Loving Time (10 page)

But the suit told only half the story. The other half was projected in the authority of her walk on nice slender legs, her flawless makeup, the comma of her dark hair. April was impressed. This woman looked very young to have such a high position.

“I’m Dr. Treadwell,” she told them in a soft voice.

“Sergeant Sanchez and Detective Woo,” Mike murmured.

The doctor glanced from one to the other and sat down at
her desk. Her second-in-command with the fading blond hair and exemplary cheekbones didn’t have to be told what to do. He had retreated to the door and left without saying good-bye.

“You have some information?” Dr. Treadwell said.

“We found the body of Raymond Cowles in his apartment this morning,” Mike told her.

The sharp intake of Dr. Treadwell’s breath drew some saliva down the wrong tube. She began coughing.

“Would you like some water?” April asked, thinking this was the second woman today to gag over the death of Raymond Cowles.

Dr. Treadwell raised her hand, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. This is a shock.… ”

“Take your time. I can imagine it must be very difficult to lose a patient like this,” Mike said.

Dr. Treadwell frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The wife of the deceased told us you were his psychiatrist.”

Clara Treadwell shivered. Her tufted leather chair swung around toward the window. When the chair swung back, her face was composed. She reached into a drawer of her desk, brought out a pocket-size tape recorder, placed it in the middle of her desk.

“Please sit down and tell me what happened.” She indicated the two chairs opposite her.

April glanced at Mike. He smiled at her, inclining his head toward the tape recorder. They sat.

“November first. I’m with Sergeant Sanchez and Detective Woo,” Dr. Treadwell said, her eyes on Mike. “I’d like to establish a record, if you don’t mind, Sergeant.”

The thing was voice-activated. Dr. Treadwell did not touch it. Mike lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. He scratched the ear that had been burned the worst in the explosion last spring. This sure was a switch. Usually they put the tape recorder on the desk and did the interviewing.

“Sergeant, you may begin now.”

Mike said, “At ten-thirty this morning we received a call from Mrs. Cowles.”

Mike told Dr. Treadwell as much as he felt she needed to know, which wasn’t much. He held a lot of information back for a later date. The doctor stopped him from time to time for clarification, as her colleague, Dr. Dickey, had done. But Mike wasn’t telling any more than he absolutely had to. They didn’t have the autopsy yet, didn’t know the cause of death.

As he spoke, Dr. Treadwell’s hand flew up to her eyes, stretching her fingers to cover them both. To April, a person’s eyes were the doors of knowledge. Between the eyes was the pathway to the soul. Dr. Treadwell’s stretched fingers between knowledge and soul could not shield her deep distress from April’s view. The Centre’s director’s face could be blank, but never so deeply blank as those of Asians, who had a much longer history of
save the face or lose the neck
. What April saw behind Dr. Treadwell’s fingers was fear, just as, earlier, April had seen fear in the widow. What was it about the deceased that scared these women so much?

When Mike stopped talking, Dr. Treadwell dropped her hand to the table. Now the eyes were open and sincere in the front, and closed only from behind.

“I want to cooperate with the police in every way,” she told them.

“Thank you. That will make things easier.” Mike smiled.

Dr. Treadwell went on. “But I’m a little uncertain what I’m at liberty to reveal in a matter like this … the ethics of confidentiality … I’ll have to consult a lawyer.”

That was it. Interview over. April glanced at Mike.

“The deceased was your patient,” he said.

Dr. Treadwell shook her head. “Not at the time of his death. As Director of the Centre, I can’t take private patients. Ray Cowles was a patient of mine, years ago. Over a decade ago—more like eighteen years to be exact—”

Abruptly, the doctor stopped talking. She picked up the
tape recorder and turned it around in her hand. “I’m very saddened by Ray’s death, Sergeant. Thank you for telling me.”

Dr. Treadwell gave the two detectives a small, saddened smile and pushed the button to stop the recording. April was right. At the mention of the lawyer, the interview was over. They were dismissed.

M
ike and April exited the Psychiatric Centre and crossed to the no-parking area where they’d left their unit. The sky had thickened into a dense rain cloud that was just beginning to unburden itself in a very fine drizzle. It was colder, too.

