“What was all that about? Who were you talking to?”
“That was my boss,” Matt said. “He wants to talk to you. I told him about you.”
“Tell him to call the office and make an appointment,” Amy snapped. “My God, you’ve got your nerve, Matt!”
“It’s important,” Matt said.
“Maybe it is to you, Dick Tracy, to polish the boss’s apple, but it’s not to me. The nerve! I don’t believe that you really thought I would go along with this!”
“A lunatic who has already raped, so to speak, a half dozen women, grabbed another one last night, forced her into his van at knifepoint, and hasn’t been seen since,” Matt said, evenly. “Inspector Wohl thinks you might be able to provide a profile of this splendid fellow, and that might possibly help us to find him.”
“Doesn’t the Police Department have its own psychologists, psychiatrists?” Amy asked.
“I’m sure they do,” Matt said. “But he wants to talk to you. Please, Amy.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged.
“Why did you say, ‘raped, so to speak’?”
“Because, so far,” Matt said, as evenly, “there has been no vaginal or
anal penetration, and the forced fellatio has not resulted in ejaculation.”
“You should hear yourself,” she said, softly. “How cold-blooded and clinical you sound. Oh, Matt!”
It was, she realized, a wail of anguish at the loss of her little brother’s innocence.
“Under these circumstances,” she added, as cold-bloodedly as she could manage, “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Not really,” Matt said. “He’s going to take us to dinner.”
“I can’t go anywhere looking like this,” she said. “I came here right from the hospital.”
“Well, then, we’ll go someplace where you won’t look out of place,” Matt said.
“The bathroom, presumably, is in there?” Amy asked, pointing toward his bedroom.
“Vanity, thy name is woman,” Matt quoted sonorously.
“Screw you, Matt,” Dr. Amelia Alice Payne replied.
Staff Inspector Peter Wohl was not what Amy Payne expected. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had expected—maybe a slightly younger version of Matt’s “Uncle Denny” Coughlin—but she had not expected the pleasant, well-dressed young man (she guessed that he was in his early thirties) who came through Matt’s apartment door.
“Amy,” Matt said, “this is Inspector Wohl. Amy Payne, M.D.”
Wohl smiled at her.
“Doctor, I very much appreciate your agreeing to talk to me like this,” he said. “I realize what an imposition it is.”
“Not at all,” Amy said, and hearing her voice was furious with herself; she had practically gushed.
“I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to do this,” Wohl said. “What I would like you to do, if you would be so kind, would be to read the file we have on this man, and then tell me what kind of man he is.”
“I understand,” Amy said.
He gave her a look she understood in a moment was surprise, even annoyance, that she had interrupted him.
He smiled.