Sonny Days Are Here Again

[greenbeing]

Chapter One

Jim pulled off Hank’s harness in the elevator and smiled as Hank shook himself out. The German Shepherd always relished the time they’d get home and he would be off-duty, no more pressure to be Superdog.

Jim enjoyed the evenings at home, too. He would take off Hank’s harness in the elevator so he could walk into his apartment on his own, his big furry companion more like a guard dog than a guide dog. His favorite time of day sometimes, that unpressured evening when nothing needed to get done, there was nowhere to go, he could finally kick back, relax, let his guard down.

The elevator doors dinged open and Jim shifted Hank’s harness and leash to the same hand so he could fish out his keys.

“Dunbar! There you are!”

Jim stopped in his tracks as the voice of Sonny Famigletti reached down the hallway toward him. Sonny, his regular snitch, not a close friend, not even someone he wanted to know where he lived. He was sort of a slime ball, but they had a good working relationship.

“What are you doing here?”

“No hello?”

“No. How’d you know where I live?”

“I asked around,” Sonny said, a shrug in his voice.

Jim moved in front of his apartment door, Hank at his side. He crossed his arms and set his lips in a no-nonsense line.

“Dunbar, I need your help.”

Jim raised his eyebrows above his customary sunglasses he used to help keep the world at bay.

“I’m in over my head.”

“What else is new?”

“That is new!”

“Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“I may not have tomorrow.”

Sonny liked to embellish thing to make them sound good, but there was no mistaking the tremor in his voice. Sonny was like a bad-guy magnet. He hung out with all sorts of unsavory people and heard horror stories every day, liked to think he could laugh in the face of danger. But often, if anything happened, he’d come running to hide behind Jim’s coattails.

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

“Why didn’t you just call?”

“For the same reason I’ve been sitting in your hallway for three hours instead of coming down to the station.”

“Sonny, I’m not your own personal bodyguard.”

“Jim?” The door to his apartment opened and his wife poked her head out. “I thought I heard you out here.”

“Hubba—”

Jim elbowed Sonny in the ribs.

Sonny doubled over and coughed. “Same Dunbar,” he gasped.

“Yeah, I am.” He turned to Christie. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Did you want to come in?” she asked hesitantly.

“No—”

“Much obliged,” Sonny said, still with a hint of pain in his voice. He hurried forward, eluding Jim’s outstretched hand.

Jim swore when he missed his mark. He pulled his hand back and hurried after Sonny’s footsteps.

Christie grabbed the corner of his jacket as he passed and pulled him back. “Sorry,” she whispered and leaned up to kiss him.

Jim unclipped Hank’s leash. “Sonny, we’re not going to talk here.” He left his sunglasses on as he dropped his keys on the table across from the door.

“Snazzy place,” Sonny said from across the room.

Jim’s confident steps carried him over to the windows the other side of the couch and he grabbed Sonny’s arm, pushing him in front of himself.

“Dunbar, you’re not very hospitable, are you?”

Jim kept pushing him toward the door.

“I can’t talk to you looking like that,” Sonny said plaintively. “You look like a cop.”

“So?”

“So I’m not supposed to go to the authorities, you know the drill.”

“We’ll talk in the hallway, we’re not going out for a friendly drink.”

“Dunbar, someone’s bound to hear us. Anyone could just walk right up!”

“Like my neighbors would give a rat’s ass if they saw you.” Jim opened the door with his free hand and pushed Sonny into the hallway.

Sonny wrenched free of his grasp and hurried toward the elevator. “I’ll meet you at that little coffee shop around the corner, okay?” he called. “That spiffy joint with the neon sign.” The elevator doors dinged.

Jim sighed and shut his door. He didn’t really want to go back out, but he was glad to no longer have Sonny in his apartment. He stripped off his suit coat as he headed for the bedroom closet.

“Who was that?” Christie asked.

“My informant. Apparently he’s run into some trouble, wants to talk.” Jim pulled on a fitted crew neck shirt.

“You could have talked to him here—”

“No.” Jim shook his head and turned around. “I don’t like it when my work follows me home.”

“He can’t be all bad; he thought I was attractive,” Christie teased.

“Even blind men find you attractive,” he teased back.

Christie kissed him.

“You want me to start following you around going hubba-hubba?” Jim asked with a small smile.

“Maybe not. That’s not your style.”

Jim passed her and hurried across the living room, snagging his leather jacket from the coat rack. He shrugged into it, then fished his cane out from the inside pocket of his overcoat. “I shouldn’t be long.” He slid his cell phone into the front pocket of his jeans.

“You’re not taking Hank?” She sounded surprised.

“No… It’s not that far. Hank had a long day.” Jim turned away from her. He’d never really gone into the details of how the case had gone bad when they lost Hank. He didn’t want Christie worrying about him, didn’t want to think of Sonny’s part in that case. He ran his hand through his hair and unfurled his cane, tapping it on the floor to lock the pieces in place. “I’ll call if something comes up, but Sonny usually exaggerates, so I’m not too worried.”

“Should you call Karen?”

Jim grimaced. “Christie, I’m a grown-up. It’s just coffee.”

She sighed.

Jim grinned. “I know, famous last words. See you soon.” He pulled open the door, pleased with how well he’d been able to hide his apprehension. Christie wasn’t your typical cop’s wife. Sure, she’d held up miraculously well after the shooting, but when it came to the day-to-day stuff, Jim usually found the less information, the better.

He smelled the place a block away, at the end of his street, wished he could remember the name of the coffee shop, wished he could remember the neon sign. So many things had changed since the last time he saw them, though, he couldn’t be sure the sign had even been there. He hesitated, running his cane along the building, not sure where the door was. The tip of the cane struck something and Jim reached out with his foot, locating a stair, then another, then the door, glass with an old-fashioned handle.

Inside he paused, letting his senses measure the room. Counter to the front. To the right, a wall maybe ten feet away. People talking to the right, maybe a couple tables; he could hear glasses, spoons. A cappuccino machine started and Jim momentarily lost his grasp on the room, then listened to the echo off the high ceilings, how the sound disappeared to the left. That must be where most of the tables were. Knowing Sonny, he’d probably be hiding in the corner as far from the door as possible, crouched down with his back to the room so no one would see him. Probably not even watching for Jim.

Jim headed left, keeping the swinging cane close to his body. It tapped the back legs of a chair and he skirted around it.

“Hey,” Sonny said, weaving through tables, dodging around.

Jim took his arm.

“No dog?”

“No,” he said shortly.

“Oh.” Sonny paused while they walked. “I’m sorry about that, you know that, right?” He stopped walking, pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jim stood there a second, then made his way around the table to the other side. He folded up his cane before pulling out a chair for himself.

“So… you want some coffee, Ted?”

Jim frowned. “Ted?” The sound of the name Sonny’d picked for him in the undercover drug deal still made his stomach and his fists clench.

“Do you just not understand that I’m in trouble here? If I call you by name, we’re all going to hell in a hand basket. I’m keeping you out of it, all right?”

“How is dragging me here “keeping me out of it”?”

“I didn’t drag. You came, out of compassion, I’m sure.”

“Right. Spill.”

“No coffee?”

Jim just stared at him.

“Right. So anyway, I’m talking to this guy named Hans—”

“Hans?”

“Yeah, Hans.”

“Hans have a last name?”

“Doesn’t everybody? I don’t happen to know what it is, but yeah, I’d guess he has one.”

Jim shook his head and looked down. “Cut to the chase, okay?”

“You’re the one interrupting.”

“Fine, I’m sorry. Please continue.” Jim found himself toying with the container that held swizzle sticks on one side and sugar on the other.

“Are you paying attention?”

“Yes!” Jim pulled back and dropped his hands into his lap.

“Dunb—Ted, there’s something you gotta understand. My mother is the sweetest, nicest person you’re ever going to meet. She’s like a saint. She’s cherubic—but not in the baby way. Just in the old lady way.”

Jim motioned for Sonny to continue.

“She’s so freaking nice, sometimes you just want to kill the lady. She’s so helpful. Everything’s always great. And she says it over and over and over. Isn’t that so great? Isn’t that so great?”

“So you killed her?” Jim asked, jumping ahead.

“No! Come on, she’s my mother. She gave birth to me. 36 hours in labor, and you think I’m going to take her life?”

“So she’s a saint.”

“And she’s driving me crazy. My apartment building, it’s getting fumigated, so I’ve been staying with her all week, and all week it’s been, Sonny, clean your room, Sonny, don’t drink from the milk carton, Sonny, do the dishes. I moved out for a reason. I know she’s just trying to make me a better person, but she says this over and over.”

“All mothers nag. That’s what they do.”

“I realize that. But you’re sitting in a bar, and you’re a grown-up, and you don’t want to go home because your mom’s there waiting up, like she doesn’t trust you. So you start talking. Everyone’s complaining about their wives or kids. And I don’t have a wife or a kid to complain about. So I pick my mom.”

“Okay…”

“And I feel really bad. She’s my mom; I shouldn’t complain about her. She means well.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I told this guy, Hans, how she’s been driving me crazy. She’s turning me into Mister Rogers—any minute I’m going to start hallucinating and talking to trains, okay? And she’s got me wearing these awful sweaters—you’re lucky you can’t see me—which she spends all her time knitting in front of the fireplace. It’s June, Ted. She has the fireplace going all the time, ‘cause she’s cold.”

Jim couldn’t help but smile. He turned his head down toward the table to try to hide it.

“And this guy slaps me on the back, stands up, and says he’ll take care of it.”

Sonny paused, waiting, the end of the story. He’d gotten to the punch line and Jim laughed loudly.

“This isn’t funny, Ted. This is serious.”

“You think he’s about to go find your mom and kill her?” Jim asked skeptically, grinning over at Sonny.

“You weren’t there. You didn’t hear how he said it. It was all sinister.”

“Yeah.” Jim stood up, unable to stop smiling. “Happens all the time.” He pushed in his chair.

Sonny jumped up and came around the table, taking Jim’s arm to keep him from leaving. “Look into it,” he pleaded quietly. “I’m not about to be the cause of my mother’s demise. I’m a good son, Ted, I really am.”

Jim slapped Sonny on the back. “Go home and do the dishes.”

“You don’t believe me!”

“Do you have any proof?”

“Well…”

“Sonny, you know I need proof.”

“I’ll get it. I will.”

“You do that.”

“I will, Ted. Just you wait. Her death, it’ll be on your head!”

Jim grabbed his cane from the table. “Sonny, relax.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Two


Detective Tom Selway pulled at the collar of his button-down shirt. It was morning, but it was hot enough in the warehouse district, surrounded by asphalt and with the sun bouncing off all the windows, with all the machinery working and creating heat and noise, that Tom was ready to get back to the squad.

Marty Russo, Tom’s partner, took a deep breath. “Ahh, burning oil,” he said, as if he were smelling a petunia.

“You like that, huh?”

“How else are we going to destroy the ozone layer?”

Tom peered around the parking lot and the unmarked identical buildings. It was eerily quiet in a place that should have been filled with workers, but they’d all been evacuated when the crime scene had been taped off. A large area, comprising three warehouses and four parking lots. All that for one dead body, but they had to include the areas with snagged bits of clothing, discarded weapons, encircled by two flame throwers and five blow torches.

“There,” Marty said, pointing at a gaggle of cops and crime scene unit hidden in the shade behind a row of parked cars. Detectives Jim Dunbar and Karen Bettancourt were already there, talking to a uniformed officer.

“Hey,” Tom said, walking up.

“It’s about time,” Jim said, tossing them a grin.

“We took the scenic route,” Tom said.

“You use the handicapped entrance?” Marty asked. “Is that how you got here so fast?”

“I always get the best parking,” Dunbar shot back. “No need to be jealous.”

“We were just making notification to the Hanson family,” Karen said. “That’s like three blocks from here. We could have walked but we were double-parked.”

“It would have been closer if we had walked,” Jim told her.

Tom nodded. “You find anything?”

“The body’s almost completely incinerated,” Jim said.

“Is that the cause of death?” Tom asked.

“Nah, he looks alive and well to me,” Marty said, wandering off with the Polaroid camera to get a better angle.

Tom followed around a couple cars and finally caught his first glimpse of the charred body, completely blackened and hairless, naked, but so burned that didn’t matter. The person had landed sort of curled up on its stomach, one arm behind its back, fingers looking brittle. “What the hell could have done this? It looks like he’s been in a house fire.” The problem was that the concrete he was lying on didn’t show any signs of fire, nor the cars right next to the body. Chances were, Tom suspected, the blow torches had little, if anything, to do with the cause of death.

Jim cleared his throat. “I contacted Dean Bostick to ask about any fires in the area lately. If he shows up, keep Marty in check, okay?”

Tom grinned, noticing Jim staring directly at Marty during that last part.

“I’m right here, Dunbar,” Marty said from the other side of the body. “I’ll keep my distance.”

