Nocturnal

Amy Zou’s Tea Time

Chief Amy Zou took a sip of tea. The tiny porcelain Miss Piggy cup held only imaginary tea, of course, but nothing could taste sweeter.

“Hmmm,” she said. “This is very good. Which one of you made this?”

Her twin girls giggled.

“We both made it, Mom,” they said in unison. It spooked the hell out of Amy when they did that.

She sat in a little pink chair at a little pink table. Her daughter Mur sat on her left, her daughter Tabz on her right, and her husband, Jack, in front of her. He also sipped at a tiny teacup, his pinkie properly extended, a pink flower hat pinned to his thinning blond hair. The girls wanted him to wear it, so wear it he did.

“Mmmmm,” Jack said. “I do believe this is possum guts tea? Tastes delightfully rotted and smells divinely stinky.”

The girls giggled. They looked adorable in their little party dresses.

Amy felt at peace. Almost at peace; she didn’t get many moments like this, and even when she did an internal voice taunted her, said these days are almost gone and you’ve pissed most of them away. With her job, she could never fully relax. And that job was never far away — her cell phone sat on the tabletop, looking horribly out of place so close to teacups and the Kermit the Frog tea pot.

Tabitha reached for an imaginary piece of cake. Mur didn’t like the imaginary cake; she had said as much after the first imaginary bite. Tabitha preferred to be called Tabz because, as she put it, it was funner. Mary demanded to be addressed only as Mur for reasons Amy and Jack had never been able to pry out of the girl.

Jack looked at the girls with a narrow-eyed glare of suspicion. “Wait just a cotton-picking minute. Did you two spike this tea with runny elephant poop?”

The girls squealed with laughter, throwing their heads back and rocking in their chairs.

“No, Daddy,” Tabz said. “It’s not elephant poop, it’s monkey poop.”

Jack set his cup down with comedic rage, then crossed his arms and sat back, shaking his head hard enough to make the pink flower hat wiggle. God, but the girls loved that man.

Amy realized with a start that Tabz was wearing her heavy, silky black hair in long pigtails. She had never worn her hair like that before. She’d always worn it down, like Mur’s was now. They had inherited Amy’s hair, not a trace of her husband’s thin blond locks.

“Tabitha, honey, your hair looks nice.”

“Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.

“Did you try that hairstyle out today just for the tea party?”

Mur laughed and pointed at Tabz. “Ha-ha-ha, you’ve been wearing those stupid things for three days!”

Tabz sank into her chair, little chin tight to her chest. She looked crestfallen.

“Mur,” Jack said, “that’s not nice.”

Mur didn’t catch the hint. “Mommy didn’t even notice,” she said to Tabz. “I told you it was stupid to try and be different.”

Amy slapped the table, rattling the cups in their saucers. “Mur! You stop that!”

Mur’s eyes widened. She shrank into her chair.

Amy’s tone echoed in her own ears. She’d talked to Mur not like a mother to a daughter, but like the chief of police to a subordinate. Amy hated herself at that moment — couldn’t she put the cop away and just be a mom, even for a few minutes?

Tabz stood suddenly and threw her teacup across the room. It landed noiselessly on her bed. “You didn’t notice, Mom, because you’re never home!”

Tabz ran from the room, her little dress swishing with each little step. Jack stood. He took off his flower hat and tossed it on the table as he followed Tabz out. Jack would talk to the girl, leaving Amy to deal with Mur.

“Mary, honey, I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

The little girl’s eyes narrowed hatefully, as only a little girl’s can do. “Don’t call me that. I like Mur. And why did she have to go and ruin the party? We never get to see you.”

“Honey, I know, but you have to understand that Mommy’s job is—”

Amy’s phone let out a tone. A special tone, three dots, three dashes, three dots. S.O.S. That tone represented only one person.

She picked up the phone. He had texted her a picture. High angle, looking down onto a marble porch she recognized on sight and would never forget. The picture showed two men waiting in front of a closed door.

Pookie Chang and Bryan Clauser.

The text beneath the picture read:

THEY ALSO STOPPED BY ALDER’S PLACE. TAKE CARE OF THIS.

Amy felt her temper rising. She had told them to keep away. She had given them a chance.

Even before the BoyCo murders, Robertson had wanted to bring Bryan and Pookie into the loop, wanted to tell them everything. Amy had said no, trusting her instincts that the men weren’t the kind of people who could properly manage the gray areas. The picture Erickson had texted showed — quite clearly — that her instincts had been dead-on. Bryan and Pookie were by far the best inspectors on the force, but they just wouldn’t listen.

Just like another cop almost thirty years ago, right, Amy? Remember how you wouldn’t listen when Parkmeyer told you to back off? Remember what happened because you didn’t?

She became aware she was alone in the room. Mur had left. Amy looked at the tea set, at the empty chairs. She was missing her daughters’ childhoods. They had been born only yesterday, it seemed. When had they grown so big?

She wanted to be with them, but she had a job more important than anyone could ever know. Not even Jack knew all of it. Amy stood, gave the table one last, longing look, then headed downstairs.

Time to put an end to this.