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CHAPTER 25

I CALLED DR. SIDNEY Greene from my car and told him that I was on my way. I parked my blue Explorer across the street from his two-story white stucco office building, rang the bell, and, after the answering buzz, took the stairs and opened the door to his outer office. The reception room was empty, but the door to the therapist’s office was wide open.

Greene called out to me from his brown leather-covered recliner, “Come in, Lindsay. Shut the door behind you.”

My hands were shaky, but I closed the door and sat in the armchair across from Dr. Greene. The first time I met Greene was after I’d shot an armed twenty-three-year-old male who’d killed two people with his assault weapon and was about to fire on Brady and me. I’d put the guy down before he could. It was a good shoot or maybe a great one, but I’d been put on administrative leave as per protocol.

The review board had sent me to see Dr. Sidney Greene. It’s not like I’d had a choice. It was see Dr. Greene or leave the force. But I liked Greene and hadn’t resisted, since he’d held my job in his hands. He was a middle-aged man with spectacles in his shirt pocket, a clean-shaven, unlined face, and a nice smile.

I was seeing him now because I feared having a breakdown.

“Talk to me,” Dr. Greene said.

I gave him a snapshot of my day: waking up to the news that my aged dog was sick, my fears that Martha would die, and then being called to an early morning homicide only to learn when I arrived at the scene that the dead man was a person I’d respected and loved for the whole of my career. Now I was in charge of finding his killer.

The images of Jacobi’s death scene were vivid in my mind as I told my good doctor how long it had taken me to fully absorb the reality that the dead man really was my dear friend and former partner. That his wounds had been violent, devastating. And that didn’t even begin to include what must have been his fear and fury.

I admitted that I’d cried a lot already today, and still had miles of tears left for Jacobi.

“I’m so sorry, Lindsay,” Greene said. “I’m very, very sorry.”