A Killing Gift

Thirty-six

Dr. Jason Frank was a morning person, always up at first light in a race with his two-year-old toddler, April, who was a morning person, too. They both wanted to be the first to greet the other. Jason's wife, Emma, slept in an hour longer. What drew her out of bed and into the kitchen every morning was the aroma of coffee, toasted waffles, bagels, or corn muffins- whatever Jason offered up in the way of breakfast. His culinary competence was limited to freshly squeezed orange juice, fresh fruit, and toasted whatever, and Emma was always appropriately grateful for whatever he served.

On Thursday April won the first-up race. Long before six, she'd climbed up on her parents' bed, put her face about an inch from her father's nose, and breathed on him until he grabbed and tickled her.

"Orange juice, Daddy," she demanded. "Please."

After he got up to supply it, she sat on the closed toilet seat while he went through his shaving routine. Sometimes Jason wore a short beard for a year or two. But now he was back into the routine of scraping his cheeks and gabbing with his little nonstop talker, who liked to lather her own cheeks and play-shave herself.

By seven he'd finished showering and was dressed in a white shirt, lightweight blue suit, and one of his dozen boring blue-and-red-striped ties. He'd already checked his e-mails and his phone messages, and thought that nothing terrible had happened in the night. Patients needed prescriptions refilled, they wanted to change appointments. Colleagues had to reschedule meetings. At that moment everything appeared normal in his world, and that was enough to make him happy.

Despite the endless round of terrors expressed daily by his patients about world war and the precarious state of the stock market in addition to their own private tragedies of death and life-threatening events, the rebirth of spring was reviving his hope. He loved his wife and baby and worked hard every day to balance fear against normalcy.

In fact, life's urgencies post-9/11 had taken on a new poignancy for him. Just having the privilege of being alive and present for his family and patients felt like a gift. Every day was a new gift. Today, when Emma came into the kitchen with a sheet crease on her left cheek, her lovely hair still a little messy, wearing one of his T-shirts, and yawning her sleep away, he felt it again. Blessed.

"Hey, baby," she murmured to Jason.

"I'm not a baby," April replied.

Jason laughed. "Hey, gorgeous." He moved close to cuddle his beautiful wife, nuzzle her neck.

"No way." Emma made a grumbling noise at the idea of beauty in the morning, so he hugged her and kissed her some more until she stopped protesting. Then he poured coffee with hot milk into a large mug and handed it over so she could climb out of the sleep pit.

"Thanks." Her first smile of the day. After that first smile had warmed him all the way up, Jason finally turned on the news. The first thing he saw on NBC was a fast-breaking news alert that Birdie Bassett, his most important appointment of the day, had been murdered last night. "Oh, no." He felt the blast of another human life wasted and gone. What was it with him and homicide? He'd had respite from violent death for more than a year, but now it was back. Someone on the fringe of his life had a violent death the night before he was to meet her to discuss important business. Damn! Reflexively, he moved the plastic syrup container out of April's range. She already had a lake of it on her plate and was squeezing out more.

"No, Daddy!" She tried to retrieve it from him.

"You've got lots," he pointed out.

"What's the matter, honey?" Emma responded to his body language. She always knew when he crashed. April didn't.

"Yum," she said, eating her waffle with both hands and dripping all over the table. "Yum, yum."

"Somebody I was supposed to see today died last night," Jason said softly.

"Goodness. Who?" Emma's eyes opened wide.

"Remember Max Bassett?"

"Of course, your lifesaver. But didn't he die weeks ago?"

"Yes. This is his widow." Jason was too depressed to pour more coffee for himself, and he needed it now.

"I'm sorry," Emma said. "Was she old?"

"No, she wasn't old."

"What did she die of?" Then she got it and stared at him questioningly.

Jason shook his head. He didn't want to go there. Emma herself had been stalked and almost killed a few years back. She was still suffering nightmares from the experience. Only months later, her best friend had been stabbed to death. Their lives were changed forever, and baby April was the result of their need to love each other and have a family. Their precious daughter was named for April Woo, the detective who'd handled both cases, and baby April reminded them of her in some way or another nearly every day. But Jason didn't want to face another murder.

