“I see.” Amused, she began to soap her leg. “You don’t have a gold card?”
“I’m lucky Sears still lets me charge my underwear.”
“Well, in that case, I don’t know if I should invite you into my tub.”
He stood, naked but for the jeans riding low at his hips. “I’m serious, Tess.”
“I can see that.” She took a handful of bubbles and studied them. “I guess that means you see me as a shallow, materialistic, status-minded woman who’s willing to slum it occasionally for good sex.”
“I don’t mean anything like that.” Frustrated, he sat on the lip of the tub again. “Look, I’ve got a job that means I deal with slime almost on a daily basis.”
Her hand was wet and very gentle when she set it on his. “It was a filthy day, wasn’t it?”
“That has nothing to do with it.” He took her hand in his a moment, studying it. It was rather small and narrow, delicate at the wrist. “My father sold used cars in a dealership that was barely on the right side of the tracks in the suburbs. He owned three sport coats and drove a DeSoto. My mother baked cookies. If a cookie could be baked, she did it. Their idea of a night on the town was the Knights of Columbus hall. I punched my way through high school, crammed my way through college for a couple of years then the Academy, and I’ve spent the rest of my life looking at dead bodies.”
“Are you trying to convince me that you’re not good enough for me because of cultural, educational, and genealogical differences?”
“Don’t start that shit with me.”
“All right. Let’s try another approach.” She pulled him into the tub.
“What the hell are you doing?” He spit out bubbles. “I’m still dressed.”
“I can’t help it if you’re slow.” Before he could regain his bal-ance, she slid her arms around him and closed her mouth over his. Often, even a psychiatrist knows it’s action rather than words that gets to the core. She felt the tension ebb and flow before he reached for her. “Ben?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think it’s relevant, at the moment, that your father sold used cars and mine didn’t?”
“No.”
“Good.” She drew back, and laughing, brushed bubbles from his chin. “Now, how are we going to manage to get your pants off?”
The pizza was STONE cold, but they didn’t leave a crumb. Ben waited until she’d dumped the carton.
“I bought you a present.”
“You did?” Surprised, and foolishly pleased, she looked at the paper bag he offered. “Why?”
“Questions, always questions.” Then he drew it back as she reached for it. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He moved closer, close enough to slip an arm around her waist. The scent of the bath was on both of them. Her hair was pinned up and damp. “Well, I think I’m going out of my head. Yes, I think I’m going out of my head, over you.”
She let her eyes close slowly for the kiss. “Little Anthony,” she murmured, playing the tune over in her head. “Was it 1961, ‘62?”
“I figured you being a shrink, you’d fall for that approach.”
“You’re right.”
“Don’t you want your present?”
“Umm-hmm. But I think you have to let me go
“Then don’t take too long.” He gave it to her, watching her expression as she looked inside. It couldn’t have been better-the blank frown, the surprise, then the amusement.
“A dead bolt. God, Ben, you know how to sweep a woman off her feet.”
“Yeah, it’s a real talent.”
Her lips curved as she pressed them against his. “I’ll always treasure it. If it was a little less bulky, I’d wear it next to my heart.”
“It’s going to be in your door in less than an hour. I put my tools in the kitchen closet the other day.”
“Handy too.”
“Why don’t you see if there’s something you can do for a while. Otherwise, I’ll make you watch.”
“I’ll come up with something,” she promised, and left him to it.
While he worked, Tess edited a lecture she was to give at George Washington University the following month. The buzz of the drill and clank of metal against wood didn’t disturb her. She began to wonder how she had ever tolerated the total silence of her life before him.
When her lecture was in order and the files she’d brought home dealt with, she turned to see him just finishing up. The lock looked bright and secure.
“That should do it.”
“My hero.”
He shut the door, held up a pair of keys, then set them on the table. “Just use it. I’ll put my tools away and wash up. You can sweep the floor.”
“Sounds fair.” As she walked toward the door, she paused to turn on the television for the news.
Though there seemed to be more mess than the small lock warranted, Tess swept the sawdust into the pan without complaint. She was straightening up, the pan and broom still in her hands, when the top story came on.
“Police discovered the bodies of three people in an apartment in North West. Responding to the concern of a neighbor, police broke into the apartment late this afternoon. The victims had been stabbed repeatedly while bound with clothesline. Identified were Jonas Leery, Kathleen Leery, his wife, and Paulette Leery, their teenaged daughter. Robbery is thought to be the motive. We’ll switch to Bob Burroughs on the scene for more details.”
A husky, athletic-looking reporter appeared on the screen, holding a microphone and gesturing at the brick building behind him.
Tess turned and saw Ben just outside the kitchen doorway. She knew immediately that he’d seen the inside of the building himself.
“Oh, Ben, it must have been dreadful.”
“They’d been dead ten, maybe twelve hours. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen.” The memory of it had the acid burning in his stomach. “They’d carved her up like a piece of meat.”
“I’m sorry.” She set everything aside and went to him. “Let’s sit down.”
“You get to a point,” he said, still watching the screen, “you get to a point where it’s almost, almost routine. Then you walk into something like that apartment today. You walk in and your stomach turns over. You think, God, it’s not real. It can’t be real because people can’t do that kind of thing to each other. But you know, deep down, you know they can.”
“Sit down, Ben,” she murmured, easing them both onto the couch. “Do you want me to turn it off?”
“No.” But he rested his head in his hands for a minute, then dragged them through his hair before he straightened. The on-the-scene reporter was talking to a weeping neighbor.
“Paulette used to baby-sit my little boy. She was a sweet girl. I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe it.”
“Those bastards’ll go down,” Ben said half to himself. “There was a coin collection. A fucking coin collection worth eight hundred, maybe a thousand. Fenced, it might bring half that. They butchered those people for a bunch of old coins.”
She glanced back at the lock, now firmly in her door, and understood why he’d brought it to her tonight. She drew him close, and in the way women have of offering comfort, rested his head against her breast.
“They’ll pawn the coins, then you’ll trace them.”
“We’ve got a couple other leads. We’ll have them tomorrow, the day after at the latest. But those people, Tess… sweet Christ, as long as I’ve been in this, I still can’t believe anything human could do that.”
“I can’t tell you not to think about it, but I can tell you I’m here for you.”
Knowing it, knowing it was just that simple, dulled the horror of the day. She was there for him, and for tonight, for a few hours, he could make that all that mattered.
