HER PERFECT SECRET a totally gripping psychological thriller Read online

  “Frank . . .”

  He hears it in my voice: I can’t discuss those details. Even now. And naming his mother as the murderer is under judicial seal. Sworn testimony. There was no courtroom moment when he pointed her out; it was all behind the scenes. Deals made in cool offices by men and women in stiff suits.

  “Yeah,” Frank says about confidentiality. “Of course. Sorry. I—”

  He’s cut off by an incoming call on my end, another number I don’t recognize. I tell Frank I need to take it. But before switching over, I get in one last quick question. “You said a neighbor saw a strange car? Were there any more details than that?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. Just that there was supposedly this guy outside, sitting in his car, right around the time of the murder.”

  “Where’d you hear it?”

  “You know . . . around. Now we’re talking about confidentiality on my end.”

  “Maybe it was a friend of Laura Bishop’s who did the staging part.”

  “There ya go.” He pauses, then, “Hey, keep your chin up, kiddo. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thanks, Frank.”

  I switch calls, my intuition up: I think I know who this is going to be.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Dr. Lindman?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause. Then, “It took us twenty minutes to calm my father down — he’s not a well man to begin with. What exactly did you say to him? What were you even doing at my house? Who sent you?”

  It must be Candace. I left my business card in the living room . . .

  “I’m very sorry,” I begin. “I had a few questions that—”

  “You come near my family again, I’ll have you arrested. You understand me? Leave us alone, you bitch.”

  She hangs up.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Bleeker family thinks I’ve done something. Sure, they’re a bit weird — all those ceramic pigs in that house on the edge of oblivion, sea air making everything damp and baggy. They’ve been through a lot — anyone could understand that. Arnold Bleeker even seems unwell, perhaps turning his daughter overprotective . . .

  But they definitely think I did something.

  Me and some other people.

  I’m part of “them.”

  It’s troubling, but it’s also very interesting, giving me the beginnings of a direction. How, perhaps, to proceed with this thing.

  When I get back to my office in White Plains, I raid the cabinet in the kitchenette and find a bottle of gin. Tanqueray. What my mother used to drink. I pour myself a stiff one. Leaving the lights off, I sit on the leather couch in the dark. The blinds on the window make slatted shadows across the floor. Outside, the traffic rolls up and down Mamaroneck Avenue.

  The sudden knock on the door startles me. Someone is in the corridor. I set my drink down and rise to my feet. As I approach, I hear the jingle of keys. I unlock the bolt but keep the chain on. With the door ajar, I peer out.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, sliding back the chain.

  Mena comes in when I open up, her shoulders hunched, full of tension. But that’s just kind of how she moves about.

  “I saw your car in front,” she says.

  We walk together into the main office. I struggle with the question: “So, what . . . what are you . . . ?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Mena says.

  I offer her to sit on the couch. She glances at my drink on the side table. “Would you like one?”

  “Oh, no,” she says, her hands on her knees. “No, thank you. Or maybe a little one. Just a little.”

  The kitchenette is next to the bathroom; a sink and two cupboards, a microwave. This is completely odd. I unscrew the cap, get a glass from the cupboard and ice from the small fridge. I pour a finger, then walk it over to Mena. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m okay. Yes. Thank you.” She pushes her straight black hair back from her face and takes the glass. She sips primly. Mena is Filipina. Perfect dark hair and large dark eyes. Her bone structure is exquisite, with wide cheekbones and a tapered chin. She’s small, barely five foot five, and is often fragrant with some coconut perfume or deodorant, as she is tonight, though I can see the dampness around her hair line, and her upper lip — she’s also been perspiring. She asks, “Were you able to find Mr. Bleeker?”

  “I did,” I say, sitting down in my chair. I cross my legs and take another drink. Despite Mena’s uncharacteristic behavior, I’m feeling more comfortable now. This is my usual role.

  “What did he say?” Mena asked.

