Stealing Time

CHAPTER 51

J

ason abruptly canceled his supervisory session just as Alison Peters, his attractive psychiatric resident, was coming into his office. In the elevator, as they went down to the street together, he explained hurriedly that he had to go to the police station. At first she was impressed; then she soured because he couldn't tell her when they'd be able to reschedule. In turn, he couldn't help being troubled by her selfishness in an emergency. By the time he hit the street, though, he was thinking of nothing else but Heather Rose.

He hailed a taxi and gave the address of the Mid-town North police station. April used to be assigned to the 20th Precinct, only a few blocks away. Now he had to travel nearly twenty-five minutes into the traffic nightmare of midtown. As he sat in a dirty taxi, with a driver who couldn't speak English, didn't know the city, and hadn't had a bath in some time, he tried to digest the tragedy: another victim of the Popescus'; this one the teenage girl whose baby Heather had returned. Jason played over and over what April had told him and still it was hard to imagine the cruelty of a young woman forced to give birth in a closet, having her baby taken from her, and recovering him several weeks later, only to die violently in the end.

The silence among the family members surrounding all the catastrophic events of many years (possibly starting with Anton's cancer but equally possibly going back even further than that) was what Jason focused on. Anton's family was perpetually in denial about the permanent effects of his childhood illness. Heather Rose was horribly afraid to tell anyone that the man she'd married was impotent. In the hospital she'd made clear to Jason that she was afraid she was the crazy one. Her husband had kept her in line by intimidating her, torturing her, and isolating her from anybody who could help her.

The meaning of Heather's responses to her situation up to the time when she returned the baby, and of her responses to him in the hospital, was now clear to Jason. She'd given the baby back as atonement, and the punishment she'd received because of it had come as no surprise. Jason arrived at the police station, paid his fare, and got out.

Inside the precinct, he went to the front desk and asked for Sergeant Woo because he didn't want to deal with Lieutenant Iriarte. He waited for what felt like a long time before Detective Baum appeared, looking very upset.

"The situation's changed," he said, preempting Jason's greeting. "There's been a shooting."

"A shooting?" Jason frowned.

"It's not clear if Sergeant Woo took a hit. We do know that one officer and the perp were shot. They're on the way to the hospital. The third victim is dead."

"What? April was in a shooting? Are you sure? I just talked to her an hour ago." Jason was incredulous.

"Yeah, the local cops arrived on the scene immediately. I don't know. They were alerted earlier. I don't know. It's not clear what happened."

"I just talked to her. . .." Jason was stunned. "What hospital has she been taken to?"

"Unclear. And we don't know it was her. Could have been Sanchez."

"Sanchez!" April's boyfriend, Sanchez? Jason tried to take it all in. "You said someone is dead. Who's dead?"

"Anton Popescu. It looks like the perp shot him when he took off with the baby."

"Jesus." For a moment Jason was speechless. Anton Popescu was dead? How could that have happened? It was staggering. Finally he recovered enough to ask, "Does his wife know this?"

"No. It just came in this minute. Do you want to tell her?"

"Where is she?"

"We have Mrs. Popescu and her parents separated. They've been here a while now."

"What, you left Heather alone? She has a history of unexplained injuries, she could hurt or kill herself in unguarded minutes." Jason spoke mildly, but thoughts of the shooting and all the bungling in the case made him furious. Suicide was an issue here. Now that her husband was dead Heather Rose would really have to be watched every minute.

Baum was taken aback. Apparently he hadn't considered this. "All she did was cut off her hair," he said defensively.

"She cut off her hair?" April hadn't mentioned that.

A commotion commenced at the front door when a well-dressed man wearing handcuffs was brought in by two uniformed officers. Detective Baum touched Jason's arm to move him out of the way as the cops hustled the prisoner to the front desk. The prisoner was complaining, and the two officers were trying to shut him up. They all had such strong New York accents Jason didn't understand a word. He tried to concentrate on Heather Rose's near-simultaneous loss of the baby she'd loved, who wasn't hers, and of her husband, who'd hurt her and had never consummated their marriage. It was a heavy load.

"How long has she been in there alone?" he asked.

"Several hours."

"She's been alone for several hours. Are you

crazy?"

"She's all right. We have an officer at the door." Baum jerked his head for Jason to follow him up the stairs.

Jason paused outside the interview room to take a look through the window in the door. Heather was sitting on a metal folding chair with her shorn head in her hands. On the table sat an unopened paper bag, presumably the lunch she hadn't eaten. She looked frail in jeans and a summer pullover, with her impromptu haircut. With her hair less than an inch long, the ugly scalp wound was clearly visible.

Jason felt a huge wave of relief, and another of sadness for her double loss. And he wondered if Heather was up to the questioning she would no doubt have to endure. April had asked him to question her. Now he had his own good reasons for doing so. He composed his features and quickly went inside, chiding himself for the mundane things he always said in the direst situations. This time it was "Hi. Long time no see."

