The Crush

by Sandra Brown

  Thanks to her able staff, things had gone smoothly in her office this afternoon. Rounds at the hospital had taken a little longer than usual. She had the four post-op patients to see, and three more to brief before their scheduled surgeries tomorrow morning. One had to be sweet-talked into his pre-op enema. The frazzled nursing staff had given up. After Rennie talked to him, he surrendered quietly.

  Then, just before she left for the day, she had received the telephone call.

  The reminder caused her to shudder. Quickly she finished the bottle of water and tossed it into the trash compactor. She rinsed out the soaking carafe of the coffeemaker, then prepared it for tomorrow morning and set the timer. She knew she should eat something, but the thought of food made her nauseous. She was too upset to eat.

  She left her handbag on the table—she didn’t think she had the strength to lift it—and turned off the kitchen light. Then, as she started toward the living room, she paused and switched the light back on. She had lived alone all her adult life, and this was the first time she could remember ever wanting to leave the lights on.

  In her bedroom she switched on the lamp and sat down on the edge of her unmade bed. Ordinarily it would have bothered her that she hadn’t had time to make her bed before leaving that morning. Now that seemed a trivial, even silly concern. An unmade bed was hardly worth fretting about.

  With dread, she opened the drawer of her nightstand. The card was beneath the box of stationery her receptionist had given her last Christmas. She had never even broken the cellophane wrapping. Pushing the stationery box aside, she stared down at the small white card.

  She had been making notations on the charts of her post-op patients when the duty nurse had informed her that she had a call. “Line three.”

  “Thanks.” She cradled the receiver between her cheek and shoulder, leaving her hands free to continue the final task of a very long day. “Dr. Newton.”

  “Hello, Rennie.”

  Her writing pen halted mid-signature. Immediately alarmed by the whispery voice, she said, “Who is this?”

  “Lozada.”

  She sucked in a quick breath but tried to keep it inaudible. “Lozada?”

  He laughed softly, as though he knew her obtuseness were deliberate. “Come now, Rennie, we’re hardly strangers. You couldn’t have forgotten me so soon. We spent almost two weeks together in the same room.”

  No, she hadn’t forgotten him. She doubted that anyone with whom this man came into contact would ever forget him. Often during the trial his dark eyes had connected with hers across the courtroom.

  Once she had begun to notice it she had avoided looking at him. But each time her gaze happened to land on him, he’d been staring at her in a way that had made her uncomfortable and self-conscious. She was aware that other jurors and people in the courtroom also had noticed his unwelcome interest in her.

  “This call is highly inappropriate, Mr. Lozada.”

  “Why? The trial’s over. Sometimes, when there’s an acquittal, defendants and jurors get together and have a party to celebrate.”

  “That kind of celebration is tasteless and insensitive. It’s a slap in the face to the family of the murder victim, who still have no closure. In any event, you and I have nothing to celebrate or even to talk about. Good-bye.”

  “Did you like the roses?”

  Her heart skipped several beats, then restarted, pounding double-time.

  After dismissing every conceivable possibility, it had occurred to her that he might have been her secret admirer, but she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it even to herself. Now that it had been confirmed, she wanted to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  But of course he would know better. He had placed the roses inside her house, making certain she would receive them, leaving no margin for error. She wanted to ask him how the hell he had gotten inside her home but, as Lee Howell had pointed out to her, Lozada was a career criminal. Breaking and entering would be child’s play to a man with his arrest record.

  He was incredibly intelligent and resourceful or he couldn’t have escaped prosecution for all his misdeeds, including the most recent murder for which he’d been tried and that she fully believed he had committed. It just hadn’t been proved.

  He said, “Considering the color of your front door I guessed red might be your favorite.”

  The roses hadn’t been the color of her front door. They’d been the color of the blood in the crime-scene photos entered as evidence and shown to the jury. The victim, whom it was alleged that Lozada had been hired to kill, had been choked to death with a garrote, something very fine yet so strong that it had broken the skin of his throat enough to bleed.

  “Don’t bother me again, Mr. Lozada.”

  “Rennie, don’t hang up.” He said it with just enough menace to prevent her from slamming down the telephone receiver. “Please,” he said in a gentler voice. “I want to thank you.”

  “Thank me?”

  “I talked to Mrs. Grissom. Frizzy gray hair. Thick ankles.”

  Rennie remembered her well. Juror number five. She was married to a plumber and had four children. She seized every opportunity to bore the other eleven jurors with complaints against her lazy husband and ungrateful children. As soon as she learned that Rennie was a physician, she had run down a list of ailments she wanted to discuss with her.

  “Mrs. Grissom told me what you did for me,” Lozada said.

  “I didn’t do anything for you.”

  “Oh, but you did, Rennie. If not for you, I’d be on death row.”

  “Twelve of us arrived at the verdict. No one was singly responsible for the decision to acquit you.”

  “But you led the campaign for my acquittal, didn’t you?”

  “We looked at the case from every angle. We reviewed the points of law until we unanimously agreed on their interpretation and application.”

