Yellow, for maybe.
There was a knock on my door.
“It’s open,” I called out, and immediately became suspicious, paranoid, whatever it is that I am most of the time.
What had Nana said when I’d left the house earlier? Try not to get shot at.
Chapter 47
OLD HABITS DIE HARD. But it wasn’t Kyle Craig, or some other psychotic nutcase from my past come to visit.
It was my first patient.
The visitor took up most of the doorway where she now paused, as if scared to come in. Her face was turned down at the mouth, and her hand gripped the jamb while she tried to catch her breath, while keeping some dignity.
“You putting in an elevator anytime soon?” she asked between gasps.
“Sorry about all the stairs,” I said. “You must be Kim Stafford. I’m Alex Cross. Please, come in. There’s coffee, or I can get you water.”
The very first patient of my new practice finally lumbered into my office. She was a heavyset woman, in her late twenties, I guessed, though she could have passed for forty. She was dressed very formally, in a dark skirt and white blouse that looked old but well made. A blue-and-lavender silk scarf was carefully tied under her chin.
“You said on the machine that Robert Hatfield referred you?” I asked. “I used to work with Robert on the police force. Is he a friend of yours?”
“Not really.”
Okay, not a friend of Hatfield’s. I waited for her to say more, but nothing came. She just stood in the middle of the office, seeming to quietly appraise everything in the room.
“We can sit over here,” I prompted. She waited for me to sit first, so I did.
Kim finally sat down herself, perched tentatively on the forward edge of the chair. One of her hands fluttered nervously around the knot in her scarf. The other was clenched into a fist.
“I just need some help trying to understand someone,” she began. “Someone who gets angry sometimes.”
“Is this someone close to you?”
She stiffened. “I’m not giving you his name.”
“No,” I said. “The name isn’t important. But is this a family member?”
“Fiancé.”
I nodded. “How long have you two been engaged? Is that all right to ask?”
“Four years,” she said. “He wants me to lose some weight before we get married.”
Maybe it was force of habit, but I was already working up a profile on the fiancé. Everything was her fault in the relationship; he took no responsibility for his own actions; her weight was his escape hatch.
“Kim, when you say he gets angry a lot—can you tell me a little more about that?”
“Well, it’s just . . .” She stopped to think, although I’m sure it was embarrassment and not a lack of clarity that held her back. Then tears pearled at the corners of her eyes.
“Has he been physically violent with you?” I asked.
“No,” she said, a little too quickly. “Not violent. It’s just . . . Well, yes. I guess so.”
With one shaky breath, she seemed to give up on words. Instead, she untied the scarf around her neck and let it float down into her lap.
I hated what I saw. The welts were easy enough to make out. They ran like blurred stripes around her throat.