by Frank Zafiro
As I was zipping up, the sound of a car filled the night air. I thought it might be someone coming up King Pigeon Lane, but when I spotted the headlights, the direction was wrong. The car came rumbling down the neighbor’s driveway on the other side of the cul-de-sac.
I squatted back down to wait some more.
Then the headlights swung left and lit up the Brassart driveway.
I reacted without thinking, scrambling behind the tree, even though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t see me. Carefully, I peered around the edge of the tree as the car rolled up the driveway. It stopped just before the concrete slab in front of the garage and stood idling. Then I heard the motor of the garage door engage. A few moments later, the car pulled forward and out of sight. I caught a sliver of silver as it did, and the unmistakable Mercedes emblem. I didn’t have to see the license plate to know it would read GETSUM2.
“Hello, neighbor,” I whispered. “Can I borrow some sugar?”
I didn’t need to keep watching to know what was going to happen next. But I waited anyway. A pair of shadows moved past one of the windows. Ten minutes later, two of the lights snapped off.
I rose to my feet. My knee let out a sharp twinge of pain, and I grimaced. Gingerly, I took a couple of steps. The knee hurt, but it worked, so I limped my way through the woods until I was even with the cul-de-sac. I went just a little further, then hooked left and into the wooded area on the other side of King Pigeon Lane. Once I made it far enough to be past where Cole and his team were hiding, I stepped back out onto the street and headed back toward my car.
As I walked, I kicked around what I’d learned. Marie Brassart was having an affair with the neighbor. If the cops knew that, did they suspect he’d been part of the murder? They’d have to be idiots not to. And while I thought Cole was macho and aggressive, he wasn’t stupid. Probably. More importantly, Richie Matsuda struck me as intelligent, if a little inflexible. They had to suspect the neighbor of colluding with Marie.
Could he have driven Marie’s Lexus and done the deed? Or his Mercedes?
There was no way to know, but the idea seemed worth considering.
I shook my head at their stupidity. Didn’t it occur to them that the cops might be watching the house? They should have waited until after her trial ended to resume the affair. Of course, if she were found guilty, they’d have to resume it through a thick glass partition, so maybe this little tryst made some kind of warped sense.
At least my next move was clear. I needed to find out everything I could about the neighbor. Who he was, where he worked, how long he’d lived on King Pigeon—
I stopped.
At the end of King Pigeon Lane sat a blue Taurus. The scrape on the driver’s front quarter panel screamed out at me.
25
I froze for a second, then stepped off the road and into the nearby brush. The car was darked out and the engine wasn’t running. The moon overhead and the street light in the distance cast just enough light on it for me to be sure it was the same car that had almost rear-ended me outside the Steer Inn.
As I stared at it, I tried to make out shapes in the front seat, especially the driver’s side. It didn’t take long to figure out that no one was in the car. Or if someone was, he’d ducked down.
Behind me, I heard the unmistakable sound of snapping twigs and shuffling feet. The cops were coming out of their eagle’s nest. I needed to get the hell out of there.
I stepped back up onto the road and took off running. My knee exploded in pain with each step. I’m sure my gait was more of a stumbling lurch than a run, but I still covered ground. As I passed the blue Taurus, I half-expected a door to shoot out and knock me off my feet.
Nothing happened.
I hazarded a quick glance inside as I passed.
The car was empty.
I turned the corner and left King Pigeon Lane, continuing to shamble along until I reached the next street over and found my car. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath and slide the key into the door, but after that, I fired up the Toyota and drove out of Namaste Estates as quickly as I could without looking like I was running rum out of the North Carolina backwoods.
26
By the time I pulled up in front of my apartment, I was calm again.
Then my cell phone rang, which made me jump.
“Jesus,” I muttered. Maybe I was getting too emotionally fragile for this kind of work. I peered down at the phone number but didn’t recognize it. A thought struck me. What if it was Cole? Or Matsuda? Maybe they’d seen my car leaving the area.
That didn’t make sense. If they wanted to pick me up, there would have been be a patrol car waiting for me at my apartment.
I glanced up and around the street. No cops.
My phone buzzed again.
Oddly, I wondered if it was Marie Brassart. Maybe she wanted to talk with me again now that she was out. But that didn’t jibe, either. She was likely still experiencing post-coital bliss with Mr. Neighbor at her side.
Another buzz.
Only one way to know, I thought. So I did what people do when the phone rings. I answered it.
“Hello?”
It was quiet for a second. Then a female voice asked, “Stefan Kopriva?”
“Speaking. Who’s this?”
“It’s Anna Lee.”
Now it was my turn to be quiet. She actually called me back?
“Are you there?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah. What’s up?”
“I’m returning your call.” Her voice was impassive, hard to read. “Actually, I’m answering your question.”
