Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect Read online

  Praise for THE HALO EFFECT

  “M. J. Rose is great.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich

  “Potentially explosive… Rose’s latest is not for the squeamish… [Dr. Morgan Snow] is an engaging guide to the world of dysfunction that Rose painstakingly constructs.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Rose writes fearlessly about sex. This is a true erotic thriller. The end will take your breath away.”

  —Lisa Tucker, author of Shout Down the Moon

  “Rose has written a steamy and sexy novel that keeps the adrenaline running until the very end. Sex, romance, and murder are artfully combined to produce a page-turning novel that shouldn’t be missed.”

  —New Mystery Reader

  “The Halo Effect is tense, engrossing and sometimes so real it’s frightening.”

  —Linda L. Richards, author of Mad Money

  “Interesting…thrilling…like a femme…Jonathan Kellerman.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Dr. Morgan Snow is a refreshingly vulnerable character whose spunky decision to go undercover in the demimonde is both believable and hairraising. The Halo Effect will have you on the edge of your seat from page one.”

  —Katherine Neville, New York Times bestselling author of The Eight

  Also by M. J. ROSE

  Fiction

  LIP SERVICE

  IN FIDELITY

  FLESH TONES

  SHEET MUSIC

  Nonfiction

  HOW TO PUBLISH AND PROMOTE ONLINE

  (with Angela Adair-Hoy)

  BUZZ YOUR BOOK (with Douglas Clegg)

  Watch for the next novel in the Butterfield Institute series

  THE DELILAH COMPLEX

  Available from MIRA Books in January 2006

  M. J. ROSE

  THE

  HALO

  EFFECT

  THE HALO EFFECT

  Copyright © 2005 by Melisse Shapiro.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  First published in the US by Mira Books.

  For Mara Nathan

  Halo—1. The circle of light with which the head is surrounded in representations of Christ and the saints; a nimbus.

  2. The ideal glory with which a person or thing is invested when viewed under the influence of feeling or sentiment.

  3. A more or less circular bright or dark area formed in various photographic processes.

  Halo Effect—psychol., the favorable bias in interviews, intelligence tests and the like generated by an atmosphere of approbation. A common error in rating intelligence tests is known as the “halo effect.” If an individual creates a favorable impression by his excellence in one trait, you are apt to rate him near the top in every trait.

  And the day came when the risk to remain

  tight in the bud was more painful

  than the risk it took to blossom.

  —Anaïs Nin

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  1

  The first thing she saw were the woman’s feet, so white they looked like the marble feet on the statue of the Virgin Mary with the gold halo that stands in the Catholic church where she attends mass every morning before coming to work at the high-rise hotel on Sixth Avenue. The church where she attended Sunday mass only four hours before. Except these feet oozed black-red blood.

  Celia Rodriguez stared, not yet comprehending.

  The Virgin’s feet do not bleed, though. Christ’s feet do. Holes through to the soles, spilling blood.

  For the love of God.

  No. No love here. Blood. Pools of congealed nighttime blood.

  These were still only fragments of thought as her mind raced to keep up with her eyes. She could not make sense of this scene. Not yet.

  The mosaic of horror seemed to take forever to fall into place, but in reality, from the time the maid walked into the room to the time she finally opened her mouth to attempt—and fail at—a scream, only one minute passed.

  Holy Mother of God.

  In random order Celia Rodriguez registered that there were fifty-dollar bills, no longer green but soaked dark brown, dozens of them, surrounding the woman’s head. Like a halo. And what she had first thought was a blanket was a voluminous black dress pushed up to show shapely naked legs. No, revealing more. Pushed up farther to reveal a chestnut patch of hair between the legs. Too bare. More naked than naked.

  The fifty-year-old housekeeper and mother of three stared, sure that what she saw was a vision of some kind.

  The woman’s pubis had been shaved in a particular shape. She knew this shape. But before she could focus on that, she saw that there was blood oozing from there, too. Celia’s eyes shifted from right to left, taking in that the woman’s arms were outstretched in a T position and lying in yet more viscous blood.

  Celia could not believe what she saw. None of it. Especially not the shape the hair had been shaved into. She knew this shape. It was engraved on her own heart. It hung around her own neck in gold.

  It was a cross.

  With that, everything finally slipped into place: the plentiful and flowing dress was a nun’s habit.

  The Hispanic woman who opened the door only seconds before fell to her knees and touched the corner of the robe. Her hand came away, stained with bright crimson. She was mesmerized by this horror that made her think of a shrine in the back of her church. Our Lady of Sorrows.