“I know.”

“Do we have an ID?” Marty asked.

“Not yet.”

“ME’s going to have a field day with this one,” Tom said, kneeling next to the body. “I’m afraid to touch it.”

“Squeamish?” Marty asked.

“It looks brittle.”

“That bad?” Jim asked.

“You have no idea,” Marty told him, snapping another couple pictures. “I’m surprised there’s any skin left on the bones.”

Jim folded his arms, looking down toward the body. “The first workers here this morning found him.”

“Him?” Marty asked. “How can you tell? You got some special extra sense you’re not sharing?”

“Just guessing.”

“And they just parked right next to the body?” Tom asked.

“Those are the cars from the night shift,” Karen supplied.

“We have the warehouse managers going through their employee records, seeing if anyone didn’t show up last night,” Jim said.

“Or suddenly went missing,” Karen added.

Tom laughed. “It’s not even your case.”

“We were bored,” Karen said. “The Hanson murder was huge, but now that it’s over…”

“You can only take so much tea and scones as thanks,” Jim said.

Tom nodded. It was always hard coming off a major case. Going day in and day out, and then having all that time and energy pay off, leaving you empty. “They gave you scones?”

“It was either that or some anise-flavored muffin,” Jim said.

“Don’t forget the crumpets,” Karen said with a distasteful look on her face.

“Ah, the crumpets! How could I forget?” Jim said, raising his face to the sky.

Tom glanced at them sympathetically. “We’re gonna start a canvas. You wanna help?”

“Sure.”

Karen’s phone rang and she stepped away from Jim’s side to answer it so they could keep talking.

“So he’s completely burned, right?” Jim asked.

Marty joined them, flipping through the photos and handing choice shots to Tom.

“Any distinguishing characteristics?” Jim asked.

“Work boots. The souls are melted, the leather’s almost melted off. My bet is they’re never coming off,” Marty said, looking closer at the body. “Ten fingers. No jewelry. If he had a wallet, that’s missing.”

“There’s been scraps of clothing all over the parking lot,” Jim said. “They haven’t found a wallet, though.”

Tom passed the snapshots back to Marty.

“Hey, hey,” Marty said, suddenly hitting Jim on the arm as he looked at the top photo. It was like he was trying to get Jim to look. Tom glanced over his shoulder at the picture. “This one makes it look like he’s sitting down.”

“Sitting down, completely burned like it was a huge fire,” Jim said.

“Weird marking across the chest,” Marty said, kneeling down and contorting his neck to get a good look without moving the body. “Two inches wide.”

“Like a seatbelt?” Jim asked.

“Yeah.”

“Like he was restrained in a car and couldn’t get out?”

“Exactly.”

“Then let’s find the car,” Jim said.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Marty said.

“I’ll call Dean again.”

“You do that.”

Jim reached for his cell phone.

Karen rejoined them and cleared her throat. “We have to go,” she said, sounding defeated, like she’d engaged in an argument and lost. Tom looked over to see her toying with the phone, deliberately not looking at Jim.

Jim’s arms dropped to his side. “A new case?” he asked, but he didn’t look too hopeful after the tone of Karen’s voice.

“The Hanson family cleared it with the commissioner. They want some huge memorial article, everything wrapped up, with quotes.”

“So?”

“There’s reporters waiting for us in Fisk’s office.”

“Damn,” Jim said, turning away from the body. He sighed and took Karen’s arm. “Hey, Marty,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ll call Dean.”

“Thanks,” Marty said, watching Jim and Karen walk off. “Like we didn’t have enough to do without worrying about reporters,” Marty mumbled.

Tom just nodded as he looked more closely at the picture Marty’d taken that gave them the theory of the burning car. He turned it as he knelt next to the body, carefully poking at a singed mark on the right hip. “Lookit this,” he mumbled, contorting himself so his forehead was near the sidewalk. “You have a flashlight?”

Marty knelt next to him. “Square.”

“More singed than crispy,” Tom muttered.

“Like it was protected.”

“By a metal seatbelt clasp.”

“Got really hot and still burned him, but protected him from the flames,” Marty summed up as he straightened to look the body over more thoroughly.

“You calling it a “him” now, too?” Tom grinned to himself.

“Looky here,” Marty said, pointing at the inner part of the right forearm. “Either he was restrained somehow, or he did it on purpose.”

Tom leaned in closer and caught a glimpse of another square singed on the inner arm. “GM?” The mark was faint and indistinct.

“Looks like it. ME will have to confirm it, though.” Marty sat back and pulled out his phone. “Dunbar… Have Bostick look specifically at any cars made by GM… Looks like the marking burned into him from the seatbelt… Well, yeah, unless he’s into weird tattoos,” Marty said with a grin. “Got it, great.” He flipped the phone closed. “Let’s have a look around.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Three

Jim settled back into his usual spot in Karen’s squad car. He was getting used to this, having a chauffer, finally. Sometimes not being able to drive still got to him, but with Karen around he didn’t mind so much. He’d rather rely on Karen than on Christie—maybe because, to Karen, he’d always been blind.

“I can’t believe this,” Karen grumbled an hour later after four stops that had given them nothing. “Marty and Tom get to have all the fun, and what do we get? Parole violation.”

The man they’d collared in the Hanson murder had failed to show up in court that morning. He was an elderly gentleman, the butler to the wealthy family who’d lost their eight-year-old daughter to his crime of passion. Accidental manslaughter charges had gotten him out on parole quickly. St. John Smythe, pronounces the British way—Sin-gin—because he was a British chap by birth, only having come to America in his teens. He’d been employed by the Hanson family most of his life.

“Yesterday they were praising us for finding the murderer, today we’re back looking for him again,” Karen mumbled.

Although it had been a high-profile case, it hadn’t been one of the more interesting ones for the detectives. Most of their time had been spent dealing with the media and the family, not out searching for clues in the criminal netherworld. Jim and Karen had both been glad to see the end of the case—but it seemed the case wasn’t done with them.

“And if one more person cuts me off…” Karen was saying.

“Sorry,” Jim said helplessly. He’d have loved to help, but this was one of the few times Karen was on her own.

“Yeah. Right,” she said in a tone bordering on sarcasm. “You expect me to believe you actually miss rush hour traffic?”

“No… I just miss the chance to swear at all the assholes out there.”

Karen finally laughed and Jim leaned his head back against the cushion.

“Let’s head over to the Hanson place and look around there,” he suggested.

“You think he’d go back to the scene of the crime?”

“It was his home. And his family. He’s not your average criminal.” St. John was not a career criminal. He was in his late seventies and the family had admitted he’d been starting to show signs of altered behavior—forgetfulness, confusion, frustration, occasional bursts of anger.

The exact details surrounding young Amy Hanson’s plunge out the tenth story window of their regal apartment were vague. The family had heard a struggle, and yelling. Amy had sounded belligerent, St. John had sounded determined. He later testified in his statement that he remembered going into Miss Hanson’s room to help her dress for the day, but after that, he didn’t remember what happened in the two or three minutes following.

Mr. Hanson wanted to press charges of molestation, though there was no evidence. Mrs. Hanson swore that St. John was a danger to himself and everyone around him, that he had a terrible temper, and had threatened each of them in recent months. They just kept him on out of pity, and for old-times’ sake.

The housekeeper’s statement told them that Mr. and Mrs. Hanson had been arguing a lot lately, causing their daughter to act out against her only confidante—St. John—thus causing him great frustration over her change of behavior. The housekeeper swore he wasn’t prone to fits of violence, but he had been drinking more lately. Of the exact time of the murder, she heard glass break and the child screaming, and heard St. John yell, “Katherine!” in great anguish. It was a name none of the family was familiar with.

It was bound to be a long and messy trial, if the man lived that long. If he survived, they were bound to declare him a danger to society and put him in a nursing home.

“I can see the memorial,” Karen informed Jim as she inched down the street.

Friends of the family and Amy Hanson’s schoolmates had erected a sort of shrine with pictures, candles, and teddy bears outside the apartment, near where the girl had landed.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she muttered, throwing the car into park and opening her door. “Come on!”

Jim tossed open his own door. He could hear Karen’s footsteps, headed to the left, then they were gone, swallowed by the sounds of the City. “Hank.” Jim let the dog out the back of the car. “Follow Karen,” he ordered, and turned his trust over to the dog.

There were footsteps all around him, the smell of gasoline and oil. The smell of asphalt baking in the sun. Someone honked a block away and Jim tried to focus on sounds closer to him, trying to pinpoint the Hanson building based on the dozens of times he’d been there during the case.

Jim’s hand brushed against a parked car, metal, hot in the sun, and Hank paused just long enough for Jim to find the curb, then turned to the right to follow his partner.

Someone was yelling in one of the apartments above, but he couldn’t make out the words. The city always seemed to get louder in the summer when people had to open their apartment windows.

A lady—he assumed—in high heels, brushed past, clicking along the sidewalk. A dog barked, probably at Hank, but Hank ignored everything in his quest to follow Karen. The dog moved just left to dodge around something, Jim followed, then they were back on course.

“Hey! Wait!” Karen called. “Sin-gin!” she sounded exasperated. “Damn,” she whispered. Jim was close enough to hear the epithet. “He went inside,” she called back to Jim, still half a building behind.

“Then go,” Jim told her, waving her in. From there he knew he could follow without a problem. He heard the door to the building bang open. Hank stopped at the bottom of the stairs and Jim took the railing on his right while following the dog. The door slammed shut when he hit the last step and Jim threw it open with even a louder bang than Karen had.

His cell rang and he pulled it out and flipped it open without missing a step. “Dunbar.” He listened to Fisk ask how they were doing. “I can’t talk right now, boss. We’re chasing our geriatric perp…”

He heard Fisk laugh while trying to retain the guise of the stern lieutenant and asked questions that needed to be asked. “Define chasing,” Fisk said, clearing his throat.

“On foot,” Jim clarified.

“Is he liable to put up a fight?” Fisk asked.

This time it was Jim’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, boss. Right.” Jim tucked his phone between his shoulder and his ear so he could feel for the door to the stairwell without dropping Hank’s harness. “We’re at the Hanson’s apartment building.”

“You need back-up?”

“Not yet.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Four


Karen glanced back to see Jim at the door to the building. She’d taken a moment to assess the situation and locate their perp. “Jim!” she called across the lobby as he flipped open his cell phone. “Stairs!” Then she disappeared behind the door to the stairwell, following the ailing perp. The way he was huffing and panting one flight ahead of her, she could tell he wasn’t doing so well. He’d been a smoker most of his life, rolled his own, a great art, he loved talking about it during interviews. Karen was in no danger of being outrun by this elderly gentleman.

The door to the stairwell opened, but she didn’t bother to look down or call to Jim. She conserved her breath and just wondered where the man was headed. It was possible he was headed back to the ritzy apartment he’d spent so much of his life in. Maybe he didn’t even remember that Amy had died.

She caught sight of St. John’s long coat flapping behind him as he passed the Hanson’s floor. She could barely hear him breathing anymore, and though she wasn’t a paramedic, she knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace much longer. “You can stop!” she yelled. Maybe he hadn’t even thought of stopping to save himself. “There’s nowhere to go.”

The footsteps didn’t stop. She took a deep breath and kept going. She could have caught him by then, if she really wanted to, if she ran. But he really had nowhere to go once he got to the top.

“Look, you missed your court date this morning. If you forgot, that’s okay. We’re not here to arrest you,” she called, stopping briefly while she spoke. She could hear Jim gaining on her from below.

The door to the roof banged open and she blinked as the daylight slashed across her face, then sprinted for the door herself. She caught it right before it closed and threw herself after St. John.

The bright sunlight disoriented her a second after the dim fluorescence of the stairwell. She heard something and spun around to see a pigeon take off from the roof of the stairwell. The only other thing moving was the clouds. She sighed. The buildings around weren’t close enough to jump to. And she didn’t hear anyone falling to the ground below. She let the door close behind her and moved out of the shade, slowly, pulling back her coat to be ready to draw her gun if she needed to.

A scratching again. She looked up and caught sight of a shadow on the roof of the housing for the stairs. Somehow St. John had made it up there in time to hide and catch his breath. Karen surveyed the scene quickly and found a large rounded vent to the left, two or three feet tall. She hoisted herself up onto the vent and grabbed for the roof of the stairwell, but found herself at the wrong angle to pull herself all the way up. She floundered as her feet left the vent, leaving her dangling, though she could see St. John prostrate in the corner against the low wall that ran around the little roof.

The door banged open again and she felt the vibration in the bricks under her fingers. She turned just enough to see Jim standing there, Hank in front of him, listening to the roof and the silence. “Karen?” he called, but the door slammed behind him when she grunted to let him know where she was. She didn’t want to waste the breath to call over to him, just wanted to hoist herself the rest of the way to the roof.

