“Oh Lord. Not those junkies again?” Sampson gave Kat an indulgent pat on the shoulder, the sort of gesture she resented. “You are taking this case entirely too personally.”
“Yeah. It got real personal when my house blew up.”
“But Ed is right on top of things,” said Sampson. “Aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Now, isn’t it time we got moving?” asked Sampson.
“Huh?” Ed glanced at his watch. “Oh yeah. Gotta go, Kat. Parade committee.”
They all walked out of the office together. In the hall, Ed raised an arm, a gesture that could’ve meant either good-bye or good riddance, and headed off with the mayor. Kat watched the two men disappear around the corner and then snorted in disgust. “Our tax dollars, hard at work. I’ll be glad when this damn bicentennial is over.”
They got into the elevator, joining a City Hall clerk, her arms loaded down with a pile of gaudy flyers. “Take one!” she said in a cheery voice.
Kat snatched one up and read it: Mayor Sampson’s Bicentennial Ball. General Tickets: $500. Contributor: $2,500. Inner Circle: $10,000.
“Do you think Ed will help us out?” asked Adam.
“I’ll hound him to the grave if he doesn’t.”
Adam laughed. “I’d say that’s a pretty potent threat, coming from you.”
They stepped off the elevator. “Hardly,” said Kat, still gazing down at the flyer.
Inner-circle tickets were ten thousand dollars each, and Isabel had two of them.
“I’m not a threat to anyone,” she muttered. Then she tossed the flyer into a trash can.
The cook had laid out a lovely dinner for them: Cornish hens glazed with raspberry sauce, wild rice, a bottle of wine chilling in the bucket. And candlelight, naturally. Everything, thought Adam, was perfect. Or should have been perfect.
But it wasn’t.
Kat was chasing a sliver of carrot around her plate now. Where was her appetite? With a sigh, she put down her fork and looked at him.
“Thinking about Esterhaus again?” he asked.
“And … everything, I guess.”
“Including us?”
After a pause, she nodded.
He picked up his wineglass and took a sip. She watched him, waiting for him to say something. It was unlike her to hold back words. Are we so uncomfortable with each other? he wondered.
“It’s not healthy for me,” she said. “Staying here.”
He glanced at her scarcely touched meal. “At least you’d eat properly.”
“I mean, emotionally. I’m not used to counting on a man. It makes me feel like I’m up on stilts, tottering around. Waiting to fall. I mean, look at this.” She waved at the elegant table setting, the flickering candles. “It’s just not real to me.”
“Am I?”
She looked directly at him. “I don’t know.”
He pinched his own arm and said with a smile, “I seem real enough to myself.”
She didn’t appreciate his humor. In fact, he couldn’t get even the glimmer of a smile out of her. He leaned forward. “Kat,” he said. “If you always expect to be hurt, then that’s what will happen.”
“No, it’s the other way around. If you’re ready for it, then you can’t be hurt.”
Resignedly he sat back. “Well, that pretty much wraps up the future.”
She laughed—a sad, hollow sound. “See, Adam, I take one day at a time. Enjoy things while I can. I can enjoy this, being with you. But I’m going to ask you to promise something: When it’s over, tell me. No BS, just the straight scoop. If I’m not what you want, if it’s not working, tell me. I’m not crystal. I don’t break.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.” She picked up her wine and took a nonchalant sip. The truth was, he thought, that she had a heart as fragile as that wineglass, and she wouldn’t let it show. It was beneath her dignity to be weak. To be human. She was convinced that one of these days he would hurt her.
And maybe she’s right.
He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. “Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
“Upstairs. If this is a doomed affair, then we should make the most of it. While we can.”
She gave him a careless laugh and stood up. “While the sun shines,” she said.
“And if it doesn’t work—”
“We’ll both be fine,” she finished for him.
They headed up the stairs, to his bedroom, and closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world. One day at a time, he thought as he watched her unbutton her clothes, watched the garments slide to the floor, one moment at a time.
And what comes after is for tomorrow to decide.
