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“I’m okay,” she said. “I called him last night. We talked for a while. I think he really listened to me, at least at first. Then the anger took over and I…” Hannibal let the silence hang, refusing to let her off the hook. Eventually she added, “I hung up on him.”

  “Good for you,” he said. It was a powerful indication that she was breaking from his dominance. They would heal their relationship or they would not, but now she was empowered to choose without being bullied in either direction.

  “Thank you,” Janet said. “I don’t know how I could repay you.” For his help or the encouragement, he could not be sure.

  “Actually, I’m calling to ask for your help. I could use your expertise on a case I’m on, trying to find someone. Can you track a man down with a partial license plate?”

  Hannibal could feel her smile across the phone lines. She loved the idea that she could be needed by someone. “I can sure as heck narrow your search, depending on how much of the plate you got.”

  “All I have is the first three characters,” he said.

  “That’s not a bad start. Local registration?”

  “I guess,” Hannibal said. “It starts with 902.”

  “Hmmm…not Virginia. All ours start with three letters, except vanity plates of course. You don’t know what state?”

  Hannibal cursed away from the phone. “Guess I don’t. So we’re nowhere, huh?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Janet said. He could hear she was already being distracted by something at work. “I can help you better when I’ve got more time at a PC. Can this wait until I can come over after work?”

  “Sure, no big rush,” Hannibal lied. “If you can help me find the driver of this car somehow, that will be great! I’ve got plenty to do today anyway, starting with taxi duty for a lady lucky enough to be able to take off from work whenever she feels like it.”

  Hannibal regretted his condescending thought about Bea Collins as soon as he pulled up in front of her home. She was dressed as if for work in a tasteful business skirt suit and black heels. She had applied her makeup with care. Her raven tresses caressed her shoulders in gentle waves. Yet her petite form seemed shrunken in on itself. Her shoulders threatened to buckle under some invisible weight. She was perfectly framed by the backdrop of the day’s low, dark clouds.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” Bea said as she settled into the car. “I have to be there for him, but I couldn’t have gone alone.”

  “I’m here to do whatever I can to help,” Hannibal said, pulling out of the protected confines of the townhouse community. “I need to talk to Dean anyway. Find out what I can about his background. I’m afraid the police will try to make something of his history. A ‘like mother like son’ thing.”

  “Dean was in and out of full awareness last night, but he talked some,” Bea said. “I found out he was raised by his Aunt Ursula after his mother, well, after they took her away. He asked me to call her, to tell her where he is. So I’ll get to meet one member of his family at least.”

  Hannibal chased the last of the rush hour traffic around the Capitol Beltway, then branched north into Maryland and soon pulled into the visitors’ parking area of the Charter Behavioral Health System Facility at Potomac Ridge, a suburb of Rockville, Maryland, which was itself a suburb of Washington DC. Bea stared hard at the front of the open, glass fronted building before she would approach it with him. To her, it must have seemed more a prison than a place of comfort.

  “It’s so big,” Bea said as they entered the sterile environment of the reception area. “My baby will just get lost in here.”

  Hannibal could empathize. Too much white, too many smiles. And he knew most people still retained the snake pit image of mental hospitals. He took her hand as they approached the counter. “Relax, Bea. There are no amateurs here. Charter is the McDonald’s of mental health. There must be a hundred of these places scattered around the country. This one has eighty-eight beds for adult inpatients, and almost as many more for adolescent patients. They have the benefit of a ton of experience.”

  Doctor Roberts intercepted them before they reached the receptionist, “You’re quite an expert, Mister Jones. Have you been here before?” Roberts walked as smoothly as he spoke. In full light Hannibal could see that he was a round man, soft looking like a stuffed animal. There was a twinkle in his eye which, combined with his beard, reminded Hannibal of the line about the “jolly old elf” in “The Night Before Christmas.” All that was missing was the smile.

  “I visited someone else here not long ago,” Hannibal said. “At that time I spoke to her doctor in a little waiting area right over here.”

