Tail Spin

“Then, all of a sudden, this middle-aged woman proceeded to tell me that her husband was eighteen-wheeling on one of his regular runs through Alabama. When he pulled into his favorite truck stop to eat at the small diner, someone stepped out of the shadows and shot him dead.

“Then Dolores said, ‘Watch this,’ and she manufactured instant tears, told me this was how she acted when the cops came to her house—you know, ‘Oh, how horrible, it must be a mistake, not my Lukey, oh God, what am I going to do, what about my poor fatherless children,’ that sort of thing. Then she told me she swooned—the shock, you know. Then suddenly, she started laughing. She nearly hyperventilated she laughed so hard. She told me between hiccups how she’d hired this thug from Savannah to shoot Lukey, paid him five hundred bucks, told him where to do it. She was very pleased with herself, with her ultimate solution to getting elected to Congress. I was so shocked I brought her out of it. She remembered exactly what she’d said, of course, and so there it all was, the eight-hundred-pound moose in the middle of my office. I told her she was my patient and I would never break confidentiality. Still, I could tell she was spooked. I never expected to see her again, and I didn’t. You think Dolores is the one out to kill me?”

“She sounds like a better possibility than Lomas Clapman,” Savich said. “What she came to see you about professionally, any motive there if revealed?”

“Probably not, her stepfather sexually abused her, and she was having nightmares about it on and off during the past year. It was driving her nuts, and so she came to see me. What brought it on? She didn’t know but that was the reason for the hypnosis—to take her back, to relive it, I guess you could say, in a controlled environment. But this is what popped out.”

Savich nodded. “Okay, there was another patient the bartender heard you talking about, right? Pierre Barbeau.”

“Ah, yes, Pierre. I nearly forgot. Pierre is very smart, knows his way in and out of the intelligence community. I’ve known him and his wife, Estelle, and his son, Jean David, for years. Molly and I played golf with them, socialized a bit with them. We weren’t best friends, but we had a pleasant acquaintanceship, I guess you could call it.

“Anyway, Pierre’s a high-up liaison between the French National Police and our CIA. He’s arrogant and rather vain, but you’d expect that because he’s French, and over the years I just laughed at him when he’d go on and on about the superiority of the French. Blah blah blah, I’d tell him.

“Then, out of the blue, he called me, said he was in turmoil— that was his word—and he needed my help.

“Turns out it was about his son, Jean David, who, interestingly enough, was an American citizen, born unexpectedly three weeks early on vacation in Cape May, New Jersey, twenty-six years old, a Harvard graduate, very analytical, very bright, a nice guy, maybe even smarter than his old man, a strategic information analyst for the CIA, with a focus on the Middle East.

“Yeah, I can see you’re getting the picture here. About six months ago Jean David got involved with a young woman who said she was a graduate student and worked part-time for a charitable group funding education in the Middle East. Of course, the group was only a cover, and she was actually gathering money here in the U.S. for terrorist groups, and recruiting. She found the gold at the end of the rainbow in Jean David.

“It wouldn’t have been all that big a deal if Jean David had, for example, been a Maytag repairman, but since he was an analyst in the CIA, we’re talking a major problem for him.

“About a month and a half ago Jean David let her see some sensitive material pinpointing the whereabouts of some of our operatives in Pakistan—showing off, I guess, to impress her.

“The CIA realized they had a big-ass problem almost immediately, what with the murder of two operatives, and went on full alert. Jean David realized he was in deep trouble, so he told his father about the woman he’d met and fallen for.”

“Do you recall the name of this woman, Timothy?” Sherlock asked.

“It was something really sweet, like Mary—no, it was Anna. I don’t know her last name. Pierre didn’t know what to do. He came to me as a friend and in confidence to ask about the possibility of my defending his son legally from a psychi atric standpoint, maybe argue the boy was delusional or brain-washed and not legally responsible, and because he was worried about his son’s mental health. I told him that no psy chiatric diagnosis would keep Jean David out of prison in a case like this. I agreed to see him, of course, but only if Jean David confessed his crime to the authorities. Many operatives might still be in danger, and the authorities needed to know about the security breach. In fact, I told Pierre it was ethically impossible for me to keep it a secret under these circumstances and that I would tell the authorities if Jean David did not.”

TWENTY-TWO

MacLean paused, closed his eyes, and Sherlock asked, “What happened, Timothy?”

“Now I’ve got to speak about Jean David in the past tense. I can’t tell you how I hate that. You already know about his death, don’t you?”

“Yes. Tell us what happened.”

“All right. A week after I spoke to Pierre, Jean David drowned in a boating accident on the Potomac. Bad weather hit—a squall, I guess you’d call it, vicious winds whipping up the water. The bad weather was expected but still Jean David and his father went out fishing for striped bass. Pierre always believed you caught more fish in the middle of a high storm. They were heading back because the fog was coming in real thick when the rocking and rolling got to him, and he got real sick and vomited over the side of the boat. Then it gets sketchy. A speedboat evidently didn’t see them in the rain and fog and rammed right into them. Pierre was tossed overboard. Jean David jumped in to save his father. So did one of the guys from the other boat. They managed to save Pierre, but Jean David drowned. They searched and searched, but they couldn’t find his body.

“Pierre was distraught, and as sick as he was, he kept diving and searching, but it was no use. Jean David was ruled dead, and his death was ruled accidental two weeks ago. Was it really an accident? I know what you’re thinking—Pierre and Jean David set it up between them to get him out of Washington. But, you see, there was the speedboat, and the people on board witnessed everything. They’d never heard of Pierre Barbeau. I believe that. I spoke to Pierre before he called me a murderer and hung up on me. He was grief-stricken. His son was dead and he blamed me for it. I strongly doubt Pierre could feign grief like that, at least not to me. I spoke to some mutual friends, and they agreed that both Pierre and Estelle were wrecks. He was their only child, and now he’s dead at twenty-six. Because of me.”