Manhattan Mayhem

TELL THE TRUTH

His eyebrows shot up. “I was expecting something more along the lines of, ‘Ride a roller coaster’ or ‘Fly to Paris.’ ” He gestured toward the pad. “That could cause some damage.”

“It could do some good,” she countered.

As she left his office, he asked her to check in every day.

“For pain control? Or to know when I ought to go into hospice?”

“Yes,” he said, and then he hugged her.

She clung to his white jacket for a moment. “Thank you for telling me the truth,” she whispered, and then she bravely walked away.

She called him on each of the next three days.

On the fourth morning, Dr. Samuel Waterhouse’s tearful receptionist brought in a newspaper that explained why they wouldn’t get a call that day.

The night before, Priscilla Windsor had been stabbed to death as she walked-running was no longer possible-in the late cool twilight along Riverside Drive. The redbud trees would blossom into mauve by the next morning, but she wouldn’t see them. She had hoped to live long enough to see spring, but she had also been afraid of seeing it, fearing that it would fill her with unbearable longing for more life. On the night she died, the buds were still wrapped tight as tiny boxers’ fists, as if they didn’t want to pound her with the bittersweet pain of seeing them open their petals.

Witnesses saw her stumble near the dog park, saw a person in sweats and a hoodie stoop to lift her up, saw them huddle for a moment, saw him set her upright, saw him prop her against a tree, saw him pat her shoulder, saw him continue on his own run. They thought, Aw, nice guy. They smiled toward his unidentifiable back as he ran faster than before. When he turned a corner, they remembered to look back at the woman he’d so kindly helped.

They saw her sway, and then slide down the tree, and not get up again.

“Oh, my God,” a woman said, pulling her dog closer on its chain.

Other people hurried to check on the fallen woman; there was shock when they saw blood, horror at the knife, then confusion as they figured out who among them should call 911. The Upper West Side of New York City was a neighborhood, and even if they didn’t personally know this young woman, they knew they wanted to help her.

“Are you sure it was a man?” one of them asked as they compared notes on what they’d witnessed. “I really thought it was a woman.”

“But we’re all agreed he was white, right? Or she was?”

But they weren’t agreed on that, either. Nor on tall or medium height, or stocky or thin build, or even whether the perpetrator had come up to the woman after she stumbled or had in fact caused the stumble. The hoodie was black, gray, red, or navy. There were fifteen eyewitnesses, and the cops joked later that you’d have thought they were all looking in different directions at fifteen different women being killed by fifteen different perps. One eyewitness swore there might have been two people who stopped to “help.”

It had the earmarks of a random killing by a random crazy person, people said. She had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the very randomness of it-in a public place, in front of lots of people, on a lovely evening-that made it so frightening. The truth was, they would have felt safer if the killer had specifically, and with malice, set out to kill this particular woman, instead of just stumbling onto the easiest person to stab.

Sam Waterford rarely attended the funerals of his patients, and he felt nervous about going to this one. At one such ceremony, years ago, he’d been screamed at by a family, and he didn’t want that to happen again. The family filed a malpractice suit the next day. They lost because he hadn’t done anything wrong. But ever since, he hadn’t wanted to remind other grieving families of his failures, or what they perceived as such.

The church on West End Avenue was packed, reflecting the social status of Priscilla’s parents, who were the head of a famous brokerage firm (her father) and the head of an even more famous charitable foundation (her mother). He paused at the back of the sanctuary for a moment and then walked down the center aisle so that he could slide between two couples in a pew near the front. When he glanced to his right, he didn’t recognize the stylish couple who had made room for him. But when he faced left, he found a very tanned older woman already grinning at him.

“Dr. Waterford,” she said, “do you recognize me with my clothes on?”

“Mrs. Darnell,” he said, smiling as if he hadn’t heard that joke a million times before. Her first name was Bunny, but he didn’t use it to address her. “How are you?”

“I suppose you’ll find out at my next appointment.”

He smiled again. She was as rich as chocolate torte and as thin as someone who never ate it, which was how she fit into her black Chanel ensemble, a perfect funeral suit.

“Poor thing,” she murmured, meaning, he supposed, the deceased and not him.

Then the organ music swelled, and the service began.

He spent it staring at the family and feeling anxious.

He could see them clearly in profile from where he sat. It was easy to pick out the elegant mother, the portly middle-aged father, the older sister who looked like a harder version of Priscilla.

They are remarkable, he thought.

In a packed sanctuary filled with the sounds of soft weeping, the air thick with the awareness of tragedy, they sat rigid and dry-eyed. Mr. Windsor did not put his arm around Mrs. Windsor. The mother never looked at her daughter. None of them wiped away a tear. It was hard to imagine anyone disliking Priss, but it appeared that either her own family was holding in torrents of emotion, or else they loathed the daughter and sister they had lost. He had seen this posture before-in hospitals, on the deaths of patients whose families did not love them.

At the close of the service, Mrs. Darnell said, none too quietly, “Well! Wasn’t that just the oddest funeral you’ve ever attended?”