  Her eyes returned to the shape carved out of the wiry hair. Why did she have to keep looking there? At that cross. At that blasphemy.

  And then she saw more. There was more?

  Dripping from the woman’s nether mouth was not just blood, but something that was alive, moving, almost crawling. No, it was a rosary that was dripping blood, drop by drop from bead to bead. The blood had washed over the oval medal of the Vir
gin and had painted the Christ figure. What had flowed off him had soaked into the carpet. And still it came. And still it came. Christ’s blood. This poor woman’s blood.

  The housekeeper opened her mouth and tried to scream but no sound came. She called for her God, and even if He heard her, no one else did.

  It would be nearly half an hour before she could make any noise. Then hotel security came, followed ten minutes later by three uniformed policemen. But it would take an hour for Detective Noah Jordain of the Special Victims Unit to get the phone call while he was sitting in a steamy and crowded restaurant in Chinatown, finishing up a spicy bowl of hot-andsour soup and about to start in on a platter of crabs in black-bean sauce.

  Twenty-four hours later, Jordain learned that the woman who had been brutally murdered was not a woman of God at all, not married to Jesus Christ or pledged to charity or good works, but rather a call girl who had one prior and had just finished up a stint in prison four months before.

  “At least she had a head start at getting into heaven in that outfit,” Jordain said after leaving the autopsy room, while he and his partner, Mark Perez, examined the nun’s habit the woman was wearing.

  “Noah, if you say prayers, you’d better start praying,” Perez suggested.

  “To help her get in?”

  “No, that this isn’t the beginning of something.”

  Jordain nodded. He’d already been there, thought that. A murder like this, ritualistic and designed, was not just an act of passion. It was, in all likelihood, the calling card of a psychopath on a mission.

  Statistically, things would get far worse before they got any better.

  2

  “Good girls don’t kiss and tell.” She stroked the cushion she had put in her lap, and the movement of her fingers was mesmerizing.

  “Does that mean you’re not a good girl? Or that you aren’t going to tell your story?” I asked.

  Cleo Thane laughed. A child’s laugh that was all delight with only an innocent hint of sensuality. “I’m good, but not a good girl.”

  To look at her shining blond hair, the flawless skin, the light makeup that highlighted rather than hid, to take in the classic diamond stud earrings and the watch—subtle platinum, not gold—the designer blazer and slacks, the chic shoes and the status bag, you might guess she was an executive at a cosmetic company or the director of an art gallery.

  But the night before, this lovely woman had been whispering lies into the ear of a television newscaster whose name you would recognize, while she brought him to a violent orgasm in the back of a stretch limousine with only a thin layer of glass separating them and their hot breaths from the driver. And before she met him, she’d charged his credit card two thousand dollars for the privilege of spending three hours with her.

  The contrast of who she was and how she presented herself was just one of the many things that intrigued me.

  “Dr. Snow, no matter what kind of gentle words I wrap it up in…I sell sex. That’s what I do for a living. How could I be a good girl?” She kicked off one of her very high-heeled shoes and noticed my glance. Even though I’d looked at her shoes before, she’d never paid attention until today. I made a mental note of that.

  “In my line of work, you always wear stilettos.”

  “Because they are so sexy?”

  “Because they are weapons.”

  That was the last thing I had expected her to say. I certainly knew how dangerous prostitution was for street hookers, but the way Cleo had described her extremely exclusive business, the need for weapons hadn’t occurred to me. I covered my surprise. “Other than your shoes, you make a real effort to look like a good girl, don’t you?”

  “It’s how I look. Why is that so hard to reconcile? I look like this. And I sell sex. And since I do, I can’t possibly be a good girl, now can I?” By repeating the question, she made it impossible for me to ignore it or how important the issue was to her. We’d talked about this before in the past six months, but there was obviously something about it that we still hadn’t uncovered.

  “Well, we aren’t necessarily what we do, are we?” I asked, then leaned back in my chair, crossing my ankles, noticing my own modestly heeled pumps. Classic and not inexpensive, but not sexy like Cleo’s shoes.

  She cocked her head and thought about my question. Not everyone did that. Some patients just blurted out whatever came into their minds. But because we’d been meeting for a long time, I already knew Cleo was more calculated with her words, sometimes saying what she wanted me to hear, instead of what she really thought. That was what we’d spent most of her sessions talking about: not that she was a prostitute or her conflicts with her lifestyle, but her inclination to please people too much—both sexually and in other ways. And not just her clients. That would have been natural. But the other people in her life.

