Second Honeymoon

Chapter 64

THERE WAS A hitch in McConnell’s voice. Not a stutter or stammer but, weirdly, something more like a swallow, a sort of dyspeptic reflex, as if the pastrami-on-rye sandwich he had for lunch was repeating on him. The result was that he randomly accentuated words for no reason.

Talk about a Monty Python skit, she thought. Paging John Cleese…

“Ned Sinclair, huh? What…would…you like to know about him?” he asked.

Sarah suppressed a laugh and asked her first question, a no-brainer. “What’s his race? Is he white, black, Hispanic?”

If Ned Sinclair wasn’t white, this was going to be a very short conversation.

“He’s white,” said McConnell. “I’m afraid I don’t have his file…in…front of me, so I can’t give you height and weight, or even exactly how old he is.”

“Can you ballpark his age?”

“I’d say thirtyish, maybe a bit older. I didn’t have much interaction with him; in fact, no one here…really…did. Ned Sinclair barely spoke.”

The age, thirtyish, was a possible match, but the part about his not speaking couldn’t be any more different from the guy back at Canteena’s. Jared Sullivan was definitely a talker, a very smooth talker.

“What else can you tell me about him?” she asked.

“The guy you’d probably want to speak with is the admitting psychiatrist. Ned was his patient for some time, but I don’t know his name offhand,” he said. “Let me actually…grab…the file. Hold on a second, okay?”

Before Sarah could even respond, she was listening to a trombone-heavy Muzak version of the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” Not an appropriate song title when you’ve been put on hold.

If only to kill a few seconds, she quickly checked her e-mails. Make that singular. There was only one new message since she last checked after leaving the Oval Office. An invitation to the next state dinner? A seat at the president’s table?

Sarah smiled. A girl could always dream…

She looked at the sender’s name. Who? She didn’t recognize it at first. Then it came to her.

Mark Campbell. From her call log.

He was the sheriff from Winnemucca, Nevada, the town where the first John O’Hara victim lived.

Sarah’s eyes slid over to the subject heading and immediately lit up.

FOUND SOMETHING, it read.