A woman in front of them turned around.

“Strangest ever,” she said.

Startled, Sam looked questioningly at his patient.

“What? You didn’t notice? They hardly mentioned her! Barely even said her name! Such a lovely girl, so giving and generous, and not a word about any of that. Nothing about her childhood, or even her education-and she went to fine schools, believe you me. I’ll grant you, too many funerals these days go overboard into a dreadful sea of sentimentality, but this went too far onto dry land. There’s restraint, and then there’s looking as if you don’t give a damn about your own child! When is the last time you went to a funeral where fifteen distant cousins twice removed didn’t get up to speak about how close they were to the deceased, telling all those family stories that nobody else gives a hoot about?”

She was right, he realized. He’d been so wrapped up in theorizing about the Windsors that he’d barely noticed the entire service was nothing but hymns, Scripture readings, prayers, and a quick stiff homily from a minister who didn’t seem to have even met Priscilla. That was explained when Mrs. Darnell gossiped on, saying, “This isn’t even their church, you know. Maybe they couldn’t get in when they wanted to, but I’ll bet you this church now has a nice endowment for a new set of choir robes. Or something. But what an impersonal service! Why, even my church lets people get up and lie flatteringly about the deceased, and we’re Episcopalian!”

They were rising to their feet, along with the rest of the crowd, when a man’s deep voice cried out. “Wait! Wait! I want to say something about her!”

People stopped, stared, looked at each other.

“Uh-oh,” Mrs. Darnell said, looking maliciously pleased.

“She was an angel!” the man said. “Is no one going to tell about how she was an angel? Sit, sit! Let me tell you what she did for me!”

“Pakistani, do you think?” Mrs. Darnell whispered.

People sank down again in the pews, a little anxiously, shooting glances toward the family in the front row. Sam watched the sister turn around to check out the speaker, but she quickly faced forward again, as if her mother, seated next to her, had pulled her back. The father’s left shoulder jerked hard, once, and that was it. The three of them returned to sitting like statues.

“She must have bought a hot dog from me twice a week, every week, for the whole last year,” the man said in a voice that penetrated every corner of the large room. “She said I had the best hot dogs in New York City! And I treated her like I treat everybody-I yelled at her to hurry up, to give me her order, to move along. She smiled at me; I never smiled back. She said thank you, but I never did. Then, the day before she was killed-the day before!-she came early to my stand, and she said…” His voice faltered. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “She said she’d give me five thousand dollars if I was nice to all of my customers for the entire day.”

Audible gasps arose from the audience.

“Five thousand dollars!” he said again, sharing the crowd’s astonishment and skepticism-even though it was well known in the city that Priss Windsor had once given away a three million dollar inheritance from her godfather.

“A crazy girl, I thought,” the man confessed. “But five thousand is five thousand, so I said, what would I have to do? And she said, you have to be kind to people, you have to smile at them, and say things courteously. You have to thank them for their business, and you can’t throw things at them!”

He shook his head. “Sometimes, it’s true, I hate it when people pay in pennies and nickels. Sometimes, it’s true, I throw it all back at them.”

He made fast work of the rest of the story. How she gave him half the amount to start, how she had brought a blanket and sat on the grass to observe him, and how she gave him grins and thumbs-up as his courteousness improved throughout the day. And how, at the end of the day, she gave him the rest of the five thousand dollars, and he gave her a free hot dog.

“She was an angel,” he said, turning toward the family whose faces had not turned toward him. “She changed my life that day. My wife says thank you, too!”

There was a low murmur of chuckles.

“I just want to say all that, and how sorry I am that she… I was so shocked when I saw…”

His voice trailed off, and he sat down.

But then he popped back up again.

“Somebody has to speak for the dead!” he proclaimed. “She says, ‘Be kind.’ Thank you.” He sat down again, flushed with exertion and emotion.

Someone else stood up, a pretty young woman.

“He’s right, Priss really was an angel, and she was funny! I was in a taxi with her two days before she died, and right after we got in, the driver laid on his horn something awful. Priscilla leaned forward and told him that she’d give him a hundred dollars if he didn’t honk for the whole rest of the ride-”

There were little explosions of laughter among the crowd of frequent taxi riders.

“And he didn’t! When he let us off, he grinned at her and he said, ‘So what will you give me if I don’t honk for the rest of the day?’ ”

At that, nearly the entire crowd laughed, the kind of heartwarming, affectionate laughter that makes shocked and grieving people feel better.

“What did Priss say to him?” a man called out.

The young woman turned a trembling smile toward him. Her eyes shone with tears. “She said that she and several million people in Manhattan would give him their everlasting gratitude.” Again, the crowd burst into laughter. “And then he said, the driver said, ‘Is it okay if I tap on my horn if I need somebody to move back at a stop light?’ And Priss laughed and said, ‘What? You think fifteen cars behind you won’t beat you to it?’ ”

There was laughing and clapping, but not from the family, Sam noted. Their shoulders did not shake with laughter; they still did not dab tears from their eyes. Whatever was damming them up inside did not give way.

