Last Call

by Baxter Clare

  “No,” she answers, deftly redirecting the questioning. “How about you? How are you doing?”

  Gail takes her time with the answer and Frank dreads what’s coming because it will probably be the truth.

  “I wish things were different.”

  “Yeah. I wish a lot of things were different.”

  “Like what?”

  “All of it, Gail. All of it.” Frank is torn between confessing her anguish and steeling herself against it. Habit wins and she forces a bland question. “How’s your mom doing?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “And your sisters?”

  “They’re all fine. Everybody’s fine.”

  “Good.” Frank is nodding. “That’s good.” What else is there to say, except what she can’t say? “The cats?”

  “They’re okay. They miss you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They told me.”

  “Ah.” Frank’s still nodding, the silence screaming between them. Even as she wants Gail to ask her back, she wonders if she could go. Nothing’s changed. Frank knows she’s digging her own grave and she just can’t put the shovel down. So she does the graceful thing. “So. Do what you want with the key. But thanks for asking.”

  Gail doesn’t answer and Frank summons the picture of Gail biting her lip and throwing her bob back the way she does when she’s frustrated, snapping her neck and tossing the hair from her eyes. Those lovely emerald eyes.

  When Gail says, “Okay. I figured I should check,” Frank hears the tears in her voice. She closes her eyes. Regret, sorrow, longing— all the feelings she has no words for—hunker in her chest like stones, stones that weight her breath and entomb her courage.

  Gail, she whispers in her head. Gail, Gail, Gail. Like a mantra. She wants to blurt how sorry she is. That she knows she’s fucked this up. That it’s all her fault. But then what? She’ll change? She’ll be better? Frank knows this isn’t true and she loves Gail too much to lie to her.

  She clears her throat. “So, I guess I’ll see you at work.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” Gail’s voice is pinched against the tears. “Take care of yourself, Frank.”

  “Yeah, Doc. You too.”

  Frank clings to the irrational hope that as long as they’re both on the line maybe something will shift. Maybe a miracle will filter through the wire and they can work it out. But the phone dies in her hand. Frank finally hangs up when the busy signal turns to static.

  Chapter 42

  Six weeks have passed since Bailey was bound over on a double count of first-degree murder. The Queen was thrilled with his signed admissions, but what really clinched the case were the fibers SID vacuumed out of Bailey’s camper. They were the same color and material as Ladeenia’s sweater, but of course there was no evidence to match them to. Frank had been keeping Mr. and Mrs. Pryce informed of the investigation’s progress, and when told about the fibers, Mrs. Pryce ecstatically produced the matching Pooh shirt that went with the sweater.

  She still hadn’t had the heart to throw it away. She’d sealed Ladeenia and Trevor’s clothing in plastic tubs, opening them now and then to sniff the fading scent of her children. Frank gave the shirt over to SID and the fibers turned out to be a dead-bang match to Ladeenia’s shirt. Case closed. Now the outcome is up to McQueen and how well her prosecutors play the jury.

  Frank is sprawled on the couch, an almost empty bottle of Black Label at her side. Since handing Pryce over to the DA’s office, Frank has given up trying to control her drinking. She can’t summon the monumental energy it takes to keep away from the bottle. Gone too is the will to even limit her drinking. She just doesn’t have the fight for it. Giving in is so much simpler than going rounds every night only to lose in the fifth. She rides the liquid line between sobriety and oblivion, despairing of falling to either side.

  But tonight Fubar is on call. She has taken the extra precaution of unplugging her phone. No midnight pleading for her to take over a scene will interfere with her drinking. She’s been at it steadily since end of watch. She started with a pint of Jack Daniel’s while driving home, then plowed through a six-pack of Coronas in the backyard while barbecuing hotdogs she ate straight off the grill.

  Food doesn’t interest her and she forces herself to eat. Her life revolves around clawing through morning hangovers then working as long past end of watch as she can before bowing to the hunger for that first drink of the day. She’s quit going to the Alibi. There’s no one there she wants to drink with and Nancy is frosty.