  For Hannibal, it was a heavy dose of deja vu. Just like the last time he visited Charter, the room was empty and painfully quiet, with a smell of vanilla he figured someone sprayed on some regular schedule. Bea perched on the edge of one of the green plastic covered sofas. Hannibal sat beside her and Doctor Roberts pulled a chair close to them.

  “How is Dean?” Bea asked as soon as they were settled. “Is he all right? Can I see him?”

  “Of course,” Roberts said. “He is feeling better, although he’s a bit confused about things, the sort of confusion that so often goes with depression and anxiety. But I don’t think he’s in great danger.”

  Hannibal tried to match Roberts’ carefully measured smile, but he could not imitate the doctor’s melodic, hypnotic voice. “Doctor, I need to talk to Dean for a couple of minutes about what he saw last night. The details could be very important.”

  “I’m sorry. You can speak to him if you like, but you must not discuss the events of last night. At least for a couple of days, all right?”

  The air conditioner sighed and Hannibal felt its cold breath on the back of his neck. “I don’t know if you understand, Doctor. Ms. Collins has asked me to protect Mister Edwards. To do that, I need to know exactly what he saw. I think I can prove he had nothing to do with this murder.”

  “On the contrary, I believe I do understand,” Roberts said. His smile never changed. “But for the next couple of days, it could do real damage for him to discuss those matters. And I am charged with protecting him also, Mister Jones. Protecting his mental health. I wasn’t kidding about his being at risk of suicide. I won’t risk stirring up those dangerous self-destructive feelings until I’m sure it’s safe.”

  The door hinges were silent but Hannibal must have detected the movement of the air when it opened. He looked up to find Detective Thompson moving toward them with a long stride that ate up distance with a minimum of effort. A pair of uniforms stood outside the waiting room. Thompson nodded toward Bea and Hannibal, but his face betrayed no surprise.

  “Doctor Roberts. Guess I should have expected it to be you,” Thompson said. He stood over Roberts looking down on him in every sense. “As you might expect, I need to question him in regard to last night’s homicide.”

  “As you might expect, you may not.” Roberts shifted in his seat, but did not crane his head up quite far enough to see Thompson’s face. “As I was just telling his fiancee and his friend here, Dean’s emotional balance is too delicate right now to…”

  “A man is dead,” Thompson said as if this would surprise someone. “The boy is at least a material witness, more likely he’s the killer.”

  Roberts’ smile never changed, even when Thompson threw his rage at it. “I’m sorry detective. Dean’s under sedation anyway. He could not very well answer your questions. And he’s no murderer.”

  “Lucky for us all you’re not a cop,” Thompson said. “He was there last night and he left the scene covered in the dead man’s blood.”

  “Actually,” Hannibal put in quietly, “Only his shoes were covered with blood.”

  “So you say. If he’d reported his so-called discovery to me, I’d have seen him last night and I’d know if that was the case.”

  Hannibal rose slowly to his feet, staring through his lenses into Thompson’s eyes, which hung three inches above his own. They stood like two
boxers just before the bell for round one.

  “I don’t think you want to call me a liar, big man.”

  A woman’s voice called, “Stan? What brings you here?” All eyes turned to a frail looking figure entering the room. Her face was worn by life’s erosion, her makeup a little too heavy as if trying to conceal that fact, her gray hair pulled back into a bun. Her belted flowered dress hung to her ankles. When Thompson saw her his posture softened.

  “Ursula. I didn’t know if you’d heard.”

  “Well, my good friend Stan Thompson didn’t call me, did he?” Ursula made it a soft accusation. “As a matter of fact, Dean’s fiancee called me to let me know the trouble he’s in. Awful to meet such a person under these ugly circumstances, and over the phone at that. But at least she was considerate enough to call.”

  Hannibal turned to face Ursula. “Detective Thompson doesn’t seem to be much on introductions. I’m Hannibal Jones and this lovely lady is Dean’s fiancee, Bea Collins. Bea is a very successful interior designer in Georgetown.”

