by Radclyffe
“Nothing specific, not yet,” Sloan admitted. “But I’m prioritizing regional credit card activity and high-speed accounts, and Jason has been mostly working the local bulletin boards.” She glanced at Catherine. “It would be very helpful if you could go through the transcripts with us and give us your take on the most likely possibles. Perhaps lend some insight as to how Jason can more effectively manipulate these likelies into committing themselves.”
“And then?” Catherine asked with genuine interest, even as she listened with relief to the sound of Rebecca breathing beside her. Respirations steady, unlabored. Stable. For now.
Sloan grinned, a happy, hungry grin. “As soon as we narrow the list down to a manageable number, I can launch digger programs which will follow the sender back to his ISP address, among other things. Then we’ll cross-reference to the credit card clearinghouses, track the business sources. Then we’ll have names.”
“Yeah, and once you get us a name, we can start knocking on doors,” Watts said with evident satisfaction. “Real police work.”
Sloan barely managed not to snarl.
“Anything from your street sources, Sergeant?” Clark ignored Watts, looking only at Rebecca.
“Not yet.” She had no intention of sharing anything with Clark at this point, and she certainly didn’t want to discuss the details of the case with Catherine in the room. Jesus, everyone is already acting as if Catherine is an official part of the team.
“Doctor? Can you set up times with Sloan to review what they have so far?”
“My schedule is pretty full,” Catherine stated, “but I should be able to spare an hour or two in the evenings—or even during the day if you absolutely need me.”
Avery Clark stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “We’ll try to give you as much advance notice as we can, Doctor. Any time you can spare would be greatly appreciated. I’ll leave the details to you and Sloan to work out.”
“Certainly,” Catherine replied, standing as well and gathering her things.
“Sloan, may I see you outside?” Clark murmured softly as he passed behind her.
“Sure,” Sloan responded, rising and following.
Jason and Mitchell left as well, leaving Catherine staring at Rebecca, who stood inches away while Watts fidgeted in the doorway, looking as if he wasn’t certain whether to go or stay.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Catherine demanded sharply. She needed so to touch her lover—it felt like days since she had—but she was so angry, the last thing she wanted was contact. Her mind was reeling from the barrage of disparate emotions.
“I knew the meeting wouldn’t be long. I wanted to make it.”
“How did you get discharged so quickly?”
Rebecca held Catherine’s gaze. “I was never admitted.”
“Jim would never have released you, not in the shape you were in last night. You signed out AMA, didn’t you?” Catherine accused.
“Not exactly against medical advice. We made a deal.” She said it reasonably, trying to sound confident, but Catherine’s fury was so potent it was like a blow. Her hands trembled, and she stuffed them in her pockets.
“Doctors don’t make deals.”
“All right. I signed out AMA…on paper,” Rebecca admitted reluctantly. “But I agreed to go back for a chest x-ray this morning.”
“And if your lung drops right now?”
“He left a catheter in my chest. In an emergency, he said I’d be able to aspirate the air out. That I’d have plenty of time to get back to the emergency room.”
“What is the matter with you?” Catherine slammed both palms down on the tabletop and leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “Don’t you know you almost died last night? What could possibly be so important about this meeting to take the risk?”
“It’s not the meeting,” Rebecca said quietly, but the fear was thundering through her now. She had to stay calm. If she explained it clearly, Catherine would have to understand. “If I let them admit me, if I didn’t show up here—if I can’t work—Henry wouldn’t just take me off the case. He’ll put me on medical disability. I couldn’t even have desk duty.”
“You shouldn’t have any kind of duty! You should be home or in the hospital.” Catherine whirled in Watts’s direction so quickly that he jumped. “Did you have a hand in this? After all the nights we sat by her bedside, waiting for her to live or die? After that, you could help her do this?”
“Uh…” He looked toward Rebecca desperately. Christ, help me out here.
Catherine ran a hand over her eyes and then slowly turned from one to the other. In a voice that was deadly calm, she said, “I do not understand what is important to you. All I know is that whatever it is, it’s more important to you than your life. And I can’t live with knowing that.”
For a moment, it seemed as if no one even breathed. Then, Catherine quietly lifted her briefcase and walked from the room.
*
Rebecca stood rigidly; the fingertips of her right hand, pressed against the granite tabletop, were white to the bone. She hadn’t realized that her eyes were closed until they snapped open at the sound of Watts’s voice. She blinked in the bright sunlight coming through the windows.
“Sarge?”
“I want to talk to Mitchell and you—alone. We need to assess where we are in this case. Five minutes, in our conference room.”
“The doc is just steamed, Sarge. She’ll get over it.”
No, she won’t. Christ, what do I do now?
“You just gotta give her ti—”
“Let it go, Watts.”
“Yeah, but—”
“God damn it,” she shouted, her fist connecting with stone as she pounded her hand onto the table. “Go find Mitchell and shut the—”
She started to cough, and he thought his heart would stop. “Oh, fuck. Are you—”
“I’m fine,” she snapped, waving a hand as she caught her breath. “Just do it.”
