Blind Trust

Chapter 1

At the unmistakable sound of a gunshot and nearly simultaneous crack of shattered glass too close to us, I yelled, “C’mon,” to my translator, Dolores, and was through the door of a bodega and flat on the floor behind a row of canned goods in seconds. Dolores crashed to the floor behind the candy counter. I would have preferred hiding behind the solid freezer case, but the owner had dibs on that. He’d done this before. Gunshots are part of the ambience on Avenue D in Manhattan.  He wasn’t even breathing hard.

I asked him, “Do you know who’s shooting?”

“Probly the asshole on the fourth floor in the Houses. Done it before. Someone says he’s outta jail again.” A second shot was answered by one from the bodega side of the street. The howl of a siren came from Eleventh Street. Another was coming up Avenue D. This was a dumb place to have a shoot-out. The temporary headquarters of the Ninth Precinct was just a block away.

I flipped my arm so I could see my watch. Damn! I was going to be late for Mrs. Wolcek, my next patient. A control freak with high blood pressure she saw my visits as one of the few parts of her life she could dictate. I hated to upset her so I did what I could to stick to her time table, but that didn’t include getting shot. About to turn my arm back I realized three mouse turds had stuck to the underside of my forearm. I flicked them off with my fingernail then reached around, felt in the outside pocket on my backpack, pulled out my unread newspaper and spread it out so I could rest my arms on it. Paper in place, I scrubbed my hands and arms with sanitizer from my pants pocket, felt for my visit note folder and pulled it out. This could take a while. I might as well finish my notes from the three visits I’d already made. Visiting nurses are like Boy Scouts—we assume something will go wrong and come prepared.

Dolores and the clerk muttered to each other in Spanish. Two teen-agers made out in the corner and an old woman moaned and prayed. I heard the crackle of paper and realized why Dolores had positioned herself behind the flimsy candy counter. She was eating candy bars. Yuck! The stench of rotting cabbage, bug spray and mouse urine was almost palpable. I can eat virtually anywhere, but have my limits.

The plate glass windows facing the street were so cluttered with notices, ads, hundreds of smudged finger prints, nose prints and general filth we couldn’t see much on the street. The gunshots finally stopped. After that there were occasional voices and the staccato sound of police radios too far away to make out words. The sound of chattering people finally came from the street. There was a festive air. Sharing gunshots turns everyone who wasn’t shot into a friend.

I paid for the eight candy bars Dolores consumed in the last hour and we left.

Mrs. Wolcek’s building had been designated an escort building because of its proximity to a crack house so I had to take an escort whether I wanted to or not. The escorts and translators the agency had on staff were generally good, but I ended up with Dolores. The person who named her had a rare gift for accurate prediction. My Spanish dictionary defines dolor as: pain, grief, sorrow, woe. With Dolores, it’s ‘all of the above.’ Frowning and sighing are her primary forms of communication.

People milled about on the sidewalk in the middle of Eighth. Street. They were always there. Crack dealers were more dependable than the U.S. mail. I kept my face blank and focused my eyes just beyond the knot of people so I could see what was happening around me without making eye contact: my way of pretending I was invisible. Two cars, one with Jersey plates, were double-parked in front of the tenement, motors running.

A tall, swarthy man was startled by something behind me. He yanked the elbow of the man next to him. They whirled around and darted off. I glanced behind to see what had freaked them out. Two squad cars rolled up, turned on their blue flashing lights and stopped, blocking the double-parked cars. Four police officers jumped out leaving the cruisers’ doors open. A stocky, sandy-haired policeman shoved past me, turned and faced us. He unsnapped his holster and stood, right hand resting on his gun. A scowling officer positioned herself behind the group effectively hemming Dolores and me inside the tense, milling bunch of dealers and buyers.

Dolores stopped, swiveled around and stared, mouth slack. I grabbed her shoulder and urged her forward. Eyes on the policewoman, she tripped over the uneven sidewalk, flailed to keep from falling and narrowly missed hitting an older officer who seemed to be in charge. He ignored her. The fourth man, a fat redhead wearing a sweat-stained shirt, patted down some of the people in the group. He pulled out a wrinkled, brown paper bag protruding from the pocket of the thin man with dyed yellow hair who was always in front of the tenement and handed it to the man in charge. He looked in it and said, “Read him his rights and cuff him.”

Dolores froze. Intent on keeping my expression blandly neutral, I pulled her forward, my voice soft but urgent. “Just keep walking. Pretend nothing’s happening.”

