by V. P. Trick
She had three or four stories simmering on her backburner at any given time but only started writing a book only when she had all of the storyline intricacies in her head. Not this time. For once, she was crafting this story backward. The waitress case had seemed like a good start but shouldn’t she have created the killer first? Who was it going to be? The cook? An old beau? A scorned woman (as per Dumb’s suggestion)? A serial with a diner-waitress fetishism?
Came Thursday morning, she hadn’t been in for an hour before she fell asleep on the library table, head on the tabletop, her nose pressed to the side of her laptop. She had watched movies with Reid quite late. They might have drunk a little too. Well, hum, maybe more than a little. Reid hadn’t informed her how the investigations were going, and she had not asked. Hurray, another mention of excellence for her and self-restraint!
“The Boss’s in a shitty mood,” was Reid’s only shop talk.
“He’s not the life of the party to start with.” More like the dark brooding type. Attentive, funny, hot and protective in private. Observant, controlled, controlling, sexy, and overprotective on the job. To her at least. To Reid, he was The Boss. She suspected the woman was more than a little impressed by him.
“I know, Pat, but he storms in and out of the office every day like his ass’s on fire.”
“Maybe Central’s sucking up came to an end, and now they’re dumping all they were holding back since the murder accusation?”
“It’s not in Central’s power to make MacLaren slam his phone down. He did that, and more than once yesterday. He even yelled at Charles just this afternoon.”
“Andropause? He quit smoking?” He misses me? What did the Big guy want? Really. He should have been ecstatic. First, the hackers’ case had been filed (he hadn’t talked much about those, but she could tell they had been getting to him). Second, big plus here, he didn’t have to deal with her on any of the cases anymore. She was euphoric herself. Couldn’t be better. Her life was returning to normal.
After the second film and somewhere down the second bottle of wine, Reid got down to the deep stuff.
“So Pat, girlfriend, how’s your sex life going?”
“I won’t dignify that with an answer.”
Christopher had yet to stop by since their aborted resignation festivity. Was she supposed to consider the window sex as a celebration of some sort? No way, Big guy. Christopher still owed her dinner, a dressy formal dinner in a fancy place. Could she get him to wear a tuxedo? Damn, he would look awesome in a tux. She might convince him to go commando. The Big guy was willing to do anything as long as she returned the favour. Even when she didn’t, he was more than generous. Impossible. Dangerous.
By Friday, she was in a terrible mood. Using the quiet of the library to plan her weekend, she reluctantly admitted to herself she was perhaps, maybe, a tiny smidgen tad, hum, bored. She remained overjoyed with her decision, of course. After all, in truth, she had been in and out of Christopher’s office for months. Finally, her life at the library felt sooo normal; she felt great, really. No need to dwell on the extent of said normality or lack thereof. She was good at pretending, and her resignation didn’t lessen her, ah, gift? Curse? Craziness? Abnormality? Hum.
Christopher had better not work all weekend. Maybe she should cook him a special meal tomorrow night. A Saturday night homemade diner en tête-à-tête. That foreign thought snapped her out of her daze. For sure I’m in withdrawal. Library might not be my thing. I wish something would happen. Please, someone, anyone burst it and rob the place. No way she’d cook for Christopher. She had done enough of that during the quartet disaster. She had cooked like a maniac during those excruciatingly stressful days. She was all out of cooking and expected to remain so for a while. A long while.
She didn’t cook. Christopher worked all weekend. Not that the second had anything to do with the first, the man was simply an infuriating workaholic. She did wonder what had got into him, though, and different scenarios crept into her mind. Like maybe, since she wasn’t working with the team anymore, he wasn’t as attracted to her? No, wait, she had turned him on before posing as a filing clerk, so that mustn’t be it.
Had he hired a new consultant? Not that she had been a consultant for real, more like a clerk turned research assistant. Then again, she reminded herself, he viewed outsiders to the team as unsolvable problems, so he wasn’t going to hire any consultant. Although, with the depleted quartet, the Big guy was running low on personnel.
