Bodyguard of Lies

CHAPTER 7

Hannah groggily put her arm over her eyes to shield them from the bright morning sun. She rolled away from the huge palladium windows that allowed the unfiltered light to blaze through their high arches. John's windows, she thought. Those two windows had probably cost more than the first house she was sent to in Kansas. She raised her head from the pillow to check the time and was hit with a tremendous wracking pain that told her she had once again drank too much.

She tried to think of a good reason to get off the sofa and had just about decided there wasn't one when the phone rang. She reached across and grabbed the phone. "Hello," she croaked in a voice husky enough to cause concern.

"Hannah Masterson?" a female voice tentatively inquired.

"Yes?"

"I'm just confirming your appointment today with Doctor Jenkins."

"Jenkins," Hannah repeated. "Oh, yeah, right. I'll be there."

"See you at eleven." The phone went dead. Jenkins. Hannah had been seeing him intermittingly for about five years. She’d gone the first time at John’s insistence after the miscarriage. She wasn’t sure the psychiatrist was doing her much good but Howard’s urging had spurred her to make the appointment and she figured now that she was locked in, she might as well go, considering she’d be charged whether she were there or not.

Hannah put her feet on the ground. She looked around the room, remembering the time she had painted the walls, when her greatest concern had been making sure the paint color matched the curtains.

The doorbell echoed through the empty house. Hannah threw on a robe and staggered to the front door.

Amelia Lewis looked surprised for only a moment, and then she walked through the open door and set down a folder on the foyer table. Hannah searched her muddled mind for the proper role.

"I have the information you need for the fund-raiser," Amelia said.

Hannah looked at the folder. "I'm sorry Amelia but I thought—"

Amelia held up a hand. "Listen, Hannah, I know something's going on. But there's no need for you to bury your head in the sand. If you don't want to talk about it, that's your business, but remember, I am here for you. I don't think you should just chuck everything."

Hannah bit back the insane laughter that welled in her chest. “I didn’t chuck everything, Amelia.”

Hannah could almost hear the synapses connecting in the other woman's head. Amelia fidgeted, looking very uncomfortable and concerned.

"Well, come in," Hannah said, more to get her out of the foyer and view of the street than anything else. She led Amelia to the kitchen. "Care for a drink?"

There was a part of her that took pleasure from the shocked look Amelia’s face.

"Hannah, what’s going on?”

“Oh, come off it,” Hannah said as she poured herself a glass full of scotch. “I’m sure Celia has filled everyone in.”

Amelia’s face tightened slightly. “John really left you?”

“’Left me’?” Hannah repeated.

"You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened, Hannah."

“Oh, that’s good,” Hannah said. “I’m not blaming me for John. I’m blaming me for me.” She saw the lack of comprehension on Amelia’s face and knew they were so far apart now, in just a few short days, that they could never really talk again. There was no common ground for understanding.

Hannah knew deep in her heart that there had never been any to start with. She was here because of John. None of these other women had been raised as wards of the state, moving from foster home to foster home, seen the things she’d seen at such a young age. She had tried so hard to pretend but ultimately she had failed at this life. She didn’t know yet how she had, but there was no doubting now that she had. Staring at Amelia, Hannah felt something shift inside of herself. The pretend Hannah was dead — the thing she wasn’t sure of, was who was the real Hannah?

“Hannah — ” Amelia began. “Well, you know, I mean, there — ” she sputtered to a halt, out of gas in uncharted territory.

Hannah took another drink. “Sure you don’t want some?”

“Hannah! You need to pull yourself together!”

“Why?” Hannah asked. “I was together. I got abandoned, so being together that way, your way, this way — ” Hannah waved her hands, taking in the house — “didn’t work too well. Don’t I get to fall apart first before I have to be together again?” Hannah felt something rise in her chest. “Don’t I get to be upset for a little while? I got screwed, Amelia! More than screwed. Don’t I get to be angry? Pissed off? Just for a little while?”

Amelia was backpedaling. “I have to go.”

Hannah didn’t follow her to the door as she finished her drink.