Eyes round, Dolores looked at me as if I were crazy. “What you mean, keep walking?” Her voice rose. “We try walking away, they gonna shoot us. They don’t want no one walking away from here.”

I squeezed her shoulder so hard she flinched and tried to yank it away but I tightened my grip. “Keep your voice down. The police aren’t interested in us.”

I hoped no one in the crowd turned stupid and decided to pull a gun or knife. It took a conscious effort not to hunch my shoulders and tuck in my head. Most of the police in the area knew me but flashing blue lights still raised my hackles. Some nervous recruit fresh from the police academy might take umbrage as we blithely ignored him.

I let go of Dolores and pulled open the outer door to my patient’s apartment house and stepped inside without checking first: an unforgivably stupid mistake.

Peering out through the small, dirt-encrusted window next to the door were the two men who had dashed away as the police drove up. Dolores pushed in behind me, gave a sigh of relief, then saw the men. Panting with alarm, she stared at them. Uneasy under her gaze, one of the men turned. He looked mean and frightened: not a man I wanted to upset further.

If alone, I would have made a quick show of checking the names on the bells, then turned and walked out, using body language to indicate I didn’t plan to get involved. With Dolores I’d have to spell it all out; a lousy idea in a neighborhood where processing and selling crack, cocaine, heroin and other currently fashionable drugs is a diminishing, but still present cottage industry.

Mentally cursing Dolores I tried to hurry. The bells didn’t work so I had a key to the front door. Turning my back on the men, I pulled Mrs. Wolcek’s chart out of my back pack. The key was fastened to the chart with a bent paper clip. When I tried to get the key off the chart, the clip snapped the chart out of my fear-clumsied hand. The medication sheet and the rest of the chart spilled all over the floor. Sweat prickled along my hairline as I stooped to gather the papers.

Even crouched down and with my back turned, I could feel the tension in the scene behind me. Hoping to distract Dolores so she would stop staring at the men, I blurted out, “I hope they fixed the hole in her floor. I wouldn’t want to break my leg.”

“What hole?” Dolores momentarily ignored the men. “Who has a hole in her floor?”

Papers finally clutched in my hand, I tried to unlock the door. My hand shook so much the key made scratching noises, but wouldn’t go in the lock. Damn! I’d better say something. I willed my voice to sound bored. “This stupid key never seems to go in right. The locksmith must have been drunk when he made it.”

“Drunk? Who was drunk?” Dolores demanded. I didn’t answer. She was like the chorus of doom in ancient Greek plays: as long as what I said sounded bad, I could count on her to repeat it.

The door finally opened. Trying to move normally I went inside then held the door for Dolores. I hoped the men were smart enough to realize Dolores would probably screech mindlessly and alert the police still out front if they tried to follow us into the building.

We were lucky; they stayed in the lobby. I latched the door behind Dolores and leaned against it. I had been holding my breath and puffed it out with relief. “Good thing they didn’t have a dog…he would have smelled fear.”

Dolores blocked my way, her face set in a mulish scowl. “What you talkin about? What dog? That woman with the hole in her floor got a dog too? I’m not going into no apartment with a hole in the floor. What if I fall through the ceiling? I could break more than a leg if I fall through the ceiling. I could break both my legs and my hips too and then I wouldn’t be able to work. You know that insurance don’t pay enough to live on. You gotta be rich to break your legs. What would my kids do? Their father won’t do shit for them even if I got twobroken legs.”

“You don’t have to go near the hole. You can stay on the other side of the room.”

“Why she got a hole in the floor, anyway?”

“Who knows?” I pushed past her then started up the steep stairs that wound up on the right beyond the mailboxes. The weak bulb hanging from the remains of a ceiling fixture in the unadorned lobby revealed cracked plaster walls but barely lit the sagging iron stair treads. I picked my way carefully, gingerly holding on to the railing and trying not to dwell on why it felt so sticky.

Dolores didn’t move. “We gotta walk up?”

As the adrenaline wore off, irritation flooded in. “Unless you can fly.” Her heavy tread and muttered comments as she followed me suggested what she thought of nurses who had patients in walk-ups. On the third floor I knocked on the door at the end of the hall.

“Who is it?” a breathy, irritable voice asked.

“It’s the nurse.”

“Come in. Come in. It’s open.”