Maybe he had hired a consultant that was both younger and sexier than her. Hum. She was not the jealous type but, after a week of library work, her mind was going crazy. She called Reid just to be sure.
Nope, no new consultant.
One possibility remained. Something was up. Christopher might not have visited all week, but he had called every day, and more than once each day. Thrice, she had invited him over, but he couldn’t make it. Was he withholding something from her?
Sunday morning, she lingered in bed alone with her thoughts. Alone and naked. She had waited in vain for the Big guy to show up the night before. Well, not waited exactly, she wasn’t the waiting type, so not waiting but hoping. A little eager, but not more than a little, she had things to do after all. Hence, hopeful but busy doing other things. Not solely hopeful, no, of course not. Surprisingly she had slept the night.
Specialists did say exercising helped with insomnia, something about the endorphins kicking in, and right they were. On Saturday night, she had gone to the gym. Busying herself during the waiting, hum, hoping thing. She could have taken a walk, but the weather had been crap. Wind and rain. She didn’t mind the rain, but it got cold, and the walking in the rain-dead girl-shivering from the cold-cop harassment episode was still too fresh hence the gym it had been.
She visited the gym on the other side of the park, to the east of the hotel. A brisk five minutes walk, and she would have been there. Instead, she had Carl call her a cab; a fifteen-minute ride later, she was at the gym. Ironic, wasn’t it? Her first time in a gym in ages, and she drove up in a taxi.
She wasn’t big on exercises. She had average upper body strength. For some reason, the team (including Frédéric) chose to differ. Not that any of them dared call her a wimp to her face. News flash, guys, not everyone power-lifts in between spoonfuls of cereals. She had average lower body strength but, thanks to her endurance and love of walking, could march for hours. She thought it quite unfair that Christopher could run an hour or more without breaking a sweat while she struggled to breathe after ten minutes of jogging. Then again, he was a guy. And a cop. Not much of a walker, though.
While Christopher had both speed and stamina when he ran, she only had the speed part intermittently, so her dreams of one day winning a race over him remained just that. Dreams. Exercising was a good stamina boost, was it not? Came Monday, she’d have plenty of energy for the library. How depressing. Moving on.
Maybe she should try binge-eating as additional motivation for the gym? She wasn’t fat. Under stress, she tended to throw up, then hunger vanished for hours after. During more relaxed days, she did gain a few pounds and grow curves of sort, but nothing remotely resembling love handles. She was rarely stress-free for long enough intervals for curves to grow and show. This week had not left her anywhere near peaceful. Bored, yes, absolutely, but not relaxed.
She tried bicycling. Not her thing, pedalling without going anywhere. She lasted a mere ten minutes. The elliptic machine wasn’t a success either, less than five minutes. A guy tried to pick her up at a bench press or weight machine or whatever those contraptions were called. Lift and lower her own weight repeatedly, now what was the point of that?
At the inner thighs machine thingy, a préposé came over to adjust the machine’s resistance and survey her body’s positioning while she sat and proceeded to open and close her legs, straining against the machine’s resistance to squeeze her thighs together. She opened and closed her legs once again, opened her legs to the leers of complete stra
ngers, all men, passing by in shorts. Saturday night at the gym might not be such a great idea after all. She did ten on the leg machine, immodesty, and quit that too.
Since she had not walked to the gym (after all, she already walked every single day of her life), she had ignored the gym’s walking machine, but now, she hopped on it as a last tentative. And why not, nothing else had worked. She walked briskly, even broke, if not a sweat but a glow. Finally, she was into that gym thing. Five minutes. Ten. Hum. She should have brought a book. Fifteen. The televisions showed a baseball game. Not her thing. Twenty.
She studied the men as they were watching the game. They did take sports seriously. The game and their muscles. They kept touching themselves, one on a biceps, one a triceps, one his butt muscle, while many fondled their groin (or so it seemed to her gym-virginal eyes). From the way a lot of guys were scratching in that area, those biker shorts weren’t comfortable. And they sure didn’t leave much to the imagination.