  Ursula’s smile faltered when she realized who Bea was, but she still offered a hand and said, “Pleased to meet you. I didn’t know, I mean over the phone you didn’t sound…”

  Thompson cut across their uneasy handshake. “I still need to question that boy, Doctor.”

  Roberts stood up to Thompson, literally and figuratively. The police detective towered over the psychiatrist, but it didn’t seem to matter. “And I have already told you that you will not discuss this grisly business with him now. He is under sedation.”

  “Please,” Bea said, speaking for the first time. “He didn’t do it. Why persecute him?”

  “Stan, be reasonable.” Ursula said. “You know how weak he is. You don’t want to make it worse for him. I’ll take full responsibility.”

  Thompson’s gaze went from face to face as if he did not know who to respond to. Watching this disparate group rally around Dean Edwards, rushing to his defense, made Hannibal think that there had to be something good in the man to inspire such loyalty.

  Roberts turned to Ursula as if Thompson had already left. “He has asked for you, and he has asked for Miss Collins. I will take you to visit him, just you two, and just for a few minutes. I think it will do him some good.”

  Turning his back on Thompson, Roberts took Ursula’s arm with one hand and Bea’s with the other. Hannibal followed them out of the waiting room, leaving Thompson standing helpless behind them. A short walk down a soundless antiseptic hall brought them to an elevator door. While they waited, Roberts turned to Hannibal.

  “I meant what I said in there, Mister Jones,” Roberts said. “Only these two ladies.”

  “I understand, Doctor,” Hannibal said, matching Roberts’ smile this time. “I’ll be happy to wait right here if you’ll return while they’re visiting. If I can’t talk to Dean I’d sure like a chance to talk to you for a couple minutes.”

  From the front, Charter looked every bit the efficient contemporary edifice dedicated to healing. But to the side of that building, by facing the right way, Hannibal could almost forget it existed. The grounds constituted a well-maintained park, reminding him of a golf course, except with young trees scattered about the fairway. Maples dominated the landscape but it was the pines that scented the area with their sharp sweetness. The occasional squirrel stopped to watch him. They knew, as did the residents in that building behind him, that this was a safe haven. The first cardinals of autumn chattered at one another, perhaps making romantic plans for tonight. Walking here, Hannibal thought, would be therapy for anyone, even those with the firmest grip on their sanity.

  “I’ll bet people go nuts just to get to come here,” Hannibal said.

  Roberts smiled his soft, professional smile. “Sometimes what a person needs most is a chance to relax and lose the cares of the day. For some of my patients, this is the only socially acceptable way to do that.”

  “But not Dean Edwards?” Hannibal asked, not looking at Roberts as he walked.

  “Dean was one of those people who hated his weakness,” Roberts said. “He worked very hard for six years to avoid ever being in a place like this. I honestly hoped I’d never see him again, but of course a precipitating event like this, well.”

  The sun burst through its cloud cover and Hannibal stopped in a small clearing, where he could be bathed in light and Roberts had the option of shade. “So how did Dean become your patient anyway?”

  “Well originally I was Ursula’s client,” Roberts said. “She was my insurance broker. Soon after the tragedy happened, she started bringing Dean to me. He had a lot of guilt issues and confused loyalties to deal with.”

  “Doctor, everyone seems to know exactly what this tragedy was but me.”

  Roberts looked at Hannibal as if deciding what degree of truth was called for. “Sorry. A little over ten years ago Dean’s mother stabbed his father to death. They were already separated you see. Dean’s father, Grant, had moved in with his sister Ursula because he thought his nine year old son needed a woman’s influence.”

  “Any idea what broke them up?”

  “Not really,” Roberts said. “Apparently they argued a lot. Or rather she argued with him. Grant was not a strong man, and from all accounts his wife dominated him. She was a strong woman. As was Ursula. Now that Francis is back I wouldn’t be surprised if she went after Ursula.”

  Hannibal was looking at Roberts now, watching the beard move up and down. “Back?”

  “Miss Collins told me Dean had seen his mother. Isn’t it so?”

  “Was Dean your patient during the trial?” Hannibal asked.

  “Yes. I’d like to think I held him together during that difficult time.”