“My question?”
“You asked if you could buy me a cup of coffee sometime. My answer is yes.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I sputtered out, “Now?”
She was unfazed. “That’s what I was thinking. Unless you’re busy.”
“No, no,” I said. “Now is good. Where?”
“You know Jenny’s Café?”
I smiled. “I do.”
“How about in an hour?”
“Sounds good.”
“Okay,” she said. “See you there.”
She hung up before I could say goodbye.
27
After a quick shower and a change of clothes, I threw on my leather jacket and headed over to Jenny’s Café. Despite getting there ten minutes early, I was still the second to arrive. Officer Lee was already ensconced in a corner booth, her back to the wall.
I sat down opposite her. “Hey,” I said, and cringed. Brilliant conversationalist.
The waitress seemed to appear at the table out of thin air, rescuing me from further banality.
“Coffee,” I told her.
I noticed Officer Lee—
Anna. Her name is Anna.
—already had a cup in front of her.
When the waitress departed, I met Anna’s gaze and smiled. “Coffee at eight-thirty at night?”
She shrugged. “I work graveyard. It’s morning for me.”
“I remember those days,” I said. Back when I was a cop, too, I thought, but didn’t add. Still, the inference was there, and a slightly awkward silence followed.
“I’m glad you called me back,” I finally ventured.
Her face remained impassive. “You sounded surprised.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
“You almost arrested me, for one.”
The waitress returned with a coffee pot, filling my cup and topping off Anna’s. We maintained radio silence while she was there. As she walked away, I continued. “You didn’t exactly see me at my best.”
“That’s the job,” Anna said. “Especially on graveyard. You see the worst people. Or good people at their worst.”
“Which one was I?”
A hint of amusement played in her expression. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? What does that tell you?”
I took a sip of my coffee and thought about it. “I’ll be honest. I’m not sure.”
“Then maybe you’re not as smart as you seem.”
I laughed at that. “Smart? I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow. “So you’re stupid, then?”
“No. I’m probably somewhere in between. The ‘S’ word that describes me best is probably stubborn.”
She considered that, nodding slowly. “It fits. But stubborn can be a vice as much as a virtue.”
“It does seem to work out as one or the other, depending.”
“Such things do. Well, then, what about me? Which ‘S’ word describes me best?”
I thought about it. A couple of words occurred to me, but none that completely fit. Finally, I shrugged. “I think your word is an ‘M’ word.”
She took a sip and motioned for me to continue.
“Mysterious,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, drawing out the sound. “The mysterious Asian woman. Quite the cliché.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You could have stayed with ‘S’, though. As in ‘shadowy.’ Or ‘secretive.’”
“I considered both. They don’t fit.”
“But ‘mysterious’ does? How?”
I took a deep breath. Then a thought struck me, and I smiled again.
“What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just seems like an awful philosophical start to a first date, is all.”
“This isn’t a date,” she said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s coffee.”
I nodded. “Good enough.”
I took another drink of the coffee, and savored the robust flavor. Then I spread out my hands in front of me. “Cards on the table, okay?”
She watched me, saying nothing. But I saw an almost imperceptible nod, so I continued.
“I called you because I liked you,” I said. “Simple as that. I like the way you handle yourself, and I like your no bullshit approach to things. And I think you’re pretty. I don’t know what I expected when I called, but I hoped we’d at least have coffee so I could get to know you better.” I paused, then added, “And that’s as straight as I can tell it.”
She started to answer but I held up my hand to stop her. She gave me a curious look, but held her silence.
“The reason I said you were mysterious doesn’t have anything to do with your ethnicity. You’re mysterious because even though I’ve known a lot of cops, I’ve never met one like you. You’re mysterious because you’re here having coffee with me even though there’s no way you don’t know that I was on the job once. And that means you know what happened.” I hesitated, then amended, “What I did. And why I’m not a cop anymore.”
She waited, watching me.
I took a deep breath and pushed on. “If you know all of that, it only follows that you know what’s happened since I left the job. My run-ins with the department, and how those events probably looked to most people.”
I leaned forward a little, locking her gaze with my own. “So if you know all of those things, you have to admit it’s a little mysterious that you’re still sitting here, drinking coffee with me, don’t you think?”
She sat for a few moments, staring back at me with flat eyes. I tried to read something in those eyes, but they were inscrutable, betraying nothing.
The silence went on long enough for the waitress to come back around and top off our cups, again. Neither of us acknowledged her. A large part of me fully expected Anna to tell me I was right, and stand up and leave.
Finally, she moved her hands in the same open hand gesture I made earlier. “Cards on the table?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
She took a sip of her fresh coffee, and put down the cup. “Let’s be clear. I know who you are. I know about Amy Dugger. Everyone does.”
