Angel Face

by Suzanne Forster

  * * *

  JORDAN found Teri Benson in the on-call room. She was throwing things in a duffel bag and talking to herself in low, angry tones. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could imagine. The cardiac unit was still buzzing about her humiliation in the OR, and most of them weren’t unhappy that Teri Benson’s halo was bent.

  Her stethoscope wasn’t in great shape, either. It was in the refuse bin, hanging onto the side by a chrome ear tip. Not by accident, he suspected.

  “Got the day off?” he asked.

  “Or a year.” She stuffed a box of opened baking soda in the bag. “I’m leaving California General.”

  “And possibly medicine?”

  She looked up with a stricken expression that told him he was right. “How did you know that?” she asked.

  “I’ve been there. I made some world-class mistakes when I was a senior surgical resident, and I figured I’d better leave before they threw me out. The thing is, every doctor makes mistakes, Benson. Big ones. Sometimes you lose patients. And sometimes it’s your fault.”

  “This is not about what happened in the OR.”

  “Then what’s it about?”

  She threw some more things in the bag, making it clear she didn’t want to talk. But Jordan had decided he wasn’t leaving until she did. Finally, she shot a glance his way. She looked so distressed he wanted to reach out and steady her.

  “Dr. Carpenter,” she blurted, “you don’t know how badly I wanted to let you take the rap for what happened in your office last night. I kept thinking, He screwed up! Finally!”

  Maybe this wasn’t a good time to tell her how many people were saying the same thing about her? Jordan would have chuckled, but he didn’t want to upset her any more. “You’re human, Doctor. We all are, and humans can be petty and envious.”

  “Or they can be deadly, like Ron Laird.” She shuddered. “And I was only a couple steps behind him. I’ve been waiting like a vulture for you to make a misstep, any misstep. Do you know that I actually debated whether or not to report the paramedics?”

  There’d always been tension between him and Teri. He just hadn’t realized it was so tense. “But you did report them,” he said. “Actually, you saved my behind, if you want to know the truth. Based on your description, the police picked up one of the paramedics, and it looks like he’s going to be a key witness.”

  Jordan had seen Teri that morning down at City Hall being interviewed by various members of the task force, and that was part of the reason he’d come looking for her now, to thank her for her presence of mind in a crisis. He’d left his office last night believing a patient might have died because of his negligence. She could have taken advantage of that with little risk to herself. If the truth came out, she could easily have claimed she’d been fooled, just as Jordan had. But she didn’t. That showed a functioning conscience and more strength of character than she wanted to admit.

  “Leaving medicine won’t solve your problem,” he told her.

  “It will if I’m in it for the wrong reasons. If I want to be a famous doctor, I should look for work on a soap opera.”

  “How about a good doctor, one who saves lives?”

  “That would be you,” she said pointedly. “Me, I want to kill people, especially the ones who block my career path.”

  She sighed heavily and tossed aside the sweater she’d been folding and refolding. “I owe you an apology.”

  Jordan toughened his stance. “You owe me nothing, but you do owe medicine something. Don’t run from this, Benson. Learn from it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the pep talk, but nothing has changed. I’d still love to steamroller you flat on my way to top, and as long as I feel that way, I don’t belong here.”

  Jordan rolled his eyes, hoping to give her the full effect of his skepticism. “Think you might have wanted me out of the way because I was in your way? You didn’t imagine it, Teri. There were times when I was blocking your path. Delegating has never been my strong suit, but this mess taught me something, too. Talent needs room, and you’re a talented surgeon.”

  He hesitated, surprised at how difficult it was to say what needed to be said. “I don’t want you to go, Doctor. I need your help here.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. She cleared her throat, but couldn’t seem to get her voice back. “You’d be willing to trust me after what I just told you?”

  “I trust you because you did tell me. If you want to change my mind, you’ll have to come up with something better than homicidal fantasies. We all have those.”

  He had no intention of letting her respond, and she didn’t seem to know what to say, anyway, especially when he pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and offered it to her. “Looks like you’re going to be needing one of these.”

  Now she was completely bewildered.

  Jordan had found the instrument in an opened desk drawer, along with a note from Angel Face, telling him to meet her in the storeroom across from Exam Three. Apparently, it was supposed to have led him to the dead body, which as it turned out, he had no problem finding on his own. Jordan had turned the note in as evidence but not the stethoscope. He’d never been a big believer in fate, but it could be that was starting to change. For some reason, he hadn’t been able to relinquish the instrument. Maybe this was the reason.

  “That’s the one your parents gave you, isn’t it?” Teri asked. “The stethoscope of legend? I couldn’t possibly take it.”

  “Good, because I’m not giving it to you. It’s on lifetime loan. Use it and make us all proud. Make yourself proud.”

  Still she didn’t touch the stethoscope. “Are you leaving?” Distress flooded back into her weary features, and Jordan was touched. That was new, too. He’d never particularly cared what people thought, which was probably why he’d stepped on so many toes.

  “Cutting down,” he told her. “I want more time for research and a few other things.” He smiled, probably giving himself away. He wanted time for a sleepyheaded ex–lust murderer.

