Honeymoon

Chapter 109

TWENTY MINUTES LATER Susan and I were speeding north out of New York City, and after an hour-fifty on the road we pulled onto the grounds of the Pine Woods Psychiatric Facility in Lafayetteville, New York.

“This should be interesting for you,” Susan said as we got out of my car and headed toward the main building, a brick tower of eight floors. “Meet the parent. Nora’s mom lives here, O’Hara.”

I gave a half smile. I could tell that Susan was enjoying this.

Soon we were sitting in a small conference room on the psych facility’s top floor. Seated across from us was the head nurse on the disturbed ward.

I couldn’t tell if the heavyset woman was scared or simply nervous. Either way, she looked extremely uncomfortable. Meeting a couple of FBI agents does that to some people.

“Agent John O’Hara, I want you to meet Emily Barrows,” said Susan, who had made the original contact with the folks from Pine Woods.

I turned to the woman, extending my hand. “Pleasure,” I said.

“I think Emily has valuable information for us about Nora,” said Susan.

I sat there with all the anticipation of a kid on Christmas Eve. Not once did I take my eyes off this woman, who was wearing white slacks and a simple white blouse, her hair pulled back and held with bobby pins. She was no-frills all the way down to her rubber-soled cordovans.

“Well,” she began, her voice shaky, “one of our patients at Pine Woods is a woman by the name of Olivia Sinclair.”

This much I knew.

“Nora is Olivia’s daughter,” said Emily. “At least, I’m pretty sure she is. It just dawned on me that I never saw any proof of that.”

“I have,” said Susan. “After I spoke with you on the phone, Emily, I pulled the prison file.”

I raised an eyebrow at Susan. “Prison file?”

“Olivia Sinclair began a life sentence when Nora was six,” she said.

“For what?”

“Murder,” said Susan.

“You’re kidding me.”

Susan shook her head. “It gets better, O’Hara. She murdered her husband. And the couple’s little girl, Nora, was there when it happened.”

Susan went on. “A few years after Olivia Sinclair was sent away, she seemed to lose touch with reality. That’s when she was transferred to Pine Woods. In the meantime, Nora bounced from one foster home to the next. She moved so much, there was never a cohesive file on her.”

Susan glanced at Emily, who now looked completely lost.

“I’m sorry,” Susan said to her. “We have good reason to believe that Nora killed her first husband a couple of years ago. Based on that, and everything else that’s happened, we have even better reason to believe she killed her second husband.”

“She and Connor Brown were only engaged to be married,” I said, reminding Susan.

“I’m talking about Jeffrey Walker,” she said.

I was now more lost than Emily. “Jeffrey Walker?”

“You know—he writes all those sappy historical novels. Or at least he did.”

“Yeah, I know who he is. You’re saying that Nora and he were—”

“Married.”

“Christ,” I said, putting the pieces together. “The news reported that he died of a heart attack. And let me guess,” I said. “He lived in Boston.”

Susan touched her finger to her nose.

“Which brings us back to Emily,” she said. She turned to the nurse. “Go ahead, tell him what you have. This is good, O’Hara.”

Emily nodded and asked that we follow her. “I’ll show you,” she said. “Let’s go see Olivia.”