by Rex Burns
“Take it easy, Max.”
“Good night, Gabe.”
“Did Tom get down to Walsenburg to see his sons?” Jo sipped a glass of white wine with her seafood; she had already put in her eight hours and was unwinding.
Wager, going on duty, washed his supper down with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know. I talked to him a couple of weeks ago, but not since.”
It was difficult to meet Jo; she was on a day schedule and getting ready for work while he slept behind the tightly drawn shades of his apartment. But they managed an occasional dinner in the two hours between their shifts. Now they sat at a corner table in a restaurant crowded with young office workers meeting friends for drinks or an early dinner while the afternoon rush hour passed them by.
“That was a good weekend.” She smiled in that quiet, almost secret way that had become a sort of code between them.
It had indeed been a good weekend, and Wager answered her smile, admiring her slightly high cheekbones and the way they tilted the corners of her eyes to match that gentle smile. “Maybe we should do it again.”
“Too bad you have to go to work tonight. We could reminisce.”
That would be good, too. “I’ve been thinking of taking a vacation.”
“You what? What was that word?”
He knew she’d give him some heat. “You heard me. If I don’t take the time, I’ll lose it. That’s what you told me.”
“Hey, that’s not my fault. It’s department policy.”
“Right, well, I’ve been thinking about it.” And Chief Doyle had left a memo on his desk reminding him that he had ninety days in which to apply for his vacation and compensatory time. After that date he would receive the gratitude of Denver’s citizenry for his contribution and start again from zero. “How much time do you have coming?”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Well, sure. Do you think I’d go on one of those damned things alone?”
“Since it’s the first I’ve heard of it, I don’t know what to think.”
“Look, you’ve been yelling about a vacation. I assumed it was because you wanted to take yours with me. Wasn’t it?”
“I have not been yelling!”
“You sound like you want to now.”
“You’re damned right I do.” Her fork stabbed a shrimp curled in the rice. “And with good reason.”
“What are you getting mad at? It’s what you wanted—a vacation. Now all of a sudden you don’t want to go?”
“Look, Wager, in the first place, I did not yell at you about a vacation. If you want to take one, fine. If not, that’s fine too. It’s your decision. In the second place, you’re taking it for granted that I plan my life around yours. I don’t. I earn my own money, I pay my own way, I’ve got my own life. If you want me to do something with you, you can ask me. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t—but that’ll be my decision to make. Not yours. I used to let a man tell me what to do, and I’m not about to start that again.”
“I’m not trying to tell you what to do. We talked about this earlier, and I thought it was something you wanted. So I assumed—and with good reason—that you wanted to go on a vacation with me. Now what—you want me to send you a written invitation?”
“Yes, I want an invitation. That’s a lot better than being dragged along without being asked. But mostly I want you to take this vacation for your own sake. If you want it, take it. If not, don’t take it for my sake—I don’t want to be blamed for it.”
“Is that what you think? That the vacation’s some kind of sacrifice?”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’ve been feeling? That’s what it sounds like.” She mimicked him: ‘“If I don’t take the time I’ll lose it—that’s what you told me.’ ‘You’ve been yelling about a vacation.’”
He considered that. “Well, a little, maybe. I wouldn’t have wanted a vacation at all if you hadn’t said something. But here’s what you haven’t thought about, Officer know-it-all Fabrizio: we had a good weekend. I really enjoyed being up in the mountains with you. And I’d like to do more of it. So I wanted to take our vacations together. And I thought that was what you wanted. Now is it or isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then what the hell is all this fuss about?”
Jo sighed and closed her eyes a moment. “It’s about style, Gabe. Yours. Sometimes it’s like you have blinders on. You’re going to get from point A to point B no matter what it costs you or anyone else, and to hell with anything or anybody who gets in your way.”
He believed he understood what she was saying, but it didn’t sound all that bad to him. “Anybody who’s not stubborn better not be a cop. I’m a cop.”
“That phrase covers a multitude of sins.”
“Gargan said that once.”
“The reporter?”
“Yeah. Only he was talking about police shakedowns and payoffs. A very funny guy.”
“Well, I’m talking about us. Sometimes I think we excuse things in ourselves by saying ‘I’m a cop,’ as if that explained it all.”
This time he didn’t understand. “What things?”
“A hardness, maybe. A cynicism. An aggressiveness. And an increasing isolation from the very thing we swear to serve and protect.”
A cop could afford to talk that way if all she dealt with was records. But it was different on the street. There, a cop who was seen as soft caused more trouble than he prevented because people would try to get away with more. You didn’t have to go out and beat on skulls twice a day; but unless it was clear you were willing to, there was no respect from the street. And the street never gave anybody anything for free. “My style with you is too cynical and aggressive? Is that what you’re telling me?”