Jim’s hand drifted to his hip, where his gun would have been, as he turned again, listening for her. The hand hovered, then dropped. “Damn,” he whispered. His fist clenched as he stood there silently. “Karen?” he called louder.

“Over here,” she said, her voice strained from holding onto her tenuous perch.

“Are you okay?” He sounded concerned as he turned the dog in her direction.

“Yeah.” She grunted as she heaved herself up. She nearly pitched over the side of the roof, where she would have landed on St. John, but she caught her balance and sat there a moment to catch her breath. “He’s on the roof up here,” she said quietly, looking over to see Jim waiting impatiently for her. “There’s a vent to your left and up, about four more feet. That’s how I got up.” She turned back to St. John. “You really didn’t need to come this far.”

“I can’t…” He gasped for breath, his face pale. He shivered, even though he was wearing a long coat and convalescing in the sun. “…perjure myself.” He gasped again, obviously in pain.

Karen blinked. She finally noticed him holding his left shoulder, and the way his face was drawn and bloodless. A man nearing eighty, not in the best of health, running up all those stairs, with the stress of losing his job and the little girl he claimed to have loved like a daughter. “Shit,” she muttered and leaned back over the wall to see how Jim was doing. “I think he’s having a heart attack. Get up here.”

Jim had one foot on the vent, one hand on the wall, but the other foot was firmly planted on the ground. “How high?”

“I don’t know, ten feet?”

Jim reached under his coat and unclipped the police radio, handing it up. “Call an ambulance.” He stretched up, not looking at her. She took the radio, but kept an eye on him while she called for the bus, ready to help if he needed it.

With one hand on the wall, he tenuously balanced on the ventilation pipe, finally throwing his other hand next to the first and walking them up to the ledge. Karen grasped one of his hands, but he shook her off while she gave the dispatcher the address of the building. He took a deep breath, then jumped while he pulled. Karen’s heart clenched, knowing if he lost his grip it would be hard landing. She hadn’t even had the gumption to jump like that.

Jim scrambled up, his face red. He reached out to steady himself and Karen grabbed his hand to be an anchor as he swung his legs over. “He did this?” he asked incredulously as he lowered his feet to the roof and slowly stood up. He let go of her arm as he caught his breath. “I feel like an old man.” Jim looked around. “Where is he?”

Karen realized she couldn’t hear St. John breathing anymore. With Jim’s hand on her shoulder, she scurried over to the old man and knelt beside him. “He’s not conscious,” she said.

Jim let go of her shoulder and knelt on the other side of the man. His fingers roved up the body, checking for a pulse.

“Ambulance is on its way,” she told him.

He grimaced. “I don’t think it’ll get here in time.”

Karen swallowed hard as she stared at her partner. Jim was facing their perp, sunglasses obscuring most of his expression, but she knew how to read him well enough by then that even the glasses couldn’t hide his anxiety. Jim had two fingers on St. John Smythe’s carotid artery in his neck. He shook his head. “Not good, Karen.”

She reached out and grasped Jim’s arm, staring at the elderly man with the white hair poking wildly out from under his bowler hat. He shivered once more underneath his heavy woolen coat.

Jim let his hand drop from the neck.

Karen pushed him back, dropping the radio in his lap out of her way. She could hear the ambulance siren in the distance, a few blocks away, maybe more. They’d be there in a couple minutes. She couldn’t let the man die just because help was a couple minutes late. She tilted the man’s head back and opened his mouth.

Jim seemed to sense her intent because he pulled St. John’s legs out so the man was lying flat, stripped out of his suit coat, then was leaning over the body, hands clasped over the heart. “Ready?”

“Ready.” Karen started the breathing regimen, then sat back. She counted under her breath as Jim pressed on the chest, over and over. He pulled back. “Okay.”

She leaned down and blew a full breath into the lungs, proceeding with the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She sat back on her heels while Jim continued the series of chest compressions.

The ambulance was getting closer, but there was no sign of life in the man.

Together, without speaking, they were attempting to be the heart and lungs of an elderly gentleman accused of murdering an eight-year-old girl. They were his only hope. They counted the breaths in silence, not needing to speak, just falling into an easy rhythm with the skill that had been drilled into them during various emergency preparedness classes.

Breathe out, turn head to side for a clean breath, blow into the airway. She could see Jim’s hand on the neck artery, vigilant and expectant. She felt a slight tremor in the body, but kept her hand on the chin as she finished the breath. Before she could pull away, though, lips that had very recently been lifeless clamped onto hers and a hand rose to her chest.

Karen sputtered and pulled back. The man’s eyes were still closed, but oxygen was returning color to his face, shallow as the breaths were. His hand had fallen from her breast and taken respite inside her hand.

She pulled away.

Jim was facing her, his brows knit together. She didn’t say anything and he turned back to the perp, checking the pulse as the stairwell door slammed open.

“Up here!” Karen called, leaning over the side. “He’s up here.”

“How the hell’d he get up here?” one of the young paramedics asked, scurrying up to the remote part of the roof. Karen quickly filled him in on the chase up the stairs and the elderly man collapsing on the roof.

The medics quickly checked his vitals to make sure he was stable enough to be moved. “Myocardial infarction,” one of them pronounced. They hoisted the half-conscious man carefully down and hooked him up to a heart monitor.

Karen crawled over to the retaining wall and lowered herself enough to fall the last few feet. Jim found the coat he’d discarded and shrugged back into it, straightening his tie. He peered over the side, his hands clenched on the wall, listening to wherever he thought Karen had landed. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of any way to help. Jim finally sat on the wall, dangling his legs over and looking down.

“Once we get him stabilized at the hospital, we’ll send word,” an EMT was telling Karen. She turned away from Jim’s precarious situation and nodded at the man. “You can question him all you want then.”

“Sounds good.” She licked her lips, which had grown parched and rough between the chase, the CPR, and whatever fit of passion St. John had imagined himself coming back to life for. She watched as they strapped Mr. Smythe to the gurney and prepared to carry him down the stairs, then turned back to find that Jim hadn’t moved, his face as impassive as a stone. “Jim?”

“Yeah?”

“You coming?”

Jim turned away, raising his head and staring straight over the tops of the buildings. “Just enjoying the view,” he said, then turned his head quickly toward a banging sound caused by one of the paramedics slamming shut a case of some sort, as if the sound had startled him. He tracked the noise, turning his head to follow the footsteps back toward the door. She saw his chest rise as he sucked in a resolute breath, balanced his hands on the wall, and twisted his body as he pushed off and lowered himself. He stopped the momentum and hung there. “How far?” he grunted.

“Three feet,” she said.

He let go and dropped, landing unbalanced and grabbing at the brick wall for support. He leaned there a second before straightening up. “Hank,” he called the dog. He swallowed hard as the dog rushed over, then took the harness. “Let’s go,” he told Karen.

“Are you scared of heights?” she asked as she followed him down the stairs. They were moving slower than usual. From her vantage she could only see the back of Jim’s head, and his hand taut on the railing.

“No,” he said quickly and followed the wall around the curve of the landing.

Karen didn’t push, but she couldn’t help but notice that this was the first time she’d ever seen Jim not completely in control.

Jim paused outside the building and turned his face up toward the sun. “Karen… I just have trouble—I can’t judge distances like that.” He gestured with his free hand, like a long straight drop.

“Oh.”

“It could be two feet, it could be ten, but either way, the landing’s going to catch me by surprise.” He nudged Hank in the direction of the car.

Karen dogged his footsteps, keeping her eyes lowered on the backs of his shoes.

[greenbeing]

Chapter Five

Fisk was waiting for them back at the squad. He met them at the elevator. “The press already got wind of our latest fiasco.”

“No comment?” Jim asked.

“We won’t make a full statement at this time, not until we find out whether or not our guy’s gonna live.”

Jim loosened his tie. “Boss, as soon as we hear from the doctors, I think we need to run down and have a conversation with him.”

“What for?”

“He said something, when we caught up to him, about perjuring himself…” Jim nodded his head to the side with a little shrug, unsure himself what he wanted to ask the man.

“Jim, you’ve been on this case for months. We know what happened.”

“I know,” Jim agreed. And he did. The case seemed pretty cut and dry. “I just want to make sure we get the whole story.”

“Okay…”

He heard Karen shifting uncomfortably next to him and could only guess at the looks she was exchanging with the boss. This was the last case they wanted to get pulled back into.

“You two… get mugged or something?” Fisk asked.

Jim tossed him a confused look. He hadn’t been expecting that question.

“We’ve been crawling around a dirty roof and giving CPR on half-melted asphalt roofing,” Karen said.

“Good thing this ain’t no beauty contest.” Fisk’s footsteps headed away, back toward his corner office.

Jim let go of Hank’s harness and patted down his clothing. Hank sneezed in the rising dust. Jim’s fingers rubbed over a few thicker spots of mud or melted tar. “I’ll let you explain to Christie,” he said as he followed Karen back toward their desks.

Karen snorted. “Oh, yeah, like I’m the one you want to explain what happened.”

“Why not? You’re my partner; you’re supposed to have my back.” Jim half fell into his chair and leaned back, enjoying the air conditioning and the relative quiet. As much as he loved his job, he could do without little adventures like falling through dead space where he couldn’t fathom the depths, showing himself and his partner that he was no longer graceful in such situations. Used to be he probably would have relished the change of scene, staring out over the city, jumping from the little parapet in order to feel that roller-coaster feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He looked up at Karen, not having heard her sit down yet. From the tapping, it sounded like she was playing with something on her desk.

“Jim…” Her voice was quiet and hesitant. “When’s the last time you got kissed by a dead guy?”

Jim couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “When did you…?”

“When we were giving Sin-gin CPR… As soon as he started breathing again… He…”

Jim bit the inside of his cheek to fight off the grin. “I’m sure it was just an unconscious reaction on his part,” he tried. “Reflexes.”

“Yeah,” she said in the tone of voice he associated with her rolling her eyes.

He grinned up at her. “Karen… I’m sorry.” It felt good to laugh. They’d been so close to losing their perp. Jim had felt a momentary panic himself, knowing he and Karen were the only two people around to save that life. Now that it was over, now that they’d been successful, it was time to relax with his partner and just be thankful. And he was thankful that he could relax with Karen.

“Next time, you get to do the mouth-to-mouth.”

He raised his hands in supplication. “It’s only fair.”

She finally sat down.

Jim leaned over and lowered his voice. “Was he any good?”

“Jim!”

“I’m just saying, with your record, you could do worse.” He tried to keep his face a straight mask.

The phone rang.

“You better forget this ever happened,” she warned as he reached for his extension. “If the guys ever even hint about this…”

“Karen, I’m your partner. Trust me.” She blew out a breath, obviously not trusting him in a situation like this, as he picked up the phone. “Eighth Squad, Detective Dunbar.” He listened as a reporter, Rochester, tried to ask about the case. “No comment at this time.”

“Our sources say Mr. Smythe went back to the scene of the crime in order to throw himself off the same building, to die in the same spot as the little girl he murdered,” Rochester said. “Would you call that poetic justice?”

“We have no comment about what Mr. Smythe may have been doing there.”

“Not poetic?” Jim could hear a pencil scratching on paper through the phone, probably scribbling something out. “Murder is always “gruesome.” We’re looking for another angle here. Something romantic and British.”

Jim sighed. “You can call it whatever you like; it’s not going to make any difference to the Hanson kid.” He set the phone back down, chewing on the corner of his lip. Some people had no delicacy, no tact. He turned to his partner. “Hey, Karen, should we see if your new boyfriend is up for some visitors?”

“Shut up,” she hissed.

Jim smiled to himself as he grabbed the phone. One of these days he was liable to provoke her the wrong way, and he knew he’d be sorry then, when she decided to give his crap right back to him. Until that time, he’d just enjoy himself. He tossed her as close to an angelic look as he could muster while he picked out the phone number for the hospital on the keypad.

“At least I know you’re not about to commit suicide by jumping off a building,” she threw at him.

“I can’t argue with that,” he said, not looking at her, feeling heat rising in his cheeks. The ringing of the phone stopped, effectively cutting off any thoughts he had about that moment on the roof.

“You kids have fun?” Marty asked. Jim heard the other detective’s chair roll out from under his desk, where he’d conscientiously placed it every day for at least six months. Marty snickered. “Looks like it takes two of you to apprehend a white-haired, half-dead old British dude.”

“I’m checking up on St. John Smythe,” Jim said into the phone, trying to ignore Marty. He knew Karen would take care of it. He could hear her shifting in her chair, silent, while they put him on hold. He looked over. “I’m not going to say anything,” he told her. She was probably expecting him to razz her about the kiss and tell the guys straight off, but he was going to keep his word. She was his partner; he was going to act like it.

“Maybe we should have caught him sooner,” she said. “I should have tried harder; would have saved us the CPR.” She sounded honestly regretful.

