You Don't Own Me Read online

  “Good job, Your Honor.”

  “No cameras, though, and he wants you to come to their apartment so no one happens to spot you at his office and starts asking questions. He was adamant that you bring no more than one other member of your staff so it doesn’t turn into a circus.”

  “I can live with that,” Laurie said.

  “He should only know that if you give Laurie Moran thirty minutes, she’ll hook you in until you’ve spilled your guts.”

  “We’ll see.” She lowered her voice to be sure no one around them could overhear. “Even if Martin Bell and Leigh Ann were having an affair, it’s hard to picture Senator Daniel Longfellow as a murderer. After all, if the affair had been discovered, he would have been the aggrieved partner in the marriage. If anything, voters would have sympathized with him. And he’d be one more available bachelor in Washington.”

  “Not to mention, they have no children,” Alex noted. “He could simply have gotten divorced and moved on.”

  Laurie shook her head. “No motive, no warning signs of violence. I just don’t see it. What I can see, however, is a jealous and resentful Kendra Bell hiring a hit man over drinks at a dive bar in the East Village, then slipping him fifties and hundreds that had been tucked away in sock drawers. I can picture her paying him—even now—to remain silent, ever conscious of her in-laws’ desire to put her in prison and take her children from her.”

  She tried to put away the image. She felt as though she’d been working nonstop all week, and she didn’t want to think about Martin and Kendra Bell anymore tonight. She took two more quick sips from her glass while she pondered the menu options. Before she knew it, she was thinking aloud about something entirely different. “Maybe Timmy and I should just move in with you. You have plenty of room.”

  Alex set down his menu, clearly surprised by her comment. “Except it’s too far from your father’s apartment and from Timmy’s school. And besides, it would feel like my space, not ours. You were the one who felt strongly about that.”

  “I also feel strongly that I’m already exhausted from looking at real estate. None of these places could ever feel like home.”

  “We’ll know the right spot when we see it,” he said.

  “And we still need to set a date and book a space and make all the arrangements for the wedding. Alex, I’m worried that I might have been selfish when I’ve said I prefer a small wedding. I’m not sure I ever asked what you want. Would you like a big wedding?”

  “Good God no.”

  “What do you really want?”

  “I want the shortest distance between two points.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I want whichever plan has us married and living under the same roof the fastest. That will make me happy.”

  He paused then added, “Laurie, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I know what I want. A quiet church ceremony with our families and close friends in attendance, followed by a festive dinner. Let’s target mid to late August. The courts are in recess. It will give you time to adjust your work schedule. If we can work it out, a honeymoon right after.”

  Laurie smiled. “Wow! You have given this a lot of thought!”

  Returning her smile, Alex said, “I’ve told you what I want. How does that sound to you?”

  “That sounds absolutely perfect.” And it would be perfect. She knew it. For so long she had been sure that after Greg there would be no one. That had been true until she met Alex nearly two years ago. Now in a mere five months she would marry her second and last great love.

  30

  Laurie felt underdressed as she emerged from the Fisher Blake elevator wearing jeans and an NYPD T-shirt, but it was Sunday afternoon. Leo had picked up Timmy and taken him to Alex’s apartment to watch the Yankees–Red Sox game. She smiled at the thought of the three men in her life spending family time together. This freed her up for an unexpected work session.

  Ryan was waiting for her at her office door with a manila folder. “I hope I’m not ruining your whole day,” he said. “In retrospect, it could have waited until tomorrow.”

  Ryan had called her cell thirty minutes earlier, excited about something he had discovered while looking into the malpractice claims that had been filed against Martin Bell. Laurie was often annoyed by Ryan’s tendency to insist that she drop everything to listen to whatever was on his mind, but this time was different. She had specifically asked him to get a better grasp on the lawsuits that were pending at the time of Martin’s death, and she had never known Ryan to work on a weekend.

