Sacred Sins (30 page)

“I won't!” Lydia shouted at her. “It's my room and I won't clean it up.”

“Then I'd be careful where I walked, so I didn't cut my feet on the glass.”

“I hate you.” When Tess didn't even wince, Lydia shouted it more loudly. “I hate you! Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you very well. But I wonder if you're shouting at me, Lydia, or yourself.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Her hand worked up and down like a jack hammer to crush out her cigarette. “You come in here week after week with your smug self-righteous looks and your pretty, upscale suits and wait for me to strip my soul. Well, I won't. Do you think I want to talk to some ice maiden who has her life all worked out? Miss Perfect Society who treats basket cases as a hobby then goes to her just-so home and forgets about them.”

“I don't forget about them, Lydia.”

Tess's voice was quiet, a direct contrast, but in the hall, Ben heard it.

“You make me sick.” Lydia heaved herself off the bed for the first time that day. “I can't stand the sight of you with your Italian shoes and little gold pins and that ‘I never sweat’ perfection.”

“I'm not perfect, Lydia, none of us is. None of us has to be to earn love and respect.”

The tears started, but Tess didn't rise to offer comfort. It wasn't time. “What do you know about mistakes?
What the hell do you know about how I lived? Dammit, I made things work.
I
did.”

“Yes, you did. But nothing works forever if you refuse to allow for flaws.”

“I was as good as you. I was better. I had clothes like yours, and a home. I hate you for coming in here and reminding me. Get out. Just get out and leave me alone.”

“All right.” Tess rose, taking the file with her. “I'll be back next week. Sooner, if you ask for me.” She walked to the door and turned. “You still have a home, Lydia.” The nurse stood in the doorway, holding the dustpan and mop. Tess took them and set them against the inside wall. “I'll have them send down a fresh vase for those flowers.”

Tess walked out the door and shut her eyes a moment. That kind of violent dislike, even when it came from illness and not from the heart, was never easy to take.

“Doc?”

Tess shook herself back and opened her eyes. Ben was there, a few steps away. “You're early.”

“Yeah.” He came to her and wrapped a hand around her arm. “What the hell are you doing in a place like this?”

“My job. You'll have to wait a minute. I have to enter some things in this file.” She walked down to the nurses' station, checked her watch, and began to write.

Ben watched her. Right now she seemed totally unaffected by the nasty little scene he'd overheard. Her face was calm as she wrote in what he was sure was a very professional hand. But he'd seen that one quick unguarded moment when she'd stepped into the hall. Not unaffected, but impossibly controlled. He didn't like it, just as he didn't like this place with its clean white walls and blank, miserable faces.

She handed the file back to the nurse, in an under-tone said a few things he assumed referred to the woman who'd just berated her, then glanced at her watch again.

“I'm sorry you had to wait,” Tess said when she came back. “I have to get my coat. Why don't you meet me outside?”

When she came out, he was standing at the edge of the grass, smoking steadily. “You never gave me a chance on the phone to tell you I didn't want you to bother with all this. I've been getting myself to and from the clinic for a long time.”

He dropped the cigarette and carefully crushed it. “Why did you take all that crap from her?”

Tess drew a long breath before she linked her arm with his. “Where are you parked?”

“That's psychiatrist shit, answering questions with questions.”

“Yes. Yes, it is. Look, if she didn't attack me, I wouldn't be doing my job. It's the first time we've really gotten anywhere since I've started seeing her. Now, where are you parked? It's cold.”

“Over here.” More than happy to leave the clinic behind, he began to walk with her. “He called you again.”

“Yes, right after you did.” She wanted badly to treat that with the same professional ease she had the patients in the clinic. “Were they able to trace it?”

“Narrowed it down to a couple blocks. No one saw anything. We're still working on it.”

“His Laura is dead.”

“I figured that much out.” He put his hand on the car door, then released it again. “The same way I figured out you're his next target.”