Heather looked up, startled. "What are you doing here?"

"I told you last night I'd be around for you. You didn't think I'd disappear so fast, did you?"

"Who asked you to come here? Why are they keeping me here? What's happening?" Heather cried. She reached up to her head in a characteristic gesture of hair arranging, then realized her hair was no longer there. The hand became dispirited and fell to her lap. All the time she was anxiously focused on the door, where Detective Baum stood behind Jason, waiting to see if he'd be allowed to stay. Jason shook his head and closed the door.

"I thought you asked to come here," Jason said, taking a seat at the table.

"No, I told them everything I knew downtown. Look, I'm worried about my parents. What's happened to them?"

"They're okay. I'll check on them in a few minutes if you'd like." Jason cocked his head, considering Heather's appearance.

She hung her head. "I know it's horrible." She shuddered at how horrible it must be.

"No, you look different, younger, cute. That's all. Why'd you cut it?"

She kneaded a thumb nervously. "I guess it was pretty dumb. When I heard that Paul's mother had been—murdered, I just—I don't know—I just couldn't imagine anybody

doing

that, killing that poor girl— why? I felt so

bad.

I went into the bathroom to be alone for a minute." She closed her eyes as if to see herself from the inside at the moment when she'd heard the news. "All I saw in the mirror was the hair. . . . You know, he made me grow and grow it. He wouldn't let me cut it. It was the only thing he liked about me." She opened her eyes, appalled at herself for saying such a devastating thing. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"I should have left things alone and kept the baby. None of this would have happened if I'd kept him." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from crying.

"Oh, you never know."

Her eyes filled with tears. "Where is he? Is he all right?"

Jason nodded without knowing if he was. "You want to tell me what happened this morning?"

Heather shrugged. "Nothing. I checked out of the hospital and went home to get my stuff. I was leaving him to go back to San Francisco. He came home and was really mean about my parents."

"I remember. He didn't sound too happy about their coming. How did he deal with finding you there?"

"Oh, he did what he always does. He has this way of acting really nice sometimes in front of some people, really horrible in front of other people, then insisting the nice him is the only him."

"It's called splitting," Jason told her. "He didn't like his bad side, so he didn't acknowledge it as part of himself."

Heather Rose didn't pick up on the past tense. "He was furious when he saw the cop had his pictures. They got into a fight. Then we left. What are you doing here?" she asked again.

Jason stared up at the ceiling, calling for help from above. He was nailed. "You keep asking me that."

"Maybe I'll keep asking until you give me a good answer."

No help came from on high. Jason made a decision. "Okay, I'll be straight with you. I'm not acting as your doctor. But I'm not a policeman whose only interest is the law, either."

"What do you mean?"

"It's an unusual situation," he murmured. He was on the hook, struggling.

"If you're not a policeman and not a doctor, then what's your role?"

"Um. Sergeant Woo sometimes asks me to help her with assessments," Jason said finally, although none of his talks with Heather or Anton had been formal assessments. He didn't think it would be useful to explain further. Oh, he was really twisting in the wind.

"But you just said you don't work for the police department."

"That's right," he admitted.

"Then why—"

"Why do it? You're asking me good questions, and since you're not my patient, I don't have to hide from you. I'm going to answer you as fully as I can. Sergeant Woo was the detective on the case when my wife was kidnapped. She saved my wife's life." He looked at the bag of lunch and wished he were in it.

"Your wife was kidnapped!" Heather was shocked.

"Yes." Okay, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing for her to know. Bad things had happened in his life, too. Maybe that would help her. Jason changed the subject. "In your case, there was a history of unexplained injuries and a missing baby. It wasn't clear who was hurting you—you or your husband. And it wasn't clear whether the baby was still alive. Sergeant Woo asked me to talk to you. As I said, she does that sometimes when people don't open up to her right away."

Heather gave him a grim smile. "What did you find out?"

"It was clear to me that you were not a killer and that you didn't want to nail your husband as a batterer."

"He's not responsible for this," she said fiercely.

"For what?"

"For killing anyone." Her face contorted with the agony of saying those words.

"But you cut off your gorgeous hair when you heard," he pointed out. "For you it was an act of revenge, wasn't it?"

"No."

"What then?"

"It was my line in the sand. The girl was dead. I drew a line in the sand." Her lip disappeared between her teeth again.

"A line in the sand." Jason looked puzzled.

"I always thought the worst had already happened."

"What was that?"

Heather was chewing on both lips, chewing, chewing. She was kneading her hands as if they'd lost circulation. Her breath was ragged. "Years ago when we were dating, he kept telling me how much he loved me, but he was very religious and didn't want to spoil our love with—you know." She glanced at Jason quickly, then away. "I don't know why I keep telling you these things. I've never told anyone this. It must sound crazy."