  She motioned for him to sit down. Ryan interpreted the gesture as an invitation for him to plop into her favorite armchair.

  “There were three lawsuits,” Ryan began. “All claimed that Martin overprescribed pain medication to patients who died. Not a great narrative considering his reputation as a miracle worker. I always suspected that book was a little too good to be true.”

  Laurie recalled the headline in the New York Times the morning after Martin’s death: THE DOCTOR WHO CURED PAIN IS KILLED. The article went on to solidify his legacy as the man who revolutionized pain management, trading prescription drugs and surgical intervention for more holistic approaches like meditation and stress reduction.

  When Martin published his best-selling book, The New Pain Doctrine, his career began to sprint. He left NYU’s Neurology Department, started his own practice, and committed himself to advocating for homeopathic remedies, physical therapy, and psychological approaches to physical pain. He was a frequent guest on television talk shows, freely condemning the culture of scalpel-happy surgeons and prescription-pushing physicians. If those lawsuits had become public, he could have gone from celebrity guru to sham doctor in the length of a single news cycle.

  Laurie immediately wondered if there might be a connection between the lawsuits and his murder.

  “I asked one of my old buddies to look into the plaintiffs to see if any of them had criminal histories.” Ryan flipped through the pages inside one of the folders and pulled out a stapled packet. Laurie, surprised by Ryan’s initiative, accepted the papers he set in front of her. “One woman, Allison Taylor, claims she got addicted to OxyContin after seeing Dr. Bell to manage bone cancer pain. Turns out she had a serious record of traffic violations.”

  “Not much of a connection between being a bad driver and being a murderer,” Laurie reminded him as she leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest.

  “True, which is why I’m more interested in another guy, George Naughten. His sixty-seven-year-old mother had chronic pain after a fender bender on the Long Island Expressway. She was rear-ended by a texting teenager. I thought at first maybe it was that Allison Taylor lady.” Ryan chuckled to himself.

  Laurie nodded, hoping to move the story along.

  “So Mom is seeing doctor after doctor with no relief,” Ryan continued, diving into story mode. “After two years, she hears about Dr. Bell on Good Morning America, and decides she has to see him. He didn’t accept Medicaid, so she had to pay out of pocket to make it happen. She even took out a line of credit on her house to pay for it. Nothing worked at first, but Bell eventually came up with a drug cocktail that kept her pain free. According to the lawsuit, the drugs turned her into a zombie, but at least she wasn’t in physical agony. Then George finds Mom unresponsive. The medical examiner says it was an overdose. George swore that, in addition to the drugs Bell prescribed through the pharmacy, he was also dispensing pills directly to her in the office.”

  Laurie stretched in her chair as she mulled over the lawsuit’s allegations. “And you said George has a criminal record of some kind?” Laurie asked.

  “Just wait,” Ryan said, putting up a hand. He was milking the story’s unfolding. “That’s where things really get interesting. A year before Dr. Bell was murdered, George had a restraining order issued against him by a twenty-year-old kid named Connor Bigsby, which he violated.” He pointed to the police report he had laid out in
front of her.

  Laurie did the quick math in her head. “I was picturing George as older, given his mother’s age.”

  “Thirty-five at the time, forty-one today. So, yes, I was a little curious about what brought him into contact with a twenty-year-old. I requested the transcripts from his trial for violating the criminal court order.” Ryan excitedly pushed a new set of papers in front of her. “Want to take a guess at the connection?” he asked.

  Laurie smiled, impressed. She rarely saw Ryan’s strengths, but now it was clear that he would have been talented in the courtroom. “Was Connor Bigsby the driver of the other car involved in his mother’s accident?”

  Ryan raised a knowing eyebrow. “Ah, good theory, right? But it’s twistier than that. The driver of the car was actually a young woman who moved to Texas to start college shortly after the accident. Connor Bigsby was the friend who was texting her while she was behind the wheel.”

