Shield of Justice (18 page)

Watts glanced at Rebecca nonchalantly. He gave no outward sign that he had noticed the strain in her voice or the tense way she sat forward in the chair, looking like she might launch herself out of it at any second. “Go ahead, Doc.”

“He’s pleased with himself,” Catherine said, shifting her attention toward Rebecca. Her gaze was remote as she sorted impressions and formulated opinions. “He’s performed an important act, you see, and he’s established himself, done something powerful—won a little victory. And he wants to be sure someone appreciates this.”

“So why call you?” Watts asked.

Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know—”

“Catherine,” Rebecca interrupted urgently, “this is very important. Are you sure he isn’t a current patient or someone you might have treated years ago?”

Catherine shook her head. “I don’t treat many men. I’m certain I would know.”

“How about pulling your files on all the men you’ve seen…say in the last five years?” Watts suggested. “Maybe we can find something there that jogs your memory.”

Catherine straightened in her chair with a start. “Absolutely not, Detective. It’s out of the question.”

“Look, Doc,” Watts pressed, his tone suddenly harsh. “This guy picks
you
—you of all the people in the city—to have a little chat with. He calls
you
to share a few
intimate
details of his latest fuck. Now, I gotta think that’s not a coincidence. Like maybe he’s got a little thing for you or something?”

“Back off, Watts,” Rebecca ordered, fighting to control her temper. Watts’s crude interrogation of Catherine incensed her, and, had Catherine not been present, she would have told him to shut his fat fucking mouth. As it was, it was all she could do to keep her hands off him. “If Dr. Rawlings says he’s not a patient, then he’s not a patient.”

Watts settled back in his chair apparently unperturbed. “Yeah, if you say so.”

“I’ll review all my files, Detective,” Catherine offered. “If there’s anything there at all I think may be relevant, I’ll look into it.”

“Absolutely not!” Rebecca exploded. “You are not to pursue any contact with anyone you think may be involved with this case. For God’s sake, Catherine, this man is a psycho; he’s already killed two women, and a third may die.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Sarge,” Watts mused softly. “Might not be a bad idea. Maybe the doc can come up with something for us. We ain’t got shit now.”

“Leave it alone, Watts,” Rebecca said, cold fury in her voice.

She then looked at Catherine, her blue eyes dark and angry. There was something else there, too, a fear she couldn’t quite hide. “Promise me, Catherine,” she said urgently, not caring that Watts was sitting beside her.

“Yes, of course,” she answered quickly, despairing at the anguish in Rebecca’s eyes and hating the conflict her involvement had created for the detective. “I only meant that I’d look into previous records. I have no intention of physically pursuing this man.” She was pleased to see the slight easing of Rebecca’s stiff shoulders.

“We’ll need to put a tap on your office and home phones,” Rebecca said, her mind beginning to function again. “I’ll order round-the-clock surveillance and put a man in your office, too.”

Catherine sighed deeply, hating the words she was about to say. The last thing she wanted was to make Rebecca’s already overwhelmingly difficult job any harder. “I can’t let you do that, Rebecca.”

“What?” Rebecca looked up from her notebook, astonishment flooding her face. She was immediately enraged, her patience completely frayed, while Watts looked almost amused. “Why the hell not?”

“I can’t have my phone lines monitored. It’s an invasion of my patients’ privacy. And a man lurking about in my waiting room would be too unsettling for some of them. I just can’t allow it,” Catherine said as gently as possible.

“Catherine,” Rebecca began, her tone dark with exasperation.
This
was too much. She couldn’t deal with this professional bullshit any longer, not when it put Catherine at risk. Confidentiality was one thing, but this was carrying it too damn far. Not only did she need to protect Catherine, but also she had to have access to this guy if he called again. Before she could continue, Watts interrupted.

“How ’bout this, Doc. We put a tape recorder on your phone, and if our boy calls, you record it. And we’ll have somebody watching your office from a car on the street. Would that work?”