A rapid visual inventory revealed an even number of lefties and righties. Funny the myths that got busted at the gym. And here she had always thought men carried their penis according to their dominant hand, to the right for right-handed men, to the left for left-handers. Logical. Boy, the things a girl learned at the gym. Although, statistically speaking, half the gym’s male population could not be left-handed.
She inwardly smirked as she thought of the Big guy. Christopher was right-handed; he packed his gun in a holster strapped to his left side, but frankly, she had not paid attention to which side he carried his cock. It stood erect often enough in her presence; surely she should be able to recall the side his pants bulged on such occasions. Nope. She lost her rhythm and tripped on the belt. She might have been gasping a little heavily too, and not from the walking. The guy next to her stopped running to lean and wink at her. Back off, Lefty. Time to leave. After a cab ride back home and a long shower, she flung herself into bed. Naked, just in case. She slept like a log.
Sunday morning, warm and comfy under the covers, she reflected on the previous days on concluded something was up. Maybe Christopher didn’t believe her; maybe he thought she wasn’t going to do it, that she wasn’t capable of doing it, that she was unable of staying out. The nerve of him! What, did he think if she saw him, she was going to break and ask about the cases? She thus justified why he had worked all week: the Big guy did not want to have to tell her off.
She said she’d quit, and she had stayed out all week, damn him! The man clearly had no confidence in her. She spent her Sunday angry at him for his lack of trust, and a little excited by her week alone and her trip to the gym. Well, perhaps she was more aroused than merely excited, but certainly not hot enough to be distracted from her anger. Bien sûr que non.
The day stretched on forever. Not much left in her closets, nothing left to reorganise in any case.
She called Reid. “Doing anything interesting today? Want me to come over and help you organise your closets?”
The closet cleaning didn’t help much since all they did was clean, try on clothes, eat, drink and talk about men. They only spoke of men in general because Patricia never talked about the specifics of men or Christopher. To put her feelings into words, to express them out loud was too risky. Thus, denial was the way to go.
Over the course of the day, she tried calling Christopher at his place. No answer, but he’d need to sleep at some point, and she proposed to go over and wait him out. She could have called him on his mobile; he always answered that phone, but she didn’t want him over. Yes, she wanted to settle his doubts in person, but she also wanted the possibility to leave if need be.
She returned to her hotel around eight, took a shower and got all pretty: soft hair, makeup, buttoned-up dress easy to take off, small white panties. Tiny. To confront him, she told herself, and to convince him of her resignation. She was angry and aroused. At ten, she took a cab over.
He answered the door, jacket and holster on. “Hi, Princess, nice surprise. I just walked in.”
“Work?”
“What else?”
He looked drained, but she didn’t have time to enquire about his health or pursue the conversation. He hauled her to him by her coat belt, kissed her hard, tongue demanding and hands all over. He smelled of smoke and stale beer. She circled his neck with her arms and pressed herself tighter. He moved his kissing from her mouth to her neck to her breasts and back while one of her hands dropped to his crotch. Lefty, tonight at least. For a more accurate survey, she intended to check again, repeatedly, in the near future. She hid her smile in his chest.
Chris, Teamwork and Other Things
Of course, he doubted her resolution. How could he not? He knew her well. How perseverant she was, how fucking determined. He was amazed she had lasted so far. Seven days, seven long days of it. Sheer stubbornness there again. He had no problem with her thinking he was avoiding her, anything to keep her away for his cases.
Lemieux’s case wasn’t going anywhere. He had spent the week pushing the case, breathing down Ham’s neck, going to crummy bars, shitholes, hookers’ corners. Nothing. It was like the guy had never existed. But for his body, maybe he hadn’t. Chris couldn’t put his finger on it. On him. Something was off, and until he figured it out, he wanted Patricia to stay away. Nothing new.