“Karen…” The muzak disappeared and a voice answered, so Jim turned back to the phone. “Yes… Sin-gin Smythe…. It’s Saint John, but it’s British, you know,” he clarified when the woman on the phone asked for clarification. “My name’s Detective Jim Dunbar, with the Eighth Precinct, and we need to talk to him as soon as he’s stabilized.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Karen was telling Marty.

“The guy died on you?” Marty asked incredulously. Jim heard his chair swivel around so he could stare at them both easier.

“Yeah, Marty, he did.”

“Geez, what next? I mean, how long was he dead? Is he going to be a vegetable?”

Jim bit his lip and the next time the woman paused, he broke in. “We were wondering, what are the chances of him having brain damage, or memory loss?... He was out for maybe three minutes?... Oh… Yes, I realize he was already showing signs of senility, but could this make it any worse?”

“Not gonna make it better,” Marty muttered.

He drummed his fingers on the desk while the woman explained the possibilities. He nodded a couple times to himself. “Should be okay,” he said quietly to Karen.

“Good. Marty? Find anything new on your case?”

“Not really. But we interviewed a bunch of firebugs, and one guy from Haversham or somewhere like that, he’s working on inventing and patenting a flame retardant chewing gum. My question: what’s the point?”

Jim hung up. “They’re still examining him, but they’ll let us know anything as soon as they can.”

“Good,” Karen said.

“Did I hear you right, Marty?” Jim turned only vaguely in his direction, knowing he’d moved his chair, but not having paid much attention to where.

“We got a lot of kooks out there,” Marty said. “You find something new in your case?”

Jim shrugged. “Not really. I just want to talk to him again.”

“My question again: what’s the point?”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Six

“Just a small party, new contacts, mostly social, a little bit of work… Nothing fancy. Just appetizers and drinks, probably.”

Jim kept his face as impassive as possible, but his stomach was churning. Christie couldn’t understand.

Even the placating tone of voice was getting to him. She wanted to host a work party. All those people, milling all over their apartment. Jim grimaced. She’d just had to bring up the fact that, being their apartment, he couldn’t have any objections because he knew his way around. It would be a comfortable get-together, like before.

Christie’d always enjoyed playing hostess. He’d never found the parties to be “comfortable get-togethers.” Jim used to go along with it, though he’d often tried to work late during her shindigs, or avoid them altogether. In one of his lower moments, he’d abandoned his wife completely to her co-workers in favor of going out with another woman.

And now he was almost sweating just thinking about it. What if he really did have to work late? Coming home, walking right into the middle of a party. That would be worse than being there from the start.

“Is this revenge for something?” he asked, attempting to distract her with humor, or at the very least, draw her safely into the more comfortable grounds of a fight.

“Jimmy,” she complained.

“Sorry.”

“What is so wrong about having a party?”

Jim sat on the couch, sinking into the well-worn red leather. He could almost hear Christie’s hands darting to her hips in the silence, so he focused away from her. He could hear Hank in the kitchen lapping up water. A car horn honked outside. The clock Christie’s mother had sent from Barbados was ticking loudly as always from the wall to the right of the desk.

It drew his attention even now. He’d forgotten what it looked like, but that thing had nearly driven him crazy, his first couple days home, unable to see. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, getting louder and louder the more he tried to ignore it. Becoming more distracting when he tried to concentrate on other things.

He remembered the day he’d begged Christie to get rid of it, donate it, burn it, or at least put it in the closet in a box. He’d heard that tone in her voice that said she was trying not to laugh, that she thought he was being unreasonable. She’d argued that it was actually very quiet. He’d argued back, the stupidest argument. It had ended with him standing on the desk, trying to find the clock on the wall, following the sound, realizing that his balance had improved greatly, but getting frustrated that he couldn’t pin-point the sound, wondering if it was echoing off the ceiling and the hardwood floors, distorting its position, cloaking itself. He’d stood there, not wanting to grope around, looking for the sound. And Christie had flung herself onto the sofa with a loud sigh, saying, “Jimmy, you’re attacking a clock!” He’d been reaching out, and his hand finally landed on the clock, polished wood and clay. The state he was in, he probably would have thrown it to the floor, hoping to break it, but that one statement had put things more in perspective than anything else she’d said in the hour they’d been arguing. He’d managed to stop, step outside himself, and take a good look. He’d climbed off the desk.

He did get used to it eventually. Except when it was quiet in the apartment, like now. Jimmy, he told himself, it’s just a party.

“Jimmy?”

“Lots of things,” he said.

“Such as?”

Jimmy, it’s just a party. It’ll make her happy.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, louder and louder, competing with the rational thoughts in his mind.

“Can you honestly look back at that party your boss threw, and say this is a good idea?” The words were out of his mouth before he’d thought them through. That had been a tough day for both of them, and probably the last thing he should have been bringing up. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, waiting.

“Are you trying to tell me you plan to sabotage any party I throw? A subtle way to tell me to keep those people out of your apartment?”

He let his head fall back onto the cushion of the sofa. “That is not what I meant.”

“Oh?”

“Before dinner. Were you having fun? Because I sure as hell wasn’t.” He sat up and turned back toward her. “You knew that.”

She sighed and sat next to him on the couch.

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But it will be fun, if you let it.”

“Honestly, Christie, what do you expect me to do here? Stand in the corner and smile?”

She was quiet a moment. “You could try talking to people.”

“About what? And who? You want me to wander around the apartment until I whap someone with my cane? It’s not like they’re going to come up to me, you know.”

“Jimmy—”

“And if they did, what am I supposed to say? Nice dress? Absolutely adored the layout of your last fashion spread?”

“When I’m with your friends I don’t say, “Nice choke-hold on that perp last week.” Come on, Jimmy, you’ll just have to be a little creative. I want to do this, and I want you there with me. No matter what.”

He massaged his forehead for a few seconds, wishing she couldn’t see him. He sometimes felt she had the upper hand now. “I’ll think about it,” he finally said. It couldn’t be that bad, he was sure, but even thinking about another party with Christie’s type of people, it made his stomach lurch like he was falling off a building and didn’t know how far away the ground was.

“Don’t forget, we’re going shopping tomorrow night.”

If it wasn’t one thing… “How could I forget? You just told me, what, an hour ago?” Before dinner she’d caught sight of the clothes he’d worn to work that day and insisted on taking him shopping to rectify the problem.

She leaned into him and he wrapped his arms around her. “I know you, Jimmy. You’ve probably spent most of the last hour working up excuses not to go.”

He stretched out on the couch with her still in his arms. “I have an idea. Why don’t we just order ten of the exact same outfits? Then I’ll be prepared, no matter what. Ten identical shirts, ten identical ties…”

She giggled and burrowed deeper in his embrace.

Jim just concentrated on holding her. He didn’t want to think about the case, which was pretty much out of their hands, especially now that St. John Smythe was undergoing bypass surgery. Nor did he want to think about a dull evening looking at clothes. If Christie knew one way to drive him mad, that was it. He’d been lucky, he guessed, that over the past two years, she’d replenished his closet without needing him along. She’d given him a lot of leeway in everything the past couple years. Looked like his luck was running out.

“Why’d you bring up Clary’s party?” Christie asked after a few minutes.

You have to take responsibility, Jim, Dr. Galloway was saying in his head. It had been a while since he’d had a session with the doctor, but he couldn’t get rid of him. You can’t expect your wife to look the other way and let you live your own life, not if you want your marriage to work.

Another part of his brain was running rampantly through old arguments he’d had with his wife over the years. Grow up, Jimmy, it’s not always about you and your job. I have a job, too.

Then there was the part of his brain, that part that ran through the party at Clay’s apartment over and over. He couldn’t picture the apartment, having never been there when he could see, nor having received a grand tour. He knew it was large, swanky, partially open, but partitioned off with walls, no doors. He’d been able to hear people talking in other rooms. He’d been able to hear Christie, no matter where she went as she made her rounds. That party had been during the case with the missing boy, the boy who’d been killed by his father—Mr. Crider, a man who’d kept questioning Jim’s ability to do his job. But at the party, Jim hadn’t even been able to retreat into his mind to go over the case. He’d just been standing there, listening, smelling dinner being prepared by the caterer, or perhaps Clay Simmon’s own personal chef. He couldn’t interject himself into a conversation, not that he would have known what they were talking about, not really. He couldn’t have even left if he’d wanted to. And the whole time, he could hear Christie moving around freely, chatting and laughing. The only things left to him had been a beer, a watch, and a wall.

“We don’t have to talk about that,” Jim said.

“We should.”

She was lying with her head on his chest, and she didn’t turn, so neither one of them could see the other. “You already changed the subject.”

“Esther said we never touch base with the real issue, even when we’re arguing.”

“Esther’s kind of… flaky.”

“Just because she’s not Dr. Galloway—”

“That’s not the problem—”

“You’re still mad because she took my side about signing us up for ballroom dancing, aren’t you?” They’d had a lot of arguments, fostered by and orchestrated by Esther. She’d tried to lead them from the inception down a healthy line of thought, leading them to a conclusive ending they could both be satisfied with. Constructive argumentation. Yet, they could never argue “correctly” on their own.

“I’m not mad at her. Just the way she—I don’t like how she—I keep expecting her to pull out incense and make us start meditating.”

“Jimmy!” But he could tell she’d almost laughed. “She’s right; you’re avoiding the issue.”

“I am not avoiding—” He cut off when Christie tried to pull back. He sat up with her, but refused to let go of her arm. “Clay’s party wasn’t “fun,” but I went for you.”

“Thank you,” she said sarcastically.

Jim clenched his eyes shut for a second, trying to come up with any safe angle on that party. “Who were all those people? You said it would just be friends; who has friends like that?” He didn’t know what any of them looked like, but he’d caught the vibe the moment they’d walked through the door, and as Christie had made cursory introductions, and re-introductions, with him and the party-goers. Insincerity, superficiality, people who wouldn’t have cared if he’d explained about his case with the missing boy.

“I do.”

“They weren’t your friends.”

“No, they were Clay’s friends.”

“And I want to know who they were and why you know them.”

“I suppose you want to know why I want to invite them over here, too?”

“While you’re at it.”

“Since when are you jealous of who I have lunch with?”

“I’m not—”

“It sure sounds like you are.”

“Christie—” He shook his head. He finally let go of her arm and stood up. I’m fine going alone, the Christie in his memory said, before the party. I’m fine going alone. As if that made everything better. She’d spent a lot of time going to those parties alone, where he couldn’t keep an eye on her. He hadn’t wanted her to be fine, alone, without him, alone, unsupervised. Maybe he had overreacted at the dinner. Maybe he hadn’t been ready for “something like that.” Maybe he’d spent too many nights alone in the apartment while she went to parties, alone. But that wasn’t the issue anymore. He wasn’t jealous now. He just… didn’t want to end up standing next to the wall being ignored again. Especially not in his own apartment.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. He could feel himself tensing up. Whether or not that was the issue, he couldn’t think here, not in the apartment, not with his wife staring at him. He needed some difficult case to wrap his mind around, not delve into the mistakes he’d made in his marriage.

“You said you’d think about it,” she said angrily.

“I will,” he said just as angrily. “I’m going to take Hank out.” He headed for the door to pick up the harness that gave him a modicum of freedom.

“You just did that,” she said.

He stopped, his back to her.

“Fine, go.”

“What else is there to talk about?” He grabbed his keys off the table opposite the door. “I told you I’d think about it,” he said, snatching up the harness and calling the dog. He walked out the door without fastening the harness in place.

[greenbeing]

Chapter Seven

“Russo!” Tom threw the Nerf ball he’d been tossing around at the other detective as soon as he walked into the room. “Where the hell you been?”

The ball bounced off Marty’s chest, catching him off-guard so he had to fumble for it. “Helping old ladies across the street.” Marty tossed the ball back when he got a firm hold on it.

“We got a lead.” Tom checked the message pad next to his phone. “Donna Berkowitz. She called her husband in missing. Garvey Berkowitz. He left for work at the Andover Warehouse where he assembles furniture for ten dollars an hour, but he never showed. According to his boss, he wasn’t scheduled to work that day, which is why we didn’t flag him before.”

“Does she have reason to believe he got attacked and burned up in some inferno?” Marty reached over the desk and turned the pad around to read the few notes Tom had scribbled while he talked to the woman.

“I asked that same question. She said, and I quote, “Why the hell not?” She couldn’t think of anyone who would want to kill him, but she figured there’s enough crazy people around, someone was bound to kill him sooner or later.” Marty looked up so suddenly with that disbelieving look on his face that it made Tom grin. “Apparently he works nights with some of these crazy people, and hangs out at some bars with less than desirable clientele. She’s meeting us at the morgue to ID the body.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“You know I don’t joke around, Marty. I don’t have a sense of humor.” Tom slipped back into his suit coat.