Neeley pulled her backpack from under the bed. Grabbing the locked trunk from the hotel room's closet, Neeley dialed the combination and swung up the lid. There were several small plastic cases inside and Neeley sorted through. She'd planned all this last night as she lay in bed after her workout. She knew that Gant probably would have kicked in the door last night at Hannah's house and forced her into giving up John's location; if she knew it. Neeley preferred a less direct approach.

Gant had lectured endlessly about women having the same violent capabilities as men, but he had usually been discussing terrorists or criminals. Neeley had argued vainly that while women were just as susceptible as men to emotional inducements to violence, women on the whole required those inducements and seldom resorted to violence for the act itself whereas men would maim and kill without much reason. Neeley had often wondered which gender was the more realistic. She also knew that despite her observations, it was dangerous to classify people into groups. Gant had always said that you could never really tell about a person's true character until you saw how they acted in a crisis.

All the previous night she had pondered the problem and her only solution seemed to be to carefully monitor Hannah Masterson while she tracked husband John through other means. A very important question that nagged at Neeley from the moment she found out John had gone under was why had he done that? Had he heard of Gant's death? Or was something else going on? Had the Cellar already moved on John Masterson? But if that was so, why had the Cellar left Hannah dangling? The biggest issue to be resolved was what was the connection between Gant and John Masterson?

Neeley transferred the needed items from trunk to backpack and then relocked the former. She wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a black windbreaker over a t-shirt. Throwing the backpack on her shoulder she headed out, locking the door behind her.

She looped around the city, melding with the flow of the early morning rush hour, careful to observe all traffic rules. Neeley didn't need to consult the GPR to get to Manchester. Once she navigated somewhere she could always get there again.

Soon after parking the pick-up truck in the same spot, she was at her perch behind the log. She pulled out the glasses and scanned.

Hannah was at the kitchen putting some dishes in the sink. Then she turned and headed for the bedroom.

In her closet, Hannah scanned the racks for something appropriate. It was hard to concentrate. She could hardly decide what to wear to see her shrink, much less how she was going to handle the meeting. A part of her wondered if he’d still see her given that John’s insurance was probably going to disappear soon. She’d never particularly felt that Jenkins had much empathy for her. Hannah had found the dialogue once a month since she started seeing him to be intellectually stimulating but of little use otherwise. But John has insisted she keep going and she had no real reason not to, so she’d continued.

She turned on the shower and, as the steam flowed over the top of the glass door, pulled off her nightclothes. She stepped into the hot spray and let the water pound some of the tension from her back and shoulders. She put both of her hands against the tile and leaned forward until she felt a comfortable stretch in her legs.

She stood in the shower a long time thinking of how she had let herself be led into this gilded cage of a marriage. There was a truth somewhere, a reason she had settled for so little while foolishly believing she had so much.

She towel dried her hair. When her hair was reasonably dry, she quickly applied her makeup using extra concealer to cover the dark smudges under her eyes. When she finished her face, she started back on her hair, throwing her head down and brushing it so hard she could feel the tugs at the roots. Done, she took one last look in the mirror and then pivoted out of the room.

Forgetting the earlier quandary of what to wear, she grabbed the first dress off the rack and slipped it on. She stepped back to look at herself in the mirror. The Ann Klein dress fit perfectly and the warm peach color was good with her hair and eyes. That made her feel slightly better.

She walked to the kitchen, grabbed her keys and purse and went out the front door.

Neeley checked left and right. No sign of life. She was glad that the houses were spaced well apart. Neeley jogged downhill and was at the back of the house in less than twenty seconds. She knelt at the patio doors and pulled out a specially made tool. It looked like a set of extremely thin needle nose pliers. The name of the security company on the warning signs posted on all the windows of the Masterson residence had alerted her to what she would need.

She slid the thin edges of the tool between the door and frame and pushed it down towards the floor. Four inches from the ground she felt an obstruction. Neeley slid the tool back slightly and opened the jaws, then reclamped them on the mechanical sensor that was pressed against the inside of the door. She locked the jaws in place and folded the handle over, hooking the adjustable catch on it over the edge of the molding on the outside of the door. All set.

