Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(31)

“They always helped until she decided not to take them,” Willingham said, nodding. “Which led to her delusional out-bursts the last week of the campaign and her sudden decision to divorce me and denounce me in the press.”

“Why didn’t you reveal her history?”

“Kay didn’t like the stigma attached to being mentally ill,” Willingham said. “She was old-school old South. Being committed to the psych ward again and again, well, revealing that would have been life-shattering. It’s why I never responded to her taunts and smears. I knew she was off her meds, having an episode, and I wanted to spare her the public pain of having her darkest secret revealed.”

I sat there, feeling like Kay Willingham was a stranger, not the socialite queen of the nation’s capital, not the woman I’d thought her to be.

Barnes said, “The vice president would prefer it if this part of Kay’s life did not become public unless absolutely necessary.”

Willingham laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Here I am, trying to protect Kay even on her way to the grave. How do you explain that, Dr. Cross?”

“Love,” I said.

His eyes welled up with tears, and he patted his chest. “I suppose you’re right.”

Barnes got to her feet, said, “We really must be going, Mr. Vice President. You’re expected at nine.”

Willingham threw his hands up in surrender and stood. “I wish I could help more, but duty calls.”

“One more thing, sir,” Mahoney said, also standing up.

“Yes?”

“No one’s come forward to claim your ex-wife’s body.”

He appeared nonplussed by the comment for a moment. He glanced at his chief of staff, then said, “Of course I’ll claim her and contact the executor of Kay’s — ”

His chief of staff’s cell phone rang. She answered it, listened, held up one finger, then said, “You’re sure? Yes, please send a copy to my e-mail.”

She hung up, looked at Willingham. “There it is, then, Walter. That was the Quantico lab. The gun’s a match for the bullets that killed Kay and Mr. Christopher.”





CHAPTER 34





LATER THAT DAY, BREE LEANED back in her chair in her office inside Metro Police headquarters downtown. “Did you expect it?”

“That it was as simple as jealous rage and a love triangle?” I said. “No, actually. But the ballistics are a match and, as Willingham’s aide said, ‘There it is.’ ”

“She fit to stand trial?”

“That I do not know,” I said.

After a moment, Bree said, “Kay Willingham was in a psychiatric institution?”

“Committed to multiple three-month stays over the course of almost thirty years. Considered a danger to herself and others.”

“What happened, exactly?”

I gave her the CliffsNotes version of the medical file I’d read that included only the details of her most recent stay at West Briar and references to earlier stays at the facility. In the wake of her mother’s death, Kay Willingham had sunk into a depression, which concerned her husband, as she’d already endured severe bouts with the illness, the first one at age seventeen. During the three breakdowns that followed, Kay bottomed out and had psychiatric breaks; she had to be hospitalized for her own safety.

“Did Willingham bring her to the psychiatric facility?” Bree asked.

“The first two times,” I said. “The most recent stay, she was evidently brought in by a childhood friend in Alabama. Kay was in a dissociative state after attempting suicide by trying to cut her femoral artery with a pair of kitchen shears. It explains the scars we saw in the autopsy report.”

Bree looked appalled. “She tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself in the leg?”

“Repeatedly,” I said.

“That’s a harsh way to try to kill yourself.”

“The wrists are easier,” I said.

“Punishing herself,” Bree said.

“Yes. But for what, I don’t know. And given the chemical imbalances she was experiencing, who knows whether her reasons mattered.”

“It’s all just gossip fodder now,” she said. “Elaine Paulson is the killer, so you can spend more time now on the Maya Parker and Elizabeth Hernandez cases.”

“You’ve got it,” I said. “Anyplace specific you want me to start?”

Bree said she’d been looking at the old files regarding the earlier rapes and murders. A year before Elizabeth Hernandez disappeared, there was a woman named Peggy Dixon who claimed she was attacked and got away from the rapist. “She was a druggie and I think the detectives who talked to her might have discounted what she said. She evidently called here again a few days ago, wanting to talk to someone about Hernandez and Parker.”

“Contact information?” I asked.

“Right here,” Bree said and slid a piece of paper across the desk to me. She glanced at the desk clock. Quarter to six. She made a sour face. “I’m fifteen minutes from yet another update meeting with the chief and Commissioner Dennison. See you at home afterward?”

“Yes. By the way, Willingham said he’d prefer to keep Kay’s psychiatric history quiet.”