Very Bad Men (45 page)

“We have a few questions all the same,” Elizabeth said, “if your client will indulge us.”

Chatterjee waved a hand. “If you must.”

“Do you keep up with the news, Doctor?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes,” said Kenneally.

“So a week and a half ago, when Henry Kormoran was found dead in his apartment, you were aware of that?”

“I heard about it.”

“And you didn't think Lark might be responsible? You knew he had an unhealthy obsession with Kormoran, didn't you?”

Chatterjee interrupted. “You can't expect my client to discuss what obsessions Anthony Lark may or may not have had. That information is confidential.”

Elizabeth arched her eyebrows. “Dr. Kenneally just told us that Lark accused him of being one of the Great Lakes robbers. Are we supposed to believe he wasn't aware of Lark's attitude toward Kormoran and the others?”

“I was aware of it,” Kenneally said.

“But when Kormoran was murdered, you didn't think to contact the police?”

“I didn't know anything about Anthony's involvement in that.”

Kenneally's trigger finger touched the table, the metal brace clicking against the wood.

“All right,” Elizabeth said. “This Thursday, when we released a photograph of Lark and a statement that he was wanted for questioning in connection with Kormoran's death, and the death of Walter Delacorte, you still didn't feel the need to contact us?”

“I didn't have any useful information to give you,” Kenneally said. “I didn't know where Anthony was. I hadn't spoken to him since he stopped coming to our sessions.”

Shan had been sitting quietly, but now he said, “This afternoon, when you walked in on Lark in your study—did you know he had a gun?”

Kenneally turned to him. “No. Not right away.”

“So what prevented you from calling the police the moment you saw him? He was an intruder in your house, wanted for murder.”

Kenneally adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “I didn't know he was armed, but I considered him dangerous. I wasn't about to call the police in front of him, and I didn't dare leave him alone. I wanted to keep him calm, and keep him away from my family. And I thought I might be able to help him.”

Chatterjee let out a sigh. “I don't understand the point of these questions.”

He understood perfectly well, Elizabeth thought. Lark had gone on a crime spree and Kenneally had done nothing to stop it. So maybe he didn't want it to stop. But she knew if she made the accusation out loud, Chatterjee would shut the interview down.

“We're just trying to get a complete picture of what happened today,” she said. Then, to Kenneally: “Could you tell me what medications you prescribed for Anthony Lark?”

“You can't expect my client to discuss the details of a patient's treatment,” Chatterjee insisted.

Elizabeth kept her eyes on Kenneally. “Sorry,” she said to him, smiling. “Confidentiality covers a lot of ground, doesn't it? I'd like to ask you about your diagnosis of Mr. Lark's condition, but I suppose you couldn't tell me. That would be a no-no, wouldn't it?”

A little life came into Kenneally's eyes, and into his voice. “That's one of the biggest no-no's there is,” he said.

“Right,” said Elizabeth. “Let's try this another way. Maybe I could ask you some questions and you could answer them in general terms. For instance, Lark's mother thought he was depressed over the death of Susanna Marten. I assume he would have been taking antidepressants, but we never found any—not in his apartment or in his car or on his body. Does that seem as strange to you as it does to me?”

Kenneally smiled faintly. “I won't talk about Anthony's diagnosis,” he said. “But in general I can tell you that drugs aren't the only way of treating a patient with symptoms of depression. Some respond well to talk therapy. Even if antidepressants are called for, some patients aren't willing to take them. Or if they are, they may stop taking them because of the side effects. Does that make sense?”

“It does. Thank you. Now, we understand Lark suffered from headaches. Talk therapy wouldn't help with those, would it?”

The same faint smile. “No. There are a number of prescription medications to treat headaches, if over-the-counter remedies don't work.”

“We found a bottle of Imitrex in Lark's car. Is that something you might prescribe?”

“It's something a patient would normally get from his primary physician.”

“But if he didn't, you could give it to him, right?”

“I could,” Kenneally said. “I'm not going to say if I did, in Anthony's case. But if you've got the bottle, the label should tell you who prescribed it.”