  I tell her the story while minimizing the emotional impact it had on me. Still, she listens with wide eyes. When I’m finished, she drinks her gin with both hands and sets the empty glass on the coffee table in front of her. Not only is it unusual for Mena to be up at this hour, it’s rare for her to drink. She has difficulty metabolizing alcohol — too much raises her blood pressure and fatigues her.

  “Okay,” I say. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s just . . . I feel terrible.”

  “About?”

  “What happened to Maggie.”

  “I know. I do, too.”

  Mena says it’s why she’s not at home in bed. She’s been out driving through the city, and she made her way back to the office without thinking too much about it.

  As she says it, her eyes flick to the file box on my desk. I’ve left it out from earlier. Files on the Bleekers, not Maggie.

  “Anyway,” she says. “I’m feeling better now.” She lifts her thin eyebrows. “Did you find the case notes you were looking for?”

  “I did. Mena . . . do you want to talk about it? Maggie?”

  Her otherwise smooth brown skin dimples with a frown. “No. I don’t think so. But what about you? Can I help you with anything?”

  “I’m fine. You should go home, though. Don’t worry about me.”

  She’s dubious, but gets to her feet. “All right . . .”

  After assuring her again that everything is going to be all right and thanking her, I walk her down to the street and see her off.

  And maybe I don’t know if things are going to be all right, and maybe I feel a little bit bad for not including Mena in more of what’s going on. But I’ve become good at compartmentalizing.

  * * *

  The night has cooled some but is still thick with humidity. I have a couple of texts from Paul I need to answer, but they can wait. It’s my turn to wander the city — though I’m more conscious of where I’m going once I get back to the car and get moving. The Bronx River Parkway has light traffic. The Range Rover’s headlights probe the semidarkness as it hugs the serpentine, southbound highway. I know this route like the back of my hand.

  As I drive, I contemplate the way we compartmentalize ourselves. “Dissociate” is the word. As in “dissociative identity disorder.” DID. At a recent training I attended, the keynote speaker theorized that all of us are actually on a spectrum of DID, in a sense. We all dissociate from things in our lives, from memories and past traumas, to some extent. Most of the time, we’re completely unaware we’re doing it. By how much, that varies among us.

  A little later, I’m driving through sleepy Bronxville, the Tom Bishop file on the seat beside me. The stores are dark along the main drag. I make a left turn up the hill into one of the residential areas. Pondfield Road. In about a mile, I’m slowing down in front of a house.

  But it’s not my house. Instead, I’ve driven to the place that once belonged to David and Laura Bishop. Two managers: a hedge fund manager and an artists’ manager. Both working in Manhattan.

  The house is big, white with black shutters. Only the upper story is visible over the juniper penning the yard.

  It’s been fifteen years since the Bishops lived here with their son, Tom. The boy who saw his mother brain his father with a hammer, killing him.

  At least, that’s what Tom eventually told me.

  And it’s what sent Laura Bishop to prison for
murder.

  But — maybe it was the look in Arnold Bleeker’s eyes, or Frank’s memory of a man sitting outside the Bishop house in a car, just about where I am now — I’m starting to see a whole new picture forming.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I sit watching the house for a minute. A few upstairs windows are softly lit. A walkway winds out of sight, decorated with ground lights. I find myself drifting back in time, back to when Tom first entered my office, and my life. His downcast eyes, his shoulders slumped. It had been six months since his father’s murder. Where had he been all that time? I try to remember if he’d gone to stay with the Bleekers straightaway or if there was a time he’d still been with his mother.

  Maybe it was both. Laura Bishop, before she was arrested, might have gone to Long Island herself. Her Bronxville home would have now been a crime scene, the kitchen floor stained from the brutal slaying of her husband. Splatters of blood would have peppered the kitchen clocks, more flecks dotting the clocks on the staircase wall . . .

  You wouldn’t stay there with your child. You’d take refuge with family. I just couldn’t recall who had been the one to drop Tom off for his sessions. I think I remember a woman.

  Alice Bleeker. Dead now, from cancer.

