The Third Eye

by Jenna Rae

  “Mine too. Thanks for offering. Amazing, wasn’t she? And gone far too soon. But no.” Tori shook her head slowly. “I left it for you. It doesn’t matter about the money. We both make enough to buy what we need and want.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tori seemed to have to force her gaze back to Brenda’s face. “This is hard, and I want it to stay professional, okay? I don’t want us to get personal. It’s too raw still. For both of us.”

  “Sure.” Stung, Brenda nodded crisply. “Okay.”

  “Don’t.” Tori rolled her eyes. “You always act like I’m being cold or unreasonable or something, but I’m not. I just don’t want to open our wounds again in mutually masochistic emotional masturbation.”

  “No, I get it.” She swallowed hard. She’d once suggested Tori join a support group for individuals addicted to alliteration, and she still remembered Tori’s surprised laugh.

  “I’m sorry Peterson ghosted. I know he means a lot to you.”

  “Thanks. He does. It’s funny. I saw Trimble. Remember him? He was talking about how top-heavy the department has gotten, and I hadn’t really thought too much about it in a while, but he’s right. Briarwood wasn’t even incorporated as a city thirty years ago. Law enforcement fell to the county sheriff’s department.”

  “Why are you bringing this up now? Who cares about Trimble? He was useless.” Tori waved him away like his very existence was a pesky fly. “Briarwood’s more than doubled in size since then, mostly in the last five years. You know that.”

  “Yeah, true. But it’s not balanced the same way. Do you realize we have the same number of patrol officers as Winston, but we have double their number in ranks above lieutenant?”

  “And Winston still runs its department using an abacus and papyrus. It also doesn’t deal with the huge gang problems we have or the tech companies. Our tax base, even after the bubbles burst, is a lot bigger than theirs. And distributed less evenly. Which means—why are we even talking about this? Trimble was taking a dig at you and me. You know, the only reason we got our promotions is because we’re women. They had to make a bunch of office jobs to keep the women busy. That’s one of his favorite little passive-aggressive games. You know better than to get sidetracked by him.”

  Exhaling to dispel defensiveness, Brenda nodded. “True.”

  Tori sat back. She fussed with her hair, pulling it out of its low ponytail and finger-combing until it was a mass of cascading waves. Brenda blinked. Playing with her hair was a nervous habit Tori displayed when she wasn’t sure of her footing. She only resorted to it when tapping her tongue wasn’t enough.

  “What do all of you do?” Brenda poured tea into their respective cups, trying not to dip the spout. She was surprised to be so shaken by her nostalgia-induced nerves. She’d put out their special cups without even noticing: the delicate green Shelley for Tori, the more prosaic Wedgwood for her. Lemon and honey for Tori, just lemon for herself.

  How many times had they sat at this table and drunk out of these particular teacups? How often while doing so had she said or done something that made Tori bristle the way she was doing now?

  “Are you kidding?” Tori ignored the steaming brew in front of her. “What do we do? I get it, Brenda. You think everybody above you isn’t a real cop. What we do is work our asses off, trying to make sure the rank-and-file have what they need to do their jobs and don’t get sued. And, lest you forget, you parked your trim little ass behind a desk months ago and haven’t come out from behind it since. What do you do all day? It’s not that different for me, only I swim with the barracudas.”

  Brenda couldn’t help but wonder if Tori was trying to wind her up. Hadn’t she just wondered that about Trimble? Struck by the fact both Peterson and Tori had talked about swimming with dangerous predators, she went to the sink, pretending to rinse her hands as though she’d spilled tea on her fingers.

  “Why do we need so many commanders?” She spoke softly, looking out the garden window to the neglected backyard, her back to Tori. The sea of rosebushes had gone wild, and blackberry brambles were overtaking the fence. “Why did I get promoted to captain? I was happy as a lieutenant.”

  “Oh, come on!” Tori stood abruptly, knocking her hip into the corner of the table, and Brenda whirled to face her. They both looked down and watched as tea sloshed out of their footed cups and into the saucers. “You worked for that promotion like your life depended on it, and now you want to act like I made you go into management? No way you’re pinning that on me, sweetheart.”

