Tilting at Windmills (Claire Lance)

by Geonn Cannon

  The lights were all low, minimum illumination for the cleaning staff, but Thorpe's office was lit up like a Christmas tree. Mallory homed in on the glow and entered without knocking. Her boss was standing in front of the desk, sleeves rolled up and arms crossed over his chest. He looked like he hadn't been to bed yet, and his eyes were weary.

  She misinterpreted his silence. "Do not tell me Borgia got off."

  "No, it's not about any of our cases," he said softly. "Sit down."

  Mallory frowned. "What happened?"

  "Faye, please."

  She refused to be cowed. "Tell me."

  Thorpe sighed and said, "I got a call from Chicago PD. They had a homicide earlier tonight. Shit, I'm sorry, Faye. It was your sister."

  Mallory jerked back as if he had punched her in the stomach. She grabbed the back of the nearest chair and used it to keep from falling over. Thorpe moved closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Elaine?" she said. "No. What...a homicide? How could it have been a homicide?"

  "They have a suspect in custody. They found her in the apartment with your sister's body."

  Mallory turned dark eyes on Thorpe. "ÔHer'? It was Claire Lance, wasn't it? Did they take her into custody?"

  "Yes. She's..." Mallory turned and headed for the door. Thorpe followed her. "Faye, they won't let you see her!"

  Mallory ignored the elevator and went to the stairs. "The hell they won't," she muttered.

  She drove across town in a daze, ignoring traffic signals. Fortunately, the streets were mostly deserted that long before dawn. She knew where Lance worked, she had heard it from Elaine several times, and drove directly to the police headquarters. She had worked with some of Lance's fellow detectives on other cases, so she knew the layout of the building very well.

  She raced upstairs to the interrogation rooms and almost tackled a uniformed officer heading for the stairs. He grabbed her arms, using his body to block her from going any further. "Whoa. What's the rush, ma'am?"

  "Lance. Claire Lance. I want to see her now. Get out of my fucking way."

  "You're not allowed to be up here," the officer said. "Who let you—"

  She grabbed the front of his uniform blouse, spun him around, and slammed him against the wall. "I'm an FBI agent, motherfucker. I let myself in. And if you don't tell me which room Claire Lance is in, I'm going to throw you down these fucking stairs." Her face was hot, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. She knew she must look like an insane person, but she didn't care.

  Convinced her threat was not a hollow one, the officer gestured down the hall. "We put her in Room Two."

  Mallory released him and stormed down the hall. She found the room marked with a black number two and slammed the door open.

  The woman she had met at Thanksgiving was at the table, her hand cuffed to a steel rail that ran along one end. Her head was down on the table and her sobs echoed off the metal table and filled the room. Mallory rounded the edge of the table, grabbed a handful of Lance's hair, and forced her to sit up. "You fucking bitch. You look at me."

  Lance was thin, her face gaunt. Her lip was split and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. Blood stained the front of her shirt and jeans. Mallory looked into her eyes and saw the familiar, disjointed look of a junkie. "You're high?" she whispered. She moved closer and raised her voice into a shriek. "You're fucking high?" She backhanded Lance and almost knocked her out of the chair. "My sister is dead because you're a goddamn junkie!"

  She grabbed Lance by the front of her shirt and hauled her up. Lance's arm caught painfully on the cuff and the table skittered across the floor when Mallory pressed Lance against the wall. Lance was taller than her, but Mallory stood on her toes and used all her weight to pin Lance to the cold concrete. Their eyes locked and Mallory saw the bloodshot eyes of a junkie. Mallory pressed the flat of her hand against Lance's throat. She bared her teeth and sobbed, "I should kill you."

  Lance looked Mallory in the eye and whispered , "Do it."

  The cold resignation in Lance's voice was enough to make Mallory hesitate. She relaxed ever so slightly, and it was enough of a pause for someone to grab her from behind and haul her off. "What the hell do you think you're doing!" someone shouted in her ear. She was hauled outside and the door was slammed behind her. A man with thinning gray hair and a thick mustache practically threw Mallory against the wall and repeated, "What the hell do you think you're doing? This is my squad."

