Chapter 21

I traded some favours and dug up Mike's criminal record. Stealing cars, theft under a thousand, big fucking deal.

But I like to keep my hands clean.

I called Mike up and met him in a parking lot behind a Couche-Tard downtown, where no one could hear us. "I want you to get me a car."

"Yeah?" He shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit it.

"A big one. Something easy to drive. An automatic."

He sucked on his stick for a while. "Why?"

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged and looked me in the eye. "I don't do that shit anymore."

I laughed in his face. "Yeah, right."

He shrugged again and got up to go. "Anyways..."

Before the word was out of his mouth, I sighed. "It's too bad about Wendy."

He carefully straightened his spine. "What about her?"

"You guys breaking up and all. She told me what you did to her. Kind of sick, dude. Especially with her being only thirteen."

He stopped breathing for a second.

"She was thinking of talking to someone about it."

"I never—"

"She made a video with her little camcorder. She showed me the tape. Not smart, Mike."

He stood there with his cigarette burning in his hand, too stunned to flick the ash off. I waited for a minute. I was enjoying this. Not only did his face go a weird, pale grey, but he even smelled funny. Can someone smell like fear?

I relented. "But I talked to her. I told her to hang on. Don't back that up. Don't upload it anywhere. I told her you were a good guy. You were even doing a favour for me." I paused. "She gave me the tape."

I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down. He glanced up and down the lot, but we were alone except for an old Geo and a GMC truck in the corner. He muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "All you want is a car? For the tape?"

I nodded. What can I say? I'm really a soft touch sometimes.

***

When I unlocked my bike at the end of the day, I saw a heavy-set woman out of the corner of my eye. She turned and her lustrous black hair caught the sun. It was Wendy, pacing on a small rectangle of lawn in front of human resources, across from the emerg entrance.

She didn't see me, she was too busy yelling into her cell phone.

"Where are you? Why didn't you come?" Pause. "Don't give me that. You couldn't leave her alone before, and now that she's in a coma, you...No. That's bullshit. I did everything you—everything. And what...oh, yeah, you're doing it all for me. You are sick." Pause. "Don't you dare hang up on me. Don't you—goddammit!"

Slowly, I wound the chain around the seat of my bike. It clanged on the frame. Wendy's head jerked up.

Uh oh. I nodded at her and secured the lock on the chain. Better to pretend blissful ignorance. Hear no evil.

She advanced on me like a bull. The only thing missing was the cartoon smoke rising from her nostrils. "You spying on me?"

I pulled my bike out of the rack, keeping it between us. "Nope."

"You're always around. Watching. Listening. Giving everyone the creeps."

I unhooked the helmet from my backpack and snapped it on my head, never taking my eyes off her. "Thanks." I backed up, wheeling my bike away.

"Don't you walk away from me." She walked around the rack.

I wasn't walking, I was biking, but something told me she wouldn't appreciate the joke.

She planted her hands on the handlebars. Or she would have if I hadn't backed up fast enough to scuff up a bit of sand on the pavement. I switched from defense to offense. "Why don't you call back whoever it was on the phone? That's who you're really mad at."

Her eyebrows soared before she slitted her eyes. "You playing with me?"

"Not at all." I glanced around, catching the eye of the parking guard lurking in the front entrance, but he was immediately distracted by someone holding a bill in his hand.

"Just stay out of our business, okay? We don't need your counseling." She made sarcastic quotes in the air. "We don't need your help. We just need you to fuck off."

I mentally flipped through a few responses. I try not to get riled up with patients or their families. It was only five p.m., so there were plenty of people around. I didn't need to feel threatened. I opened my mouth to defuse the situation, but instead, I said, "Is that why you're harassing me?"

Her head snapped to the side, but her eyes never wavered. "What?"

"I don't know what you'd call it. A picture of a gravestone in my mailbox. Calling me at home. You were trying to scare me off?"

"I have no clue what you're talking about." But her gaze dropped to the ground before she rallied. "Pretty scary, though, right?"

"Yeah. Petrifying."

She shook herself. "Anyway, the point's the same. Leave us alone." Her voice rang hollow.

I just waited. We both knew her mother was going to call me and schedule an appointment with me, if she hadn't already. We were going to see each other, showdown or no showdown. "Look, Wendy. Who are you trying to protect?"

Her eyes widened. "No one."

She was lying. We both knew it. My tired brain clicked like it was trying, and failing, to make a connection.

Her turn to go on the attack. "I was just wondering if your supervisors know you're asking all these questions instead of doing your real work."

My stomach dropped, but I tried on a poker face. "What do you mean? I think they'd be pleased I'm showing such an interest in my patients."

She bent in close enough that I had to lean away, but I did it slowly, striving not to show fear.

"Yeah, an 'interest,' is that what you call it? Accusing me of sending you letters and calling you? You think because I'm gay, I'm that hard up? As a matter of fact, I've got—" She bit back the rest.

