The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “You have to tell me what’s good for you,” he said.

  I sat up, moved my arm outside the nest of quilt which still swathed both of us, and reached for the VCR’s remote control. “You’re doing fine,” I said, “but I want your full attention.”

  I punched the STOP button.

  “Maybe we ought to move into the other room,” Mike said. “We might feel acrobatic.”

  We moved, but we didn’t get acrobatic. We simply looked into each other’s eyes, and we moved very slowly. Nothing fancy. Classic. Absolutely perfect.

  Later, with our bodies still demonstrating their impeccable fit, Mike rested on his elbows and put one hand on each side of my face. “Nell, this could turn into something—”

  I put my hand over his mouth, gently.

  He stopped talking, and we stared into each other’s eyes some more. Then he blinked and kissed the fingers which were signaling for him to be quiet.

  “Let’s keep it just the way it’s been,” I said. “Suspended in time. Perfect.”

  He frowned and kissed the palm of my hand. “That’s okay. As long as you understand I won’t be satisfied with just tonight.”

  I could feel a tear forming in my right eye. I was filled with all sorts of tenderness, but the cynical, smart-ass core of me wanted to say, “Tell me more, sweetie. I’m not going to hold you to anything you say in the position you’re in right now.”

  With Professor Tenure, I would have said it. But this time I kept my mouth shut. Was I getting soft?

  This time Mike was the one who fell asleep right away, and I was the one with the shakes. At least I was able to keep my quivering emotions internal. The way he could make me feel was pretty scary. Would he have the same feelings for me when he wasn’t in the grip of passion? Would I dare feel the same way about him outside of bed? He slept peacefully. I don’t think he realized how frightened I was. He was upsetting my picture of myself as permanently uncommitted.

  I dozed fitfully until around six A.M., when Mike woke again, too. After we experimented with yet another position, I fell deeply asleep. When I opened my eyes, the blinds were letting in strips of sunlight, and I could smell coffee. Nine-fifteen. The answering machine in the living room was making unintelligible clicks, and this time Mike picked up the phone.

  He spoke in a low voice, but the house was quiet, and I could hear him. “This is Mike, Coy. I got your message. One-thirty at the PD. I’ll be there.’

  He paused. “I hope you find her. I don’t want to face the national television alone.”

  I grinned. Coy had apparently told Mike he hadn’t been able to find me, and Mike hadn’t volunteered to tell him my whereabouts. I appreciated his discretion.

  I sat up. Time to return to the world.

  In the bathroom mirror I looked less haggard than I felt, though my hair was in tufts which pointed in several different directions.

  “You look like you spent a mad, passionate night wallowing in some guy’s bed,” I told myself. “Or on his couch.” I reached for the toothbrush Mike had bought me. “Time for Missy to go home.”

  Mike had put on jeans, but no shirt or shoes. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading the Gazette’s sports section.

  “Glad to see you’re a subscriber,” I said.

  He tapped his finger on A Section, which was lying on the table, facing the chair opposite his. “They have some good stuff. There’s a great story this morning by that daring girl reporter, Nell Matthews.” He hugged me around the waist. “That gal’s got guts.”

  “Yeah, and they’re empty,” I said. “How about a bowl of cereal or something?”

  “Sorry, no cereal. Happens I hate cereal. And I’m out of eggs. But I love toast.”

  “Toast is fine.”

  Mike got me a plate and put two slices of bread in a toaster on the counter. He poured coffee and juice. I looked at the front page of the Gazette. Ruth had spread my first-person account of the hostage situation across the top, above a four-column picture lifted from the police videotape. Chuck’s straight news story was beside the picture, in the two right-hand columns. My story had the biggest, blackest headline the Gazette ever runs.

  “Wow!” I said. “Seventy-two-point head in a condensed face. We’re famous.”

  Mike handed me orange juice in an old-fashioned glass and lifted a similar glass in his other hand. “Here’s to us celebrities. Alive and damn lucky to be so.”