“I'm afraid not. Anthony stole it from a pharmacy.” Elizabeth opened a folder and brought out a photograph of the tin Shan had found in Lark's apartment. “Have you ever seen this?” she asked Kenneally.

“Not that I remember,” he said.

“Anthony kept pills in it. The label says ‘Imitrex,' but the pills inside were vitamin D. Do you have any thoughts on that?”

Chatterjee slapped an open palm on the table. “Enough,” he said. “I don't know what thoughts you expect the doctor to have on Mr. Lark's vitamins—”

Kenneally ignored him. “Actually, a deficiency of vitamin D has been linked to mood disorders,” he said, “so it's not surprising that someone suffering from depression would be taking it. Speaking in general, of course.”

 

 

ANTHONY LARK'S NOTEBOOK lay on the blotter of Chief Owen McCaleb's desk. McCaleb himself perched on a corner of the desk and listened as Elizabeth summarized her interview with Matthew Kenneally. Shan sat by the window, tossing in a comment now and then. They had left Kenneally in the interview room to write out his statement, with Rex Chatterjee looking over his shoulder.

When Elizabeth finished, McCaleb asked, “What do we think of Kenneally?”

“He could be just what he seems,” she said. “A doctor forced to defend himself against his patient. But I doubt it. For one thing, I'd expect him to be more broken up about it.”

“On the other hand,” Shan said, “he didn't try to lie to us. He could have held back the accusations Lark made against him when they were alone—the stuff about the Great Lakes robbery and Lucy Navarro. But he didn't. So either the accusations are false and Kenneally sees no reason to hide them, or they're true and he's smart enough not to get caught hiding them.”

McCaleb bumped his heels against the pinewood front of the desk. “I haven't talked to the prosecutor yet, but I don't see him bringing charges. The evidence supports Kenneally's story. The gun that shot Lark was Paul Rhiner's, so Lark had to have brought it with him. I've had a preliminary report from the medical examiner: she found gunshot residue on Lark's hands and clothes, which supports Kenneally's statement that they were fighting over the gun when he pulled the trigger.”

“Classic self-defense,” Shan said, “just like Chatterjee claimed.”

“What about the other stuff?” McCaleb asked. “Do we believe Kenneally is the fifth man from the Great Lakes robbery? Do we think he manipulated Lark—wound him up and sent him after Dawtrey, Kormoran, and Bell?”

“It's possible,” Elizabeth said. “Lark met Kenneally in March. That's when Kenneally bought Lark's boat. At the time, Lark had been in mourning for years over Susanna Marten. He'd been afflicted with headaches. He had a shrine to the girl on the wall of his room.”

“Kenneally could have seen the shrine when he picked up the boat,” added Shan.

Elizabeth touched the glass beads of her necklace. “Lark's mother told us he had resisted seeing a therapist. He felt responsible for Susanna's death, because he hadn't done enough to prevent it. She told us something else too. She thought Lark didn't want a therapist who would tell him to go easy on himself. He was looking for someone who would agree with him. Someone to tell him he really was responsible.”

“So Kenneally came along and agreed with him?” McCaleb said.

Shan stepped away from the window and paced across the carpet. “If Kenneally was the fifth robber, then he's been living with the secret for seventeen years. He managed to get away from the Great Lakes Bank, but he did it by ramming a patrol car and killing a Sault Sainte Marie cop—Scott White. So Kenneally knows he's got a murder charge hanging over him. After all this time he ought to be safe—but then Callie Spencer decides to run for the Senate and suddenly people are talking about the robbery again. Dawtrey, Kormoran, and Bell saw him back then. He can't be sure what they remember.”

McCaleb nodded. “So he has a motive for wanting them dead.”

“Right,” said Elizabeth. “And then he meets Lark, a man who's tormented because he didn't do enough to save a girl with a pretty smile—a smile like Callie Spencer's.”

“Kenneally gets Lark to come to him for therapy,” Shan said. “Lark talks to him about feeling responsible for Susanna's death. Kenneally tells Lark what he wants to hear: he
is
responsible.”