Catherine considered carefully for a moment. “The tape recorder sounds fine, but I can’t have someone watch my patients come and go.”

“God damn it to hell!” Rebecca barked.

“Okay for now,” Watts said, slapping his thigh briskly. He turned to Rebecca, his face carefully revealing nothing. “Talk to you outside for a moment, Sergeant?” He rose and strode deliberately to the office door, leaving Rebecca to follow angrily behind.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Watts?” she barked as soon as the door closed behind her. “It’s not up to you how we run this case. I’m the primary, and I’ll say how we handle this surveillance.” Her face was two inches from his, and it took all of her control not to punch his already misshapen mug.

Watts reached unperturbedly into his jacket pocket and fumbled for a cigarette. He lit it, took a long drag, and exhaled slowly. “Looks to me like the shrink is one stubborn lady. If we’re gonna get anything out of her, we’ve gotta go real slow and treat her gentle, like a virgin on her first date.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rebecca murmured. “You are the worst piece of crap I’ve come upon in years. If you think I’m going to leave her here like some piece of bait, you’re stupider than you look.”

She was having trouble thinking straight, but she couldn’t seem to clear her head. She’d been up for nearly three days running with only a few hours of sleep. Jeff was dead, for God’s sake, and now some piece of slime had slithered into her world and touched the woman she…she…she
what
, for Christ’s sake? The woman she let hold her when her heart was breaking? The woman whose body she sought for comfort and a few hours’ peace?

Oh God, what am I doing? How could I have let this happen now, in the middle of a case like this?
She sagged slightly against the wall and stared numbly at Watts, who continued to puff contentedly on his cigarette.

“Sorry, Watts,” she said at length. “You’re right. We can’t force her to do anything, and even a tape is better than nothing. Probably can’t use it as evidence, though.”

“Doesn’t matter if we catch the guy. We won’t need the tape…we’ll have a
DNA
match from the semen. We just have to get our hands on him to make the case. Fuck the tapes then.”

Rebecca stared at him wordlessly. He was right again.

“Let’s see if Cath…if Dr. Rawlings has anything else to add,” she said tiredly, feeling ineffectual and unaccountably defeated.

Watts stubbed out his cigarette on the expensive parquet floor in the hallway outside Catherine’s office. “Why don’t you do it? Not much more there, and I’m ready to call it a day.” He strolled away, leaving Rebecca staring at his retreating back.

Catherine slumped tiredly behind her desk and, even from two rooms away, could hear the angry voices outside in the hall. The excitement of the last few hours had dissipated, leaving her drained. She knew Rebecca was angry, and she understood, or thought she did as much as anyone could, the frustration and powerlessness that she must feel right now. To have this man, whose identity had eluded the police so thoroughly, suddenly reveal his presence in such an arrogant and taunting manner was an insult too bitter to contemplate.

And
, Catherine reminded herself,
now the man who has escaped her has made me an involuntary participant in all of this. She has got to feel
torn between her professional obligation to maintain contact with
him
and her personal desire to shield
me from him
.
What’s making it even worse is that I can’t cooperate with her investigation the way she wants. This on the heels of her partner’s death. What were they thinking to let her keep working?

But Catherine knew the answer to that question. This was what Rebecca did. This was who Rebecca was. She stared uneasily at her office door, wondering what future difficulties the return of the two detectives would bring. Clearly, Rebecca and her associate did not see eye to eye on the best way to proceed. Catherine imagined it must be very hard for Rebecca to deal with a new partner so soon after Jeff Cruz’s death, especially since Rebecca had had no real opportunity to mourn him.
Of course, she’ll never have time to deal with his death as long as she can drive her feelings into some hidden corner by working twenty hours a day. I suppose she’s placing me in the same category—someone who creates feelings she’d rather avoid.

