“Oh, yeah.” With a smirk, she pushed through her papers until she found it. “Bunny called.” When the high, breathy voice didn’t get a rise out of him, she sent him an arch look and handed him the paper. “She wants to know what time you’re picking her up. She sounded real cute, Paris.”
He pocketed the slip and grinned. “She is real cute, Lowenstein, but I’d dump her in a minute if you wanted to cheat on your husband.”
When he walked off without returning her drink, she laughed and went back to typing out the form.
“They’re turning my apartment into condos.” Ed hung up the phone and went with Ben toward Harris’s office. “Fifty thousand. Jesus.”
“It’s got bad plumbing.” Ben drained the rest of the Pepsi and tossed it into a can.
“Yeah. Got any vacancies over at your place?”
“Nobody leaves there unless they die.”
Through the wide glass window of Harris’s office they could see the captain standing by his desk as he talked on the phone. He’d kept himself in good shape for a man of fifty-seven who’d spent the last ten years behind a desk. He had too much willpower to run to fat. His first marriage had gone under because of the job, his second because of the bottle. Harris had given up booze and marriage, and now the job took the place of both. The cops in his department didn’t necessarily like him, but they respected him. Harris preferred things that way. Glancing up, he signaled for both men to enter.
“I want the lab reports before five. If there was a piece of lint on her sweater, I want to know where it came from. Do your job. Give me something to work with so I can do mine.” When he hung up, he went over to his hot plate and poured coffee. After five years he still wished it were scotch. “Tell me about Francie Bowers.”
“She’s been working tables at Doug’s for almost a year. Moved to D.C. from Virginia last November. Lived alone in an apartment in North West.” Ed shifted his weight and checked his notebook. “Married twice, neither lasted over a year. We’re checking out both exes. She worked nights and slept days, so her neighbors don’t know much about her. She got off work at one. Apparently she cut through the alley to get to the bus stop. She didn’t own a car.”
“Nobody heard anything,” Ben added. “Or saw anything.”
“Ask again,” Harris said simply. “And find someone who did. Anything more on number one?”
Ben didn’t like victims by numbers, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Carla Johnson’s boyfriend’s in L.A., got a bit part on a soap. He’s clean. It appeared she’d had an argument with another student the day before she was killed. Witnesses said it got pretty hot.”
“He admitted it,” Ed continued. “Seems they’d dated a couple of times and she wasn’t interested.”
“Alibi?”
“Claims he got drunk and picked up a freshman.” With a shrug, Ben sat on the arm of a chair. “They’re engaged. We can bring him in again, but neither of us believe he had anything to do with it. He’s got no connection with Clayton or Bowers. When we checked him over, we found out that the kid’s the ail-American boy from an upper-middle-class family. Lettered in track. It’s more likely Ed’s a psychotic than that college boy.”
“Thanks, partner.”
“Well, check him out again anyway. What’s his name?”
“Robert Lawrence Dors. He drives a Honda Civic and wears polo shirts.” Ben drew out a cigarette. “White loafers and no socks.”
“Roderick’ll bring him in.”
“Wait a minute-”
“I’m assigning a task force to this business,” Harris said, cutting Ben off. He poured a second cup of coffee. “Roderick, Lowenstein, and Bigsby’ll be working with you. I want this guy before he kills the next woman who happens to be out walking alone.” His voice remained mild, reasonable, and final. “You have a problem with that?”
Ben strode to the window and stared out. It was personal, and he knew better. “No, we all want him.”
“Including the mayor,” Harris added with only the slightest trace of bitterness. “He wants to be able to give the press something positive by the end of the week. We’re calling in a psychiatrist to give us a profile.”
“A shrink?” With a half laugh, Ben turned around. “Come on, Captain.”
Because he didn’t like it either, Harris’s voice chilled. “Dr. Court has agreed to cooperate with us, at the mayor’s request. We don’t know what he looks like, maybe it’s time we found out how he thinks. At this point,” he added with a level glance at both men, “I’m willing to look into a crystal ball if we’d get a lead out of it. Be here at four.”
Ben started to open his mouth then caught Ed’s warning glance. Without a word they strode out. “Maybe we should call in a psychic,” Ben muttered.
“ Close-minded.”
“Realistic.”
“The human psyche is a fascinating mystery.”
“You’ve been reading again.”
“And those trained to understand it can open doors layman only knock against.”
Ben sighed and flicked his cigarette into the parking lot as they stepped outside. “Shit.”
“Shit,” Tess muttered as she glanced out her office window. There were two things she had no desire to do at that moment. The first was battling traffic in the cold, nasty rain that had begun to fall. The second was to become involved with the homicides plaguing the city. She was going to have to do the first because the mayor, and her grandfather, had pressured her to do the second.
Her caseload was already too heavy. She might have refused the mayor, politely, even apologetically. Her grandfather was a different matter. She never felt like Dr. Teresa Court when she dealt with him. After five minutes she wasn’t five feet four with a woman’s body and a black-framed degree behind her. She was again a skinny twelve-year-old, overpowered by the personality of the man she loved most in the world.
He’d seen to it that she’d gotten that black-framed degree, hadn’t he? With his confidence, she thought, his support, his unstinting belief in her. How could she say no when he asked her to use her skill? Because handling her current caseload took her ten hours a day. Perhaps it was time she stopped being stubborn and took on a partner.
Tess looked around her pastel office with its carefully selected antiques and watercolors. Hers, she thought. Every bit of it. And she glanced at the tall, oak file cabinet, circa 1920. It was loaded with case files. Those were hers too. No, she wouldn’t be taking on a partner. In a year she’d be thirty. She had her own practice, her own office, her own problems. That’s just the way she wanted to keep it.
Taking the mink-lined raincoat from the closet, she shrugged into it. And maybe, just maybe, she could help the police find the man who was splashed across the headlines day after day. She could help them find him, stop him, so that he in turn could get the help he needed.
She picked up her purse and the briefcase, which was fat with files to be sorted through that evening. “Kate.” Stepping into her outer office, Tess turned up her collar. “I’m on my way to Captain Harris’s office. Don’t pass anything through unless it’s urgent.”
“You should have a hat,” the receptionist answered.
“I’ve got one in the car. See you tomorrow.”
“Drive carefully.”
Already thinking ahead, she walked through the door while digging for her car keys. Maybe she could grab some take-out Chinese on the way home and have a quiet dinner before-
“Tess!”
One more step and she would have been in the elevator. Swearing under her breath, Tess turned and managed a smile. “Frank.” And she’d been so successful at avoiding him for nearly ten days.
“You’re a hard lady to pin down.”
He strode toward her. Impeccable. That was the word that always leaped to Tess’s mind when she saw Dr. F. R. Fuller. Right before boring. His suit was pearl-gray Brooks Brothers, and his striped tie had hints of that shade and the baby pink in his Arrow shirt. His hair was perfectly and conservatively groomed. She tried hard to keep her