“This I gotta see. If she can ID the body, I’ll buy lunch today.”

“Deal.”


* * *


The lady was in her fifties, Tom thought. Not well dressed, but composed. “Mrs. Berkowitz?”

“Yes.”

Tom shook her hand, then pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

“There’s not much to see here,” Marty piped up.

The two detectives flanked her as the body was pulled out of the freezer and the bag unzipped to reveal the charred body. They were prepared to catch her if the sight was too overwhelming.

“We’ll need to identify him by his dental records,” Tom said quietly.

“No need,” the woman said, trying to put up a strong front, though her lower lip trembled like that of a child when she took a breath through her mouth. “I know his teeth.” She bent over the body and waited for Tom to open the mouth, gently, against the charred skin. The muscles under her eyes twitched and tensed, but the rest of her body she had control over. The jaw loosened and opened. She sniffed and turned away, tears building up, but not blinking, so the tears wouldn’t fall, even if she couldn’t see through them. Marty took her arm and led her to the chair in the corner. “What’d they do to him?”

“Our best guess is they burned him in his car,” Marty said.

“We don’t have a car.”

“Then, someone else’s car.”

“Are you sure it’s him?” Tom asked. He didn’t believe she could ID the man so easily. And he definitely couldn’t believe he was about to win the bet with Marty, but he also didn’t want to get rolling on the wrong guy in the case.

She just nodded.

“We’ll need a list of friends. Acquaintances. Co-workers. Anyone you can think of who’s been in contact recently.”

She nodded again, staring at the closed drawer that held her husband’s body.


* * *

“Where you been all day?” Tom asked as he slid into a booth at a local greasy spoon. Marty’d been disappearing at the squad every time Tom turned around. He wiped the table down with a napkin, then tossed it aside.

Marty threw his coat onto the bench before sliding in. “The kid’s sick, so Lauren has me calling every half hour to check in with the baby-sitter.” He looked a little embarrassed.

“What she doin’ all day, if Josh’s sick?”

“Some class for this fundraising project she signed up for months ago. Which leaves her incommunicado, and me doing the overprotective dad thing.” Marty grabbed the menu before Tom’s hand landed on it. This was one of those places that kept just one menu per table and let the customers fight it out.

“You contagious?”

“Probably. But you know how kids are, they pick up everything. They make dead bodies look healthy.”

Tom snatched the menu. “Sounds appetizing.”

Marty pulled his cell out and pushed a button. “I got the baby-sitter’s cell phone on speed dial. Makes me look like an obsessive parent.” He turned away, looking out the window. “Hi, Shelley,” he said almost sweetly, “how is he?” He grimaced. “Lauren should be home in a couple hours, so don’t worry about it… No, don’t give him any grape juice. It’s one thing if he spills it, but if he ends up throwing up again, he’ll take out the sheets, the carpet, and the curtains…” Marty grimaced. “If he falls asleep, by all means, take a nap, kid, you’ve earned it.” He ended the call. “We got a kid watching the kid, and the way kids pick up germs, she’s going to end up coming down with this thing and take it to her class and spread it around, and what do you want to bet, in a month, one of her classmates will have passed it to a little brother in Josh’s class, and Josh’ll come down with the same thing again.”

“Makes me glad Nikki’s not talking to me this week.”

Marty chuckled. “The day you become a dad is the day I transfer to Witchita. Exciting police work down there, you know.”

“I’d make a great dad!” Tom told him, then paused. “Let’s not talk about it.”

Marty laughed.

The waitress walked up, a voluptuous maiden in spandex and a push-up bra, snapping her gum and searching her apron for a pencil. “What can I get youse?”

Once they’d ordered, Tom glanced out the window, trying to think about the case, about the man they might have ID’d who hadn’t been supposed to go to work that day, and who’d ended up dead and curled up in a drawer at the morgue.

“I bet you’ll be the next one to have kids,” Marty said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, out of us detectives. You and Nikki’ve been going out, what, three years now?”

“On and off.”

“You’ll probably end up popping the question, or maybe she’ll end up forgetting to pop a little birth control pill, and then what? You’re a dad, simple as that.”

“You and Lauren talked it out first, right?”

“She said, have you ever thought about having kids, I said, shouldn’t be a big deal. Three months later she was pregnant.”

“What about Karen? She’s young, probably got that biological clock thing going on.”

“Karen, a mom?” Marty snickered into his water glass. “Scrubbing dirty faces, kissing skinned knees? Taking the kids to soccer practice?

“And I’d bet if Dunbar was going to have kids, they would have some by now. His wife doesn’t exactly seem like the biological clock type.”

“You got that right,” Tom said, thinking back to meeting Christie Dunbar at a party a year before. She wasn’t cold, exactly, but she had this aura of priority, and kids didn’t seem to fit. “Jim wouldn’t be that bad as a dad, though.”

“Except for the stage where the kid’s crawling around the floor, leaving toys all over, and tripping you. I fell over Josh more than once myself. They’re just all over the place and you wonder how a little thing like that can move so fast when it can’t walk.” Marty took a long drink. “So I pick you. Next dad, picking up dirty diapers, calling the baby-sitter, doing laundry in the middle of the night.”

“That’s low, man.”

Marty’s cell rang. “’Lo?”

The waitress bounced back up with a tray of burgers and French fries for them. “Here you go,” she said.

Tom rested his arm across the back of the booth. “Hey, Cindy, could I trouble you for a straw?” he asked and winked.

She fished one out of her apron and set it next to his water.

“Lauren,” Marty complained, “he’ll bounce back.”

Tom reached for the straw, peeling the wrapper quickly and bringing the end to his mouth, not bothering with the drink. He’d seen women use this ploy, getting men to bring their eyes up to their mouths, always neatly painted. Getting them to think of making out. Nikki used to use this tactic when they first started dating. “Thanks,” he said, lightly biting the end.

She gave him a distracted smile, not buying into the flirting. “Anything else?” she asked, not making eye contact.

“Not right now,” Tom said, jamming the straw into his water and turning his plate so his burger was closer.

She sashayed off toward the kitchen with her tray.

Marty ended his phone call. “You know, the kid’s not so bad. Get a kid, forget the wife.”

“What’s she want now?”

“She wants me to go home and check on him. Like I’m gonna be able to help him have a better fever.” Marty grabbed the ketchup just before Tom’s hand touched it. He shook the bottle. “I saw you flirting with the waitress.”

“Keeping my options open.”

“Yeah,” Marty said, dripping sarcasm into the ketchup.

“You gonna go home?”

“What for? I can’t just run home every time he sneezes. He’s a big boy.”

“How old is he?”

“Seven.”

“Gonna be joining the navy soon, huh?”

“Soon enough. And by the time we’re done taking care of this kid’s every need, you know that spark, the whole reason we got married? It’ll be gone. We’ll be old. How can that be attractive? Women just have kids way too young. If it was up to me, I’d’ve waited until I was about ready to retire, when I could spend all the time I want playing whiffle ball in the park. And then, when I get tired of catering to his every need, I’ll just keel over and die.”


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


Tom stepped off the elevator, looking around for Marty. His partner was nowhere to be seen, but he found Jim just leaving the snack machines. “Yo, Jim,” he greeted the other detective.

Jim looked up, a package of Oreos in hand.

“You got the snack machine memorized?” Tom asked.

“Pretty much.” He pulled open the pack and held it out to Tom.

Tom snagged a cookie. “Thanks.”

“There was a lady here looking for you,” Jim said, staying just behind Tom as they walked toward the desks. “A Ms. Moore.”

“Oh, good, that’s the daughter.”

“I left her in the holding cell.” Jim gestured at the cell with a cookie, then turned down the aisle toward his desk.

“But—!” Tom spun around, then stopped, finding the cell empty. Jim’s laugh carried across the room behind him and Tom heard him pull out his desk chair.

“She’s in interview room one. I stuck her in there with some racy magazines and a pot of coffee.”

Tom turned back to find Jim pursing his lips against a smile and fitting his computer earpiece in his ear. “I’m sure she’s happy,” Tom said sourly.

“How’d the identification go?”

“Not bad.”

Jim looked up, his forehead creased. “I thought the body was burned beyond recognition.”

“We’re still waiting for the official dental records, but the widow swears she’d recognize those teeth anywhere.”

Jim shrugged with a grimace. “I guess if anyone would know…” He rubbed a hand over his chin, that spacey look on his face.

“What?”

“I’m just trying to remember what Christie’s teeth look like… Is that odd?”

Karen stopped just behind Tom, staring at Jim. “I’m not usually one to judge you, Jim, but yeah, it is.”

Jim grinned. “Thanks, Karen, I knew I could count on you.”

“Anytime.” Karen gave Tom a searching, almost disgusted look.

“Don’t give me that look, Karen,” Tom said.

“What look?” Jim asked.

“She thinks it’s a guy thing.”

“Sad to say, but I don’t think I could ID Christie just on a set of teeth.”

“Well, I, for one, am glad our widow has an oral fixation. It’ll make this case go a lot smoother.”

“The one with the incinerated body?” Karen asked.

“Yeah. If Marty ever gets his ass up here, we’re off to talk to the daughter. Who Jim has so graciously supplied with a stack of Playgirls.”

Karen shot Jim a look, but Jim’s face was completely unreadable as he stared at his computer screen. Karen blinked a few times. She settled into her seat, tossing glances in Jim’s direction, waiting for him to either deny it or say it was a joke.

Karen finally glanced at Tom and Tom couldn’t help but laugh. She rolled her eyes.

He shook his head as he left for the interview room. Maybe it was a blind thing, the way Jim was always able to keep a straight face, since he couldn’t see the reactions to his jokes. ‘Cause Tom certainly couldn’t keep a straight face.


* * *


“Andrea?” Tom asked. He held the door open for Marty behind him.

Andrea Moore looked up, her eyes rimmed with red, her lips glossy and tinted. She was in her late twenties. She stood up as the two detectives came closer. “I just need to know, is it him?”

“Your mom seems to think so. But we don’t have conclusive evidence pointing that way,” Marty said.

“Can you tell us, do you think it’s him?” Tom asked, pulling out a chair and sitting near the girl.

“How could I…?” She settled back into her own chair.

“I’m sure you’ve heard all about it from your mom, right? How he died, where we found the body. Based on what you know of your dad, do you think it could be him?”

She shook her head, momentarily silent, staring at the shiny metal table, eyes wide, but unfocused. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I moved out when I was 18, and I go home to visit, and for holidays, sometimes for dinner. Sometimes no one’s home at all, but I have a key.”

“You don’t know anything about your dad’s social life, or his business dealings?”

“Not really. He bowls. He’s on a team, I think, on Tuesday nights. He works nights, but that’s one of his evenings off.”

“And your mom? She works?” Marty asked.

“Mostly temporary stuff. Offices, cleaning.”

“They’re not well-off?” Tom asked.

“No.”

“Do you know if they owe money to anyone? Trying to make ends meet? Favors?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think they would tell me if they had any problems.”

“Did they keep a lot of money lying around?”

“No.”

“So there’s no way anyone could have planned, knowing your dad’s habits, to catch him off-guard?”

“Rob him? I don’t think anyone would try to rob him. He didn’t even dress… nice. Mom was always getting on him to dress a little better. And he’d joke that even the muggers leave him alone.”

“He have a sense of humor, your dad?” Marty asked.

“Most of the time.”

“A temper?”

“He’d get upset about traffic, pollution, politics. He liked to yell at the TV, but he never got in fights, and he never hit me or my mom.”

“He never got into it with his friends, or at the bar?”

“No.”

“You can’t think of any reason for someone to lock him in a car and set it on fire?”

“No.”

“Because, the problem is, something like this, wouldn’t be random. A mugging, accidentally shooting a guy in an alley, that might be random. But burning a body like that, that takes planning, it’s purposeful. Premeditated. Means he really pissed someone off.”

“If it is your dad,” Tom added when her eyes got wider and tears started to puddle on her lashes.

“When will you know if it is him?”

“After we get the match from his dental records. The medical examiner’s looking into it right now.”

“We’ll let you know when we find out, so you’ll have time to think of anything else,” Marty said. “Anything you forgot, or that didn’t seem important.” He stood up.

“But we’re done?”

“We’re done.”


* * *


The phone rang.

“Dunbar, eighth squad.”

“Dunbar, I finally lost ‘em. Got about three minutes. Pay phone.”

“Sonny, what are you talking about?”

“They were tailing me. I told you, I gotta be real careful talking to you, and I think they got my phones tapped, and I gotta be careful when I go home, so they don’t find out where my mom lives. But I had to find out what you’ve found out, so I got dressed up—and I gotta tell you, Dunbar, I look like the Flying Nun right now—in order to lose them. It worked, but I know they know I’m here. Only got a minute left. So what’d you find out?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Sonny’s voice was almost a screech.

