“That’s …”Jason shook his head. “So what happened to Dickey? How did you get involved?”
“It’s a little mysterious. Usually in cases like this, the ER doctors will sign off on the spot. Or the attending will sign the certificate. Dickey was sixty-eight, had a heart attack. It should have been straightforward enough. Buuut—I guess somebody didn’t like the way it looked and didn’t want trouble later. All I know is someone called the Medical Examiner, the office took the case, and the path found something.” She watched Jason move in on the fries again, then said, “You know, the Cowles case looked like a clear-cut suicide, too. It turned out to be, but still, we have to check it out.”
“Tell me about it.” Jason licked a finger, then another one.
April wrinkled her nose. “Anybody ever teach you what napkins are for?”
“Nope.” He finished licking his fingers and pushed the plate away. “So, what’s the story on Cowles?” he asked, finally getting to his reason for wanting a meeting.
“What’s your interest?”
Jason sighed. “I got sucked into reviewing the case as a consultant. There might be a lawsuit.”
“From what I’ve seen of the widow, there will certainly be a lawsuit.” April watched Jason catch sight of his image in the mirror behind the booth and look surprised, then refocus on the subject.
“On what grounds?” he asked.
“She was married to him for almost fifteen years, didn’t know the guy was gay. Her story is they were the perfect couple. Then suddenly her husband needs space. Out of the blue he takes another apartment and returns to his former shrink, Dr. Treadwell. The doctor sees him a few times, prescribes tranquilizers. He uses them to kill himself. The widow thinks the shrink made him believe he was gay when he was in a vulnerable state. Then because it was against everything he believed, he freaks out and kills himself. Whatever the truth was, the medication she prescribed helped to kill him.”
“Anything else?”
“The autopsy showed Cowles had a lot of perianal scarring and signs of long-term infection. The pathologist said it wasn’t a new thing with him. He’d been into it for a long time.”
“Probably all his adult life,” Jason murmured.
“Another thing. Cowles was with someone just before he died. His lover was a lawyer from the insurance company where he worked. The night he died they cooked dinner together, had sex. The lover said Cowles was in a great mood. They were in love and planned to move in together. The lover went home to his own apartment about nine.”
“When did Cowles die?”
“Not likely to have been before ten. Three trick-or-treaters rang his doorbell at nine-thirty. They said he complimented them on their costumes.”
“So something happened after that. Any idea what?”
“Well, he placed a call to Dr. Treadwell at nine-thirty-eight. The phone company logged the time at six minutes.”
“What?” Jason said, shocked again. “What did Dr. Treadwell have to say about that?”
“I didn’t call her on it, Jason. It wasn’t relevant to our investigation. We were looking for a homicide.”
“It would be relevant to malpractice, though.”
“Yeah, I guess in civil suits, sticks and stones can break your bones and words can also harm you.” April glanced up at the clock over the counter. It read 4:02.
“Yeah, and sometimes words can even kill you.” Jason raised his hand for the check.
“I’ll take it,” April said.
Jason shook his head. “Next time … So, there was a six-minute conversation between Dr. Treadwell’s phone and Raymond Cowles’s phone. And Cowles committed suicide almost immediately thereafter.” Even if it could never be proved that Clara talked to Cowles, it was very nasty news. Jason rubbed his cheek.
“That’s about the size of it.” April reached for the check, but Jason got it first.
“I said next time.”
“Thanks.” April gathered up her jacket and bag. “What about this Dickey? You know of any reason he had to kill himself?”
Jason scratched his cheek. That morning he’d had a call from the head of the medical school asking him to take over Dickey’s classes until they found a replacement. Oh, and by the way, was he interested in the job? Now Dickey turned out to be an unnatural. Had words harmed him, too?
Deeply disturbed, Jason took a deep breath and exhaled. “No, I wouldn’t have said Harold Dickey was the type to commit suicide. Could it have been an accident?”
“That was my next question.”
“People make fatal mistakes all the time. I know older heart patients who forget they’ve taken their medication and take it again. It’s not supposed to happen, but it does.” He counted out the bills and left them on the table with the check.
“I’ll probably need your help with this hospital stuff,” April said, out on the street, vaguely annoyed that he wouldn’t let her pay and didn’t even look like himself anymore.
“So will I,” he said, smiling grimly. “Let’s keep in touch.”
thirty-eight
Clara Treadwell did not get up or say hello when April came into her office. She merely pointed to the tufted leather tub chair in front of her desk.
“Please sit down, Officer.”
“Detective Woo,” April corrected her.
“Yes, I remember. But there were two of you. Where’s your partner?” The woman seemed annoyed that there was only one of them now. She also seemed much older than she had a week ago. Her skin had a dry and grayish cast under the tan, and the puffiness around her eyes made her look as if she’d been worrying a lot and not sleeping much.
“He’s on another case.” April did not bother to tell the doctor that precinct detectives sometimes worked together but did not have partners. She sat gingerly on the shiny tufts, which were so hard, they must have been designed to discourage visitors from staying too long.
On the Upper West Side she had worked on cases involving all kinds of women—homeless, hookers, students, housewives, store owners, and businesswomen. It was the people April considered rich who fascinated and intimidated her the most. Until she’d come uptown she’d never seen this kind of people up close before, the kind who looked like they walked out of TV shows and magazines. They lived in luxurious apartments with doormen and porters, who took out the garbage and hosed down the sidewalks every morning. They kept their cars in garages that cost what a one-bedroom apartment cost outside of Manhattan. They ate in restaurants with white tablecloths and worked in stores and offices that were attractive and clean and comfortable—unlike New York City precinct stations or anything April had ever encountered in Chinatown.
But privilege gave rich women more than luxury. April had noted the extra piece in their design over and over, wanted it and knew how hard it would be to achieve. No promotion would give it to her, and no amount of money could buy it. The posture of Clara Treadwell’s body, the arch of her eyebrows, the set of her mouth as she sat at her desk exhausted but undaunted—her hands easy among expensive blotter, appointment book, and pen set— everything about her stated her confidence in herself, her certainty that she was right and could get that lightness across, her ability to intimidate without saying a word. Her lack of fear. April believed you had to be born with that lack of fear, educated to it, and Caucasian to carry it off.
“You’re here to report your conclusions on the Raymond Cowles case,” Dr. Treadwell said imperiously.
“I’m here on another matter, but I’d be glad to fill you in on that investigation if you’d like.”
Clara nodded.
April quickly told her what they had discovered about Raymond Cowles’s last night and what the forensic evidence had indicated about the manner and time of his death. Clara’s face tightened as April described the dinner and sex with his lover. Otherwise she betrayed no emotion.
“Except for his phone call to you, there seems to be no mystery about it,” April concluded.
The weariness and age dropped away from the hospital director’s face as indignation animated it. “What
