The Naked Face

The taxi pulled up in front of Judd’s office building. From now on, there was no safety for him anywhere. He could not go back to his apartment. He would have to check into some hotel. Returning to his office was dangerous, but it had to be done this once.

He needed a phone number.

He paid the driver and walked into the lobby. Every muscle in his body ached. He moved quickly. He knew he had very little time. It was unlikely that they would be expecting him to return to his office, but he must take no chances. It was now a question of who got him first. The police or his assassins.

When he reached his office, he opened the door and went inside, locking the door after him. The inner office seemed strange and hostile, and Judd knew that he could not treat his patients here any longer. He would be subjecting them to too much danger. He was filled with anger at what Don Vinton was doing to his life. He could visualize the scene that must have occurred when the two brothers went back and reported that they had failed to kill him. If he had read Don Vinton’s character correctly, he would have been in a towering rage. The next attack would come at any moment.

Judd went across the room to get Anne’s phone number. For he had remembered two things in the hospital.

Some of Anne’s appointments were scheduled just ahead of John Hanson’s.

And Anne and Carol had had several chats together; Carol might have innocently confided some deadly information to Anne. If so, she could be in danger.

He took his address book out of a locked drawer, looked up Anne’s phone number, and dialed. There were three rings, and then a neutral voice came on.

"This is a special operator. What number are you calling, please?"

Judd gave her the number. A few moments later the operator was back on the line. "I am sorry. You are calling a wrong number. Please check your directory or consult Information."

"Thank you," Judd said. He hung up. He sat there a moment, remembering what his answering service had said a few days ago. They had been able to reach all his patients except Anne. The numbers could have been transposed when they were put in the book. He looked in the telephone directory, but there was no listing under her husband’s name or her name. He suddenly felt that it was very important that he talk to Anne. He copied down her address: 617 Woodside Avenue, Bayonne, New Jersey.

Fifteen minutes later, he was at an Avis counter, renting a car. There was a sign behind the counter that read: "We’re second, so we try harder." We’re in the same boat, thought Judd.

A few minutes later, he drove out of the garage. He rode around the block, satisfied himself that he was not being followed, and headed over the George Washington Bridge for New Jersey.

When he reached Bayonne, he stopped at a filling station to ask directions. "Next corner and make a left – third street."

"Thanks." Judd drove off. At the thought of seeing Anne again, his heart began to quicken. What was he going to say to her without alarming her? Would her husband be there?

Judd made a left turn onto Woodside Avenue. He looked at the numbers. He was in the nine hundred block. The houses on both sides of the street were small, old, and weatherbeaten. He drove to the seven hundred block. The houses seemed to become progressively older and smaller.

Anne lived on a beautiful wooded estate. There were virtually no trees here. When Judd reached the address Anne had given him, he was almost prepared for what he saw.

617 was a weed-covered vacant lot.

Chapter Nineteen

HE SAT IN THE CAR across from the vacant lot, trying to put it all together. The wrong phone number could have been a mistake. Or the address could have been a mistake. But not both. Anne had deliberately lied to him. And if she had lied about who she was and where she lived, what else had she lied about? He forced himself to objectively examine everything he really knew about her. It came to almost nothing. She had walked into his office unannounced and insisted on becoming a patient. In the four weeks that she had been coming to him, she had carefully managed not to reveal what her problem was, and then had suddenly announced that it was solved and she was going away. After each visit she had paid him in cash so that there would be no way of tracing her. But what reason could she have had for posing as a patient and then vanishing? There was only one answer. And as it hit Judd, he became physically sick.

If someone wanted to set him up for murder – wanted to know his routine at the office – wanted to know what the inside of the office looked like – what better way than to gain access as a patient? That was what she was doing there. Don Vinton had sent her. She had learned what she needed to know and then had disappeared without a trace.

It had all been pretense, and how eager he had been to be taken in by it. How she must have laughed when she went back to report to Don Vinton about the amorous idiot who called himself an analyst and pretended to be an expert about people. He was head over heels in love with a girl whose sole interest in him was setting him up to be murdered. How was that for a judge of character? What an amusing paper that would make for the American Psychiatric Association.

But what if it were not true? Supposing Anne had come to him with a legitimate problem, had used a fictitious name because she was afraid of embarrassing someone? In time the problem had solved itself and she had decided that she no longer needed the help of an analyst. But Judd knew that it was too easy. There was an "x" quantity about Anne that needed to be discovered. He had a strong feeling that in that unknown quantity could lie the answer to what was happening. It was possible that she was being forced to act against her will. But even as he thought it, he knew he was being foolish. He was trying to cast her as a damsel in distress with himself as a knight in shining armor. Had she set him up for murder? Somehow, he had to find out.