by C. E. Murphy
“I know. But I can’t use them, and it made an excuse to meet you.”
She had a smile to break my heart. I wondered what her story was, and couldn’t think of a way to ask without seeming rude. We chatted a few minutes longer, then at the same time glanced toward the clock on the O’s back wall and said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get back.”
I grinned, and Rita added, “The shelter starts serving dinner at four and I help cook, so I need to catch a bus back downtown. I hope you go to the concert, Detective. And thank you for letting me meet with you.”
I shook my head. “Thanks for coming up. We don’t usually get visitors who are just coming to say hi. Usually something terrible’s happened. It’s nice to see something wonderful happening instead.” Especially after today, but that was yet another thing she didn’t need to know. We got up and I figured if I was going back to the office, I might as well return bearing gifts. I ordered Morrison what the menu called a St. Patrick’s Day Latte, and examined the doughnut cabinet, which had an array of mint-to pine-green frosted doughnuts lined up by hue.
The drink that came back was swamp-green and decidedly nasty-looking. Rita gave it, then the doughnut cabinet, a considering look, then smiled at me. “I’ll go catch my bus while you decide if you’re brave enough to bring someone that horrid-looking drink or make people break a bunch of Lenten promises with those doughnuts. It was nice to meet you, Detective Walker.”
“I think I’ll do both.” I ordered one of each shade of doughnut and waved goodbye at Rita at the same time. “It was nice to meet you, too. Visit again sometime, okay?” She nodded on her way out the door, and a couple minutes later we waved again as I hurried past the bus stop back to the precinct building.
Billy had returned by the time I got back and took the latte with a suspicious sniff. I’d meant it for Morrison, but Billy’s grimace after taking a sip made me just as glad he’d swiped it instead. The rest of the Homicide detectives swarmed the doughnut box like a pack of wolves, and I retreated to Morrison’s office, ticket envelope held between my fingers like it might bite.
He was concentrating on paperwork, which gave me a moment to stare at the top of his head and get my nerve up.
I usually thought of him as silvering, but looking at the top of his head made it clear he was really just silver. He wasn’t that old, not yet forty. I wondered when he’d started going gray. Not that it mattered. It looked good on him, playing into the whole aging-superhero look that I thought of as being his thing.
I rattled myself and tapped on his door. Morrison glanced up, curiosity sliding across his face. “You look nervous, Walker. Caldwell said the interview went well. What’s wrong?”
“You said to come by, and besides, I have a ques…” My knees buckled a little as my brain caught up to what he’d said. I caught myself on the door frame. “She said that?”
Morrison elevated an eyebrow. “Did you think other wise?”
“Morrison, I’ve never shot…” I closed the door behind me and sat down, probably signaling to everyone in the open office area outside that I was in trouble again, but for once I didn’t care, possibly because for once I wasn’t actually in trouble. “I’ve never shot anyone before,” I said quietly. “I’ve never spent any significant time talking to a shrink. I had no idea if it went badly or well.”
“I’ve talked to Holliday and Caldwell. They’re both working up their reports, and I saw you already dropped yours off. It was a shit situation, Detective, and from what I’m seeing so far you handled it as well as you could’ve.”
“Even…” I waved a hand, encompassing the whole magi cal aspect of my skill set which I’d utterly failed to use.
“As you said, if it was anyone else, I wouldn’t even have asked. I shouldn’t have asked you. You did what I’d expect any detective to do when her partner was in danger. The suspension is still in effect,” he warned me. “I can’t do anything about that.”
“No, I know, it’s fine. It’s standard procedure. I just…” The last word came out as a shuddering breath and I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to let stinging tears overwhelm me. My hands smelled like maple frosting and cinnamon now, a vast improvement over the pre-shower scent of blood. “Sorry. I’m a little up and down. I just, I feel like I made the right choices, but it helps to hear you say that, sir. Thank you. And if there’s anything else I need to do or not do while the incident is being looked into…”
“Just keep your nose clean. You can manage that for three days, right?”
