Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow

The newscaster’s voice droned on in the background as Nikki came back downstairs. She half tuned in.

‘A young woman’s body was found this afternoon, partially hidden in undergrowth close to the 10 freeway,’ the anchor was saying. ‘Initial reports suggest that the victim, a white woman in her late twenties, was stabbed multiple times, possibly even tortured.’

Was it Nikki’s imagination, or did the newscaster seem to be lingering over the gruesome details?

‘According to police, the injuries to the victim’s face are so severe that no formal identification has yet been made.’

Nikki winced and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge. Christ. There are some psychos out there.

‘Sports news now, and in a major setback for the LA Rams …’

Nikki tuned out. Opening the door, she ran out into the still bright evening light.

She’d almost reached Sunset Boulevard when her phone rang. She stopped and answered, panting.

‘Hello?’

It was Trey. He was crying, sobbing so violently it was hard to make out his words. Nikki slipped into doctor mode.

‘Try to breathe, honey. Slow it down.’

Two long, rasping breaths shuddered down the line.

‘Good,’ said Nikki. ‘Now can you tell me what’s happened?’

‘Lisa!’ Trey blurted. ‘Lisa Flannagan.’

Trey had always had a soft spot for Lisa. Nikki could tell. The way he stared at her when she walked down the hall to the restroom, the shy smile he gave every time she came to his desk to pay for a session.

‘What about Lisa?’ Nikki asked kindly. ‘Whatever it is, I’m sure it can’t be that bad, Trey.’

‘She’s dead!’ Trey sobbed.

A low ringing had started in Nikki’s ears. She watched the traffic crawl past her as if in a dream.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean she’s dead. Murdered!’ Trey started to weep uncontrollably. ‘I heard it on the news.’

Nikki’s knees buckled beneath her. She’d seen Lisa yesterday, alive and well and full of plans for her future. This couldn’t be right. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m positive. Oh God, Doc, it’s awful. Some sicko cut her to pieces! Dumped her by the side of the freeway.’

Nikki gasped. The news report she’d heard earlier! About the young woman dumped off the 10. That was Lisa?

‘Dr Roberts? Dr Roberts, are you still there?’

Trey’s voice whined out of her earpiece but Nikki didn’t answer.

Guilt crept over her like a spider. While she’d been envying Lisa’s hope and youth, while she’d been judging her, Lisa had been … Oh God.

She tried not to think about it, but the horrifying images crowding into Nikki’s brain wouldn’t stop.

‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Trey,’ she rasped, and hung up.

A new nightmare had begun.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘We’re looking for Dr Roberts. Dr Nicola Roberts. Now it’s a simple question, son. Is she here or isn’t she?’

The two cops hovered menacingly in front of Trey Raymond’s desk. At least, it felt menacing to Trey. Then again, they were cops, and Trey was black and a former meth-dealer from Westmont, South LA’s ‘Death Alley’, so the three men weren’t ever going to be friends.

‘She’s with a patient right now.’

One of the cops, the shorter, fatter, older one with big, wet, larva-like white lips, regarded Trey with unadulterated contempt.

‘In there?’ he asked, nodding towards Nikki’s office door.

He wasn’t wearing uniform and he hadn’t showed Trey his badge. Neither of them had, for that matter. But he spoke with the innate, entitled authority of a police officer. It didn’t occur to Trey to question him.

‘Yes, in there,’ Trey confirmed. ‘But like I said, Dr Roberts is with a patient. She can’t be disturbed while she’s in session.’

‘Is that a fact?’ The fat cop smiled unpleasantly, moving towards the door.

‘Leave it, Mick.’ His taller, younger, more attractive partner put a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘We can wait.’

‘Wait?’ Larva Lips looked furious, but his partner ignored him, smiling at Trey and taking a seat on the Italian leather couch in the waiting room. Picking up a copy of Psychology Today, he asked casually: ‘It’s fifty minutes, right? A therapy session? I remember from when my wife left me.’

‘Which one?’ Larva Lips snarled, obviously not best pleased to have been ‘reined in’ in front of Trey.

‘All of them,’ his partner grinned. ‘I was a wreck every time.’

Larva Lips didn’t smile back but sat down, lowering his ample backside into an armchair where he simmered belligerently. Trey had encountered scores of LAPD like him growing up: knee-jerk racists, Blue Lives Matter assholes who shot first and thought later. Or not. Dude might as well have had a swastika tattooed on his forehead, so obvious were his prejudices. For all Trey knew, his partner might be every bit as rotten inside, but he was better educated and he hid it better. Maybe he thought he’d get more out of Dr Roberts if he played nice with her office staff?

