Hush

Then, totally spent, she’d packed up and hailed a cab for the West Side.

After tossing down her bags, she sank into one of the arm-chairs in her living room. She began to sob. Sensing something was wrong, Smokey leapt into her lap. As he nuzzled her chin, Lake stroked him and blinked back tears. Her eyes swept the living room, with its comforting shelves of books and pretty landscape paintings. What she’d told Molly and Keaton was true. Though the past week or so of her life could hardly be described as blissful, she had started to feel at peace again and hopeful about her future. But that all changed in an instant. Everything in her life was in jeopardy now-her kids, her work, her future. She’d given in to a desperate hunger for approval and connection-and to her own raw desire-and because of that she might end up losing custody of her kids. There was even a chance she’d be arrested for murder.

After forcing herself up off the chair, she left a second message for Hayden. Thirty minutes later, as Lake stared at a frozen slab of vegetable lasagna, knowing she had to eat but wondering how she could summon any appetite, Hayden returned the call. Lake outlined the situation to her, and made an urgent pitch for her to come on board as a consultant.

“I’m totally swamped right now,” Hayden confessed in her Alabama drawl, “but I can’t turn this down. I’ve done damage control on everything from drug companies that sold tainted drugs to a CEO who used company funds to rent a water park for his kid’s birthday-but never a murder. That’s very, very sexy.”

“So that’s a yes?” Lake said.

“Yes, but we need to hit the ground running. This is going to be big and move fast-it’ll probably be the plot on Law and Order next week. Can you arrange for me to meet everyone at eight tomorrow morning?”

Lake assured her it wouldn’t be a problem. Next she phoned Levin.

“That’s terrific, Lake,” he said. “I’ll let Dr. Sherman know. I think this first meeting should just be the senior team.”

His tone was almost obsequious; she wondered if he was trying to make up for rudely grabbing the file out of her hand earlier.

Next she needed to summon the energy to write the kids. She skipped the stories and riddles and scribbled a simple message:

“I can’t wait to see you both on Saturday and meet your new friends,” she wrote. “I’ll be there right at ten.”

She wanted to add more but she was already feeling weirdly fraudulent, reminiscent of when Jack was beginning to withdraw and she’d had to act normal in front of the kids. What would she say if she were being totally honest? “Mommy may be implicated in a grisly murder, so there’s a chance I won’t be able to come after all”?

As she slipped the paper into the fax machine, she wondered how she was going to handle bumping into Jack at the camp. Prior to her recent conversation with Hotchkiss, she’d hardly relished seeing him there, but now the idea seemed unbearable.

She nuked the lasagna and pushed it around on a plate as she drained a glass of wine. She tried to calm herself but she kept picturing Hull and McCarty at their precinct desks, searching their notes for clues and combing through evidence reports. The crime-scene people would have lifted her fingerprints but because hers weren’t in the system, there would be no match. Her DNA would be meaningless, too. But if she gave the cops any reason to truly suspect her, they could take her fingerprints and her DNA and then they would know she’d been in Keaton’s bed.

Closing her eyes, she let her head drop into her hands. In her mind she could see the horrible, oozing gash from one side of Keaton’s neck to the other. Whoever had slashed him must have been overwhelmed with rage. So who had Keaton managed to infuriate? Was it a woman he’d bedded and then dumped? He’d told Lake that he’d bought his place six months ago; he was likely visiting the city even before consulting with the clinic. So this fury could have been building for weeks. It was a fury that would have been directed at her, too, if she hadn’t been safely asleep on the terrace. She let out a moan as she contemplated what her fate would have been.

Another question gnawed at her. How had the killer gained entry to the apartment? Had he-or she-possessed a key? Or had the person jimmied the lock somehow? Maybe Keaton actually let the person in while Lake was sleeping, perhaps even assuming that Lake had left. But if Keaton had answered the door, he wouldn’t have been stabbed in his bed.

She considered Hayden’s comment about how big the story would become. Lake had been so preoccupied about her own connection to the murder that she hadn’t even considered the ramifications of just being employed by the clinic. Reporters might start to hound her. She wondered, in fact, whether the nameless person who’d called her at the clinic yesterday had been a reporter who’d gotten wind of her name.

Something unformed began to nudge her, but it was only later, when she was crawling into bed, that she recognized what it was: Keaton’s comment to her about a snag in his plan to be a partner. During today’s meeting in Levin’s office, there’d been no mention of any hitch. Either Levin had chosen not to bring it up in front of the associate doctors or the snag had only occurred in Keaton’s mind-and he hadn’t yet shared it with Levin.

Lake anticipated hours of fitful tossing that night, but she fell into a stupor almost instantly. Twice she was jounced awake by nightmares. She couldn’t remember the first one-it evaporated as soon as her eyes shot open. In the other, someone called on the phone about her children-saying their names, laughing, and then hanging up.

She woke with a start at six. For a brief moment she remembered nothing-but her stomach was knotted, as if she’d forgotten an urgent task. Then, like a tidal wave, the memory crashed against her. She hurried to retrieve the Times from on top of the mat outside her apartment door. The story was in the Metro section, a half-column long. It described Keaton as an L.A. ob-gyn and fertility specialist living part-time in New York. No mention of the clinic. So maybe the story wasn’t going to be huge after all.

But later, at a newsstand on her way to the bus, she picked up the Post and cringed as she saw Keaton’s photo splashed across the front page with the headline: BACHELOR DOC SLAIN DOWNTOWN. The photo was like a Hollywood red-carpet shot. He was in a tux, emerging from some event, looking handsome and cocky, like George Clooney at the Golden Globes. She forced herself to read the story. This time it included the name of the fertility clinic.

The Daily News had a more formal photo, the kind you’d see in a program for a medical conference. And this article had one new piece of info: Keaton’s super had found the body. When Keaton hadn’t shown up at the clinic yesterday, Levin had probably told Brie to try to locate him. In the course of looking for Keaton, his super had somehow been tracked down.

When Lake arrived at work, she found that the mood was an awful mix of somberness and agitation; people were both despondent and all churned up.

“Can you believe all the stories about this?” Maggie whispered to her as she set her things down in the small conference room. “I mean, it’s like the Laci Peterson case or something.”

“Have any reporters called you?” Lake asked.

“Not me in particular, but they’ve been calling here all morning.”

Lake could see the strain on Maggie’s face.

“How are you doing, anyway?” she asked. “Did your sister end up staying with you?”

“Yes-but it didn’t do much good. I had the worst nightmares. I might ask Dr. Kline for some advice when he gets a minute today.”

“Oh, he’s here?” Lake asked, realizing she hadn’t seen him since before all this happened.

“Yes, he was away for a few days but he’s back now. He was totally shocked to hear the news.”

Lake and Maggie agreed to try to get their minds off everything and get some work done. At five minutes to eight, Hayden Culbreth arrived, wearing a dazzling purple silk shift that contrasted boldly with her blond bob. As promised, she hit the ground running.

“Let’s start,” she said to Levin as soon as Lake had introduced them.

Sherman had joined them in Levin’s office, along with Hoss and Brie, notebook and pen in hand. Brie ran her eyes up and down Hayden, her disapproval loud and clear.

“So far you’ve done a decent job of handling things,” Hayden announced. “By that I mean no one on your staff has blabbed to the press. But they still might be tempted to. We need to implement a lock-and-load strategy.”

“Good God,” Sherman said. “It sounds like you’re suggesting firearms.”

Hayden pursed her lips and gave her head a little shake. “Of course not. But to protect the reputation of the clinic, you have to lock down communication-make sure that no one, and I mean no one,