The doorknob was useless; the latch mechanism had fallen out years ago. I banged the door with my hip then gritted my teeth at the jarring screech of metal on the cement doorsill. Opposite the front door, gray light filtered through the dirty kitchen window looking out on a narrow airshaft of rough grayish bricks heavily encrusted with pigeon droppings. Dolores followed me into the sixteen-foot square room Mrs. Wolcek hadn’t left for two years except for occasional hospital stays.

Tethered to an oxygen compressor by end-stage emphysema, she was so weak she couldn’t get out of bed without help.

Dolores lowered herself into the worn green leatherette chair in the near corner, then looked around the room and rolled her eyes. The odor of old cabbage and bad sewers overlaid with stale cigarette smoke permeated everything.

With a rhythmic gasp and sigh, the oxygen concentrator on the far side of the bed pumped a slow trickle of oxygen through the cannula in Mrs. Wolcek’s nostrils. A large green emergency oxygen tank stood behind the concentrator. Mrs. Wolcek was too weak to change the line from the concentrator to the tank by herself so the tank was useless unless the aide was with her during a power outage.

Her color was high; she trembled with agitation, but didn’t berate me for being late. That was a first. Hoping she just hadn’t noticed it, I didn’t apologize as I did a routine physical assessment. “I have to call Doctor Rossi. Your blood pressure’s too high and fluid’s building up in your lungs again.” I made this a comment, not an accusation. Mrs. Wolcek would literally die before she gave up her lifelong pack-a-day cigarette habit.

Three words at a time with a strangled gasp in between, she recited her usual complaint. “Why bother…he doesn’t care…he won’t even…talk to me…when I call.”

I couldn’t fault the doctor. What Mrs. Wolcek wanted was magic, not good medical care. After two minutes off and on hold, I left a message with the doctor’s perpetually frazzled nurse. Although I hated to acknowledge it, I was sorry Dr. Rossi wasn’t in his office. He was one of the physicians I had known as a voice for ten years, but never met. Our conversations had never been anything other than strictly professional yet I looked forward to them and always had. Even when he was busy, he listened and asked for my opinion in a thoughtful voice.

The door screeched open. Mrs. Wolcek’s face lit with what appeared to be anticipation. A white garbed woman came into the room carrying a drug store bag. She wasn’t the usual aide, but I knew her; she had taken care of a former patient who had died unexpectedly. Her face registered alarm, then fear when she saw me. She half turned as though about to dart back out then stopped and flicked a furtive glance at me.

At a loss to explain her behavior, I fell back on routine. By law, nurses instruct aides on the specifics of each patient’s care. Aides sign the visit note to acknowledge this. She had worked for my agency before and knew the drill, so I handed her my visit note and pen.

She scribbled something then handed it back to me. I started printing her name under the scrawled signature then stopped. She had written a name different from the one I remembered. Her writing was hard to read, but it clearly wasn’t Cheryl Murchison, the name she used before.

I looked up. “Did you get married?”

“What makes you think I got married?” Her voice rose in a frightened squeak.

What was wrong with the woman? I did my best to sound unconcerned, “Sorry, I thought your name was different. What is your name? I can’t quite make out your signature. And what agency are you with?”

“My name’s Merlene Baltimore and I’m with Kennedy Care.”

“Thanks.” I drew a single line through the ‘Cheryl’ I had written, initialed the error and printed ‘Merlene Baltimore’ and the agency name. It was the same agency she was with before. The aides were licensed now; the state regulations may have stipulated she use her real name when she got her license.

What did you think my name was?” Now she sounded angry.

Baffled at her open hostility, I said, “It’s not important. I got you mixed up with someone else.”

But I hadn’t. Her hair used to be in corn rows with small blue and gold beads woven in and now was a longer, straightened bob with bangs, but the eyes and the rest of her features were the same and she still had the tiny crescent scar on her right ring finger: pink against the smooth brown skin.

She watched me with wary eyes as I finished writing my visit note. I toyed with just coming right out and telling her I didn’t care what name she used as long as she did her job well, but couldn’t without calling her a liar.
After giving her specific instructions on Mrs. Wolcek’s care I added the standard required caution on the use of oxygen with long-term oxygen dependent patients. “Mrs. Wolcek thinks if she had more oxygen, she could breathe better, but if the power goes off and you have to put her on the emergency tank don’t give her more than four liters a minute even if she begs you to, because too much oxygen all at once could kill her.” The aide didn’t comment. She would have learned this in order to get her home health aide license.