He took her in his arms, kissed her. He wanted to be gentle; she wanted to be fierce. As though, in making love, she was battling some inner demon, struggling against it and him, against even herself. Love and war, delight and despair, was what he felt that night, making love to her.
When it was over, when she’d fallen asleep in pure exhaustion, he lay awake beside her. He gazed around his darkened bedroom, saw the gleam of antique furniture, the vaulted ceiling. It comes between us, he thought. My wealth. My name. It scares her.
Clark was back from vacation, sporting a red sunburn and even redder mosquito bites. While the mosquitoes had found the pickings good, Clark, it seemed, had not.
“One lousy fish,” he said. “The poorest excuse for a trout I ever saw. I didn’t know whether to cook it or put it in a bag of water for my kid’s goldfish bowl. Practically a whole damn week, and that’s what I had to show for it. Lost three of my best flies, too. I tell you, the rivers up there are fished out. Totally fished out.”
“So how many did Beth catch?” asked Kat.
“Beth?”
“You know. Your wife.”
Clark coughed. “Six,” he mumbled. “Maybe seven.”
“Only seven?”
“Okay, maybe it was more like eight. A statistical fluke.”
“Yeah, she’s good at those flukes, isn’t she?”
Clark yanked his lab coat off the door hook
and thrust his arms into the sleeves. “So how’s it been here? Anything exciting happen?”
“Not a thing.”
“Why do I bother asking?” Clark muttered. He went over to the in-box and fished out a pile of papers. “Look at all this stuff.”
“All yours,” said Kat. “We left ’em for you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“And you’ve got two dozen files on your desk, waiting for signatures.”
“Okay, okay. It’s enough to keep a guy from ever going on vacation.” He sighed and headed down the hall to his office.
Kat sat at her desk, listening to the familiar squeak of his tennis shoes moving down the hall. It was back to business as usual, she thought. The same old routine she’d had for years. So why was she so depressed?
She rose and poured another cup of coffee—her third this morning. She was turning into a caffeine junkie, a sugar junkie. A love junkie. Hopeless relationships—that was her specialty. She dropped back into her chair. If she could just stop thinking about Adam for a day, an hour, maybe she’d regain some control over her life. But he had become an obsession for her. Even now, she wondered what he was doing, whether he was sitting at his desk, missing her.
She grabbed a file from the stack on her desk, signed her name, and slapped the file shut again. She almost groaned when she heard those tennis shoes come squeaking back down the hall toward her office.
Clark reappeared in her doorway. “Hey, Kat,” he said.
“What?”
“What the hell’s this supposed to mean?”
He read aloud from a lab slip. “ ‘Results of mass and UV spectrophotometry show following, nonquantitative: Narcotic present, levo-N-cyclobutylmethyl-6, 10 beta-dihydroxy class. Full identification pending.’ ” He looked up at her. “What’s all this?”
“You must have one of m
y slips. The drug’s Zestron-L.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Here, I’ll take care of the report.”
“But it’s got my name on it.”
A frightening thought suddenly occurred to Kat. “Who’s the subject?”
“Jane Doe.”
“Oh.” Kat sighed with relief. “Then that’s mine.”
“No, it’s my Jane Doe.” He held the slip out to her. “See? There’s my name.”
Frowning, Kat took it. On the line next to AUTHORIZING PHYSICIAN was typed the name BERNARD CLARK, MD. She scanned the Subject ID data. Name: unknown. Sex: female. Race: White. ID #: 372-3-27-B. Processing date: 3/27.
A full week before her Jane Doe had rolled in the morgue doors.
“Get me this file,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Get me the file.”
“Whatever you say, mein Führer.” Clark stalked away and returned a moment later to slap a folder on her desk. “There it is.”
Kat opened the file. It was, indeed, one of Clark’s cases. She had seen this file before; she remembered it now. This was the Jane Doe of the glorious red hair, the marble skin. The page from the central ID lab was clipped to the inside front flap, with a notice of a fingerprint match. As Kat now remembered, the corpse’s name was Mandy Barnett. She had a police record: shoplifting, prostitution, public drunkenness. She was twenty-three years old.