I groaned and pushed the envelope across his desk at him. “I don’t know. Tell me if this qualifies. The woman whose life I saved down at the Fremont Troll in December just gave me these.”
Morrison shook the tickets free of the envelope before eyeing me. “Dance concert tickets?”
“She won them at a…” It didn’t matter. “She gave them to me as a way of saying thank you. I told her she didn’t have to, but she insisted and I didn’t want to insult her and I didn’t know if it was like an ethical breach to take them so, well, I just thought I should take them and then come ask you—”
“Ask what?” Morrison said in amazement, interrupting my breathless explanation. “If I wanted to go with you?”
“—er.” For an excruciatingly long moment that was all I could think to say. Long enough that Morrison figured out that wasn’t at all what I’d meant to ask, and began to look uncomfortable. I followed up my initial witty “er” with a salvo of, “Uh,” then rubbed my nose ferociously. “Actually I’d been going to ask if it was an ethical breach or if it was okay for me to take them. But now that you mention it, um, there’s only two tickets so I can’t invite Billy and Melinda along, and Gary’s out of town, so if it’s okay for me to accept them, um, well. Would you…like to go with me?”
Someone with a modicum of cool wouldn’t have put all the emphasis on like. Sadly, I was not that person. The way I asked it sounded as if the idea that Morrison might want to go out with me was only slightly less unlikely than, say, the idea that a Hollywood producer might walk into the precinct building and randomly choose me to be the next twenty-million-dollar star.
For a few seconds I waited for a Hollywood producer to walk into the room, but it didn’t happen. Instead Morrison glanced at the tickets again, then shrugged. “I don’t have anything planned for tonight, and God knows you probably need some kind of distraction. Just log the tickets as a gift, and if the woman ever needs anything else from you make sure every second of your interactions are observed.”
“Yes, sir.” He could’ve been suggesting I take a long walk off a short pier, for all I was comprehending. I took the tickets back, got up, made it to the door, and said, “Er,” for the second time in our conversation. “Should I pick you up…?”
There was no chance on earth he would agree. My car was a 1969 Mustang named Petite who clocked over a hundred and ninety miles an hour. His was a nameless 2003 Toyota Avalon with the highest safety rating in its class. Ne’er the twain should meet.
Morrison’s expression, almost without changing, suggested the idea was so outrageous it stretched all the way to funny. “I don’t think so, Walker.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to meet there, because I have my pride.” And my smarts. Petite would never forgive me for tarting around with an Avalon. She knew these things.
Minute laugh lines crinkled around Morrison’s blue eyes. “Fair enough. I’ll see you at a quarter to eight, then. Go home and get some rest.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I scurried back up to Homicide, where, fortunately, all the doughnuts had already been eaten. I’d have gone on a panic-inspired binge if they hadn’t been. Instead I seized Billy’s arm and hauled him off to the broom closet which doubled as a crash pad for cops whose shifts had gone on too long.
He came along willingly enough, though he did say, “Do I need to tell Melinda you’re dragging me off to bed?” as I banged the closet door open and propelled him inside.
My partner was a steady soul. A good man. The sort, in fact, who could walk away from nearly getting a nail through the skull and still remain a bastion of calm. I was sure he, too, had seen Dr. Caldwell this afternoon, but there was nothing in his demeanor which suggested he’d had a bad day. That’s how glued-together he was.
So I hardly expected him to fall into a fit of what could only be called giggles, even if men who stood well over six feet tall were not normally prone to giggling. Offended, I stared at him, which upgraded his giggles to whoops. He staggered back, sat on the army-corners bed and leaned against the far wall while gales of laughter shook his body. It took over a minute for him to catch his breath, and I thought perhaps he was just a leeeettle more on edge about the morning’s events than he’d been letting on. Still, it was with genuine merriment that he said, “Sorry, Joanie, it’s just that when something’s gone wrong around you it usually runs to the apocalyptic. The captain having a date, even with you, probably isn’t a sign of the end times. Besides, isn’t it about time?”