  She’s taken to stopping for a pint on the way home and by the time she hits her driveway she’s got a gentle buzz on. She spends the rest of the night tending it. Somewhere between eleven and twelve she’s had enough to help her sleep. She swallows Advil and vitamins, brushes her teeth and wakes up around 2:30. Sometimes she can go back to sleep. Usually she can’t, until she has a tumbler of Scotch. Then she dozes until 4:30, gets up woozy and starts the cycle all over again.

  She is watching Cops with the mute on. Coltrane plays in the background, with Johnny Hartman on “Dedicated to You.” She loves that song, but it doesn’t touch her. None of her music sounds good tonight. Sinatra and Ella are too maudlin. The opera that can move her to tears leaves her cold. Miles, Mingus, Redman—they all make her nerves itch. Nothing can soothe her tonight. Not even the booze.

  This is the terrifying thought she has been dancing around since that morning at Nancy’s. What happens when the alcohol doesn’t work anymore, when the tail is thrashing the dog?

  Not much frightens Frank, but the thought of being unable to escape herself is more than she can handle. She swallows from her glass, as much as her mouth will hold, and repeats the motion. She watches a cop in Houston trying to reason with a drunken wife-beater. She should be smashed by now, but she hasn’t heard the click yet. That lovely, comely, magical click.

  ” ‘Did you say click?’” she whispers, quoting from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  “‘Yes, sir’,” she answers in Paul Newman’s drawl. “‘That click in my head that makes me feel peaceful. It’s like a switch clicking off in my head, turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and of a sudden there is peace.’”

  Like Burl Ives, she growls, “‘Boy, you’re a real alcoholic.’”

  “‘That is the truth. Yes, sir. I am an alcoholic.’”

  Frank turns the glass in her hand.

  “Yes, sir,” she repeats in her own clear voice. “That is the truth. I am an alcoholic.”

  She sits with the statement, unashamed and unrepentant. Just tired. Very tired.

  On the coffee table, next to her feet, rest her .38, .357 and Beretta. Each weapon is meticulously cleaned and oiled. They gleam in the TVs blue light. Each fully loaded.

  Frank levels her glass between her eyes and the handguns.

  “Cop on a hot tin roof,” she muses through the jeweled refraction.

  Colors glitter and twinkle in the crystal. She squeezes her hand and the crystal shatters. She crushes the shards into her palm. Hanging her hand over the couch she lets it bleed onto the tile floor. She considers the fiery little stabs of pain. They feel good and she tightens her hand into a fist. The shards bite deeper.

  Studying her macerated palm, she notes, “You are one sick puppy.”

  She watches her hand until the bleeding slows, then assiduously removes the shards over the bathroom sink. She takes pleasure in the pain. When she is done she pours rubbing alcohol over her hand and wraps it in a towel. She returns to the couch with a fresh bottle of Scotch. She doesn’t bother with another glass.

  Unbidden, like a butterfly in a garden, a sparkling long-ago afternoon flits across the landscape of Frank’s memory.

  It was early in their partnership, at the start of their shift one day, when Frank and Noah got the crying-baby call. They’d pulled up at the address dispatch gave them, to a house overgrown with weeds. The neighbor who’d called in the complaint met them on the sidewalk. The man who lived in
the house had only recently moved in after winning his son in a vicious custody case. The last time the neighbor had seen the man was yesterday afternoon. He was walking into his house with his son in one arm and groceries in the other. The baby had started crying around 8:00 pm. She’d thought maybe it was just fretting, but she’d heard it again in the middle of the night and it hadn’t stopped since she woke up this morning.

  “He seems like a good father,” the woman said.

  Noah thanked her and told her they’d take it from there.

  Frank knocked, calling loudly, and got no response. They walked around the house and peeked through windows with drawn curtains. Seeing nothing. They kept calling and knocking, trying each lock. Finally they busted a small pane and were able to reach inside to unlock a window. Noah, the skinnier of the two, went in first, calling out so he didn’t get shot for a burglar. He let Frank in the back door. Even though the sun was high and hot, lights were on throughout the house. A baby’s subdued, rhythmic cry came from down a narrow hallway.