  We clicked glasses and drank. Then the toaster popped. Mike buttered my toast and handed it to me. Then he put two more slices of bread in the toaster.

  “When you interviewed me, when I was a rookie,” he said, “nearly every question you asked boiled down to my reasons for coming back to Grantham.”

  “And you were darn clever in dodging those questions, too.”

  “Are you still interested?”

  “On the record?”

  Mike laughed. “I hid your notebook. But I guess at least one of the reasons is no secret anymore. In case you still want to know.”

  “Sure I do. Seems as if you denied practically every reason I could think to ask about. You didn’t come for family reasons. Or for professional reasons. It wasn’t money. It wasn’t health.”

  “You didn’t ask about the simplest reason.”

  “Which is?”

  The toaster popped then, and he buttered two more pieces of toast, then sat down himself.

  I cleared my throat. “You’re not answering the reporter, sir. And just what is the simplest reason?”

  “Romance. I broke up with my girlfriend.”

  “I see.” I munched toast. Where was this leading us? I needed more coffee before I was ready for any major discussions on Mike’s past.

  “We were a steady item for three years—two of them at the same mailing address,” Mike said. “Just as I was deciding it was time to get married, she was deciding she couldn’t stand to live with a guy who got up in the night with his teeth chattering. So she moved on to a job at a Texas college.”

  “College?” Had Mike had an experience like mine with an intellectual snob? “What did she teach?”

  “She’s an academic librarian.”

  I remembered the joke I had made about writing “the librarian” a thank-you note. For a moment I felt like blushing. Then I got the giggles. Mike began to laugh, too.

  “I thought my joke got a mighty big reaction,” I said. “Sorry if I put my foot in it.”

  Mike shrugged. “It’s been nearly two years since the breakup, so I’ve had time to get philosophical. In fact, you started me on the path up from the pits.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “I moved back to Grantham with some idea I could slip down to Dallas and see her on my off days. But she wasn’t all that eager for me to show up. Then, first week on the job, this reporter comes to interview me. And I’m thinking ‘this is one sexy gal,’ and having a terrible time keeping my mind off her legs and on the questions she’s asking.

  “So after the interview I give myself a lecture, along the lines of ‘you’re supposed to be in love with somebody else. What are you doing lusting after reporters?’”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. Not anybody’s fault. It was just some instinct telling me that it was time to move on. But it caught me by surprise. A few weeks later, when I thought about making a serious move in your direction, first there was this guy—”

  “Professor Tenure. We broke up a year ago.”

  “—then everybody said you wouldn’t date cops.”

  “There are several reasons—”

  “Sure. I understand that.” Mike reached across the table and took my hand. “I’m trying to tell you I’ve been nuts about you for a long time, and last night wasn’t as sudden as it might seem.”

  I stared at my plate. What was Mike getting at?
This sounded dangerously like a lead-in to a “commitment” speech. I didn’t want to hear that.

  Or was he being tactful? Was he trying to tell me he didn’t consider me a mere bimbo because I’d gone to bed with him without much coaxing? I decided to work on that assumption.

  “Mike,” I said, “you don’t have to soothe my ego just because I acted pretty slutty last night. Maybe I go home with guys all the time.”

  Mike stared at me. Then he laughed. “No, Nell. You don’t go home with guys all the time.”

  “You have no way of knowing if I do.”

  “Sure I do. Deduction. I’m a detective, remember?” He tapped his forehead. “If you did, a girl as smart as you would figure out what to do with a condom. Besides, I told you I was egotistical. I’m special. You’re special. And we’re sure special together.”

  Well, that was true. I’d never been as attracted to anybody as I was to Mike, and we seemed to be extremely well-suited to each other physically.

  Besides, I liked the guy. That was the part that scared me.

  “Therefore,” he said, “as I said at one crucial moment last night, we’ve got to make arrangements to keep this going. How about if we start by going out to dinner tonight?”