As yet another mourner got up and started to tell a story, Sam saw Mrs. Windsor give a sharp sign to the minister to get his attention. Then she pointed to the organist, making it clear what she wanted. Almost immediately, the music rose to Bachian heights, drowning out the testimonials. Ushers walked rapidly into place at the ends of pews and began to move the big, and now boisterous, crowd out of the sanctuary.

Shocked, Sam realized he might have just heard evidence of Priscilla Windsor’s bucket list: Tell the truth. He wondered, If this was what she did with strangers, what was on her list for people she knew well?

“Now, that was more like it,” Mrs. Darnell said approvingly as they rose to their feet. “Even if Maggie hated it. Did you see how fast she got that minister to move? Oh, well, at least we had a little fun, and that dear girl would be glad, I’m sure of it. You’re going to the reception now?”

“No. I wasn’t invited. I don’t know the family.”

“Oh, well, bosh to that. You just crook your well-tailored arm and let me hold your elbow, and I’ll get you in as if you live there. I’m assuming Priscilla was your patient, although I know you won’t tell me so. You know us better than our husbands do, and that makes you at least as close to her as family. Closer, in the case of her family, and don’t you ever tell anybody I ever said so!”

Sam smiled at her. “I won’t.”

A few pews from the exit, he managed to ease away when Mrs. Darnell wasn’t looking and lose himself in the crowd. He wanted to chase down the last person who had risen to speak, the one who had been defeated by Bach.

A floral dress, puffy hair, a round face.

He spotted her standing between two younger women, and immediately he intuited whom they might be: teachers at the preschool where Priscilla had worked, a school so unfashionable that it didn’t even have a waiting list. They looked unfashionable themselves amid the chic crowd. The older woman looked like somebody a child might run to for a hug.

She didn’t smile when he said, “Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

“You started to get up, in the sanctuary just now, to say something about Priscilla-”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to. Would you mind telling me what it was?”

“Who are you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Sam Waterhouse. I was her doctor.”

“Oh.” She looked tired, harried, and a lot less huggable up close. “I was only going to say that the children and parents at our preschool adored her. I thought it might bring us some business. Do you have grandchildren?”

He was taken aback by her cold words and sharp eyes-and by her assigning grandchildren to him before his time.

“I have a son in fourth grade.”

“Really?” The single word had an amused tone that offended him, as if it tickled her that a man his age could have a child that young. He thought the woman tactless and unpleasant; no wonder her preschool didn’t have a waiting list.

“I liked her,” he said on Priss’s behalf. “I liked her very much. I thought maybe you were going to tell a funny story about her.”

She snorted and eyed the young women on either side. What she didn’t see was how they eyed each other the moment she turned her attention back to him. “The story I could tell wouldn’t be so nice,” she said. “I fired her last week.” She finally smiled, but it had a smirky edge. “Maybe not the right story for a funeral, hm? What kind of doctor did you say you are?”

“Ob-gyn.”

“Oh. I was sure you’d say psychiatrist.” She smirked again and walked away.

One of the young women went with her, but the second woman lingered and said quietly, “Don’t pay any attention to her. She was always jealous of how much the kids and parents liked Priss more than her. And she’s still furious about what Priscilla did.”

“What did she do?”

“She read a couple of parents the riot act. Which they so had coming!”

“When was this?”

“The day she died.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s so awful, to think her last memory of us was of getting fired, but I think she knew that the rest of us loved her for it. Susan”-she pointed a thumb back over her shoulder in the direction the floral dress had gone-“won’t cross our parents for any reason, because she doesn’t want to lose their money. It drives us crazy. The parents Priss yelled at used to pick up their kids any ol’ time they wanted to, even if they were two hours late, or even later! No call ahead, no making plans with our permission. No consideration for us at all, and their poor kids felt abandoned, even though we lied and told them their mom and dad weren’t the jerks they really are.”

“And Priss-Priscilla-told them off?”

“Did she ever! It was beautiful! Shocked the heck out of them. And us! They pulled their kids out of the school right then, even though Susan fired Priss in front of them and apologized until I wanted to puke.”

“Did Priss say anything to you about a bucket list?”

“Isn’t that something people do when they know they’re going to die?” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, my gosh. Do you think she had a premonition?”

“No, no, I just-”

“She did say that telling off those people was something she’d always wanted to do. Well, not always, but you know what I mean.” That sounded very bucket list-like to him, especially when combined with the incidents involving the hot-dog vendor and taxi driver.

He wanted to ask the young woman a question that was going to sound rude no matter how he phrased it, so he just said it plainly: “Why did Priss go to work there, do you know?”

She smiled a little. “You mean, when she had all this?” She swept her right arm in an arc, indicating the signs of money around them, in the clothes, in the hair colors, in the address of the church, in the limos and cabs waiting at the curb outside.