He shook his head. "Many people hide the things that make them miserable. Yesterday you told me your husband couldn't have children. You also told me he was impotent."

"We didn't have any kind of . . . physical . . ." She wrung her hands. "I feel so bad." She tried to sniff back her tears, but was caught by her sobs.

Jason gave her a few seconds. "You told me you had no sex life together."

"He was so mean—" She swallowed, gulped. "No. A lot of the time, he couldn't stand to let me sleep in the bed. He wouldn't touch me at all. Except when— after I . . ."

"When you were hurt."

She hung her head. "Yes. I felt so sorry for him."

"He hurt you, and yet you felt sorry for him. Why did he burn you, Heather?"

She tried to take a deep breath. It caught a few times. She looked away. "I didn't want to tell."

"It's okay. You can tell now. He can't hurt you anymore." Jason repeated it. "He can't hurt you."

"Oh, he can, you don't know him. My parents said they won't leave me alone with him. They promised.

But—he's very persistent. He always says if I'm really good it won't happen again."

"Heather, listen to me. Anton can't hurt you anymore. He's gone."

"Gone? What do you mean?" Heather was puzzled. She blew her nose on a badly shredded tissue.

Jason reached into his pocket and gave her his handkerchief.

She blew her nose and handed it back. He shook his head. "You can keep it."

"I'll have it washed—"

"Why did he burn you?"

"Oh, God." She gulped. "Oh, God. He got so angry. He just got so angry."

"What made him so angry?"

This was the question that opened the way for her. Physically, it was as if she were reliving the horror in front of Jason's eyes. She squirmed in the chair, almost writhed. Her bruised face suffused with blood. She pressed her knees together and gasped for air, like someone drowning. "He thought I was a—slut. I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be."

"He was jealous."

"His brother kept showing up all the time when Anton was at work. In the beginning he kept bringing me little wedding presents and telling me what to expect from the family. He said he'd take care of me and gave me advice on how to handle Anton and everybody else in the family. I hadn't known about Anton. I was so upset. I didn't know why he didn't want to—why he wouldn't touch me. And Marc was there all the time, being so nice about it. Saying it wouldn't do any harm. When I didn't want to, he got angry and told me I owed him for being good to me. He was so persistent. He just—Oh, my God. He kept touching me and hugging me and—I didn't even like him at first. But he kept saying I'd never have it my whole life and how I didn't know what I was missing and he'd, he'd—love me forever." She broke down and hid her face.

Jason sat very still, the anguished and helpless therapist, who always led people to the hurts they didn't want to face, always hoping to free them and take the burden of suffering on himself. And always aware how far away and tenuous that chance of freedom was. He let her cry for a few moments, trying to go there with her, imagining the terrible hold the two brothers had on her. He was waiting for the right moment to tell her that the reason Anton could not hurt her anymore was that he was gone from this earth.

She coughed back her tears, cleared her throat, and went on before he could say it. "I didn't know about Marc and the girl when I gave the baby back. I had spoken to Annie at the factory many times."

"Who's Annie?"

"Oh, she's the one who supervises the workers. Marc and Ivan don't speak Chinese." Heather sniffed. "When Marc told me one of the girls was pregnant and wanted a good home for her baby, I talked to Annie regularly about it. I didn't know the baby was Marc's."

"When did you find out?"

"He came over when he found out I gave the baby back to Lin. At first, I thought he just wanted to—" She closed her eyes. "When I said no, he started hitting me. He told me the baby was his. He said he'd gotten that girl pregnant for me, so I could have his baby. He was furious when I gave it back. Annie told him Lin took it and didn't come back. He didn't know where his baby was. He was so mad."

Jason felt the blood drain from his face. "So it was Marc who beat you."

"He almost killed me," she said softly, "because I didn't know where Lin had taken the baby. I didn't know until that moment it was his baby. Anton still doesn't know." She shook her head. "I hope to be very far away when he finds out."

Jason decided this was the time to tell her that Anton would never find out. First, he did something therapists weren't supposed to do: he took her hand. They were sitting in a grubby interview room in the police station. He didn't know then that April had gone to the hospital with Sanchez, who'd been shot in the chest but saved by the cell phone in his breast pocket. He didn't know that Marc's fingerprints had already been matched with those found in Heather's kitchen and had also been lifted from the very skin of the dead girl, where he'd gripped her carrying her down the stairs. He didn't know that the baby was fine. All Jason could tell Heather at that moment was that Anton was dead, and she was free.

She was puzzled, partly unbelieving, partly hopeful. And after all the tears she'd shed, she did not have a single tear in her eyes now. She and Jason sat silently for a long while, holding hands, and Jason had the feeling this was the beginning of the road for a strong woman, not the end of the road for a weak one.