  “Perhaps, Rennie,” he said with a soft chuckle. “But Mrs. Grissom said you argued my side and that your arguments were inspired and… passionate.”

  He said it as though he were stroking her while he spoke, and the thought of his touching her made her skin crawl. “Don’t contact me again.” She had slammed down the telephone receiver but continued to grip it until her knuckles turned white.

  “Dr. Newton? Is something wrong? Dr. Newton, are you all right?”

  Drops of perspiration beaded on her face as though she were performing the most intricate and life-threatening surgery. She thought she might throw up. Taking a deep breath through her mouth, she let go of the telephone receiver and turned to the concerned nurse.

  “I’m fine. But I’m not going to take any more calls. I’m trying to wrap up here, so if someone wants me, tell them to have me paged.”

  “Certainly, Dr. Newton.”

  She had quickly completed her chart notations and left for home. As she walked across the familiar doctors’ parking lot, she glanced over her shoulder several times and was reassured by the presence of the guard on duty. She’d heard that the young man who had discovered Lee’s body was taking some time off.

  On the drive home, she kept one eye on the road and another in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see Lozada following her. Damn him for making her feel paranoid and afraid! Damn him for complicating her life when she had finally gotten it exactly as she wanted it.

  Now as she stared at the hateful little card in her nightstand drawer, her resentment increased. It made her furious that he dared speak to her in sexual overtones and with implied intimacy. But it also frightened her, and that was what she hated most—that she was afraid of him.

  Angrily she closed the nightstand drawer. She stood up and removed her blouse and slacks. She wanted a hot shower. Immediately. She felt violated, as though Lozada had touched her with his sibilant voice. She couldn’t bear to think about his being here inside her house, invading her private space.

  Worse, she felt a presence here still, although she told herself that
was just her imagination, that it had been thrust into overdrive. She found herself looking at every object in the room. Was each item exactly as she’d left it this morning? The cap on her body lotion was loose, but she remembered being in a hurry this morning and not replacing it securely. Was that the angle at which the open magazine had been left on the nightstand?

  She told herself she was being silly. Nevertheless, she felt exposed, vulnerable, watched.

  Suddenly she glanced toward the windows. The slats of the blinds were only partially drawn. Moving quickly, she snapped off the lamp and then went to the windows and pulled the louvers tightly closed.

  “Damn him,” she whispered into the darkness.

  In the bathroom, she showered and prepared for bed. When she turned out the light, she considered leaving it on, but only for an instant before deciding against it. She wouldn’t give in to her fear even to that extent.

  She had never been a coward. On the contrary, her courage when she was a child had caused her mother to wring her hands with concern. As a teen, her bravery had escalated into deliberate recklessness. In recent years she had traveled to war- and famine-plagued corners of the world. She had defied despots, and raging storms, and armed marauders, and contagious disease in order to provide medical treatment to people in desperate need of it, always with little or no regard for her personal safety.

  Now, inside her own bedroom, lying in her own bed, she was afraid. And not just for her safety. Lozada posed more than a physical threat. Detective Wesley had mentioned his trial, had insinuated…

  “Oh my God.”

  Gasping, Rennie sat bolt upright. She covered her mouth and heard herself whimper involuntarily. A chill ran through her.

  Lozada had tried to impress her with a lavish bouquet of roses in a crystal vase. Personally delivered. What else had he done in an attempt to curry her favor?

  The answer to that was too horrible to consider.

  But obviously the homicide detective had considered it.

  * * *

  Wick opened another Coke, hoping it would wash away the unpleasant aftertaste of the tuna sandwich. Rennie had retired for the night. It had been thirty-two minutes from the time she got home until she had turned out her bedroom light. Not long. No dinner. No leisure activity. Not even a half hour of TV during which to unwind after a hard day.

  She had spent some of that thirty-two minutes at the kitchen sink, appearing to be lost in thought. Wick saw her shake her hair loose and massage her scalp. She’d had the aspect of someone weighted down by a major problem, or suffering a severe headache—or both.

  Which didn’t surprise him. She’d worked her ass off today. He had arrived at the family waiting room at seven that morning, knowing the day began early in the OR. Nobody questioned his being there. It was assumed that he belonged to one of the families who had set up temporary camp with magazines and cups of vending-machine coffee. He chose a chair in the corner, pulled his straw cowboy hat low over his brow, and partially hid behind an edition of USA Today.

  It was 8:47 before Dr. Newton made her first appearance.

  “Mrs. Franklin?”

  Mrs. Franklin and her retinue of supporters clustered around the surgeon. Rennie was dressed in green scrubs, the face mask lying open on her chest like a bib. She wore a cap. Paper slippers covered her shoes.

  He couldn’t hear what she was saying because she kept her voice at a confidential pitch to ensure the family’s privacy, but whatever she said made Mrs. Franklin smile, clasp her hand, and press it thankfully. After the brief conference, Rennie excused herself and disappeared through the double swinging doors.

  Throughout the long morning she had made three other visits to the waiting room. Each time she gave the anxious family her full attention and answered their questions with admirable patience. Her smiles were reassuring. Her eyes conveyed understanding and compassion. She never seemed to be rushed, although she must have been. She was never brusque or detached.