“Do we still have the body?” asked Kat.
“No. There’s the release authorization.”
Kat glanced at the form. It was signed by Wheelock the day before, releasing the body to Greenwood Mortuary.
“I called it a probable barbiturate OD,” said Clark. “I mean, it seemed reasonable. There was a bottle of Fiorinal next to her.”
“Were barbs found in her tox screen?”
“Just a trace.”
“No needles found on-site? No tourniquet?”
“Just the pills, according to the police report. That’s why I assumed it was barbs. I guess I was wrong.”
“So was I,” she said quietly.
“What?”
She reached for the telephone and dialed the police. It rang five times, then a voice answered, “Sykes, Homicide.”
“Lou? Kat Novak. We’ve got another one here.”
“Another what?”
“Zestron OD. But this one’s different.”
She heard Sykes sigh. Or was that a yawn? “I’m real interested.”
“The victim’s name is Mandy Barnett. She was found in Bellemeade—a week before the others. And get this—she was set up to look like a barbiturate OD.”
“Are you going to tell me what is going on?” whined Clark.
Kat ignored him. “Lou,” she said. “I’m going to stick my neck out on this one.” She paused. “I’m calling it murder.”
SYKES TOSSED THE POLICE FILE DOWN ON his desk and looked across at Kat. “Dead end, Novak. No motive. No witnesses. No signs of violence. Mandy Barnett was a loner. We can’t locate even a single relative or friend.”
“Someone must have known her.”
“No one who’ll come forward.” Sykes leaned back in his chair. “We’re stuck. If it’s murder, then someone’s committed the perfect crime.”
“And chosen the perfect victim,” said Kat. She looked at Ratchet, who was hunched at his desk, making a ham sandwich disappear. “Vince? You talk to Greenwood Mortuary?”
“They’ve had no calls, and the burial’s tomorrow. But someone did pay the expenses.”
“Who?”
“Anonymous. Envelope stuffed with cash.”
Kat shook her head in disbelief. “And you guys aren’t chasing that?”
“Why? Not a crime to pay for a woman’s burial.”
“It shows that someone knew her. And cared about her. Don’t you guys have anything?”
“We know she lived out in Bellemeade,” said Sykes. “Had an apartment on Flashner and Grove. We asked around the building, and you know what? No one even knew her name. They’d seen her come and go, but that was it. So much for witnesses.”
“How did she get the drug?”
Sykes shrugged. “Maybe she bought it off Esterhaus. Or got a free sample in exchange for, uh, services.”
“Prostitution?”
“She’d been busted for it before. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, pardon the double entendre.”
“So we’re back to blaming Herb Esterhaus?”
“I don’t know who else to blame. It’s a dead end for us.”
For Mandy Barnett as well, thought Kat. She remembered the woman’s flame-colored hair, her porcelain beauty, shrouded in the cold mist of the morgue drawer. Not the sort of looks that went unnoticed in this world. Surely there’d been friends, lovers? Men who’d known the pleasures of her company, if only for a night. Where were they now?
A woman dies, and no one seems to notice. She thought about this as she walked through the police station. She thought about herself, wondered how many would notice her death, would come to her funeral. Clark, of course. Wheelock, out of duty. But there’d be no husband, no family, no giant mounds of flowers on the grave. We’re alike, Mandy and I. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we’ve made our way alone through life.
She stopped at the elevators and punched the DOWN button. Just as the floor bell rang, she heard a voice say behind her, “Well, speak of the devil.”
Turning, she saw her ex-husband emerge from the chief’s office. You wouldn’t come to my funeral, either, she thought with a sudden dart of hostility.
“My, what a nice scowl you’re wearing today,” said Ed.
They both stepped into the elevator, and the doors slapped shut. He was looking dapper as usual, not a scuff on his shiny Italian shoes. What had she ever seen in him? she wondered. Then she thought morosely, what had he ever seen in her?
“I got what you asked for,” he said.
“What?”