She didn't grow pale or shudder. He hadn't expected her to. She simply nodded, accepting, then put her hand on his arm. “Would you do me a favor?”

“I can give it a shot.”

“Let's not talk about it tonight. At all.”

“Tess—”

“Please. I have to go to the station with you tomorrow and meet with Captain Harris. Isn't that soon enough to hash all this over?”

He put cold, ungloved hands on her face. “I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I don't care what I have to do.”

She smiled, lifting her hands to his wrist. “Then I don't have anything to worry about, do I?”

“I care about you,” he said carefully. It was as close to a declaration as he'd ever come with a woman. “I want you to know that.”

“Then take me home, Ben.” She turned her lips into his palm. “And show me.”

T
HE MAINTENANCE MAN
was glumly mopping up a mud-colored puddle in the hallway outside the squad room. Under the heavy scent of pine cleaner hung trails of more human odors. The machine that dispensed coffee black, coffee light, and when its mood was generous, hot chocolate, leaned like a wounded soldier against its companion which handled Hershey bars and Baby Ruths. A platoon of Styrofoam cups littered the tile. Ben steered Tess around the worst of it.

“Coffee machine blow up again?”

The man with dusty gray overalls and dusty gray hair looked over the handle of his mop. “You guys gotta quit kicking these machines. Look at that dent.” He slopped more coffee and Lysol as he gestured. “Criminal.”

“Yeah.” Ben sent a look of dislike at the candy machine. He'd added a fresh dent there himself after he'd lost another fifty cents the day before. “Somebody ought to investigate. Watch your shoes, Doc.” He led her into the squad room, where at eight o'clock phones were already shrilling.

“Paris.” Lowenstein chucked a paper cup toward her
trash basket where it caught the rim and flipped in. “Captain's daughter had her baby last night.”

“Last night?” He stopped by his desk to look for messages. The one from his mother reminded him that it had been nearly a month since he'd checked in.

“At 10:35
P.M.
”

“Shit, couldn't she have waited a couple of days? I had the fifteenth in the pool.” There was still a chance, he figured, if she'd cooperated and had a boy. “What'd she have?”

“Girl, seven pounds, seven ounces. Jackson hit it on the nose.”

“Figures.”

She rose, giving Tess a quick professional sweep. Lowenstein judged the price of the snakeskin bag in the ballpark of a hundred fifty and felt a small, harmless tug of envy. “Good morning, Dr. Court.”

“Good morning.”

“Ah, if you'd like coffee or anything, we're getting it out of the conference room until things are cleared up. We'll be meeting in there in a few minutes.” The perfume was French, the real stuff, Lowenstein deduced as she took a quick, discreet sniff.

“Thanks, I'll wait.”

“Why don't you have a seat until the captain's ready?” Ben suggested, glancing around for a clean chair. “I've got to return a couple of these calls.”

There was a sudden spurt of obscenities from the hall, then a metallic crash. Tess turned to see the dirty water from the bucket stream down the hall. Then all hell broke loose.

A stringy black man with his hands cuffed behind him got as far as the doorway when a man in an overcoat caught him in a headlock.

“Look at my floor!” Almost dancing with fury, the
maintenance man jumped into view. He swung his mop, spraying everything. “I'm going to the union. See if I don't.”

The prisoner bucked and squirmed like a landed trout while the officer in charge tried to hang on. “Get that wet mop out of my face.” Panting and a bit red-faced, he tried to avoid the next shower while the black man sent up a high, keening wail.

“Shit, Mullendore, can't you control your prisoners?” Without hurry Ben walked over to assist when the black man managed to sink his teeth into Mullendore's hand. There was a low growl of a curse before the prisoner burst free and ran headlong into Ben. “Jesus, give me a hand, will you? This guy's an animal.” Mullendore made a grab, sandwiching the prisoner between them. For a moment they looked as though they were ready to rhumba. Then all three men lost their footing on the damp floor and went down in a heap.

