CHAPTER 38

Tully let her wait on him. She had insisted. It was the first time he had been inside her brownstone. The first time he had been invited. By default, of course, he reminded himself, but still, an invitation was an invitation.

She had decided they would be more comfortable here than at Joan Begley’s loft. There, she had been distracted. Tully had noticed her walking, stepping lightly, quietly, reverently. He knew Joan Begley was a client of Dr. Patterson’s, but he didn’t have to be a profiler to guess she had also been somewhat of a friend. Or if not a friend, then someone Dr. Patterson genuinely cared about. There was a connection. Even he could see that, feel that.

He studied her face while she poured the coffee into mugs, preoccupied with the task, and so it was safe to study her. He sat at the counter that separated her living room from her kitchen—a spic-and-span kitchen with hanging utensils and pots and pans in more sizes and shapes than Tully could think of uses for. Here, among her own things, she looked less vulnerable than she had at Joan Begley’s. But even here, she still looked…it was hard to explain. She looked tired. No, that wasn’t right. She looked…sad.

“Cream or sugar?” she asked with only a glance over her shoulder.

“No, thanks. I take it black.” He knew before she reached for the cream that she would pour a healthy dollop of it into hers, making it look like milky chocolate. Cream, but no sugar. And if available she preferred a café mocha.

The realization startled him. These days he couldn’t remember what color socks he had put on in the morning—hopefully they at least matched. And yet, here he was remembering how Dr. Gwen Patterson took her coffee.

“So you think Maggie’s right? That this Sonny has something to do with Joan’s disappearance?”

“He sends her e-mails every day that she’s in Connecticut, obviously every day after they met. Sometimes two and three a day. Then all of a sudden they just happen to stop on Saturday, the day she disappeared. Too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“But from the e-mails we read, they sounded like friends, confidants. He didn’t sound like someone who would want to hurt her.”

Her cell phone interrupted them and Dr. Patterson managed to grab it before the second ring, like someone expecting news, any news.

“Hello?” Then her entire face softened. “Hi, Maggie,” she greeted her friend. “No, I’m okay. Yes, I did meet Tully at Joan’s apartment. Actually, he’s here. No, here at my brownstone.” She listened for a few minutes then said, “Hold on.” She handed him the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, O’Dell.”

“Tully, can you tell me anything about Sonny?”

“Well, we were able to get into her e-mail.”

“Already?”

“Dr. Patterson figured out the password. There’re daily e-mails from this guy, but we were just talking about that. They sound pretty chummy, in a friendly way, not a romantic way. Right?” He looked at Gwen for her agreement. “But here’s the thing. His e-mails stop the day she disappeared.”

“Can you track him?”

“I’ve got Bernard working on it. So far it looks like he uses a free e-mail account and there’s no customer profile on him anywhere that I can find. I’m betting he uses a public computer. Probably the local library or maybe one of those cafés that have computers available.”

“Have you talked to Cunningham today?”

“No, he’s in meetings all day. Why?”

“He managed to get out of a meeting long enough to call me.”

“Uh-oh. You’re busted?”

“Not sure. Look, Tully, I just don’t want you getting into trouble for helping me out on this.”

Tully glanced up at Dr. Patterson. She stood on the other side of the counter, sipping coffee and watching him, thinking he was focused on listening to O’Dell when he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

“Tully, do you hear me?” O’Dell was saying in his ear. “I don’t want you getting into trouble over this.”

“Don’t worry about it, O’Dell.”