  I pick up the file on the passenger seat and leaf through it. Case notes, police reports, even a copy of David Bishop’s autopsy . . . I don’t remember having that. I slide it out for a closer look and find pictures clipped to the back. It’s not pretty. Bishop was hit in the head with a hammer, but not just once. Five times, caving in his skull.

  The pictures are the stuff of nightmares. His head, shaved postmortem, looks like cratered asphalt.

  I quickly shove the images and documents back in the file and close it up.

  Why does an autopsy report accompany my notes on Tom Bishop? It must’ve been that the police had provided me a copy for context. This is what the boy saw.

  As I sit there contemplating the horror of it, I get the sense that I’m being watched.

  I first check the house, but nothing seems to have changed. The same windows are lighted, and one upstairs window flickers a bit, as if with TV light. The street ahead of me is empty: no one parks on the streets in Bronxville at night.

  But then I see it. In the rearview mirror, a car is stopped behind me about forty yards, headlights off. A streetlamp in proximity reveals the shape of a driver at the wheel.

  Gut reaction: I grab the shifter and put the car in drive. But before my foot leaves the brake and hits the gas, the door of the car behind me opens and a man steps out.

  I’m trapped, too curious to just drive away, even if my heart is now banging my ribs.

  The man comes up alongside the driver’s side of my car. I let out a shuddering breath, then buzz down the window.

  “Evening,” he says.

  “Hello.”

  For a few long seconds, we just stare at each other. It’s been fifteen years, but both of us are calculating what we see — whom we see. He’s familiar. He’s Mooney’s partner.

  “Detective Steven Starzyk,” he says, holding his hand up to the window.

  Of course. I realize the car looks familiar. The shape of it, anyway; the make. Like an unmarked police car.

  “You’re Dr. Lindman?”

  “I am.”

  We shake and he continues to give me cop-eyes, hunting for my agenda. But he seems satisfied a moment later when he says, “Guess we had the same idea. Or feeling.”

  I’m not sure what he means. “I haven’t been here in a long time.”

  “Me neither.”

  He’s only kind of handsome, if a little weaselly, his eyes close-set and his nose a bit pinched. His hair is wispy and blond, cut like an aging surfer’s. He glances at the house, and his eyes come back to me.

  I feel like I’m supposed to say something else. Something better. But before I do, he’s looking past me at the passenger seat. “That a file on, ah, the Bishop boy?”

  “It is.” This is feeling awkward now.

  Starzyk’s eyes narrow and his tone grows authoritative. “Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”

  Fine. I give him a version of the story: I’m on vacation upstate, and I just met the man my daughter is dating, Michael Rand, who looks remarkably like an older version of Tom Bishop. The story includes me coming down because of Maggie Lewis, but skips the trip to the Bleeker house on Long Island. “I just . . . I was in my office. I picked up the file. Then I just came by. Trying to remember, I guess.”

  When I look at his face, I expect Starzyk to give me the expression I’ve been getting, you know, stranger things and what a coincidence, but I don’t. Starzyk looks a shade paler, his eyes a hue darker. He even takes a half-step back from the vehicle.

  “It sounds like you’re not aware of it?”

  “Aware of what?”

  He glances at the house and then resumes in a low, grave tone: “Laura Bishop was granted parole. They’re letting her out.”

  It feels like a bomb going off somewhere in the back of my brain. I actually see a hammer swinging down, arcing through the air, blood trailing. David Bishop on the morgue slab, half of his skull bashed in. Little Tom, head hanging, shoulders rounded, as he walked into my office the first day, six months later.

  “She’s getting out?”

  Starzyk nods. “The hearing was two months ago. The board reviewed her case and recommended parole.”

  “Really? So when exactly is she released?” The nuances of parole have always eluded me.

  “It’s not an exact science,” he says. “But today’s the eligibility date. I know that much because I had it written down. And it was in the paper this morning. Big headline.”

  “I didn’t, ah . . . We’re out of town. I’ve kind of turned off the world.”

  “Sure, I get that. But, so, you’re telling me Laura Bishop’s son is dating your daughter?”