Neeley picked the lock and entered. The pliers held the alarm sensor in place as the door opened. From kneeling to entry had taken ten seconds.

Closing the French door, Neeley paused, scanning the immediate surroundings. She worked top to bottom, left to right, in steady arcs. Smoke detectors in the ceiling corners. No sign of any internal alarm system. No rug on the floor, which precluded ground sensors unless the Masterson's had put some extremely sensitive — and expensive — ones under the tiles. Neeley doubted that.

Her eyes went back to the bookcases that lined almost every wall. She’d never seen this many books outside of a library. And she could tell they weren’t for show as there were numerous well-thumbed paperbacks nestled among leather-bound hard covers. Titles were jammed horizontally on top of rows, filling every available space. Who had that much time to read all this, Neeley wondered?

She had planned out her movements the night before based on the observations of the interior that she was able to make from the outside. Her first move was to the portable phone in the kitchen. She opened the battery case on the backside of the handset, pulled out the rechargeable battery and replaced it with one she had brought with her. The phone would still work, but now it would also simultaneously transmit on a second frequency.

She moved to the stove hood and unclamped the filter. Reaching up as far as her arm would go; she attached a tiny magnetic transmitter to the metal. Backup if the portable phone was taken out of the room.

Neeley turned. Dining room next. She paused in the entranceway and checked it out. Looked clean. She moved along the wall and used a Swiss army knife to unscrew the grating over the air vent. The third bug was in place.

Next the foyer. Neeley stepped into the large open area at the bottom of the double staircase and froze. Her eyes were riveted on a small plastic box in the far corner of the ceiling, pointed at the front door. She slowly looked up and saw a similar box in the corner above her, pointing in the same direction as the other. Neeley slid her feet back and re-entered the dining room. Infra-red sensors. That wasn't good, but not unexpected. She was prepared for the possibility. Neeley considered and made a tactical decision. The foyer wasn't that important and the mikes she had planned for the den ought to pick up conversation there unless they were masked by a TV or other noise emitter in a closer location.

Neeley turned and went around the back of the dual staircase to the den. She checked that out. No sensors there. If there were more IR's than those two out front they would logically be near the master bedroom. On the way across the den, Neeley pressed another bug into the flue of the fireplace.

She paused at the short hall leading between the master bath and a room off to the right. The main bedroom was ahead. Lurking above the door to that room was another IR sensor. Unlike the foyer, this one would have to be dealt with. The master bedroom couldn't be ignored.

Neeley slid her backpack off and pulled out something that looked like a small hand-held searchlight. She plugged it into a wall socket and flipped the switch to on. Nothing apparent happened, but Neeley knew that the bulb was throwing out intense infrared light, enough to blanket any movement she might make. She'd been half-afraid that simply turning on the emitter would trip the alarm, but had taken the chance. The sensor worked off of movement and variation. The solid beam from her light changed the level of IR to one that allowed her to move freely. The electronic engineer in desperate need of money who had sold it to Gant had assured him that it would work on most home IR alarm systems.

All this gear was Gant's. He had taught her how to use it and it was part of his legacy to her. Some men left insurance policies and mutual funds, Gant had left her the tools of breaking and entering along with assorted weapons. More importantly, Gant had left her with knowledge and experience.

Leaving the light in place, she crossed the hall and entered the master bedroom. This was the only room she had not been able to see from the outside. Neeley stared at the massive four poster bed against the far wall for a minute. The bed was made perfectly. Neeley bet that if she checked, the top sheet was upside down so the flowers would be right side up at the blanket fold. Her grandmother in France had taught her to make a bed like that and she imagined that Hannah had been taught the same.

