Bones Never Lie (Temperance Brennan, #17)(79)

Ajax was shopping when Shelly Leal disappeared. Did he have an accomplice? Was it someone at the hospital? If not there, where? Did he have a killing place, as Slidell believed?

Or.

I thought of the home on Sunrise Court. So architecturally right and yet so wrong. Lifeless. Sterile.

I pictured Ajax working crossword puzzles in his bed. Paying bills at his desk. Watching baseball or DVDs from the chartreuse chair. Alone. Always alone. A common pattern with serial killers.

In my mind, I went back through each room. Recalled not a single thing to suggest that Ajax had a life outside his home or the hospital. No woman’s robe in the closet. No Post-it on the fridge saying, Call Tom. No picture of himself with friends or co-workers. No reminder on a calendar to meet Ira for lunch. Nothing to suggest anyone in Ajax’s life cared about him. That he cared about anyone.

No. That wasn’t true. He’d kept the three photos. Old photos. Of whom? Had to be his wife and daughters. Was the woman the template for his victims? One of the girls? Why?

No one at Mercy knew Ajax. No one on his street. No one in New Hampshire or West Virginia remembered him.

Again the unsettling thought. Could we be wrong? Could Ajax be innocent?

Could we be bullying a man who cut himself off from the world out of self-loathing? A man who had made a hideous mistake and lost everything? A man unable to forgive his own actions? Unwilling to trust himself outside the confines of the workplace or home?

There was no excuse for taking advantage of a child. But had anyone followed up on that? Talked to those involved in the arrest and prosecution? The babysitter would be in her thirties now. Had anyone talked to her?

I would ask Slidell in the morning.

Outside, the rain fell softly. Inside, the annex was dark and still.

My mind refused to clock out.

Over and over, I glanced at the time.

11:20.

12:10.

2:47.

My iPhone woke me from a sound sleep. The room was dim. The digits on the clock said 5:40.

Mama!

Heart banging, I clicked on.

My mother wasn’t dead.

Hamet Ajax was.





CHAPTER 34


SLIDELL PICKED ME up with no more greeting than a sour glance. Which was fine.

He handed me a Styrofoam cup with a white plastic cover. The tepid contents bore some vague resemblance to coffee.

As we drove, the horizon bled from black into pearly pink. Trees and buildings took shape, and gray oozed into the spaces between.

The lighter it got, the worse Slidell looked. His lower face was dark with five o’clock shadow; the bags under his eyes were large enough to house small mammals. His outfit was a color-clashing, coffee-stained rumple that stank of cigarettes and sweat.

Slidell briefed me in a voice gravelly from too much smoking and too little sleep.

After collecting his car, Ajax had driven to the hospital. He’d committed to a double shift that day, a practice not out of character. Thirty minutes after arriving, he’d left. Definitely out of character.

Ajax had told his supervisor, Dr. Joan Cauthern, that he was a victim of police harassment. Said he hadn’t been home all day and needed to shower and check his house. Assured Cauthern he’d be back by seven.

The surveillance team had followed Ajax from Mercy to Sunrise Court. He pulled into his garage at 5:22. Never left.

When Ajax failed to return as promised, Cauthern began phoning. Tried repeatedly throughout the night. By early morning, she’d grown concerned. Ajax had been perspiring heavily and acting fidgety, behaviors she’d never seen him exhibit. At four A.M., when the ER grew quiet, Cauthern went to his home to see if he was ill.

The surveillance team observed a vehicle pull into Ajax’s driveway at 4:20 A.M. A woman got out and rang the bell. Dialed a cellphone. Rang again. Getting no response, the woman shifted to the garage. Appeared to listen with an ear to the door. Walked to the side and peered through a window. Ran toward the cruiser, waving her arms.

The officers approached. The woman appeared agitated. Gave her name as Joan Cauthern. Stated she was Ajax’s superior at Mercy Hospital.

Cauthern said a car was running inside the garage. Said she feared Ajax was in it.

Hearing engine sounds, the officers forced open the door. Found an adult male unconscious behind the wheel of a Hyundai Sonata. Tried to resuscitate, but the victim failed to respond. Called for a bus. Called Slidell.

The ambulance was now gone, and the MCME van had taken its place. Larabee’s car was there. The CSS truck. A cruiser with bubble lights flashing. A Lexus I assumed belonged to Cauthern. The garage door was up, the overheads on. Ditto every light in the house.

A gurney had been rolled up the drive. On it lay a black body bag, unzipped, ready. Beside it were the same CSS techs who’d worked the site less than twenty-four hours earlier. One held a video camera, the other a Nikon.

Slidell and I got out. The sky had morphed to a foggy gray. The color of Ajax’s lonely rooms, I thought.

The air was cool and damp. The frost-coated lawn pulsed red and blue. As Slidell and I crossed it, my insides felt like a lump of granite.

Larabee stood in the space between the Hyundai and the garage wall. Beside him was Joe Hawkins, an investigator with the MCME. On the floor between them was the metal death scene kit. Hawkins was shooting pics.

The driver’s door was open. Through it I could see Ajax slumped over the wheel, head twisted to the side, nasal mucus and saliva crusted on one cheek. His hands hung limp at his knees. A pair of tortoiseshell glasses lay on a mat by his feet. The macabre tableau brightened every time Hawkins’s flash went off.