“Right. Okay. Just do me a fucking favor and go sit down until we get there.” He didn’t wait for an answer but went to find the rookie. They couldn’t get back to the hospital soon enough to suit him.
*
Sloan looked up as Watts charged by and then caught sight of Frye still in the conference room. She walked back in, poured a cup of coffee, and leaned against the counter, observing the detective, who seemed a little unsteady on her feet.
“You all right?”
Rebecca stared at her. “Yeah.”
Sloan sipped her coffee. “We’re making progress.”
“Good.” Rebecca sighed, giving in and sitting down. She rubbed her eyes, then blew out a breath. Just work the case, Frye. That’s what you do. That’s what you know. “Because I’m not. We ran down a couple of names that turned up from the previous kiddie prostitution bust, but we haven’t been able to go anywhere with that. I’ve got a few feelers out, but so far, nada. And there’s a rumor of somebody making sex movies, but right now that’s weak. If I get lucky, someone will point us toward that.”
“It’s early, on a case like this,” Sloan observed mildly, wondering how out of line it would be to ask Frye what the hell was going on. The cop didn’t exactly make it easy to get friendly, but she looked as if she was hurting. And not just physically. There was desolation in her blue eyes that Sloan had never seen before.
“Is Clark on to your FBI hack?” Rebecca asked suddenly.
“You’re sharp, Frye,” Sloan said with an appreciative laugh. “You were here, what? Five minutes? And you picked up on a certain tension between us?”
“I’ve met the type.” Rebecca shrugged and grinned weakly. “When someone says outside the way Clark said it, it usually implies they have a burr up their ass.”
“He suspects we might have used unorthodox methods to acquire some of our information, but he didn’t want specifics.”
“They never do,” Rebecca observed wearily. “Too accountable then.”
“Yeah. Mostly he w
anted to be certain that I understood I was on my own.”
“Why are you doing this, Sloan? You could be making a lot more money doing something with a lot less potential to fuck you over.”
Sloan walked to the sink and poured out the last of her coffee, surprised at the question. When she turned around, she said quietly, all hint of her usual cockiness gone, “Maybe I wanted them to see what they lost.”
Rebecca rose, more surprised at herself for asking than she was by Sloan’s answer. “That’s a fairly fucked-up reason.”
“Yeah,” Sloan admitted, feeling an odd sense of relief. Suddenly the bitter memories didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Maybe the past really was dead. “It is.”
“But I understand,” Rebecca added as she headed out the door. “Keep me up to speed, Sloan.”
“Right,” Sloan called after her. She hesitated for a second, then walked to the wall phone and dialed a number. After a minute, she smiled and said, “Hey. Any chance you could meet me for lunch?…No special reason. I just love you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Hazel Holcomb reached for the phone, pushing aside a pile of administrative bulletins as she did. “Yes?”
“Dr. Rawlings is on line two,” her secretary informed her.
“I’ll take it.” She pressed the other line. “Catherine? What can I do for you?”
“Can you see me this morning?”
“Just a minute,” Hazel replied, instantly alert to the flat tone of her friend’s voice. She rummaged under a stack of file folders and found her weekly schedule. “I have forty-five minutes open now. If it’s urgent, I could cancel a meeting later this morning.”
“No—I’ll come right over. I have clinic in an hour, too. That’s perfect. Thank you.”
Hazel buzzed her secretary and instructed, “Send Dr. Rawlings in when she arrives, and then hold my calls.”
Five minutes later, a knock on the door heralded Catherine’s arrival.
“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” Catherine began as she took one of the upholstered chairs in front of Hazel’s desk.
“It’s fine,” the chief of psychiatry assured her colleague as she moved around to join her in the other chair. “What’s happened?”
“Is it that obvious?” Catherine asked ruefully, folding her hands in her lap to hide the trembling. “God, I’m embarrassed.”
“Catherine, nothing is obvious unless one knows you. You wouldn’t have called if it weren’t important, and you wouldn’t have that very wounded expression in your eyes if it weren’t personal. So…something has happened.”
“I think Rebecca and I just—I don’t even know what to call it. Broke up?”
“Well,” Hazel said gently, a small smile on her face. “We can start with that and worry about definitions later. What prompted this…event?”
“I’m not sure,” Catherine admitted. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Ah, I see. Good point—spoken like a true psychiatrist. Let’s hear the details, then we’ll plumb for all the deeper, hidden meanings.”
Catherine managed a faint laugh. “Do you talk to all your patients like this? It’s very irreverent. Freud is cringing somewhere in another dimension.”
“You’re not a patient. You’re a friend,” Hazel replied softly, placing her hand briefly on Catherine’s arm. “So, tell me.”
Catherine closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them and sighed. “I got a call from a woman last night whom I’d never met, telling me that Rebecca had collapsed in her apartment and that she needed my help.”
Hazel listened, her expression intent, as Catherine described the previous night and morning’s events. When her friend fell silent, Hazel remarked, “Trite as it seems, I’m afraid I have to ask—how do you feel right now?”
“Hurt. Terribly angry at her and just…empty.” Catherine met Hazel’s eyes, tears swimming behind her lashes. “It’s tearing me apart that she would risk her life like this, and that she doesn’t realize what that does to me.”
