Loving Time Read online

  The highest praise for Leslie Glass and

  hanging time

  “Hanging Time is one terrific read and Leslie Glass is one terrific writer.”

  —Tami Hoag

  “Gripping psychological drama … There’s no straight path to the truth when information is manipulated and withheld on all sides.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Polished and intriguing … Glass not only draws the reader into the crazed and gruesome world of the killer, but also cleverly develops the character of Woo … and her growing attraction for partner Sanchez.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “Fine psychodrama. Glass walks on the noir side.”

  —Booknews from the Poisoned Pen

  “Complex insights … Deft plotting and strong characterizations will leave readers eager for further installments.”

  —Library Journal

  “I’ll drop what I’m doing to read Leslie Glass anytime.”

  —Nevada Barr

  also by leslie glass

  HANGING TIME

  BURNING TIME

  TO DO NO HARM

  MODERN LOVE

  GETTING AWAY WITH IT

  STEALING TIME

  TRACKING TIME

  JUDGING TIME

  This edition contains the complete text

  of the original hardcover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  LOVING TIME

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition / November 1996

  Bantam paperback edition / December 1997

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by Leslie Glass.

  Hand-lettering by Ron Zinn.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-12544.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78540-4

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  For Edmond and the Graduates

  JHU

  and

  RCS

  Class of 1996

  acknowledgments

  Readers are often surprised to learn that it takes almost a year for a manuscript to travel from an author’s desk through its many stages of production until it finally becomes the book they’ve been waiting to buy. The process begins with editorial Close Encounters of the Third Kind, moves right along through many scheduling, marketing, promotion, and sales conferences. The pages themselves go through a complicated copyediting, production, book design, and printing process. Meanwhile, the difficult packaging decisions are made and realized, the cover design, cover art, and copy are completed.

  A beautifully produced book is the author’s dearest wish. For fulfillment, it requires the work of dozens of gifted people. Bantam has an editorial, production, packaging, marketing, and promotion dream team. Thank you especially, the truly daring and visionary Publisher, Irwyn Applebaum, and world’s most challenging and supportive Associate Publisher—my brilliant editor—Kate Miciak. Thank you Managing Editor Susie West for production orchestration; Jamie Warren Youll for gorgeous cover designs, Betsy Hulsebosch for marketing, Barbara Burg for publicity, and my publicist, Susan Corcoran. Thank you Linda Biagi for foreign sales.

  But, wait a minute! Before a single book can appear in a store, another powerful group of Bantam people have to go to work: The Mighty Bantam Sales Force, which comprises the true, and not-often-enough-sung, heroes of publishing. This is the Force to which we authors pray every night: “May the Force be with me.” Thank you especially, Sally Johnson, Central District Manager, who said the magic words at the right moment, as well as Bantam Salesperson Cinda Van Deursen in the Eastern District; David Glenn and A. Scott LePine in the Western District. Thank you Telemarketers and those in Special Markets and National Accounts, and everybody else who gets those books out there and tells them not to come home again.

  For help with the fictional Psychiatric Centre in LOVING TIME, and the field of psychiatry, thanks to Richard C. Friedman, M.D., gender expert, psychology professor, and consultant extraordinaire.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Part 1 - Raymond

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Part 2 - Harold

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Part 3 - Bobbie

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

  Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?

  Can wisdom be put in a silver rod?

  Or Love in a golden bowl?

  thel’s motto

 
; William Blake

  raymond

  one

  Raymond Cowles died of love on the evening of his thirty-eighth birthday. It happened on Sunday, October 31, after a long battle for his soul. As with many bitter conflicts, the end was abrupt and unexpected. In the same way as love had come on him unexpectedly and caught him by surprise after a lifetime of loneliness and despair, death crept up on Ray from behind without his even knowing that his release from ecstasy and anguish was at hand.

  Since his twenties, Ray had flipped past the passages about love in the books he read. The movie versions of passion and lust seemed stupid and unbelievable to him. Love was supposed to happen to men like him when scantily dressed, big-breasted women flashed the look that said “I’ll do anything. Anything at all.”

  Lorna had looked at him with those eyes; other women had, too. Many other women. Sometimes Raymond had even thought he’d seen it in the eyes of Dr. Treadwell. He never got it. Love to him was like a foreign language for which he had all the clues but couldn’t figure out the meaning. And he had learned to live without it as his own personal cross to bear, like a dyslexic who could never really read, or a patient with a terminal illness that wouldn’t go all the way and end his misery for a long, long time.

  Until six months ago, Raymond Cowles thought he had all his problems solved. He had made work the focus of his life, tried to find the same satisfactions in his personal life other people experienced in theirs. He wanted to feel what other people felt, and when he couldn’t, he acted as if he did.

  Then, six months ago, Ray Cowles finally understood what life was all about. He fell in love. The paradox was that real love, the kind that smacked into one so hard it turned a person all the way around, didn’t always happen as it should. The great passion of Raymond Cowles’s life came too late and was spiritually messy. Even though he was a man experienced at battling demons, Ray’s new demon was the worst he’d encountered.

  With Dr. Treadwell’s help he’d conquered all the others. First the demons that told him he was a bad child. Then the ones that told him he was stupid, not up to his studies. The big ones that said he was incompetent at his jobs. And always in the background there were those demons that told him he could never attract a girl, never satisfy a woman. These particular demons continued to torture him even after he met Lorna, the endlessly sweet and understanding girl he married.

