Loving Time

sixty-eight

Tuesday was a quiet night in the squad room of the Two-O. Except for the Boudreau case, nothing much was going on. One detective was at his desk on the phone; everybody else was out. Mike and April sat at the table in the locker room, the tension between them unrelieved. It had been a long day. Their shift had been over many hours before, but neither wanted to go home. April knew that she would be out of there tomorrow, headed toward another life, but she wasn’t ready to detach from this one yet. Mike had sent Detective Andy Mason to watch Boudreau, whose only response to his interview with Daveys had been to ask for a lawyer. The D.A.’s office felt there was only circumstantial evidence, no direct evidence, that the suspect had tampered with Dickey’s scotch bottle. In addition, Boudreau’s prior history, though persuasive to Agent Daveys, was also based on circumstantial evidence. In any case, nothing he’d done in the past would be admissible in court in the present instance. They needed a stronger case before they could make an arrest Behind the mirror, April and Mike had watched Daveys put on a show for nothing. They didn’t feel good about him.

Boudreau had been released for the moment, and a completely unapologetic Daveys took off after him. A bad day was turning out to be an even worse night. After Daveys had gone without leaving a forwarding address or beeper number, they’d received some disturbing information from the lab. Lab techs confirmed the presence of Elavil in the Johnnie Walker bottle found in Boudreau’s apartment. Boudreau’s fingerprints had been found on the bottle along with those of the deceased.

But the print experts also found smudges and partials of a third person on the bottle. Those partials turned out to match the only other set of prints found on the folder containing Boudreau’s file: Gunn Tram’s. Dickey’s fingerprints on almost all of the pages of Boudreau’s file suggested that the file had been in his office and he had read it. Gunn’s prints were mingled with the dead man’s in such a way as to suggest that she had handled it after he had, and she had probably been the one to return it to her office. If Boudreau had taken the file from Dickey’s office, April and Mike reasoned, he would never have returned it to the personnel office. He would have destroyed it.

Gunn’s prints showing up in two places where they weren’t supposed to be bothered the two detectives enough to keep them sitting at the table with their notes, and Boudreau’s file, for many hours. April dialed Gunn’s number a few times to make sure the little lady hadn’t gone anywhere. Her line was always busy.

At ten P.M., they’d been on the job for fourteen hours, and they were still debating what they should do next. A lot of people would have gone home hours ago, waited for another day, another supervisor to deal with it. Tomorrow was their day off; whatever came down would be off their watch. But Mike and April didn’t see it that way. They had one suspect they considered dangerous out on the street who was being tailed by one or more FBI agents, as well as by one of their detectives. And now they had a brand-new suspect, the first suspect’s girlfriend, who happened to be a little old lady. Suddenly the case was beginning to sound like a boyfriend/girlfriend thing after all. April sighed gustily. They had to bring Gunn in and talk to her. Should it be now or tomorrow?

At ten-thirty Andy phoned in to say Boudreau had gone into his building and looked as if he might have settled in for the night. April suppressed a yawn. If all was quiet, maybe she could go home now. She picked up the phone and dialed Gunn’s number again just to make sure the old woman was all right. She let the phone ring ten times, then hung up, shaking her head.

“It’s been busy for hours and now suddenly she’s not there.”

Mike tapped a pen on the arm of his chair. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”

April made a skeptical face. “Maybe she’s not.”

“You’re worried?”

“Yes, aren’t you? Boudreau was harassing the one doc; and he, or Gunn, or both of them, killed the other doc. The whole thing stinks.” April actually looked at him for the first time in hours. “You know we have to make a move.”

“Hey, I don’t have anything scheduled right now. I’ll go over and bring the lady in for a chat. Would that make you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. You go home and get some sleep. I’ll go get her.” Mike tapped the pencil, shrugged again. “Will I see you in the morning?” he asked.

April shook her head. “They’ve probably got somebody new coming in here tomorrow.”

“Look, April, I’ve been thinking about what happened this morning and I know you’re wrong about me being a loose cannon. I’m not a wild man. I just—” He took a breath and let it out. “I just didn’t know it was there, that’s all. Sometimes you just go along with certain assumptions and then something happens to knock them out.”

Uh-huh.

He gave her a helpless look. “You know I’m a gentle person.”

She frowned and looked at her hands. “No, I don’t know that anymore.”

“Yes, you do. You know me. That wasn’t me. That was …” He searched for a word.

April didn’t help him find one.

He dropped the pencil and started tapping his finger against his lip, glanced through the open door at the other detective out in the squad room. He was a young black man, new to the squad, talking heatedly on the phone. From the tone of his voice it sounded like an argument he didn’t want to lose. “You’re making it hard,” Mike murmured to April.

She didn’t say anything.

“Okay, you’re right. I did play with some rough people in my time. I did get into some trouble, but it was a long time ago. I never hurt anybody who didn’t deserve it, and I got out of it, didn’t I? You know I’d never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

That was the excuse they all gave: every thief, every abuser, every batterer, every killer. Now April looked out at the other detective on the phone. He was winding down now. It was time to go.

“I didn’t know it was there. I know now, so it’s a factor,” Mike said.

“What’s the factor?”

He glanced around, caught—guilty, lifted a shoulder. “I guess I love you.… It took me by surprise. I didn’t know I would get … violent about it.”

April glanced down at her hands as the heat rose to her face. There hadn’t been a lot of people in her life who’d said that to her. Certainly not any of the people who should have. Somehow that made it worse.

“¿Y qué más?” he said softly.

She shook her head. Somehow it hurt not to feel the way she’d always thought she would when a man she admired finally said he loved her. Safe and secure and happy like in the movies. A lot of things were in the way. A cop couldn’t be unpredictable, couldn’t fly off like that—should never, never fall in love with a partner and go crazy over her honor. Love made Mike dangerous, not safe. He was always going to be dangerous. She wondered if real love was like this.

“¿Y qué más?”

“Nada más. Let’s go.”

“You’re coming with me?” He was surprised.

“Yeah.” Wearily, she reached for her bag.