At the car, Mike smoothed back his hair and held out the keys. “You want to drive?”

April shook her head. She opened the passenger door and slid in, slamming it harder than she meant to.

Mike jogged around to the driver’s side. Just as he reached for the door handle, the sky opened up. Sheets of fat raindrops plummeted down. He dove into the car, banging the door and sprinkling water all over the front seats, shaking his hands in April’s face.

“Hey, watch that.” Cold on April’s cheeks, the rain felt fresh after the hot dance in the executive offices upstairs. She laughed, relieved to be out of there.

Mike settled in his seat, adding to the musty old car a mix of aromas that included fruity Caribbean aftershave, Old Spice deodorant, and wet wool. He didn’t make a move to start the engine. He was busy with the rain on his face, with his sleek wet hair. The torrent streamed down the windshield, completely blocking the world outside.

This was how he liked it, stuck with April in a very tight space. This was when he was tempted to tell her the stories of his life and ask to hear hers. This was when he most wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. All the windows were fogged up. From outside in or inside out no one could see a thing. He glanced at her, but she was studying the rain pummeling the windshield, didn’t say a thing. He knew if he tried to kiss her, she might take her gun out and kill him. April seemed to think love was some kind of curse. He didn’t know why any woman would be as hard and unyielding as that.

“I’ve decided to move,” he said suddenly.

“When did you decide that?”

He laughed. “This morning. In the shower. I was thinking of you, and I decided it was time to get a place.”

Sitting in the car with the rain hammering at them, April could almost imagine it. The downpour sounded like a shower. She didn’t want to think of Mike without his clothes. “Let’s go. I’ve got a lot to do. I’m hungry. It’s almost two-thirty.”

“What do you think of it?”

She shook her head. “It’s hard to get a shrink to tell a straight story. Even in homicide cases, they always claim patient confidentiality.” She sighed. “Maybe we’ll never know what happened to Cowles.”

“Not that.”

April laughed. “Well, I’m glad you shower, if that’s what you mean. But thinking of me? I don’t know, Mike.… You got a hundred and one girls crazy about you. Why think of me?” She turned to him, her face appropriately blank.

“You’re the detective. You tell me.”

“Nope. I’m not in your head.”

“Yes,” he said. “You are in my head.”

She shifted uneasily. Uh-uh, she wasn’t going for monkey business in a unit. Why didn’t he give it a rest?

“Okay, then, what about you?” he said.

“What about me?”

“You shower or bathe? This is important.”

She made a
tsk
ing noise with her tongue. She knew of officers who had gotten up to things in their units. Knew the cooping places along the Henry Hudson Parkway. Precinct life was practically living together. There would have to be some monkey business among the uniforms. Some of it consensual, some of it not so consensual. Nobody liked to talk about it, but sexual harassment happened. A lot.

As for the detectives, they were so together there were bunk beds down the hall from the squad room for people who didn’t want to go home on night shift-day shift turnarounds.
With the exception of Sergeant Joyce, April was the only woman in the detective squad. Sergeant Joyce went home to her kids. April went home to her parents even if it turned out to be for only two or three hours. She went home, thought about Mike, then came back, saw him, and wanted to get away again. It was weird.

“I’ll tell you what,” April said. “If I’m so much in your head, I’ll think it and you tell me.”

“Fine.”

Although April showered every morning, she thought of all the bath beads and bubble baths lined up on the shelf above her bathtub. She bathed at night and on weekends.

“You do both,” he told her. “Bath and shower. How’s that?”

“Adding the third option gave you only a thirty-three-percent chance of being right.”

“Well?”

Well, she could lie and say he was wrong, but she wasn’t much of a liar. “You’re right,” she admitted.

“Good. You should trust me more.” The rain had slowed to a trickle. With a grin, Mike wiped the fog off the inside of the windshield, then started the car. “So what do you think about my moving out on my own?”

That wasn’t a good question to ask April, who had moved out only as far as the second floor herself. “I don’t know. You ever live alone?”

“Entirely all by myself alone? No.”

“Me neither.”