Trey Raymond figured he’d learned a lot, working in a psychologist’s office.

‘How much longer?’ Larva Lips demanded, glaring at the clock on the wall as if it were to blame for his impatience.

‘The session ends in fifteen minutes,’ said Trey. He assumed the police were here to ask about Lisa, which only made him feel worse. The thought of these bozos, picking through Lisa’s private life like vultures pecking at a carcass, made him feel sick.

Trey had seen a lot of death growing up. A lot of murder too, but that was different. That was shootings, gang violence, and where Trey grew up that was a fact of life. Sad, for sure. But not shocking.

Not like this. Lisa wasn’t part of that world. She was white and rich and beautiful, part of a white, rich, beautiful world where shit like this didn’t happen. Dr Roberts came from the same world. Trey didn’t, but he’d been invited in by Dr Roberts’ husband, Doug, before he died. More than invited. Welcomed. Like a son.

These son-of-a-bitch cops had no business here, bringing their dark world into this bright one.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ Trey offered the politer officer.

‘I’m fine thanks.’

‘You can get me a Coke,’ the fat one replied, without looking up from his phone. An unspoken ‘boy’ hung in the air.

Beneath the desk, Trey’s fists clenched. He longed to refuse, to tell the man they were all out, sorry. But a deep-rooted survival instinct kicked in. Don’t mess with cops. Not to their face, anyway.

Inside Nikki’s office, Anne Bateman recrossed her slender legs beneath her long linen skirt. All her movements were so graceful, so thoughtful and composed. Like a ballet dancer, thought Nikki admiringly. Only last night Nikki had dreamed about Anne again, dreams that were not overtly erotic but that certainly had something obsessional about them, something voyeuristic. Perhaps being a virtuoso violinist isn’t so dissimilar to being a ballerina? Nikki thought. Whatever the reason, Anne appeared to dance through life to the tune of some inner music, some rhapsody of her own creation.

‘She was your patient, wasn’t she? Like me,’ Anne asked.

‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ Nikki said gently.

Like everybody else, Anne had seen the grisly reports of Lisa Flannagan’s murder on the TV news. She’d been distressed by them, and understandably wanted to talk.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she said quietly, staring down at her lap. ‘I know. I’ve passed her in the corridor a hundred times. Poor woman.’

‘Yes,’ said Nikki. She felt bad herself. Lisa had been so full of hope in their final session together, so focused on her future. A future that, as it turned out, didn’t exist.

It was too late to help Lisa Flannagan now. But Nikki could still help Anne Bateman. Beautiful, intoxicating Anne. In fact, Anne was the one patient who Nikki felt she was helping, consistently. A violin prodigy with a coveted position at the LA Phil, at only twenty-six years old Anne was already wildly successful. Although childlike in some ways, in others she had already lived a life far beyond her years. As a teenager she’d traveled and performed all over the world, eventually marrying young to an extremely wealthy, charismatic, and much older man.

Anne was an attractive girl, in a tiny, fragile, doll-like way. Shy and meek in everyday conversation, with a violin in her hand Anne transformed into a frenzied, passionate woman, utterly lost in her own talent. Many men had been drawn to her on stage, to her alabaster skin and enormous, chocolate brown eyes, as well as to the intensity of her playing. But her husband had coveted her with an obsessive desire. After they married he had carried her off to his vast estate like a fairytale princess, showering her with gifts and clothes and attention and adoration, rarely letting her out of his sight.

It had taken immense courage for Anne to leave him and move back to her native Los Angeles. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. But she’d married so young, and she’d changed, and her music was calling to her, its call becoming more and more insistent with each passing day. The collapse of her marriage was what had prompted Anne to start seeing a therapist, and she and Nikki had quickly formed a strong bond. Over the last three months, Anne had come to rely heavily on Nikki’s support and advice in almost every aspect of her life.

‘You mustn’t feel frightened,’ Nikki told her now. ‘What happened to Lisa was terrible, but it had nothing to do with you. Don’t internalize it. The fact that you happened to see her in this office doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t tie the two of you together.’

‘No.’ Anne smiled shyly. ‘You’re right. I’m being silly.’

