Sanford Crow

CHAPTER 39

Diane sat at her desk, rubbing the red lines on her neck where Sanford's fingers had been, envisioning the horrid scene that occurred not too long ago. She had cancelled all of her appointments, being Christmas Eve there had been plenty of them.

A newly opened wine bottle was rapidly diminishing on her desk. The switch from caffeine to alcohol was seamless. Every time she replayed what happened, the glass would be empty by the end of it. Luckily, her patients knew what she liked, and behind her desk was a growing stockpile of cabernet wrapped in shiny silver, red, green, or gold paper.

Something nagged at the back of her mind; an annoying little voice, one that normally was never heard. It spoke up in soft whispers at first.

"What you did was wrong... what you did was dangerous...what you did..."

She drank a full glass of wine in a few gulps and poured the following just as fast. The wine cascaded over the glass and sloshed on her desk, splattering red marks on her perfectly white calendar schedule. Was it really that bad, tugging the strings to her puppet? It stirred something in her, a feeling she hadn't felt in years, not since her dissertation of Natalie Gleeson.

The room became hot and stuffy. Anxiety was pounding at the door of her heart, causing the blood to flush her skin.

She breathed slowly through her nose and exhaled slowly out her mouth. Training people to survive panic attacks was her forte, but she never had to implement those tricks on herself, until now. They were stupid; she was stupid, or at least she felt that way.

Paper bag, the thought came like an epiphany. She had stacks of them in her desk drawer for moments like these for her patients.

Inside the drawer, she grabbed the whole pile. A flurry of brown paper bags flew out of her hand and scattered to the floor. She grabbed for one, struggling with her fingers to open it. Soon enough the earthly scent of the brown paper filled her nose, she took large forceful breaths to slow down the helpless feeling.

As she calmed herself, she reached for the wine bottle with one shaky hand. A file caught the corner of her eye as she reached over, peeking out from the opened drawer. Sanford Crow. She pulled it over and flipped through it.

He came after me once, who's to stop him from coming again?

She closed the mammoth file and grabbed a pen from her desk. Her hands had stopped shaking and the decision came clearly. She wrote his name in all caps: DETECTIVE FRANK WATERS.

There had to be a limit to the doctor-patient confidentiality, when lives are at stake, no? She emptied the last of the wine down her throat. Serenity took hold. Sure, she lied, she manipulated, she had been the creator of her own Frankenstein. But now she would do the right thing.

Maybe he choked the apathy out of me.

It could've been a fool's errand, but she wouldn't run from it. The thought pressed her dimples into a smirk. She put on her jacket and picked up the file with the detective's name scribbled on it. It would be his now. She felt the weight of guilt lift from her shoulders as she walked out of her office, out of the building, and into her car, warming it for a moment before driving off in the direction of the police station.