Camille picked up her puppy and held it tight. Milicia wouldn’t take this puppy from her. No way.
“Don’t touch my puppy,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to touch your puppy. Camille, you can’t go on like this. You have to get some help. Don’t you want to get better?”
Camille saw the words come marching out of Milicia’s mouth like little soldiers on a parade ground. Milicia was looking around nervously as she spoke. Looking for Bouck, who said he’d kill her. Camille let out a little giggle. Bouck was in the chair upstairs. He could come down if he wanted to.
They stood by the door on the edge of the living room. Camille giggled again. For the first time in her life she lived in a place where Milicia was afraid to come in.
“I met someone who can help you get better. Camille, can you hear me?”
Camille shook her head. Couldn’t hear a thing. She saw Milicia’s big red mouth moving, saw the words marching out, wanted to stop them once and for all.
“Will you come with me and meet this man? He knows how to help people like you. Please, Camille. I have a bad feeling. I have this really bad feeling something’s going to happen that can’t be fixed. You don’t want anything to happen, do you?”
Camille looked at Milicia and backed away. “What?”
“What? What?”
“What?”
“You mean, what’s going to happen—I don’t know, Camille. Only you can know,” Milicia said wildly.
Camille saw the tears in Milicia’s eyes, shook her head, holding the puppy tight. Don’t touch.
“You know. Please, I can’t deal with this by myself. You have to help me.”
The stairs creaked. Milicia started. “Oh, God, this place is so creepy. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
Camille had flinched, too.
“I know you’ve taken something. I can see it in your eyes. He gives it to you, doesn’t he? You’re scared of him, aren’t you? You can’t help it. I know it’s not your fault, Camille. Whatever is happening with you, I know it’s not your fault.”
Camille stopped seeing the words come out of Milicia’s big red mouth. Her eyes felt very heavy. She was holding Puppy, leaning against the back of a chair. Stiffly, she moved around to the other side of it and crumpled into the chair, closing her eyes. Puppy stretched out across Camille’s lap and put her head down.
16
The phone rang. It was seven in the morning. A thick fog blanketed the street and Jason’s head. It always took him a half hour to wake up, and he wasn’t there yet. His second cup of coffee sat on the counter in front of him, black as ink. He had forgotten to buy milk for the third straight day.
He yawned and picked up on the second ring. “Dr. Frank.”
“Hi, it’s Charles. Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I was out late. What’s up?”
Jason snapped into focus. “Just wanted to thank you for Sunday. Great day. Congratulations on the house, it’s really something.”
“Glad you like it. We hope you’ll come out often. You know Brenda thinks the world of you.”
“I think the world of her, too. Listen, ah, about your architect, Milicia.”
Charles laughed. “So that’s what’s up, you old rogue. I should have known.”
“Just wanted to know what your take on her is,” Jason said.
“Since when do you need that?”
“She’s building a house for you, Charles. You’ve been working closely with her for some time.…”
“Over a year.”
Could have fooled me, Jason thought. He hadn’t heard a word about it until the house was half up.
“So?” Jason prompted.
“So she’s a beautiful and talented girl. Go for it, you old dog.”
“That’s what you always say.” The last thing Jason was was a dog, but he didn’t want to explore the subject with Charles. “Aside from looks and talent, what do you think of her?”
“I don’t really know her that well.” Charles paused. “She’s certainly powerful. Gets what she wants … There is something about her that’s—”
“What?”
“I don’t know, a little offputting. Something that doesn’t quite fit.”
“Oh?” That was interesting. “Like the way she dresses, the way she acts?”
“No, not the way she dresses. She is one of those phallic women though. Go for it.”
“Same old Charles. So what doesn’t fit?”
“Hmmm, research, old pal? Or something bothering you about her?”
“Call it research, Charles. What about the way she thinks?”
“No, it’s not her behavior, and not the way she thinks. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just a feeling.”
“Thanks.”
“Have I helped you?” Charles sounded doubtful.
“Oh, yeah, you’ve helped me.”
“Well, good luck, and let’s get together soon.” Charles rang off.
The inky coffee was cold. Jason poured it down the sink and tightened the knot on his tie. It was a nice deep blue with red French horns on it, the first tie Jason’s fingers had touched when he reached in the closet for his tie rack that morning.
He rinsed out the coffee cup and left it in the sink. His stomach growled. He ignored it. He was thinking that Charles always knew what was off about somebody. His not being sure about Milicia might mean simply that Charles couldn’t relate to the powerful aspect of her. But the concept of falseness might come from the woman herself. It was something to think about. The carriage clock on the hall table chimed the hour. It was fifteen minutes late. Jason sighed. He didn’t have time to go out and get milk before his first patient showed up at seven-thirty.
17
The alarm didn’t have to scream at April for her to know it was time to wake up. She always heard the click before the alarm sounded. Sometimes she was up before the click. Last night she had fallen asleep studying her notes, and now their contents were the first thing she thought of as she pulled herself out of bed.
No one was allowed to take anything home from a case. All evidence had to be carefully labeled and locked up. Only thing you could take home was your notes. April took a lot of notes. She studied them at night, working on questions, angles, speculations, hypotheses. Every case to her was like being in training for the police Olympics. Every morning she started thinking before she could see. That morning she was thinking, who killed Maggie Wheeler? Was it a random thing—some crazy off the street—or somebody involved with the girl herself?
April drank some water, pulled on her tights, and started exercising. Last night she’d had Maggie’s address book copied, took the photocopy home with her, and made a few calls. She was rewarded for that bit of ingenuity by not being able to get through to anybody. She tried always to do things right. There was a rule of procedure and a reason for everything the department did. But doing everything right took a lot of extra time and wasn’t always so easy to do.
Not everything happened the way it was supposed to. For one thing, no one was supposed to go into a crime scene but the cops who caught the run and the two crime-scene people. The catching cops were supposed to rope off the area and keep everyone out, but it didn’t work that way. Call came in on a homicide like this, and twenty, maybe thirty people from the bureau wandered through, wanting to see the corpses and check out the murder scene. Problem was thirty cops and detectives wandering through a murder scene couldn’t help but contaminate the evidence quite a bit.
No way could anyone keep the bureau out.
In the Wheeler case ten squad cars rolled up before Crime Scene got there. The new Captain of the precinct, an uptight Irishman of the old school who wore blue shirts with white collars, and half a dozen ranking officers from the Two-O were among those “having a look.”