When we got back down to the street, people were milling around in front of the crack house as though the police had never been there. Only the man with yellow hair was missing. Dolores followed me back toward Avenue D. I’d had enough of her for one day. I lied to her without a qualm.

 “You can go back to the office now if you want, the rest of my patients speak English and are in safe buildings.” Dolores grunted assent, turned and lumbered to the bus stop.

The wrong name aide worried me. If she’d been working as Cheryl and had to use her real name when she was licensed, why wouldn’t she just say so? Using a pseudonym wasn’t illegal. And why did I frighten her? On impulse, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number for Kennedy Care. I asked for Merlene Baltimore’s supervisor. The woman who answered identified herself as Miriam Byrne. Her voice was pleasant but turned hard when I asked her if she had ever had any complaints about Merlene. Checking on aides was a normal part of my job, but it took a lot of persuasion to get her to answer my question. She finally said, “Never. She’s a good aide.”
I asked her to transfer my call to Cheryl Murchison’s supervisor. Her voice was suddenly tight and high-pitched. “I’m her supervisor too. And we’ve never had any complaints about her either. Then she hung up. She didn’t ask why I wanted to know who Cheryl’s supervisor was.

I wrote an addendum on Mrs. Wolcek’s visit note indicating that I had contacted Merlene’s supervisor and quoted her by name. Ms. Byrne had to know Cheryl/ Merlene was the same person. Why hadn’t she volunteered the information and offered some sort of explanation? She should have.

My cell phone vibrated against my hip as I crossed the plaza in the middle of the Jacob Riis Houses: not a place where I would whip out a cell and start talking
unless I were a drug dealer. I kept walking.

A young man with tawny skin and a shaved head crossed Avenue D and turned into the plaza. A woman dragging a shopping cart scuttled out of his way. Easily seven feet tall, he moved with the head forward slouch very tall people adopt to survive standard doorways with their brains intact. Denim pants so loose they threatened to slide off his narrow hips scraped the ground with each step. Small earphones were plugged into an I-pod clipped to the neck of his sleeveless tee shirt. His upper body, hands and feet moved in sinuous, dancing movements accentuated by the tattoo of a writhing snake running from his right shoulder to his wrist. Although he seemed to be engrossed in the music coming from his headphones his eyes were in constant motion. When he was a few feet away he looked at me with hooded eyes and winked. I grinned in appreciation. As he passed me, he said softly, “Lookin’ good, pretty lady.”

I loved this job. Some days it was better theater than the best Broadway had to offer. The lower East Side of New York City was allegedly gentrifying. But this supposed change hadn’t affected Avenue D. It would take more than a few hundred determined Yuppies to displace the hundreds of thousands of low or no income families who lived in the red brick, box-shaped public housing projects that stretched from Fourteenth Street down to Delancey Street on the river side. Across the avenue from these buildings, bodegas, other assorted services that always looked desperate and empty and an occasional new store were dotted between empty buildings with plywood covered windows. Obscene sayings and ornate spray-painted tags filled every inch of the plywood.

By the time I got to Avenue C at Tenth Street no one seemed to be paying attention to me so I slid the cell phone out of my pocket and flipped it open. The readout said it was my office. I groaned. I had been on my way back there. A phone call at the end of the day meant trouble.

Tina, the business coordinator for my area, told me I had to make an emergency visit to a woman, Stella Mishkin, who lived on East Tenth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. A note was on my desk when I got back from break. Some woman called from Connecticut and says she’s worried because her mom doesn’t answer her phone. The daughter’s afraid she fell again.”

“No doctor mentioned?”

“No. The note just gives the address and apartment number and says the patient leaves her door unlocked and the downstairs one is usually propped open.”

The patient lived in an old tenement with barred windows on the ground floor and a rusty fire escape snaking back and forth across the façade. An obviously gentrified hairdresser’s shop with a gleaming display window was on the right side of the front door. Inside the shop, a cadaverous man with a wild mop of spiked black hair glanced up briefly then looked back at the hair he was dying in green and purple stripes.

The door to the building stood propped open. The woman’s apartment was on the fifth floor. Avoiding the dirt-streaked walls, I walked back to the cast iron staircase in the middle of the hall. Dull marble treads set in the rusting iron frame were worn and had front edges cracked and crumbled by years of scuffling feet. I picked my way with care, winding my way up and around the six-steps-landing-six steps-hall sequence until I got to the fifth floor. The apartment was on the left at the end of the short hall. I tapped on the door and called out, “Hi, Mrs. Mishkin. It’s the nurse.” There was no answer, so I tried the door. As her daughter had said, it was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside the dark hall.

