Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [101]
“I will. Love you.”
“The feeling is entirely mutual. See you this evening.”
RICK KLAYMAN HAD SPENT a sleepless Sunday night.
After leaving the ME’s office, he’d taken a hungry Rachel Kessler for a burger before dropping her home.
“Come in?” she asked as they sat in the car in front of her apartment building.
“No, thanks,” he’d said. “I really have to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“Work.”
Voicing his thoughts for the first time, he’d told her of what he’d learned from Dr. Ong, that there were similarities between the two slain young women that might indicate the same person had killed them. Nothing definitive, but the possibility existed.
“That’s comforting,” she’d said. “There’s a murderer walking around Washington who preys on young women, one of them two years ago, and now another. Gives me the chills.”
“May not be true,” he’d said, “but I want to follow up on it. Sorry I dragged you away from Mo’s house and a steak.”
“You made up for it with the burger. Besides, I have the steak for tomorrow. Sure you won’t come in?”
“I’d just be lousy company.”
“Okay,” she said, “but I think my mother was right.”
“About what?”
“About not falling in love with a cop or fireman.”
“She said that?”
“Yeah. Her father was a fireman, and she had a cousin who was a cop.”
“And she told you not to get involved with either.”
“No, Rick, she told me never to fall in love with one.”
“Oh. And you’re—?”
“Go to work. Solve all the city’s crimes. Save us all. When you’re finished, call me.”
“Hey, don’t be mad.”
“You’re too cute to get mad at.” She grabbed him by the ears, pressed her lips tightly to his, lingered there, released him, left the car, and ran up the steps to the building, leaving a befuddled detective sitting in his car.
He drove to First District headquarters, went to the records room, and pulled out the Constance Marshall files, which he pored over until past midnight, making notes, drawing diagrams linking names of people who’d known her and trying to inject order into a fragmented mind.
He went home to sleep but found that impossible. Among many thoughts and questions was what every veteran cop had told him, that the minute you became personally involved in a case and with a victim, you lost your ability to think clearly and rationally. You lost your impartiality. They said the same about doctors, particularly surgeons. A patient was a body, an anatomical unit to be opened and its disease cut out and discarded.
But wasn’t that the problem with too many cops and doctors? he mused as he sat in his living room. He knew cops, too many of them, who carried the notion of detachment to an extreme, dismissing victims as just another case with a file number on it, and approaching victims’ families, or anyone else with something to offer, as moronic, congenital liars.
If that’s what it took to be a successful cop, his parents were right. He was in the wrong business.
HE WAS PREPARING TO LEAVE the apartment at six Monday morning when a call from his sister in Boston stopped him.
“Rick, it’s Susan.”
“Hi. How are you?”
“Not too good. Harry had a heart attack last night.”
“I’m sorry. Is he okay? I mean, is it serious?”
“Is any heart attack not serious?”
“I just meant that—”
“It was a mild one, a good early warning. He’ll be fine if he watches his diet and exercises and starts living a more healthy life.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“I just thought you’d want to know.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you called. Where is he? I can send, I don’t know, flowers or something.”
“We don’t want flowers. It’s a waste. Maybe you could send him a book, something on golf. That’s his hobby, you know.”
“Sure. I’ll send a golf book or something.”
“He’ll have to recover at home for a while. He’ll need things to read.”
“I imagine. I’ll send it to the house. How are you?”
“How can I be, with a husband who’s a cardiac cripple at forty-five?”
She cried; he waited.
“I have to go,” he said finally. “I’m sorry about Harry. Will call you shortly.”
Which was true, although he’d never particularly