Tess Gerritsen - Harvest

"Everyone's seen her face." Koubichev pointed to the name on the photo. "Michelle Pfeiffer. She's an actress. American. Not even the name is Russian."

"But I know her! I had a dream about her!"

Koubichev laughed. "You and every other horny boy." He glanced around at the scattered chess pieces. "Look at this mess. We'll be lucky to find all the pawns. Come on, you knocked it over. Now pick them up."

Yakov didn't move. He stood staring at the woman, remembering the way she had smiled at him.

Koubichev, grumbling, dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl about, retrieving chess pieces from underneath machinery. "You've probably seen her face somewhere. The TV, or maybe some magazine, and you forgot about it. Then you have a dream about her, that's all." He set two bishops and a queen on the board, then heaved himself back onto the chair. His face was flushed, his barrel chest panting heavily. He tapped his head. "The brain is a mysterious thing. It takes real life and spins it into dreams, and we can't tell what's made up and what's real. Sometimes I have this dream where I'm sitting at a table with all this wonderful food, everything I could want to eat. Then I wake up and I'm still on this fucking boat." He reached for the magazine and tore out the page with Michelle Pfeiffer. "Here. It's yours."

Yakov took the page but didn't say anything. He just held it. Looked at it.

"If you want to pretend that's your mother, go ahead. A boy could do worse. Now pick up the pieces. Hey! Hey, Boy!Where do you think you're going?"

Yakov, still clutching the page, fled Hell.

Up on deck he stood at the rail, his face to the sea. The page was wrinkled now, flapping and crackling in the wind. He looked at it, saw that he'd been holding it so tightly, a crease now cut across those half-smiling lips.

He grasped one corner with his teeth and ripped the page in two. It was not enough. Not enough. He was breathing hard, close to crying, but no sound came out. He ripped the page again and again, using his teeth like an animal tearing at real flesh, letting the pieces fly off into the wind.

When he'd finished, he was still holding onto one scrap of the page. It was an eye. Just beneath it, pinched by his fingers, was a star-shaped crease. Like the sparkle of a single teardrop.

He threw the scrap over the rail and watched it flutter away and fall into the sea.

She was in her late forties, with the thin, dry face of a woman who had long ago lost her oestrogenic glow. In Bernard Katzka's opinion, that alone did not make a woman unattractive. A woman's appeal lay not in the lustre of her skin and hair, but in what was revealed by her eyes. In that regard, he had met a number of fascinating seventy-year-olds, among them his maiden aunt Margaret, whom he'd grown particularly close to since Annie's death. That Katzka actually looked forward to his weekly coffee chats with Aunt Margaret would probably bewilder his partner, Lundquist. Lundquist was of the masculine school that believed women were not worth a second glance once they'd crossed the menopausal finish line. No doubt it was all rooted in biology. Males mustn't waste their energy or sperm on a nonreproductive female. No wonder Lundquist had looked so relieved when Katzka agreed to interview Brenda Hainey. Lundquist considered postmenopausal women to be Bernard Katzka's forte, by which he meant Katzka was the one detective in Homicide who had the patience and fortitude to hear them out.

And this was precisely what Katzka had been doing for the last fifteen minutes, listening patiently to Brenda Hainey's bizarre charges. She was not easy to follow. The woman mingled the mystical with the concrete, in the same breath telling him about signs from heaven and syringes of morphine. He might have been amused by the quirky nature of this encounter if the woman had been likeable, but Brenda Hainey was not. There was no warmth in her blue eyes. She was angry, and angry people were not attractive.

"I've spoken to the hospital about this," she said. "I went straight to their president, Mr Parr. He promised he'd investigate, but that was five days ago, and so far I've heard nothing. I call every day. His office tells me they're still looking into it. Well, today I decided enough was enough. So I called your people. And they tried to put me off too, tried to make me talk to some rookie police officer first.

Well I believe in going straight to the highest authority. I do it all the time, every morning when I pray. In this case, the highest authority would be you."

Katzka suppressed a smile.

"I've seen your name in the newspaper," Brenda said. "In connection with that dead doctor from Bayside."

"You're referring to Dr. Levi?"

"Yes. I thought, since you already know about the goings-on in that hospital, you're the one I should speak to."

Katzka almost sighed, but caught himself. He knew she would take it for what it was, an expression of weariness. He said, "May I see the note?"

She pulled a folded paper from her purse and handed it to him. It had one typewritten line: Your aunt did not die a natural death. A friend.

"Was there an envelope?"

This, too, she produced. On it was typed the name Brenda Hainey. The flap had been sealed, then torn open.

"Do you know who might have sent this?" he asked.

"I have no idea. Maybe one of the nurses. Someone who knew enough to tell me."

"You say your aunt had terminal cancer. She could have died of natural causes."

"Then why send me that note? Someone knew differently.

Someone wants this looked into. I want it looked into."

"Vaere is your aunt's body now?"

"Garden of Peace Mortuary. The hospital shipped it out pretty quick, if you ask me."

"Whose decision was that? It must have been next of kin."

"My aunt left instructions before she died. That's what the hospital told me, anyway."

"Have you spoken to your aunt's doctors? Perhaps they can clear this up."

"I'd prefer not to speak to them."

"Why not?"

"Given the situation, I'm not sure I trust them."

"I see." Now Katzka did sigh. He picked up his pen and flipped to a fresh page in his notebook. "Why don't you give me the names of all your aunt's doctors."

"The physician in charge was Dr. ColinWettig. But the one who really seemed to be making all the decisions was that resident of his. I think she's the one you should look at."

"Her name?"

"Dr. DiMatteo."

Katzka glanced up in surprise. "Abigail DiMatteo?"

There was a brief silence. Katzka could see consternation clearly written on Brenda's face.

She said, cautiously, "You know her."

"I've spoken to her. On another matter."

"It won't affect your judgment on this case, will it?"

"Not at all."

"Are you certain?" She challenged him with a gaze he found irritating. He was not easily irritated, and he had to ask himself now why this woman so annoyed him.

Lundquist chose that moment to walk past the desk, and he flashed what could only be characterized as a sympathetic smirk. Lundquist should have interviewed this woman. It would have been good for him, an exercise in polite restraint, which Lundquist needed to develop.

Katzka said: "I always try to be objective, Miss Hainey."

"Then you should take a close look at Dr. DiMatteo."

"Why her in particular?"

"She's the one who wanted my aunt dead."

Brenda's charges struck Katzka as improbable. Still, there was the matter of that note and who had sent it. One possibility was that Brenda had sent it to herself; stranger things had been done by people hungry for attention. That was easier for him to believe than what she was claiming had happened: that Mary Allen had been murdered by her doctors. Katzka had spent weeks watching his wife slowly die in the hospital, so he was well acquainted with cancer wards. He had witnessed the compassion of nurses, the dedication of oncologists. They knew when to keep fighting for a patient's life. They also knew when the fight was lost, when the suffering outweighed the benefits of one more day, one more week, of life. There had been times towards the end, when Katzka had wanted desperately to ease Annie across the final threshold. Had the doctors suggested such a move, he would have agreed to it. But they never had. Cancer killed quickly enough; which doctor would risk his professional future to hurry along a patient's death? Even if Mary Allen's doctors had made such a move, could one truly consider it homicide?