"No, sugarplum. That's enough." A few seconds ago Emma had been sleepy and out of it. Now she was on active toddler duty with a wet towel at the ready to swab sticky syrup out of April's adorable blond curls as soon as she finished covering them with it. And Emma was on that other alert, too. The murder alert.

"What happened?" she asked as soon as Jason muted the TV.

"Later." He clicked his tongue. He really didn't want to talk about it now. The sudden death didn't bode well for the institute, and that was upsetting, too.

Jason was a prominent psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who taught and supervised candidates at the Psychoanalytic Institute. He also chaired about a hundred thousand ineffective committee meetings there a year. Max Bassett had helped the institute emerge from several decades of decline and finally enter into the modern age. With Max's death, chaos among the dinosaurs was certain to reign again.

It was a selfish thought, but Jason couldn't help it. The whole mental-health field was suffering from HMO-itis, but psychoanalysts most of all. Psychiatrists had become closely aligned with drug companies and were reimbursed nicely for heavily medicating every kind of emotional distress. Psychoanalysis didn't qualify for reimbursement by HMOs and was scorned by drug companies. To make matters worse, analysts had trouble accepting the fact that they had to fund-raise to support their institutions just like everybody else. Soliciting funds from their patients and patients' families was considered taboo. It was a catch-22. With the loss of an important advocate like Max Bassett, so much had been at stake for the institute that Jason had been looking forward to meeting his widow.

He pushed away the selfish feeling of loss for the institute with the same motion he used for his breakfast plate. Then he remembered the tremor in Birdie's voice when she'd returned his call a week ago. Something had been bothering her about her husband's will and about his death. She had questions. Jason hadn't thought much of her concern at the time. No one ever believes death is a natural consequence of living. But now that she was gone, he was sorry he'd taken so long to see her. His week could not have been that busy. What had he been thinking? He began to torment himself about it.

At eight he said his good-byes to Emma and April, then traveled the long distance to his office in the apartment next door to begin his patient day. Several hours later, during the time he was supposed to be at Birdie Bassett's apartment, he'd brooded long enough to call April Woo on her cell phone.

"Sergeant Woo," she answered right away.

"Hey, April, it's Jason. Long time no talk."

"Jason! I thought you dropped off the end of the earth. How's my namesake doing?"

"Talking up a storm. Emma's great, too. How's Mike?"

"Oh, being promoted to captain any day. We're doing okay. What's up? I never hear from you unless there's trouble."

"Well, there's trouble. Birdie Bassett, that woman who was murdered last night…" He sighed. "I had an appointment with her today."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Jason. How can I help you?"

"Well, her husband was a donor at the institute. I didn't know her, but she called me last week."

"I see. Do you have some information that could help us?"

"Her husband died recently and she voiced some concern about it. I'm calling about that."

"What kind of concern?"

"She knew him well, of course. She said he was in perfect health, but you know, people have trouble accepting the fact that sometimes no one is to blame. We're a blaming society."

"For sure. What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not really suggesting… You just always told me there are no coincidences in police work. And Mrs. Bassett was troubled last week. I don't know the full extent of her suspicions. I'm just reporting what she told me in the few minutes that we talked. She'd inherited a lot of money, and she gave me the impression that her stepchildren didn't get what they expected, and they were contesting the will. She definitely had her concerns. Last night she was murdered. I just wanted you to know."

April was silent. She wondered about Mike's copycat speculation. Maybe Bernardino's death presented an opportunity to Birdie's enemies. It had happened before.

"Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Can you talk to the detectives handling the case?" he asked.

"Oh, sure. I guess I could do that," she said.

"Are you the detective handling the case?" he asked after a beat.

"One of them."

"So you know everything about it?"

"There was another homicide in Washington Square last week, a retired police lieutenant, my old supervisor, in fact. This is the second one," she said slowly.

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know. At the very least it means there's a sick person out there who kills rich people with his bare hands."

"Rich people. I thought you said your supervisor was a cop."

"Bernardino was a cop with fifteen million dollars in his pocket. Thanks for the tip, Jason. I'll get back to you." Jason hung up the phone more distressed than he'd been before.