Sacred Sins

his eyes, then it was gone, just as quickly. “Your point, Doctor.”
    She tapped a finger on the table, the only outward sign of emotion. He had an admirable capacity for stillness. She had already noticed that in Harris's office. Yet she sensed a restlessness in him. It was difficult not to appreciate the way he held it in check.
    “All right, Detective Paris, why don't you make your point?”

    After swirling his vodka, he set it down without drinking. “Okay. Maybe I see you as someone raking in bucks off frustrated housewives and bored executives. Everything harks back to sex or mother hating. You answer questions with questions and never raise a sweat. Fifty minutes goes by and you click over to the next file. When someone really needs help, when someone's desperate, it gets passed over. You label it, file it, and go on to the next hour.”
    For a moment she said nothing because under the anger, she heard grief. “It must've been a very bad experience,” she murmured. “I'm sorry.”
    Uncomfortable, he shifted. “No tabletop analysis,” he reminded her.
    A very bad experience, she thought again. But he wasn't a man who wanted sympathy. “All right, let's try a different angle. You're a homicide detective. I guess all you do all day is two-wheel it down dark alleys with guns blazing. You dodge a few bullets in the morning, slap the cuffs on in the afternoon, then read the suspect his rights and haul him in for interrogation. Is that general enough for you?”
    A reluctant smile touched his mouth. “Pretty clever, aren't you?”
    “So I've been told.”
    It wasn't like him to make absolute judgments of someone he didn't know. His innate sense of fair play struggled with a long, ingrained prejudice. He signaled for another drink. “What's your first name. I'm tired of calling you Dr. Court.”
    “Yours is Ben.” She gave him a smile that made him focus on her mouth again. “Teresa.”
    “No.” He shook his head. “That's not what you're called. Teresa's too ordinary. Terry doesn't have enough class.”
    She leaned forward and dropped her chin on her folded hands. “You might be a good detective after all. It's Tess.”
    “Tess.” He tried it out slowly, then nodded. “Very nice. Tell me, Tess, why psychiatry?”

    She watched him a moment, admiring the easy way he sprawled in his seat. Not indolent, she thought, not sloppy, just relaxed. She envied that. “Curiosity,” she said again. “The human mind is full of unanswered questions. I wanted to find the answers. If you can find the answers, you can help, sometimes. Heal the mind, ease the heart.”
    It touched him. The simplicity. “Ease the heart,” he repeated, and thought of his brother. No one had been able to ease his. “You think if you heal one, you can ease the other?”
    “It's the same thing.” Tess looked beyond him to a couple who huddled laughing over a pitcher of beer.
    “I thought all you got paid to do was look in heads.”
    Her lips curved a little, but her eyes still focused beyond him. “The mind, the heart, and the soul. ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart.’”
    He'd lifted his gaze from his drink as she'd spoken. Her voice remained quiet, but he'd stopped hearing the juke, the clatter, the laughter.
    “Macbeth.” When she smiled at him, he shrugged. “Cops read too.”
    Tess lifted her glass in what might have been a toast. “Maybe we should both reevaluate.”

    I T was still drizzling when they turned back into the parking lot at headquarters. The gloom had brought the dark quickly, so that puddles shone beneath streetlights and the sidewalks were wet and deserted. Washington kept early hours. She'd waited until now to ask him what she'd wondered all evening.
    “Ben, why did you become a cop?”
    “I told you, I like catching bad guys.”

    The seed of truth was there, she thought, but not the whole. “So you grew up playing cops and robbers, and decided to keep right on playing?”
    “I always played doctor.” He pulled up beside her car and set the brake. “It was educational.”
    “I'm sure. Then why the switch to public service?”
    He could've been glib, he could've evaded. Part of his charm for women was his ability to do both with an easy smile. Somehow, for once, he wanted to tell