  I gasped. “Oh, I can’t do that!”

  Mike looked alarmed. “You aren’t seeing somebody else?”

  “Oh, no! It’s just that—” I stopped in midsentence. My old excuse, “I don’t date cops,” hovered behind my teeth.

  “It’s my job,” I said weakly. “Reporters shouldn’t date sources. It’s a rule I’ve always followed.”

  “You mean, if we go out to dinner, you get fired?”

  “Of course not! I’d just be duty-bound to ask the Gazette to shift me to another beat.” I leaned across my plate. “It’s my own rule, not the Gazette’s. It’s simply not a good idea to get personally involved with something or someone you cover.”

  Mike didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, and a grin began to twitch at the corners of his mouth. In a minute we were both laughing.

  I got up, walked around the table, sat down in his lap, and put my arms around his neck. “And that’s about the stupidest speech I’ve ever made,” I said. “If we’re not personally involved at this point . . .”

  Mike patted my fanny. “I think you’re trying to tell me that if we start dating, you’ll have to give up covering the PD.”

  “Yes.”

  He nuzzled me under the chin. “I hate to ask you to give up your career in exchange for dinner out.” I leaned back and drew a design on his shoulder with my finger. “The violence beat isn’t exactly a career. To tell the truth, it’s considered an apprentice beat. Most reporters do it a couple of years, then move on to something else. The city editor’s been wanting me to make a change.”

  “Then you could change to a different beat?”

  I nodded, but I guess I frowned. “But—”

  “But you’re not sure you want to.”

  Silently, I buried my face in Mike’s neck. The truth was too stupid to verbalize. I loved the violence beat. It had been a haven to me. It had used up my emotional energy at a time when I wanted to keep my personal life detached and unemotional. I couldn’t lie about it, but I didn’t want to explain.

  So I nibbled Mike’s ear.

  “All those hostage negotiation courses you took,” I said, letting the words puff out gently against his neck, “did they include mind reading?”

  “No, but when you snuggle up like that, I hope it’s because you’re reading my mind.” He pushed the robe open so that we were skin to skin. Then he nuzzled, beginning with the shoulder and dropping past the collarbone. He used the ice-cream-cone technique again. I arched my back.

  And, somewhere, in the background, a motor began to purr.

  Mike jumped all over. “Damn!” he said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The garage door,” he said. “Crap!”

  He began to readjust the robe, tucking it into the belt. I tried to stand up, but before I could get to my feet, the back door opened.

  Over Mike’s shoulder, I saw a tall, blond woman framed in the doorway. She wore khaki slacks, a plaid shirt, and a flannel blazer. She wasn’t young, but she was attractive and well-kept.

  She and I stared at each other.

  Mike finished adjusting the robe into a more modest arrangement, but he didn’t look around. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Come on in.”

  I did manage to get to my feet then, and I made a move toward the door to the living room, but Mike caught my hand and kept me there. He stood up, too, and turned around.

  Wilda Svenson hadn’t moved. “I, uh, I tried to call,” she said, “but you didn’t answer.”

  “We turned the phone off,” Mike said. “I left a message on your machine last night.”

  I made another move toward leaving the kitchen, and at the same time Mrs. Svenson moved back a step, as if she were leaving. But Mike kept his firm grip on my hand, and he gestured to his mother.

  “Come on in, Mom. And it’s okay, Nell. My mom knows that we’re adults, and adults have needs, and sometimes one of those needs is not to be alone.”

  I was picking up a rather cold tone to Mike’s voice. His mother looked at him with narrowed eyes, but she stepped into the kitchen. Then I saw that she had someone with her.

  A tall, handsome, older man was behind her. He had a gorgeous head of thick white hair, a deeply tanned face, and heavy black eyebrows. Like Mrs. Svenson, he was dressed in expensive sportswear, including a beautifully cut camel-hair jacket. The two of them came into the kitchen.

