Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

“If he’d’ve inflicted those injuries, he’d’ve come apart while he was talking through them.”

“He lied to Bernie about seeing Norma only one time. He gave a good performance of an hysterical husband the morning after Mila’s disappearance.”

“But he wasn’t at the scene of the crime.” Thatcher bent down and picked up Dr. Perkins’s list from the floor. “This amounts to the scene of the crime. I don’t believe he did these things.”

“But?”

“But I think he got rid of Mrs. Driscoll.”

“To be with Norma?”

“He admitted that he couldn’t help himself, that she was a drug and he couldn’t get enough. Guys in the trenches would say he was pussy whipped.”

“What do you say?”

“That’s my thinking, too.”

Bill gave him a wry grin, but it was short-lived and turned into a frown. “We don’t have a body, Thatcher. Not a solid clue as to what happened to Mila. As you know, the prosecutor won’t indict on circumstantial evidence alone. A mistress, even an exotically beautiful, sexually uninhibited one, isn’t evidence.”

Thatcher said, “Well then, only one thing left to do.”

“Let him get away with it?”

“Get him to confess.”

Before Bill could comment, they heard Gabe returning. He walked into the room carrying a glass of water in each hand. He set one in front of Thatcher, the other in front of Bill, and returned to his chair behind the desk.

Then the three sat with nobody saying anything. Bill drank from his water glass, then smoothed his mustache as he did when muddling through a dilemma. This time, however, Thatcher believed it was more for effect.

Finally he said, “Gabe, the view from where I’m sitting doesn’t look good. Within two months’ time, your wife has gone missing, and your mistress died of injuries sustained during a brutal sexual assault.”

Gabe swallowed audibly but didn’t say anything.

Bill continued, “Now either the stars just really aren’t lining up favorably for you, or an enemy is setting you up to do you in, or you’re doing yourself in. Help me out here.”

The doctor took several shallow breaths, like he was pumping up his courage. “I’ve owned up to having a passionate affair with Norma. Like all lovers, we had our spats. But I would never have done to her what was done.”

“You were with her on two separate occasions the day Mrs. Driscoll disappeared.”

Mention of that out of context momentarily flustered him. “I told you that myself.”

“I remember.” Bill looked down and seemed to study the pattern of the rug between his boots. When he raised his head, he said, “Do you want to change anything you’ve told me about your activities on that day and evening?”

“No.”

Bill looked over at Thatcher, his expression pained. Going back to the doctor, he said, “What you told me about that day was that a patient, as of then unnamed, was going through a difficult breech birth. According to Mrs. Kemp, that’s not true. She said Arthur was already a month old. Which one of you is lying?”

Gabe placed his elbow on his desk again and rubbed his forehead. “I thought it would make me look bad if you knew I’d been with my mistress that night.”

“Well, you’re right about that.”

Thatcher cleared his throat. Bill said, “Mr. Hutton? Something on your mind?”

“Um-huh. I recall Mrs. Kemp’s description of Dr. Driscoll when he went back to her house that second time late that night. She said he was frantic.”

Bill said, “He’s right, Gabe. She did say that. Why were you frantic?”

“Because Norma wasn’t there, and I needed her.”

“Needed her? For what?”

“I’d just come from that ratty roadhouse where I’d tended to that girl. I think her name was Corrine. It had been a long day. I was exhausted.”

“You went seeking the womanly kind of comfort Miss Blanchard could give you?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“Then, in your words, why were you frantic?”

“Because Norma wasn’t there.”

“That’s close, but not exactly what we were told,” Thatcher said. “Mrs. Kemp’s words were that when you got there, you were ‘batshit crazy.’ You didn’t get upset after learning that Miss Blanchard wasn’t there. You were unhinged when you arrived.”

Softly, Bill said, “Why, Gabe?”

The crackup was gradual. It seemed to Thatcher that it started at his thinning hairline and worked its way down his long face. His brows drew together above the bridge of his nose. His eyes filled with tears. The tip of his nose turned red and dripped a bead of snot. Then his lower lip began to quiver and he blubbered, “I did something terrible.”





Fifty



Somewhere between his blubbered “I did something terrible” and the sheriff’s office, Gabriel Driscoll grew a pair.

That was the only explanation Thatcher had for the doctor’s change of heart. By the time he and Bill escorted him into the building, he had gone from a shattered man facing ruin to a haughty, self-righteous jerk.

Scotty and Harold, who were sharing a desk piled high with paperwork, stopped sorting through it and looked on with interest as Driscoll proclaimed that an affair was the only thing he had confessed to, and that if the sheriff and his fledgling deputy thought otherwise, they had misunderstood.