The glint of humor in those golden eyes. “There is some of that, Officer Wager; there certainly is.” Then the humor went away. “But what I think I mean is how easily we can cut each other off. Both of us. We have our jobs and so we don’t really need each other—or anyone else. When you think about it, that’s a little frightening. It’s like our world is distant from everyone else’s, and within that world, we’re each distant from the other.”
Yes. As Wager had learned from age sixteen on, every man died alone. When you accepted that fact, a lot of others followed, including the knowledge that every man lived alone, too. And that was something else Lorraine had not been able to stand. “You want to walk a beat holding hands?”
“Now you’re really trying to be cynical—and dense. You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is this, Jo: a man who puts on that uniform better not count on anybody to help him who’s not in uniform. And a lot of times, you can’t count on them, either. You’d better believe you’re out there alone. You start believing you’re not … well, that’s when you get in trouble.”
“I know that, Gabe. But that’s the street, and this isn’t. It’s the carrying over of that attitude into our feelings for each other that’s frightening. Two minutes ago you could easily have told me to go to hell and walked out, and I wouldn’t have said a thing to stop you. Just like,” she added, “the other night. For no reason we argued and then we split and it could have stayed that way. I didn’t want it, but I was willing to let it happen.”
“I didn’t want it either. I called you up later, didn’t I?”
She laughed. “And gave me an ultimatum: beer or fear. I really like you, Gabe. I have fun with you—when you let yourself have fun—and you’re good to sleep with. No, don’t start acting nervous and tough; I’m not looking for a husband. I don’t even want to use the word ‘love.’ But I like you very much, and I wouldn’t want to be without you. Yet these moments come when I could shrug you off, and that’s what frightens me—I wonder if I’m becoming an isolated function instead of a person.”
“And you think that’s what’s happened to me?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
Maybe it had. God knew that sounded like what Lorraine
used to say in one way or another, that Wager was a cop and nothing else—and she wanted something more. “You know, one of the reasons I don’t like vacations is that when I get back, my timing’s off. It takes a couple tours to feel like I fit in again—to be able to see things with my skin as well as my eyes. What I’m trying to say is, yes, I do feel like a function, and it doesn’t bother me. What the hell, it’s what I’m paid for; it’s who I am. What I am is who I am. And when I function well, I feel good. Everything else comes second.”
“Everything?”
He nodded, not really wanting to say the word, but not willing to lie, either. “Yes.”
“We’re a lot worse off than I thought.”
“So we enjoy what we’ve got while we’ve got it.”
It was her turn to nod as she stared at the unfinished plate on the red-and-white cloth. Then, with a shrug, she glanced at her watch. “It’s almost seven. You’ll be late.”
“Right.” Wager signaled for the check, trying to hide the relief he felt at seeing an end to this conversation, one that forced him to poke into areas of self that he preferred to leave sleeping.
In the parking lot, Wager held open the door to his Trans-Am for Jo. She hesitated before sliding in. “Are you sure you want to spend this vacation together? Are you sure it might not commit you to more than you’re ready for?”
A touch of bitterness in that? Wager almost said he felt safe enough, but that sounded harsher than he meant. “We’ll see what happens,” he said. “You might decide you don’t want a damn thing to do with me.”
“I might.”
The first person Wager saw in the echoing lobby of District One headquarters was Police Reporter Gargan. Wager pretended to be interested in a spot on the wall back by the elevators, but there weren’t many places to hide as he crossed the expanse of brown tile floor, and Gargan called to him, trotting over from the desk sergeant’s counter, a jingle of keys and coins in his pockets.
“Wager—wait a minute. I got some questions for you.”
“I’ve got to be on duty in five minutes, Gargan.”
“Won’t take that long.”
There was something different about the reporter, and it took Wager a couple of seconds to figure it out: no black turtleneck. Because of the heat, he had traded his usual uniform for a short-sleeved shirt open at the neck and bristling at the pocket with an array of ballpoint pens. It left him looking thinner and oddly nude and vulnerable, like seeing your father in his underwear.
“Remember the stabbing the other night? The Indian who got stabbed?”
“I do.”
“What can you tell me about his assailant? Was he an Indian too?”
“That’s what a witness said.”
“Molly White Horse, right? And these two brought a feud down from the reservation, right?”
“I can’t comment on that, Gargan. It’s an ongoing case.”
“Hey, I swear I’m not going to use any names. In fact, this isn’t even a police story—my editor wants me to do a special on Native Americans in Denver. You know: what’s happening to them, how they survive, how they don’t. The sad passing of the old wild west. It’s a big story.”
Wager didn’t give a damn what kind of story Gargan was working on; they had stepped on each other’s toes too often in the past to kiss and make up now. “Talk to Chief Doyle in the morning.”
“I got a deadline, Wager. And it’s a bitch getting in to see Doyle!”
“A reporter’s lot, Gargan, is not a happy one.”
“Jesus H. Christ, a literary allusion from the world’s only surviving Neanderthal. Thanks a lot, Wager. Maybe I can do you a favor sometime.”
