Loving Time

thirty-eight

Clara Treadwell did not get up or say hello when April came into her office. She merely pointed to the tufted leather tub chair in front of her desk.

“Please sit down, Officer.”

“Detective Woo,” April corrected her.

“Yes, I remember. But there were two of you. Where’s your partner?” The woman seemed annoyed that there was only one of them now. She also seemed much older than she had a week ago. Her skin had a dry and grayish cast under the tan, and the puffiness around her eyes made her look as if she’d been worrying a lot and not sleeping much.

“He’s on another case.” April did not bother to tell the doctor that precinct detectives sometimes worked together but did not have partners. She sat gingerly on the shiny tufts, which were so hard, they must have been designed to discourage visitors from staying too long.

On the Upper West Side she had worked on cases involving all kinds of women—homeless, hookers, students, housewives, store owners, and businesswomen. It was the people April considered rich who fascinated and intimidated her the most. Until she’d come uptown she’d never seen this kind of people up close before, the kind who looked like they walked out of TV shows and magazines. They lived in luxurious apartments with doormen and porters, who took out the garbage and hosed down the sidewalks every morning. They kept their cars in garages that cost what a one-bedroom apartment cost outside of Manhattan. They ate in restaurants with white tablecloths and worked in stores and offices that were attractive and clean and comfortable—unlike New York City precinct stations or anything April had ever encountered in Chinatown.

But privilege gave rich women more than luxury. April had noted the extra piece in their design over and over, wanted it and knew how hard it would be to achieve. No promotion would give it to her, and no amount of money could buy it. The posture of Clara Treadwell’s body, the arch of her eyebrows, the set of her mouth as she sat at her desk exhausted but undaunted—her hands easy among expensive blotter, appointment book, and pen set—everything about her stated her confidence in herself, her certainty that she was right and could get that lightness across, her ability to intimidate without saying a word. Her lack of fear. April believed you had to be born with that lack of fear, educated to it, and Caucasian to carry it off.

“You’re here to report your conclusions on the Raymond Cowles case,” Dr. Treadwell said imperiously.

“I’m here on another matter, but I’d be glad to fill you in on that investigation if you’d like.”

Clara nodded.

April quickly told her what they had discovered about Raymond Cowles’s last night and what the forensic evidence had indicated about the manner and time of his death. Clara’s face tightened as April described the dinner and sex with his lover. Otherwise she betrayed no emotion.

“Except for his phone call to you, there seems to be no mystery about it,” April concluded.

The weariness and age dropped away from the hospital director’s face as indignation animated it. “What makes you think I had a conversation with Ray that night?”

“We hit the redial button on his phone, Dr. Treadwell. Your number was the last one he called.”

“That doesn’t mean he reached me,” Clara said angrily. “If he called the number, he must have gotten my answering machine and hung up.”

No, that was not possible. The phone company had logged the call in at over six minutes. Clara’s answering machine took messages of only two minutes in length. April knew that because the machine itself had given her the information when she called the number. Cowles and Treadwell had talked, but April decided to let it go. If Dr. Treadwell bore some responsibility for Cowles’s mental state at the time he took his life, some other court would have to determine it.

“It’s a mystery,” April murmured.

“I’m a doctor. Do you think I would have hung up on him if I had known he was on the edge?” Clara persisted.

“You spoke to him,” April said softly.

“No, of course I didn’t. I’m saying it wouldn’t have happened if we had spoken.”

April’s mouth went dry exactly the same way it had when she followed Mike to the door of Raymond’s room and saw by his stance that Cowles was in there and he was dead. Clara had most certainly talked to him. The admission was there in her denial. It didn’t change anything, though. Only that April could no longer believe any statement she made.

“Well.” April backed off on Raymond. “I’m here to ask you a few questions about Dr. Harold Dickey. You were with him when he collapsed, I understand.”

“Yes.” Clara’s eyes flared. “Has this become a police matter, too?”

April was surprised. “Haven’t you been briefed on it yet?”

Clara shook her head, wary now. “What’s going on?”

“The death file isn’t complete yet, but the preliminary findings show no signs of heart disease or natural—”

“Then what killed him?” she demanded impatiently.

“According to the tox reports, he had very high levels of alcohol and Amitrip … ah, Elavil.”

“Jesus.” Clara’s brow furrowed. “Amitriptyline? Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But he’d been drinking. He knew better than—” Clara Treadwell froze.

April pulled out her notepad. “Do you know of any reason he might have wanted to commit suicide?”

The doctor stared at April, clearly stunned. “Give me a minute, will you. This is …”

Pressed rigidly against the unyielding chair, April’s back began to ache. She wanted to get up and walk around.

Clara pulled herself together. She could do it faster than anyone April had ever seen. In less than sixty seconds the imperiousness was back. “Detective, I’ll have to talk to you some other time. I need to organize my thoughts about this.”

“I won’t take long,” April said evenly. She didn’t want Clara Treadwell organizing her thoughts. She wasn’t getting a cozy feeling about this woman, who was already implicated in one death. This was her second death in little more than a week. April wanted to know what happened to Harold Dickey. It was her job to find out, and find out she would—no matter who the woman was or how intimidating she could be.

“I don’t care how long it will take. I cannot do it now.”

Clara stood up. April did not.

“I’d rather talk to you before you think about it, Doctor. It’s an unnatural, that’s all. We just have to establish whether it was an accident or Dr. Dickey took too much medicine on purpose.”

“How can I know that?” Clara clenched her fists.

“You were there.”

“Yes,” Clara said, calmer now. “Harold asked me to come there. He was already ill when I arrived. At first I thought he was drunk.” She shook her head. “Then I realized it was something more than that.”

“What made you think so?”

“He was agitated, paranoid, raving, hallucinating. He was having a psychotic episode.” She looked puzzled. “But I—”

“Did he ask for help?”

“He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He didn’t know. He would have told me.” She shook her head again.

“When did you call for help?”

“He collapsed and had a seizure almost immediately. I was only there for a minute, maybe two minutes, before it happened. You can ask the guards. They saw me come in and they responded when the code was called.”

“The code?”

“There’s a code for medical emergency.”

“When did you arrange to meet?”

“We didn’t. He just asked me and I—” She froze again.

Another nerve. “When?”

Clara closed her eyes. “I don’t remember. I just know he didn’t take anything while I was there, and he was already very ill. If I’d gotten there five minutes later, he would have died alone.” She fell silent.

“Was he depressed when you talked to him?”

“Not at that exact moment, no.”

“Had he been depressed recently?”

“Well … yes. There was the Cowles suicide. He was upset about that.”

“Oh? Did he know Raymond Cowles well?” April asked.

“Of course he did, he was the supervisor on Cowles’s analysis. He directed every aspect of the case.” Clara pursed her lips. “But I’m sure he told you that when you spoke with him.”

Uh-uh. Dickey had told her he hadn’t known Cowles.

“Dr. Dickey told me you found his number by Cowles’s body. Maybe Dr. Dickey spoke to him,” Clara speculated.

“Maybe.” April nodded, wondering if the two deaths were connected or not. “Well, thank you for talking to me. I’ll need to see his office. Has anyone been in it since—”

Again the eyes flared. “No. I locked it immediately. No one’s been in that room or touched a thing.”

“Good. I’ll also need a list of his patients, people he worked with—colleagues, nurses—his relatives.” April got up. Her back throbbed, and she had to pee.

“I’ll have my assistant take care of everything.” Clara Treadwell didn’t say good-bye. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the Chinese detective was gone.