Loving Time

eleven

“Halloween.” Sergeant Joyce spat out the word with disgust. “Worst night of the year as far as I’m concerned.” She threw herself into a chair in the detective squad’s interview room, where the TV was on, set to a surgical procedure. The removal of what appeared to be an eyeball was in progress.

April leaned against the wall behind the monitor so that she wouldn’t have to watch it. Mike sat in the chair opposite her and stroked his mustache.

“One of my kids ate two pounds of candy and threw up half the night. The other one dressed like a washing machine—covered his head with a box from the supermarket and had his sister staple up the bottom. She forgot to put any holes for his arms, so the poor kid couldn’t collect anything.” Sergeant Joyce shook her head fondly. “Can you beat that?”

April and Mike exchanged glances.

Joyce sighed gustily. “Well, what do you think?” She directed the question at Mike.

He winked. “Kids are great,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind having a few myself.”

“No kidding.” Joyce shot him a mean look. “Why don’t I believe that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I wasn’t talking about kids. I was talking about the case—Raymond what’s-his-name.”

“Okay.” Whatever you say.

The words “ovarian cancer” jumped out of the TV speaker.

Sergeant Joyce’s head jerked around as if she hadn’t realized the show was on. “What the fuck is that?”

April’s stomach rumbled. She jiggled her foot impatiently. It was lunchtime. The minutes were ticking away, and there was a lot to do.

“Looks like the TV. You want it off?”

“Yes, I want it off. I want it always off. Who turns that thing on, anyway?”

Mike leaned over and hit the power button. He shrugged again. If the squad supervisor didn’t know that Healy turned on the surgery channel every chance he got, it wasn’t his problem.

“I hope it’s suicide,” she said suddenly, pulling at her hair. “Our record is really getting to stink.”

April smiled. Yeah, here they were in what was called a quality-of-life precinct: the West Side north of Fifty-ninth Street, Central Park West to the Hudson River. The area included a number of high-profile churches and synagogues, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of Natural History, Columbus Avenue, where the TV networks were, Lincoln Center, several colleges and a university, a huge hospital complex. The list went on and on. This was where robberies, muggings, panhandling, car thefts, drugs, and rapes of the homeless were the major contenders for their time. Homicide was not exactly a daily occurrence around there. People didn’t like it. It made them nervous.

“It’s Healy. I know it’s Healy. He must have been rejected from medical school or something.” The Sergeant smirked at them, wanting them to know that even when she said she didn’t know things, she really did.

“High school,” Mike shot out.

“All right, all right. What about the stuff in this guy Raymond’s apartment?”

“You mean the book and the Kaminex?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a precise description of the plastic-bag suicide in the book, complete with some discussion about alcohol and tranquilizers. If you drink too much and take too many, you fall asleep before the bag’s attached. He had that section highlighted,” Mike said.

Or someone had. April thought of the neat job and wondered how a man might have a lover in for dinner, have sex, get dressed, comb his hair. Then what? Did they have a fight and break up? Was he so despondent he headed for the bathroom, popped a few pills, wandered back into the bedroom to call his shrink?

Then what?

He took the pills, put a plastic bag over his head, lay down on the soiled sheets with his shoes on, and went to sleep? Wouldn’t he want to write a note telling the shrink what had happened? Desperate people usually wanted to tell, to explain themselves.

“The book could be a plant,” April said. Could be there were no tranqs in his body.

“Halloween,” Joyce muttered. She was back on Halloween. “What’s the significance of that, huh?”

“Maybe it was just a coincidence,” April suggested.

“Lots of movement, lots of noise in the area last night,” the Sergeant was lamenting. “You know in these buildings, not all the kids trick-or-treating live there. Sometimes they bring their friends over and do it together. People open their doors without looking.”

April shifted her weight and started jiggling her other foot. Why was Sergeant Joyce fixated with Halloween? Halloween probably had nothing to do with it. The guy was unhappy. He offed himself. After a bottle of wine and dinner and sex all over the sheets? Love bite on his neck.

“Maybe it’s not a coincidence,” Mike said. “If you kill somebody on Halloween it could be a trick. The joke’s on the victim. If you kill yourself, the trick’s on the people left behind. You think Cowles had a sense of humor?”

April shook her head. Sometimes killers did, but suicides usually didn’t. Raymond’s wife had said he was seeing a psychiatrist. The same Dr. Treadwell had prescribed a tranquilizer. Maybe Ray had had trouble sleeping, but maybe he had had a mental problem. April had already dialed the number on the pad found on the table beside Ray’s body. Harold Dickey was also a shrink. According to Ray’s appointment book he’d seen Treadwell, the other psychiatrist, on Friday.

The two psychiatrists seemed to be the key. April checked her watch. It was after one. The person who had answered Dickey’s phone said the doctor was usually in his office between one-thirty and two. If they hurried they might be able to catch him.

“Let’s go talk to the shrink,” April said.

Sergeant Joyce pushed her chair away from the table, scraping new scuff marks on the dingy green linoleum floor. She scowled at Mike. “Be nice,” she warned.