  Noah, in the lead, glanced into a room off the kitchen. “Uh-oh.”

  A man fitting the father’s description was sprawled on the floor in front of the television. It looked like he’d taken a shotgun blast to his head and neck, the resulting wounds dark and coagulated.

  Frank checked cursorily for a pulse, as Noah exclaimed, “Holy fuck.”

  She looked up to see him backing away from a bookshelf over the TV, pointing.

  “See it?”

  It took her a moment to track his finger, then she saw the vacant eyes of an over-under 12-gauge aimed just above her head.

  “I think we better get—” Frank’s words were engulfed in a boom. Noah had fallen to the floor and Frank had flattened. They looked at each other, afraid to move.

  “Did you touch something?” she whispered.

  Noah searched around himself. His foot was inches from an end table.

  “Jesus Christ, we’re fucking booby-trapped. I got fishing line on this table going under the couch. Can you see it at your end?”

  Frank tentatively crawled around the couch. She saw the line appear briefly from the couch and disappear under another table. She inched along beside it, eyeballing it up the wall and behind a shelf to another shotgun.

  “Shit,” Noah said, seeing the barrel at the same time. “We gotta get outta here.”

  Frank nodded. “Let’s just crawl out the way we came in.”

  They crept from the room on hands and knees, hugging the floor and searching for tripwires. Frank had forgotten the baby but remembered it as they approached the kitchen. The sudden gun blast had triggered hiccupped crying.

  “Noah,” Frank said.

  He looked behind himself, at her.

  “It’s gonna be hours before we get a demo team assembled and in here.”

  “The baby,” Noah finished for her.

  “Yeah. What if there’s something wrong with it?” Tossing her head toward the body in the living room, she continued, “I mean, it looks like he offed himself. Either on purpose or by accident, but what if he did something to the baby first?”

  “I know, I know,” Noah whined, veering toward the hallway.

  “Noah!”

  He stopped.

  “Don’t move,” Frank ordered. She crabbed up next to him, blocking the hallway. “Go back to the car and get demo and homicide in here. I’ll get the baby.”

  “No way.”

  Noah surprised Frank by making a rush past her. He almost got by until she threw her shoulder into his ribs, shouting, “Damn it, No, don’t make me kick your rucking ass in here!”

  She could, too. Noah knew that and paused to consider this latest threat. They stared at each other for seconds that seemed like minutes, Frank loving Noah, marveling that he’d take the risk even as she was infuriated that he assumed the right to.

  “Think it over, dumb fuck. Who’s got a wife? Who’s got kids? Come on. Move over. Let me do it. I’ll be okay if I keep low. Besides, Tracey’d kill me if I let anything happen to you.”

  Noah reluctantly crawled back a few paces.

  “Shit,” he called after her scuttling butt. “Don’t make me have to call Maggie.”

  Frank heard him but didn’t hear. She’d seen the almost invisible line tied around a closed doorknob. She traced the line to where it retreated into the doorjamb. She didn’t see a connection across the hallway and continued. Sweat tickled the underside of her arms, incongruously erotic, given her state of terror. She eyed the walls. They were lined with snapshots in cheap frames and shelves crowded with knickknacks. Anything could be rigged up there. With amazing recall she remembered every war story she’d ever heard in the Academy or patrol room about walking into booby traps.

  Continuing to creep along the carpeted floor, she realized the baby had stopped crying.

  Shit, she thought. Hang in there, little guy.

  She paused at the open door to an unlit room. Reasoning that the door would likely be primed only when it was closed, she hustled past, glancing into a darkened bedroom. She was bone-jellying grateful as Noah encouraged helplessly, “You’re doing great.”

  “Yeah,” she tried to joke. “Think I’ll make the back of the Law Enforcement Bulletin?”

  “Only if you die.”

  “You sure know how to make a girl feel good.”

  She approached a third door. It was open. Frank searched for a telltale line, saw none, and proceeded beyond a brightly lit bathroom. In addition to fingering her way through the dirty brown carpeting, she remembered to check above her head. There she saw an axe head peeking from behind a high framed mirror. She had visions of it flying down at her, as if swung by demons in a horror movie.

