The Unknown Beloved(102)

“He’s the best. And he’s agreed to help us,” Eliot said.

“Well, we’re going to need all the help we can get,” Cowles muttered.

The big man on the bed tossed and the four men stilled, waiting. Hopeful.

But it would be another full day before questioning could even begin.



“Do you know who I am?” Francis Sweeney shouted on the morning of the third day. He’d come awake in stages, none of them pleasant. He begged for a drink and they gave him water. He threw that against the wall and begged for a bath. A male nurse from the psychiatric hospital had arrived—someone Grossman knew and trusted—to help the man bathe and administer aid should he need it, only to be tackled by a furious Francis Sweeney, who accused him of having romantic inclinations.

Around and around they went. Sometimes Malone was convinced the man was a genius. Other times a drooling idiot. But he was coherent enough, wily enough, that he teetered between denial and demand and answered nothing directly. He threatened them with exposure and then thanked them for the sumptuous accommodations. They brought him clean clothes when he complained of his filth, but he refused to put them on because the quality was inferior.

“I have very sensitive skin. I will break out into a rash.”

He wrapped himself in the curtains after that, huddling in a corner though the mattress he’d soiled had been stripped, turned, and remade. Malone wondered if wrapping himself in the curtains was a common practice. It would explain Dani’s reaction to the ones in the apartment.

“I’m freezing. I’m so cold I can’t feel my toes or my fingers,” he whined. The room was so hot that every other man had lost his tie, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. They didn’t dare open the windows for fear of someone hearing his shouts, and there remained the very real possibility that Francis Sweeney might try to hurl himself out one of them.

Keeler had arrived with his polygraph, but he sat waiting, unable to perform any kind of assessment on Francis Sweeney until he was more stable.

“How can a man be so drunk that even when he wakes, after days of being unconscious, he acts like this?” Cowles marveled.

“This is why he’s probably never sober,” Grossman responded. “The alcohol makes him functional. But he doesn’t know when to stop.”

Malone did his best to ignore the dark smear that clung to Sweeney’s shoulders and moved with his bulk every time the man was awake. He’d never seen a shadow quite like it, and it unsettled him deeply.

They slept in shifts in a suite across the hall, and Malone had only been back to the house once. He’d washed and changed his clothes, kissed Dani like they were both drowning, and left again to sit in a stinking hotel room and watch Francis Sweeney sweat and shake and shout.

To Dr. Grossman: “You are a doctor? What kind? Couldn’t cut it in surgery, eh? Afraid of a little blood?”

To Leonarde Keeler: “I’ve heard about your little machine. This isn’t science. It’s a parlor trick. I don’t have to answer your questions. Do you know who I am?”

To Malone: “What’s your real name? Why are you here? Have you been following me?”

“My wife is here. Isn’t she?” he would babble. “Mary? Mary? I know you’re here, Mary. She put you up to this, didn’t she, Ness? She told you lies about me. She spends all my money, yet I cannot see my sons. You don’t have any sons, do you, Ness? And your wife left you too. I saw you at the gala. All alone. We should have gone together. Two bachelors about town.”

He demanded to be let out of the room, yelled about his civil rights, threatened Eliot with public crucifixion, and yet seemed almost flattered by his circumstance, as though he was living out a fantasy. His fixation with Eliot was obvious.



“What are you gonna do when this wraps, Mike?” Eliot asked. It was 3:00 a.m. and the two of them were the only ones awake. Grossman and Keeler had retired to beds on the empty floor, and Cowles was asleep in his chair, the lamplight reflecting off his bowed, bald head. Sweeney’s snores buzzed and burbled from the other room.

“I’m going to do what I always do, Ness.”

“What do you always do?”

“I go on to the next job. The next assignment. There’s always another job.”

“And leave her here?”

Malone didn’t have to ask who Eliot was talking about. He’d thought of little else for days. Months.

“You should tell Elmer about her,” Eliot suggested. “They’ll make a whole division for her. Maybe call it the Extra-Sensory Division. The ESD. Daniela Kos, ESD agent. Or maybe Dani Malone, ESD agent.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You could be partners.”

“Eliot.” He sighed at the outlandish suggestion. “She’s a seamstress. She’s a . . . goddamn child. And she has a business, two old biddies, and a terrorist named Charlie to take care of.”

“That hasn’t stopped you from kissing her, though, has it? You had lipstick on your collar the other day when you brought her out to take a look at Sweeney’s suitcoat. You’re attached. Both of you.”

“Yeah. Well.” What could he say?

“But . . . if you’re determined to move on, like you are inclined to do, then I will be making my own bid for Miss Daniela’s skills, maybe as a consultant,” Ness mused.