Clara tossed her head defiantly. “So what?”
“There are many highly competent gay psychiatrists. Why didn’t you refer Cowles to one of them?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. Hal knew the case. He seemed the best man at the time, so I gave him Hal’s name. What’s the difference?”
“Hal bore some responsibility for the outcome of the first treatment, so a renewed involvement wouldn’t have been the best thing for the patient.” Jason spoke with a passion that annoyed Clara.
Her eyes became shrewd. “Don’t get moral on me, Jason, there’s no percentage in it.”
“Percentage is not my department. What did Cowles say then?”
“He said he’d do that, he’d call Hal. He sounded fine. And that was it.” Clara stood up, poured herself some more coffee, then sipped it standing up. “It was extremely inappropriate for him to call me in the first place. We’d talked about boundaries, we’d talked about termination. There was nothing new here.” Except that he’d tried to ruin her life, and she was not going to let him.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven-forty-five. She had to go. She put her cup in the sink and cleared the table of the orange juice carton and the file. She didn’t bother to look at Jason. She didn’t care what he thought. She could destroy him if he didn’t do what she wanted. He had to know that. She released the chain on the back door and went out into the back hall.
She opened the garbage chute and stuffed the file in. It took a minute to position the bundle to fit the slide, but finally she heard the satisfying thunk as it dropped twenty stories to the basement. When she returned to the kitchen, Jason had buttoned his coat and was ready to leave.
“Let’s get one thing straight about the Cowles case,” Clara said. “It was a blip in the screen. Ray couldn’t accept his sexual preference. He chose to end his life. These are the facts that have significance for us. The other incidents, the harassment of me that you were witness to, Hal’s death—they brought a kind of hysteria to us all, led us in another direction. Now we’re centered on this unfortunate case of a disturbed young man again. If we stick together with a clean story, we’ll all benefit. If we waver on it, we all stand to lose. Do you understand me, Jason?”
“Gotcha.” Jason patted his pocket and turned to go.
Clara nodded grimly, satisfied with the outcome of the interview. She was glad Jason had the sense not to annoy her by asking about the staff appointment she’d promised him. It made it easier because she’d never intended to give it to him.
Only much later in the day did Clara realize Jason had stolen her tape recorder with their conversation on it. It wasn’t where she’d left it, and she looked for it everywhere. For a while she waited for him to blackmail her. When the shit hit the fan and she was fired, she tried to reach him on the phone. She suspected him of using the tape to discredit her. Stealing was a flaw Clara would never have suspected in Jason’s character. The whole thing baffled her until she moved out several months later. Then she found the recorder. It had been in the bottom cupboard near where Jason had been sitting. Hiding it there, letting her think he had stolen it to blackmail her, must have been his own little joke.
But it was not the tape about the suicide of her patient that cost Clara Treadwell her job. What cost her her job was the scandal of FBI intervention on her behalf in the homicide investigation of Harold Dickey. That intervention had caused a riot on Six North and the shooting deaths of a patient and a former employee in a hospital that strictly prohibited guns on its premises. It also cost Clara her future in Washington. The good Senator from Florida changed his mind about being in such a great rush to remarry so soon after the death of his beloved first wife.
epilogue
Wednesday, November 17, was Mike Sanchez’s day off. After hanging around the Psychiatric Centre with April for several hours to house-clean three deaths in a psycho ward, they both went home to sleep it off. At four P.M. he was awakened out of a deep sleep to get the unofficial word that he had been transferred to the Homicide Task Force of the NYPD.
“You know where Sergeant Woo has been assigned?” were Mike’s first words.
“Nope, I haven’t heard anything on that,” said his contact in Personal Orders.
“Well, let me know, will you?”
“Yeah, yeah. Congratulations, Mike.”
“Thanks.”
Mike hung up. His mother wasn’t at home to hear the good news. He wanted to tell someone. He took a long, hot shower and thought of April Woo.
An hour later he pulled up in front of April’s house in Astoria and honked the horn. About five minutes later she came outside. He was leaning against his car waiting for her.
“What’s up, another triple homicide?” She ambled down the walk toward him. Her purse was hitched to her shoulder. She was wearing a new camel-hair winter coat and new boots. Her hair looked different. Suddenly it seemed a lot longer. The lipstick on her rosebud mouth was now a deep red-brown.
And something else was different, too. For a second Mike couldn’t figure out why April looked so spectacularly different. Then he saw a knee appear as her coat flapped open. With a shock, he realized April was wearing a skirt. He’d never seen her in a skirt, never seen her legs. April had always worn trousers to work, didn’t want anyone to look at her.
He chewed on his mustache, smitten.
“Cat got your tongue?” She grinned.
“You look great, querida. I never knew you had such great legs.”
“Well, now you know.”
“Now I know.”
“What’s the news? Anybody going to get arrested in this case?”
Mike shook his head. He thought of Ray Cowles, Harold Dickey, Gunn Tram, Bobbie Boudreau. Then his thoughts wandered to Clara Treadwell and Special Agent Daveys. Rumor had it Daveys would take a vacation for a while and probably not resurface in the New York area.
“I guess there are crimes people die for, crimes people lose their jobs for …” Mike stopped as he caught sight of Sai Woo’s head in a downstairs window.
“Yeah?”
“And crimes people get away with.”
April turned around and waved at her mother.
“April, you think I should take that place in the Garden Tower?”
April leaned against the car. “It has a nice terrace … and a view of Manhattan—”
“If you crane your neck.” Mike shrugged. “And a dishwasher. You ever had a dishwasher, querida?”
“Do you have to wash the dishes before you put them in?”
“I don’t know, but you don’t have to dry them when you take them out.” Mike opened the door for her. “They’re standard everywhere now, look good. What do you say—want to take another look?”
“At a dishwasher? Is this a proposal, Sergeant?” April laughed and got into the car.
about the author
LESLIE GLASS is the author of the April Woo mystery novels, including Burning Time, Hanging Time, and To Do No Harm. She divides her time between New York and Sarasota.
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
Epigraph
Part 1 - Raymond
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Part 2 - Harold
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Part 3 - Bobbie
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Epilogue
About the Author