  She was gone in a flash, slamming the front door behind her and pulling her gleaming Mustang away so quickly the tires squealed. Brenda didn’t bother to follow her. Even during the good years, Tori had made a regular habit of storming out anytime they disagreed. The best strategy had always been to give her some space.

  Or, she wondered now, had it? Maybe if she’d been better at communicating they’d have managed to work through their problems. Maybe she should have chased after Tori and made her finish the difficult conversations they never seemed to get past.

  She shook her head and sighed. She’d wound Tori up and pushed her away, which was a mistake she’d made hundreds of times in their decade together. Now they were apart and she was still poking at Tori’s tender spots for no good reason. Over the years she’d gotten very good at making Tori defensive, and that thought pained her.

  They’d joked, once upon a time, about the briar roses in the backyard, how they looked so delicate and pretty but had particularly vicious thorns. Back then, both of them had been willing to admit they could be thorny themselves. But too many sharp barbs between them had left them both reluctant to admit to anything.

  The uncomfortable truth was that Tori was right. Brenda fought to get the promotion because she thought newly minted Commander Tori Young might feel she was slumming, being with a mere lieutenant.

  Shortly after Brenda’s promotion, though, they were broken up and it didn’t matter, and she had given up the parts of the job she loved for nothing. Months later, she was still trying to reconcile herself to playing a role she wasn’t sure she liked.

  She might not really have that job ever again, she realized with a pang. She might have just maneuvered her way out of it. Would they offer her early retirement? She had her twenty years. Maybe she was already done and just didn’t know it yet. She couldn’t imagine not being a member of the department. It was part of her. Would she end up an alcoholic like Peterson, unable to walk away from the job?

  She snorted. She could always go work for Dan Miller, who’d been trying to woo her to his private security company for the last several years. If she ended up getting pushed out of the department at the end of this thing, she might have to consider it. A shudder ran through her, and she tasted bitterness.

  He was everything she hated, a slick, self-serving huckster who genuinely saw himself as superior to other people. His money had come from his family, she knew, and the only reason he was still solvent was that he’d somehow managed not to squander it all. He reeked of privilege and its inevitable byproduct, sanctimony.

  She drifted toward the front window, wallowing in a nauseating mix of self-loathing and self-pity. On the way to the living room, she heard a car start, noting absently the unfamiliar engine. She’d lived on the same street for years and knew the neighbors’ cars as much by sound as by sight, and this one was new to her.

  Feeling her pulse quicken as she hotfooted it toward the door, she thought maybe Mrs. Johnson finally got a new sedan after fifteen years. Maybe someone got lost. Maybe the Silvermans had a visitor.

  She heard the mystery car pull out, noting that it was only seconds behind Tori’s. Funny, Tori’s was the only car parked on the street when I got here, she thought. She yanked open the front door and peered out, but Tori’s Mustang and the other car were already out of sight.

  A vague feeling of unease kept her looking outside for a few minutes. She wasn’t sure if she was being paranoid. She’d been in a fu
nk for months. One of the neighbors could have bought a new car without her noticing. She was almost always the first person to head out in the morning and the last to head home at night. A neighbor could have had a visitor. There could have been a salesperson or a caregiver or someone who’d just moved in and was exploring.

  There were a hundred reasons for a new car to arrive on the street during Tori’s brief visit. The last new car Brenda remembered noticing on the street had belonged to the woman Tori cheated with, though surely there’d been others since then. Maybe, she thought, she was too awash in her memories of that day, seeing ghosts where there were none.

  But two decades in law enforcement, preceded by a childhood spent trailing her mom around the least civilized parts of the Western states, had taught her to be suspicious of coincidences. Frustrated by the lingering thought that had she been ten years younger, she’d have been able to reach the front door quickly enough to see the mystery car, Brenda pondered the possibilities.

