The Criminal Mind Read online

  “I already made plans to stay with a girlfriend.”

  “I see, so you don’t want to go back to your apartment.”

  “And the expense. I’ll never be able to pay you back.”

  “My dead uncle won’t mind. It’s all inheritance anyway.” I wasn’t nearly about to tell Maureen the whole truth, and hoped a light explanation would end the discussion.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” She was looking down again.

  I put my hand under her chin and gently guided her head up to face me. I looked her in the eyes. “It will be great for you to get away, especially now.”

  “I’m also supposed to make an appointment with the doctor the hospital gave me.”

  “We have doctors in New York, and I hear they’re pretty good.”

  She chuckled. “You are persistent.” She dropped her head, but her eyes stayed fixed on me. “I’m sure it would be nice to go with you.” Then, with a deep conciliatory breath, she added: “But I’ll still owe you, okay?” She had a determined look on her face that I found endearing.

  “Absolutely,” I answered. “I’ll send you my marker.” I then walked over to the built-in desk beside the kitchen counter. Eleanor’s laptop was still sitting there. I flipped it open and booked two seats on the 3:00 p.m. flight out of Nashville.

  “Do you have a lot of business in New York?” she asked.

  “Now and then.” As to the reason for my trip, she wasn’t even close to getting the truth out of me. Eventually, I figured I would fess up. For the moment though, she seemed pleased to be going, and I didn’t want to spoil the mood with unpleasant talk about missing children.

  Maureen tapped me on the shoulder just before I closed the laptop. “Nick, how long will we be away? I’ll need more clothes for the trip.”

  “Just bring enough for a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” She thought again. “And where will we be staying?”

  “I have an apartment in the city.”

  Maureen eyes widened. “Oh...”

  Other than a stale smell, everything seemed the same in Maureen’s apartment as the day before. Since she seemed hesitant to enter, I went in first and wondered if she would ever be able to sleep alone there again. She quickly packed a suitcase while I waited in the small living room that merely consisted of a coffee table, couch and a wing chair.

  Though I found it hard to believe that her ex-husband and father of their only son would strike Maureen over the head hard enough to render her unconscious, he was still at the top of my suspect list.

  She told me that his name was Larry Brooks, and despite the recent trauma Maureen had suffered, she was still able to recall the last four digits of his social security number. She also said there was a time when she could easily recite his checking account number too, since she was the one who made the deposits, signed his name, and paid all the bills. “But make no mistake about it,” she said. “His name alone was on the accounts.” At one time, she even knew his American Express number, including the four-digit security code, but when she started questioning some of the charges—which she suspected were from his many dalliances—the card disappeared. When the new one came, it was in the name of his business—an account, he said, she didn’t “need to concern herself with.”

  Despite Maureen’s firm belief that her ex had nothing to do with the assault, when I got back to New York, I would pass this information along to Paul.

  The moment the plane’s tires hit the runway, a call came in on my cellphone. I had purposely kept it off ‘airplane mode’ just in case. The flight attendants were still strapped in their seats or a gentle scolding would have been in the offing––gentle, because we were flying business class.

  Maureen had been sleeping, and my Moon River ring tone wasn’t exactly startling. She didn’t so much as flutter an eyelash when the sound of Mancini’s symphonic strings rose from my pocket. I suppose I should have been more worried every time she did go to sleep, considering the concussion she suffered only three days earlier. She had good color though, and I was keeping a close eye on her––checking her breathing—while admiring how pretty she looked as she slept. Since it warmed me all over when she opened her eyes, I let the phone play a few bars more before I answered the call.

  It was Charlie, and, as usual, he sounded anxious and cranky and (again) began talking without even a perfunctory hello––another Charlie idiosyncrasy. “Hey Captain, we’ve got to get up to Cartersville. No telling how many more kids are buried up there.”

  “Am I hearing ‘we’? C’mon Charlie. You can’t be serious? And there’s no need to call me Captain.”

  “You’re my captain now, and I’m dead serious. No one knows the area better than I do. Like I told you, I grew up there, and I can take you to all the places you need to go, including the construction site where the bodies were found.” I could hear the anxiety in his voice heighten. “I bet it hasn’t changed a lick in the last fifty years.”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. Are you okay to travel?”

  “What do you mean, am I okay to travel? I made it back from Vietnam, didn’t I? Syracuse is a 45-minute plane ride. Besides, I’m in a wheelchair. I’ll go to the head of the line and with an airport escort to boot.”

  Maureen was still a bit bleary-eyed in the cab ride to the 51st Street apartment. As soon as we pulled up to the building, the doorman ran out to get her bags. As she stepped on to the sidewalk, she looked up at the building’s 59 stories. The doorman—whose name was also Nick, and who was also Italian American—left Maureen’s bags by the elevator. That was as far as he went; no way would he leave his post by the door. I gave him a twenty.

  Since I had left my suitcase in the apartment when I rushed back to Franklin, I helped Maureen with hers—one large and one small—then hit the button for the 59th floor.