“I guess I do mean that. And also-” He gestured in the direction of the floral dress.

“Oh, she’s nice when she interviews you,” the young woman said. “All cookies and teddy bears. You only find out later how she really is. And we never knew about this.” Her glance took in the crowd. “We thought Priss was just like us, only nicer.” She smiled again, a sweet smile. “All I knew was that she had a degree in early childhood education, and she needed a job, just like us. Well, I guess she didn’t need one, but she wanted it. I have a theory, now that I’ve seen all this…”

He cocked his head, the way he did to encourage patients to tell him all their symptoms.

“I think she walked into DayGlow DayCare and saw the real situation: a witch of an owner, an unhappy staff, the effect that had on the kids. And she decided she could change it. Change us. I think she went to work there because she was one of those people who makes other people feel good just to be around her.”

“And did she have that effect?”

The woman nodded. “Slowly. It was happening. We-the staff-were happier. The kids were having more fun and learning better. Susan was the roadblock, and parents like those two that Priss told off.” She started to cry openly. “I’m going to miss her so much.”

If she’d been his patient, he would have hugged her.

He hugged her anyway.

“Are you ready?”

He turned at the sound of Bunny Darnell’s voice and told her he was.

“Who was that cute little thing?”

“She teaches at the preschool where Priscilla worked.”

“Ah.” For the first time, her face and her voice softened. “Priss was a nice child.” Then her expression and tone turned wry again. “How she came out of that family, I’ll never understand.” She gave him a slanted look. “Oh, I could tell you stories.”

“I wish you would.”

“Really? I’ve never heard you gossip about your patients. It’s one of the reasons we all go to you, you know. You keep our secrets. Are you going to change my idolatrous image of you?”

“God forbid.” He smiled. “But I’m not the one who would be telling the stories, and I wouldn’t be passing them along to anyone else.”

“Oh.” She laughed a little. “Good points. In that case, get in our car and prepare to be shocked.”

But he wasn’t shocked. Not by the stories of Priscilla’s father’s shady business practices, and not by the stories of how her mother lavished big salaries on herself and her staff toadies instead of spending all she should on the charitable organization she led. Even when Mrs. Darnell confided that Priscilla had gotten pregnant at sixteen, he didn’t react with surprise.

“You’re not even surprised at that?”

“I was her doctor. Even teenagers get stretch marks.”

“So you could tell.”

He didn’t acknowledge her statement.

“Did she tell you that her parents kicked her out of the house? If you must know, she came to me for help. I took her in and gave her spending money. And then, may God forgive me, I left her with my housekeeper and fled to Europe and didn’t return until it was over. She put it up for adoption, you know. It was a terribly lonely time for her, I’m sure.”

It amused him that she’d said “If you must know,” as if he were pressing her to tell him all these things that flowed out as if she’d kept them locked up a long time and was glad at last to say them aloud.

“Why did she go to you for help?” he asked.

She looked surprised at the question. “Well, because I was her godmother. Didn’t you know?”

He did know. It was why he’d sat down beside her. “I guess I’d forgotten.”

He glanced at her husband, who was driving the Jaguar through Central Park from the west side to the east.

“Then…” Sam left his awkward question unasked.

She laughed. “You’re thinking of the godfather who left her the three million? That was my first husband, George. It wasn’t easy for George to give money away. I nearly had to threaten to kill him if he didn’t put her in his will. She was cut out of her parents’ will. I wanted her to have something, even if it took her a long time to get it. Then, when George got so sick, I had to tell him, please, she isn’t in so much of a hurry for it. But it was too late. He was gone, and she wasn’t broke anymore.”

“But then she gave it all away.”

“I should have realized she might. She didn’t want to be anything her parents are, including rich. And she took to heart that Bible verse that causes so many of us anxious nights.”

“Which one?”

“The one about how it’s harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”

Her husband smiled at the traffic ahead of him.

Sam stared out a window. “Do you think she’s in heaven?”

“She’d better be, or what’s a heaven for, if it won’t take angels?”

“Do you want to end up in heaven?”

“Why do you think we take all those trips to Egypt? I’m searching for pygmy camels.”

He laughed. “That’s still going to take a very big needle, isn’t it?”

For the first time, her husband spoke. “You’ve never heard of the Seattle Space Needle?”

Sam laughed again. He liked these people.

After a bit, he said, “I understand why you can’t stand her parents.”

She nodded. “Loathsome people. No mercy. From them to her, or from me to them.”

Bunny Darnell’s husband magically found a parking space near the Frick museum, and then he threaded their trio smoothly past a doorman and into an elevator that opened directly into a penthouse apartment.

“Buffet to starboard,” Mrs. Darnell advised Sam. “Drinks to port, host and hostess receiving guests amidships, in front of the windows. Will you want a ride back with us?”

“I’ll get myself home. Thank you.”

“No problem,” she said, adding, “as the young ones say, though I wish they wouldn’t. Whatever happened to a simple gracious ‘You’re welcome’?”