“Yes, I can see how much it hurts. I’m sorry.”
“I thought about calling her captain, telling him what happened. Insisting that he relieve her of duty.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because,” Catherine sighed again, “it would be divulging patient confidences—”
“You’re not her doctor,” Hazel pointed out.
“No, but I have privileged knowledge that I wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
Hazel made a dismissive gesture. “A technicality at best.”
“All right,” Catherine conceded. “Because she’d never forgive me.”
“She’s hurt you.” Hazel’s tone suggested that turnabout was fair play.
“She’s hurt me because she’s stubborn and careless with herself, but this would be such a betrayal.”
“And what she’s done—isn’t that a betrayal? Of the connection between you? Of your love for one another?”
Catherine regarded her sharply. “It’s only a betrayal if you know what you’re doing—if it’s a conscious act. She didn’t intend to hurt me, she’s just doing what’s she’s always done.”
“But things are not the same any longer…for either of you,” Hazel pointed out reasonably.
“No,” Catherine said quietly. “Everything is different.” She looked at Hazel in frustration. “What a mess. I keep thinking that I should be better at this.”
“Why?” Hazel laughed. “Love is messy. Relationships are horrible, unpredictable things.” Suddenly serious, she asked, “What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t be with her like this; I can’t watch her kill herself.” Her eyes darkened, and she added softly, “But I don’t know if I can stand losing her this way either.”
“You know, Catherine, I haven’t met this detective of yours, although I’d certainly like to. She sounds fascinating, especially if you don’t happen to be in love with her. But I do know that she almost died two months ago. That’s a terrifying occurrence. For someone like her, the best defense against that fear is to—”
“Deny it ever happened.” Catherine grimaced. “Yes, I know. Like the business executive who has an MI and insists on taking phone calls in the cardiac care unit. I know. It just doesn’t help.” She rubbed her eyes, glanced at her watch. “I have to work and so do you.”
“Don’t make any decisions today, or even tomorrow. It’s already too late to break up. You love her, remember?”
“Yes, I do,” Catherine said, wondering if that would be enough.
*
Catherine contemplated canceling her last patient of the day. It was almost 8:00; she was tired. Beyond tired. Bone weary and just plain sad.
“It’s going to be a tough session, and you want to avoid it. Because she’s going to walk in here, all spit and polish, and very possibly pissed off. And she reminds you of Rebecca.” She rubbed her temples. “And you’ve started talking out loud to yourself, which can’t be good.”
Joyce knocked on the door and stuck her head in. “You’ve got five minutes. Want anything?”
“Yes,” Catherine replied. “When she gets here, tell her I need to resched…”
“What?”
“Nothing. A Coke if you’re getting one.”
“Will do.”
A few minutes later, the door opened again to admit Dellon Mitchell.
“Hi,” Catherine said as Mitchell settled into the chair. She wasn’t in uniform, but she wore her dark chinos and pressed denim shirt as if they were one. Neat, tidy, precise.
“Hi.”
Catherine waited a beat, and when nothing else appeared to be forthcoming, she said, “Let’s talk about this morning.”
“All right,” Mitchell replied neutrally, but her eyes were wary.
“Sometimes it can be awkward or uncomfortable when you run into your therapist unexpectedly. Was it a problem—my being there?”
Mitchell regarded her steadily. “What we talk abo
ut in here; it’s confidential, right?”
“Usually, yes,” Catherine answered. Mitchell stiffened, and she quickly clarified. “Officer, you were referred for an official evaluation. I still have to do that. I don’t include information that isn’t relevant to my opinions, and I very rarely include specific details of what we’ve discussed.”
“But you wouldn’t…” She searched for words. “You’re going to be working with the people I work with. There are things…private things…I don’t want anyone to know.”
“They won’t learn them from me,” Catherine assured her firmly. “First of all, it’s my business to keep confidences. Second, I’ll be there for professional purposes and on a fairly limited basis. There is absolutely no reason anyone should know that you and I have a therapeutic relationship.”
“Thank you.”
“Good.” Catherine watched Mitchell cross one ankle over her knee and sit back a little into her chair, a pose Catherine was coming to recognize as relaxed. For Mitchell. “Now, let’s talk about the incident in the alley.”
“I knew her.”
Catherine had many years of therapeutic experience, and she was glad of that now. Because she wanted to blurt out, What? Slowly, carefully, she asked, “The young woman who was being attacked? You knew her?”
“Yes.”
“When did you realize that?”
“He’d been beating her, and when I announced my presence, he let her go. She fell…I saw her face in the light from the window.”
There was sweat now on Mitchell’s forehead that Catherine was certain she didn’t know was there. Her right hand trembled where it rested on the chair arm.
“What happened when you recognized her?”
Mitchell was quiet a long time. Then, voice hoarse, she replied, “I hesitated. I thought maybe I had imagined it. That’s when he hit me, knocked me down.” She looked at Catherine, stricken. “There was so much blood on her face, I froze…I thought she might be dead…Jesus, there was so much blood.”