“The name of the cop who arrested Esterhaus last year. You still want it, don’t you?”
“Who was it?”
“The name was Ben Fuller, Narcotics detail. A sergeant with eighteen years on the force. He filed the arrest report. Possession of three live marijuana plants.”
“Did Fuller also arrange the release?”
“Nope. Feds did. They stepped in and pulled their ex-witness out of the fire. So you can drop the conspiracy angle. Fuller had nothing to do with it.”
“Can I see his Internal Affairs file?”
“Won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?”
The elevator doors slid open. “Because Ben Fuller’s dead,” he said, and walked out.
Kat dashed after him into the first floor lobby. “Dead? How?”
“Shot to death in the line of duty. He was a good cop, Kat. I’ve talked to his buddies. He had a wife, three kids, and a whole drawer full of commendations. So lay off the guy, okay? He was a hero. He doesn’t deserve anyone mucking up his memory.” With that, Ed went out the front door.
Kat watched her ex-husband stride away down the sidewalk. Then she stalked off to her car.
Traffic was heavy on Dillingham, and she didn’t have the patience to deal with it. Every red light, every idiot making a left turn, seemed to jog her irritation up another notch. By the time she got back to the morgue, she felt like a menace to the public.
In her office two dozen long-stemmed roses sat in a vase on her desk. “What the hell’s this?”
Clark stuck his head out of his office and called out sweetly: “So who’s the new lover boy, Novak?”
She slammed the door on his laughter. Then she sank into her chair and sat staring at the roses. They were gorgeous. They were blood-red, the symbol of love, of passion.
Once, Ed had sent her roses, that very same color. Just before he’d asked for a divorce.
She dropped her head in her hands and wondered morbidly what sort of flowers Adam Quantrell would send to her funeral.
What she found instead was Isabel’s Mercedes parked in the driveway.
Kat got out of her car and stood for a moment by the Mercedes, gazing in at the leather upholstery, the kidskin gloves lying on the front seat. Then, in an even blacker mood, she went to the front door and rang the bell.
Thomas opened the door and regarded her with surprise. “Oh dear! Did Mr. Q. neglect to give you a key, Dr. Novak?”
Kat cleared her throat. It had never occurred to her to simply walk in the door. After all, she was a guest and would always feel like one. “Well, yeah,” she said. “I guess he did give me a key.”
Thomas stepped aside to usher her in.
“I thought I should ring first,” she added as he took her jacket.
“Of course,” he said. He reached into the closet for a hanger. “Mr. Q. hasn’t arrived yet. But Miss Calderwood dropped by for a visit. She’s in the parlor, if you’d care to join her for tea.”
Joining Isabel was the last thing she felt like doing, but she couldn’t think of a graceful way to avoid it. So, hoisting a socially acceptable smile onto her lips, she entered the parlor.
Isabel was seated on the striped couch. Her sweater, a fluffy cashmere, hung fetchingly off the shoulder. She seemed unsurprised to see Kat; in fact, she appeared to have expected her.
“Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” said Kat. “I don’t know when Adam’s expected home.”
“He gets home at six o’clock,” said Isabel.
“Did he call?”
“No. That’s when he always gets home.”
“Oh.” Kat sat down in the Queen Anne chair and wondered what else Isabel knew about Adam’s habits. Probably more than I ever will. She glanced at the end table and saw the empty teacup, the plate of biscuits. The book Isabel had been reading lay beside her on the couch—the title was in French. The very air held the scent of her perfume—something cool, something elegant; no drugstore florals for her.
“Six o’clock is his usual time,” Isabel went on, pouring more tea into her cup. “Unless it’s Wednesday, when he kicks off early and gets home around five. He occasionally has a drink before supper—Scotch, heavy on the soda—and perhaps a glass of wine with his meal, but only one glass. After supper, he reads. Scientific journals, the latest pharmaceuticals, that sort of thing. He takes his work seriously, you see.” She set the teapot back down. “And then he makes time for fun. Which normally includes me.” She looked at Kat and smiled.
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