Sacred Sins

“We'd already figured that out.”
    “Give it a break, Ben,” Ed murmured, knowing the temper would be deflected on to him.
    “You give it a break.” The hands in Ben's pockets balled into fists. “That sonofabitch is just waiting to strangle the next woman who's in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we sit around talking to psychiatrists and priests. I don't give a damn about his soul or his psyche.”
    “Maybe we should.” Roderick looked to the captain first, then to Ben. “Look, I know how you feel, how I guess we all feel. We just want him. But we've all read Dr. Court's profile. We aren't dealing with somebody who's just out for blood, for kicks. If we're going to do our job, I think we'd better understand who he is.”
    “You get a good look at the morgue photos, Lou? We know who they are. Who they were.”
    “All right, Paris. You want to let off any more steam, you go down to the gym.” Harris waited a moment, drawing the room together with his sense of authority alone. He'd been a good street cop. He was a better desk cop. Knowing it only depressed him occasionally.

    “Press conference is being set up for eight A.M., mayor's office. I want a report on the meeting with Monsignor Logan on my desk tomorrow. Bigsby, you keep working on where those damn scarfs came from. Lowenstein, Roderick, go back and work on the family and friends of the victims. Now get out of here, go get something to eat.”
    Ed waited until they'd signed out, covered the corridors, and were crossing the parking lot.
    “It's not doing you any good to take out what happened to your brother on Dr. Court.”
    “Josh has nothing to do with this.” But the pain was still there. He couldn't say his brother's name without it hurting his throat.
    “That's right. And Dr. Court's just doing a job, like the rest of us.”
    “That's fine. I don't happen to think that her job has any connection with ours.”
    “Criminal psychiatry has become a viable working tool in the—”
    “Ed, for Christ's sake, you've got to stop reading those magazines.”
    “Stop reading, stop learning. Want to go get drunk?”
    “This from a man carrying sunflower seeds.” There was still tension along the back of his neck. He'd lost one brother, but Ed had come along and nearly filled the void. “Not tonight. Anyway, it embarrasses me when you have them pour all that fruit juice in with the vodka.”
    “A man's got to think of his health.”
    “He's also got to think of his reputation.” Ben opened his car door, then stood jingling his keys.

    It was a cool night, cool enough so that you could just see your breath. If it rained before morning, as the starless skies indicated, it would come down in sleet. In their tidy, high-ceilinged row houses, Georgetown's affluent would be setting logs in the fireplace, sipping Irish coffees, and enjoying the flames. The street people were in for a long unpleasant night.
    “She bothers me,” Ben said abruptly.
    “A woman looks like that, she's bound to bother a man.”
    “Not that simple.” Ben slid into his car and wished he could put his finger on it. “I'll pick you up tomorrow. Seven-thirty.”
    “Ben.” Ed leaned over, holding the door open. “Tell her I said hi.”
    Ben shut the door the rest of the way then gunned the engine. Partners got to know each other too well.

    T ESS hung up the phone, and with her elbows on the desk, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Joe Higgins, Sr., needed therapy as much as his son, but he was too involved with destroying his life to see it. The phone call had resolved nothing. But then, conversations with alcoholics on a binge rarely did. He'd just wept at the mention of his son and slurred a promise to phone tomorrow.
    He wouldn't, Tess thought. Odds were he wouldn't even remember the conversation in the morning. Her treatment of Joey hinged on the father, and the father was glued to the bottle—the same bottle that had destroyed his marriage, lost him countless jobs, and left him alone and miserable.
    If she could get him to an AA meeting, get him to take the first step… Tess let out a long breath as she dropped her hands. Hadn't Joey's mother explained how many times she'd tried, how many years she'd devoted to prying Joseph Higgins, Sr., away from the bottle?

    Tess understood the woman's bitterness, respected her determination to resume her own life and bury the past. But Joey couldn't. All through his childhood his mother had protected