with your Italian shoes and little gold pins and that ‘I never sweat’ perfection.”
“I’m not perfect, Lydia, none of us is. None of us has to be to earn love and respect.”
The tears started, but Tess didn’t rise to offer comfort. It wasn’t time. “What do you know about mistakes? What the hell do you know about how I lived? Dammit, I made things work,
“Yes, you did. But nothing works forever if you refuse to allow for flaws.”
“I was as good as you. I was better. I had clothes like yours, and a home. I hate you for coming in here and reminding me. Get out. Just get out and leave me alone.”
“All right.” Tess rose, taking the file with her. “I’ll be back next week. Sooner, if you ask for me.” She walked to the door and turned. “You still have a home, Lydia.” The nurse stood in the doorway, holding the dustpan and mop. Tess took them and set them against the inside wall. “I’ll have them send down a fresh vase for those flowers.”
Tess walked out the door and shut her eyes a moment. That kind of violent dislike, even when it came from illness and not from the heart, was never easy to take.
“Doc?”
Tess shook herself back and opened her eyes. Ben was there, a few steps away. “You’re early.”
“Yeah.” He came to her and wrapped a hand around her arm. “What the hell are you doing in a place like this?”
“My job. You’ll have to wait a minute. I have to enter some things in this file.” She walked down to the nurses’ station, checked her watch, and began to write.
Ben watched her. Right now she seemed totally unaffected by the nasty little scene he’d overheard. Her face was calm as she wrote in what he was sure was a very professional hand. But he’d seen that one quick unguarded moment when she’d stepped into the hall. Not unaffected, but impossibly controlled. He didn’t like it, just as he didn’t like this place with its clean white walls and blank, miserable faces.
She handed the file back to the nurse, in an undertone said a few things he assumed referred to the woman who’d just berated her, then glanced at her watch again.
“I’m sorry you had to wait,” Tess said when she came back. “I have to get my coat. Why don’t you meet me outside?”
When she came out, he was standing at the edge of the grass, smoking steadily. “You never gave me a chance on the phone to tell you I didn’t want you to bother with all this. I’ve been getting myself to and from the clinic for a long time.”
He dropped the cigarette and carefully crushed it. “Why did you take all that crap from her?”
Tess drew a long breath before she linked her arm with his. “Where are you parked?”
“That’s psychiatrist shit, answering questions with questions.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Look, if she didn’t attack me, I wouldn’t be doing my job. It’s the first time we’ve really gotten anywhere since I’ve started seeing her. Now, where are you parked? It’s cold.”
“Over here.” More than happy to leave the clinic behind, he began to walk with her. “He called you again.”
“Yes, right after you did.” She wanted badly to treat that with the same professional ease she had the patients in the clinic. “Were they able to trace it?”
“Narrowed it down to a couple blocks. No one saw anything. We’re still working on it.”
“His Laura is dead.”
“I figured that much out.” He put his hand on the car door, then released it again. “The same way I figured out you’re his next target.”
She didn’t grow pale or shudder. He hadn’t expected her to. She simply nodded, accepting, then put her hand on his arm. “Would you do me a favor?”
“I can give it a shot.”
“Let’s not talk about it tonight. At all.”
“Tess-”
“Please. I have to go to the station with you tomorrow and meet with Captain Harris. Isn’t that soon enough to hash all this over?”
He put cold, ungloved hands on her face. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I don’t care what I have to do.”
She smiled, lifting her hands to his wrist. “Then I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?”
“I care about you,” he said carefully. It was as close to a declaration as he’d ever come with a woman. “I want you to know that.”
“Then take me home, Ben.” She turned her lips into his palm. “And show me.”
Chapter 13
The maintenance man was glumly mopping up a mud-colored puddle in the hallway outside the squad room. Under the heavy scent of pine cleaner hung trails of more human odors. The machine that dispensed coffee black, coffee light, and when its mood was generous, hot chocolate, leaned like a wounded soldier against its companion which handled Hershey bars and Baby Ruths. A platoon of Styrofoam cups littered the tile. Ben steered Tess around the worst of it.
“Coffee machine blow up again?”
The man with dusty gray overalls and dusty gray hair looked over the handle of his mop. “You guys gotta quit kicking these machines. Look at that dent.” He slopped more coffee and Lysol as he gestured. “Criminal.”
“Yeah.” Ben sent a look of dislike at the candy machine. He’d added a fresh dent there himself after he’d lost another fifty cents the day before. “Somebody ought to investigate. Watch your shoes, Doc.” He led her into the squad room, where at eight o’clock phones were already shrilling.
“Paris.” Lowenstein chucked a paper cup toward her trash bas-ket where it caught the rim and flipped in. “Captain’s daughter had her baby last night.”
“Last night?” He stopped by his desk to look for messages. The one from his mother reminded him that it had been nearly a month since he’d checked in.
“At 10:35 P.M.”
“Shit, couldn’t she have waited a couple of days? I had the fifteenth in the pool.” There was still a chance, he figured, if she’d cooperated and had a boy. “What’d she have?”
“Girl, seven pounds, seven ounces. Jackson hit it on the nose.”
“Figures.”
She rose, giving Tess a quick professional sweep. Lowenstein judged the price of the snakeskin bag in the ballpark of a hundred fifty and felt a small, harmless tug of envy. “Good morning, Dr. Court.”
“Good morning.”
“Ah, if you’d like coffee or anything, we’re getting it out of the conference room until things are cleared up. We’ll be meeting in there in a few minutes.” The perfume was French, the real stuff, Lowenstein deduced as she took a quick, discreet sniff.
“Thanks, I’ll wait.”
“Why don’t you have a seat until the captains ready?” Ben suggested, glancing around for a clean chair. “I’ve got to return a couple of these calls.”
There was a sudden spurt of obscenities from the hall, then a metallic crash. Tess turned to see the dirty water from the bucket stream down the hall. Then all hell broke loose.
A stringy black man with his hands cuffed behind him got as far as the doorway when a man in an overcoat caught him in a headlock.
“Look at my floor!” Almost dancing with fury, the maintenance man jumped into view. He swung his mop, spraying everything. “I’m going to the union. See if I don’t.”
The prisoner bucked and squirmed like a landed trout while the officer in charge tried to hang on. “Get that wet mop out of my face.” Panting and a bit red-faced, he tried to avoid the next shower while the black man sent up a high, keening wail.
“Shit, Mullendore, can’t you control your prisoners?” Without hurry Ben walked over to assist when the black