“Nothing, Sonny.”

“Yeah, well, next time you better get something for me, or I ain’t calling back!” He slammed the phone down.

[greenbeing]

Chapter Eight

Jim turned his head to follow a pair of footsteps down the aisle of the department store. He stepped back a little to make sure the person had enough room to get by, but found the edge of a clothing rack burrowing into his shoulder. He squirmed away and inched to the side. The racks were too close together for easy navigation. He shifted from foot to foot as Christie held another shirt up to his chest.

“Can you stand still?” she asked.

Jim held his breath, his muscles tense and unmoving.

“I don’t understand how you can work on cases in your head all day and not move a muscle, but you can’t stand still for thirty seconds to buy new clothes.”

“Lack of interest?” he offered. He checked his watch. “Thirty-two minutes. That’s how long we’ve been here.”

“You need some new shirts for work.”

“I’m not a fashion experiment.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’m definitely not one of your mannequins.”

“I’m trying to match a shirt to the new tie your niece sent for your birthday.”

“Great…”

“Hold this.”

Jim held his hand out and grasped another hanger. He already had several in his other hand.

“Hold up the one on the left.”

Jim complied. “I think it looks great.”

“You haven’t even tried it on yet.”

“Can we pick something? Please?” He switched the shirt to his right hand with the others and reached out to a nearby rack where he plucked down the first shirt he found. “How about this? Is this my size? Feels good, let’s go.” He started to hand her the stack.

“Jimmy! I’m not having you going to work looking like you picked out your own clothes.”

Jim finally smiled.

“That’s better,” she said sweetly, patting his chest and leaning closer.

He tried to keep the smile even as his jaw tightened.

“We’ll hurry.” She leaned in close enough he could feel her hair under his nose and he breathed deeply. “But.” She stepped back. “You are going to have to try something on.”

He sighed and straightened his shoulders. “Then let’s do it.” He held up a shirt. “This one?” He shook his head, running the fabric between his fingers. “I don’t like it.” It was strangely rough, and probably not at all comfortable, especially not with the coming of summer. He handed the shirt back and held up another in front of his chest. “This one?”

“Are you this impatient at work? I feel sorry for Karen.” Christie moved away and he could hear hangers scratching on the rack as she sorted through the shirts.

Jim bit his lip. He probably did drive Karen crazy, especially now that he couldn’t see. Forcing her to look for clues, giving her the third degree to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. It wasn’t a lack of trust of her skills as a detective; just frustration that he couldn’t look for himself. He was never going to let himself feel useless, and he probably made Karen work twice as hard to satisfy that need. He drummed his fingers on the table to his left.

“Slave driver,” Christie muttered teasingly.

“Jimmy Dunbar, man, or mannequin?” a deep voice asked from his right.

Jim looked up carefully. He hadn’t heard anyone walking up, but he had been pretty deep in thought. And if the man had come from one of the carpeted areas of the department he was less likely to notice the footsteps approaching. Jim squared himself with the voice. When he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses he always took an extra moment to size people up and look at them as closely as possible. “Doug?” he asked, picturing the hulking man who went with the voice.

“I’d go with the teal, personally.” Jim felt a shirt move in his hand as Doug tugged at it, then forced it up for Jim to model. “Oh yeah, that’s nice.”

Doug Bergan had been another homicide detective at the 77 when Jim had been paired up with Terry, but Jim hadn’t seen any of those guys since he’d gotten out of the hospital. They’d never visited him at home, and he hadn’t exactly taken his own position as a social butterfly.

Jim grinned. “Long time no see,” he said before weighing the affect of those words coming from his mouth. “You still partnered with Gabe?”

“Nah, he’s moved on to higher things. He’d seen his quota of dead bodies.”

Jim nodded. “And you?”

“I’m still there. You… you’re with the 8 now?”

“You been checking up on me?” Jim asked with a smile. He could hear Christie still sorting through clothes behind him, so he relaxed in the presence of his old friend. It was amazing, he thought, that after working near the man for years, he’d never felt dwarfed the way he did now. Doug was no miniature, weighing in usually around 350 and probably a half foot taller than Jim. They used to call him Berg, because of his size. It was strange, the way he could feel that size hulking over him in ways he’d never noticed before. His perceptions really were changing.

“Just listening to rumors.”

Jim felt a small hand on his, taking the burden of the shirts. “I’ll be to the left,” Christie said quietly.

Jim nodded her off. “The wife.” He gestured after her, her high heels making it easy to follow her movements across the linoleum.

“I remember,” Doug said. “You busy?”

“She’s just picking me out some new duds.” Jim made a show of straightening the collar of his button-down shirt, which he’d left on after work without the tie. “Can’t have me going out like this, you know.”

“Glad it’s you and not me,” Doug said confidentially, leaning his rotund body a little closer.

Jim leaned closer himself. “You do realize you’re in a department store, right?” he asked somberly. Doug wasn’t the type of guy who went shopping, even for groceries, without a fight. There’d been a running joke in the department about Doug being the worst dressed detective ever, almost as threadbare and stained as any junkie on the street.

Doug laughed. “I need a new tie. I’m down to two after this morning.”

Jim nodded knowingly. “What’d you do this time?”

“I got a little too close to the body. This kid was messed up, even bleeding out the ears. Man, it was like a massacre. So I get voted to check for ID, and… you get the picture.”

Jim nodded grimly. “Tough job.”

“You holding up okay? I mean, job-wise?”

“Sure, no problems there.”

“I saw you on the news, first day back. We all did.”

Jim nodded, feeling his shoulders tensing up. Doug didn’t usually dance around an issue, but Jim couldn’t imagine exactly what he wanted to ask.

“Saw you, with the dog…”

Jim smiled. “Oh, Hank!” he said, relieved. “He’s at home. Christie thought he’d get bored.” He lowered his voice and said, “She didn’t care how I felt.”

Doug laughed. “They never do, do they?”

“There was nothing in the marriage vows that said she did. But it was too late by the time I realized it,” Jim said with a laugh.

Doug moved a little to the side of the aisle and Jim turned his head to track the change. “The boss was sort of looking into your clearance rate.”

“What’d he think?”

“He thought it was damned bad luck you weren’t with us anymore.”

Jim laughed. “I’m sure he’s all broken up about it, too. He was always complaining about my techniques and how he’d have to stand up to his boss about me.”

“You ever think about coming back?”

Jim shook his head. “I went where I was assigned and I never looked back.”

Doug sort of laughed at the wry comment. “Right.”

“Really.”

“You could always put in for a transfer.”

“You miss me that much?”

“That was our heyday, the most fun I’ve ever had solving cases. You and me and Gabe and Red.”

Jim found himself laughing out of shock. “Red?”

It sounded like Doug was shifting uncomfortably. “The good old days, you know, back when we got to work a lot with Walter, right after I moved up.”

Red Higgins, Jim’s partner for about a year. Jim bit his lip. He’d definitely never thought of Red as part of a heyday era, but he supposed the nights spent working with Walter Clark fell in that category, and Red had been part of the team then.

“No offense to Terry…” Doug started. “Bastard,” he muttered. From the sound of his voice, it seemed he’d even turned his head away from Jim. “I didn’t want to bring him up. I mean, with you gone, we had Terry, and Glenn Semple, this fat bastard, rubs everyone the wrong way—”

“I met him.”

“He’s on desk duty now.”

Jim nodded. “That’s definitely for the best.”

Doug groaned. “Actually it means he’s always there. We come back and it’s always: “Hey guys, I know who done it. I did all this research while you were gone, called my old pals in the tax bureau…” And he’s always wrong. Can barely use a computer. But he can’t walk more than five steps without wheezing, so I’ve heard the lieutenant pressing him about early retirement.”

“That’s even better.”

“Sorry for bringing Terry up.” Doug almost sounded ashamed, like a little kid who’d been caught taking the Lord’s name in vain.

“It doesn’t matter. You heard from him?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

“I guess he wouldn’t go to you anymore. But—what did happen that day? You can’t help but think, if they hadn’t stuck Terry with Semple… You know.”

Jim shook his head. “I don’t think we’ll ever know what happened.”

“Yeah…” Doug said sadly. “I’m gonna change the subject now.”

Jim laughed.

“Talking to you about Terry, that’s like rubbing it all in your face or asking you how you do your job when you can’t—” Doug cut himself off.

“Doug.” Jim shook his head. He’d never known the big detective to be at a loss for words or to treat any subject as taboo. “Do I have to spell it out for you? You can say whatever, just like always.”

“Yeah,” Doug said, forcing a laugh. “What am I doing, worrying about offending Jim Dunbar?”

“No idea.” He grinned.

“Without the dog… for a second there… I thought you could see.”

Jim nodded knowingly.

“Good thing you’re as thick-skinned as you are hard-headed.” But the big man still sounded uneasy.

[greenbeing]

Chapter Nine

“I lost a perp last week,” Doug was saying.

Jim tried to give him a sympathetic look.

Berg slugged him in the arm and laughed. “There’s that old Jim Dunbar smugness! You’d never lose a perp, would you?”

Jim grimaced. He recalled talking to Marty about that same thing, but he’d honestly never thought of himself as smug. “I’ve lost perps,” he said carefully.

Doug laughed again. “Right.”

Jim could feel his jaw getting tight. “One almost died on us the other day…” But what he was really thinking about was the one who’d run right past him outside the Korean grocery store, had even touched him.

Bergan was quiet a second. “Look, if you’ve lost perps after you—since you can’t—I mean, it doesn’t matter.”

“How?” Jim faced the big man squarely. He hated how easily Berg could read him, even though they hadn’t worked together in over two years.

“You know…”

“I’m a detective. I can’t afford—”

“You’re not a superhero,” Doug interrupted. “Hell, I lost a perp last week. You want know how? He dumped a garbage can and I jumped over it, right? Landed in the trash and slid—damn near killed myself. I was flailing all over the place and Quartz—my new partner, Quartsmeier—was laughing hysterically. I don’t know what the hell happened with him, but he couldn’t even get himself together enough to catch the kid. And I certainly wasn’t going anywhere—knocked myself senseless and nearly dislocated my knee. But him—”

“It’s because you scream like a girl,” Jim said somberly.

He could felt the big man flounder for a word. “What?” he finally spat out.

“You should hear yourself sometime. It’s no wonder your partner couldn’t do anything. Look at yourself—this big hulking man flailing his arms and screaming. It happens to be funny, how high-pitched your voice gets.”

“But—How would you know?”

“I’m not deaf, Berg. Remember the Alexander case? When the guy was hiding in the rafters and dumped that pail of—what was it, mayonnaise?—on your head? Not a pretty sight.”

“Hey, I did not scream. My mouth was full of that sh%t.”

Jim laughed and moved to punch Berg in the shoulder, but the blow glanced off the side. “I’m just shitting you.”

“Yeah…” Berg cleared his throat. “I moved, just now,” he started to explain, “’cause you hit too hard.”

“I’ll pay more attention next time.” Jim smiled, glad he hadn’t misjudged the distance that badly. “And it wasn’t the Alexander case. Remember when you fell off the barge into the river?”

“…I can’t swim…”

Jim grinned. “Don’t worry about it. We’re all scared of something.”

“Yeah…”

“Most of us are just more manly about it.”

Berg grabbed him in a loose chokehold.

“I’d break out, but this is not the time or place for you to get your ass kicked,” Jim said.

Berg let go. “You think you could take me?”

Jim turned back slowly, the spin into the chokehold having disoriented him just enough to make his movements less than precise. But he could feel Berg under the muzak, hulking warmth in the air conditioning, fat in the empty aisle, breathing just loud enough to give his position away. Jim looked down at the man’s feet and let his eyes travel upward to where his head would be, as if sizing him up. “Not a problem.”

Berg laughed. “We never did get our sparring match.”

Jim grinned. “That was years ago.” Jim had taken a defensive fighting class with Doug Bergan years earlier and Doug constantly brought up the fact that they hadn’t gotten a chance to practice on each other.

“You say that like I’m getting old.”

Jim shook his head.

“I’d better get going. Got a date tonight.” The way he was moving made Jim think Doug was fluffing his collar and flaunting his stuff. “You should stop by and visit. The rest of the guys haven’t seen you, either.”

Jim nodded. “Yeah, I’ll have to drop by.”

“You still… know your way?”

“I could get there in my sleep. Done it enough times.”

Berg laughed that deep chuckle that came straight from his gut. “I bet I could, too.”

Jim flinched as he suddenly found a monstrous hand on top of his head, ruffling his hair. He reached up to try to repair the damage. “Better run before my wife sees what you’ve done.”

Jim listened as Doug walked away, following the footsteps with his head. He smiled to himself and got his bearings by touching the table that had been just to his left. Re-acclimated, he listened, expecting Christie to pop up immediately and tease him about the goofy grin. He checked his watch. They’d talked for nearly an hour.