  Wick had found it hard to believe that this was the same guarded, haughty woman on Oren’s videotape.

  He had stayed in the OR waiting room until his stomach started rumbling so loudly that people began looking at him askance. The crowd had thinned out too, so the tall cowboy sitting all alone in the corner with a newspaper he’d read three times was beginning to attract attention. He had left in search of lunch.

  Oren thought he’d been sleeping through the day in his dreary motel room. He hadn’t told him about going to the hospital. Nor did he tell him that after grabbing a burger at Kincaid’s he had staked out Rennie Newton’s private office. It was located near the hospital on a street that had formerly been residential but had been given over largely to medical offices.

  The limestone building was new looking and contemporary in design, but not ostentatious. The office had done a brisk business all afternoon, with patients going in and coming out at roughly fifteen-minute intervals. The parking lot was still half full when Wick left to go break into her house.

  Yeah, Rennie had put in a full day. To reward herself she’d drunk a bottle of water. That was it. When she moved out of the kitchen, she had switched off the light, then turned it back on almost instantly, which he thought was strange.

  She had left that light on when she went into the bedroom, where she sat slumped on the edge of the bed, loose hair falling forward. Her whole aspect had spelled dejection. Or terrible trouble.

  Then she’d done another strange thing. She had opened her nightstand drawer and, for the next several minutes, stared into it. Just stared. She didn’t take anything out or put anything in—she just stared into it.

  What had she been looking at? he wondered. He concluded that it had to be the enclosure card. What fascination could an unopened box of stationery hold for her? Her mother’s obituary might be something she would read occasionally, maybe in remembrance of her. But he was putting his money on the card. And that made him damn curious about its origin and significance.

  Eventually she had closed the drawer and stood up. She’d unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off. She was wearing an unadorned bra. Maybe the sheer lacy ones were reserved for the days when she didn’t perform four surgeries. Or for the man who had sent her the card.

  Next she had removed her slacks.

  That was when Wick had realized he was holding his breath and admonished himself to resume breathing normally—if such a thing were possible. Could any heterosexual man breathe normally when he was watching a woman take off her clothes? He didn’t think so. He didn’t know of one. The question might warrant a scientific study.

  Conducting his own test, he had inhaled deeply, then exhaled an even stream of carbon dioxide.

  And in that instant, almost as if she had felt his breath against her bare skin, she looked toward the windows with alarm. Immediately the bedside lamp was extinguished. A vague silhouette of her appeared momentarily at the windows, then the slats of the blinds were closed tightly, blocking her from sight.

  The light in her bathroom had come on and remained on for ten minutes, long enough for her to bathe using one of the scented gels. She might’ve used the pink razor, too. She’d probably brushed her teeth and rolled the tube of toothpaste up from the bottom before replacing it in the cabinet above the sink that had not one single water spot.

  Then the house had gone dark except for the light in the kitchen. Wick surmised that she had probably gone straight from her bath to bed.

  And now, after thirty-two minutes, she was probably sleeping between the pale yellow sheets, her head sunk deeply into the down pillow.

  He remembered that pillow. He had stared at it for a long time before peeling off the latex gloves and lifting it from the bed. He’d held it close to his face. Only for a second, though. Only for as long as any good detective would.

  He hadn’t told Oren about that, either.

  Chapter 6

  It was the best Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth, making it, in Lozada’s opinion, the best rest
aurant in Fort Worth.

  He came here only for the food and the deferential service he received. He could have done without the trio who strolled among the tables strumming guitars and singing Mexican standards in loud but mediocre voices. The decor looked like the effort of someone who had run amok in a border-town curio shop buying every sombrero and piñata available.

  But the food was excellent.

  He sat at his customary table in the corner, his back to the wall, sipping an after-dinner tequila. He’d have shot anyone who offered him one of those frozen green concoctions that came out of a Slurpee machine and had the audacity to call itself a margarita.

  The fermented juice of the agave plant deserved to be drunk straight. He favored a clear añejo, knowing that what made a tequila “gold” was nothing but caramel coloring.

  He had dined on the E1 Ray platter, which consisted of enchiladas con carne, crispy beef tacos, refried beans, Spanish rice, and corn tortillas dripping with butter. The meal was loaded with carbohydrates and fat, but he didn’t worry about gaining weight. He’d been genetically gifted with the lean, hard physique that people joined health clubs and sweated gallons of perspiration to acquire. He never broke a sweat. Never. And the one time in his life he had lifted a dumbbell he had brained someone with it.

  He finished his drink and left forty dollars cash on the table. That was almost double the amount of his bill, but it guaranteed that his table would be available anytime he came in. He nodded good-bye to the owner and winked at a pretty waitress on his way out.

  The restaurant was located in the heart of the historic Stockyards area. Tonight the intersection of Main and Exchange Streets was thronged with tourists. They bought trashy Texas souvenirs like chocolates shaped as cow patties or rattlesnakes preserved in clear acrylic. The more affluent were willing to pay handsomely for handmade boots from the legendary Leddy’s.