  “Jesus T. H. Christ,” she mumbled, pausing on her elbows, ass low.

  “What? What is it?” Noah called.

  “He’s got a fucking axe up there. Doesn’t look like it’s wired to anything, though. What a fucking nut.”

  “Be careful,” Noah answered.

  “Ain’t gonna get up and tango with you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Damn,” was the game reply. “One of these days.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, buddy.”

  The ribbing calmed Frank as she faced two more doors. The one on the right was closed and she easily spotted the rigging on the knob. The door opposite was open. She sidled along the carpet, approaching the darkened doorway until she made out a crib against the curtained windows.

  “Hey, little guy,” she called to the baby, more to comfort herself than the baby, who was still disquietingly silent.

  Using her prior logic, that an open door wouldn’t be rigged, she started crawling into the dim room. Rustling, then a gurgle came from the crib, and Frank saw a lump that looked like a baby.

  She stopped four feet from the crib, shouting, “Why’s this guy booby-trapping his house, Noah?”

  The quick answer was, “To keep his wife from stealing the baby?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. So what would be the first tiling you’d rig?”

  “The baby’s room.”

  “Bingo.”

  The lump in the crib moved, and large brown eyes looked at Frank.

  “Hey,” she said to the baby. “If I didn’t want anybody to take you the first thing I’d rig would be your crib.”

  The baby stirred listlessly and Noah asked, “See anything?”

  “Uh-uh. That’s what’s scaring me.”

  “Is the baby okay?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Frank, get out of there. If the baby’s not bleeding to death or unconscious, let’s just wait for demo to get him out. He’ll be all right a little longer.”

  The anxiety in his voice belied the rationality of Noah’s suggestion. It sounded like a good idea and Frank weighed it seriously. She asked, “Shouldn’t the baby be crying if there’s nothing wrong with it?”

  “He’s probably exhausted. Been crying since yesterday. A fe
w more hours won’t kill him.”

  Christ, Frank thought. What am I doing here? Why didn’t I just leave this for demo?

  Then she said to Noah, “In for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, I gotta get on the cover of the Bulletin.”

  “Next year,” Noah whined. “Come on.”

  Hearing his concern, she was tempted to turn around and crawl back the way she came, but she advanced toward the crib. Stretching gently onto her belly, she swept her fingertips around the bed’s legs. Then she raised an arm and fingered the railings for line. She almost pissed her pants when she touched a sprung mattress thread.

  The bottom of the crib seemed safe enough, but Frank wondered how to get the baby out without standing.

  “Where are you?” Noah asked.

  “Right by the crib.”

  “Shit. Come on, Frank. Let the demo birds do this.”

  Frank tugged at a blanket on the floor, waited, then pulled it toward her. Waving it above her head, she prepared for a blast. None came. She waved the blanket over the crib with similar results. Still waiting for a gun to go off, Frank slowly raised herself to a kneeling position, a crouch, and then tentatively stood. She reached for the baby.

  “I got him!” she yelled to Noah.

  She turned with the baby against her chest just as she heard the KABOOM and felt the concussion of the blast pass her head. The blast deafened her but she felt the baby renew its crying and she lifted her head just enough to yell, “I’m okay, No! I’m okay! I got the baby!”

  Not sure how she’d tripped the blast, she froze where she was. Remaining face down in the rancid, crumby carpet seemed the best option. Just sit tight and wait for the bomb boys to come. At least wait for her ears to clear, but Frank wanted desperately to be out of this room and out of this house. Her body insisted she move, but her mind demanded she stay. Paralyzed, she’d listened to the warring inside her. Eventually an overpowering need to pee had forced her to scuttle back to Noah.

  Tonight, bedeviled by dead friends and lovers, haunted by busted relationships, a precariously maintained job and an incomprehensible craving for alcohol, Frank feels exactly like she did on the floor of that filthy bedroom fourteen years ago. She is terrified to move forward and can’t go backward. Stasis seems the only alternative. It’s enough just to keep breathing.