My head heated up. I hated to think what color my cheeks were. “It’s not that kind of date!”
“Of course it is.” Billy wiped his eyes, looking as happy as I’d ever seen him. “For one thing, if you didn’t think it was, you wouldn’t be having a meltdown.”
“Billy, he’s my boss! Our boss!” Which, while true, had hardly stopped me from slowly falling for the man. I really didn’t know when it had happened.
Just because I didn’t know when it had happened, however, didn’t mean every single person I knew hadn’t noticed it happening. In fact, they’d all clued in ages before I did, which was its own kind of humiliating. I sank down on the bed beside Billy and mumbled, “It was his stupid idea,” into my hands.
Billy patted my shoulder and did a credible job of not sounding too interested in the details. “Really? Morrison asked you out?”
“Well, sort of!” I knew he was going to go home and gleefully tell Melinda everything, but I explained the awful scene in Morrison’s office anyway.
Billy manfully didn’t start giggling again. “He likes you, you know.”
“I drive him insane.”
“Which doesn’t negate the point. Look, Walker.” Billy knocked his shoulder against mine. “Just go and have a good time. A date is not the end of the world.”
“It is if I don’t have anything to wear!” Oh, God. I was turning into a stereotypical female before my very own eyes.
Billy choked on another laugh. “Call Phoebe. She likes dressing you.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then slumped. My friend Phoebe was a fencing teacher by vocation, but a fashionista in her heart of hearts. Tall, generally slender me was her idea of a perfect model. She loved dressing me up. Moreover, she had vastly better taste in clothes and style than I did, and I had the entire remainder of the afternoon, thanks to the suspension of duty. There was no chance she couldn’t make me presentable. “Okay, but I’m blaming you if this is a disaster.”
“It won’t be a disaster.”
That was our cue to leave the broom closet, but I only nodded moodily and sat there, slouched, for a minute before nerving myself up to say, “So how’re you doing?” in a much more subdued tone.
Billy pushed out a huge breath of air and said, “Okay,” after a while. “You?”
I bobbed my head around in a noncommittal okay of my own. “I haven’t heard how she is, yet.”
“Stable. She’s going to be fine. You did good, Joanie. The neighbor—not the one with the kids—said he thought she’d been hiding in their doghouse.”
“Big dog.”
“German shepherd.”
That was big enough, all right. “How’d she get into the yard?”
“Hole in the fence. The kids use it to go back and forth to play.”
I said, “Shit,” and put my face in my hands. “I should’ve looked beyond the Raleigh property. I’m sorry, Billy.”
“We weren’t supposed to be checking out anybody else’s property. You did fine. You saved my life.”
This time I managed the tiny joke I’d been reaching for earlier: “Had to. Who else on the force is going to put up with my bizarre life?”
He knocked his shoulder against mine again, a familiar and comforting action. “Nobody, that’s who. Don’t think I don’t know it.”
I wobbled from the impact. “Don’t think I don’t.” I had, for most of the four years we’d known each other, given him endless hell about his belief in the paranormal, right up until the paranormal came and bit me on the ass. Since then he’d put up with my shenanigans, held his tongue time and again and generally been as stalwart a companion as a girl could ask for. Nobody would have treated me as well as he did, past, present or future. I didn’t deserve him, but I was grateful as hell to have him. “You call Mel yet?”
“No. Morrison’s sent me home for the afternoon, soon as I get my report in. I thought it’d be better to talk to her face-to-face. She can’t panic about me being dead if I’m standing right there.”
“As long as the news isn’t reporting a North Precinct cop involved in a shooting incident yet, that’s probably a good idea.”
Billy looked pained and stood up. “I better check on that. You heading out?”
“Yeah. To let Phoebe dress me, I guess.”