Neeley moved to the nightstand and bugged the phone. That one would be good for both the phone and the room. All the bugs were voice activated so their batteries ought to work for at least two weeks given Hannah was alone. Neeley sincerely hoped it would take less than that to find John Masterson. Neeley had gloves on and the bugs were all sterile, so even if one was found, they couldn't be traced to her. Not that anyone could make anything sensible out of her fingerprints, Neeley thought with a bitter smile. That would certainly cause the police some consternation if they ever got a good print from her and ran it through their computers. Better not to ever have that little situation come up at all had been Gant's advice.

Neeley pulled a Polaroid out of her backpack and took a picture of the room. She tossed the developing film onto the bed. She then began to search. Every drawer she opened, she checked first to make sure there were no tell-tales to indicate it had been opened, such as a piece of hair taped across the bottom. She also took a picture of each as soon as it was open so that everything could be put back into place exactly as it had been left. The bedroom yielded no information about where John might possibly have gone. Using the Polaroids she returned the room and drawers to their original state.

Neeley retraced her steps out of the bedroom, down the hall and recovered the IR light. She had decided last night not to do the upstairs. She'd yet to see Hannah go up there.

Neeley went into the room that had obviously been John's den. She found the map in the back of the file drawer with the two red lines on it, but knew, as Hannah had, that no such pipelines had been built. Still she slid it into her backpack. The computer refused to allow her access as she didn’t have the password. Neeley decided her time was up.

Neeley scanned the rear of the house to the wood line before stepping out. All clear. She closed the door, relocked it and retrieved the special pliers. She quickly sprinted across the backyard and disappeared into the wood line about twenty feet in, near a tree she had scouted earlier. She pulled a square box, about six inches cubed, from the backpack.

Neeley climbed the tree until she was twenty feet above the ground. She taped the box in the crux of a branch, making sure it was secure. Then she pulled a spool of very thin wire from the top of the box and pinned the end to another branch about six feet above, leaving the exposed antenna hanging free. She flicked the box on and shimmied back down the tree. She knew it was chancy to leave it unattended, but she had no choice. There were too many things to do. She felt it was reasonably secure above the ground. The odds that someone would look up in that particular tree were slim.

Hannah's house taken care of, Neeley headed back to the truck.

Hannah found a parking space despite it being Westport’s busiest time of the day. The complex consisted of various groupings of buildings — shops, office buildings and two Sheraton Hotels. As she made her way toward the building that housed Jenkins, Hannah suddenly realized she’d been here to see another doctor once — to have her wisdom teeth removed. That had been a bad experience; she remembered as she entered the lobby and walked to the elevator.

For some reason that memory brought to mind another one: her miscarriage, an ordeal she had believed at the time she would never recover from, if she ever had.

Standing alone in the elevator, Hannah was overwhelmed with the urge to cry. She held it in until she was afraid the pain in her chest would explode, sending fragments of her helter-skelter in the confined space. Finally, despite her efforts, it escaped.

That was the way Hannah entered Dr. Jenkins office, sobbing silently for a life lived uselessly and, more importantly, the one never lived at all.

The receptionist didn’t seem to think Hannah’s state unusual at all and simply waved her through to a partially opened door like a flagman on the highway trying to prevent a pile-up on her section of the road.

Hannah came to a stop just inside the door. She remembered being surprised the first time she’d met Jenkins that he didn’t look a thing like she had imagined from his voice. Jenkins was young and small, very inoffensive looking. The only immediate acknowledgement he made of her presence was to hand her a Kleenex and shut the door behind her.

As soon as they were both seated, he spoke. “You mentioned something about having problems with John?”

Right to the matter. Hannah liked that. It almost made up for his brief advice on the phone to follow her routine that had not worked well. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment how easy it would be to just sit here and have that voice explain everything. To tell all her secrets and then have them interpreted and fed back in a way she could handle. She’d told Jenkins a lot about herself over the last several years, but his feedback had been minimal. Since her life had been on a reasonably pleasant cruise control, Hannah had had no desire to press him for anything.

“He’s gone. I assume I drove him away.”

“You forced him to do what he did?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Hannah countered. “If I had been more aware I would have been able to do something prior to his leaving. Made things better somehow.”

“How do you know he wouldn’t have left no matter what you did?”