She then surprised him by placing a hand lightly on his shoulder to give herself a boost up to kiss his cheek.

“If you’re lucky, they won’t remember you,” she whispered, causing him to turn to her so sharply that he knocked her briefly off balance. Sam grasped her elbow to steady her.

He apologized as people around them stared with concern at her and disapproval at him.

Bunny Darnell looked straight into his eyes and said quietly but firmly, “Don’t be sorry for what you’ve done, Sam.”

He stared as she walked away, then he turned blindly toward the windows.

When he could think clearly again, he joined a line of people waiting to speak to the family. All around, he heard comments marveling at the view of Central Park. He looked out over its trees, on toward his beloved West Side, and wished he were there with his wife and son, inside his own happy family, instead of here, intimately, on the East Side, with an unhappy one.

When a white-jacketed waiter went down the line with a silver tray and wine, Sam was tempted, but he decided he’d better keep his wits about him.

“I was her doctor,” Sam told her mother quietly.

“I know who you are,” she said coldly.

She’d been his patient, too, years before-right up until the day she’d taken Priss to him for a pregnancy test.

“May I speak to you privately?” he asked.

She stepped back, indicating with a head gesture that he should follow her to the window ledge behind her.

“Excuse me for asking something that will seem none of my business, but did Priscilla speak to you in the days before she died?”

“Speak to us? If you mean, come here without warning after years of saying nothing to us, then yes, she did. If you mean, did she speak the same unspeakable things she said to us years ago, yes, she did. And I’m assuming she spoke them to you as well, or you wouldn’t be here asking this question. I have to give you credit, Doctor. Apparently, you have never spoken of them to anyone else, because I think we would hear about it if you had broken your vow of confidentiality. So I will confide in you, Doctor, that my elder daughter was a hateful destructive liar, not the saint some people think she was.”

He felt his own anger rise along with hers.

He’d intended to ask if she knew about her daughter’s fatal condition. He thought it might comfort them to know the killer hadn’t taken away a long life from Priscilla, hadn’t deprived her of marriage, a career, children, future friends, and meaningful years. The cancer was going to steal all that, regardless.

Now he didn’t feel like offering a single word of comfort.

It sounded to him as if Priss had given her family one last chance. She had told the truth, and once again they had rejected it and her.

He leaned in toward her mother. “If you ever want to know the real truth, Mrs. Windsor, I have the baby’s DNA. All you have to do is have your husband come in with a sample of his-”

She slapped him.

“Hey, hold up!”

When he stopped his fast walk to the elevator and turned, he was so unnerved that he could feel the blood drain from his face-which must, he thought, make her slap stand out like finger paint on his pale face.

The young woman chasing him down looked so like his late patient that he nearly blurted “Priscilla-”

As she got closer, the eerily strong resemblance vanished; she was younger than Priss, but looked older.

“Ha!” she said. “For a minute you thought I was her, didn’t you? I’ve spooked a whole lot of people today. So much fun. Speaking of which, what’d you do to piss off my mother?”

“I said something she didn’t want to hear. You’re Priss’s younger sister?”

“Yeah, I’m Sydney.” She laughed again. “I hope you think of something else offensive to say to my mother. That was very entertaining. Who are you, anyway?”

“I was her doctor.”

“Mom’s?”

“Well, yes, at one time. But I meant your sister’s.”

He saw a look of distaste cross her face. “Do you know, if she hadn’t given away all that money, I might be three million dollars richer now?”

“What makes you think she’d have left it to you?”

She gave him a sharp look. “And that’s your business how?”

When he didn’t answer, she said, with a lift of her chin and an unpleasant smirk, “At least she left me her boyfriend. Although, to be honest, I stole him a little earlier than that.”

Sam followed her glance to a dark-haired young man slouched against a wall, the sole of his left shoe propped against the gorgeous wallpaper, his hands crossed behind his back as he rested his weight on them. The propped foot made Sam feel like a grumpy old codger; he realized that his first thought was: No manners, no respect for other people’s property. Figures, for a jerk who’d let one sister steal him away from the other sister. He felt pained on Priscilla’s behalf, but then thought maybe she’d got the better end of that particular bargain. The stolen boyfriend and the thieving sister deserved each other.

“Why didn’t your parents hold the service at their own church?” he asked.

“Because our minister might have said nice things about Priss.”

“Wow.”

“Hey, she’s lucky they didn’t hire a funeral home.”

“All this punishment just for being an unmarried pregnant teenager?”

Sydney shot him a furious look, which he received as an equal match to his own fury at all of them.

“What about you?” he asked her very quietly.

“What about me?”

“Your father-”

“Shut up! If you say anything else, I’ll slap you, too.”

Sydney turned away so fast that her long hair swung across her shoulders.

Seeing hostile looks from people around him, Sam continued on to the elevator and took it down, descending in regal solitude because no one wanted to ride with him.

Out on the street, Sam checked his phone.

His receptionist had texted: Cop wants to talk to you. She had left no name but did give him a number, which he called immediately.