  Was someone following Brenda or Tori? And what happened to Peterson? Did he get frustrated with Brenda and take off? Or did he suddenly realize he was too drunk, the way someone will upon getting up to use the restroom? Or did someone take him? He could have gone out back for a smoke. He’d quit smoking years earlier but still snuck the odd cigarette now and then, especially after a drink or two. Or, Brenda reminded herself, six or seven. He didn’t go out to get his car, which would be towed if left where it was parked for a couple of days.

  She tried to recall the sounds of the bar: the traffic, the humming of the air conditioner and refrigerators, the murmurs of the few patrons lounging on the bench that served as seating behind a series of small round tables along the south wall. There were three retired cops sitting with their backs to that wall when Peterson went down the narrow hallway to the bathrooms and the same three when Brenda went to look for him. Trimble stayed near the door.

  She remembered thinking there was something odd about his entrance but couldn’t recall what that something was. Had he come into The Hole looking for someone? He’d left right after talking with her. Had he been there to distract her while someone lured or forced Peterson out the back door?

  Brenda closed her eyes. Trimble had stood behind her, and she had turned to face him. Would she have heard a struggle taking place in the alley? She wasn’t sure and decided to table the question for the moment. She needed to think about it without being clouded by emotion. After cleaning up the tea-soaked mess on the kitchen table, she dialed Tori’s number.

  “What did you want to talk to me about, specifically? Did you just want to tell me you were investigating inside the department?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Sorry I sandbagged you.”

  “Old habits. On both our parts, I guess.”

  “Can you do me a favor? Look into Trimble?”

  “Yeah. On it. I’ll get back to you.” And she was gone.

  Brenda smiled. One of the things she’d always appreciated was Tori’s quick mind. She missed their best conversations, the ones that made sense to no one else because so few of the words were spoken aloud while the ideas flowed seamlessly over and around and through each other. It was dizzying, those first years together, when she was still getting used to someone understanding her thoughts.

  Her smile died. She couldn’t imagine sharing that connection with anyone else. She reminded herself she’d had other relationships before Tori and would find someone else when she was ready to do so. She’d been telling herself that same thing for months. And just like every other time, it sounded like a lie.

  She shook her head to clear it. She had to figure out what had happened to her old partner, and standing around moaning over her personal problems wasn’t going to accomplish that. Tori was right. They should have kept things professional between them. But she’d been unable or unwilling to listen to Tori, as usual.

  She drove down to The Hole and saw Peterson’s car still parked where he’d left it that morning. Then she went to his house, noting the perfectly manicured lawn, the sparkling windows, the polished door handle. Peterson had been a Marine once upon a time, and he still lived like one, with everything shipshape and all potential emergencies anticipated and prepared for. His desk at work had been the same, perfectly organized and so neat she had teased him about it.

  At the bar she’d noticed some decline in his personal grooming. He looked fine, by most people’s standards, but not his. His hair had grown out just a little and his shirt was creased. Most unlikely of all, his shoes were not shined. In the years she’d known her former partner, she’d never seen him looking so disheveled. Maybe Tori was right. Maybe Peterson was finally losing his ability to function, either because of the alcohol or some age-related decline. For all she knew, he could be dealing with Alzheimer’s.

  She peeked in Peterson’s living room window, noting the green, healthy plants and recently polished furniture. The place looked like an ad for conventional suburban living: one sofa, two side chairs, the requisite walnut coffee and side tables. Matching brass lamps adorned the side tables, and two small houseplants sat atop a brass stand in the middle of the front window. It could have been a stage set, meant to represent middle-class orderliness and propriety.

  There was a large seascape over the fireplace, whose mantel featured six framed photographs. Five of these she knew from memory: his black-and-white wedding photo, the high school graduation pictures of both of his daughters, a Marine Corps portrait of nineteen-year-old Peterson, a formal photo taken at his graduation from the police academy.

  In the center of the grouping stood the newest addition, a large framed snapshot from his retirement dinner. In it Peterson’s arm was slung over Brenda’s shoulder and a wide smile brightened his normally somber features.

