“Odd? How?”

I shook my head. “Think.”

“It was a deep voice, husky, I guess.”

“That’s it?”

She took a sip of wine, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Then it wasn’t Kevin.”

“How do you—?”

“Kevin’s voice is ruined, Doctor Warren. Has been since he was a kid. It sounds like it’s perpetually cracking, like the voice of a teenager going through puberty.”

“That wasn’t the voice I heard on the phone.”

“No.”

Eric rubbed his face. “So, if Kevin didn’t make the call, who did?”

“And why?” Diandra said.

I looked at both of them and held out my hands. “Frankly, I have no idea. Either of you have any enemies?”

Diandra shook her head.

Eric said, “How do you define enemies?”

“Enemies,” I said. “As in people who call up to threaten you at four A.M., or send you pictures of your child without a note of explanation or generally wish you dead. Enemies.”

He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

He grimaced. “I have professional competitors, I guess, and detractors, people who disagree with me—”

“In what sense?”

He smiled, somewhat ruefully. “Patrick, you took my courses. You know that I don’t agree with a lot of the experts in the field and that people disagree with my dis-

agreements. But I doubt such people wish me physical harm. Besides, wouldn’t my enemies come after me, not Diandra and her son?”

Diandra flinched, lowered her eyes, and sipped her wine.

I shrugged. “Possibly. You never know, though.” I looked at Diandra. “You said that in the past you’ve feared patients. Any of them recently released from wards or prisons who might hold a grudge?”

“I’d have been notified.” She met my eyes and hers were vibrant with confusion and fear, a deep, encompassing fear.

“Any current patients who might have the motive and resourcefulness to do this?”

She spent a good minute thinking about it, but eventually shook her head. “No.”

“I’ll need to speak to your ex-husband.”

“Stan? Why? I don’t see the point.”

“I need to rule out any possible connection to him. I’m sorry if it upsets you, but I’d be a fool if I didn’t.”

“I’m not obtuse, Mr. Kenzie, but I promise you Stan has no connection to my life and hasn’t for almost two decades.”

“I have to know everything I can about the people in your life, Doctor Warren, particularly anyone with whom you have a relationship that is not picture perfect.”

“Patrick,” Eric said, “come on. What about privacy?”

I sighed. “Fuck privacy.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Eric,” I said. “Fuck privacy. Doctor Warren’s, and yours too, I’m afraid. You brought me into this, Eric, and you know how I work.”

He blinked.

“I don’t like the way this case feels.” I looked out at the darkness of Diandra’s loft, at the icy sheen on her windows. “I don’t like it and I’m trying to catch up on some details so I can do my job and keep Doctor Warren and her son out of danger. To accomplish that, I need to know everything about your lives. Both of you. And if you refuse me that access”—I looked at Diandra—“I’ll walk away.”

Diandra watched me calmly.

Eric said, “You’d leave a woman in distress? Just like that?”

I kept my eyes on Diandra. “Just like that.”

Diandra said, “Are you always this blunt?”

For a quarter second, an image flashed through my brain of a woman cascading down onto hard cement, her body filled with holes, my face and clothes splattered with her blood. Jenna Angeline—dead before she hit the ground on a soft summer morning as I stood an inch away.

I said, “I had someone die on me once because I was a step too slow. I won’t have that happen again.”

A small tremble rippled the skin at the base of her throat. She reached up and rubbed it. “So you definitely think I’m in serious danger.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But you were threatened. You did receive that photo. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to screw with your life. I want to find out who that is and make them stop. That’s why you hired me. Can you call Timpson for me, set up an appointment for tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Good. I also need a description of Moira Kenzie, anything you can remember about her, no matter how small.”

As Diandra closed her eyes for a full minute to conjure up a complete image of Moira Kenzie, I flipped open a notepad, uncapped a pen, and waited.

“She was wearing jeans, a black river-driver’s shirt under a red flannel shirt.” She opened her eyes. “She was very pretty with long, dirty-blond hair, a bit wispy, and she chain-smoked. She seemed authentically terrified.”

“Height?”

“Five five or so.”

“Weight?”

“I’m guessing about one ten.”

“What kind of cigarettes did she smoke?”

She closed her eyes again. “Long with white filters. The pack was gold. ‘Deluxe’ something or other.”

“Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra Lights?”

Her eyes snapped open. “Yes.”

I shrugged. “My partner switches to them every time she tries to quit by cutting back. Eyes?”

“Green.”

“Any guesses on ethnic background?”

She sipped her wine. “Northern European maybe, a few generations back and maybe mixed. She could have been Irish, British, even Slavic. She had very pale skin.”

“Anything else? Where did she say she was from?”

“Belmont,” she said with a note of mild surprise.

“Does that seem incongruous for any reason?”

“Well…if someone’s from Belmont, usually they go to the finer prep schools, et cetera.”

“True.”

“And one of the things they lose, if they ever had it, is a Boston accent. Maybe they have a light one…”

“But not a ‘If you come to my pahty don’t fahget the beah’ type of accent.”

“Exactly.”

“But Moira did?”

Tags: Dennis Lehane Kenzie & Gennaro Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net