He turned his head, hearing nothing but muzak around him. Wherever Christie had said she was going, it wasn’t likely she’d still be there after an hour of reminiscing. Maybe she’d thought he’d talk to Berg all night if she let him, and she’d wandered off somewhere, expecting the guys to still be talking by the time she got back, not having moved.

Jim shook his head to himself. Two minutes alone in a department store and he was questioning his ability to get out? Just because he’d let Christie guide him and hadn’t paid much attention didn’t mean he was lost. He had his cane. He’d easily find the door, maybe catch a cab. He wasn’t lost; he’d just lost his wife.

“Christie?” He kept his voice calm, but he felt like the lost child, calling for Mom.

He pulled his cane out. It would probably be best to let her find him, since she knew where he was, but he’d never been very good at inaction. He unfolded the long rod and stepped away from the table, listening intently and trying to decide which way to go. Berg had gone to the left. That was the last thing he wanted to do, follow the man and bump into him, have to admit he couldn’t find his own wife. Berg wouldn’t be able to understand, not yet. He swallowed hard.

A faint sound of traffic arose to the right. That would be where the doors were. He wouldn’t find her there, leaving him not much choice; he’d have to go left. Jim squared off with the table and extended his cane. There were footsteps headed toward him, which he’d have to skirt around.

“Jim?” Christie said.

They were her footsteps. He didn’t understand how he’d failed to recognize them immediately.

“I just saw Doug walk past. I hadn’t realized how far I’d gone.”

He shrugged. “We done here?”

“Just because you managed to waste an hour does not mean you get out of trying on clothes.” She slipped her hand through his arm. “Dressing rooms are straight ahead, then we’ll turn left after the next aisle and weave through the racks.” She let him guide her and just stayed close. “You have fun?”

“Yeah.” He’d nearly forgotten how much fun he’d been having talking to his old friend, having lost the moment to the practicalities of finding his wife.

“Yeah.”

He smiled. “Yeah. He said I should go visit. The old squad.”

“Are you going to?”

He shrugged.

“Come on. You talked to him long enough. I doubt you’d be bored.”

Jim felt the carpet end under his cane. “Left?”

“After the aisle. It’s in the middle of this section.”

Jim let her pick the spot where they turned, but the racks were too close together for him to walk next to her any longer, so he forged his own way. “Getting close?” He wove around a table.

“Fifteen feet. And you’re changing the subject.”

“I’m concentrating,” he said lamely.

“I know you don’t like to get together with my friends, but you should keep in touch with your own.” She moved closer and took his arm. “Here.”

Jim folded his cane up.

“Mrs. Dunbar! Just the woman I was hoping to run into.”

Jim turned toward Doug Bergan’s voice.

“Hi, Doug,” Christie said sweetly.

“Which do you think?”

Jim stowed his cane back in his back pocket, but he wasn’t sure where to look, at his friend or his wife.

“Ooh…” she said noncommittally, that tone of voice she used when both choices were equally untenable. “Um…”

“Neither,” Jim piped up. He shook his head, then turned to face his wife. “Honey, this man has a date tonight. Do you think you could… do something?”

“Oh—”

“No!” Berg jumped in. “Thanks, but—”

“He needs more help than I do. Look at him.”

“Like you’d know.”

Jim grinned. “Trust me.”

“I could suggest something,” Christie said, almost shyly.

“That’s okay. I appreciate it, but—” Doug stopped. “Jim, no offense, but I’m a f^cking cop; I don’t want to look like you.”

Jim burst out laughing. “So it’s a pity date?” he asked.

“No,” Berg growled.

He felt the pile of shirts being pressed into his stomach and took them from her. “Here…” Jim heard Christie move away. “Um…” she said from about ten feet away, vocalizing for Jim’s benefit. She hummed to herself.

“I have my own sense of style,” Berg said.

Jim turned to face him, not having realized his attention had been drawn so far by Christie’s humming.

“That’s not style,” Jim countered.

“I’m a man. On a mission.”

“You have a theme song to go with that?”

Doug grunted. “Yeah, it goes “boom chicka wow-wow.” And the ladies go crazy for it.”

“My wife doesn’t mean any harm. You might even like it.”

“Here,” Christie said, rejoining them. “This is pretty… spiffy.”

“Spiffy?” Jim asked.

“Not bad,” Doug said.

“You think Christie captured your unique sense of style?” Jim couldn’t picture it.

“It’s better than what she’s got you dolled up in.”

Jim looked over at Christie. “Darling, does that tie say “boom chicka wow-wow?” he teased.

“Look!” Berg exclaimed excitedly. “A matching belt!”

“Oh, god,” Christie squeaked. Jim heard a small sound just to his right, like her clapping a hand over her mouth.

“You don’t like it?” Doug asked, sounding genuinely disappointed.

“It’s um…” Christie faltered.

“Too much?” Jim supplied.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It’s not… subtle.”

Jim grinned. Doug’s hulking figure was anything but subtle. He turned back to Doug and said, “I like it.”

“What?” Christie asked.

“He’s not one to blend in with the crowd.”

“No, but—”

“You can play dress-up with your Ken doll there,” Doug offered.

Jim almost felt himself blushing. He suddenly felt subservient. He’d always been fighting Christie’s influence before because he knew he’d get razzed by the guys. It was a feeling he’d never felt at the 8, where everyone there seemed to accept the fact that he had a doting wife. But with the old team… he wondered if maybe it was this feeling that had instilled him with that old fatal recklessness, that disapproval and discontent with his wife. It was a whole new dynamic, and it had taken some getting used to this new Jim.

“You really don’t like it?” Doug asked quietly.

There was silence.

Doug gave in and Jim could only imagine the looks Christie had given the other detective. Most likely it was a pitying look that had gotten him to give in.

“And you don’t like this one?”

Jim could only imagine Doug holding up a tie of uncertain gaudiness.

“Okay.” Doug gave in again.

Jim felt him moving more than heard it. The bulk was headed toward him.

“What time is it?” Doug grabbed Jim’s wrist and twisted it to look at his watch. “Sh@t, already? I gotta go.” He released Jim’s wrist and leaned down a little. “She’s kinda scary, man,” he said quietly.

“But Doug,” Christie said sweetly, “the tie I picked out highlights your eyes.”

“Oh.” Doug shifted uncomfortably, like he was embarrassed, or blushing. “Do you still pick clothes that highlight—” Jim could feel him gesturing toward him before Doug cut himself off. “Never mind.”

“Yes, Doug,” Chrsitie said, half-seductively, “blue’s his best color.” She leaned closer to Jim.

“Yeah, Doug,” Jim agreed as Christie slipped her hand into his, “my eyes are my best feature.” He smiled wryly and winked.

Doug gave a nervous giggle, not so easily won over by Jim downplaying the blindness.

Jim tapped his watch, awkwardly shifting the shirts to complete the action.

“Oh, sh&t, right. See you.”

“Yeah,” Jim said.

“Good night, Doug,” Christie said.

“Good luck,” Jim said.

“Right. Bye.”

Jim listened to the footsteps disappear.

“You have a mean streak,” Christie said quietly.

He shrugged.

“You gonna try these on, or am I going to have to hold you down?”

Jim took her arm to let her guide him into the dressing rooms. “Was he staring at me the whole time?” he asked quietly.

“I… don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention,” Christie said awkwardly. “You could have cut him some slack. This is the first time he’s seen you up and about.”

He frowned at her.

“Is that why you don’t want to go visit?”

“There’s a lot of memories there, Christie.” He was sure he wouldn’t have to elaborate for her sake. He let her push him into a cubicle with the stack of clothes.

She followed. “Do you worry about Karen staring at you all day?”

“She doesn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because… we’re busy.” He pulled his shirt over his head and handed it to her to keep track of. “Besides, I’m not worried about people staring at me. I was just… wondering.”

“Mhm,” she said knowingly.

“Come on.” He wrinkled his nose up and took a shirt from her. “What does it matter? I was just wondering because… sometimes, he’d just stop in mid-sentence and…”

“Jimmy, this is the first time he’s seen you since—he came to visit you in the hospital, right?”

“Are you saying I was touchy back then?”

“I’m saying you weren’t very good company for anyone.” She straightened the collar and held him by the shoulders at arms’ length. “Hmm… yeah.” She undid the top button.

Jim followed the lead and finished unbuttoning.

“You’ll have to see everyone you used to work with sometime.”

“Why?” She was beginning to sound like Galloway.

“You can’t just pretend you’re some new Jim Dunbar. You have a past.”

He kind of smiled, but only one corner of his mouth moved as he sucked the other corner in to chew on. He could almost hear Galloway saying, “You can’t move forward when you can’t deal with your past.” It was like Christie was telling him he still had some demons that needed to be put to rest. He’d dealt with Anne, and he and Christie had been dealing with their problems, even seeing a couples’ therapist.

“Jimmy, you used to have friends. We used to go out almost every night; we never saw the inside of the apartment unless you were feeling particularly… romantic. Maybe it’s hard, but don’t you want things to get back to normal?”

“Yeah…” he agreed half-heartedly as he exchanged shirts with her. Christie never used to confront him directly like that. He guessed it took guts, trying not to offend him while opening up the problem at hand, not dancing around the issue, not just angrily arguing with no hope of closure. “So what do you want to do? Go play miniature golf?”

She laughed, then kissed him. “Actually, I want to go home, Detective.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Ten

“ID came back positive,” Tom said. “Garvey Berkowitz.”

“That’s creepy,” Marty said.

Tom snickered.

“What’s so creepy?” Karen asked. “Come on, Marty, you’re a grown man.”

“You tell me it’s normal for a grown woman to come in here and take a look at a dead man’s teeth to identify him, and I’ll get over it,” Marty said.

“Now comes the hard part. Who killed him?” Tom asked.

“It was me, Tom,” Karen said, prodding absently at her keyboard. “I killed him.”

“Right.”

“What about the wife?” Marty asked. “I mean, she seemed kind of distraught, but maybe she was sure it was him because she’s the one who offed him. How many burned up bodies are there in the city at any one time?”

“Locked him in a burning vehicle, stood back and laughed?” Tom stared at Marty as if the other detective had lost his mind.

“Hey, Karen, what’s that you always say?”

Karen busied herself at her computer, shaking her head. “You’ve heard it enough, Marty, get over it.”

“It’s just so enlightening, Karen. Let’s hear it one more time.”

Karen grunted.

“How’s your case going?” Tom asked, playing peacemaker as always. There was a reason he’d been nominated as the union delegate for the squad. Not that he didn’t have his own opinions, but he knew how to keep them inside, not rock the boat.

“Our perp’s still not regained consciousness,” Karen said, leaning back in her chair. “Jim and I spent the morning hanging around the hospital, waiting for the doctor, who showed up two hours late and assured us, “He’ll be fine.” Then he patted me on the shoulder and went on his way.”

“He’ll be fine?”

“Yeah. When what I need to hear is, he’s awake, and he’s completely coherent, and he’s confessed to the murder, here’s his statement. That’s what I need.”

“Annoyed much, Karen?” Marty teased.

“Bored out of my fricken mind, Marty. You go deal with Mrs. Hanson this afternoon. I dare you.”

Hank wandered down the hall from the elevator, through the gate, and took his place by Jim’s desk, yawned, then shut his eyes.

Marty looked down at the furriest member of the squad. “What’d you do, push him off the bridge? Or maybe you just peed on him?”

“Hank has better aim than you do, Marty,” Jim said, pausing at the gate, not wearing his suit jacket and with the sleeves of his pale blue shirt rolled up. He had four spoons in his right hand and a small paper grocery sack in the left. He listened to the positions of various people in the room, then continued on his way to his desk. “Anything jump up while I was gone?”

“Be realistic, Jim,” Karen said. “You ever been in a coma?”

The sack hit his desk a little harder than he’d planned. “Actually, yeah.”

“Then, uh, you know when he comes out of it, he’ll be, uh, a little…”

“Out of it?” Jim turned, forcing a smile and holding out a plastic spoon in her direction. “Here.” He pulled out two frozen lemon ices, set the one on his desk, and handed the other across the aisle to Karen. “It’s brutal out there.” The air conditioning in the squad was battling the heat outside, but even though it wasn’t quite summer, it was over ninety, and the air conditioning was acting like it forgot how to do its job.

“Um, thanks, Jim,” Karen said.

Jim dropped the remaining spoons in with the remaining cups and handed them over to Marty.

“Good thing it’s morning,” Marty said as he took the bag. “We have all day for it to get hotter.”

Jim settled into his seat and turned to Karen. “Nothing new?”

“Nothing,” she said, mumbling around a mouthful of solid lemonade.

“We got something,” Tom said, rubbing it in. “Positive ID.”

Jim popped open the plastic lid. “I talked to Bostick again this morning; they haven’t found anything on the car yet. My bet is, whoever burned it, they made sure that car disappeared.”