I cringed slightly, but she took no notice.
“But I didn’t know you were the officer involved until after we met, and I did some checking. So yes, I know about your misdemeanor conviction. I read the report on that case, and the one Detective Browning investigated involving the suicide on the South Hill. I Googled your name, too. I’m thorough, and I did my research.”
“But you’re sitting here.”
She nodded.
I spread open my hands. “Mysterious, see?”
“Not really, if you knew me.”
“I’m trying to.”
“Then here’s the horsepower,” she said.
I smiled slightly at her use of cop slang.
“I’m half Chinese,” she told me. “My father’s side. My mother was half Japanese and half black.”
I peered more closely at her, examining her features. I tried to find the different ethnicities there, but what I saw most was an attractive blend.
“Try to fit in with that mix,” she said. “The Chinese and Japanese have hated each other for centuries, and both of them look down on anything African as sub-human. I grew up in San Francisco, which is supposed to a bastion of peace, love, and understanding. It didn’t work out that way for me. If I was around Chinese, they saw my mother’s side. Same with Japanese, same with African Americans. Everybody saw what was different.”
She paused to take another sip of coffee, then continued.
“When we moved up here, it was no better. Almost everyone up here is white, and I gave them three different options to be prejudiced against.”
I felt a pang of shame, but I knew she was right. In some quarters, River City could just as easily be called Racist City.
“If you go through all of that as a kid, a couple of things happen. You get pretty good at not taking crap off of anyone, and you get pretty comfortable being alone. Both of those talents stuck with me into adulthood, and onto the job.” She cocked her eyebrow at me again. “Does that take away some of the mystery?”
“Some,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re sitting here.”
“Maybe I like you.”
“I hope you do. But it doesn’t explain—”
She interrupted. “Everything doesn’t have to be explained on a first date, does it?”
I stopped. “No, I guess not.”
“Good.”
“But this is just coffee. Isn’t it?”
She smiled, just a little, for the first time. It lit up her eyes in a way that made me smile involuntarily in response. “Cards on the table?”
“Yes,” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s keep that part mysterious for now.”
I was okay with that.
28
We sat and drank a few more cups of coffee, and talked. The conversation lightened, and we seemed to reach an unspoken agreement to let it be that way, at least for a little while. We stayed away from the topic of law enforcement for most of an hour. Instead, we touched on family. She told me about growing up in San Francisco. I told her about being raised by my grandmother.
“Your parents passed away?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not exactly. My mom took off when I was still a baby. Dad and I moved in with my grandmother. She pretty much raised me.”
“What about your Dad?”
“He was a drunk, and a gambler. I think I was around twelve years old the last time I saw him.”
“He left, too?” She seemed surprised.
“Yeah. Imagine my abandonment issues.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I pointed at my leather bomber jacket. “He left behind this. Makes me look like Indiana Jones, don’t you think?”
She didn’t smile.
I shrugged. “Okay, maybe not. But honestly, being raised by my grandmother was the best thing that could have happened to me. She was a smart woman, and kind. But there was no bullshit about her. And she was wise.”
“Wise, huh?”
I nodded. “She had a saying for everything. Sometimes she’d say them in Czech first, then
translate into English for me. But either way, they were always bang on.”
“She sounds great.”
“She was.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. She passed away about six months after I graduated from the academy.” I smiled, bittersweet. “She got to see me in uniform, at least.”
“I’m sure she was proud.”
I nodded again. “She was. And then she was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
I nodded my thanks, and took a drink of coffee.
“My mother was proud of me when I graduated,” Anna said.
“What about your father?”
“I think so. But he would never show it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, half serious.
She glanced up sharply, but saw that I was partially joking. She shrugged. “He wanted a son. And when that didn’t happen, he wanted me to at least follow him into the business.”
“Which is?”
“He’s a tailor.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life making the same clothing over and over again.”
We fell silent. After a while, we kicked around a few benign subjects for a bit. But the conversation lagged, and I could tell it was a good time to end things. When the waitress came by again, I covered my cup and asked for the check. It came to a whopping three dollars. I laid a five on the table.
“I’d like to see you again,” I said.
“For coffee? Or a date?”
“Either,” I answered.
She smiled again. “Let’s stick with coffee. Take it slow.”
“Sounds good to me.”
We rose and walked out together. At the doorway, we said goodbye without a handshake, without a hug, without a kiss, and walked to our separate cars. I started my engine and sat in my driver’s seat, watching her back out of the parking space. As she nudged the car forward, she gave me a small wave before pulling onto the street.
I waved back.
29
All the coffee I drank with Anna kept me up until after two a.m., but that gave me a chance to think. At first, most of my thoughts were about her, and how I’d just had the weirdest possible first date—