She reached a hand out and touched his arm. 'What's going on, Dismas?' she asked.
'I'm not looking for something to believe, that's for sure.' His voice was harsh.
'Then what are you arguing against? What's so terrifying?'
'What's so terrifying?' he snapped back. 'How can you even ask me that? That's what I want to know. You can't envision our sweet little Vin where Cole is someday? Or even the Beck? You don't think that's terrifying?'
She tightened her grip on his arm. 'That isn't going to happen, Dismas. That doesn't make any sense.'
'That's my damn point, Frannie. It doesn't have to make any sense. It just happens sometimes. It just happens.'
And suddenly the source of his terror was clear to her. Educated, white, middle-class, raised by caring parents, Cole Burgess was Dismas's own private vision of the devil, the personification of everything he feared and could not control. Their own children might turn out just like Cole if they weren't ever vigilant with them, and maybe even if they were. And beyond that, the dangers everywhere in the modern world – the threat of random violence, terror out of the dark night. The tragedy inherent in every moment of temporary weakness – why the struggle must never end, not for an instant.
She lifted her hand up to touch his face, and he backed off, by all signs angry at her. During his little speech, his color had gone progressively to a deep red. To the Union Street crowd, it probably seemed that they were having a fight.
'Dismas?' she said softly.
He was furious. Tears of rage had come to his eyes and he was determinedly blinking them back. She stepped into him, put her arms around his back, held him. 'It's all right,' she said. 'Everything's going to be all right.'
It was Old Home Week around Abe's bed again. Isaac had picked up Jacob after his arrival from Milan, and the two of them came straight from the airport to the hospital. Nat and Orel were already there – the first time the whole family had been together in nearly two years. There were only the five of them, and that was just as well. Since the word was out about Elaine, there was a lot to talk about.
At a little before nine, Hardy and Frannie showed up, looking a bit the worse for wear. They had both cheered slightly at the sight of Jacob, as they had with Isaac the night before, but after a while the edge between them appeared again. It didn't help that Hardy was expecting Ridley Banks to come and talk about Cullen Alsop, and that he never appeared. And with the boys and Nat there, it wasn't a good time to talk murder cases anyway.
By nine forty-five, everyone had gone home.
Glitsky leaned back into his bed and closed his eyes. Tonight, he was tired. His groin throbbed where they had inserted the angiogram into his femoral artery. The blisters on his chest – mementos of the defibrillation – itched uncomfortably. They had him on some blood-thinning medication and he still felt wiped out from sedatives.
He fancied that he could feel his heart, that the presence of all of his sons and his father tonight had filled it almost beyond its capacity. Early on, before the Hardys came and after the first flurry of questions and answers about Elaine, he'd asked Jacob if he would sing them all a song with his newly-trained Italian voice, then surprised him not by asking for anything from the opera repertoire, but for 'Unchained Melody'. He'd sung it so beautifully that the nursing staff and other visitors seeing patients had come into the room, applauded when he finished.
The melody came back to him now. It had been Flo's song, but the image now was not of his past wife. He opened his eyes, grabbed his book, took out Treya's card and reached for the phone.
26
Still in his scrubs, Jonas Walsh commanded his own table in the St Mary's cafeteria. His newspaper was spread out over every inch of the available surface area, all the sections separated. His tray held the remains of his mid-morning snack – the empty bowl that had held his mixed fruit, the plate for the dry toast, three empty juice glasses. He sat back at some distance from the table, an ankle resting on a knee. He held his cup of coffee out at arm's length. For one man, he took up a lot of room. It was ten thirty in the morning and his four scheduled hernia surgeries had all gone without incident, as they always did.
Nevertheless, his posture reflected a great deal of frustration. He hated being out here, but the idiot operating room schedulers had been unable to book in all his patients, even though he had them lined up waiting. There'd been a couple of cancellations and the hospital hadn't been able to fill the damn time; and when you only have two surgery days a week, you'd better make sure you pack them in. But now, instead of ten hernias today, he had only eight – which meant thirty-two hundred dollars out the window. Plus he had to endure a much-despised break for a couple of hours before he could start making more money with another four in the afternoon. At this rate, he was never going to pay off his loans.
At least you'd think they could have moved up two of the late afternoon jobs, let him get off early. But no. No thought. He was going to complain to the administrator. Get somebody else on scheduling who had some kind of clue.
He finished sports and grabbed at the business section, where he noticed that his stocks remained in the tank. Shaking his head in disgust, he brought his cup to his lips, sipped. The coffee had gone tepid and he swore.
'Is this chair taken?' A large black man with a hatchet nose and a scar through his lips hovered on the far side of the table. He stood casually, his expression relaxed, his hands resting in the pockets of his windbreaker. He was in need of a shave and Walsh thought he detected a slight pallor under the pigment, an almost jaundiced quality to the whites of his eyes.
Was the man sick?
Whatever, he wasn't welcome. Jonas looked around ostentatiously. There were maybe ten other people in the entire room, forty unoccupied tables all around him. 'Sorry. I'm busy,' he said. 'Not here, pal, OK?' His eyes went back to his newspaper.
'You're Jonas Walsh?' The man had taken the seat, cleared a space on the table in front of him.
A dark glance. 'I'm Dr Walsh, that's right. And I just told you I'm busy.'
'I can see that,' the man replied calmly. 'And I could take out my badge and show it to you, but maybe you'd find that embarrassing.'
Walsh snapped the paper down, stared for a while. Then, 'You're Glitsky.'
'That's right.'
'Elaine's father.' Walsh fixed him with a challenging look.
'I guess the word's out. How'd you find out about it?'
'How do you think? We didn't have secrets. We were engaged, you know – you also might have heard that.'
Glitsky nodded. 'That's why we're talking right now. And you were happy? Everything was fine with you both?'
'Yes.' A pause. 'Of course.' He waited for Glitsky to pursue it, and when he didn't, added some more. 'Sure, why not?'
'No reason.' Glitsky stared across at him. He wore his most bland expression and it finally wore Walsh down.
'What?' the doctor asked. 'What do you want?'
'What I want is to fill in a few blanks. You know we've got a suspect in custody, but we don't know why Elaine was downtown at that time. We don't know who she was meeting, if our suspect knew her somehow.' A shrug. 'All of that. If you two didn't have any secrets from each other, maybe you could help.'
'Of course I'd like to help if I can.' Walsh pursed his lips tightly, cast his eyes briefly to the upper corners of the room, came back to the lieutenant. When he spoke, he'd found his professional, courteous, bedside voice. 'I'm sorry if I was rude just now. It's been a difficult couple of weeks.'
'I would imagine so. I'm sorry.' He took a minute. 'So on the Sunday, the night she didn't come home, did you expect her to be out late?'
'More or less. Yes, I guess. She called and left a message.'
'You weren't in?'