‘Not silly,’ said Nikki. ‘Death is a traumatic event. Especially violent death. But you’re still processing your own trauma, Anne. Try not to take on anyone else’s, that’s all I’m saying.’

Their time was up. Reluctantly, Nikki opened the door to the corridor to show Anne out. Most patients shook Nikki’s hand at the end of a session, but Anne always hugged her, squeezing tightly like a child leaving its mother at the school gate. It was too intimate a gesture really, not appropriate between a patient and a therapist, but Nikki didn’t have the heart to put a stop to it. The truth was that Anne’s dependence on her felt good. Everything about Anne Bateman felt good.

This time, however, Nikki stiffened the moment Anne embraced her.

Two strange men were heading towards her from the waiting room, watching intently.

Extricating herself swiftly from Anne’s arms, Nikki ushered her patient out before turning to the two men.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked curtly.

One of the men, the younger one, stood up and extended his hand politely.

‘Detective Lou Goodman, LAPD. This is my partner, Detective Mick Johnson.’

Nikki shook Goodman’s hand. ‘I assume you’re here about Lisa? Such a terrible thing.’ She offered her hand to his partner as well, but the short, heavyset man jerked angrily away.

‘Not here,’ he barked rudely, with a sidelong, distrustful glance at Trey. ‘In your office.’

Nikki bristled. What’s his problem? She had the vague sense of having seen him somewhere before, but she couldn’t place it. ‘All right,’ she said briskly, walking both men into her consulting room and offering them a seat, before closing the door behind them.

Back in the waiting room, Trey waited until he could hear the three of them talking before he picked up the phone.

‘There’s two cops here!’ he whispered down the line. He was close to tears. ‘What do I do? I’m scared, man.’

The voice on the other end of the line began to talk.

Trey listened, and nodded, trying to calm himself down.

They don’t know.

Nobody knows.

Be cool.

Detective Mick Johnson watched and listened as Dr Nikki Roberts answered his partner’s questions.

When did Nikki last see Lisa Flannagan?

The day she died.

Had Lisa mentioned anything in that session, or prior sessions, about being threatened, or having any fears for her safety?

No.

Did Nikki know of anyone who might have a reason to target Lisa, or hurt her?

No.

Goodman asked all his questions politely, and accepted all Nikki’s one-word answers without question or comment, writing each one down in his little notebook like a schoolboy taking notes from a teacher.

Johnson watched in silent disapproval. He didn’t trust Nikki and he didn’t like her. The arrogant bitch didn’t even remember him! But he remembered her. He would always remember her. Watching her now, poised and cautious, sweeping her shiny dark hair back out of her eyes as she talked with Goodman, he could feel the anger burn his chest like battery acid.

‘Dr Roberts, you may have been the last person, other than her killer, to see Miss Flannagan alive,’ Goodman was saying. Leaning forward in his chair, looking at Nikki intently, it was obvious he was smitten by her. ‘It’s vital that we understand as much as we can about exactly what happened, both in this office, and after she left here.’

‘I understand that, Detective,’ said Nikki. ‘I’m not sure what I can add, that’s all. The session was positive, as I told you. Lisa seemed happy. She’d made a break from her boyfriend—’

‘Boyfriend? You mean her sugar daddy,’ Johnson interjected. ‘Willie Baden?’

These were the first words the angry little man had spoken since he sat down. There could be no mistaking the leer in his voice. The idea of a beautiful young girl like Lisa offering herself sexually to a dirty old man like Baden clearly turned him on, or at least amused him.

‘Yes,’ Nikki said evenly.

‘But, to be clear, she didn’t have a “boyfriend”. She was sleeping with a rich old man, someone else’s husband, for his money,’ Johnson pressed the point, earning himself a dirty look from Goodman, as well as a horrified one from Nikki. ‘She was a high-class whore, basically. Isn’t that right?’

‘I don’t know why she was with him. It’s not my place to judge my clients, Detective,’ Nikki replied coolly, fighting down her distaste at this man’s unabashed sexism. ‘All I know is that in our session that evening, Lisa told me she’d taken steps to leave Willie, and she seemed to be feeling good about that. I’d say she left here in a happy, hopeful mood.’

‘Did she plan to meet anyone after her appointment? A friend, maybe? Did somebody pick her up?’ Goodman asked, glaring at Johnson as he resumed his questioning.

‘No,’ said Nikki. ‘She left alone. Typically, she drove herself to our sessions but on Wednesday she didn’t have her car with her.’