  With her forefinger she drew circles on the pillow. Her eyelashes were long and dusted her skin, and for the first time since she had been coming to see me at 10:00 a.m. each Monday and Wednesday, a single tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek.

  She kept her head bowed.

  I waited.

  Still, Cleo didn’t move. I took the opportunity to tuck my hair behind my ears. Straight, dark hair—almost black—that hung to the top of my shoulders. Cut to curve and frame my face. My twelve-year-old daughter liked to experiment with it: setting it, braiding it, putting it up with clips. She also liked to do my makeup. Other kids dress up in their mother’s clothes; Dulcie preferred to dress me up and prepare me for the makeshift stage that doubled as the far side of our living room. And then, once I was in costume, she’d make me act out plays with her.

  “Morgan Snow appearing as the lead in…” she’d say, and fill in the part I was playing at her direction. She’d act opposite me. Happier with this game than any other.

  My daughter wanted to be an actress. Which wasn’t surprising since her father was a film director, and I, being an overindulgent mother despite my better instincts, accommodated her. I didn’t mind that it was her hobby and her ambition, but she wanted to try to act professionally while she was still in grade school, and I didn’t want her to.

  Acting is a tough business and I wanted my daughter’s life to be filled with acceptance and success—not rejection and frustration.

  Cleo finally looked up. Her gray eyes were soft and wet.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I am really confused. I wish I’d found you sooner. I wish I had known you a year ago. Two years ago. I needed someone like you who I could trust not to judge me, but who would push me to judge myself.”

  “That is not what I want to do. This isn’t about judgment at all.”

  “Is it about redemption?”

  “Do you need to be redeemed? Do you think of yourself as a sinner?”

  More laughter. Even though Cleo, at twenty-eight, was only seven years younger than I was, she reminded me of my daughter. For all that she had seen and done in her life, she remained untouched in some fundamental way.

  “Not necessarily a sinner. No. But I’m not a good girl, either.”

  “You say it as if you are proud of it. What would be so bad about being a good girl?”

  She grinned at my unintentional wordplay. “There are some very good things that I do. If I talk about them it will sound like propaganda from some pamphlet.”

  “Let me worry about that. I think you are much harder on yourself than you need to be. And we need to talk about that. It plays into you doing too much for other people. You deserve to feel good even if you don’t want to be good.”

  She reached out and touched my hand, to thank me. Her skin, even on her fingertips, was like finely spun satin. It was unusual for my patients to touch me, but I didn’t pull back, didn’t flinch or show any reaction. Touch is telling. Lack of touch is even more telling. There is nothing as sacred as one person reaching out to another with their body to offer connection, and I would never treat such a thing lightly.
There was nothing sexual about the way she put her fingers on the back of my hand and exerted a small but real pressure, but it woke me up in a momentarily sexual way. It made me think about sex, not with her, not with a man, but just inside of myself. Two fingers on my skin and she made me crave something I couldn’t quite name.

  “I don’t meet many people willing to forgo making judgments about me,” she said.

  The current of connection between us was strong. It was not something I ignored with my patients. I intrinsically understood some better than others.

  “What do you think would make you feel good?”

  “Having my book published.”

  Cleo had just finished writing a memoir, a tell-all about what she had learned about men and sex, based on the clients she had worked with over the past five years. She’d submitted an outline and the first five chapters to a publisher and just two weeks ago had been offered a substantial six-figure deal.

  Now she was dealing with the reality of what she had signed on to do. Reveal secrets, albeit anonymously, about men, albeit disguised and not named, who had paid her and trusted her to never do exactly what she was doing.

  My phone rang and Cleo glanced at it with a slight frown, but not nearly with the consternation that some patients show. I don’t usually answer the telephone during sessions, but I do look at the caller ID in case it is Dulcie, or Dulcie’s school.

  It was neither, so I let the machine pick up, apologizing to Cleo.

  “That’s all right. But you asked me another question and I never answered it. What was it? I don’t like unanswered questions.”

  Her voice was soft with a faint hint of a Southern accent. Too soft to be talking about such hard facts and harsh realities.

  She sighed and crossed her ankles. It was a dainty movement. A woman sitting on a veranda sipping iced tea and wearing a flower-print summer dress would cross her ankles like that.

  “A patient after my own heart. I asked you what was wrong with being a good girl.”

  “Can you think of anything more boring?”

  “Can you?” I asked.