  The killer demon told him he was a failure at everything, even the years of psychoanalysis to which he had resorted half a lifetime ago for a cure. This was the demon that whispered to him in his sleep that his sudden and overwhelming passion at age thirty-seven was beyond disgusting and immoral. Love, for Raymond Cowles, was a fall from grace into the deepest pit of depravity from which abyss he was bound to fall even further into the very fires of Hell.

  In the months prior to his death, as Raymond fell deeper from grace into lust and corruption, he wanted nothing more than to surrender at last to the first real feeling of contentment and joy he had ever experienced. But he wanted to fall and be saved with his love absolved. Surely everyone had the right to surrender to passion and be released from the excruciating anguish of sin. He had that right, didn’t he?

  But absolution didn’t come, and once again Raymond Cowles’s dreams were full of far-off women—high on cliffs when he was on the ground, or on shore when he was way out at sea. In dream after dream, these women waved their arms at him and told him, “Watch out, watch out.” And each time he awoke in a panic because he didn’t know what to watch out for.

  Then on October 31, at the very start of his new life, Raymond’s world collapsed. He felt he had no warning. He was cornered. For a few moments he was alone. And then he wasn’t alone. He was trapped with a person who wanted to kill him.

  “Save me, save me.” He tried to scream into the phone, into the hall, into the lobby of the building, out on the noisy street. Save me!

  He longed to reach for a life preserver, but there wasn’t one. Where was one? Where was a lifeboat? Where was safety?

  Help!

  At the end he was mute. He couldn’t cry out for help or make the move to save himself. In his last moments of panic, when Raymond Cowles was too frantic and distraught to make a sound, the very thing he had never been able to watch out for slipped out of the noisy Halloween night of dress-up and reveling on Columbus Avenue and took his breath away.

  two

  At midnight on Halloween, two hours after Raymond Cowles died, Bobbie Boudreau slouched into the French Quarter. His mood matched the atmosphere of the seedy bar perfectly. To a Cajun from Louisiana, this was as far from the real French Quarter as a place could get The old jukebox was a poor stand-in for even the worst live band and there was no compensation for the lack of a weary stripper migrating slowly back and forth across the bar. Charlie McGeoghan liked to tell Bobbie he’d named his dump the French Quarter because he’d heard New Orleans was a wild place, and even the word French sounded pretty wild to Charlie.

  The old Mick got only two things right. It was too dark to see the menu and newcomers’ drinks were always watered. Bottom line was, Charlie hated anything wild, and his hole was nothing more than an advertisement for missed chances. Which was pretty much how Bobbie himself felt tonight. He didn’t like basic principles like justice, wisdom, and truth getting all fucked up.

  Bobbie had been told a long, long time ago that the Lord always evened things out in the end. But sometimes it just didn’t seem that way. The Lord’s mysterious ways were awful slow, too slow for Bobbie Boudreau. Bobbie liked to hum a little tune to the words “The Lord’s too slow for Bobbie Boudreau.” When he got tired of the wait, Bobbie had to step in as the Lord’s agent and speed things up. He was working such a case now. In just a few days the coin would drop in the slot, the wicked would slide down the tubes, and the meek would inherit the earth. He was looking forward to it, banged the door of the bar going in.

  “Hey, Bobbie.” Charlie’s skinny wuss of a nephew glanced up from mopping the counter. “How’s the war going?”

  Bobbie grabbed a stool. “We lost, frère. Lost on all counts.”

  “Well, as they say, time heals all wounds. What can I get you?”

  Bobbie shook his head. “No, Mick. It don’t. Fact is, time makes it worse and worse.”

  “Oh, come on, Bobbie, don’t start that Mick stuff. You know how my uncle feels about that.”

  “Fuck your uncle.”

  Brian McGeoghan’s nervous eyes raked the murky, nearly empty room. “Good thing Charlie ain’t here, Bobbie. He told me to throw you out when you get like this. He can’t afford any more insurance.”

  Bobbie jerked his head at the vacant bar stools around him, his sullen mouth softening at the happy reminder of those occasional, teensy-weensy scuffles that occurred when he was forced to avenge some asshole provocation. “Throw me out with not one soul here to bother me? That’s a good one. Give me a beer. Just one, I’m working tonight.”

  “Okay.… One’s fine as long as you don’t make trouble.” Brian McGeoghan smiled suddenly. “Wouldn’t want you drunk in the operating room either, would we?” He pushed a frothy draft across the battered surface.

  “Hey frère, I’d never do anything to hurt a patient,” Bobbie intoned solemnly. Bobbie hadn’t been a surgical nurse since his MASH days in ‘Nam a long, long time ago, but Brian didn’t need to know that. “Never.”

  The beer tasted like shit. Bobbie drank it down quickly, then had another. The second tasted better. He considered a third. Then two assholes came in, sat a few stools down from him at the bar, and began talking softly. One was bigger than Bobbie was, a mean-looking white with fleshy pockmarked cheeks and a drunk’s red-veined nose. The other looked like an Irish mole. Bobbie didn’t feel like breaking any bones tonight, so he paid up and went outside.