  “Losing his father must have been tough, but seeing his mother convicted of murder would be worse,” Hannibal said, starting to walk again. “Was there any doubt? I mean, any chance she wasn’t guilty?”

  “Mister Jones, you’ve met Stan Thompson. Does he strike you as the type of man who leaves anything to chance? He was the investigating detective.”

  “What?” Hannibal’s feet stopped dead, and the sound of the birds faded from his mind.

  “Oh yes. He was up here back then. That case made him, Mister Jones. Moved to Virginia not long after at a much more impressive salary.”

  “And you don’t think there’s any chance a mistake was made?” Hannibal asked. “Sometimes evidence can be misleading.”

  “Their case didn’t depend on evidence, Mister Jones,” Roberts said. “And it could hardly fail with Dean as an eyewitness.”

  Hannibal’s office was dim with only the corner lamp lit. Janet was perched in Hannibal’s desk chair, her toes dangling just above the floor. To her right and a little behind her Hannibal sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, looking over Janet’s shoulder at his computer screen. He had surrendered his jacket, gloves and shades and even rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, but in his mind he was still at work.

  “Is it a rule you can’t relax while we do this?” Cindy asked, handing him a glass of wine. She had already placed one in front of Janet and held one for herself. When Hannibal shook his head, she turned to drop onto his lap.

  Janet turned just enough to smile a thank you toward Cindy as she sipped her wine. “Here’s the site I was looking for,” she said. Hannibal saw the words “License Plates of the World” and checked the URL: http://danshiki.oit.gatech.edu/~iadt3mk/index.html. Way too complex to try to remember.

  “Bookmark that, will you Janet?”

  “Will do,” she said. “Now, we’re assuming the car you’re after is registered in the U.S., right?”

  “Yeah,” Hannibal said, sipping his wine. Cindy had chosen a fruity white wine that he knew would lighten his spirits. “So let’s start looking. There’s only fifty of them.”

  Janet tapped a few keys and a group of plates came into view. “I guess alphabetically is as good a way to approach it as any, eh?” she said. “Here’s Alabama.” />
  “Nope, way too light,” Hannibal said. “The plate we’re looking for is dark, maybe a real dark blue, with white letters.”

  “And the first three characters are numbers, right?” Janet added, tapping more keys. “Alabama always has a letter in the first three. Alaska’s next.”

  Cindy squirmed down into Hannibal’s lap, getting comfortable. “So did Doc Roberts say what got Dean into the hospital?”

  “Oh yeah,” Hannibal said, kissing her forehead just because it was within reach. “Dean discovered his father’s mutilated body.”

  “Oh God,” Cindy said, moaning as if she herself had seen something awful.

  “He and his dad had been alone in the house. His mother came over but Dean didn’t go to greet her I guess. From another room he heard them arguing, apparently about finalizing their divorce.”

  Janet skipped Alaska, which starts with three letters, and Arizona, which has a light blue plate. “Kids don’t go near when that’s going on,” she said.

  “Roberts says he heard her leave,” Hannibal said, hugging Cindy to his chest. “Then the door opens again, in Dean’s words, like she forgot something.”

  Janet skipped past Arkansas, California and Colorado for color or number combination mismatches. “Maybe she was just getting up her courage.”

  Hannibal wondered if Janet was projecting her own feelings. “For whatever reasons, the next thing Dean heard was a grunt, then something heavy falling to the floor. Then the door slams again.”

  Cindy emptied her wine glass while watching the monitor. “Hey what about Connecticut?”

  Hannibal leaned forward. “Dark blue, light letters, three numbers a dot then three letters. That could be it!”

  “I’ll bookmark this page too, and move on,” Janet said. “So then this kid walks out and finds his father dead, right?”

  Hannibal gave a grim nod. “I’m afraid so. Terrible thing for a boy that age.”

  “You lost your dad when you were even younger,” Cindy commented. She refilled glasses while Janet flipped past Delaware and the District of Columbia, plates they were all familiar with, and glanced at Florida and Georgia plates which were the wrong colors.