Nora Roberts - Sacred Sins

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who’s watching you at the office?” Ben explained, and tried to find a corner in the phone booth where the wind wouldn’t reach.

“Oh, Sergeant Billings.”

“Good.” He cupped his hands around a match as he lit a cigarette, and wished like hell he’d remembered his gloves. “Have Billings drive you to the clinic.”

There was silence. In it he heard her temper, and was tempted to smile at it. “I don’t see any reason why I can’t drive myself to the clinic as I’ve done every week for the last several years.”

“I’m not asking you to see a reason, Tess. I’ve got plenty of them. See you at six.”

He hung up, knowing she’d hold the phone, and her temper, until she could replace it quietly. She wouldn’t want to do something as childish, and typical, as slamming it down.

He was right, tess counted backward from five, slowly, then quietly replaced the receiver. She’d hardly set it down when Kate buzzed her again.

“Yes?” It took effort not to bite the word off.

“You have another call on line two. He won’t give his name.”

“All right, I-” The nerves in her stomach tangled, and she knew. “I’ll take it, Kate.”

She stared at the slowly blinking button. Her finger was steady when she pushed it. “This is Dr. Court.”

“I saw you in church. You came.”

“Yes.” The instructions she’d been given raced through her head. Try to keep him on the line. Keep him calm and on the line. “I was hoping to see you there so we could talk again. How are you feeling?”

“You were there. Now you understand.”

“What do I understand?”

“You understand the greatness.” His voice was calm. A decision reached, faith confirmed. “The sacrifices we’re asked to make are so small compared to the rewards of obedience. I’m glad you were there, so that you understand. I had doubts.”

“What kind of doubts?”

“About the mission.” His voice dropped, as if even whispering of doubt was a sin. “But not anymore.”

Tess took a chance. “Where is Laura?”

“Laura.” She could hear the tears. “Laura waits in purgatory, suffering, until I atone for her sins. She’s my responsibility. She has no one but me and the Blessed Mother to intercede for her.”

So Laura was dead. Now she could be sure of it. “You must have loved her very much.”

“She was the best part of me. We were joined before birth. Now I must make restitution for her before we can be joined after death. You understand now. You came. Your soul will join the others. I will absolve you in the name of the Lord.”

“You can’t kill again. Laura wouldn’t want you to kill again.”

There was silence… three, four, five seconds. “I thought you understood.”

Tess recognized the tone, the accusation, the betrayal. She was going to lose him. “I think I do. If I don’t, I need you to explain things to me. I want to understand, I want you to help me understand. That’s why I want to come talk to you.”

“No, it’s lies. You’re full of sin and lies.” She heard him begin to mumble the Lord’s Prayer before the connection was broken.

When ben walked back into the squad room, Lowenstein was standing by her desk. She signaled to him, cradling the phone against her ear so her hands would be free.

“She can’t keep away from me,” Ben told Ed. He started to slip an arm around her, not aiming for her waist, but for the bag of chocolate-covered raisins on her desk.

“He called Court again,” Lowenstein told him. His hand froze.

“When?”

“Call came through at 11:21.”

“The trace?”

“Yeah.” She lifted a pad from her desk and handed it to him. “They pinned it to that area. Had to be within those four blocks. Goldman said she did real good.”

“Christ, we were just there.” He tossed the pad back on her desk. “We might have driven right past him.”

“The captain’s sent out Bigsby, Mullendore, and some uniforms to comb the area and look for witnesses.”

“We’ll give them a hand.”

“Ben. Ben, wait.” He stopped, turning back with impatience. Lowenstein pressed the mouthpiece of the phone against her shoulder. “They’re sending up a transcript of the call for the captain. I think you’ll want to see it.”

“Fine, I’ll read it when I get back.”

“I think you’ll want to see it now, Ben.”

A few hours’ work at the Donnerly Clinic was enough to take Tess’s mind off her own nerves. The patients there ranged from manic-depressive businessmen to street junkies who were withdrawing. Once a week, twice if her schedule permitted, she came to the clinic to work with the staff doctors. Some of the patients she would only see once or twice, others she would see week after week, month after month.

She gave her time there, when she could, because it wasn’t an elite hospital where the rich came when their problems or addictions became too much to cope with. Neither was it a street-side clinic run by idealists on a shoestring. It was a struggling and capable institution which took in the emotionally and mentally ill from all walks of life.

There was a woman on the second floor with Alzheimer’s disease who sewed dolls for her grandchildren, then played with them herself when she forgot she had grandchildren. There was a man who thought he was John Kennedy and spent most of his day harmlessly writing speeches. The more violent patients were kept on the third floor, where security was tighter. Thick glass doors were locked and windows were barred.

Tess spent most of the afternoon there. By five she was nearly wrung dry. For the better part of an hour she’d been in session with a paranoid schizophrenic who had hurled obscenities then his lunch tray at her, before he’d ultimately been restrained by two orderlies. Tess had given him an injection of Thorazine herself, but not without regret. He’d be on medication for the rest of his life.

When he was quiet again, Tess left him to catch a few moments of quiet in the staff lounge. She still had one more patient to see: Lydia Woods, a thirty-seven-year-old woman who had run a household with three children, held down a full-time job as a stock broker, and worked as president of the PTA. She had cooked gourmet meals, attended every school function, and had been named Businesswoman of the Year. The new woman, who could have and handle it all.

Two months before, she had fallen violently apart at a school play. There had been convulsions, and a seizure many of the horrified parents had taken for epilepsy. When she’d been taken to the hospital it was discovered she’d been in a withdrawal as serious as one from heroin addiction.

Lydia Woods had held together her perfect world with Valium and alcohol until her husband had threatened divorce. To prove her strength, she’d gone cold turkey and had ignored her physical reactions in a desperate attempt to keep her life as she had structured it.

Now, though the physical illness was well under control, she was being forced to deal with the causes, and the results.

Tess took the elevator down to the first floor, where she requested Lydia’s file. After studying it, Tess tucked it under her arm. Her room was at the end of the hall. Lydia had left the door open, but Tess knocked before going in.

The curtains were drawn, the room dim. There were flowers beside the bed, pink carnations. Their scent was light and sweet and hopeful. Lydia herself was on the bed, curled up to face the blank wall. She didn’t acknowledge Tess’s presence.

“Hello, Lydia.” Tess set the file on a small table and glanced around the room. The clothes Lydia had worn the day before were heaped in a corner. “It’s dark in here,” she said, and moved to the curtain.