He swung around in a wide U-turn. “You ever live with that guy—what was his name?—Jimmy?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“You were honest. I asked you a question, you didn’t slide around on it, saying it wasn’t my business. You answered the question.”

“Well, I
didn’t
live with him,” April said, indignant now. “Why would I want you to think I did?”

“Doesn’t mean you weren’t sleeping with him.”

“I’m not a nun.”

“Querida!
I’m relieved.” Mike laughed, then hit the hammer and ran a red light.

“
I
didn’t do it, you fucker. I didn’t do nothing. God gonna come down and she gonna rip your heart out. She gonna give your babies boils and plagues. That’s what she gonna do.” The invective from the woman in the holding cell came out in a long, bitter tirade. When it was over she began again. The woman was wearing three or four layers of clothes, all torn and reeking. She wouldn’t sit down on the bench against the wall. Occasionally she kicked at it.

“There’s roaches in here,” she screamed.

No one denied it.

“Hey, get me out of here. I didn’t do nothing. You put me in jail for
nothing
.” She hung on the bars of the holding cell, trying to get her fat head through. Her face was puffy and blotched. Her stringy hair was tied in a few loose knots that hung down on either side of her face.

The four people in the squad room were on the phone, ignoring her.

“Hey! You. Fucker. God’s gonna rip your heart out.”

Detective Aspirante, at the desk closest to Ginesha, the civilian secretary who answered the phones and took messages, crossed his legs. “Pipe down, can’t you see we’re working here?”

“I can see it. I can see you fuckers working.” The woman started her own private spitting contest. How far out from the bars could she land one?

For a few seconds it was almost peaceful—Ginesha, Aspirante, Mike, April, all talking on the phone, looking out the windows at the rain pounding Eighty-second Street.

“Aw, shit, don’t do that. Come
on
.” Aspirante was on his feet. “That’s disgusting. Jesus.” He looked around for help. “She’s spitting on the fucking floor.”

Sergeant Joyce came out of her office with a file in her hand. “What’s the matter, Aspirante?”

The woman in the holding cell screamed at Joyce. “He hit me. That fucker hit me.”

Joyce made a disgusted face at Aspirante. He shook his head.

“Oh, no. I didn’t even bring her in. Healy brought her in.”

“He knocked me down and raped me, too. That’s the one.” The woman pointed at Aspirante. “He’s a cop. I knew he was a cop. God’s gonna rip his head off. She is.”

“What’s her story?” Joyce demanded.

“Some old guy crossing Broadway stumbled into her grocery cart. She was napping on a bench. Heard the cans rattle in the cart, got up, and knocked him flat with a broom handle. Broke his arm with it.”

“Get her out of here.” Joyce turned back to her office. “We got a raper coming in.” She went into her office, kicking the door closed behind her.

“Hey, Woo …” Aspirante began.

April listened to the voice on the phone, ignoring Aspirante’s approach. “Well, when is he coming in? Uh-uh, I see.”

“Hey, Woo. The Sergeant wants you to get the Broom Lady out of here.”

April swung her chair all the way around to face the wall and the window, ignoring him.

Mike hung up. “What’s your problem, Johnnie?”

“She spit on the floor.” Aspirante directed his attention to three fat gray lugies on the floor.

“I got to pee. I got to pee. Get me outta here. I got to pee. I mean it. I really got to.”

“Hey, Woo. The lady’s got to pee. Take care of it, will you?”

“Yes, you have my number. Give me a call if you think of anything else.” April rang off. She turned to Aspirante and spoke in a quiet, hard voice.

“Don’t do that again.” She enunciated clearly. “Didn’t you
see I was on the phone?” She looked up at him. It was a long way to the sneer. Aspirante was about six feet two, weighed about two hundred and thirty, maybe forty, pounds. Of that maybe an ounce or two was intelligence.

“You were on the phone?”

April stood up. Now it was five five to six two. “I’m off the phone now,” she said evenly.

Aspirante thrust one hip out as if to stop her from getting away if that was her intention and looked way down at her, truculent. “Well, while you were on the phone we got ourselves a crisis. The lady here has to ur-in-ate. Then the Sergeant wants her out of here.”

“It’s not my call.”