Loving Time

He passed the Centre without looking at it, didn’t feel like going in, which was the reason he didn’t have a full-time job there. Jason had never acquired the taste for politics and committees and endless meetings. The only way for an independent like him to earn a living was in patient hours. And he knew exactly how many patient hours he had to book to support his writing and teaching. He was never really idle, never without a thousand demands on his time. He had married twice. He’d left his first wife. Emma, his second wife, had left him. Whenever he wasn’t working, he was thinking about that.

He barely noticed the majestic Hudson River or the cliffs of New Jersey on the other side of it. He was worrying about his wife acting in movies, living in California, who spoke to him on the phone at a scheduled time every week and told him there wasn’t a thing about him she’d ever loved. It was at this point that he broke into a sweat.

When he reached Ninety-fifth Street, he was thinking that he didn’t have a car, a country house, a child. The question was, could he cut back his activities and spend some real time with Emma? That was the issue. It seemed that only a major sacrifice would impress her. That was how far women had come in their evolution from passive helpmate to separate working partner. It was clear that two careers meant no time for anybody. Emma had given him five years of hers and ended up desperate enough to act in an erotic film to get his attention. Now that she was successful in her own right, she thought it was perfectly fair for him to sacrifice his work to hers for the next five years.

Up at 110th Street, sweating freely, Jason turned around and started back at a faster pace. By now he was no longer thinking of any of the things that oppressed him. The endorphins had kicked in. His energy was renewed. He felt he could run for an hour and not feel any pain later. Which wasn’t true. He felt optimistic about women in general and Emma in particular, felt somehow it would all work out. Which probably wasn’t true either.

As he passed the Psychiatric Centre for the second time, he glanced at the entrance. He almost fell over his feet at the sight of the only two cops he knew heading into his turf again.

fourteen

Shrinks were a strange species, April thought. The hospital complex was called the Medical Center, but the psychiatric building was named the Psychiatric Centre. The Centre’s towering marble entrance and vast lobby also insisted people take it seriously. A quick check before April and Mike left the precinct confirmed that both of Raymond Cowles’s shrinks had offices in this intimidating building. It was the kind of place that made cops feel like they came from the reeking lower levels of society’s dung heap.

As soon as Mike was on the other side of the revolving door, he stuck a finger in the collar of his gray shirt and pulled at his shiny silver tie, stretching his neck. He didn’t exactly fit in with the M.D.s of the world. The bulge of his holster was just visible around his left armpit. His sharp clothes and sharp watchfulness, his gleaming black hair, and the bravado in the smile under his abundant mustache didn’t help either.

April shifted her bag from one shoulder to the other, hoping the security guard having an animated conversation with a maintenance man across the wide stone floor would not suddenly realize he’d just let in two people with guns and call the cops. They headed for reception.

“Can you tell me where I could find Dr. Dickey?” Mike asked the pretty woman at the desk.

She gave him a big smile and tossed her mop of curly red hair so that it bounced around. “Dr. Harold Dickey?”

Mike gave her a big smile back. “That would be the one.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

Mike showed her his gold shield. “Of course,” he said.

“Nineteenth.” She handed them visitor passes.

“Thanks.” Mike Sanchez turned away, then swung back. “What about Dr. Treadwell?”

“The Director of the Centre? You have an appointment with her, too?”

Her? Mike’s eyes opened wide as he turned toward the elevators. “Yeah,” he murmured, “her, too.”

Surprised, April touched his sleeve. The woman director of the Centre was the shrink of the dead man?

Mike jerked his head at the guard by the door, who continued his discussion without looking their way. Some security. Also the woman at the desk forgot to tell them they had to check in with the Nursing Supervisor on the third floor to turn in the bullets to their guns. Nobody was allowed to walk around a mental hospital with a loaded gun.

April was troubled by a number of things, not least of which was that Dr. Treadwell was a woman. She had no idea why it bothered her. It occurred to her she might have felt the same distress if the doc were Chinese. One didn’t want trouble for one’s own. April pressed the up button a few times. Then Mike punched it. They looked at each other. With six elevators it seemed to be taking a long time. The crowd grew as they waited. A number of the people waiting were wearing white coats. Others had interesting patterns shaved into their heads, multiple pierces, weird-colored hair, and strange clothing. Mike looked increasingly unhappy.

It took an eternity to get to the third floor, to find the head nurse, give up their bullets, watch them being labeled, bagged, and locked in a filing cabinet. Standing at the elevator a second time, April saw Mike drop two replacement bullets into his pocket, just in case.

It was one-forty by the time they got to the nineteenth floor, and the matronly woman at the desk rang Dr. Dickey’s office to see if he was free.

“Dr. Dickey, two police officers are here to talk to you.” She turned her shoulder to shield the receiver. “No, they didn’t.… Yes, Doctor.”

The receptionist hung up the phone. “Fifth door on the left,” she told them crisply.

Fifth door on the left. April’s lips tightened as she thought of Raymond Cowles with the neatly pleated plastic bag over his head. Ray had had two shrinks. One turned out to be the Director of the most prestigious psychiatric hospital in the city—maybe the whole country—a woman, no less. And the other was who knew what. No one was going to be happy with this case.

The fifth door on the left opened before they got to it. A plump man in a gray suit stood in the doorway, warily watching their approach. His bushy eyebrows and expressive mustache, along with dark eyes that kept moving as if they didn’t intend to miss a thing, dominated his pink-cheeked face. The man was past the midpoint of his life but still radiated a feeling of power and energy as he sprang back into his room and motioned for the two detectives to enter.

“Dr. Dickey,” he said mildly, introducing himself. “How may I help you?” As shrinks often did, Dickey gave the impression of already knowing how he could help them.

“I’m Sergeant Sanchez and this is Detective Woo,” Mike said.

“Is there a problem?” Dickey cocked his head.

“Do you know a man by the name of Raymond Cowles?”

Dickey moved his head over to the other shoulder. Yes, no, maybe so. “Should I?” he asked.

Mike shrugged.

Dickey regarded him coolly. “Why don’t you fill me in on the facts, and we’ll see what I can do to help.”

“Fine. Raymond Cowles was found dead in his apartment this morning.”

Dickey’s bushy eyebrows moved together into a deep frown while his eyes darted back and forth, as if searching for some clarification. “This is not a person I know,” he murmured finally. “I’m puzzled …” He opened his hands questioningly.

The three of them still stood in the small space in front of Dickey’s unimpressive wooden desk. Dickey didn’t ask them to sit down. His hands were open, palms up. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Raymond Cowles wasn’t a patient of yours?” Mike asked.

Dickey shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically.

“You didn’t know him?”

“No.”

“Your name and number were on a notepad beside the body.”