arrested or volunteers to waive doctor-patient confidentiality. I know Kay. She’s not going to say anything improper.”
“What about a connection with Terri Bridges? Possible?”
“Can’t imagine it. If Oscar discusses Terri with her, and she realizes there’s a connection, she’ll immediately recuse herself or at least notify us so we could figure out what to do.”
“Not a fun thing to put her through,” Berger said. “Not fun for either of you, really. I imagine you’re not used to it. Professional discussions are your dinner conversations. They’re your dialogues on weekends, holidays. They’re even the source of fights, perhaps.” Her eyes on his. “Nothing off-limits unless you’re expert witnesses for opposing counsel in the same court case, and that almost never happens. Quite the team, the two of you. No secrets. Always professionally inseparable. And now, personally inseparable. I hope it’s going well.”
“No, this isn’t fun.” He didn’t like her personal references. “It would be easier if Oscar’s charged with killing his girlfriend. That’s a terrible thing to hope.”
“We hope a lot of things we don’t want to admit,” she said. “But fact is, if he murdered Terri Bridges, we’re not looking for someone else.”
She remembered snow that stung like nettles, and she needed a pound of Breakfast Blend coffee, but she didn’t feel like going out. Overall, there was nothing good she could say about that day.
She’d had a harder time than usual with a column she was supposed to post, an especially mean-spirited one titled “The Ex-File,” which was a list of celebrities whose fans had turned on them and why. Certainly Shrew had to leave out that part as she wrote the scene for Investigator Marino. There was a lot she had to leave out. For example, she couldn’t tell him her horror when her doorbell rang, and she let Terri in, not realizing the Gotham Gotcha website programming was as big as life on her twenty-four-inch computer screen.
Terri set the basket on the coffee table and walked right over to the desk, which was forward of her, now that Shrew thought about it as she wrote the scene on her pad of paper, leaving out what she was remembering right this minute.
Terri looked at what was on the screen, and Shrew tried to figure out how to explain what was clearly a Gotham Gotcha column, formatted and embedded in actual programming language.
What’s this?Terri was so short, she was eye level with the computer screen on top of the desk.
I confess I readGotham Gotcha.
Why does it look like that? Are you a computer programmer? I didn’t know you worked.
I have display codes on because I’m such a ninny. Please sit down.Shrew almost bumped her out of the way so she could exit the program. No, I certainly don’t work. She was quick to clear that up.
Terri sat on the sofa and her feet stuck straight out from the edge of the cushion, because her legs were stunted. She said she used e-mail, but aside from that was computer-illiterate. Of course, she was familiar with Gotham Gotcha, because she saw ads for it everywhere and heard references to it all the time, but she didn’t read it. Graduate school didn’t allow her time to read for pleasure, although she wouldn’t read a gossip column anyway. It wasn’t her thing. In fact, she’d heard it was filth and lowbrow. And she wanted to know if Shrew thought so, too.
“I don’t know how to write a movie script,” Shrew said to Investigator Marino. “I believe they require a special language and formatting, and in fact, people who write them use special software. When I was at Vassar, I took a course in theater and read a number of scripts for plays and musicals, and I’m quite aware that scripts aren’t written to be read. They’re written to be acted, performed, sung, et cetera. I hope you won’t be offended, but it’s better I stick to plain prose. At any rate, let me read this to you.”
She had a tickle in her throat. Memories and bourbon were making her emotional, and she sensed that Investigator Marino wouldn’t be sitting in the recliner if he had nothing better to do. He did have better things to do. Asking her to write a movie scene and all the rest hinted that what had happened across the street was part of a much bigger, more threatening problem. The only other explanation would be the worst one of all. He was an undercover agent, perhaps for the federal government, and believed she was involved with terrorists because of unusual banking activity, such as wires from the UK and the fact that she didn’t pay what she should in taxes, since on paper, it didn’t appear she had an income beyond Social Security benefits and other monies she received in dribs and drabs.
She read from the pad of paper. “Terri set the basket on the coffee table and climbed up on the sofa with great agility and no hesitation, and it was quite clear she was accustomed to improvising and compensating for her short arms and legs. She managed in an effortless way, but I’d never seen her sit, so it did startle me a bit that her feet stuck out from the edge of the cushion like a cartoon character or a five-year-old. It’s important to add that no matter what she said or did, from the instant I opened my door to her, I could tell she was immensely sad. Indeed, she seemed quietly frantic, and held the basket in a way that told me something unusual was in it that she neither wanted nor was comfortable with.
“I need to mention how she was dressed, because that, indeed, is part of a scene. She had on blue jeans and ankle boots, navy socks, and a navy blue cotton shirt. She was not wearing a coat, but had on blue dishwashing gloves, because she’d rushed out of her apartment as if it were on fire. No question, she was in the midst of a true crisis.
“ ‘What on earth has happened?’ I said to her, and I offered her refreshment, which she declined.
“ ‘I know you love animals. Especially dogs,’ she said, looking at all of the crystal and porcelain dogs placed about my apartment, gifts from my husband.
“ ‘It’s true, but I don’t know how you would know. I haven’t had a dog since you moved in across the street.’
“ ‘When we chat on the sidewalk, you mention them and notice other people out walking them. I’m sorry. This is urgent. I don’t know where else to turn.’
“I pulled back the towel and I thought my heart would break. Ivy was no bigger than a small flashlight, and so quiet, I thought at first she was dead. Terri said it was a gift, and she couldn’t keep it, and her boyfriend had tried to get the shop to take it back. But it wouldn’t. Ivy wasn’t thriving, and right then a part of me knew she wouldn’t make it. She didn’t move until I picked her up to hold her against my heart, and she nuzzled her little head under my neck. I called her Ivy because she clung to me like . . .”
Shrew dried her eyes with a tissue and after a moment said to Investigator Marino, “I can’t. I’m sorry. It’s as far as I got. It’s too painful. And I’m still so angry about it. Why are you upsetting me like this? If you’re toying with me, then I’ll file a complaint against you with Jaime Berger’s office. I don’t care if you’re the police. I’ll complain about you all the same. And if you’re some secret agent for the government, just come right out and say it and get it over with.”
“I’m not toying with you, and I’m sure as hell not a secret agent,” he said, and she detected kindness in his otherwise firm tone. “I promise I wouldn’t be digging into all this if it wasn’t important. Obviously, Terri’s bringing the sick puppy over here’s something I need to know about because it’s unusual and isn’t consistent with a few other things I’m aware of. I was inside her apartment earlier today. Went over there after talking to her parents. They live in Arizona. Maybe you knew that.”
“I didn’t know. I can’t imagine what a mess her apartment must be.”
“You told me you’ve never been inside it.”
“Never.”
“Let me put it to you this way. She’s not a pet person. You could eat off her floors, and anybody as concerned about tidiness and cleanliness as she was wouldn’t have pets. And she didn’t have pets, and the reason I can say that with certainty is after I saw her apartment and noticed all the antibacterial soaps and the rest of it, I called her parents a second time and asked a few more questions. That’s when the subject of pets came up. They said even as a child, she never had a pet and wouldn’t have anything to do with other people’s pets. She wouldn’t touch a dog or cat, and was afraid of them, and hated the hell out of birds. Maybe if you think back to that scene you just described to me, you’ll take a look at a couple of the details and see them in a different light. She didn’t have on her coat, but she was wearing dishwashing gloves. You assumed she was washing the dishes when someone arrived with the sick puppy as a gift, and in a panic, she fled across the street to see you.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask her why she had on dishwashing gloves?”
“I did. And that’s what she told me. She seemed slightly embarrassed, and took them off and gave them to me to throw away.”