  "She was my sister!" Mallory shouted. "That bitch killed my sister!"

  The man softened, but not much. "I don't give a damn. We're not going to have this bust go to hell because you beat the shit out of her."

  Mallory breathed in through her nose and glared at the closed door. She tried to contain her emotions, but flashes of Elaine kept running in her mind like a film with a broken projector. She was aware that her face was wet, that she was sobbing, but she couldn't stop. "How? Why did she do it? What happened? She's a fucking cop."

  The detective sighed. "She's an undercover narcotics detective. We put her undercover with a group in the hopes she could get enough information to bring them down. She had to use drugs so they wouldn't suspect she was a cop. Apparently she got addicted. We've found evidence of long-term intravenous drug use. The EMTs said she was still high when they found her."

  "You let one of your cops become a junkie?"

  "We thought we could trust her. She dropped off the grid about two weeks ago. We thought the drug dealer we sent her after had killed her, until tonight."

  Mallory wiped at her eyes. "How did she do it?"

  "The vi—your sister was stabbed six times, and her throat was cut. We found drug paraphernalia around the apartment, but no actual drugs. The place was a mess. I think your sister was covering for Lance and, when the drugs ran out, Lance snapped. I don't think she even realized what she had done until afterwards."

  Mallory wasn't paying attention to him. She was replaying her last conversation with Elaine in her mind. "I'm worried about her, Faye. It's...I don't know. She's missing. It's not like other times. It's scary." Elaine had lied. She had known where Lance was the entire time; she was just scared to death, frightened that maybe this time Lance would hurt her. Mallory was suddenly glad she had left home so quickly; she didn't have her gun. The thin walls of the interrogation room were far too tempting a target.

  "Do not fuck this up," she said. Her voice was low, a threat and a promise underlying the words. "She goes down for this. And she goes down hard."

  "As hard as we can," the captain said.

  It took all of Mallory's willpower to push away from the wall and walk back to the stairs. She had to let the police handle it. Lance was one of their own, but surely they would do everything in their power to make sure she paid for what she had done.

  #

  Mallory was pressed tight against her seat, staring out the window at the watery landscape rushing by the window. The storm had abated ever so slightly and she could make out details of the towns they drove past. Fast food chains lit up like lighthouses in the premature darkness, the white headlights and red taillights of cars moving along the rain-dark streets made it look like the roads were decorated for Christmas. When she stopped talking, she just stared, trying to push the memories back into the box in her mind.

  Lazareva's voice was soft when she spoke again. "So what happened? Did she escape or did the police screw up?"

  Mallory turned and looked at the windshield. She didn't want to look at Lazareva. "She got out."

  "She got out?"

  "It was my fault," Mallory said. Her voice was flat, completely without emotion. "At her arraignment, her fucking shyster lawyer argued that Lance had been brutalized in custody — by cops and by inmates. He argued that she wasn't safe. He threw up her exemplary arrest record and the bastard judge gave her a low ball bail. She paid it and they let her go. Less than a week later, she skipped out. The first thing she did was kill the man the police sent her undercover to bust. She slaughtered
him in his office. He was a drug lord, so that's when we got involved. Lance ran. She's been running for ten damn months now."

  Lazareva clenched her teeth as she stared at the road. Mallory knew what she was going to say. She should have stayed away. She should have left the cops alone and let them do what they did best, then Lance would have been prosecuted and sent to jail. Probably for life. And it was all Mallory's fault that she wasn't.

  "How are you here?"

  Mallory didn't expect that question and, at first, didn't understand it. "What?"

  "How is it that the Chicago office sent you to track her down? They shouldn't have let you within a hundred miles of this case, but you're the single agent they send to track her down. Why?"

  "Because I screwed up once, and my boss knows me well enough to know that I'm not going to screw up again. This time, he knows I'll do whatever it takes to arrest Lance by the book. She jumped bail, so she won't get out on a fucking technicality. When I get my hands on her this time, she's going down for good."

  Lazareva nodded. "Sounds good to me. Let's go get the bitch."

