Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,47
legacy, and he wanted me to be prepared. I’ve studied the material a great deal over the years. There is significant documentation on Harry Day. The neighbors described him as engaging, clever, good with his hands. By all accounts, my parents didn’t socialize a great deal, but if you ran into Harry on the streets, he wouldn’t give you the cold shoulder or turn your hair on end. One of the neighbors, an elderly widow, even raved about what a nice young man he was, fixed a leaking window for her, helped out with a squeaky door. Wouldn’t even accept any money, just wanted a piece of her homemade apple pie. Of course, those are the types of stories that become nearly legendary after the fact, the cold killer with the kind heart. But to be honest, I don’t believe it.”
“The elderly neighbor was making the story up?”
“No.” Adeline looked up, regarded D.D. flatly. “Harry was making himself up. That’s what superpredators do, right? Engage in camouflage. I suspect he probably had some poor girl chained to the workbench in his shop that same week. Ergo, he went out of his way to help a neighbor. So if the police did come sniffing around, they’d all get the same scoop: Harry Day, what a nice guy, why just the other day, he fixed my broken window . . .”
D.D. nodded. She’d run across the same phenomenon—the But He Seemed Like Such a Nice Guy killer—and she agreed with Adeline’s assessment. Psychopaths were never nice. They were just good at playing the part when it suited their needs.
Now D.D. pressed: “You still haven’t answered my question about your mom.”
“Because I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. Even my adoptive father, who was an award-winning researcher, couldn’t find any information on her. She was a ghost. No extended family, no past. She migrated to Boston from somewhere in the Midwest; at least that’s what she told people. Her marriage certificate listed her maiden name as Davis, which, frankly, is too common to effectively trace. She never answered any of the police’s questions, and not even the neighbors seemed to know her. Anne Davis lived as a shadow. Then became a ghost.”
D.D. couldn’t help herself; she shivered slightly. “Maybe that just proves she knew what her husband was doing. Leading to the mental breakdown: survivor’s guilt.”
Adeline merely shrugged. “Irrelevant. As you know even better than I, Harry was the perfect psychopath, and that kind of predator is always the alpha. Even if Anne knew, there was nothing she could’ve done. Harry was the one in control.”
“Your father,” D.D. stated once again, for the sake of argument.
Adeline’s expression never changed. “Given that I suffer from a rare genetic condition, no one knows the potential pitfalls of DNA better than I.”
D.D. found this intriguing. She leaned forward. “Did Harry have your same condition—is it possible he also couldn’t feel pain?”
“No. Congenital insensitivity to pain is caused by a double-recessive gene—meaning both parents must be carriers of the genetic mutation. Not to mention there are fewer than fifty cases known in the entire US, and half of the children diagnosed die before age three from heatstroke. Someone like me, grown to adulthood, with four fully functional limbs . . . I’m the exception, not the norm.”
“Why is that?”
“As part of the gene mutation, we can’t feel heat. Meaning we don’t sweat. For infants and toddlers, this is particularly dangerous. On a warm summer afternoon, their bodies can overheat to critical levels without them ever showing signs of distress. By the time the parents rush their listless baby to the hospital, it’s too late.”
D.D. couldn’t help herself. “So what do you during the summer?”
“Enjoy air-conditioning. Drink plenty of fluids. And I take my temperature multiple times a day. I can’t trust what I feel, Detective, which means I must rely on external diagnostics to tell me if my body is all right.”
“Melvin is useful,” D.D. murmured.
“Melvin is useful. I’ve never lain on a beach or walked in the full summer sun. I don’t even enter a shower without first checking the thermometer. And as for most athletic hobbies or fitness programs . . . It would be dangerous for someone like me to run or swim or play tennis or shoot hoops. I could blow out a knee, break an ankle, strain a shoulder and never be any the wiser. My health remains a matter of constant vigilance.”
D.D. nodded. She thought the good doctor spoke very matter-of-factly when describing a