Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [6]
“Ah, I see. I have, perhaps, a fatal attraction.”
“No, certainly not. You shouldn’t have referred to it like that. It’s much too soon.”
“Too soon for what? I’m still trying to get the hang of it?”
Anger flashed in his eyes. It made her feel good. “Go on, Ms. Matlock. No, don’t argue with me yet. First tell me more. I need to understand. Then we can determine what’s going on, together.”
In his dreams, she thought. A crush on the governor? Yeah, right. What a joke that was. Bledsoe was a man who would sleep with a nun if he could get under her habit. He made Bill Clinton look as upstanding as Eisenhower, or had Ike had a mistress, too? Men and power—the two always seemed to go with illicit sex. As for Bledsoe, he’d been very lucky thus far, he hadn’t yet run into an intern as voracious as Monica, one who wouldn’t fade into the woodwork when he was done with her.
“Very well,” she said. “I came to New York to escape that maniac. I was—I am—terrified of him and what he’ll do. Also, my mother lives here and she’s very ill. I wanted to be with her.”
“You’re staying in her apartment, is that right?”
“Yes. She’s in Lenox Hill Hospital.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Becca looked at him and tried to say the words. They wouldn’t come out. She cleared her throat and finally managed to say, “She’s dying of uterine cancer.”
“I’m sorry. You say this man followed you here to New York?”
Becca nodded. “I saw him here for the first time the day after I arrived in New York, on Madison near Fiftieth, weaving in and out of people to my right. He was wearing a blue windbreaker and a baseball cap. How do I know it was him? I can’t be specific about that. Deep down, I recognized that it was him. He knew I saw him, I’m sure of that. Unfortunately I couldn’t see him clearly enough to give more than a general impression of what he looks like.”
“And that is?”
“He’s tall, slender. Is he young? I don’t know. The baseball cap covered his hair and he was wearing aviator glasses, very dark, opaque. He was wearing generic jeans and that blue windbreaker that was very loose.” She paused a moment. “I’ve told the police all of this, many times. Why do you care?”
His look said it all. He wanted to see how specific, how detailed her descriptions were, how much she’d embellished her fantasy man. And all of the marvelous particulars were from her imagination, her very sick imagination.
She kept it together. When he hesitated, she said mildly, “He ducked away when I turned toward him. Then the phone calls started again. I know he’s keeping close tabs on me. He seems to know exactly where I am and what I’m doing. I can feel him, you know?”
“You told the officers that he wouldn’t tell you what he wanted.”
“No, not really, other than to tell me if I didn’t stop having sex with the governor, he would kill him. I asked him why he’d do that and he just said he didn’t want me to have sex with any other man, that he was my boyfriend. But it sounded funny, like it was just something he was saying, not something he really meant. So why is he doing this, really? I don’t know. I will be frank with you, Dr. Burnett. I’m not crazy, I’m terrified. If that’s his aim, he’s certainly succeeded. I simply don’t understand why the police think I’m the bad guy here, that I’m making all of this up for some crazy reason. Perhaps you could believe me now?”
He was a shrink; he hedged well. “Tell me why you believe this man is stalking you and making these phone calls to you, why you don’t believe that he wants to be your boyfriend, that it really all boils down to an obsession and his possession of you?”
She closed her eyes. She’d thought and thought about why, but there wasn’t anything. Nothing at all. He’d targeted her, but why? She shook her head. “At first he said he wanted to know me. What does that mean? If he wanted that, why wouldn’t he come over and introduce himself? If the cops wanted a nutcase to send to you, they should find him. What does he really want? I don’t know. If I even had a supposition about it, I’d throw it out there, believe me. But the boyfriend