“Just a little accident. Sorry I’m late.” He unlocked the door and ushered Teri into the reception office. Carol’s empty desk and chair loomed in front of him.
“I read about Carol,” Teri said. There was an excited edge to her voice. “Was it a sex murder?”
“No, “ Judd said shortly. He opened the door to his inner office. “Give me ten minutes.”
He went into the office, consulted his calendar pad, and began dialing the numbers of his patients, canceling the rest of his appointments for the day. He was able to reach all but three patients. His chest and arm hurt every time he moved, and his head was beginning to pound again. He took two Darvan from a drawer and washed them down with a glass of water. He walked over to the reception door and opened it for Teri. He steeled himself to put everything out of his mind for the next fifty minutes except the problems of his patient. Teri lay down on the couch, her skirt hiked up, and began talking.
Twenty years ago Teri Washburn had been a raving beauty, and traces of it were still there. She had the largest, softest, most innocent eyes that Judd had ever seen. The sultry mouth had a few hard lines around it, but it was still voluptuous, and her breasts were rounded and firm beneath a close-fitting Pucci print. Judd suspected that she had had a silicone injection, but he was waiting for her to mention it. The rest of her body was still good, and her legs were great.
At one time or another, most of Judd’s female patients thought they were in love with him, the natural transference from patient-doctor to patient-protector-lover. But Teri’s case was different. She had been trying to have an affair with Judd from the first minute she had walked into his office. She had tried to arouse him in every way she could think of—and Teri was an expert. Judd had finally warned her that unless she behaved herself, he would send her to another doctor. Since then she had behaved reasonably well with him: studying him, trying to find his Achilles heel. An eminent English physican had sent Teri to him after a nasty international scandal at Antibes. A French gossip columnist had accused Teri of spending a weekend on the yacht of a famous Greek shipping magnate to whom she was engaged, and sleeping with his three brothers while the ship’s owner flew to Rome for a day on business. The story was quickly hushed up and the columnist printed a retraction and was then quietly fired. In her first session with Judd, Teri had boasted that the story was true.
“It’s wild,” she had said. “I need sex all the time. I can’t get enough of it.” She had rubbed her hands against her hips, sliding her skirt up, and looked at Judd innocently. “Do you know what I mean, honey?” she had asked.
Since that first visit, Judd had found out a great deal about Teri. She had come from a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania.
“My father was a dumb Polack. He got his kicks getting drunk on boilermakers every Saturday night and beating the shit out of my old lady.”
When she was thirteen, Teri had the body of a woman and the face of an angel. She learned that she could earn nickels by going to the back of the coal tips with the miners. The day her father had found out, he had come into their small cabin screaming incoherently in Polish, and had thrown Teri’s mother out. He had locked the door, taken off his heavy belt, and begun beating Teri. When he was through, he had raped her.
Judd had watched Teri as she lay there describing the scene, her face empty of any emotion.
“That was the last time I saw my father or mother.”
“You ran away,” Judd said.
Teri twisted around on the couch in surprise. “What?”
“After your father raped you—”
“Ran away?” Teri said. She threw back her head and let out a whoop of laughter. “I liked it. It was my bitch of a mother who threw me out!”