A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,58

more seconds of eye contact than usual and I thought I could see a slight grin playing at his mouth. I know it’s just locker-room humor that people can tell, but how the hell would he know where I’d spent the night?

Billy had long since gone to his office and the apartment was immaculate. He had left a note on top of two large manila envelopes:

Max. This is the Thompson file, including a full dossier and confirmation that she did indeed have a viatical policy through a company other than McCane’s and sold it to the same investment group as the others.

The other file is a full dossier on Dr. Harold Marshack, our possible middleman.

Let me know when you get in.

I showered and changed and started a pot of coffee. While I waited I started leafing through the Thompson file. The woman had purchased an inordinately large life insurance policy in 1954 and had been paying loyally for decades. She obviously liked the idea of tucking such death insurance away that in the late ’70s, she bought yet another policy that gave her nearly $100,000 in coverage. But four years ago she sold both to the investment group for $40,000. They had required a medical exam, but when they found she had been diagnosed with cancer and had refused surgery, they didn’t hesitate.

Different figures, but pretty much the same pattern as the others. I poured myself a cup of coffee and took the other file to the patio. Out on the ocean there were a dozen fishing boats strung out past what I knew was the third reef line. The water was flat and a huge freighter was southbound on the horizon, the visibility so clear I could see the lump of a wave being pushed by the prow of the big vessel. I sat in one of the patio chairs and opened the file on Marshack.

The doctor, who was fifty-two, had taken his degree from a small college in Louisville. The résumé listed internships and hospital privileges in both Kentucky and Tennessee. A few years were then unaccounted for, but a license and three different business addresses in North Carolina made me think he must have been struggling to find a steady practice.

It was all pretty undistinguished stuff until I got to the address listing in Moultrie, Georgia. The work address was for the State Penitentiary. His title there had been head of prison psychiatric services. He had worked there for four years. There was another lapse in time before his next official work record for Health and Prison Services of Florida. His current address was in Golden Beaches, just as McCane had said.

What McCane had not said—except to a bartender he was probably trying to hit on at Kim’s—was whether he had ever been in Moultrie. I put the file down and stared out at the sun flashes on the small shore break. Coincidence that McCane had worked in the same Georgia prison as the middleman who might be killing Billy’s women? Was the old cop chasing down a lead he wasn’t filling me in on? How well did these guys know each other?

I was getting more coffee when my cell rang.

“Billy?” I answered.

“Richards,” she said, her voice professional and with an edge.

“Hey. What’s up? They call you off the homicide?”

“Freeman. Didn’t you tell me at Lester’s that your partner the insurance investigator was trailing some middleman?

“Yeah, he was doing surveillance on the guy’s place and trailed him to the liquor store.”

“Said his name was Marshack?

“Yeah. A psychiatrist named…”

“Dr. Harold Marshack,” she finished my sentence. “Max, you better get down here.”

I called Billy and filled him in on the homicide of Dr. Marshack, McCane’s middleman and the county jail psychiatrist. Billy jumped ahead of me.

“And the Moultrie prison psychiatrist. You’re thinking they knew each other?”

“Let’s get the paperwork before I call McCane,” I said, getting up to leave. “Call me.”

When I found the address along A1A in Golden Beaches, I again pulled into a lot filled with squad cars and a couple of unmarked units parked alongside. A team of crime scene guys was going over an old-model Caprice in a spot nearby.

As I got out I could see Richards and Diaz, standing next to their boss. Hammonds cut his eyes toward me and then turned back to say something to his detectives before walking away. Richards met me halfway across the lot.

“We’ve got to quit meeting like this,” she said, but the joke had lost some of