The new administration had put out a memo reminding officers of the importance of good public relations, so Wager smiled and said thank you. The elevator closed on what sounded like a nasty word.
Max was already at his desk and shuffling papers when Wager turned in from the hallway that led to the homicide section of Crimes Against Persons. So far this year, each officer had twelve or thirteen folders in the open file to add to or check on or to just stare at and wonder when something else might turn up, something that could provide the legal evidence to nail a known killer or the clue that would point to an unknown one. Some of the files, usually the fattest, had been in the drawer for years, gradually gaining this or that slip of paper, occasionally reassigned from one detective to another as men transferred in and out of the unit. But they were never closed. The statute of limitations on homicides was forever, and these first couple of hours, particularly on the night shift, were usually spent consolidating the letters, reports, and memos that had arrived since the last tour of duty. The detectives placed the new information in the right folder, always with the vague hope that it might click something together; then they made telephone calls to those who had left home phone numbers, or to those other offices open, like this one, every day and every night.
At his desk, Axton yawned, the gap of his mouth half as large as Wager’s head, and rubbed his thumbs into bloodshot eyes.
“You’re off to a good start,” said Wager.
“It’s the Maestas case. I was in court all day.”
“I thought that finished last month.”
“Continuance—psychological evaluation. Now we’re back in session and I’m still the advisory witness.”
It wasn’t unusual for the night shift to be up twenty-four hours; a lot of things couldn’t get taken care of during their official work period when everyone else was asleep. But none of the extra chores was as wearing as sitting in a hot courtroom on a wooden bench and listening to lawyers. “It goes with the territory.”
“Don’t it, though.”
They settled back into the stack of envelopes, routing sheets, and interoffice mailers. On the gray filing cabinet, the radio in its charging unit gave its familiar crackle of the night police business in District Two, one of the most active of the city’s four districts. Occasionally a tone alert broke into Wager’s concentration and he half-listened to the all-channels broadcast. So far they had been for ambulances or fire equipment; as yet no voice had called for Union 6, the designation that had been shifted from Rape to Homicide. The new administration reasoned that victims of sexual assault might be further offended by hearing an officer use “Union 69” to call Detective Nine from the rape team. It was one of those nice touches of public sensitivity that came from new blood in high administrative levels, and that brought a slight smile to Wager’s cheek.
“I’ll be damned.”
Wager looked up at Max, who was reading through the thick packet of an autopsy report.
“You know what Sam Walking Tall died of?”
“Three and a half inches of steel,” said Wager.
“That wasn’t the immediate cause of death.”
“What was?”
“He drowned.”
“He what?”
“The beer. The guy drowned in beer. Molly White Horse poured the beer over him and it went through the hole in his chest into his lungs. He drowned.”
Wager pushed back against the creak of his desk chair. “What the hell? We don’t have a murder charge on Robert Smith?”
“He didn’t murder him. Assault One, maybe. But the public defender’s office will probably go for Assault Two as a misdemeanor—the bartender said Sam and Robert had been picking at each other all night, so they’ll try to show provocation.”
For which the maximum sentence could be two years and a five-thousand-dollar fine. But Robert wouldn’t get that much. With time off for good behavior, he might serve six months in county jail. Moreover, the search for him would lose its intensity with other law enforcement agencies—you kept your eyes open for a murderer, but there were so many assault suspects that it became a matter of luck to catch one. And there was something else: “So now we have to pop Molly for killing him?”
“We can suggest a finding of accidental death.”
“Sure we can. A guy gets
stabbed in the chest, dies outside a bar in front of witnesses, and the DA calls it an accident. I can see what Gargan and some of those other assholes will put in the paper. There goes the policy of improving press relations.” Wager’s guess was that the prosecutor would charge Molly with negligent homicide, which was also a class one misdemeanor; but she could end up serving more time than Robert Smith, who had started all this crap.
“Well, the medical fact is that he drowned—old Robert got lucky and Molly didn’t. Sam didn’t have much luck either, come to think of it.” Max yawned again. “But it’s up to the DA to sort out now.” He scribbled a note and clipped it to the file. “It looks like we just solved another homicide, partner, and Assault just got another case.”
Wager should not have been surprised—he’d seen a lot of strange things happen in the continuing attempts to place the flow and chaos of human passions into the rigid boxes of legal definition and punishment. Criminally negligent homicide—the section that would apply to Molly—was defined by the Criminal Code simply as “conduct amounting to criminal negligence,” and that gave the DA a lot of room to act. But it, too, was a box; it excluded Molly’s drunken love for Sam, her intention to wake him up rather than drown the poor bastard, her total ignorance that she had been the one to kill him. All of that could be heard as mitigation for sentencing, but it didn’t fit into the box of guilty or not guilty. She had done it, and they had her statement—which would have to be taken again after reading her the Miranda Warning—and the DA’s policy was to lay the heaviest charge on perpetrators. “I guess we have to pick her up.”