“Oh!” She spotted Clare and hurried down the stairs. She was a tiny thing, a head shorter than Clare, and with her sneakers, jeans, and hair braided down her back, Clare would have thought her some sort of teenage volunteer if not for the fine lines around her sharp, skeptical eyes and her white coat embroidered L. RAYFIELD, N.P.

“I’m afraid we’re having a bit of trouble right now. You can-” L. Rayfield, N.P., glanced around, frowning. “You can wait in the office, back here. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“It’s okay,” Clare said. “I’m a priest.” Without waiting to see what effect that complete irrelevance had on the woman, Clare charged up the stairs.

“You’re a what? Hey-wait! Come back here!”

The hallway off the landing ran the length of the house to a single dull gray elevator, jarringly at odds with the mahogany six-panel doors opened, two to each side, onto the hall. Above the shrieking and shouting coming from the last room on the right, Clare could hear Russ Van Alstyne’s voice, hard with authority, pitched to control.

“Put the stool down! Back away from the cabinet!”

She felt a thud vibrate through her feet and turned to see the nurse headed up the stairs. Clare ran down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of the open door.

Russ and Kevin Flynn, backs to the door, were angling to box in a wild-eyed Debba Clow, who brandished a metal stool like a battering ram against a glass-fronted cabinet filled with medical supplies. “-defend myself against this monster who wants my children taken away from me!” she was saying, her words a high-pitched screech.

“And you’ve proven me right,” roared Dr. Rouse, rearing up from his shelter behind the examination table. “You’re so obsessed with revenge for nonexistent wrongs you can’t even stop to think about your kids!”

Debba shrieked and raised the stool.

“Debba, stop!” Clare stepped forward into view, her hands raised. Officer Flynn twisted around to stare at her, but Russ never took his eyes from Debba.

“We’re handling this, Clare,” he said, his voice tight.

Clare ignored him, fumbling with her parka’s zipper to yank it down like Superman revealing the S on his chest. “Remember me? From St. Alban’s? We talked the other day.” Debba stared at her, pulling the stool in tightly against her chest. Clare took another step into the room. “You don’t want to do this.” She could hear the sound of the nurse’s shoes as she reached the doorway and stopped. “I bet you don’t hit your children to discipline them, do you?”

“Of course not!”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if she-”

“Not now, Al!” The whispered command from the woman behind Clare cut Dr. Rouse off.

Clare reached one hand out slowly. “Then you already know that violence isn’t the answer.”

“You don’t know what he did,” Debba said. “He wrote my goddamn ex-husband and told him I was endangering the children. Today I was served with papers-he’s suing me for full custody! Except he doesn’t want to keep Skylar, he wants to institutionalize him!” She shifted the stool in her grip as if she might throw it at the doctor. “Did you know that? Did you know that before you wrote him, you bastard?”

Clare took another step forward. She was almost shoulder to shoulder with Russ. “You’re so angry and frustrated you want to hurt Dr. Rouse, don’t you? But I bet you’ve felt that way before, haven’t you? Every mother I’ve ever met has felt like that. Has been pushed so hard she wanted to lash out at her kids. To hit them. To hurt them.”

“Clare…” Russ’s hiss warned her to shut up.

“But you didn’t give in to that feeling, did you? You didn’t hurt anyone. You controlled yourself.” She stepped forward. Almost close enough to touch the stool if she stretched out her arm. “You controlled yourself. You are in control.” She deliberately looked away from Debba and laid her hand on Russ’s arm. Under the slick nylon of his parka, his muscles were tensed. “Chief Van Alstyne is a good man. Why don’t you let him help you? Before you get yourself into real trouble.”

Debba’s eyes grew larger. “I’m going to get arrested, aren’t I? Oh, God.” Her lower lip bowed down like a toddler’s caught between anger and anguish.

“Put the stool down, Deborah,” Russ said. “And we’ll talk about it.”

Hands shaking, Debba lowered the stool. As soon as it touched the ground, Russ stepped past Clare and took the trembling woman by her upper arms. “Okay, Deborah, listen to me.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m going to have you sit in another room while I talk to Dr. Rouse. Officer Flynn will stay with you.” He flicked a glance toward Clare. “As will Reverend Fergusson.” He reached to the small of his back and unsnapped his handcuffs. “Now. I don’t want you to get alarmed, but I am going to cuff you.”

At the sight of the handcuffs, Debba burst into tears. She shook her head wildly, sending clouds of kinky blond hair flying everywhere. “I’m going to cuff you while you’re with Officer Flynn,” Russ said, his voice steady. “When I come back in to talk with you, I’ll take these off.”

Debba gasped out, “No, no,” but obediently held out her wrists. Russ snapped the metal constraints on her. “Kevin,” he said. Officer Flynn appeared and put his hands on Debba’s shoulders. Russ pivoted. “Laura,” he said to the nurse, “is there a place where Ms. Clow can sit down in private?”

“We’ve got an old-fashioned ladies’ lounge with a sofa and everything.” The nurse beckoned. “Follow me.”

Officer Flynn guided Debba out of the examination room and down the hall, with Clare close on his heels. The nurse-Laura-opened the door closest to the stairs. It was indeed an old-fashioned ladies’ lounge, with the toilets and sinks discreetly behind a second, interior door. “Come here, honey, and sit down.” Laura patted the sofa, an overstuffed red velvet monstrosity that looked as if it had been taken from a whorehouse. Clare recognized it immediately as the soul mate to her own office’s sagging love seat-the one piece of furniture that couldn’t be auctioned off. Debba sat down shakily, still weeping. Officer Flynn perched on the edge next to her, somewhere between guarding and comforting her.

“Don’t feel so bad,” the nurse said. “I’ve been arrested plenty of times. They’ll have the bail bondsman over at the station half an hour after you get there and you’ll be home in time to make supper.”

Clare took a closer look at the tiny redhead. “Wait a minute-haven’t I seen you before? Weren’t you part of the environmental action group protesting the Adirondack Spa development last summer?”

“That was me! Laura Rayfield.” She held out her hand and grinned as Clare shook it. Clare pulled her a little away from the sofa.

“So what happened?” Clare asked.

The nurse sighed. “I think Dr. Rouse overreacted to Deb’s antivaccination crusade. He’s been under tremendous stress lately, and everything seems to set him off. Thank God he didn’t grab his gun when she came charging in here.”

“You have a gun? At the clinic?”

“Al has a gun. In his desk.” She made a face. “It makes him feel safer. We’ve had a few break-ins, addicts looking for Oxy, stuff like that. Me, I think you’re more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder.”

“Have you talked to him? About his stress?”

“I told him the best thing to do would be to schedule a couple of evening meetings where he could ease anybody’s fears about vaccinations, but does he listen to me? Not hardly. He’s always practiced by the ‘Me doctor, you patient’ model, and now he’s got women coming in and questioning him about their kids’ immunizations, and about flu shots, and this, that, and the other thing.”

“Is that bad?”

“Hell no. But Al still thinks he’s living in a world where a white coat makes you bulletproof and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

Clare reflexively reached back and twisted her hair more tightly into its knot. “Last summer, I saw you hauled off getting the word out about the dangers of PCBs. How come you’re not helping Debba spread the alarm about this vaccination thing?”