Kate White - Hush

For a few moments Lake fought with the idea of calling the police after all. Her failure to get in touch before now wouldn’t be hard to explain-she’d fled in panic, worried that the killer had still been in the apartment. And the forensic evidence would confirm that she didn’t kill Keaton.

But would it? What if the weapon was still in the apartment-a butcher knife, for instance-and it had been wiped clean? They’d think she’d wiped it clean. It wasn’t hard to imagine the scenario the cops would form in their minds. A recently dumped, possibly drunk, possibly unstable divorcée sleeps with a hot doctor. She asks when she’ll see him again, he makes it clear he isn’t interested. In a drunken rage, she takes a butcher knife to him while he sleeps. Even if she weren’t arrested immediately, she would be a “person of interest,” like in those cop shows.

Jack would have a field day with that. He’d convince a judge to give him custody until her situation was resolved. And that’s what Hotchkiss had warned her about. He’d said that it was almost impossible to regain custody once it had been lost temporarily. So even if her name was cleared, she could end up without the kids.

That meant she couldn’t tell the police. She flashed back to Keaton’s loft, making certain in her mind that she’d grabbed everything of hers. There was still evidence of her there, of course. Her bodily fluids in the bed perhaps, her fingerprints on the cognac glass. But from what little she knew, she was pretty sure that the police couldn’t ask for her DNA or fingerprints unless they had legitimate reason to suspect her. And what reason could there be? She’d never spoken to Keaton at dinner and she’d left alone.

She wondered whether she should call someone-Molly, for instance-and ask for guidance. But wouldn’t that put the person in some kind of legal jeopardy?

What she did have to do, she knew, was to go to the clinic today-as horrible as that would be. She would have to act normal and be cooperative when the police arrived-as they surely would.

She stayed in the diner for another half hour. At seven-thirty she left and just walked, back and forth along the side streets, slowly making her way home to West End Avenue and Eighty-fourth-keeping her eyes down the entire time in case someone she knew was nearby.

Half a block away from her building, she stopped and positioned herself by a parked truck, watching the front. A light drizzle had begun, which was lucky for her. She could see that Ray, the morning doorman, was busy trying to flag down a cab for someone. Having no luck, he moved farther up the street to the corner. The person waiting stood under the building’s awning keeping an impatient eye on the corner. Fortunately Lake didn’t recognize him and she saw her chance. She bolted to the main door and slipped inside.

Rather than chance the elevator, she took the stairs, two steps at time. When she finally slammed her apartment door behind her, she let out the strangled sob that had been lodged in her throat for hours.

In the kitchen she poured a glass of water and gulped it down, and then, as she sat at the table, she let the tears come. A man who had made love to her had been murdered. And though she’d escaped death, she wasn’t safe. Everything in her life was in jeopardy now.

She showered, scrubbing her body red with a loofah, and then dressed in a white shirt and dark-blue pencil skirt for work. Staring at her reflection, she wondered ruefully if things would have gone differently last night if she’d worn something other than the sundress. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so sexy for the first time in ages, so ready to be seduced. As she remembered the sundress still in her purse, her stomach tightened. She would take it-and the trench coat, too-to the dry cleaner’s on the way to work, just in case.

Lake arrived at the clinic shortly before ten. A few women sat in the waiting room, leafing listlessly through magazines. As she headed down the corridors past the nurses’ station, it was clear from the easy manner of the staff that no one had heard anything yet. For the first time she recalled what Keaton had said to her in the Balthazar lounge-that he might not be joining the clinic after all. What had that been about?

After opening her laptop in the small conference room, Lake went to the kitchenette and fixed some tea, trying to act normal. The cup trembled in her hand as she pumped hot water into it.

“How was the dinner last night?” a female voice asked with a trace of sarcasm. Lake turned to find Brie towering in the doorway, her thin, scarlet-painted lips locked in a tight smile. Brie had obviously not been invited.

“Nice,” Lake said as lightly as possible. “I got a chance to spend more time with Dr. Levin. He’s a very impressive guy.”

“ We certainly think so,” Brie said, snippily.

Lake took a small breath and forced herself to smile. “I’ll be in the conference room making some notes-if anyone’s looking for me.”

“Expecting someone?” Brie asked.

“I-no. But one of the doctors might want to talk to me.” She felt stupid for having stammered, for having overexplained herself. If she was going to get through the day, she told herself, she would have to compel herself to calm down.

She went back to her laptop and tried to read the file of notes she’d been taking. But really she just waited, reading the same line over and over. At eleven, she spotted Maggie in the corridor, talking to someone just out of sight.

“I’ve left him at least ten messages,” Maggie complained. “He was supposed to be here at nine for a procedure, and Dr. Levin is fit to be tied.”

Oh God, Lake thought. She had to be talking about Keaton. He was officially missing in action and soon everything would come to a head. She felt a wave of nausea and wondered if she’d be sick. She hurried to the restroom to the left of the kitchenette. After locking the door, she wet a paper towel with cold water. Sitting on the toilet seat, she pressed the towel to her face and forced herself to breathe.

When Lake stepped out of the restroom, the hall was even quieter than usual and every door was closed. Suddenly she heard a cry that sounded almost animal-like. She spun around. It had come from an exam room just down the hall, and as Lake stood frozen, Rory and Dr. Levin emerged through the doorway. Have they just heard the news? she wondered. Had Rory let out the cry? But then she saw there was a patient with them, and it was she who was crying.

“Rory will help you now,” she overheard Levin say.

“Would you prefer to stay in the room for a few more minutes, Mrs. Kastner?” Rory asked the slender, spent-looking patient as Levin headed toward the front. “It might help to rest for a minute.”

“No, I can’t bear this,” the woman said, through her sobs. “I just want to go home.”

“I understand. But I’ll walk you out. And I brought you some of my jams today. Come on, we’ll pick them up on our way out.”

This is surreal, Lake thought. People are passing out jams as Keaton’s body lies rotting in his bed.

Back in the conference room, she started the horrible waiting again. The lab supervisor popped his head in at noon and announced that people were ordering lunch-would she like something? Sure, she told him, forcing a smile. Maybe they won’t find Keaton today, she thought miserably as he walked away with her order. Maybe I’ll have to spend another hellish day waiting.

But forty-five minutes later, as Lake picked at a sandwich, Brie appeared in the door and her face looked dark.

“Please come to the big conference room,” she said, her voice strained. “There’s an emergency meeting of the staff.”