Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

“You’re a shrink. And Danny trusts you. He asked me to get you, and I said I would try.”

“I’m a shrink, but I’m not Danny’s shrink.”

“I told the cops that you are so that I could get you in to see him. Will you just talk to him? Maybe you can make some sense of this, Dr. Smith, because I know Danny very well. I’ve seen him every day for the last four years, and I’m telling you, Danny didn’t kill anybody.”

Justine was exhausted, stressed out, sleep deprived, and now she was conflicted too.

Should she go see Danny because he was still her client and he had asked for her?

Or should she wait until she’d spoken to Jack and Private’s lawyer, Eric Caine?

Nefertiti rubbed against her.

Justine bent to pet her cat.

Everything about Danny Whitman was bothering her. Was he a psychopath? Was that why neither she nor Larry Schuster had seen Danny’s potential for violence? Or was he a lamb, as innocent as Schuster said?

For her own peace of mind, she had to know.

“Dr. Smith?” Schuster said.

“I’m here.”

It was an hour’s drive to Twin Towers in traffic. Getting past the bureaucracy at TTCF could take all day, and she still might not get to see Danny.

“I’m being paged,” said Schuster. “I’ve left your name at the main gate.”

CHAPTER 81

IN THE FOUR hours since Justine had last seen Danny Whitman, he’d been transferred from Lost Hills, the best jail in the state, to TTCF.

He was now in the Twin Towers medical services building, which was packed to the walls with prisoners, many of them mentally unbalanced.

She’d worked in places like this one. They were never good.

After being patted down again and sent through a metal detector again, Justine stood in the doorway and looked around.

The rectangular room had armed guards on both sides of the door, bars in the small high windows, fresh industrial-green paint on the walls, and a pervasive, almost punishing odor of disinfectant.

She located Danny in one of the hospital beds, two down from the glass-enclosed nursing station. He had two black eyes, wore a paper robe and a gauze turban, and he was handcuffed to the bed rails.

Justine had been told that she had fifteen minutes with Danny, no physical contact permitted, and that if she broke that rule, her meeting with Danny would be terminated immediately.

Danny looked up when she came toward him. He appeared happier to see her than she had expected. She hardly knew him. What did he think she could do for him?

Justine pulled a plastic chair up to the side of the bed. “We don’t have much time, Danny. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Piper and I were in love, but we couldn’t tell anyone because of her age, and listen, the paparazzi—”

“I’m sorry, Danny. The short version, okay?”

Justine was assessing him. Did he comprehend? Was he lucid? Was he truthful? Was he living in this time and place or in a world of his own creation?

“Yesterday morning when we were setting up in the Ferrari, Piper said to me, ‘Too bad we can’t just get out of here,’ and I was thinking with my heart. We’d never spent the night together.…It was a great opportunity.…I drove to the cabin I bought last year under a fake name. Oh, God. If I’d used my brain, she’d still be alive.”

He was crying again.

“Danny. In twelve minutes, I’ll be thrown out of here, so please talk to me. Did you have a fight with Piper?”