  A beeping signal emanated from Teri’s coat pocket. They both knew what it was and laughed.

  Gingerly, Teri took his offering and draped it around her neck. “You know this makes me feel even lousier, don’t you?”

  “It’s supposed to make you feel obligated,” Jordan shot back. “Go to work, Benson! Your pager’s going off.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “LOVE?”

  “Children and kittens, anything innocent.”

  “Hate?”

  “The abuse of anything innocent.”

  “Doctors?”

  “Better than the alternative, I suppose.”

  “Dr. Fremont, please keep your answers to one word. That is the object of these free-association exercises.”

  Angela smiled, pleased at having the last word. She’d decided to turn the tables on her psychiatrist and play the free-association game with her. The doctor had been a good sport about it, and Angela had liked her answers. They could have been her own, she realized. The gnawing sense of dread Angela lived with had eased greatly in the last twenty-four hours, and she’d decided to take Silver’s advice and have a session with the doctor.

  The more closure she could get, the better, obviously.

  Dr. Fremont’s blue-framed glasses picked up the light from the window as she left her desk and came to sit by Angela on the couch.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I know your trust has been shaken in everyone, including me, and I’m grateful for a second chance.”

  Angela was touched and found herself wanting to extend a hand to the other woman. But suddenly it felt like the space between them had become the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t a lack of trust on Angela’s part. It was something else she couldn’t put into words, her own sense of inadequacy perhaps. Somewhere in the dark inner forest lurked the fear that she might be rejected. Or worse, that she would be accepted and wouldn’t know what to do.

  “I’m glad I’m here, too,” sh
e said and fell silent.

  “What else shall we talk about today?”

  In fact, Angela’s session was nearly over, but there were several things still unresolved in her mind where the Angel Face case was concerned, and she knew Dr. Fremont was working with the task force.

  “Do you have any idea what will happen to Peter Brandt?” she asked.

  “I understand he’s been offered immunity to testify against Laird, and he’ll probably take it. His main role in the company over the years has been damage control. Laird got them into scrapes, and Peter got them out.”

  Angela had always had that sense of it, too. “Silver told me that Peter knew nothing about Angel Face.”

  “He didn’t,” the doctor affirmed. “Laird told him a whole different lie. He said the CIA was after you because you were a national security risk, and if Peter didn’t deal with you first, they would. He had Peter believing that you were as dangerous as Adam, that you could bring down governments.”

  “Because of the information Adam gave me?”

  “Yes, but it was all a lie. Adam’s design was flawed. Laird secretly tried to re-create the weapon using his formula, and it didn’t work. Adam wasn’t killed because he could supply third-world regimes with deadly weapons. He was a loose cannon who could rat on SmartTech at any time, and since Laird never knew how much Adam had told you, you had to go, too.”

  “Was it Peter who held him off?”

  “For a while, yes. Peter didn’t discover how Adam died until after you disappeared. He was appalled and demanded that all research in biowarfare be suspended. He told Laird you were off limits. He was going to find you and rehabilitate you himself. He argued that you were a classic survivor personality, and the company could profit by studying you. But the truth was, he was in love with you, Angela. Hopelessly.”

  Angela didn’t feel like much of a survivor presently. She felt sad.

  “Peter never intended that you be harmed,” Dr. Fremont added. “His plan was to relocate you and change your identity, which meant, of course, that he had to give you up.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to turn Laird in?”

  “People don’t do what’s easy, Angela. They do what they have to, and apparently Peter Brandt and Ron Laird knew too much about each other. Peter couldn’t bring down Laird without bringing down himself.”

  “And Sammy, what happened to him?”

  “Sammy’s been questioned and released. His only crime was overzealousness. Your disappearance had him so concerned he broke into your E-mail account and found the appointment schedule for your field interviews. He went to several of the addresses looking for you, including Jordan Carpenter’s.”

  Angela ought to have been grateful that people cared enough to take such risks for her, but her heart was burdened, and the reason had nothing to do with the case. It was deeply personal.

  “Now let me ask you a question, Angela. What about your doctor? Is everything all right with you and Jordan?”

  Dr. Fremont was a perceptive woman. This was really what Angela had come to talk about. “No, everything isn’t all right,” she admitted.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is he’s wonderful, Dr. Fremont. He’s perfect. I couldn’t ask for more. But he deserves more.”

  The psychiatrist sat forward, concerned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m still haunted by violent fantasies and may be for the rest of my life. I can’t look in a mirror without wanting to scrub away this face. How can I expect him to love and accept me as I am, if I can’t?”

  “You don’t believe he loves you as you are?”

  “He doesn’t know who I am. He’s in love with a picture of who I was.”

  “Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you, Angela, or that he couldn’t love the woman he comes to know.”

  Angela stared at the blue plaid pattern in the carpet, wondering if she could go on. This part was hard. Too hard. It cut straight to the heart of her.

  “Yes, perhaps he could come to love me, but it would be the wrong kind of love—” She floundered for an example. “He has a cockatiel with clipped wings. It’s a beautiful thing, but it can’t fly. It has to be carried everywhere, taken from room to room. What if he came to love me like that?”

