16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

I smiled back at him and said, “Hi, Neddie. Everyone is good.”

I looked around at the other patients in Dr. Hoover’s ward and saw people with obvious challenges and others who looked as normal as anyone in any crowd. Some of the patients wandered, some played games, one sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” while lying in the intersection of two corridors. Another group watched Dr. Phil on TV.

There was noise all around, but my internal alarms were quiet. What I now knew about Saint Vartan’s and this psych center led me to conclude that we had both too many suspects and none whatsoever.

Conklin and I made our way out of the labyrinthine Hyde Street Psychiatric Center. Out on the street I said to my partner, “I hate square one.”

“Let’s grab lunch,” Conklin said. “I think better when I’m not half starving.”

“Copy that.”

CHAPTER 79

NEDDIE WATCHED THE two cops talking to Doreen Collins and heard her crying, “I’m diabetic. I’m sorry, Dr. Hoover. I was looking for insulin.”

Neddie was paralyzed by panic. Cops were here. Right here.

He didn’t get it at all.

What had brought them to the Bin, and why were they were grilling Doreen?

The vial of sux he’d stupidly dropped. That was coded. They’d traced it to the hospital. And the rest of it came together in a horrible, stinking flash.

He’d been seen, either when he stuck the woman outside the Admiral Dewey—or maybe when he stuck the footballplayer dude. He had gotten careless. Someone had seen him and described him to the cops.

This was bad.

He’d known Doreen casually for four years, but now he saw that they resembled each other in the grossest, most general way. Both of them were short and blondish.

But Neddie was pretty sure that once the cops talked to Doreen, they’d know how stupid she was, too thick to pull off murder under any circumstances. And elegant murders? Never.

Another thought struck him.

Mikey had told Hoover about his night flights. Would Hoover tell the cops that he disappeared sometimes all night long?

He went cold and numb just thinking about that.

Hoover was very smart, but he was arrogant. Neddie had been the perfect idiot for so long, would Hoover even consider that Neddie was a killer? No. No, no, no. Never.

Or was this his own arrogance speaking?

He had to check on this to be sure. He wanted to see Hoover’s expression. He wanted to see the cops’ eyes when they looked at him. It was compulsive, he knew, but he’d learned many lessons during his lifetime in lockup. One of those lessons was how to read faces.

He would know if he was a suspect when he looked into the eyes of those cops.

Neddie cut through the little gang of gawkers outside Hoover’s office and approached the two cops, a man and a woman who could have been the two cops who had stopped him on the patio outside the Waterside Restaurant.

“I’m Neddie,” he said in squeak mode. “I’m good. Are you good?”

Hoover’s voice boomed. “Neddie, Carlos, Tommy, please clear the hallway. Thank you.”

The tall, blond woman cop looked Neddie in the eyes, checking him out, maybe asking herself, Is this one a killer? Then she smiled at him, dismissing Neddie as everyone always did.

“Hi, Neddie. Everyone is good,” she said.

Could he count on that?