The Man Who Wasn't All There by David Handler (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

day when your higher-ups, including Colin Fielding, the governor’s “special envoy” – who was here but wasn’t here – decided to “pull the ripcord” and have Michael’s A-team capture Austin and escort him to his private sanitarium, from which he promptly escaped, shot some poor guy at the Old Lyme Beach Club, kidnapped Lulu and me, forced us at gunpoint to the top of Mount Creepy, cracked me on the head, locked us in a root cellar for something like sixteen hours and managed to get his throat slit.’

He glared at me. ‘Are you done?’

‘It was a well-devised operation. I especially like the part where Captain Rundle of Troop F made sure he delivered Austin’s toy state police cruiser to his home, keys in the ignition, so that Austin could make a quick getaway. That was really shrewd thinking.’

‘Now are you done?’

‘I guess so, although I reserve the right to get genuinely pissed off again. Annabeth McKenna’s in her early forties, a widow with three teenaged kids. The Yale School of Medicine’s top child psychiatrist, like you said, which is precisely what she told me Austin was – a child. Michael is, too, in her professional opinion. She described both of them as pre-pubescent.’

‘Good-looking woman?’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

Tedone raised his chin at me. ‘Just curious.’

‘She’s quite attractive, as a matter of fact.’

Tedone leafed through his notepad some more, sticking his lower lip in and out. ‘As far as persons of interest go, Jim Conley mentioned Austin’s cousins, the Hardy Boys …?’

‘Right. No love lost there. They’re here right now putting in Merilee’s storm doors and windows.’

‘Good. I’ll have Ang find out where they were when Austin Talmadge was getting his throat slashed. They’re not exactly choirboys, those two. They’ve had brushes with the law going back to high school – vandalism, criminal trespassing, marijuana possession. They got into a whale of a bar fight a couple of years ago at the Monkey Farm Café. Tony broke a guy’s jaw.’

‘Have they ever served time?’

‘No,’ he acknowledged. ‘I guess it helps being related to the Talmadge brothers. Even a poor relation.’ He glanced back down at his notepad. ‘Another person of interest is Donna Noyes.’

‘Who is …?’

‘A grad student in botany at Cornell. She drove down a couple of weeks ago to work on her thesis at her parents’ place in Old Lyme. It was pretty late at night by the time she got here. Austin, in his self-appointed role as an auxiliary state policeman, pulled her over, groped her and asked her pervy questions.’

‘OK, I heard about this.’

‘What you may not have heard is that Donna has a serious anger management problem. Recently had a restraining order filed against her by a guy who she’d been seeing at Cornell. The guy met someone else and wanted to break up with Donna. He claims she physically assaulted him. Also slashed all four tires on his car and left a note on his windshield that said, Next time this will be your throat, you two-timing bastard! Interesting choice of words considering what went down, don’t you think? I’m told by Jim Conley that she knows the mountain well. Searches for native plant specimens up there. Could be she didn’t take too kindly to the way Austin treated her and decided to do something about it. Those voices you thought you heard after Austin dumped you in the root cellar. Could one of them have been a woman’s voice?’

I mulled it over. ‘It’s possible. I really couldn’t say for sure.’

He nodded his head slowly before he said, ‘OK, now it’s your turn.’

‘My turn for what, Lieutenant?’

‘I’m not sure how you do it, but you and your short friend pick up bits and pieces that I don’t. Got anything you care to share?’

‘Happy to. Austin claimed to me that one of his brother’s ex-Green Berets, Joaquin, kept staring at his pecker after he was captured and thrown in the shower of his personal sanitarium. He also claimed that Joaquin had made sexual advances toward him. There may or may not have been anything to that, but Austin was definitely homophobic. After he escaped from his house all of the bloody mayhem at the Old Lyme Beach Club was triggered, as it were, by Austin witnessing a public display of affection between a pair of young gay guys having lunch out on the deck.’

Tedone nodded. ‘Truman Mainwaring, an architect from New York, whose family has a place out here. I’ve spoken to him at the hospital. He’s still pretty doped up. Skip Rimer, his boyfriend or whatever you’re supposed to call them this year, was there with him. He’s the editor of a men’s outdoor magazine. Muscular, macho type. Got real hostile toward me after I discovered from the nursing staff that he left the hospital for several hours while Truman was in surgery. Several hours that happen to coincide with what we’re currently figuring is the mid-afternoon time frame when someone was slitting Austin’s throat. Rimer refused to tell me where he was. Got real uncooperative.’

‘Are you hinting that I, being a fellow New York media type, might have better luck with him when I go back to the hospital to get checked over?’

‘Not even maybe,’ he said gruffly. ‘You are not doing this again.’

‘Doing what, Lieutenant?’

‘Working my case with me.’

‘Fine by me. I sensed that you were hinting.’

‘I wasn’t hinting.’ He paused, gazing into the fire. ‘But Rimer certainly fits the profile. He’s in good enough shape to hike seven miles uphill, cut Austin’s throat, hurl him into the falls and hike seven miles back.’

‘So are the Hardy Boys,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re volunteer firefighters who do a lot of outdoor work. They also grew up here and know that mountain well. Michael Talmadge qualifies as a no. He’s too frail. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t sic one or more of his ex-Green Berets on baby brother to get rid of him once and for all. Did your people