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.”
Laurie and Ryan exchanged a quick glance. Apparently there had been some kind of run-in with the police at Dr. Bell’s office, and George had assumed they already knew about it.
They took the new information in stride. “Why do you suppose he even called the police in the first place, George, unless he was frightened of you?” Ryan asked.
“I didn’t mean to scare him, and I swear, I never meant to scare that kid either. I’m not such a scary guy,” he said, shrugging and looking down at his own soft frame. “I just wanted him to know the harm he was doing, just like I wanted that Connor Bigsby kid to know he shouldn’t text a friend who’s behind the wheel. I needed Martin Bell to know that he wasn’t saving people. He wasn’t a miracle worker. His drugs took the life out of Ma. I called him and called him, but he never picked up or called me back. So I showed up in person. What other choice did I have?”
George stared into the lizard tank as he spoke. “I told the lady at the front desk I wouldn’t be leaving until he came out to talk to me, man-to-man. I was never going to hurt him, and I told that to the police when they came. They said Dr. Bell would file charges for trespassing if I came back, so I never did.”
Ryan tried a new angle. “What about the gun, George? A Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter pistol was registered under your name. The same model used to kill Dr. Bell outside his home that night.”
“I bought that thing years ago for Ma’s safety. There were some break-ins in the neighborhood and I wanted to be prepared. I had fun with it at first, going to the range to practice. But after Ma’s accident, I sort of forgot about it. I didn’t have time anymore, seeing as I was looking after her so much, so it sat in a closet. Sort of ironic it got stolen. Serves me right for trying to be such a tough guy. Not in my nature.”
“Did you buy another one?” Laurie asked. “Didn’t the burglary confirm your fears about the need for protection?”
“Nah. I had the thing to protect Ma. There’s nothing of value here anymore.”
Laurie asked him the name of the range he used to frequent, and scribbled it down in her notebook. “And after Dr. Bell was murdered, did the police interview you?”
George shook his head. “I kind of expected them to, but that misunderstanding in his office was more than a month before his murder, and there was no police report. So . . .”
He didn’t finish the thought, but Laurie knew he meant that it had fallen through the cracks. Whatever police officer responded to a quick call about a man who wouldn’t leave a doctor’s office had probably never connected the dots to Dr. Bell’s murder over a month later. And Laurie was certain that the police hadn’t unearthed the details of George’s prior interactions with law enforcement, let alone the fact of his supposedly stolen gun. After all, they had been too busy investigating Kendra.
“And the night of Dr. Bell’s death,” Ryan started, “where were you that evening?”
“I was here,” George said, motioning to the space around him. “Alone.”
The three of them sat quietly for a moment. The windows rattled as another plane flew overhead. “Will you go on camera to clear your name?” Ryan asked.
George winced. “I’d like to speak with my psychiatrist first.”
“Well, make sure he knows this reinvestigation isn’t going away,” Ryan said. He looked to Laurie to see if she had more to ask, but Laurie thanked George for his time and stood to leave.
As they stepped into the bright sunlight and made their way back to the car, Laurie turned to Ryan. “What’s your gut?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t fix him up with my sister, but so far I’m not feeling him as a murderer.”
She nodded, wishing that gut instincts were enough for her to scratch a suspect’s name from her board. Personally she wasn’t sure. It was obvious that George Naughten was obsessed in his belief that Dr. Martin Bell had caused his mother’s death.
“Thanks for all your good work,” she said. “You were great in there.”
“Thank you, Laurie. That means a lot coming from you. I know I wasn’t exactly a team player straight out of the gate.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what’s changed?”
Ryan hesitated, and Laurie noticed his brow furrow. “A woman I was seeing dumped me.”
He shook his head. “It was never serious. But, man, she really called me out when she broke it off. She said I was selfish—and entitled. Said I was born on third base and go through life thinking I hit a triple.” He shrugged sadly, then opened the back door of the car for Laurie, beating the driver to the task.
Once he was settled into the seat next to her, he said, “Anyway, I realized she might just have a point. So consider me humbled.”
Laurie wasn’t sure how to respond to this unprecedented moment of vulnerability from Ryan, so she opted for humor. “Humbled, perhaps, but not quite humble.”
“Never,” he said, breaking out into a broad grin. “Ryan Nichols doesn’t do humble.”