Behind me, the door crashed shut. Before I could turn, a strong arm clamped my neck in a vise-like grip. My backpack dug into my spine. Coughing and struggling, I reached up and tried to claw the person’s eyes, but ended up with a torn ski mask clutched in my hand. I yanked this away from the attacker’s face and got a glimpse of a man’s chin as he twisted me to the left. The arm around my neck tightened viciously. Something hit my right hip; I was shoved, tripped over my own feet and ended on my side on the floor of a small room. A door slammed behind me. He had grabbed my back pack.

Winded, I rolled onto my hands and knees, clamped my teeth together and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths. My eyes squeezed closed in concentration. Beads of sweat trickled down my face.

I opened my eyes and confronted cracked, one-inch square floor tiles. They may have been black and white, but were so filthy I wouldn’t want to bet on it. A foul-smelling toilet was a foot in front of my face. I waited for my heart to slow then stood and crept away from the wall. Something made a soft crinkling sound under my foot. My heart speeded up again when I saw what it was. An empty paper and plastic wrapper from a syringe was on the floor. Had a couple of addicts invaded Mrs. Mishkin’s apartment? Had they given her an injection? I didn’t know how old or frail she was. She could be in real trouble. I had to get help, but how? I could hear two men talking. I assumed they were watching the bathroom door so I couldn’t escape. They missed the cell phone in my pocket. If I tried to call 911, they’d hear my voice but I might be able to text message for help. I slid it out. No signal. Not unusual in this area. I tiptoed to the window, but there was still no reception.

Fire engine klaxons blared as a fire truck turned into the street and stopped in front of the building. A vehicle must have blocked them because they didn’t turn off the sirens. They were making enough noise so I might be able to get out without the men hearing me. I crept to the door. Thick paint had kept it from latching. I eased it open just far enough to see. My heart sped up when I realized the front door was ajar.

I slipped through the bathroom door and out of the apartment. Racing down the hall, I swung into the stairwell and started on a breakneck descent of the stairs, but had only gone down a few steps when the sound of ascending footsteps registered. I stopped so abruptly, I had to grab the handrail so I didn’t end up on the landing head first. Someone to help me? Or another bad guy?  I choked down a curse, reversed direction and ran back up the stairs making as little noise as possible. Gasping, I was afraid to stop. At the top of the last flight, I listened. No sound from the stairs.

I pushed open the heavy steel fire door and slid through. It slammed shut behind me before I could grab the edge without smashing a finger. Dumb move!  Fire doors only open from the inside. If no one else were out on their roof, I’d have to go down a fire escape. I hate the fire stairs in these old tenements. Seven stories above the ground, I want something more than a bunch of rusty iron strips between the sidewalk and me.

Board walkways led back to a couple of ratty lawn chairs. From there, they went to the buildings on either side. I hurried across the roof in the direction of Avenue B and stepped over the two-foot high parapet that separated this building from the next one. I still had my phone in my hand. Only one signal bar and even that came and went.

Assorted crates, a bent aluminum picnic table and a splitting half-barrel full of dry dirt with a dead tree in it littered the second roof, but the door was closed and locked.

The third rooftop was filled with pigeon coops and rank smelling guano. I didn’t see anyone until I stepped over the parapet onto the roof and bumped one of the coops, knocking a feeding tray to the ground with a clatter and a spray of seed.

“Imbecile!” a thin, high-pitched voice shrieked, as a mottled pigeon flew up and fluttered over my head.  “You frightened Nelda. Go away! Go away! I can’t get her back with you here! Get off my roof!”

“Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bump the coop,” I sidled past a red-faced old man who looked like a twisted gnome with anorexia and hurried toward the blessedly open door to the building.

As I ran down the stairs, I could hear the man’s plaintive voice calling and cooing, “Come back, dearie. Come back sweet Nelda. That’s my dear sweet bird.”

On the street, I checked my cell phone again. Still no signal. I stuck it in my pocket. I needed a pay phone. The first phone with all its parts intact and no one using it was in the next block. I was about to dial 911 then realized I would get faster action from the local precinct so called them. They wouldn’t waste time deciding if they were dealing with a weirdo. As soon as I said I was Samantha Abbott, the man who answered said, “What’s the problem, Sam?”

“I got mugged in a patient’s apartment…”

“Mugged how? Are you hurt?”

