Dan Sharp Mysteries 6-Book Bundle. Jeffrey Round

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      Dan thought of Magnus Ferguson and wondered what the now-dead gardener would have had to say about it. Had Killingworth really fired the man for theft or had there been another reason? A love affair with his wife, perhaps? Maybe Craig had disappeared after a violent confrontation gone wrong. Or had Lucille arranged for the gardener to kill her husband, paying him a tidy sum in a yellow envelope? He wouldn’t put it past her. In fact, she might even have done it herself.

      Dan let his imagination wander. How would a woman like Lucille Killingworth kill? Surely not by force. With a gun if she had to, but that was always messy. There’d be traces left behind: blood on a floor, guts splattered on walls and curtains. Not her style. It would be even riskier outdoors where someone might hear or see. The acoustics over the bay would advertise the action for miles. Would rat poison be too gruesome or risky for a woman like Lucille Killingworth? It might explain why she didn’t want her husband found — if he’d been poisoned, his body would still bear traces of it.

      But the other question remained: why the horses?

      When he went back to bed an hour later, the mystery of Craig Killingworth was very much alive in his mind.

      He was only halfway through what was promising to be a long and tiresome day. The computer’s pop-up window cheerfully reminded him that he had his weekly therapy session to look forward to that evening. At seven he closed up shop and walked over to the Harbord Centre, as he did every Thursday. As far as Dan was concerned, there was only one item on the menu today. Martin listened quietly as he described what he’d learned on his stopover in Sudbury.

      “How are you handling it?” was Martin’s non-committal response.

      “Apart from the fact that it seems to have blown my entire world apart? Well enough, I suppose.”

      Martin clasped his hands under his chin. He seemed disposed to relate the revelation to Dan’s buried anger. “Think of your anger as an attempt to shake off a sense of futility, the hopelessness you felt over your mother’s death. Sometimes we blame our anger on the city or the traffic or on other people’s inadequacy. It can even make us strike out at things and people that have no relation to what is really disturbing us. What we’re talking about is an inability to function in the normal world.”

      Dan said nothing.

      “I’d like to refer you to a depression specialist.”

      “I’m not depressed.”

      “You may simply be unaware of it,” Martin persisted. “Perhaps this is the epiphany you need to alert you to that reality.”

      “‘Epiphany.’ You mean a realization?”

      “Yes — when a light goes on and we make connections.”

      “I make connections for a living.”

      Martin stared at him blankly.

      “I connect the dots to find people who go missing from their lives. That’s what I call an epiphany.”

      “I see.”

      Martin reached for his pad. A nagging thought brought Dan full circle. He held up a finger, his brain still formulating the question.

      “How would you know if you had an android for a patient?”

      Martin’s face registered intrigue. For a moment Dan thought he might even smile, but he stopped short of that. “I don’t know. How would I know if I had an android for a patient?”

      “That’s the question,” Dan said. “How do we know if people are really feeling something or if they’re just mimicking an emotion? Can emotions be learned?”

      “The responses can. A clever person might even be able to produce certain physiological reactions deemed appropriate to the circumstance. Tears maybe, or even an increase in blood pressure in a heightened situation. Some people can actually blush on command. But it’s not the same as having a real emotion.”

      Dan’s thoughts were racing. “If you did something you felt guilty about for years, even if it was never found out, how would it register on your subconscious mind?”

      “Are you talking about what happened to you because of your mother’s death?”

      “No, I’m not. I can accept the fact that I was four years old and unaware of what was happening. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life beating myself up over that.”

      Martin’s pen scribbled furiously. He looked up. “It’s hard to say. Guilt has a funny way of disguising itself as other emotions — egotism, a sense of entitlement, anger. Even self-hatred. It’s impossible to predict.”

      “What if you murdered someone?”

      Martin stared. “I still say it’s not possible to predetermine the answer, but my guess is that in the end, if you can’t reconcile it, it would eventually destroy you.”

      Dan pictured Lucille Killingworth’s frozen smile. “But what if you’re incapable of feeling emotion? No remorse?”

      “Then maybe nothing would come of it, except the person might retreat further into a lack of genuine emotional responses. There are adults who never mature emotionally. They look and act like other people, but on an affective level they’re very childlike.”

      “Immaturity?”

      “It’s more like an emotional retardation. These are people who don’t feel the same things the rest of us feel. Lacking empathy, for example. Usually they learn to hide their responses. They become adept at masking how they really feel, giving expression to what they think we want to see.”

      Dan thought of Lucille Killingworth’s artificial manners and tempered speech, her convincingly feigned dismay when Dan told her of Daniella’s pregnancy. Her reactions had seemed real, despite being manufactured. Everything cool and restrained. But what, he was thinking, if you pushed her over the edge? What would happen then? Would she do or say anything to give herself away? What would it take to see that side of her?

      Out on the street, Dan tossed away Martin’s script for the specialist and put in a call to Trevor. His voice mail answered. Dan left a greeting, saying he was doing well and asking Trevor to reply to his question when he had a moment. If he didn’t answer his cell, Dan said, then he was in transit and the call would forward home. He apologized for the unusual question but said it was important. He felt odd about asking, though he was already sure he knew the answer.

      Trevor’s reply was waiting on the machine when he got home. He’d called his mother to make sure. The answer wasn’t what Dan had expected, but it still fit his hypothesis. Maybe even better than he’d hoped. Dan dialled Donny’s number. His friend sounded calm, proudly telling Dan how he’d decided not to panic. There was plenty of time to look for a job, he said, though a vacation still wasn’t in the works, as far as he could see.

      Dan listened politely before changing the subject. “Question,” Dan said.

      “Shoot.”

      “If you were a woman …”

      “If?”

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