  “That’s crazy,” Laurie said, staring into the transcripts from George’s trial. “That was enough for George to blame him for his mother’s accident? Seems like he missed a step in the logic there.”

  Ryan pointed to a section of text that he had highlighted. “Check this out. The protective order was issued after George showed up repeatedly at Connor’s job at a sporting goods store. He would berate him, call him reprehensible, say he should be in jail for assault—it was full-fledged harassment. And then one day, George waited in his car outside the store and sped past Connor, apparently just missing him. Connor said George would have run him over if he hadn’t leapt out of the way. Hence the court order.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have been charged with attempted murder?” Laurie asked.

  “The DA probably didn’t think they could prove he had intent to hurt the kid, let alone kill him. But they used all the other harassment as evidence to get a court order requiring him to stay at least a hundred feet away from the kid. He couldn’t even manage to do that. Connor’s mother caught him parked across the street, watching their house. She called the cops and he was nabbed for violating the court order. But get this.” Ryan flipped to another page of the transcript, this one marked with a yellow Post-it. “George called a psychiatrist in his defense. The shrink testified that George goes through obsessive phases. Apparently it’s par for the course for stalkers to transfer their obsession onto others. The judge sentenced him to lengthy probation and warned him that if he violated, he would go to prison.”

  “I just can’t believe he connected his mother’s injury to a kid sitting at home texting his friend,” Laurie said, thinking aloud. “If he’s willing to make that kind of leap, I can only imagine how he felt about the doctor who prescribed his mother the pills she OD’d on.”

  “We should talk to him, right?”

  Usually Laurie hated it when Ryan proposed that “we” do something, but he had earned the right to be involved in the research this time. “You want to set it up?” she asked.

  “I’m on it,” Ryan said enthusiastically. “But wait, there’s one more thing I have to tell you. As of four years before Martin’s murder, George Naughten was the registered owner of a Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter pistol, the kind used to kill Dr. Bell.”

  “Wow. I wonder if we can ask him to make the gun available. We could get the police to test the ballistics.”

  Ryan rose from the armchair. “That’s extremely unlikely. The DA’s office insisted he turn the gun over as part of his sentence for violating the protective order, but his lawyer came to court claiming it was stolen in a burglary two months earlier. So instead of handing over the gun, they presented a police report that said it was stolen along with some of his mother’s jewelry. There’s no way to be sure though. For all we know, George made up the fact that the gun was stolen so he’d be free to use it later.”

  Laurie thanked Ryan for all the hard work as he left her office. Once she was alone, she began reading the pages of police reports and trial transcripts, paying extra attention to the passages Ryan had marked.

  Had the police been so focused on Kendra that they had failed to consider George?

  Her thoughts drifted back to the fact that Kendra Bell had been meeting a mystery man at the Beehive bar in the days leading up to her husband’s murder. She flipped through the pages Ryan had given her, searching for a booking photo, but found none. Was it possible she had conspired with a man who had his own grievances against her husband?

  She didn’t know if George Naughten was a murderer, the Beehive man, or just a creep with some psychological hang-ups, but she knew she had a new name to add to their list of potential suspects.

  She got up from her desk, walked to the whiteboard at the other end of her office, and picked up a red dry-erase marker. By the time she was done, the entire board was filled with ink, documenting the possible links between all the parties. Kendra. The unidentified stranger she met at a dive bar. Her dermatologist boss who might still be carrying a torch. The disgruntled son of a deceased patient. Even the junior senator from New York, whom Laurie was scheduled to interview the following afternoon.

  Her cell phone pinged. There was a text from Ryan. George will meet with us. I’m on phone with him now. Tomorrow at 10 work for you?

  It would be a busy day, but she could handle it. She confirmed with a yes and added the appointment to her calendar.

  I still have so much to do, she thought, her attention returning to the whiteboard. But the killer’s right here, on this board. I feel it. And whoever you are, I’m going to find you.

