Read Online Riders on the Storm by Ed Gorman - Free Book Online

dry cleaning that I hadn’t picked up for two weeks. Then I said, “Jamie, please call the Psychological Partners and see if I can get in to see Lindsey Shepard as soon as possible. I’ll call you back when I’m leaving here. I’m at ZOOM right now.”
    â€œMy daughter loves saying that word. We drove past there one time and she’s been saying it ever since.”
    I gave her the number of the pay phone.
    Duffy was waiting for me.
    â€œSorry to keep you waiting, Tim.”
    â€œSo what you want is for me to ask around?”
    â€œI’d appreciate it.” Kenny Thibodeau was usually the only faux stool pigeon I needed but I didn’t think Kenny hung out with too many biker gangs.
    â€œByrnes takes his bike over to Len Gibbons’s shop. He used to go out with Len’s sister, only time he ever got sort of interested in a lady. And big surprise—she’s still alive. I guess Byrnes loves smacking the gals around.”
    â€œOne more reason I want him for president.” Then, “I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”
    I pushed my hand out to shake but he held his right hand up and pointed to it with his left. “You don’t really want to shake hands with me, now do you, Sam?”
    Just then his name was called on the loudspeaker again.
    â€œThanks, Tim.”
    â€œThanks to you, you mean. You did me a hell of a good turn and I’ve never been able to pay you back. I’ll see what I can find out.”
    I needed to give Jamie a few more minutes to make her call to Lindsey Shepard. I sat sideways in my car with the door open and smoked. I thought about Mary. I’d always loved her, that was the strange thing. And after the first long-ago time we made love I found her endlessly erotic. But there had been this almost psychotic need for Pamela for so long….
    The return call took longer than I’d assumed it would.
    â€œShe was in session and the woman who was helping me didn’t know if Lindsey was going out for lunch. Lindsey said that if you could come right now she could give you twenty minutes or so.”
    â€œGreat. Thanks, Jamie.”

    The name Lindsey Shepard put me in mind of a glacial Grace Kelly blonde but she was instead a winsome little thing who would look young even in her sixties and seventies.
    She wore a red blouse with nubby red buttons and a black skirt. She had winsome legs, too, and tiny feet in tiny black flats. Lindsey Shepard, High School Shrink.
    She seemed too diminutive for the enormous Victorian house that she and her husband had turned into a fashionable site for both their practice and their living quarters.
    â€œI’m glad to know that Will has you for a friend, Mr. McCain,” she said. “But I really can’t help you. I guess I’m old-school, but when I was in grad school my favorite instructor always said that one rule was absolute. We aren’t to discuss confidential information with anyone unless we feel that a patient is a danger to himself or to someone else.”
    â€œYou don’t consider Will a danger to himself at least?”
    â€œNot enough that I want to talk about him with anyone else.”
    â€œNot even the police?”
    Her office was a rain forest of heavy plants and an art museum of Chagall and Impressionists. Contradictory styles of art but it worked. From her wide, square window you could see in the distance the limestone cliffs above the river. Peaceful.
    â€œI care about Will, Mr. McCain.”
    â€œSam. Please.”
    â€œI care about Will as I do all my patients. Especially the vets. Very few people seem to appreciate what these young men have been through and the price they’ve paid. And as for the police, Sam … we’re social friends with the chief. I guess he expected that I’d pretty much open my files on Will to him but I didn’t. He was very disappointed. He even tried to get my husband Randall to help