Sergeant Joyce’s face also wrinkled with puzzlement. “He thought she’d committed suicide, then confessed to killing her?”
“I know he doesn’t make a lot of sense,” April muttered. “But I think he’s telling the truth about this.”
“How does he know it was a woman?”
“She was wearing flats.”
Sergeant Joyce thought it over.
“Uh-huh,” she said finally.
“He says transvestites always wear heels.”
“Uh-huh. Sure, I knew that. Whose damn pizza is this?” Sergeant Joyce finally acknowledged the pizza.
Mike shrugged.
“Don’t look at me,” April said. “I don’t have time to eat.”
Like a lightbulb, Joyce switched off the pizza again. “Okay, so where are we?”
“Block remembers the red hair and a long skirt,” April said.
“What about the dog?”
“He didn’t say anything about the dog.”
“Can he identify her?”
“Maybe.”
“Our forensic dentist took a look at Rachel Stark’s ankle. He says it looks like an animal bite to him. He wants to make a mold of the dog’s teeth to see if there’s a match.”
Sergeant Joyce shook her head. “Do you have the dog?”
“No. Something else came up. The Honiger-Stanton sister you’ve got in your office also has a poodle. I went by her building. She wasn’t there, but I talked to the doorman.”
“She wasn’t there because she went over to see her sister,” Mike threw in.
“So it appears,” April said, still upset because she hadn’t taken the time to get Camille’s dog on the way over.
“But they wouldn’t let her in. So she came over here.”
Aspirante charged into the locker room. “You didn’t touch my pizza, did you?”
“Yeah, we got hungry. We ate it,” Mike said.
“Shit, you didn’t!” Aspirante punched a locker. It made a nice metallic bang.
“It didn’t have your name on it,” Mike said, deadpan.
“It was mine.” Aspirante pushed by him and opened the box. Three congealing slices with pepperoni and mush-rooms were neatly arranged in the middle.
Aspirante turned away from Sergeant Joyce and mouthed the words “fuck you” at Sanchez.
Mike nodded.
“Cut the shit,” Joyce said sharply. “We just left a suspect in the office.”
Where the case file was. Very smart.
They trooped to the office. By the time they got there, they had a plan.
April turned to Mike before they went in. “How’s Braun?”
Mike shook his head. “He’ll probably limp for life—and get a citation. He said he missed you, wanted to know why you weren’t there at the hospital, paying your respects.”
“Nice. What did you tell him?”
“I said you were busy, but you were planning to come by first minute you got.”
“Oh, wonderful. I’ll remember that.”
Sergeant Joyce opened the door quickly. Milicia sat there with her legs crossed the other way, drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair, trying to look as if she hadn’t made a move since they left. The Maggie Wheeler file was where Sergeant Joyce had put it, under a stack of color-coded forms with her empty coffee cup that said LIFE IS A BEACH on top.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Miss Stanton?” Sergeant Joyce sat down at her desk.
“I want to see my sister. I’m extremely worried about her.”
“I understand, but we need your help first. Can you tell us a little about your dogs?”
Milicia stared. “What?”
“Your dogs. You and your sister have little poodles. We’re going to need to know all about those dogs.”
A muscle jumped in Milicia’s cheek. She didn’t speak for a long time. It didn’t take a genius to see she wasn’t prepared for any dog questions.
April glanced at Mike. His mustache twitched with the ghost of a smile. The ghost struck her in the heart. She left the room to make a call.
69
Max was having his first session since he got back from his vacation in Paris.
“Bonjour,” he said with a long face as he walked in the door. “It’s shit to be back.”
“Thanks very much, and the same to you,” Jason replied.
Although Jason was several years older than Max, they had attended the same medical school and shared some of the same professors. Max was a surgeon who had been referred to Jason about five years ago when he plunged into a deep depression after losing a patient during a complicated breast reconstruction. His treatment with Jason had gone well. They’d terminated three years later.
The reason for his return to therapy, Max reported, was that his second wife, Lydia, wanted to get a divorce and take their three-year-old daughter, the only child he had, to another state to live. Max was bitter and didn’t understand what was wrong with Lydia.
Since their last meeting, Max’s hair had turned white. He’d gained about forty pounds, and was grossly overweight now. His face was round and full and looked like a bowl of vanilla pudding. Jason had been shocked. And that wasn’t the only change. When Jason knew him he was married to a lovely woman called Alison who had worked in a bank to support him through his many years of training. The last Jason heard, Max was doing well, and Alison was quitting work so they could have a family.
Instead, he divorced Alison to marry the secretary he was sharing with his two partners in the practice. Now he was furious with Lydia for leaving him. And for insisting he purchase a big house for her in Virginia.
“So what went wrong?” Jason asked after he had heard the whole story.
All right, Max admitted, so he was fucking his surgical nurse. What was the big deal? Why did Lydia have to make this whole big thing about it? Why couldn’t she just move into a modest apartment nearby where he could see his daughter every day? Why did she have to be a bitch about everything? Why couldn’t she shut her mouth and just be nice? That had been the crux of his complaint for the past several months. He had to get to his complaint. He never started with it. And it would be a very long time before he could get past his complaints to the issue of his behavior.
True to form, Max lay down on the couch and started describing in minute detail the surgical procedure he had performed earlier that morning. Then he talked about Paris. Pamela, the surgical nurse, got some kind of bug and threw up the whole time. Max had found it all pretty disgusting.
Jason stifled a yawn. It was his birthday, and he wasn’t feeling sympathetic. He looked at the clock on his desk and wondered when Emma would call. As he was wondering, the phone rang.
“I have to take this,” Jason said. “I’m screening my calls this morning.” He picked up before the second ring.
“Hi, it’s April. Is this a good time?”
Jason glanced at Max’s highly polished loafers at the foot of his analyst’s couch. One was crossed over the other. The one on top jiggled impatiently. “I have a minute.”
“We have a problem. Our only witness thinks the murderer was a woman. Is there any way you could come over and question Camille again?”
Jason’s adrenaline kicked in. He didn’t have time to be so deeply involved in this. He was supposed to meet Charles in two hours, and he had another patient before that. He looked at the clock again. Max’s foot continued to jiggle. “It’s not convenient,” he murmured.
He didn’t leave his office unless it was a medical emergency, a question of life or death. That was his rule. He never broke it.
“Murder isn’t convenient for anybody. Look, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t urgent.”
“I know.” Jason hesitated. He owed her. He’d probably be paying for the rest of his life.