“No. Some guy just shoved me into the bathroom. But it’s not me I’m worried…”

“Hold on. I’m going to turn you over to one of the detectives.”

There was a click then a gruff voice said, “McLusky.”

“Jerry, it’s Sam Abbott.” I told him what happened. “I’m okay, but I’m worried about the patient. She was supposed to have fallen and…”

“Where are you now?”

“In a phone booth on Avenue B between Tenth and Eleventh. Could you send someone over to the apartment to see if she’s all right?”

“Gimme the address and the patient’s name.” I did. The phone clunked as he put it down. He spoke with someone then picked up the phone again “The dispatcher says a squad car is a block away. They should be at the apartment house now. They’ll check it. You said there were two guys, Sam. How’d you get away?”

A recording cut in before I could answer. A metallic voice instructed me to deposit money. “Just a second, I have to feed the phone.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. Tucking the receiver between my shoulder and cheek, I picked silver money out of a pile of pennies. The only quarter dropped and started rolling. I lunged for it. A large foot in a well-shined loafer stepped on the quarter, barely missing my outstretched hand. Startled, I looked up from my half crouch. A totally bald, heavy-set man looked down at me. For some reason, he just stood there. I straightened and looked at him. “Excuse me. I need that quarter for the phone. Could you please move your foot?”

He stood without speaking, his face hard to read. His features were neat, his clothes obviously expensive. Completely hairless, he had no eyebrows or eyelashes. This emphasized the cold, repellant expression in his pale yellow eyes. He held my gaze the way a snake would before it struck. Then he turned and walked away. I looked after him then picked up the coin and stuck it in the slot.

“You still there, Sam?”

“Yeah,”

“Hold on a sec.” I could hear him talking to someone. “Sam, the officer who checked the apartment just came in. He says it doesn’t look like anyone’s been living there for a while. There’s no furniture in the place and it’s filthy. But someone’s been there in the last hour or so. There was a clean syringe wrapper in the bathroom, a half-full cup of still-warm take-out coffee on the windowsill and your backpack on the floor. He brought your backpack up to me. I’m on my way out but I’ll leave it down at the front desk so you can pick it up. Can’t be much missing. Damn thing must weigh twenty-pounds of more.”

“Thanks, Jerry.”

“Did you get a look at the guy’s face before he shoved you in the bathroom?

“He had red hair. Dyed.”

“How the hell do you know it was dyed?”

“Trust me. God never made hair that color.”

“Anything else?”

“He had dark five-o’clock shadow…and a receding chin…and wide nostrils with tufts of white hair showing.” Jerry waited. “And I think he was maybe an inch taller than I am… and he had on a navy blue suit jacket…and a dark green ski mask.”

“Wait. How did you see so much of his face if he was wearing a ski mask?”

“I went for his eyes and ended up with a handful of mask. I yanked on it and it ripped, but I don’t suppose the ski mask is much help. He’s not going to wear it on the street in August.”

“You didn’t see the second guy?”

“Not unless he was the man who stepped on my quarter.” I told him what the man did and described him. “He’d have no other reason to be angry with me. I never saw him before.”

The Ninth Precinct was temporarily housed on Avenue C in an ultra-modern building made from terrazzo, stainless steel and glass. Jerry came out of the building just as I got to the doors. Just shy of six feet, wiry and lean, he had a great mouth and what I thought of as detective eyes. He looked right at me when he talked and listened intently. By the time he finally looked away I was sure he knew everything about me, even what I had eaten for breakfast.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sam?” He gestured at my left arm. “That looks sore.”

I twisted my arm and looked at it. The area around the elbow was scabbed and beginning to bruise. “I guess I did get a little banged up. That’s where I landed.” I flexed the joint in all directions. “It’s a little sore but it still works. I’ll have someone look at it when I get to the office.”

“Let me know what those men wanted if you ever find out. Your backpack is at the desk. You’ll just have to sign for it.” He started to turn then swung back to me and did the thing with the x-ray eyes again. He was frowning. “Be careful, Sam. You go into places even I would avoid if I could. And I have a gun”

I found him very attractive and got the impression the attraction was mutual but was careful not to flirt with him. I had a visceral reaction when he looked at me so it wasn’t easy. Jerry was divorced; he had met his former wife when they were in law school. They were divorced six months after he decided he would rather chase bad guys than defend or prosecute them and joined the police. He and his former wife were still friends. I just wasn’t sure how friendly they were. Neither had remarried.