The man who answered said, “Dr. Waterhouse. Thanks for calling me back. I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Priscilla Windsor. Where are you right now, sir?”

“Just leaving the funeral reception at her parents’ place.”

“Well, that’s a lucky coincidence, because I’m waiting outside there. By any chance, are you tall and handsome, with ridiculously great silver hair, wearing a really nice gray suit?”

“I think you have me confused with Richard Gere. I’m medium height, mid-fifties, black suit, graying brown hair.”

“Oh, okay, I’ve got you now. I guess we can’t all be Richard Gere. But, really, you’re not so far from George Clooney.”

“Detective…”

“Paul Cantor. Turn left, look ten yards down for a short bald guy in a blue suit that he won’t let his wife throw out.”

They shook hands, crossed over to the Central Park side of the street, and found a bench, where they sat with their backs to the park and their faces toward traffic.

Without a word, the detective handed Sam a long thin piece of notepaper with Sam’s name and office information at the top. Under that were the words TELL THE TRUTH, and then a list with an asterisk in front of each entry.

* Hotdog guy

* Dog lady

* Taxi drivers

* Sydney/Allen

* The Awful Parents

* The Other Awful Parents

* Dustin

All but the last entry had a single line drawn through it, as if each had been taken care of and then crossed off. Additional asterisks followed down the page, but nothing was listed beside them; she had either meant to add more or figured she already had plenty.

“Where’d you find this, Detective?”

“In her fanny pack. Do you have any idea what it is?”

“It’s a bucket list,” Sam informed him, and then he detailed the facts of the illness that had been set on killing Priscilla until someone took its chance away.

“Ah, some of this explains the funeral,” the detective said.

“I think so.”

“Hot-dog guy. That was amazing.”

“She was an amazing young woman.”

“Five thousand bucks. Makes me wish I’d had a chance to be rude to her, too.”

Sam laughed.

“You liked her?” the cop asked him.

“Oh, yes. She was a genuinely nice person.”

“Who might want to kill her?”

“What? It wasn’t a random guy?”

“We have a witness who saw somebody dressed like a runner near her building. Leaning against it, like he was waiting. Straightened up when she came out. Started walking, as if following her. Crossed a street when she did, turned the direction she did, and kept going after her. It didn’t look dangerous at the time, our witness says; it looked more casual. But that’s a hell of a casual coincidence-that he’d just happen to be hanging out near her building.”

“I don’t know what to say. Wow. That’s”-Sam stared at the traffic going by-“really awful. I can’t imagine who-”

The cop shrugged. “I’m thinking it wasn’t the hot-dog guy or that taxi driver.”

“Yeah.” Sam glanced at the detective. “I heard a story you didn’t hear. Remember the woman who got up to say something, but she never got a chance?”

“There were people popping up all over the place. I was at the back. I could see all of them. Which one was she?”

“Floral dress. Middle aged. Close to the front.”

“What was her story?”

“That she fired Priscilla the day she died.”

“She was going to tell that?”

“Well, no, she was going to say that all the little kids loved Priscilla.”

“Then why fire her?”

“For telling the truth.” Sam told the whole story, according to both women, as it had been told to him.

“So that would be ‘The Awful Parents,’ I guess. But who are ‘The Other Awful Parents’?”

“Her own, I think. Or vice versa.”

“So that could explain the incredibly impersonal service. I’ve never seen one like it. All those fancy people there to hear nothing about her, at least not until the mourner rebellion.”

“Mourner rebellion.” Sam nodded. “That’s what it was.”

“The mom and dad looked as if they’d wandered into a funeral for a stranger.”

“I just got slapped by one of them.”

The detective’s eyes widened. “What did you do, tell them you liked her?”

“I suggested to her mom that if she ever wants to know for sure whether her husband had molested their daughter, I still have some DNA that could prove it one way or the other.”

“Holy moly, Doc. Let’s walk while you tell me more.”

As they got up to enter the park, the detective pointed to the bucket list. “Who are Sydney and Allen, do you know?”

“Sydney is the sister who hated Priss for giving away three million dollars to charity, and I’m guessing that Allen is Priss’s boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister.”

“Man, oh, man,” the detective said. “Am I ever glad you gave her a piece of paper with your name on it.” He laughed a little. “What about this last name? Dustin.”

“Don’t know,” he said, lying.

As they parted, the detective said, “Don’t worry. We’ll catch her killer the easy way-with surveillance video.”

Sam’s heart picked up its pace.

He had worried about exactly that possibility.

He steadied his voice: “A camera in the park?”

“No, across the street from her building.”

For the first time that day, Sam felt beyond nervous, beyond anxious, and deep into frightened. When he shook hands in farewell, he hoped his palm wasn’t as sweaty as he feared it was.

At the last minute, he found the nerve to ask, “Have you looked at it yet?”

“The video?” The cop shook his head. “No, but I hear it’s good stuff. See ya, Doc. You gave me good stuff, too. Thanks.”

