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to the paper, Dr. Romero had murdered over one thousand children.
    I kept the wanted poster, putting it in a pocket, then set the purse on the counter beside the bottle.
    “I want a lawyer,” Mary Werthin said.
    Natalie sighed heavily. “Would you cuff her, please?” she asked me.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “You two look so nice together.”
    “You can’t hold me, you’re not the police,” Mary Werthin said.
    I got my cuffs and locked them around the hand that had held the bottle. Natalie backed up, releasing her grip, and I turned Werthin carefully toward the wall, and cuffed her other hand behind her back. Natalie dragged a chair away from the comer and I led Werthin to it. Once she was seated, Natalie went to the sink and ran some water over a paper towel, dabbing it at her blouse. The blouse was white, and the paint had pretty much ruined it. After a few more swipes at the paint, Natalie sighed and threw the towel in the trash can.
    I said, “Whose idea was this, Mary?”
    Mary didn’t look at me. She found a paint blotch on the floor and examined that. After a while she said, “Anytime we want to, we can stop her. This was only a warning.”
    I looked around at the paint-spattered room. It wasn’t as bad as I’d first thought coming in. “You stay with her,” I told Natalie. “The police should be here in a couple of minutes. I’m going to check on the doctor.”
    Natalie nodded.
     
    I picked up my coffee mug and stopped at the nurses’ station. I asked Lynn Delfleur to check the appointment book for Mary Werthin. “When did she make her appointment?” I asked.
    She flipped pages until she found the name, then said, “Two weeks ago. She came in for a counseling session last week, just before you guys started here.”
    “She was going to have an abortion?”
    Lynn shook her head. “Prenatal checkup. Second trimester.”
    “You checked her ID when she showed up today?”
    “I always check IDs,” Lynn said.
    “And she did nothing suspicious?”
    She glared at me. “Not that I noticed.”
    I thanked her and continued down the hall.
    Dr. Romero was in the bathroom opposite her office, the door shut, Dale standing outside. I’m tall, but Dale is big, with about two inches and thirty pounds on me, mostly muscle and bone. His face is broad and smooth, his Japanese features clear. As I approached he said, “She’s unhurt. The glasses kept the paint out of her eyes.” 
    “When that lady came in, you and Sheldon ran her through the metal detector, right?”
    He nodded.
    “Didn’t check the purse?”
    “We haven’t been checking bags. I assume that’s about to change?” He said it without sarcasm.
    “Yeah. Go on downstairs, meet the cops when they get here,” I told him. “We’re holding the assailant in two twenty-three. Her name’s Mary Werthin.” I handed him my mug. “Dump that for me.”
    He took the mug with a nod and headed off down the hall. I could hear water running in the bathroom. After a moment, I knocked on the door.
    “What?” Dr. Romero asked.
    “It’s me,” I said. “Are you all right?”
    “How the hell did that woman get in here?” she asked. “Why didn’t you people stop her?”
    “Ms. Werthin made her appointment two weeks ago. Lynn checked her ID. There’s no way we could have known she was going to pull something like that.”
    “She could have had a gun,” Dr. Romero said.
    “No, she couldn’t have. At least, not easily. She went through the metal detector downstairs. We haven’t been checking bags. We’ll start now.”
    “You’re searching bags?”
    “We will now,” I repeated.
    The door opened. The doctor was wearing a black T-shirt, and her hair was wet, but the paint had come off. She put her glasses on and said, “I’m not certain I want that.”
    “It’s your choice, of course.”
    She stepped past me and across the hall, into her office, motioning for me to follow. I shut the door after me, and sat down in one of the chairs