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

a standard-issue silver Crown Vic just as he had when he’d been deputy superintendent. Pete was a chesty fireplug in his early fifties with a shaved head and a twenty-inch neck who was partial to cheap, shiny black suits that were just a bit too snug in the shoulders.

He’d barely had time to greet me with a grim nod and a firm handshake before the gravel driveway was overflowing with men exiting their vehicles. Each of them greeted me with that same grim nod and firm handshake when Pete introduced us, one by one. The first was Jim Conley, resident state trooper of Lyme and Old Lyme. Resident troopers are common in rural Connecticut towns that are too small to fund a police force of their own. Conley carried himself with a great deal of calm authority. He was maybe fifty, tall, lean and broad-shouldered. Wore a wide-brimmed Smokey hat and a trimly tailored uniform. A genuine one, unlike Austin Talmadge’s. His superior was Captain Donovan Rundle of the Troop F Barracks in Westbrook – or ‘F Troop’ as the locals called it in mocking homage to the ’60s TV sitcom about an inept cavalry troop that starred Ken Berry, Forrest Tucker and the one, the only Larry Storch. Rundle was in his mid-fifties, a jowly, paunchy, deflated accordion of a man who looked incredibly unhappy to be pulled away from his primary job, which was sitting at his desk counting the days until he could retire and play golf in Boca Raton. Moving on up the food chain, Pete introduced me to Buck Mitry, the man who’d succeeded him as deputy superintendent. Mitry was a stern-faced black man who was a good two inches taller than I am – which would make him six feet five. He was dressed in a sober gray suit and muted tie and possessed the largest hand I’d ever shaken in my life. Lastly, I met Colin Fielding, a slightly built man in his late forties with thinning sandy hair and piercing eyes. Pete Tedone described him as a ‘personal envoy’ from the governor’s office.

‘I’m here but I’m not here,’ Fielding said cryptically. He wore a navy-blue suit and a silk tie of bold orange and black stripes that identified him as a Princetonian.

I led them inside where we sat around the big kitchen table. They declined coffee. They weren’t there to drink coffee. Or to fuss over Lulu. Didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to her.

She curled up at my feet with a sour grunt. She doesn’t like to be ignored. ‘Forgive me for jumping to conclusions, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘but I get the feeling I’ve just had a close encounter of the weird kind.’

‘That you have, Hoagy.’ Pete Tedone nodded his shaved head.

The table fell silent after that. And stayed silent.

Resident Trooper Conley cleared his throat. ‘Forgive us, we’re waiting for one more member of our team to arrive,’ he explained as I saw a Volvo station wagon pull up outside. ‘Ah, here she is.’

‘Come on in!’ I hollered when there was a tap at the mudroom door.

In strode a strikingly attractive woman. She was in her early-forties, I’m guessing, with penetrating brown eyes and a lush, untamed mane of chestnut-colored hair streaked with silver. She was about five feet seven and had the kind of lean, muscular body that only comes from working out like a total demon eight days a week. She wore a tight-fitting black cashmere turtleneck sweater, tight-fitting black fine-wale corduroy pants and a pair of trail hikers. No make-up or jewelry, other than a plain gold wedding band. No perfume either, which was a blessing because Lulu is highly allergic to most of them.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said in a low, cool voice as she joined us at the table. ‘Had to wait for my mother to get here from Guilford. My youngest is home with the sniffles. Forgive me, but what’s this all about? You said it was urgent.’

I said, ‘Excuse me, you are …?’

‘Oh, sorry,’ Pete Tedone said. ‘Stewart Hoag, say hello to Dr Annabeth McKenna. She’s on the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine. Her field is child psychiatry. She’s in private practice, too, and for the past several years she’s attended exclusively to the needs of one very special patient.’

I tugged at my ear. ‘Going out on a limb here – would that one very special patient happen to be named Austin Talmadge?’

‘Correct, Mr Hoag,’ she replied, running her fingers through her hair.

‘Make it Hoagy.’

‘As in Carmichael?’

‘As in the cheese steak.’

She arched an eyebrow at me curiously. ‘On the surface, Austin might strike you as a bit of a departure for a child psychiatrist. But allow me to assure you that while the calendar may say he’s forty-two, Austin is a highly unstable, anti-social delusional psychotic who has the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old boy. Did he threaten you? Is that why we’re here?’

‘He said, and I quote, “You’ll regret this.” Is that your idea of a threat?’

‘Why don’t you tell us what happened?’ she suggested as Captain Rundle kept sneaking admiring looks at her, no doubt picturing her in a bikini lounging by the side of his pool in Boca.

‘He showed up here anxious to speak with my ex-wife.’

She smiled at me, brightening. ‘That would be Merilee?’

‘Do you two know each other?’

‘We were on a committee together last year. Blocked a developer from building sixteen McMansions on Selden Cove Road. She’s a real fighter.’

‘That she is. Austin seems to feel she’s also deeply caring and understanding based on a role she played in a movie last year. That sort of thing happens to actors. It’s an occupational hazard.’

Deputy Superintendent Mitry cleared his throat. ‘I don’t like it that a celebrity of her stature is on Austin’s radar screen. He might start watching the house, tailing her when she leaves …’

‘We’re in luck in that regard,’ I said. ‘She’s on location in Budapest shooting a movie.’

‘Did you tell Austin that?’ Resident