Sam got his breathing under control and then called home just to hear his wife’s voice. She was an architect, working from their house.

“How’s tricks?” she answered, their habitual query.

“Okay. How are you and Eric?”

They had a ten-year-old son, the light of both of their lives.

He would have been adopted if they’d gone through proper channels, if Sam hadn’t put the proper papers under his patient’s nose and whisked them away to be shredded after Priscilla signed them. No one was ever supposed to know her baby was a child of incest; Eric was only ever supposed to know that he had been loved by a young mom who couldn’t keep him. And when the time came for him to ask about her, she would have vanished into bureaucratic thin air. He would never know where she was, she would never know where he was, and everybody would be happier for it.

Priss had named him Dustin.

Of course, he would be on her bucket list.

Of course, she would want to see him once more before she died, if only from a painful distance. That’s what Sam’s wife Cassity had predicted when he told her about Priscilla’s diagnosis. His wife, so smart, so empathetic, had immediately cried, with desperation and doom in her voice, “She’s going to want to see him, Sam! It’s going to ruin his life!”

And ours, Sam had realized at that moment.

At first, he’d tried to convince himself that nothing could happen, for Priscilla couldn’t find any of the information she might seek; she didn’t possess copies of the paperwork and had been too young to know to ask for them.

But he realized that if she were as determined as he knew she was capable of being, she would then come to him, asking for the information: Where is my child?

What would he tell her? He could lie, but that would only lead her to an adoption agency that had never heard of her. He could tell her the truth-that he had fooled her and taken her baby-a revelation that could spiral into disaster.

Maybe she’ll be happy I did it, he’d tried to convince himself. Maybe she’ll think it’s all for the best.

But what if she didn’t? Could they take that chance?

They could lose Eric.

Losing his medical license would be the least of Sam’s punishments; losing Eric would be the very worst. Between those two consequences would be kidnapping charges against him and his wife.

“Honey,” Cassity said, interrupting his terrified thoughts, “he’s still at school. Are you so busy you’ve lost track of time?”

“I guess so. Speaking of… gotta go. Love you guys.”

“Ditto, Doctor.”

The dog lady couldn’t get her terrier to shut up.

The dog barked. His owner yelled at him. The dog barked again because the owner yelled. The owner yelled again because the dog barked. And around and around they went, barking and yelling, all because of a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” she screamed at her apartment door.

“Police!” a male voice called back.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Buddy, be quiet!”

As she unlocked and opened the door with one hand, she held onto the dog with her other arm. “Hang on. Let me get his magic collar and he’ll shut up. I guess I’m going to have to keep it on him all the time.”

The thick-set man in a blue suit stood in the doorway as she picked up the little dog and scurried to her tiny dining room, where she picked up a collar and struggled to get it onto the pooch.

“It’s eucalyptus!” she said to the cop at the door. “Just watch!”

Somehow she got it fastened onto the dog.

Buddy started to make a ferocious charge toward the door, opening his mouth to bark, but a second in he stopped barking.

“See?” his owner crowed. “Magic, I’m telling you.”

“What the heck?” the blue-suited cop asked as he stepped inside. “Why’d he stop barking?”

“The collar lets out a spray of eucalyptus scent! He hates it.”

“I never heard of that. That’s amazing. Where’d you get it?”

“My neighbor, that poor sweet girl, gave it to me the day before she got murdered. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To ask me about Priscilla? She was lovely. I know Buddy’s barking drove her mad. It drove me crazy, too. But she found out about these magic collars and gave one to me.”

“I’ve got to get one for my dog.”

“They’re expensive, and it doesn’t work on all dogs, I hear.”

“It sure works on this one.”

“Oh, yes. And Buddy’s a barking demon.”

The cop, who had crouched to take a look, stood back up. “Yeah, I heard him.”

“I don’t know anything about her getting killed except that it was horrible, and I’m just broken up about it.”

“Did she say anything about being stalked or followed?”

“Oh, my word, no. I never heard anything like that. Was that what happened?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “I’ll tell you what I did hear, though. When she came down to give me the collar, she was jittery, and she told me she was going to do something she wasn’t sure she should do.”

“What?”

“She told me she’d had a baby when she was only sixteen, and her parents had kicked her out of the house, and by that time it was too late for an abortion, and she’d put it up for adoption, and she was going to try to find the baby and just get a look at him. That’s all she wanted, she said, just to see him one time before she died to make sure he was taken care of. She told me she had cancer. Isn’t that ironic? That she had only a short time to live anyway, and then some monster kills her and takes away her only chance to see her only child. It’s just so sad and awful. She had the worst luck. Seems so unfair for such a nice person. I’ll think of her every time Buddy doesn’t bark.”

With a shaking hand, Sam laid his keys on the little curved table in the foyer of his home.

“Cassity?” he called out to his wife. “I’m going to change clothes. Then let’s go for a run.”

“Okay!” she called back from her office.