  She stood staring into his front window. Even with the sun hot on her shoulders, she shivered, gripped by the need to make sense of his sudden, unexplained departure. Maybe he had the flu. Maybe it was the anniversary of his mom’s death. Maybe he had a brain tumor. Maybe he got his heart broken by some smooth-talking lady. Maybe he was, as Tori suggested, reluctant to get involved in the informal investigation she was conducting. Maybe he blamed her for Sheraton’s death and didn’t want to say so.

  She shook her head. His demeanor had been decidedly different. And it must have taken more than a few hours for his normally spit-and-polish appearance to reflect global carelessness. His decline was recent. It must have occurred within the last week, she decided. Long enough for the man to visibly neglect his personal appearance but not yet house and car—she’d noted the vehicle’s characteristic gleam.

  She wondered if he’d had a stroke and wandered home. No one answered her knocking or ringing the doorbell. She peered through the gap in the gate that led to his backyard, but there was a lock on the latch and it was engaged. She called his cell phone and left her third message. Then she called The Hole.

  “Hey, Simpson, this is Borelli.”

  “Yeah, you ever find your partner?”

  “Negative, that’s why I’m calling. Anything there?”

  “Not a whisper. Some of the guys, you know, they can’t hack retirement.”

  “Yeah.” She thought for a moment. “Is that why you bought the bar?”

  “That and taxes. Listen, if you track down the runaway, let me know?”

  “You bet. Hey, Simpson, does Captain Trimble come in a lot?”

  “Trimble? Nah, he’s a Boy Scout, remember?”

  “Yes, I do.” She pressed her lips together. “Listen, I’m not asking this to get personal. I’m worried about him just taking off like that. You mentioned Peterson keeps a tab. Does he come into your place a lot?”

  “What’s a lot?” Simpson put his hand over the receiver and spoke sharply to someone. He sighed heavily into the phone. “Shit. Gotta go. Take it easy, Borelli.”

  “You do the same.”

  She wondered why Simpson was willing to say Trimble didn’t usually come
in the bar but unwilling to say how often Peterson did. She was rarely so uncertain about what she should do. As far as she knew, her inebriated former partner had walked out of the bar’s backdoor because he was annoyed with her, too drunk to drive home and too embarrassed to admit it.

  She could report him missing and specify he was an at-risk individual, but if he’d just taken off in a fit of pique, he’d be humiliated by her filing. If she did nothing and he was lying in a gutter or creek, hoping for help, her inaction could cost him his life.

  She groaned in frustration and scanned the neighborhood as though some visual cue might guide her. All she saw were small, carefully maintained ranch homes surrounded by lovingly tended gardens and cheapened by ugly security system signs from Briarwood Watchdog.

  She could break into his house. Peterson had invested in good locks and doors, but any of the windows would provide easy access. She could get a window replaced if need be. She tapped on the front window and debated. Obviously it would be better to get into the backyard and access a smaller window in the guest bedroom, which was not an insurmountable task. She just wasn’t sure she was ready to tread on his privacy.

  He’d accepted and eventually embraced her as a partner in some measure because she was respectful of his boundaries. Now that he was retired, he seemed touchier and more in need of that respect than ever before. She wasn’t prepared to step on his dignity any more than absolutely necessary, and she wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was necessary. With some reluctance, she left Peterson’s silent, orderly house in peace.

  She drove back downtown to canvass the area around the bar. She was hoping someone had seen him. If he went to The Hole as often as she suspected he did, the local merchants probably knew him by sight if not by name. With a shrug, she fell back on the old investigative standby: pounding the pavement. Two hours of shaking hands and showing store clerks and local residents Peterson’s digital likeness on her cell phone rendered her nothing but hungry, thirsty, and tired.

  She called him yet again and left a message. “Listen, either call me back or I start breaking into your house and car to find out where you are. Unless you want broken windows and me digging around in your stuff, call me.” She lowered her voice. “Seriously, Peterson, I need to know you’re alive and well. You’re important to me. Okay?”