“Then Kenneally steers him toward Callie Spencer,” said Elizabeth. “He plants the idea that Dawtrey and the others are a threat to her, just like Susanna's abusive husband was a threat. No rational person would believe that the Great Lakes robbers posed a threat to Callie after all these years, but Lark wasn't rational. And Kenneally knew it. I think Kenneally played up the similarities between Susanna and Callie. There was the physical resemblance—the smile—but just as importantly there was the similarity between their fathers: both ended up in wheelchairs. Susanna's husband, Derek Everly, was responsible for putting her father in a wheelchair, and Lark did nothing about it. If only he had done the right thing—if he had killed Derek—then Susanna wouldn't have been driven to suicide. Lark would have saved her. Likewise for Callie. The Great Lakes robbers put her father in a wheelchair. And in Lark's mind, there was still time to do something about it. To save her.”

McCaleb looked skeptical. “This sounds like an awful lot of speculation.”

“It's not all speculation,” Elizabeth said, pointing to Lark's notebook on the desk. “I've only had time to skim through what Lark wrote in there, but I can tell you that he wrote pages and pages about how he failed Susanna, and how he wasn't going to fail Callie. And the entries in there are dated. The first reference to Callie comes after Lark met Kenneally.”

McCaleb glanced at the notebook. “I don't suppose there's anything explicit. Lark doesn't actually say that Kenneally told him to kill anyone.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I didn't see anything like that. I think Kenneally was much more subtle about it. But Lark got the message. The Great Lakes robbers were his chance to redeem himself.”

Shan had stopped his pacing and gone back to the window. “If we assume Kenneally manipulated Lark,” he said, “then some other things fall into place. Lark's depression worked in Kenneally's favor, so he didn't prescribe drugs to treat it. When Lark complained about headaches, Kenneally gave him some pills and told him they were Imitrex. But they weren't.”

“It still sounds far-fetched,” McCaleb said. “If Kenneally wanted Dawtrey and the others dead, why didn't he just hire someone to do it? Why go through all this trouble with Lark? And what made him think he could turn Lark into a killer?”

“He's a psychiatrist,” said Shan. “It's not like he knows any professional hitmen.”

McCaleb looked to Elizabeth for her opinion, but she was still considering his question. What made Kenneally think he could turn Lark into a killer?

The answer came to her. “He did a trial run,” she said.

McCaleb's mouth made a puzzled frown.

“Derek Everly,” she said. “Lark blamed him for Susanna's suicide. But he didn't do anything about it for three years. Then Lark met Kenneally, and a month later Everly was murdered.”

“But Lark was never charged in that case,” said McCaleb.

“No. The detective we talked to in Dearborn thought Lark did it, but he couldn't prove it.”

“Then we're not likely to prove Kenneally persuaded him to do it,” said McCaleb. “Look, let's assume Kenneally had some kind of influence over Lark. So he sent Lark after Dawtrey, Kormoran, and Bell. And we think he did that because he, Kenneally, was the getaway driver in the Great Lakes robbery. Can we prove that?”

Shan lifted his shoulders. “We walked Kenneally past Harlan Spencer. Spencer said he didn't recognize him.”

“We can try Sutton Bell,” said Elizabeth. “But he only met the getaway driver briefly.”

McCaleb got down from his perch on the desk. “That doesn't sound promising,” he said. “So do we have anything at all on Kenneally? Any actual proof of a crime he committed?”

Shan smiled grimly. “We do if we find Lucy Navarro in cold storage in his garage.”

“Right. The freezer. Is there any reason to believe she's in there?”

“Lark thought so,” said Elizabeth.

“I can't get a search warrant based on a dead man's hunch,” said McCaleb. “Can we link Kenneally with Navarro?”

“Lark saw a blue minivan the night Lucy Navarro disappeared,” Shan said. “Kenneally owns a minivan.”

“Please tell me it's blue.”

“It's gray,” said Elizabeth. “His wife drove it to the hospital this afternoon.”

“Could it have been painted in the last three days?”