The two cops exchanged glances.

‘Do you know why not?’

Nikki shook her head. ‘No. Sorry. I only remember because it was raining, and she told me she was leaving on foot, so I lent her my raincoat.’

Forgetting his anger for a moment, Detective Johnson sat up eagerly. ‘She was wearing the coat when she left?’

‘Yes,’ said Nikki.

‘Can you describe the coat, Dr Roberts? In as much detail as possible.’

Nikki did so. It was a perfectly ordinary raincoat but both men seemed fascinated by it.

‘Thank you, Dr Roberts,’ Goodman said, smiling warmly. ‘That’s very helpful information.’ He had an intense way of speaking, Nikki noticed, a sort of flattering, micro-focus that made you feel as if you were the only person in the room. It wasn’t flirtatious exactly, but it wasn’t far off.

By contrast, his partner was utterly charmless, firing off a few more questions without any sort of thanks, before both men took their leave. But even he, Johnson, had seemed excited by the raincoat revelation. Could it really be that important?

Once they’d gone, Trey knocked on Nikki’s door.

‘I’m sorry, Doc. I didn’t know what to do,’ he said anxiously to Nikki. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want them to interrupt your session, but I think the older guy didn’t like that I made them wait.’

Nikki put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s OK, Trey. You did everything right. How are you feeling? I know you cared about Lisa.’

‘I’m feeling OK, I guess,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘I mean, I’m sad. Shocked.’

‘Me too,’ said Nikki.

‘She was so beautiful.’

‘Yes. She was.’

‘Times like this, I wish Dr Douglas was here,’ Trey blurted. ‘You know?’

Nikki looked pained. Trey hung his head.

‘Sorry, Doc. I shouldn’t have said that. Not to you.’

‘Of course you can say it, Trey,’ Nikki said kindly. ‘You miss him. I miss him too. I don’t want you to feel Doug’s name is taboo. He’d have hated that.’

Later, after Trey had gone home, Nikki sat in her office alone for a long time, thinking.

She thought about Doug, and what he’d have made of all this.

She thought about Lisa, about the horror of her death.

She thought about the angry detective, Johnson: She was a whore, sleeping with someone else’s husband.

Nikki understood anger. Since Doug’s death, it had been her constant companion.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the card that the other detective had given her. The civil one. Detective Lou Goodman.

Lou.

How long would it be, she wondered, before she heard from him again?

CHAPTER SIX

The Medical Examiner, Jenny Foyle, replaced the plastic sheeting covering Lisa Flannagan’s body and returned her attention to the two detectives. In her early fifties, with a short, unkempt bob of salt and pepper hair, a stocky frame and a make-up-free face, Jenny was no beauty. But she was smart, intuitive, waspishly funny and astonishingly skilled at her job.

‘So you’re saying only one of these stab wounds killed her?’ Mick Johnson asked.

‘The one to the heart. Yes,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘The others were all superficial. Designed to wound, to hurt, but never intended to kill.’

Lou Goodman raised a groomed eyebrow. ‘All eighty-eight of them?’

Jenny sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’

Most people preferred Lou Goodman to his partner, probably because Lou was handsome and charming and, unlike Mick Johnson, rarely looked as if the thing he’d most like to do in the entire world was punch you in the face. But not Jenny Foyle. Detective Goodman’s charms were lost on her. A New York Irish girl herself, Jenny had always had a soft spot for Detective Johnson. True, he lacked charm and was no oil painting. But Jenny liked the big man’s permanently stained shirts, his gruff sense of humor and his take-no-prisoners directness. In a city that was all about style over substance, and a department in which political correctness had gone mad, the Medical Examiner had always found Mick to be a breath of fresh air.

‘So she was tortured?’ Mick asked her. ‘That’s basically what you’re saying?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ said Jenny. ‘She was tortured. Incapacitated, probably through terror as much as from her physical injuries. Then she was moved. And at a later time, killed. Then she was moved again to the dumping site.’

All three of them paused for a moment to take in the plastic-covered shape that had once been Lisa Flannagan. A gorgeous young girl with her whole life ahead of her, reduced to a mutilated carcass.

Goodman broke the silence first. ‘And you’re confident of this timeline?’

‘I am.’

‘Because …?’

‘Because the rate of healing clearly shows the fatal wound occurred some hours after the first injuries. And because the levels of blood loss at the scene, although substantial, are incompatible with the victim having been stabbed in the heart there,’ Jenny answered matter-of-factly.