  It was a warm night in early May, and once we settled in I went out onto the balcony overlooking 50th Street and the southern views of a colorful and brightly-lit New York City that weren’t blocked or overshadowed by taller buildings. Like lawyers, New York City sometimes gets a bad rap, which in the 1970s and 1980s—when it was on the verge of financial collapse and crime was at an all-time high—was somewhat deserved. But those were the ‘bad old days.’ The New York City of 2018 was a thriving assortment of neighborhoods—all on a developmental upturn. Broadway box office receipts were breaking records, tourism was at an all-time high, and loads of foreign money was flooding in. It was no surprise that the greatest city in the world still had its ups and downs, but whether I was seeing it from the sky or the water or the vantage point of a tall building’s highest floor, New York had always been one beautiful shining metropolis to me, and I never had to ask myself why. It was, and always will be, a place of infinite possibility and boundless hope, no matter who you are or where you’re from. And as I stood on that balcony and pondered the reasons why I loved New York, an intractable sadness began to swell inside me.

  It was in May of 1979 at a dance at Cardozo Law School in Downtown Manhattan when I first met Eleanor. She was in her third year at NYU Law at the time—and engaged to be married. Nothing ever came easy to me, and I don’t expect anything that truly matters in this life ever will. We danced, talked, and ended the night with a kiss. Though we spoke on the phone almost every day thereafter (long distance between Long Island and her home in Atlanta), it wasn’t until she broke off her engagement later that summer that we began dating.

  Looking out over the city, I could still see her at the edge of that dance floor as clearly as if she was standing right in front of me. And as I drifted off into a state of melancholy, a squall of discontent washing over me, I could swear I felt her arms around me as I had so many times before on that very balcony. But they weren’t Eleanor’s imaginary arms I was feeling. They were Maureen’s real ones.

  “It’s wonderful here. I can’t thank you en
ough,” she said. “You’re like my knight in shining armor.” She then rested her head on my back and began to cry.

  As I turned to put my arms around her, the hollow lump of sadness that had begun to swell inside me seemed to dissolve away.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked.

  “Because my life is a mess, and I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met you…if I hadn’t gotten to know you over pie and coffee. And that scares me more than I care to admit.”

  “You mean you weren’t just trying to fatten me up?”

  She briefly laughed, then cried some more. I took her by the hand into the living room and we stood in front of the picture window facing the north side of Manhattan.

  “Can you believe this city has a 20-acre park in it?” I said lightheartedly, trying to cheer her up. “We can visit it tomorrow if you like, and then have lunch at Tavern on the Green.”

  She turned to me and gave me the longest kiss I’d had in almost two years. And I didn’t want it to end. She pulled back first, but not before giving me a shorter one on the cheek.

  With my hands on her back, I continued clutching her close. The window beside us was open slightly and I felt a cool breeze across my face and neck that probably began somewhere along the East River. Though it only slightly rustled Maureen’s hair, it was enough to ground me back to reality. I moved my hands slowly down to her waist, which only served to enhance my burgeoning arousal. We caressed each other and my head began to fog. But before I could move in for another kiss, the instrumental version of Moon River, normally meant to enhance any and all amorous moments, only served to interrupt one.

  “How romantic,” Maureen whispered.

  “If you call bad timing romantic.”

  I pulled out my phone. The screen read: Paul Tarantino. Maureen gave me another kiss before I gently stepped away and put the phone to my ear.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” Paul asked.

  “Since when do you care how you catch me?”

  “I don’t, but I could swear I heard someone else breathing.”

  “It’s just me. When you get old, you breathe this way.” I turned to Maureen, excused myself, and went back into the bedroom. “So, what’s up?” I asked.

  “We confirmed that two crates of bones were found at the construction site, and according to the medical examiner’s reports, they were the bones of little boys. Jasmine also picked up some encrypted email chatter off a police server indicating there may be more.”

  “So, when do you want to leave?”

  “If you’re serious about this investigation, first flight out tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got to see my kids. If I can have dinner with them tonight, I’ll catch up with you later in the day.”

  “Fine.”

  “And I’ll probably be coming with Charlie.”

  “The disabled vet? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “He’s the guy who turned me on to this investigation in the first place.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to bring him.”

  “He grew up in and around Cartersville. He could be an asset to us, and besides, he wants to come.”

  “It’s your dime, Nick. I only hope he doesn’t get in the way.”

  “From what I understand, he’s very independent. He’s also pretty rough around the edges, but who isn’t these days?”

  “All the more reason I should get a head start.”

  “Charlie also says he can show us around.”

  “Nick, the last thing I need is an escort, but if you insist on bringing him, bring him.”

  “I’ll be wiring you the usual retainer. Look out for it.”

  “I’m not looking out for anything. If I can’t trust you by now...”

  I then whispered to him the info on Maureen’s ex and ended the call. When I returned to the living room, she was still standing beside the picture window. “Who are you anyway, Nick Mannino? I couldn’t help but hear some of that.”

  “Sorry, I tried to talk quietly.” I squared up next to her. “Forget the call. What do you say we go out to dinner with my son and daughter and you’ll find out all you’ll ever want to know about me?”

