Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [167]
They went to Lily’s room, saw she was still asleep and no one else was there, and Sherlock shut the door. She walked to the window, fiddled with the tiny receiver and recorder, turned on rewind, then play.
“Dammit, she needs more pain medication.”
Savich said, “Who’s that?”
“Dr. Larch.”
“I cut it back, just like you ordered, but it was too much. Listen, there’s no need to make her suffer like this.”
“She doesn’t react well to pain meds, I’ve told you that several times. It makes her even crazier than she already is. Keep the pain meds way down. I don’t want her hurt anymore.”
Sherlock pressed the stop button and said, “That was Tennyson Frasier. What do you think it means?”
Sherlock slipped the tiny recorder back into her jacket pocket.
“It could be perfectly innocent,” Savich said. “On the other hand, the Explorer has been compacted. The guy at the junked car yard told me Dr. Frasier told him to haul the Explorer in and compact it immediately. Will this thing click on whenever someone’s speaking?”
“Yes, it’s voice-activated. It turns off when there’s more than six seconds of silence. I got it from Dickie in Personnel. He’s a gadget freak, owed me one after I busted his sister’s boyfriend—you know, the macho drug dealer who was slapping her around.”
“Sherlock, have I ever told you that you never cease to amaze and thrill me?”
“Not recently. Well, not since last night, and I don’t think you had the same sort of intent then.”
He laughed, pulled her against him and kissed her. Her curly hair tickled his cheek. “Let’s call Mom and talk to Sean.”
FIVE
Eureka, California
Clark Hoyt, SAC of the new Eureka FBI field office, which had opened less than a year before, handed Savich the bottle of pills. “Sorry, Agent Savich. What we’ve got here is a really common antidepressant, name of Elavil.”
“Not good,” Savich said and looked out the window toward the small park just to the left of downtown. The trees were bright with fall colors. If he turned his head a bit to the right, he’d see the Old Town section on the waterfront. A beautiful town, Humboldt’s county seat, Eureka was filled with countless fine Victorian homes and buildings.
“Something I can help you with, Agent Savich? Sounds like something’s happening you don’t like.”
Savich shook his head. “I wish there was something, but the pills are exactly what they should be. I guess it would have been really easy if they were something different. I told you the Explorer my sister totaled has been compacted. I was really holding out big hopes for those pills. Oh yeah, call me Savich.”
“Okay, Hoyt here. Now, the Explorer—that was done awfully fast.”
“Yes, maybe too fast, but then again, my life’s work is to be suspicious. Maybe it was very straightforward. As of right now, it’s all a dead end. However, I think it’s time I did a bit of digging on my brother-in-law, Dr. Tennyson Frasier.”
Clark Hoyt, who had heard of some of the exploits of Sherlock, Savich, and MAX, Savich’s transgender laptop, said, “Don’t tell me you didn’t do a background search on this guy before he married your sister? Seems to me a brother would have checked out the fillings in his teeth.”
“Well, yeah, sure I did. But not a really deep one. He didn’t have a record, hadn’t ever been in rehab for drugs or alcohol, stuff like that.”
“And he wasn’t a bigamist?”
“No, I didn’t check on that. Lily told me he’d been right up front about the fact that he’d been married before and that his wife had died. You know something, Hoyt? I wonder now what the first wife died of. I wonder how long they were married before she died.” His eyes brightened.
“Savich, you don’t really think he’s trying to kill his wife? The pills were exactly what they were supposed to be.”
“They were indeed, and I’m not sure. But you know, information is about the most important thing any cop can have.” Savich rubbed his hands together. “MAX is going to love this.”
“You know