Minutes later, they met in the foyer, and she smiled a welcome home for him. It looked forced; there’d been a brittle, frantic quality to her since Priscilla’s murder. It hurt his heart to see it in her face and hear it when she spoke to him. Only with Eric did she still seem like herself.

She was tall and athletic, with college-shot-putting shoulders and legs that could pound down tracks as if Olympic medals were at stake.

“I’m rarin’ to go,” she said, though she sounded weary.

She had on running shoes, pants, and a top; her long dark hair was pulled into a ponytail at the top of her head. She’s so beautiful, Sam thought, and such a wonderful mother. They’d both married late and then waited for many fruitless, disappointing years for the child they both wanted. Nothing had worked, but somehow their marriage grew deeper in a situation that would have weakened many others. He loved her fiercely, thought her brave and tender, brilliant and wonderful. He had felt guilty through all the years of trying to have a baby because it was his biology that failed them. When they finally agreed on adoption, enough years had passed that their ages became a problem on applications.

When fate delivered a chance to give her what she wanted so much, and to do what looked like a good deed in the process, Sam had grabbed it-baby blanket, warm baby, and all. And now his heart felt sick as she yelled toward the back of the house, “Eric, sweetie, your dad and I are going for a run, and I’m going to beat him as usual! Don’t go play next door without leaving us a note, okay?”

“Duh, Mom!” their son yelled back. “Go, Dad!”

“We love you!” Sam called with an aching heart. “Go over to the neighbors’ now, so we don’t have to worry about you!” He waited a moment. “Eric? Yes?”

“Okay, parental unit!”

He nodded, turning toward his wife.

“New running duds?” he asked.

She pirouetted in front of him. “You like?”

“Nice on you. Where’s your old gray hoodie?”

“In the trash, where it should have been long ago.”

“What about those navy sweatpants you love?”

“Out with the hoodie! Too many holes. You ready?”

She jogged past him and was down the front walk before he got the door closed and locked. As he turned toward her, he thought, They’re going to take Eric away. They’re going to tell him the truth about how he came to be, and how he came to be with us. He’s going to be thrown into the path of those terrible people. I’m going to prison for kidnapping a baby. She’s going to prison for killing his mother, who was dying anyway.

He heard himself making excuses for Cassity.

“Let’s run by the river,” he said as he caught up to her.

Night was falling, and soon there would be long, dark spaces between the streetlights.

He couldn’t allow these terrible fates to happen; and most of all, he couldn’t allow Eric to know the truth about himself and his birth family. Even to be left alone in the world would be better than knowing all the horrible things he might otherwise have learned about both of his families.

Sam’s cell phone rang. He nearly ignored it, but the long habit of being a doctor awaiting the birth of babies made him stop and turn it on while Cassity jogged in place by his side.

“Doc? It’s that cop again. Are you near a computer? I want to send that surveillance video to you and have you see if it looks like any of these people on her list.”

“Detective, I haven’t met them all.”

“You’ve met more of them than I have.”

“Okay. Right now?”

“Yeah. Right now, if you don’t mind. Or even if you do.”

“Wait?” Sam asked his wife.

She nodded, continuing to jog in place.

By the time Sam reached his computer, the e-mail was already there in his inbox. He clicked the video into action and watched while his heart felt as if it was hammering within every cell of his body, as if it might hammer so hard that it could beat him to death.

The quality was poor, but one thing was clear.

The figure in the hoodie and jogging pants was slouching against the wall of a building, with his hands pressed between his body and the wall and his left foot propped against it.

Sam didn’t collapse with relief while the detective was still on the phone with him. But when they hung up, he sank down onto the carpet, crossed his arms over his knees, put his face on his arms, and sobbed into them.

His wife came in, saw him, and ran to him, putting her arms around him. “What? Oh, Sam, honey, what?”

“It was the boyfriend. Priss’s boyfriend killed her.”

His wife collapsed into him, weeping, too.

“Oh, thank God it wasn’t you, Sam.”

A week passed before he could tell her the whole truth that he learned from the detective: Priss broke up with her boyfriend when he became scarily possessive and jealous, her sister told the police, and then Sydney pushed him further and further down that path. To turn him against Priscilla and toward herself, she told him about Priss’s former boyfriends, increasing the numbers to spice up the story, claiming that one or two were still in her sister’s life while Priss was seeing him. Then, to light the final fuse to his wounded ego and growing rage, she said: “And I’ll bet she never even told you she had a baby with another man.”

NANCY PICKARD’s short stories have won Anthony, Agatha, Barry, Macavity, and American Short Story awards and have been featured in many “year’s best” anthologies. She has been an Edgar Award finalist for her short fiction and for three of her eighteen novels. She has served on the national board of directors of MWA and is a founding member and former president of Sisters in Crime. She lives near Kansas City, where she is working on a novel and percolating future short stories. Her favorite short story is “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway, because it says everything that needs to be said and evokes deep feeling and understanding, and it does all that (in her opinion) in clean, well-lighted sentences.