I stared at her. I'd accused her of being my poison pen pal without any evidence or even a clue about her motivation. No homophobia intended. But was she really admitting to harassing me, or just shooting off her mouth?

"Oh, forget it!" Wendy waved her hand at me and stormed away.

I took irrational pleasure in watching her thighs jiggle as she walked. It was easier than trying to figure out why she was trying to scare me, and if it had any connection to Laura's death.

It was easier than admitting I was freaked out.

Ryan was gone. Wendy was psycho. I'd have to figure this out alone.

Or almost alone.

After that, I really needed a treat, so just before I started call, I hit our local Japanese resto for some takeout and paged Tucker from the residents' lounge while the steam still rose from one of the Styrofoam boxes.

"Back already?" he said.

"Yeah. There weren't any consults yet, so I bought me some teriyaki and you a bento box." If he was anything like me, supper was an excellent suck-up/make-up/thank you/are we still friends? gift. Plus I wanted to talk to him about Wendy. "Anyway, I'm in the residents' lounge, if you want to pick it up." When he didn't respond, I said into the micro-silence, "Or I'll leave it in the fridge. Whatever's good for you."

"They haven't gotten back to me yet," said Tucker

"Who?"

"The staff at the Douglas. You wanted me to ask about antisocial patients."

"Yes, I know. That's not why I was calling, though."

"Wasn't it?"

"Well. Only partly," I admitted.

He barked with laughter. "That's what I love about you, Hope. If nothing else, you're honest. So here's the million dollar question. Why else were you calling?"

"To talk about Saturday?"

"Sounds good. Anything else?"

I thought of what we'd done and crossed my legs. It sounded nuts, throwing handbooks at each other and then nearly getting it on, but he was so hot. "Maybe."

"And you're playing it safe by meeting me in the residents' lounge, where medical students will be our chaperones and romance will be held in check by the smell of rotting garbage?"

"Well..." I glanced around. Two medical students hypnotized by the TV, a third by Facebook. "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. But my food smells a lot better than garbage."

"No dice."

"Huh?"

"The residents' lounge stinks, Hope. I try to avoid it. Meet me outside somewhere. It's August and you're on psych call. Live a little."

My idea of living dangerously was leaving the premises to grab supper even though I was on home call and had 20 minutes to respond. He was probably right, but it annoyed me. "You want your bento box or not, Tucker?"

His laugh crackled back at me through the line. "Yeah. At the picnic tables outside HR. See you in five?"

I hung up on him. We both knew I'd be there.

Seven minutes later, while I unsnapped my wooden chopsticks for teriyaki chicken, Tucker sampled some sushi. "Not bad. How've you been?"

"Uh, busy." I blushed and dug into my chicken to hide it.

"I'll bet. Well, me too. I talked to one of the psychiatrists, Dr. Ven."

"But you said—"

"Yeah." His brown eyes turned serious for a second. "Just wanted to make sure you wanted me and not just my skillz. Happens too often."

I pushed my Styrofoam container aside. "So what did you find out?"

"He has a great memory and he's really a nice guy. He's going to get out some of his notes, but he still remembered that group of borderlines. It disbanded in 2002, something about funding, before they restarted it in 2003."

I suspected the history lesson was to keep me in suspense as long as possible, so I bit my tongue.

"They thought it would be a good idea to have group therapy for borderlines, same as for everyone else. They have issues of anger and abandonment, as you know, so the idea was that they could work on those together. But he said there were problems. Some of the girls got together for 'slasher parties' afterward, where they brought out the razor blades and cut their own arms, egging each other on. Two of the girls had to be stitched up in the emerg." Tucker shook his head. "He did remember one guy, though, he thought might have antisocial personality. Michael Martinez."

"A guy," I repeated.

"Yeah. He was the only man in the group. That's probably why Dr. Ven remembers him so well. He was also the only one to have serious trouble with the law. Breaking and entering, theft under a thousand dollars——not hard stuff, but enough to get him a record. He was nineteen at the time, so it didn't get all wiped out the way it would have if he'd been underage. Actually, most of the borderlines were over eighteen. It started with eighteen and under, but got expanded, plus they didn't want to kick out the patients once they turned nineteen..."

Tucker was way too interested in the mechanics of the psych group. "Okay, so this Michael Martinez. What else do you know about him?"

"Dr. Ven was going to look it up, but he remembered him as very charming. Always had a girlfriend. We laughed about that. I said there's less worry about abandonment issues if he's always stringing them along, but Dr. Ven said actually borderlines get screwed up sometimes when the partner dumps them and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But Dr. Ven remembers that Martinez kind of changed around the time of Laura's death. He became a lot more secretive and defensive, and then stopped coming altogether. Dr. Ven tried to track him down and get him to come back, but his phone number was just a pizza place he used to work at. He kind of slipped away."

"Okay. And Dr. Ven never said anything about that to the police?"