  “I say yes.” Another kiss came—only this time we didn’t stop there.

  Jasmine was what one might call a ‘quiet genius.’ She had been working for Paul since he left the Secret Service during George Bush Jr.’s first term. Her resume stated that she was an early Facebook recruit, and at a time when how well you can hack at Harvard was a prerequisite to employment, she was one of their best. In 2005, when Paul’s sister, Julie, was found wrapped in trash bags on the side of a dirt road in Central Pennsylvania with her skull caved in, he called Jasmine.

  But she was already on it.

  Jasmine was Julie’s roommate at Harvard. She never liked Julie’s husband, Chris, and believed the rumors that he had date raped a University of Massachusetts coed before he met Julie. The instant Jasmine discovered that Julie was missing, she hacked into Chris’s computer. On it she found a history of online chats he had with women on websites dedicated to sadomasochists. She also saw that he had downloaded TOR, the entry browser to the dark web. Paul asked her to keep at it to see what else she could find.

  And she found out plenty.

  Despite being in serious financial trouble, Julie’s husband, Chris, also loved the ‘1-900’ telephone lines. When the lights in their house were turned off, Julie discovered that the not-so-successful DDS had not only let their personal bills go unpaid, he had also wiped out their savings. All that was left of value were their joint life insurance policies. When Julie’s body was found, the information Jasmine uncovered was enough to make Chris suspect number one as far as Paul was concerned. With help from the FBI, Paul arranged to have a forensics team sweep the house. With the use of luminal spray and an ambient light, images of blood puddles and splatter that had been thoroughly washed away appeared, which provided conclusive evidence that Julie was murdered inside the house. Once confronted with the luminal proof, Chris confessed to the murder.

  While Maureen and I were headed out to have dinner with my kids, and Paul was booking his morning flight to Syracuse, Jasmine had already begun hacking the servers of police departments, news organizations, and a variety of intelligence-gathering governmental agencies. Her goal: to gather whatever information she could find on missing children in Upstate New York, outside Syracuse, and in and around Cartersville.

  Our investigation had officially begun.

  Maureen and I dined with my children at Café Luxembourg on 70th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where the food was delicious (and also expensive). It was Charlotte’s choice. The last time I dined there was with Eleanor, and the actor, Liam Neeson was sitting at a table across from us with his sons. His wife, Natasha Richardson, had just died in a skiing accident and his boys were no more than ten or twelve years old. The site of the three of them eating alone was both lovely and sad. Thoughts of Charlie and Mia must have been weighing on me, because my mind then drifted from the Neesons to Upstate New York and the many buried crates that inexplicably contained the bones of little boys.

  I was pleased when my son grabbed my attention and began chatting about a case he was handling. As I proudly listened, I kept glancing at Charlotte and Maureen, who were pleasantly talking away the evening. Apparently, Maureen was telling an abbreviated version of her life story––mostly the second half—and I was pleased to see that Charlotte appeared genuinely interested (whether she was or not). I was hoping John would break away and join in. My fondness for Maureen was apparent. Charlotte, the tougher of the two to please, appeared to be warming up to her quite nicely. I also noticed John looking over and taking in some of the conversation (or so it seemed). He then turned to me and asked: “So why are you really in New York, Dad? And don’t tell me it’s just to visit the Veterans’ C
enter and your friend, Charlie.”

  I thought about dodging the question, but what was the point? My son was a grown man, and like the best of friends, our loyalty to each other was without bounds. I fessed up about Mia, her alters, and the discovery of the wooden boxes.

  He thought for a moment. “You said this teenager, Mia, had turned eighteen this year,” he said, placing emphasis on her age. “No doubt she’s been seeing a psychiatrist with her multiple personality disorder and all that she’s been through. Am I right?”

  “No doubt,” I confirmed.

  “Dad?” John said my name as if to ask a question, but it was more of an indication of what he was thinking.

  We stared at each other for a few seconds until it dawned on me. “That’s brilliant!”

  “It’s not brilliant, Dad. I’m just thinking like a lawyer—and apparently so are you.”

  “Still, this should have occurred to me already. Now that Mia has turned eighteen, if she waives doctor-patient privilege, we can find out all that her alters told her psychiatrist—not to mention the doctor’s notes and records. It could be a treasure trove.”

  “Psychotherapy notes will be harder to get,” John added. “The patient does not have an absolute right to them. What you can get is what Mia would have said about crimes committed against her and others—what she said to the doctor when one of her alters was talking. Don’t even bother asking for the doctor’s written observations and conclusions. Without a continuing case of patient child abuse, you won’t get them.”

  “Got it.” I answered.

  “But will Mia waive the privilege?” John asked.

  “She is as anxious as anyone to find out what happened to those little boys, and should the doctor refuse to cooperate in spite of the waiver, we’ll get the FBI to issue a subpoena. Paul Tarantino’s got the hooks.”

  “Any resistance from the doctor—and I would also get Mia a lawyer. I’d have her bring an action as well. She’s the patient, after all, and no one is more entitled to the doctor’s notes and records than she is.”