‘No sexual assault?’ asked Goodman.

Jenny shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘And she didn’t fight back?’ Johnson asked quietly.

‘Well,’ Jenny peeled off her latex gloves, allowing herself a small smile. ‘At first I thought she didn’t fight at all. Terrified, as I said. But right at the end of my examination I found a tiny – and I mean tiny – sample of tissue under one of her fingernails.’

Johnson’s brow furrowed. ‘Why so tiny?’ he asked. ‘If she scratched him, fighting for her life, wouldn’t there be more?’

‘Indeed there would.’ Jenny’s smile broadened. ‘Which is why I think her nails were cut and the fingers scrubbed. Post-mortem.’

‘Jesus.’ Goodman winced.

‘But he missed a spot?’ Johnson asked brightly. ‘Lucky for us.’

‘I hope it will be,’ said Jenny. ‘Like I say, the sample was tiny. It was also … strange.’

Both men waited for her to elaborate.

‘The cells were unlike anything I’ve seen before. They appeared to be from rotten flesh.’

Goodman raised an eyebrow. ‘Rotten?’

‘Yes, rotten.’ Jenny cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘From something … someone … dead.’

Detective Johnson’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think this chick was killed by a dead guy?’

‘No,’ Jenny replied, deadpan. ‘That would be impossible.’

‘So what are you saying?’ asked Goodman.

‘Simply that the cells I recovered were unusual. And that I can’t guarantee whether the quality or quantity of what we found under that nail will yield a meaningful DNA match to a possible suspect.’

‘Maybe our killer’s a zombie.’ Mick Johnson nudged the ME playfully in the ribs. ‘The living dead are among us!’

Jenny laughed. ‘I’d say you’re proof of that, Mickey. I’ll let you know when I have any more, but that’s all she wrote for the moment, boys. You take care now.’

Standing outside the Boyle Heights Coroner’s Office, the two detectives digested the ME’s bizarre findings in silence. Johnson’s zombie comment was obviously a joke. But exactly how had Lisa Flannagan wound up with a corpse’s flesh under her fingernails?

Realizing someone had to say something, Goodman tried to focus on the facts.

‘So, we’re looking for three sites,’ he observed. ‘Torture. Murder. Disposal.’

‘Uh huh,’ Johnson nodded. ‘Three sites.’

‘I guess we focus on that first.’

‘I guess we do,’ Johnson agreed.

There were a whole bunch of things that irritated him about his slick, young, ambitious partner. But Mick Johnson had to give Lou Goodman credit for an ordered mind, even in the craziest of circumstances.

They were back in their car and about to drive away when Jenny Foyle came rushing out the building towards them, flapping her arms like a lunatic.

Johnson wound down his window. ‘Did you forget something? What else you got for us, Jenny? Vampire teeth-marks on her neck?’ he quipped.

‘Ha ha.’ Panting from exertion, the ME shoved a single sheet of paper into Johnson’s hand. ‘Looks like you got lucky, Mick. DNA results just came back. Turns out your zombie has a name.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lou Goodman drove alone to Pacific Palisades. He and Johnson had agreed long ago to divide and conquer on their homicide cases. Goodman always handled the rich, high-class, educated types, while Johnson bonded with the ‘great unwashed’, as Lou only half-jokingly called the blue-collar witnesses. The system didn’t work perfectly. Johnson was great with low-income whites, and over his years in the drug squad had developed a decent working relationship in some of the rougher Latino communities. But he was old school LAPD when it came to black neighborhoods. He didn’t like them and they didn’t like him.

It was a problem.

But not today’s problem.

Today’s call was up in the wonder-bread-white community of Pacific Palisades. The wide streets and multimillion-dollar mansions were very much Lou Goodman’s territory. He was in his element.

‘Turn right on Capri Drive,’ Google Maps commanded. Goodman obeyed, cruising past homes so opulent it beggared belief. ‘Estate’ was an overused word among LA real estate brokers, but these houses were the real deal: ten-, fifteen-, twenty-bedroom palaces with sweeping driveways and idyllically manicured grounds. Uniformed maids, all of them Latina, darted in and out of side gates, some walking dogs, others taking out trash or directing deliveries. Goodman saw a bouquet of flowers as big as he was being delivered to one house, and to another an entire van’s worth of helium balloons emblazoned with the words ‘Ryan is 9!’