  #

  Lance finally gave up trying to drive when the crack in the windshield began to leak water into the car. Gwen was willing to keep going, but the car was freezing and the water was starting to seep into the seat. Besides, Lance was afraid that the glass might give way. Better they were in a safe, warm motel room if and when that happened. She left the highway as soon as they reached Oklahoma City and stopped at the first motel she found. The nicest part of the building was a large neon sign with a blue moon that announced it was the Blue Motel.

  "Let's stay here," Gwen said.

  Lance pulled into the parking lot and sought out a parking space. She had already decided to stop, but she was curious. "Why here?"

  Gwen shrugged and looked down at her thighs. "It's a, it's a song by Chris Isaak. Well, his song is "Blue Hotel," but still..."

  Lance smiled as she parked the car. It was the first comment in a long while that hadn't involved Roy, Saxe, or Lance's past, and the smile took her by surprise. "You don't strike me as the rockabilly type," she said.

  "You saw the jukebox in the bar? All kinds of music played on that thing."

  And, just like that, they were back to Saxe. Lance's smile faded and she unfastened her seat belt. "I'm going to go check in. Stay here, and keep your head down in case anyone here happened to read this morning's paper. I'll be right back."

  She stepped out of the car into the pouring rain and walked around the hood. Gwen watched her go, seeing her in a new light now that she knew her story. Lance had been brutalized for almost two weeks, and then released only to discover her entire world was gone. She had breezed over the reason she wasn't in prison, saying only that it was a technicality and then she had skipped on bail. The reasons didn't matter; she was a fugitive, on the run from murder charges and believed to be a drug addict.

  Once she finished the story, Lance had stayed quiet for several miles. It was like she had never told the story at all, like a wall had gone back up — solid, impenetrable, and well-maintained. But Gwen thought that maybe she could see some tiny fractures starting to form in the wall. Maybe Lance had never wanted to reveal the story to a stranger, but even Gwen could see that telling it had done her some good.

  Lance came back to the car and knocked on Gwen's window. "I got us a room. Come on." Gwen took their bags from the backseat and climbed out of the car. Lance was hunched over to keep the rain out of her face and pointed Gwen to a room. Gwen nodded and ran, pulling the collar of her shirt up for the meager protection it might provide.

  As they ran into the room, a pick-up with Texas plates pulled into the parking lot.

  Chapter Ten

  Garth Pope's brand new truck could blow away any other vehicle in their unofficial fleet, but even it was powerless in the face of the weather. He and Kevin Keating, had gone on as hard as they could, pressing the needle against a hundred for most of the trip, but the storm had blinded him. He finally gave up and stopped at a motel outside of Oklahoma City, using a payphone to call Hadley back in Saxe to report the bad news. "There was a fucking tsunami here, Gar. I couldn't see ten feet in front of me, let alone find one particular truck. They're gone, man."

  To his benefit, Hadley took the news well. "Me and Estevez are flying up there as soon as the weather permits. We'll meet up and try and figure out a way to corral these bitches. I don't think Lance is gonna fly anywhere, not if Gwen is a hostage. They're going to stay on the roads. I think the airport is a decoy. Sit tight until I get there."

  "You're not mad at me for losin' the cops?"

  "You're not a weatherman, Garth," Hadley said. "Besides, it was a long shot you'd have been able to catch up with them anyway. You did well. Hell, better than me. I lost track of 'em before they left the fucking county. We'll see you up there. Where are you staying?"

  "The Blue Motel, off Meridian in Oklahoma City," Garth said. He had looked up the address beforehand and felt that he had finally done something right.

  "Stay there. We'll call when we're on our way."

  Garth hung up and checked the coin return for stray quarters. He came up empty, as usual, and turned to walk back to his room.

  He didn't pay much attention to the beat up Pinto coupe parked a few doors away. He just noted, as a car guy, that the damn thing was on its last legs. There were dents all over it, and a crack that looked like the St. Louis arch running across the windshield. He turned his back on the piece of junk car and went into his motel room.