  “Mickey and I had gone down to the lake,” Mrs. Svenson said. “We just heard about all the excitement this morning. I tried to call—”

  The white-haired man’s voice rumbled. “Your mom was worried, Mike.”

  “No need,” Mike said. “Thanks to Nell keeping her head, we came out fine.” He turned slightly toward me. “Nell, this is my mother. And this is Mickey O’Sullivan, an old family friend.” I caught the coldness in his tone again when he referred to O’Sullivan.

  I wasn’t quite sure what was going on here, but it seemed to me that I ought to be out of it.

  “Mrs. Svenson and I were introduced at the Amalgamated Police Brotherhood dinner,” I said. “Mr. O’Sullivan, nice to meet you. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get dressed.”

  This time Mike let me leave. I forced myself to walk sedately toward the bedroom, picking up the quilt from the couch as I passed. I closed the bedroom door gently, then leaned against it weakly. That’s why I was able to hear what Mike said next.

  “Mom, I admit that I acted like a horse’s rear end on Labor Day,” he said. “I will apologize to both you and Mickey freely and sincerely—later. And you can say anything you want to me, later. But if you make one snotty remark to Nell—then it’s gonna be a cold day in Hell before we settle our differences.”

  So Mike hadn’t accepted his mother catching him half naked with a half-naked girl quite as calmly as he’d tried to make me believe. And he didn’t expect his mother to be calm about it either.

  But when Wilda Svenson answered him, her voice sounded calm. It also sounded syrupy. “I’m just glad to see you’re getting some good out of the robe I gave you for Christmas,” she said.

  After that I quit eavesdropping and got dressed in a hurry. Then I made the bed. A heavy quilted bedspread was tossed in the corner of the room, and I started trying to get it onto the kingsize bed—an activity much like trying to raise a circus tent without elephants. Mike came in, and we worked together on the bedspread, silently, not looking at one another. But when I did glance quickly at him, I discovered he was glancing quickly at me. Then we both cracked up. We stood at the foot of the bed, holding each other and laughing and saying, “Shhh!” and laughing again.

 
; We were still snickering when the phone rang.

  Mike picked up the extension beside the bed, but the machine in the living room had already answered the call. By some electronic fluke, the caller’s voice was broadcast throughout the house.

  “Mike, this is Jim Hammond.”

  That got my attention. Jim Hammond is the senior detective who handled the Coffee Cup killings.

  “Yes, Captain.” Mike had gone into his patrolman persona. His voice stood at attention.

  “Mike, we just got a call from the mental health center. I want you to get out there, in case we need your help.”

  “Not another hostage situation?”

  “Not this time. But Bo Jenkins is still causing problems.”

  “What’s he done now?”

  “He up and died on ’em.”

  Chapter 7

  “What!” Mike’s voice was furious. “Didn’t they have the guy under a suicide watch?”

  “It may not be suicide. See you there. Pronto.” Hammond hung up.

  I was stunned. Bo Jenkins dead? After all he’d put the Grantham PD through? After all the humiliation he’d inflicted on his family? After the way he’d scared me? And it might not be suicide. This was going to make the wire. Heck’uva story. I had to get out there. Did I need a photog? Who did I know at the Grantham Mental Health Center?

  Thoughts went racing through my head, but I didn’t move. Then my attention focused on Mike.

  While I’d been standing stock-still, he was rampaging around the room. Right at that moment, I took back all my beliefs that redheads were no more hot tempered than people with less vivid coloring. Mike’s face had turned the color of his hair.

  “Did you hear that?” His voice was a dull roar. “Shit! Shit!” He started to kick the bedside table, but seemed to remember he was barefoot, and stomped the foot instead. He headed toward the closet.

  “You’ve got to get out there,” I said. “And so do I.” I picked up my purse and opened the door to the living room. “I’ll call a cab.”

  “No!” Mike was still roaring. He turned away from the closet and rushed past me, out into the living room. “Mom! Mick! Did you hear what Hammond said? Can you give Nell a ride home?”