"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.
Thirty-seven
When April hung up with Jason, the sun was out and the city was heating up. It had gone from rain to shine without her noticing, and she felt she'd missed something, missed a lot.
"What's going on, boss?" Woody Baum was heading uptown in the unmarked unit, away from the mob scene at the crazed Sixth Precinct. He was driving with one hand, playing tag with civilian cars, running red lights, all his usual antics to keep things interesting.
Woody had been in a rough-and-tumble anticrime unit for three years, driving around with a bunch of tough guys on the third tour in the earliest hours of the morning, looking for bottom feeders to lock up before they got impatient and shot someone. There had been a lot of shootings among the dealers back when Guiliani was cleaning up the city block by block. Since then Woody had hung up his spurs, cleaned up, and cut his hair real short. He was a good-looking, almost preppy kind of guy now, trying to be a nice, quiet detective. It wasn't so easy for him. His life on the streets had made him somewhat unpredictable. April thought of him kind of like Dim Sum-a bad dog with some training that didn't always stick. The poodle squatted in the kitchen when she was thwarted. And Woody kept testing his limits, too.
Right now April was too preoccupied to chastise him or answer his question. Jason's call had caught her off guard. Cops rarely made friends with people whose lives they'd saved. They didn't like to be reminded of their traumas. But Emma and Jason had been different. They trusted April, had even named their daughter after her. It always made April laugh to think that a little blond angel was carrying her name. But she was proud of the child and secretly wanted to return the favor. A dark-haired Emma, or maybe a Jason. Why not?
She'd consulted Jason on many cases. In return, Jason seemed to feel that April and Mike were his own private police force he could call on whenever something was off in his world, which was too often for comfort. He treated many different kinds of people and was no stranger to the dark side of human nature. Woody finally got her attention when he ran a light on Forty-second Street while a bunch of car horns blared in protest.