The other cases were coming along, the team hard at work. They might even make some arrests this week, yet Chris wasn’t satisfied. They had nothing on the important cases. The hackers’ case was bothersome, Lemieux haunted him, and the dead waitress annoyed him. That case wouldn’t have been his if it hadn’t been for her. Not that she’d asked, plain and simple overreaction on his part. He put Shapiro in charge of that one; the guy was well practised in dealing with locals.
Shapiro searched for killings with similar MO, but, except for Patricia’s cold case, he found none. Even though serial killers didn’t wait years, Chris had Shapiro compare the two: colleagues, neighbours, customers even if he could track any. Nothing yet.
So here he was, back in his office early Monday morning. He had awakened early, even for him. Four-thirty. Then again, he had gone to bed fucking early the night before. Ten fifteen. Ten minutes after Patricia had showed up at his door. That dress had slid off so easily. Fucking fast too, even though she had tried to delay the inevitable.
“I came over to talk, Big guy.”
Right, Pussycat. “Should have thought of that before putting your hand on my dick, Angel.”
“Cute. I was simply doing research. Anyway. It’s important I clarify something before this goes further.” He often teased she shouldn’t start something she didn’t intend to finish. This, they were going to finish. Together. You can clarify all you want, Princess, no fucking way am I stopping now. “Why don’t you trust me to stay out? Not once since quitting have I so much as ask about a case. I’m done with police work, and I intend to stay finished,” she said, whispered by that time. Moaned.
He smiled without arguing. A day she was off was a day she was safe. Besides, at that point, he was too busy sucking her left nipple to waste time arguing. The clarification pretty much stopped after that, and they finished what they had both started.
She fell asleep right after, her body on top of his. Nice. He had woke early this morning and had watched her sleep for a while. She looked exquisite and peaceful. She smiled in her sleep. Pleasant dreams, Angel of mine? Am I part of them?
He made French toasts for her to reheat when she got up. Corny how he liked cooking breakfast for her; she was so hungry in the morning. So fucking sexy. He left before waking her up got too tempting.
The Monday review meeting occurred without her. Fredrick was even less attentive than his usual inattentive self. He needed to have a serious conversation with the kid, and soon. Our relationship is making my life complicated as hell, Darling of mine. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, though. Hell was never boring and felt like heaven with her. It had last night.
The guys left after lunch. He did
the meetings-with-Central shit, the return-phone-call hassle, the I-need-a favour-or-information-so-let’s-trade annoyance. Chris liked the streets, interrogating suspects, collecting the clues, making sense out of the bits and pieces that made a case. But be it men or women he disliked the things, smooching and shit that came with the job.
Monday night, Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday night, Wednesday morning he left her messages. She returned his call on his answering machine at home but made no direct call to his mobile phone. The damn woman knew he would take her call anytime, anywhere, even on his deadly urgent number just to say hi, but did she call? Fuck no, she preferred to leave messages on his home answering machine.
It couldn’t have been clearer if she had spelled it out for him. “I want to be sure you won’t answer my call, Big guy, because I don’t wish to talk to you.” Childish. “You don’t believe I resigned for real.”
Damn right he didn’t. Ten days already, fucking impressive. This mess was his fault to beginning with, he should never have let her in the team in the first place for he knew too fucking well how her curiosity often got the better of her. Not this time, though. Not yet at least. She had not asked anyone anything relating to any of the cases; he had checked with the team. Maybe she meant it this time? Chris shook his head to himself. No fucking way.
At the first hint of action on Lemieux’s front or the diner’s front, she was going to break and ask him to take her back. Beg him. Her begging he liked. Immensely. Although, he’d prefer not solving either case to her begging. That his girlfriend remained permanently resign and spent her days at the library topped his list of fantasies. Way above begging. Fucking right. And while he was dreaming, after her library days, she could wait for him at his place. Damn perfect. And she said he had no fucking imagination. He grinned and got back to the hassles and shit.