  Angela looked up, her heart breaking. “I can’t fly, either, Dr. Fremont. And I don’t want to be loved that way, out of duty or pity.”

  “Maybe it isn’t either he feels, Angela. Maybe it’s compassion?”

  Angela shook her head. She couldn’t settle for that, and Jordan shouldn’t, either. She wanted love and passion. She wanted fire and joy, but first she had to find those things within herself. She had to be able to look at herself in the mirror and believe that the world would not be a better place without her.

  She had caused so much pain.

  * * *

  “NO, I don’t understand. Tell me again why you can’t be with me, Angela. Make me understand this time.”

  The midafternoon heat had expanded to fill the porch of Jordan’s house until it felt like a physical presence. What little breeze there was seemed to get trapped in the lush foliage. Leaves rustled soothingly, but the air could not escape.

  The sliding rocker Angela sat in whistled softly with each push of her feet. Jordan wasn’t even sure she knew she was rocking. It looked like one of those mindless repetitive motions meant to keep certain feelings at bay.

  He stood by the porch railing, next to the bunch of lilacs he’d foolishly picked in honor of her visit.

  “I have work to do,” she said, “work on me. I don’t know how else to explain it. I feel unfinished, and before I can be of any use to anyone, especially myself, I need the missing parts.”

  He considered that for a moment. “You could be talking about the sensor I shelved because I was concerned it would be misused. As it turned out, I should have followed through on it myself.”

  “Yes, it’s exactly like that, only I allowed myself to be misused, and it happened not because of who I was but because of the way I looked, this face.” She touched the back of her fingers to her mouth. “I have to make my peace with that before I can go on.”

  “You couldn’t do that here?”

  It was a moment or two before she spoke. “I can’t.”

  He could hear the heartache in her voice, and his throat tightened, especially since she couldn’t seem to look at him.

  “Did you know that after awhile, a bird with clipped wings stops trying to fly?”

  “God, Angela.”

  She said nothing to that, just glanced at him with an expression of such sweet anguish that it left him speechless, too.

  “I’m coming back,” she said. “I don’t know when that will be. Or if you can wait, but—”

  He understood. Or he was trying to understand. “You have to try those wings, see if they work.”

  She rose and came to him. He pulled her close, and she whispered, “I love you, Jordan.”

  “I love you, too. Stay with me.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “Angela!”

  She stepped back to look at him, and her chin began to tremble. “Do one thing for me?” she asked.

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Don’t let the flame go out.”

  He steadied her as she knelt to pick up her backpack. By the time she had it on and securely arranged, she also had herself under control again. There would be no tears, no histrionics. But Jordan felt his heart twist with both pleasure and pain as she flicked back some imaginary hair. It was a lovely, frantic gesture, and futile, of course. No matter what else about her might change, no matter who she discovered she was, he hoped she never stopped doing that.

  “Say good-bye to Birdy for me.”

  “I will. I’ll do that.”

  Jordan would have no problem keeping his promises. He could explain to the bird why she’d had to leave, and the flame would not go out. Never. But a part of him died whe
n she turned and walked away. This was what Ned Jenkins must have felt when he thought he’d lost his wife. It was what Jordan had been missing in his life—a partner, a soul mate—someone he cared about so deeply that to lose her would render life meaningless.

  “Good-bye, Birdy . . . good-bye . . .”

  Jordan was roused from his thoughts by the melancholy refrain. It was Birdy herself, he realized, croaking softly from the living room.

  Jordan had no idea how long he’d been sitting on the porch steps, but the sun was lower in the sky and the ache in his shoulders made him sit up and roll the stiffness out of them. Feeling as if he’d aged several decades, he got himself up and went to the kitchen in search of a box of sunflower seeds. Penny could eat the bag of Total Diet cockatiel food herself. It wasn’t always the body that needed to be fed. Sometimes it was the soul.

  By the time Jordan reached the kitchen, he’d realized what he was facing. His crystal ball had cracked, and he couldn’t see the immediate future beyond an endless blur of minutes. Not days or hours. He was going to feel the emptiness minute by minute. He was going to miss her that much.

  A summer afternoon in June, one year later. . . .

  “Varoooom varooom varooom.”

  The noise of revving engines came from the living room. Jordan ignored the din. It was Birdy, hinting that she wanted to go for a ride in the car.

  “Not this trip, Birdy.” He dropped one last pair of jeans in his suitcase and zipped up the bag. Two pair of blue jeans, one pair of khaki Dockers, a replacement Lakers jersey, and three crewneck tees. Not a suit in sight. He wasn’t going to a conference or educational seminar. There was an annual summer music festival in Ojai, and he’d always wanted to go. Maybe he’d even pick up a guitar and learn some tunes, give Springsteen some competition.

  Jordan grabbed his bag from the bed, his V-neck sweater from the chair, and carried them into the living room. “The baby-sitter will be here any minute,” he told Birdy. “You be nice to her now.”

  “Dead meat,” Birdy chirped with an innocent twitch of her tail.