  “Well, I don’t know that it’s—”

  “And you just met him this morning? I mean, that’s something, isn’t it? That’s more than something.” His eyes are getting intense, probing me.

  “I don’t know that it’s him,” I explain. “Which is the whole thing.”

  Starzyk makes a face, like yeah, right. He gives me the same line about long odds I’ve been telling myself. And he’s talking some more about how Laura Bishop must’ve charmed the parole board, that she’s got all the hallmarks of a psychopath, that she’s smart and clever and manipulative.

  I let him talk, not saying much myself. Until my own question forms. “And what brings you here tonight, Mr. Starzyk?”

  “Like I said, it was in the paper.”

  “Right, but still . . .”

  He shrugs. “I live only thirty minutes from here. And I don’t take an August vacation.” He looks off, up the street. “Half these houses are empty right now. Not me. I don’t have any place to go.” When his gaze comes back, he takes out his wallet and hands me a business card. Bureau of Criminal Investigation. “Would you mind doing me a favor? Let me know, okay? Let me know what you find out? If this is the boy.”

  “Of course.” I tuck it into the file, adding, “I hear what you’re saying, but it doesn’t seem possible. I think I’ve just been under a lot of pressure. This was a much-needed vacation. I should get back to it.”

  He looks at me with half-lidded eyes, like he can smell the bullshit. “Sure,” he says.

  “And what about Detective Mooney?” I ask, smiling. I should stop talking now and leave, but I’m curious. “How come she’s not here with us, reliving the old days?”

  My smile is not reflected back. “Mooney is no longer with the New York State Police.” Starzyk doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he pats the side of my car. “Good luck, Dr. Lindman. Keep in touch, okay?”

  He walks back to his vehicle.

  It’s all I can do not to tear on the gas and squeal the tires. Instead, I pull away from the curb as calmly as I can. My own home is nearby, and I’m there in
minutes.

  The encounter with Starzyk has shaken me up. Once inside, I have a glass of wine to cool my nerves. As I drink, I wonder if Starzyk smelled the alcohol on my breath — the gin from my office.

  The urge to smoke hits me again. I wonder if there’s a pack of cigarettes hidden somewhere in my large, stately home. Maybe Paul? He quit when I quit. We’ve left some lights on and I flick on a few more, trying to chase away the bad feelings. I hunt through drawers and cabinets, jacket pockets and basement bins, but come up empty.

  “Fuck you,” I say suddenly, thinking about Starzyk. I’m normally not profane, even in private, but he really got to me.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s so unexpected, I feel my heart pound. A text has just come through.

  It’s from Frank Mills: Sent you an email. Check it out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Paul and I share a spare bedroom converted into a home office. We’ve meant to update either Sean’s old room or Joni’s so we can have separate spaces in the home, but we haven’t gotten around to it. I open my laptop, bring up Gmail and check the inbox. The subject line of Frank’s message reads Arizona?

  As a former cop, Frank can pull favors here and there and get access to databases I can’t, like the Departments of Public Safety in various municipalities. The best I can to do on my own is check social networks for Michael Rand and Tom Bishop, which didn’t yield much.

  Frank has already found something more: Thomas R. Bishop, residing in Tucson, Arizona. Twenty-three years old, born on March 4.

  It’s the right birthday and age. I check the picture — an employee photo, and the quality is less than superb. But, squinting at the screen, I study the young man’s face. He’s a dead ringer for Michael. And just like Michael, he looks quite plausibly like the grown-up version of the boy I treated fifteen years ago.

  Thomas Bishop works for an Amazon shipment facility, primarily driving a forklift. In the photo, he’s unsmiling, wearing a bright yellow vest.

  Below this, Frank has written: Arrest record and DMV info forthcoming. — F

  Well, I think, sitting back. Maybe that’s that.

  I wait for the feeling of relief, but it doesn’t arrive. My father was often telling me I think too much. It seems an absurd thing to say to someone — how could a person think too much — and Roy Graber wasn’t exactly the epitome of a calm, unfettered mind.