She looked at him and thought briefly about what he had just said. “Doctor Jenkins, I know you want to help me but I don’t think I can do this. I—“

“Did your husband say or do anything to you that indicated he was getting ready to leave you?”

She thought shrinks weren’t supposed to interrupt. “No.”

“Did he tell you he was unhappy?”

“No.”

Jenkins was matter of fact about it. “Sounds as if your husband made a conscious decision to leave and it might well have nothing to do with you. Why do you feel responsible?”

“He wouldn’t have left if he had been happy with me.”

“Were you happy with him?”

Touché, Hannah thought, but didn’t respond.

Jenkins shifted his angle of approach. “Tell me exactly what has happened since we last met.”

Hannah relayed the events, completely, for the first time to another person starting with waving bye to John as he headed off to golf. She wound up with the meeting with Brumley. It took her most of the allotted time for the session.

Jenkins had his hands folded neatly in his lap as he finally spoke, but through her own fog of emotions, Hannah was surprised to sense that Jenkins seemed nervous.

“Do you feel suicidal?”

“No.” Hannah remembered the knife and the tub. “Yes.”

A single eyebrow went up and Jenkins waited.

“I play with a knife sometimes.”

“Is this something new?”

“No.”

Jenkins waited, probably wondering why she’d never told him this before she knew. Finally he gave in. “Ever cut yourself when you play with the knife?”

“No.”

“Why do you do it?”

Finally the open-ended question, Hannah thought. She’d been a bit disappointed with Jenkins for a few moments there. “I think there’s a part of me that I want to get rid of.”

“And what part is that?”

Hannah shrugged. “The bad part.”

Jenkins was probably remembering that silence didn’t work well with her. “What do you think is the bad part of you?”

“The part that allowed me to end up in the situation I’m in right now. I should have known better.”

“Known better than what?”

“To entrust my life to someone else. It never worked as a child, I don’t know why I thought it would as an adult. I suppose I took the easy way and it’s turned out to be the hard way.”

“Other than that bad part, though, do you have a desire to hurt yourself?”

“No.”

“And if you get rid of that part of you?” Jenkins asked.

“Then I can control me.”

“And?”

Hannah’s eyes flashed with anger as she looked at Jenkins. “You don’t think I can control myself?”

Jenkins spread his hands wide, a giving up gesture. “That’s not my province. I think you have great un-tapped potential.”

She laughed bitterly. “Like a newly discovered oil field? That’s the area John worked in. Oil. They were always looking for the un-tapped potential.”

“You’re a person, not oil.”

Hannah’s narrowed her eyes and stared at Jenkins without saying anything. For the first time she really focused on him.

Jenkins shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “OK. Listen, Hannah. You’ve got to understand that you are under stress. There’s a lot going on in your head and in your gut right now. You’re feeling anger, guilt, relief, fear — every emotion in the book. And all within minutes of each other. Each emotion brings a new one on its coattails.

“There’s even a small part of you, and you don’t have to admit it to me if you don’t want to, that’s happy your husband is gone. Even the best marriage has its bad times.”

Hannah didn’t protest although she supposed it would have been normal to do so.

“The problem is that the feeling of relief probably immediately triggers a feeling of guilt,” Jenkins continued. “Guilt is the baggage women carry, while men wield anger.”

Not all women, Hannah immediately thought, but didn’t say. She didn’t feel guilty. She was shocked to suddenly realize it. Not in the slightest.

“Maybe—“ Jenkins drew the word out—“the part you’ve really wanted to cut out was your marriage. The life you were leading.”

That surprised Hannah. In all the years she’d been seeing him he’d never talked this much and had most certainly never taken a stand on anything. Jenkins eyes slid past her and she realized he was checking the time. “We can get together next week if you like.”

Hannah felt like there was a hole in her chest with cold air rushing through. Jenkins had said a lot in a very short period of time. The interesting thing was that none of it had particularly surprised her.

Jenkins slowly stood and walked over to the side of her chair, placing his hand on the back of it. She realized he was indicating that the time was up. She stood. “Thank you, Doctor.”