  #

  Lance took the bags from Gwen and dumped them on the floor so they wouldn't soak the sheets. Gwen had only been outside for a few seconds, but she had gotten drenched. Lance was worse off, due to her jog to the manager's office and back again. The white shirt underneath her blouse was plastered against her body and her nipples stood erect against the fabric. She pushed her limp hair up and away, sticking out her bottom lip to blow air over her face.

  Her own hair hanging like a wet mop on her shoulders, Gwen hugged herself and turned away from Lance to scan the room. It was virtually indistinguishable from the room in which they had spent the previous night, just with different shades of fabric. Yellow-orange blankets instead of white, brown carpet and a painting of a wooded path that was actually pretty nice. She looked back at Lance and realized that she was stripping off her waterlogged clothes.

  Lance had unfastened her belt and her jeans were unbuttoned. She dumped her jacket over the back of a chair, then pinched her tank top between her thumb and forefinger and shook it. She looked at Gwen. "You, uh, can take the first shower."

  "Thanks," Gwen said, her concentration broken. She picked up her bag and carried it into the bathroom.

  Once the door was closed, Lance finished undressing. She draped her shirt, jeans, and panties over the radiator under the window and knelt next to her bag for a change of clothes. The problem with carrying her things in a duffel bag was that if the bag got wet, so did everything inside. She searched through the hastily folded clothing in hopes that something had been buried deep enough to stay dry. She came up with a pair of white boxer shorts and a tank top that were nowhere near warm enough for the motel room.

  Hearing the shower running, she made a decision. She stood up, opened the door without hesitation, and walked to the cabinet next to the sink. She grabbed one of the fluffy white robes and pulled it off the shelf. When she turned to leave the bathroom, she caught movement through the shower curtain out of the corner of her eye.

  Gwen was behind the curtain, her back to the room and her head bowed as she washed her hair. Lance could see the curve of her ass and the shape of her breasts through the thin material. She swallowed, averted her gaze, and left the bathroom quickly.

  In the safety of the bedroom, Lance wrapped the robe around her body and put her boxer shorts on underneath, just as another layer of protection. She unpacked her suitcase and laid the clothes around the heater to get them as dry as poss
ible before they moved on. She didn't plan to stay long, just long enough to wait out the storm and figure out what her next move was. She thought about laying out some of Gwen's clothes as well, but she had taken her suitcase into the bathroom with her. Besides, the risk of running into something skimpy or lacy was too great. After the near run-in in the bathroom, she didn't feel up to seeing that.

  Leaving her clothes to dry, Lance went to bed and stretched out on top of the blankets. In the next room, she could hear a man and woman arguing. Someone walked by outside their room and she heard him talking on the payphone at the corner of the walkway. The rain started to die down, and the shower stopped. In the silence, she heard Gwen moving around in the bathroom and she closed her eyes.

  She hadn't been with, or even wanted, another woman since Elaine. There had never been more than a twinge, which always led to pain and anguish at the thought that Elaine was gone forever. She remembered their last Thanksgiving together. She had been overworked and overtired, cramming for the detective's exam while pulling double shifts to get noticed by the higher ups in the department. Her dedication couldn't waver just because it was a holiday; she had to keep focused on the prize. But she had seen the hurt in Elaine's eyes as she left the apartment, and there was nothing she could do about it until later.

  #

  Elaine was washing dishes in the kitchen when Lance came home. Not angry, not even really irritated, just resigned. Lance dumped her jacket on the counter and embraced Elaine from behind. "I'm sorry," she said as she kissed Elaine's neck.

  Elaine leaned into the embrace. "It's okay. Are you hungry? There are some leftovers in the fridge."

  Lance stepped back and turned Elaine around. She kissed her lips softly, but passionately. Elaine looped her arms around Lance's neck and moaned into the kiss. She brought her leg up against Lance's hip and drew her in close. She hadn't truly held Elaine in far too long; almost twelve whole hours. They pressed against the counter and Lance broke the kiss. She hugged Elaine and rested her chin on Elaine's shoulder. "I missed you. I'm sorry about today."