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

don’t have the luxury of “eventually” with this one, not with Colin Fielding, the governor’s personal hatchet man, breathing down Deputy Superintendent Mitry’s neck, which translates to Mitry breathing down my neck.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Guess I’d better hit the road. The wife will be expecting me for dinner.’

‘Sure. I’ll walk you out to your car.’ Lulu was fast asleep and didn’t join us. I couldn’t make out any stars overhead. The sky had clouded over. ‘Lieutenant, I was wondering about something …’

He gave me a wary sidelong glance in the motion detector lights. ‘Oh, yeah, what’s that?’

‘Have you obtained Austin Talmadge’s medical file from McLean Psychiatric Hospital?’

‘Ang’s put in an official request. We don’t have it yet, and they won’t go out of their way to make it easy for us. There are patient confidentiality concerns. People have a right to protect their privacy, even after they’re dead. But with a case like this we might turn up something valuable.’

‘Such as …?’

‘Such as someone who came in contact with Austin while he was there who now happens to be a person of interest in his murder.’

‘A fellow patient, you mean?’

‘Could be. Could also be someone who was employed there. A nurse, security guard, custodian, groundskeeper …’ He peered at me in the motion detector lights. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘Just curious.’

‘And why is it that whenever you get curious, my stomach starts to hurt?’

‘I wouldn’t know. Perhaps you should have your doctor check you over.’

‘Yeah, I’ll get right on that.’ He climbed into his Crown Vic, peering at me. ‘You look all in. You’re still not a hundred percent, you know. Ought to make an early night of it.’

‘I intend to. Goodnight, Lieutenant.’

He rolled up his window, started up his engine and sped down the driveway for home. I went back inside. I was too tired to cook anything so I raided the bread, sausage, cheese and other goodies that Merilee had scored at the Italian market in Middletown. Then I turned out the lights, made a fire in the bedroom fireplace, brushed my teeth, didn’t floss, undressed and climbed into the cozy flannel sheets, barely able to keep my eyes open. Lulu sprawled out next to me, somehow managing to take up her usual three-quarters of the bed. I turned out the bedside lamp and lay there in the firelight, exhausted. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I’d gotten accustomed to sleeping alone after Merilee dumped me – if you can consider sharing a bed with Lulu sleeping alone – but now that Merilee had come and gone like a whirlwind, the bed felt empty and I ached with loneliness.

So my mind went back to work on who’d killed Austin Talmadge. And why so savagely? I lay there for an hour or more with my wheels spinning before I finally gave in, turned my lamp back on and read Mrs Parker for a while until my eyes absolutely, positively would not stay open. I flicked the lamp off and fell fast asleep – only to awaken with a yelp because I thought I was buried in that damned root cellar tomb again. Eventually, my heart stopped racing and I managed to fall back to sleep. But it was a restless, fitful sleep. And I’d been lying there awake for at least an hour in the country darkness before Quasimodo started crowing.

I was thinking about getting up to make the coffee when the unlisted line rang. I reached for the bedside phone eagerly, hoping it was Merilee calling to tell me she’d arrived safely in Budapest and missed me as much as I missed her.

It wasn’t Merilee.

It was Tedone. And he wasn’t calling to tell me how much he missed me. He was calling to tell me that Michael Talmadge had been murdered.

EIGHT

Michael Talmadge’s cold, dead body had been found at six o’clock that morning in the entry hall of his high-security mansion high atop Mitchell Hill Road by his long-time housekeeper, an elderly Lyme widow named Connie Pike, who arrived at six every morning to prepare the richest man in Connecticut his breakfast of grapefruit juice, two soft boiled eggs, wholewheat toast and black coffee. Michael had no live-in help.

‘The man liked his privacy,’ Tedone informed me as we sped to Michael’s house in his Crown Vic. He’d stopped at Merilee’s to pick me up thirty minutes after he’d phoned me, which gave me just enough time to feed Lulu, down two cups of coffee, shave and dress. It was a clear, frosty autumn morning. A beautiful morning, actually. Lulu rode between us, her tail thumping eagerly as Tedone filled me in.

‘Connie found the front gate open, which she said didn’t surprise her. Michael informed her last evening when she served him his dinner of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and string beans that he would no longer be keeping it locked now that Austin was dead. He’d already dismissed his four-man security team and sent them to New Orleans for an all-expenses-paid blow out. He also told her that from now on he intended to live his life as he pleased.’

‘Didn’t get to live it for very long, did he?’

‘No, he did not.’

‘I find this very strange, Lieutenant. He stopped by the farm when I got home from the hospital to express his condolences for what Austin had put Lulu and me through. Told me he intended to pay all of our medical and veterinary bills. He also gave me a check for a hundred thou for my pain and suffering.’

‘Did you accept it?’

‘Sure did. And then it went straight into the fireplace.’

He shook his head. ‘You are one stubborn guy.’

‘Are you telling me you would have accepted it?’

‘Sworn personnel aren’t allowed to accept gratuities. And I’m still waiting for the strange part.’

‘He hadn’t stopped trembling. He was terrified that Austin’s slasher wasn’t someone who had a nasty personal history with the toxic little bastard but someone who killed him strictly out of bitter resentment over his