  31

  The following morning, Laurie and Ryan parked down the block from George Naughten’s house in Rosedale, Queens. He lived in a tan townhouse on a block lined with other tan townhouses. As they crossed the street, a low-flying plane roared above them on its approach to neighboring JFK. Ryan opened the rusty, wrought iron gate for Laurie. Together, they stood under the faded gray awning and knocked on a wooden door that needed a fresh coat of paint.

  Naughten undid two locks and a slide chain and cracked the door just wide enough to get a look at his visitors. “You’re the TV detectives?” he asked, squinting, his voice an octave higher than Laurie expected.

  “Laurie Moran,” Laurie said, extending her hand. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.”

  Naughten opened the door fully. “Come in, come in.” He ushered them past the threshold and into a dark living room. The ceilings were low, and heavy Marie Antoinette–style curtains were drawn. The red UV light from a reptile tank made the room feel like a brothel, and Laurie noticed that inside the tank, a bearded dragon was toying with a cricket that was probably not long for this world. Above the tank the wall was covered by framed photos. Every picture was of George at different ages with his mother.

  “Please, make yourselves at home,” Naughten said as he sat in a worn La-Z-Boy in the center of the room. He swiveled it away from the box-style TV set on the floor and faced two wicker rocking chairs in the corner. Whatever money he had gotten from the lawsuit against Martin Bell had probably gone to paying off bills and subsidizing living expenses, not remodeling.

  Once seated, Laurie got a proper look at George Naughten. He was wearing crimson sweatpants a few sizes too small and a baggy brown T-shirt a few sizes too big. He looked older than forty-one, his hairline creeping away from a forehead that already bore deep wrinkles.

  She recalled the bartender’s description of Kendra’s mystery friend from the Beehive bar. Rough-looking with a shaved head and mean eyes. That was definitely not the sad-looking man sitting across from her.

  “We appreciate you inviting us into your home, Mr. Naughten,” Ryan said.

  “Please call me George. My mama used to call me Georgie boy. My father left us when I was a baby. She said it was just the two of us against the world. I know the place isn’t much, but it has everything I need. There’s the Green Acres Mall just over there. And the Walmart. Kohl’s. And it’s nice to wake up every morning knowing that Mom was happy here once.”


  As far as Laurie could tell from her research, George had lived with his mother from the day he was born until the day she died. Laurie began to feel pity settling in her stomach, but she knew she couldn’t let it overshadow the investigation. She pushed through it. “George, we’d like to know more about your relationship with Connor Bigsby.”

  “Oh, that whole thing was a misunderstanding,” he said, shaking his head. “I would never have hurt the kid. I just wanted him to know how dangerous the texting was.”

  “But he wasn’t even driving the car that hit your mother,” Ryan said.

  “But he knew. The police read the texts. The girl who was driving had told him she was stuck in traffic. He knew, but he distracted her anyway!”

  Ryan frowned, but let it drop. They weren’t there to unpack the logic behind George Naughten’s past offenses. “What about Dr. Martin Bell? What was your contact with the late doctor? We know you were suing him when he was murdered.”

  “That I can’t discuss. Sorry. I signed a nondisclosure agreement about the lawsuit.”

  Ryan leaned forward in his rocking chair, assuming a prosecutor’s attack. “The NDA is in regard to the wrongful death lawsuit you filed. It doesn’t cover your personal contact with Dr. Bell.”

  George dug his toes into the shag carpet, and Laurie thought she saw a flicker of fear in his deep-set brown eyes.

  “We know what your own psychiatrist said about your obsessive tendencies,” Ryan said. “If you were willing to go after a kid barely involved in your mom’s accident, I bet you didn’t hesitate when it came to the doctor you blame for her death.”

  “I swear I only had direct contact with Dr. Bell that one time. And he didn’t even file a police report. The cop told me to stay away, and after the problems I’d had with that kid, I listened. I never went back to his office again.”