Split Second

“If I was looking for absolution, Dr. Kernan, I’d be in a church and certainly not sitting here in your office.”

He smiled, a thin-lipped smile. Maggie realized it was the first time she had ever seen the man smile.

“Will you be looking for absolution after you shoot Albert Stucky between the eyes?”

She winced, remembering their last session and how out of control she had been. It reminded her that she still felt out of control, only now the anger gave her a false sense of how close the ledge really was. If she remained angry, perhaps she wouldn’t see the ledge at all. Would she even feel herself slipping or would the fall be abrupt and sudden when it happened?

“Maybe I’ve been around evil too long to care about what I need to do to destroy it.” She was no longer concerned with what she told him. He couldn’t use any of it to hurt her. No one could hurt her more than Stucky already had. “Maybe,” she continued, letting the anger drive her, “maybe I need to be as evil as Albert Stucky in order to stop him.”

He stared at her, but this time it was different. He was contemplating what she had said. Would he have some smart-ass response? Would he try his reverse psychology on her? She wasn’t one of his naive students anymore. She could play at his game. After all, she had played with someone ten times as twisted as him. If she could play at Albert Stucky’s game, then Dr. James Kernan’s would be nothing more than child’s play.

She stared him down, without flinching, without fidgeting. Had she rendered the old man speechless?

Finally he sat forward, elbows on his messy desk, fingers constructing a tent of bent and misshapen digits.

“So that’s what concerns you, Margaret O’Dell?”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but she kept the question from her face.

“You’re concerned,” he said slowly, as if approaching a delicate subject. It was an unfamiliar gesture, one that immediately made Maggie suspicious. Was it another of Kernan’s famous tricks or was he genuinely concerned? She hoped for a trick. That, she could handle. The concern, she wasn’t too sure about.

“You’re worried,” he began again, “that you may be capable of the same sort of evil Albert Stucky is capable of.”

“Aren’t we all, Dr. Kernan?” She paused for his reaction. “Isn’t that what Jung meant when he said we all have a shadow side?” She watched him closely, wanting to see how it felt to have one of his students contradict him with his own teachings. “Evil men do what good men only dream of doing. Isn’t that true, Dr. Kernan?”

He shifted in his chair. She should have counted the succession of eye blinks. She wanted to smile, because she had him on the ropes, so to speak. But there was no victory in this truth.

“I believe—” he hesitated to clear his throat “—I believe Jung said that evil is as essential a component of human behavior as good. That we must learn to acknowledge and accept that it exists within all of us. But no, that doesn’t mean we’re all capable of the same kind of evil as someone like Albert Stucky. There’s a difference, my dear Agent O’Dell, between stepping into evil and getting your shoes muddy, and choosing to dive in and wallow in it.”

“But how do you stop from falling in headfirst?” She felt an a

“I’m going to tell you something, Maggie O’Dell, and I want you to listen very closely.” He leaned forward, his face serious, his magnified eyes pi

CHAPTER 65

Tully punched at the laptop’s keyboard. He knew the computer down in his office was much faster, but he couldn’t leave the conference room. Not now that he had had all the calls forwarded, and every last file on the case was spread out over the tabletop. Agent O’Dell would be furious about the mess. Though he doubted she could get much angrier. He hadn’t seen or talked to her since she had stormed out of his house yesterday.

Assistant Director Cu

Although Tully had to admit, he was also having a tough time waiting. The Maryland authorities were hesitant to go storming onto private property without just cause. And no government department seemed willing to admit or confirm that the metallic mud could have come from the recently closed and sold government property. All they had was Detective Rosen’s fishing story, and now that Tully had repeated it over and over to top government officials it was begi

It might be different if the property in question wasn’t miles and miles of trees and rocks. They could drive down the road and check things out. But from what he understood, this property had no road, at least not a public one. The only dirt road available included an electronic gate, a leftover from when the government owned the property and had allowed no unauthorized access. So Tully searched for the new property owners, hoping to find something that would tell him who or what WH Enterprises was.

He decided to use a new search engine and keyed in “WH Enterprises” again. Then he sat, elbows on the desk, his chin resting on his hand as he watched the line crawl along the bottom of the screen…3% of document transferred…4%…5%…This would take forever.

The phone rescued him. He wheeled his chair around and grabbed the receiver.

“Tully.”

“Agent Tully, this is Keith Ganza—over in forensics. They told me Agent O’Dell was out this morning.”

“That’s right.”

“Any chance I could get hold of her? Maybe her cell phone? I was wondering if you had the number.”

“Sounds important.”

“Don’t really know for sure, but I figure that’s up to Maggie to determine.”

Tully sat up straight. Ganza’s voice was a constant monotone, but the fact that he didn’t want to talk to him alarmed Tully. Had O’Dell and Ganza been on to something that she wasn’t letting him in on?

“Does this have anything to do with the luminol tests you did? You know Agent O’Dell and I are working on the Stucky case together, Keith.”

There was a pause. So he was right. There was something.

“Actually, it’s a couple of things,” he finally said. “I spent so much time analyzing the chemicals in the dirt and then the fingerprints that, well, I’m just getting to that bag of trash you found.”

“It didn’t look too unusual except for all the candy bar wrappers.”

“I might have an explanation for those.”

“The candy wrappers?” He couldn’t believe Ganza would waste his time with those.

“I discovered a small vial and a syringe at the bottom of the trash bag. It was insulin. Now, it could be that one of the previous owners of the house has diabetes, but then we should have found more. Also, most diabetics I know are fairly conscientious about properly disposing of their used syringes.”