My partner grinned. “Get a photo. ’Cause I promise, it won’t be a disaster.”
FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 7:53 P.M.
It wasn’t a disaster.
Phoebe had slicked my short hair back in that wet look that either really works or really doesn’t. To my surprise, it worked: without any bits of hair to soften them, my cheekbones looked sculpted. Then she’d applied just enough makeup to smooth my skin and emphasize my eyes, so I almost didn’t look like I was wearing makeup, a trick I’d never myself learned. At my insistence, she’d left my eclectic jewelry—ivory coyote earrings, a silver choker necklace and a copper bracelet—alone.
The jewelry, though, was the only decision I could pretend was my own. I wouldn’t have dared put me into a forest-green velvet sheath that bared my broad shoulders and made my waist look improbably small. Also, any dress I would have chosen would’ve come to my ankles, whereas this one stopped somewhere just beyond fingertip-length. My legs were long to begin with. A dress that quit that far above my feet, coupled with three-inch strappy gold heels, made them go on forever. Every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, I didn’t know who I was, which made me accept the possibility that I was smokin’ hot. I owed Phoebe one.
The advantage to being a smidge under six feet tall in bare feet was that if I wore three-inch heels, there was almost no one I couldn’t see over. Beautifully dressed theater-goers milled around me and I stared over their heads, watching the front doors. In another two minutes I was leaving. The insurance I’d taken out on my nerves to make myself leave the apartment in my fancy new dress didn’t cover being stood up. It wasn’t a scenario I’d even considered.
Anticipated humiliation was getting my heart rate up when Morrison walked in. I’d never seen him in a tux. In fact, of all the people I interacted with regularly, the only one I’d seen in a tux was Billy’s wife Melinda. She’d been nine months pregnant and cute in a penguinlike way.
I had, therefore, kind of forgotten that men tended to be more devastating than cute in a tuxedo. Particularly if they looked comfortable in one, which Morrison did. It got a whole James Bond thing going, like he was slightly ruffled because he’d stopped to casually beat up forty-seven bad guys on his way to meet the girl.
Maybe that’s why he was late.
He saw me from across the room, which would have sounded a lot more romantic if I didn’t tower over everyone around me. We nodded at each other and I let him come to me, bas
ed on me being much closer to the theater doors than he was. It took him a minute to get to me, during which time I watched a couple dozen admiring women, and at least two equally admiring men, shift slightly so they could get a better look as he passed. I gave myself two points for having the best-looking date at the theater. Then I gave him two points for having a none-too-shabby date himself, when some of those lingering glances followed his trajectory and came to land, with hints of bitterness or approval, on me.
He had a shamrock pinned to his lapel. I touched it with a fingertip. “I think that’s cheating. You’re supposed to wear green, not be nominally adorned by it.”
“Are you going to pinch me?”
“Would I get fired?”
Morrison laughed aloud, which I didn’t think I’d ever heard him do before. While I gaped, he offered me his elbow. “Don’t risk it. You clean up good, Walker.”
“You’re not half bad yourself, sir.” I tucked my hand into his elbow and, unable to resist, added, “Except unusually short.”
“You didn’t warn me you were wearing platform heels.”
“If I was wearing platform heels your nose would be in my clea—” I cleared my throat, and Morrison, God bless him, slid a glance at the half-mentioned décolletage. We were exactly the same height, he and I, and in police-issue shoes neither of us ever had the height advantage. Back when we were still pissing in each other’s cereal for the crime of existing, I’d been known to wear extra-stompy thick-soled boots for the sheer glee of looking down on him. In retrospect, which I was only applying right now at this very moment, it had never seemed to bother him at all. “Right. Rented tux?”
“Will it damage your perception of me if I say I own it?” Morrison guided me to the theater doors, where I handed over the tickets, and then he walked me down the long aisle as though he had a great deal of practice at it. I, who wore heels seldomly, clung to him like an ingénue and couldn’t answer the question until he had me safely seated.