The smooth pink mouth puckered. “You are used to getting your way, Dr. Savard. But this time you will not.”
“The girls are Catholic,” Anna said. “As a priest, would you care to explain your position to them?”
He smiled at her. “Certainly. You may bring them to see me anytime. Now tell me, who has legal custody of these two Catholic children? Are they being raised in the Church?”
Anna gave him the same insincere smile as she got to her feet. “That is not a topic open to discussion. With anyone, for any reason. I want you to know that I may decide to talk to the Mullen family without your permission.”
There had been some condescension in his manner, and now that disappeared entirely.
“Do not test me, Dr. Savard.”
“But you are having such a grand time testing me, Father McKinnawae. And turnabout is fair play, even for Catholics.”
? ? ?
ELISE SAID, “I feared as much. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not finished yet.”
They turned from Great Jones Street onto Fourth Avenue, walking briskly. Elise wondered if it would be best to leave the subject until Dr. Savard had time to gather her thoughts, but then decided it was best not to hesitate.
“He will do what he can to stop you,” she said.
“And what would that be? Will he try to have me arrested, do you think?” She produced a sour smile.
“Would you really approach the family?”
Dr. Savard stopped and looked at her. “I might. Do you have objections?”
“Concerns.” Elise didn’t look away.
“Yes, there is no shortage of concerns.” Her posture relaxed, quite suddenly. “Don’t worry that I’m going to go marching off to Staten Island to confront the Mullen family. I have no interest in hurting them. We’ll talk about it at home, when the girls are asleep, and decide how to proceed. Does that put your worries to rest?”
Elise said, “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” said Dr. Savard. “Neither do I.”
They walked back to the New Amsterdam in silence.
? ? ?
DETECTIVES LIKED TO think of themselves as foolproof, able to tell an honest man from one who played at being honest. In Jack’s view of things this was true much of the time, but only because the first lesson learned on the job was not to trust anybody about anything. Something like Anna’s work, where she had to assume that all patients lied, whether they meant to or not.
Harry Liljestr?m wasn’t lying about anything. His wife’s death had torn him in two; at the morgue he stood looking at her remains with tears streaming down his face. Jack stood back to leave the man his privacy, then took him to the Gilsey House, where he had arrangements to make and a bill to settle.
“I have questions,” Jack said. “But if you’d like to wait until tomorrow—”
Liljestr?m was ashen, almost as if he were about to faint. “I have to get back home. Ask your questions now.”
They sat in a quiet corner of the hotel’s main lobby. Liljestr?m cleared his throat, wiped his face with a sodden handkerchief, straightened his shoulders, and looked Jack in the eye.
Jack decided that the direct approach would be best. He said, “There was a postmortem. Your wife died of blood loss following an operation.” He waited, watching Liljestr?m’s expression. He was a man like a thousand others in the city, someone Jack might have walked past every day and never noticed. But there was a dignity about him, and when he spoke his tone was even and unapologetic.
“We have two children,” he said. “Healthy, beautiful children. A boy and a girl. But the first confinement was hard, and the second even worse. Our doctor said that she was unlikely to survive a third pregnancy.”
“So you are aware of the operation she had.”
The man had very pale blue eyes, almost colorless. “Yes. She missed twice, you see, and we decided together that it was the right thing to go to a doctor who could bring her courses on. I wanted to come with her but she refused. It wasn’t the first time, and she thought she had nothing to fear.”
Jack said, “She had the procedure done previously? By the same doctor?”
“She had it done once before, but that doctor died, and she decided she didn’t want to approach anyone else near home. We’ve heard of women being blackmailed, you see.”
Jack sat back. “Well, no, I haven’t run into that before. Does it happen often?”
“I don’t know,” said Liljestr?m. “I only know of one case, a lady who goes to our church. Her daughter was in trouble and so they went to a doctor who could fix the problem. Afterward his nurse threatened the lady that she’d tell everybody about her daughter’s shame if she didn’t give her money.”
“How do you know this?” Jack asked.
“Because the lady is a close friend of my wife’s. Was a close friend.”