Judging Time by Leslie Glass Page A

come. Most of the time he does come home eventually," she conceded. "What time did he die?"
    "Sometime last night."
    "I was here all evening, if you want to know. All night in fact. Anyway, I'm not powerful enough to give people heart attacks. But Tor was. He gave them all the time." She stubbed out her cigarette, splitting the paper and shredding the tobacco.
    "Would you mind identifying his body later today?" Mike asked suddenly.
    "Oh, is that absolutely necessary? I'm afraid it would make me sick to my stomach."
    "You only have to look at his face through a window," Mike told her.
    "Couldn't you arrange something?" Daphne pleaded. "Send his lawyer or something?"
    April bristled as the cleavage became more pronounced. Of course they could. Mike would see what he could do. April rolled her eyes and made a note to kick him later. The two detectives stayed, asking the dead man's wife questions until the sun rose. Then they went out for breakfast.

6
J ason, the last thing in the world I want to do right now is go in that room by myself and lie down." Rick Liberty shot Jason an angry look. "What do you think I am?"
    Emma saw Jason check his watch and gave him a pleading look not to abandon them.
    "I think you've had a terrible shock," Jason replied calmly. "And you're going to have a really rough day." He glanced at Emma to assure her he would stay as long as he had to.
    "A shock! My wife and best friend go to my own restaurant with my own people all around. Now both of them are dead. No one can tell me what happened. And you want me to lie down!"
    Dr. Jason Frank, psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry, was a man well accustomed to hearing other people vent their grief and rage. He ached for his friend and didn't argue. His own wife was still alive. She sat on the white sofa clutching one of Merrill's sweaters and holding Rick's hand as if he were a child. Emma had been Merrill's best friend, a bridesmaid at her wedding. She'd left the two victims to come home to him only minutes before they were killed. He ached for Emma, too.
    Jason stood with his back to the window and the dawning day. Over the years as a psychoanalyst, he had seen a lot of illness both physical and mental, and a lot of self-destruction played out in a wide variety of ways. He'd seen death come in many forms. The endless repetition of tragedies and sorrow that constituted the human condition had always affected him, but until a year ago he had never experienced the catastrophe of a vicious crime against anyone he knew.
    He had grown up with a basketball in his hands, a street kid in the Bronx always looking for a pickup game. He'd carried a knife in his pocket and been in fights, but he'd never cut anybody and nobody had ever cut him. Until he was in medical school he'd never seen a gunshot wound or a knife wound or a battered body. Since then he'd seen a number of them, but none of the violence had been connected with him. He was a thirty-nine-year-old psychiatrist who wrote scholarly papers and taught medical students and psychiatric residents and now even Ph.D. candidates how to think about the mind. His had been an orderly life, and though he would never have admitted it, a cerebral one.
    He was also a collector of antique clocks. He would have liked to meet the person who invented the first mechanical device to measure time. He himself was ruled by time, obsessed by it. For many years his only fear was that his own time would run out before he was finished with his life's work. But a year ago he'd learned there were many worse fears than that.
    A year ago Emma had starred in a film that triggered her kidnapping. Until then, his only connection with the police was as a source of directions when he was lost. Now he was so close to several NYPD detectives that he had actually been relieved when Rick told him an Asian woman called Woo and a Hispanic with a big mustache were in charge of this case. That meant every step of the way Jason would know what