Beside Tess, Lowenstein watched with her hands comfortably on her hips.

“Shouldn't you break it up?” Tess wondered aloud.

“The guy's cuffed and weighs maybe a hundred pounds. They'll just be a minute.”

“You ain't putting me in a cell!” The black man rolled and squirmed and screamed, and managed to bring his knee solidly into Ben's groin. In reflex, Ben jerked his elbow and caught him under the chin. As his body went limp, Ben collapsed on it, with Mullendore panting beside them.

“Thanks, Paris.” Mullendore held up his wounded hand to study the teeth marks. “Christ, I'm probably going to need a shot. The guy went crazy when we walked into the building.”

Ben managed to rise to his hands and knees. His breath whistled as he sucked it in, and left a hole burning
in his gut. He tried to speak, dragged in another whistling breath, and tried again. “Sonofabitch put my balls into my stomach.”

“I'm real sorry about that, Ben.” Mullendore took out a handkerchief and wrapped it around the bite. “He looks real peaceful now, though.”

With a grunt Ben pushed himself off to sit on the floor, braced by the wall. “For Christ's sake get him into holding before he comes to.”

He sat there as Mullendore hefted the unconscious prisoner. The cold, coffee-stained wash water had soaked through the knees and thighs of his jeans and splattered his shirt. Even when it soaked through the seat, he continued to sit, wondering why the knee that had connected with his pride had been so bony.

As he headed down the hall for a fresh batch of soapy water, the maintenance man rattled his mop in his bucket. “I'm talking to the shop steward. I had that floor almost finished.”

“Tough break.” Ben spared him a look as the pain between his legs sang its way up to his head.

“Don't worry about it, Paris.” Lowenstein leaned on the doorway, carefully avoiding the small river. “Chances are you're still a stallion.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Honey, you know my husband's a jealous man.”

Tess crouched down beside him, giving him a sympathetic tut-tut. Her hand was gentle as she patted his cheek, but her eyes were lit with laughter. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, I'm terrific. I like absorbing my coffee through my skin.”

“Executive branch, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Want to get up?”

“No.” He resisted reaching a hand between his legs to make certain everything was in place.

The laugh wasn't quite muffled as she pressed a hand to her mouth. The long, narrowed look he gave her only made it worse. Her voice hitched and bubbled. “You can't sit here all day. You're sitting in a puddle, and you smell like the floor of a café that hasn't been washed over the weekend.”

“Great bedside manner, Doc.” He took her arm as she fought a losing war against laughter. “One good tug and you're down here with me.”

“Then you'd have all those guilt ramifications to deal with. Not to mention the cleaning bills.”

Ed walked down the hall, still bundled in his outdoor gear. As he avoided the worst of the wet, he dug the rest of his breakfast yogurt out of the carton. Licking the spoon, he stopped in front of his partner. “Morning, Dr. Court.”

“Good morning.” She rose, still swallowing laughter.

“Nice day.”

“Yes, a little cold though.”

“Weatherman said it should hit fifty this afternoon.”

“Oh, you two are a riot,” Ben told them. “A real riot.”

Tess cleared her throat. “Ben … Ben had a little accident.”

Ed's bushy brows lifted as he looked at the stream running down the hall.

“Just keep your sophomoric humor to yourself,” Ben warned.

“Sophomoric.” Ed rolled the word around on his tongue, impressed. He handed his empty carton to Tess, then hooking his hands under Ben's armpits, hauled his partner effortlessly to his feet. “Your pants are wet.”

“I was restraining a prisoner.”

“Yeah? Well, things like this happen in the midst of all that tension and excitement.”

“I'm going to my locker,” he muttered. “Make sure the doctor hasn't hurt herself laughing.” He sloshed, a little spread-legged, down the hall.

Ed took the empty carton and plastic spoon from Tess. “Want some coffee?”

“No,” she managed, strangling a bit on the word. “No, I think I've had enough.”