"I'll sue all of you!"
"Be my guest," he said with a frosty smile.
"You sue, and you're going to be in the headlines a long time, lady. But meanwhile your career is down the drain. No more kiddie patients for you. And wherever you go, for the rest of your life, people will point a finger and whisper, "That's the woman they said killed her husband."
You'll never outlive that."
"You're a brute," she shouted at him, quivering with anger.
"A brute!"
"A brute, am I? And what do you call someone who hammers in the skull of another human being and then crushes his eyes? I'm a brute but you're notis that the way your mind works? You didn't really think you were going to get off scotfree, did you? This is an imperfect, unfair world, I admit, but you sin and you pay the price, one way or another. It's payment time for you, doctor."
"I didn't do it!" she howled desperately.
"I swear I didn't!', "You did it," he said, looking at her steadily.
"You know it, I know it, these officers know it, the Department knows it.
And pretty soon the whole city will. You're going to be a nine-day wonder, Doctor Ellerbee. Maybe they'll even make up rhymes about you-like "Lizzie Borden took an axe..
Won't it be great to be a superstar?"
She moved so swiftly they didn't have time to react. Instead of circling the desk, she launched herself over the top, claws out, going for Delaney's face. He jerked back, his chair went over with a crash, and he dragged her down atop him, hoping his glasses wouldn't break.
Boone and Jason Two pulled her off. She fought them frantically and they slammed her back into the chair behind the desk. Jason stood next to her, a meaty hand clamped on her shoulder.
Delaney climbed awkwardly to his feet. He set the chair upright, examined his reading glasses to make sure they weren't broken, and touched the stinging marks on his cheek.
His fingers came away bloody. He pressed his handkerchief to the gouges.
"Anger," he said to the others, nodding.
"Uncontrollable.
The way she was when she killed her husband. Sergeant Boone, take a look out the window, see if the press is here."
Abner Boone looked down from the window fronting on East 84th Street.
"They're here," he reported.
"A lot of guys with cameras and a TV crew."
"Right on schedule," Delaney said quietly.
"I should tell you, Mrs. Ellerbee, that because this is a felony arrest, you will be handcuffed."
She sat, huddled and shrunken, head bowed, arms crossed over her breast, holding her elbows. She would not look at him.
"Do you understand what you did?" he asked gently, still pressing a handkerchief to his cheek.
"You killed a human being. The man betrayed you, certainly. But was that sufficient reason to take a human life?
Sergeant..
Abner Boone stepped close to Diane.
"You have the right to remain silent…" he started.
Delaney sat while they took her away. He had no desire to watch from the window. But he saw the flash of photographer's lights and heard the uproar. Deputy Thorsen had delivered.
He waited until the noise and confusion had died away. He was out of it now; let Thorsen and Suarez carry the ball. His job was finished. He had done what they asked him to do, and if the result was less than perfect, they got what they wanted.
He gingerly touched the back of his head. It had smacked the floor when his chair went over, and he suspected he'd have a welt there. He was, he acknowledged, getting a bit long in the tooth for that kind of nonsense.
It wasn't so much that he was physically tired, but the evening -had taken a lot out of him. He couldn't summon the energy to rise and tramp home to Monica and the girls. so he tucked his reading glasses away and just sat there, fingers laced across his vest, and brooded.
His first wife, Barbara, had once accused him of acting like God's surrogate on earth. He didn't think that was entirely fair. He had lost his hubris, he was convinced. What drove him now was more a sense of duty. But duty to what he could not have said.
Despite those things he had shouted about Diane Ellerbee playing him for a fool, he felt more pity for her than anger. He thought her life had been so structured, so neat and secure, that she had never learned to handle trouble.
But he could continue forever making up excuses. He was a cop, with a cop's bald way of thinking, and the naked fact was that she had killed and had to be punished for it.
He dragged himself to his feet, and, as if it were his own home, made the rounds of doors and windows in the deserted townhouse, making certain they were securely locked.
He stopped suddenly, wondering where the hell his overcoat and homburg were. Probably still in Jason's car, now parked outside the precinct house. But when he went down to the first floor, he found them waiting for him, neatly folded on a marble-topped lobby table. God bless… He pounded home, head down, hands in pockets. He pondered how much to tell Monica of what had happened. Then he decided to tell her everything; he had to explain the jagged scrapes on his face. If it made him seem like a vindictive beast, so be it. He wasn't about to start lying to her now.
Besides, she'd know.
He looked up suddenly, and beyond the city's glow saw the stars whirling their ascending courses. So small, he thought.
All the poor, scrabbling people on earth caught up in a life we never made, breaking ourselves trying to manage.
Philosophers said you could laugh or you could weep. Delaney preferred to think there was a middle ground, an amused struggle in which you recognized the odds and knew you'd never beat them. Which was no reason to stop trying.
Las Vegas did all right.
When he came to his brownstone, the lights were on, the Christmas wreath still on the door. And inside was the companionship of a loving woman, a tot of brandy, a good cigar.
And later, a warm bed and blessed sleep.
"Thank you, God," he said aloud, and started up the steps.
Delaney didn't want the girls to go out on New Year's Eve.
"It's amateur night," he told Monica.
"People who haven't had a drink all year suddenly think they've got to get sloshed.
Then they throw up on you or get in their cars and commit mayhem. The safest place for all of us is right here, with the doorlocked."
Wails and tears from Mary and Sylvia.
Finally a compromise was devised: They would have a New Year's Eve party at the brownstone, with Peter and Jeffrey invited. The rug would be rolled up and there would be dancing. Formal dress: The ladies would wear party gowns and the men dinner jackets.
"There I draw the line," Delaney protested.
"My tux is in the attic, and probably mildewed. Even if I can find it, I probably won't be able to get into it; I've put on a few ounces, you know."
"No tux, no party," Monica said firmly.
"And the girls go out."
So, grumbling, he trudged up to the attic and dug out his tuxedo from a grave of mothballs. It was rusty and wrinkled, but Monica sponged and brushed it. He could wear the jacket unbuttoned, and Monica assured him that with his black, pleated cummerbund in place, no one would know that the top button of his trousers was, by necessity, yawning.
Still grousing, he left the brownstone and marched out to purchase party supplies and food for a light midnight supper.
He dragged along a wheeled shopping cart and thought he cut an undignified figure with his cart and black homburg. But he met no one he knew, so that was all right.
He returned home two hours later to find numerous messages waiting for him.
He went into the study to return the calls. He phoned Abner Boone first.
"How did it go, Sergeant?" he asked.
"Just about the way you told her it would, sir. She's out now, back in her townhouse."
"A lot of reporters?"
"And photographers and television crews. She cracked UP."
"Cracked up? How do you mean?"
"A crying fit. Close to hysteria."