Rubbing at the tension between her eyes, she sighed softly and leaned her head against the back of her tall leather chair. Sometimes it was hard being a psychiatrist; it was too hard facing what many others never really saw. Now and then she longed just to live from moment to moment like most of the world, not really knowing, or caring,
why
she did or felt something. She longed to abandon for just a few hours her awareness of the struggle it was merely to survive.

When Rebecca let herself back into Catherine’s office, she found her asleep. They had kept the room lamps turned down deliberately in case anyone was watching from the street, and now, a pale sliver of moonlight fell across the slumbering woman’s face. Only Catherine’s soft, steady breathing broke the nearly dreamlike stillness in the room. Rebecca sank into the chair in front of the desk, remembering that the last time she had seen her like this they had been lying naked together.

For one brief moment, she forgot the case, and even Jeff’s death, content just to look at Catherine. Her face was soft in sleep, with only a hint of fine lines at the corners of her full lips to suggest that she was not as young as she appeared at first glance. She looked very beautiful to Rebecca, who rose finally and walked around behind the desk. “Catherine,” she murmured, shaking the dozing woman’s shoulder gently.

A faint smile touched Catherine’s lips as her eyes fluttered open. Her gaze widened with pleasure when she found Rebecca bending over her, an unexpectedly tender expression in her deep blue eyes. There was something else in Rebecca’s face, though—a tightness around the fine mouth and a weariness in the shadowed gaze that she had never seen before, not even when Rebecca had come to her in the first hours after Jeff’s death. Instinctively, she reached out to stroke the cheek now just a whisper away and spoke without thinking. “What is it, love?” she asked quietly.

Rebecca’s heart lurched at the words.
He’s found you now, and I can’t stand the thought of him anywhere near you. He could hurt you, and I don’t think I could bear it. The idea of this madman touching you, even talking to you, is driving me crazy, and I don’t know how I’m going to leave you. I don’t know how I’m going to work. Ah God, I don’t know what I’m doing standing here wanting you so much I hurt all over.

“Rebecca?” Catherine asked again, pushing herself upright, her fingers lingering on that troubled face.

Rebecca forced herself to keep quiet. Her demons were her own problem, and it was time she began acting like a cop instead of allowing Catherine to take care of her again and again. She turned her head slightly and kissed Catherine’s palm. “I need to take you home,” she whispered quietly.

Catherine drew her hand away, recognizing the barrier that Rebecca had subtly erected. Rebecca might touch her, but she would not share her pain. Despite her understanding, Catherine was hurt. She needed to know this woman,
all
of her, not just the parts the rest of the world was allowed to see. She already knew Rebecca’s strengths—she could see them in her body, feel them in her touch, hear them in her words. But what of her fears and her needs? Would that part of Rebecca’s life always be closed to her?

“I have my car here,” Catherine answered, knowing, even as she struggled with disappointment, that this was not the time to search for answers, nor the time to expect Rebecca to lower her defenses. The investigation and her partner’s death were taking too heavy a toll on the detective’s physical and emotional reserves as it was.

“No.” Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t want you to drive home alone. Not tonight…not after this call. I don’t think you’re in any danger, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ll take you home and pick you up in the morning. You can come back for your car then.”

Catherine started to protest but then thought better of it. An argument now would not help either of them, and she suddenly realized she was exhausted. It was nearly ten o’clock, and, once again, she had missed a meal. “Burger break on the way?” she asked, rising stiffly from her chair.

Rebecca grinned at last. “I’ll do better than that, my dear Dr. Rawlings. I’ll treat you to pizza.”

“You’re on,” Catherine replied, slipping an arm around Rebecca’s slim waist.

The unexpected embrace caught Rebecca by surprise. She suddenly pulled Catherine close and held her fiercely. “I have to go out again,” she whispered into fragrant hair. “Things are beginning to move in this case, and I’ve got to stay on top of it. I wish I could stay with you tonight, but I’ll have one of the black-and-whites cruise by your place every half hour or so.”