"He said it was all circumstantial. As a matter of fact, a lot of the patients acted peculiar when Laura died. He thought they were uneasy about the reminder of their own mortality. He thought it might be part of the reason so many of them dropped out."

"Who else dropped out?"

"Like I said, he's getting back to me."

"I'd like to talk to him."

Tucker stretched his legs out and ate the last piece of sashimi. "I know you would."

I whipped out my phone. "Do you have his number?"

"Uh huh." He made no move to give it.

I waited with my finger poised in the air. "Tucker?"

"I know you'd like it, but this is my part of the 'investigation.' I'm covering it, Hope."

"But—"

He shook his head and closed his eyes. I reached across the table, stopping just short of his hand. "Come on, Tucker, what difference would it make if I talked to him?"

"He doesn't like to break patient confidentiality, for one," he replied without opening his eyes.

Damn. "Well, what about—"

"It's different. We used to work together. But you're the 'detective doctor' parachuting in from Ontario, you know what I'm saying?"

I grimaced.

He put his legs down and laughed openly. "Anyway, I lured you here to talk to you about something else."

The look in his eye made my heart pound all of a sudden. "Saturday?"

"And beyond. Don't worry, it's not about jumping your bones."

"How disappointing."

He clucked his tongue. "That's my girl. Can I try some of your chicken?"

I held the box toward him. "You're just trying to draw it out and torture me."

"You know it." He was deft with the chopsticks. Good with his hands. It made me wonder how he'd be in bed. Again. He caught me looking at him and laughed. "Good, huh?"

I pretended he was talking about the food. "Yeah, I like their sauce."

"Right." He lifted his eyebrows. He seemed a lot more confident and playful than the last time we'd seen each other. I wondered what had changed. Maybe it was just the lure of being a 'detective doctor' himself. Well, I could live with that.

But then Tucker smiled, and I thought it was more likely our dalliance in the conference room had recharged him somehow.

"Well, you've been kind of torturing me, Hope." Despite his light tone, I tensed and waited. I had an idea what was coming.

He surveyed me. He and Ryan both had brown eyes, but Ryan's were dark brown, black in some lights, intelligent and deep. Tucker's were lighter, with some gold in the iris, and usually more playful. Except now they were intent. I waited for the Ryan-guilt. I deserved it.

But he surprised me again. "My parents are college sweethearts. Did you know that?"

I shook my head.

"You never asked. But they've been together since he asked her to dance to the Police's 'Every Breath You Take.' They play it on their anniversary every year." He grinned and rolled his eyes. "They probably would've gotten together before except he threw spitballs at her in grade seven and she shouldn't have anything to do with him for years after. But they both said they 'knew' the other one was the right one. All our lives, they've been telling me and my sisters that, and we've been like, okay, whatever, hippies."

I had to laugh. "I didn't know you had sisters."

"Two younger ones. We quoted the divorce rate at them, we told them life was a lot more complicated, new millennium, yadda-yadda. And then I saw you at the resident orientation." His mobile face turned serious. I found myself holding my breath.

"Everyone else was on time, serious, and I'd known almost all of them for years. You burst in late with this huge smile on your face. You were wearing shorts when everyone else was in dress pants. You had so much energy, like a hummingbird or something."

I had to laugh at that.

"And right off the bat, you didn't take shit from anyone, including me. And I knew." He looked me straight in the eye and repeated, "I just knew."

Holy macaroni. He was serious. A small, secret part of me was amazed and touched while the rest of me was scared. I never knew Tucker saw me that way. Cute, sure. He'd always been interested. But he was talking coup de foudre, or as the English say, love at first sight.

"I can't explain it. I could hardly believe it myself. Still can't." He shook his head, too. "Sometimes, I think it's a masochism thing." He didn't say, but we were both thinking of Alex and now Ryan. I winced. He waved it away. "You drive me crazy. But other times..." He looked me, tilting his head to the side. "I know what I'm doing. So I'm waiting for you. Not passively. And not forever. I'm not a saint. But you're the one, Hope."

My mouth went dry. My heart started drumming like another panic attack, but in a semi-good way. He wasn't exactly saying he loved me, but it was pretty close. He was calling me his destiny. And I had no freaking clue what to say back.

He shrugged and smiled. "You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. Thanks for the bento box." He stood up, untangling his legs from the picnic table.

I found my tongue again. "Now, wait a minute. You can't say that I'm 'the one' and leave."

"Actually, I can do whatever I want."

"Yes, I know, but..."

"And if someone had laid that on me, I'd want some time to think about it."

"Yes, but—"

"Unless it was you." He frowned before he gave me a lopsided grin. "I'm looking forward to that."

I exhaled. "Tucker."

"I'm impossible. I know." He saluted me and started walking away, bento box between two fingers, his head held in a jaunty way. Faintly, on a breeze, I heard him whistle but couldn't quite make out the tune.

Before I could decide what to do, my pager went off for a consult in emerg.