“Then why didn’t they leave the body in it?” Marty asked.

Jim grinned. “It’s your case, isn’t it, Marty? You feeling lazy today, or do you honestly want my opinion?”

“Neither,” Marty said. “I happen to be calling your opinion on the car a load of hooey.”

“Hooey?” Tom asked. “White boys can’t talk.”

“So, Jim, why would anyone kill a guy, then pull his scorched hot body out of an equally scorched hot car? Then go through the trouble of making the car disappear? They’d have to have towed it: there’s no way a car in that condition would be drivable.”

“You said there were no burn marks where you found the body,” Jim said. “What if they got rid of the car where they burned it? Down at the docks, or by the river, or even in some other state. Then they transported the body to the warehouse where he worked.”

“Okay, but why? Why bother pulling the body out of the car?”

“To revive it, Marty. Obviously they had a change of heart, and they thought they might be able to save him,” Jim said, his face straight.

“That’s a load of—” Marty started.

Tom laughed. “Good one.”

“Maybe to make an example for someone else involved? Or maybe because they felt guilty? Making the guy disappear without a trace? This way the family could have some closure? Or maybe the car was in such bad shape, it just fell out of the car.”

Marty blinked over at Jim. “You go back to your coma case, Jim. You think too much.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Eleven

Say fifteen more minutes. Or even ten. He could wait ten minutes, right?

But Jim Dunbar had never been a patient man. Self-indulged impatience was more his style. And Karen, who should have already been there—early, just like him—she’d understand if he didn’t wait.

Fifteen minutes early and the wait was killing him.

St. John Smythe lay comatose behind this door. Jim’s hand floated to the handle again, but he pulled back. The man wasn’t conscious; what would five more minutes matter? Karen would be there and if there was some miracle, she’d take notes.

He wouldn’t. Not that he couldn’t, but he’d never been that patient when writing things down—he’d created a brisk shorthand which only he could read. Terry’d only been starting to learn to decipher it. After he’d come back on the job, Jim had just used his blindness as an excuse not to carry a notebook—the shorthand would be useless between him and Karen now, anyway. But did he rely on her too much?

The silent hallway echoed the tiny flip of his watch. Twelve minutes. Surely he could wait twelve minutes?

His hand was back on the handle of the door. This time he didn’t pull back. “Hank,” he said quietly, “stay.” The dog had already been positioned next to the wall, out of the way. Hank so rarely got to meet suspects and victims and families—always a danger of allergens, or of intimidating perps who would later claim police brutality, confession under duress, or of frightening witnesses. But the dog seemed to be used to being left behind.

Jim had been blind three years, back on the job about two, working in sync with Hank and Karen nearly as long—it had taken a few months for them all to mesh into their proper rolls. The intuition and synchronicity Jim had with his blindness had come later. He’d fought against believing what his other senses told him, but he was getting better at understanding his world, this narrow focus.

Click—metal on metal, releasing hold. The door, how it slid heavily through the air, opening inward, the slight creak initially of a hinge, the way the air-conditioning of the room rushed out to greet that of the hallway—warmer in the room, air currents swirling to even the temperature—he could already feel the dimensions. More than that, the shallow breathing in the bed, assisted by life support, a compressing sound, oxygen pumping in time with the weakened lungs. Beep-beep-beep-beep, heart monitor, sounded a little fast for a man on his death bed, but perhaps the infarction had weakened the muscle to the point that it needed to work twice as hard to keep him alive—the doctors had said they couldn’t operate yet, not unless he awoke, or unless he got worse. A slight rattle across the room he couldn’t place, it didn’t sound like the air conditioning vent or even a normal part of hospice, but it was too regular of a clacking to be created by a human. Guessing, the air conditioning blowing some tubing, or even the blinds on the window. The regularity of the sound helped give the room dimensions.

The other thing he was becoming aware of, finally after three years, the most helpful sense was that of whether or not he was alone. And now, here in this hospital room, he was definitely not alone. And it wasn’t the presence of St. John Smythe fluttering around him. He couldn’t even be sure he was detecting a bit of cologne, or hearing another breath, it was something less tangible than that. Someone was there, staring at him; if ESP or telepathy had been possible, Jim knew he’d have felt every thought transferred from the—man, it was definitely a man—to him.

He let the door click shut, it swished, the air displacing momentarily and settling down again, like in a crypt.

He turned. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, so there was no hiding if he happened to be off of his guess, but he could swear the presence was—there. He stopped panning and waited, a small smile on his lips. Again, he could feel the connection.

“No one’s supposed to be in here,” a male voice said. A little nervous, but hardly a waver of tone, he sounded in his late twenties, bold, self-assured, but that undertone of nerves.

Jim swept out his badge and showed it, just long enough, tilting it just so as to catch either a light from above, if it were on, or light from the window, then he stowed it back away. “And you?”

A pause, perhaps to swallow, the voice a little less certain. “Security.” A shifting, tennis shoes, a slight squeak.

Jim waited. He crossed his arms.

Fabric rustled, the rough fabric, loose, like a lab coat. “Sort of. Back-up security.”

“And the real security went where?”

“Breakfast. They, um, didn’t figure as he was going anywheres…”

“Not a high priority?”

“Well, um, see—”

“You don’t need maximum security on a corpse?”

“Right—well, I mean, he’s not dead—”

“Yet,” Jim finished.

“Right—well, um—”

“Relax,” Jim soothed, but inside, he could feel himself laughing. He wanted to work the guy over, figure out what he’d been doing, that was his own devilish side trying to get out. “So you’re just here to make sure Mr. Smythe doesn’t go AWOL, right?”

“Right.”

“But what about visitors?”

“What about them?”

“Has he had any?”

“Oh, um, I wouldn’t know.”

Jim quirked an eyebrow.

“I usually work downstairs—cafeteria—but I brought up the breakfast trays, and, like, just in case, you know?”

Jim nodded.

“But he wasn’t, of course.”

“Of course.”

“So here I was, and Diggins was tired, so—we swapped.”

Jim grinned. “He’s off delivering breakfast trays and you’re here waiting for the old guy to kick the bucket.”

“It’s bound to happen.” The voice sounded suddenly nervous.

“Oh?”

“I was, uh, just reading his chart.”

Jim let his eyes shift toward the bed, toward the inevitable sick-bed chair next to it, next to this kid. He turned back, the overall silence of the hospital playing for him, giving him the benefit of cool quiet so he could track every movement this kid made. “What’s your name?”

“Billy.”

“What’s the chart say, Billy?”

“It’s c-confidential.” The sound of wide eyes.

“What’s the chart say, Billy?”

Jim listened attentively as Billy recited bits and pieces from memory, must be memory, as there was no fluttering of paper, no rustling, not even a movement from Billy, who was talking to the floor. Jim’s own gaze was drawn downward, probably to the same place Billy was staring at. Christie had commented on this before, the way Jim had been trained after nearly 40 years of seeing, to track movements, to look away when the person he was speaking to turned away. It was all cued from the voice, he suspected, but Christie said it was uncanny, even unnerving, sometimes, when he was in tune with the person he was speaking with, how he’d even make eye contact for a prolonged period.

By the time Billy had finished, Jim found his posture had sagged, his gaze had been broken, and he just stared at the floor, though he straightened up, using the blast from the air conditioner and the beeping of the heart monitor as clues for his vertical line.

“That bad?” Billy asked.

Jim just nodded. St. John Smythe wasn’t faring so well.


* * *


Hank’s harness was like an extension of his hand—or of his eyes, of his very being. Jim knew how to read the movements of the German shepherd better than most cops knew how to read their partners.

Did he know Hank or Karen better? Both were vital to his success on the job. The dog, he knew every nuance of every movement. If the dog was distracted by a person it was a different feeling than when he was distracted by a squirrel in the park. Jim knew when he was hungry, thirsty, tired.

They balanced each other. For Hank, this wasn’t so much a dog’s life. He was out there, doing stuff, meeting people, going places. Any dog would kill for this position, even with all the responsibility. It was better than lying on a rug somewhere, alone, wondering when the human would come home next so he could pee.

By contrast, Jim didn’t know Karen’s movements as well. With her, it was more her voice, every tone meant something else, no matter what she was saying, he always felt he understood more by what she wasn’t saying. Little things like how she shifted in her chair at the squad, or looked for something in her desk, everything had meaning to him. And quite often he found that meaning saying: you will never understand this woman.

She wasn’t a thing like Christie. Christie he understood. The wife, the mood swings, toeing the line. He knew when to back off, though sometimes he refused. Christie was filled with that feminine mystique. He understood that she was a woman, and that he wasn’t supposed to understand her.

Then there was Karen.

“You think he’s dying because you talked to some orderly?”

Jim set his jaw, waiting at the street corner with Hank just in front of him. “He wasn’t an orderly.”

“That kid you were just talking to? Yeah, Jim, he had doctor written all over him.”

“He wasn’t a doctor.”

Christie wasn’t the sarcastic type. She’d never been able to handle humor. Not that she was rigid and humorless, but she was serious, intense, goal-oriented. And she’d never argue with him over something so cut and dried as a case.

“Well?” Karen prompted.

“Billy—”

“Right. Billy,” she agreed.

The traffic shifted. He took another listen, then prompted Hank forward. At the end of the harness, the dog took an extra look-see, the harness taut as he looked one way, then the other, then straight, ready to go. Jim stepped off the curb after him. The city was loud, impersonal, full of taxis and swearing and the smell of burning rubber. And Karen, next to him, lost in the shuffle. It wasn’t like the hospital room, so sterile Jim hadn’t missed a cue. Here was where the world started to spin.

Hank paused at the curb, just long enough for Jim to find his footing on the sidewalk.

Karen touched his arm, a small tap, maybe to remind him of her question, or just to let him know she was there. Whatever it was, he focused on it, briefly, then lost her again as a car with an inordinately loud stereo pulled up alongside them. “Where’s the car?”

“Down the block.”

He followed her. Pedestrians brushed past and the sun beat down, baking the scents of the city into the pavement, into the very air and substance of life around him. The trees smelled of pastrami and garlic and bagels. The decorative fountains reflected the sounds of traffic and music and gossip. The pigeons were the most coherent sentient beings around. Jim focused on one cooing on a mailbox or a straggly bush just down the street. It was easiest to focus on one thing while he tried to think out here. “Billy works in the cafeteria, yes, but he read the chart—”

“And his diagnosis?” Karen asked, that grin in her voice that he hated. The one she always had when she thought he’d gone off the deep end.

“My diagnosis, Karen, from what he told me, is that we’re out of luck.”

“So what? Chances of him making it to trial anyway were slim. What else do you want from him?”

“The truth, Karen, is that too much to ask?”

There was pressure on his arm, her hand again, this time stopping him. He signaled Hank to stop and looked down at the woman at his side, his lips pressed together.

“You still think that line about him perjuring himself is worth something?”

He took on the tone he heard her use sometimes, mocking her, he said, “Get a grip, Jim, get over it.”

“I don’t sound like that.” Sounded like she was rolling her eyes.

He pushed it. “I don’t know what you look like, Karen, but I know what you sound like.”

“Car’s to your left, detective,” she said. Again, the tone he associated with her rolling her eyes.

Jim let go of Hank’s harness, holding only the leash. He reached out, took a step, then two steps. His hand found the car and he let his arm drop. Karen hadn’t moved, but he wasn’t sure exactly where she was. The city had swallowed her, but he let her go and just spoke; it’d be easier to explain himself without knowing for sure she was staring at him with her no-nonsense, get-a-grip tone. “You wanna know why I’m so obsessed with this? One, I don’t know if Sinjin was even there. Two, if he was, I don’t think he did it on purpose. Three, the way Mr. Hanson, esquire acted the entire time we were investigating this case, I wanted to rip his balls out and shove them down his throat.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s why I got into law enforcement, too.”

Jim let his head drop, but it was more to hide his grin.

“There’s something… something I hated about that family, too, but that doesn’t mean they’re capable of committing a crime. Just because they were always doting on the great Detective Dunbar and making sure he was comfortable, that’s no reason to follow them until they screw up.”

Jim sighed. Yeah, it got to him, how some people wouldn’t let him screw up, how they were constantly hovering and making sure he was comfortable, some sort of invalid.

“Don’t worry, I’m with you on this,” she reassured him.

Jim cocked his head at her.

“The day we arrested Sinjin? Mr. Hanson hugged me.”

Jim laughed loudly. “Yeah, that’s a good reason.”

“There was something off about it, Jim.”

“You don’t think it had anything to do with you being a pretty young lady?”

“He stroked my hair.”

“You shoulda stayed a beat cop. You coulda spent all your time arresting huggers and muggers.”

“Ha ha, very funny, get in the damn car.”

A footstep, just one, then a car roared by, a hole in the muffler, and he lost her. Jim reached out again for the car, finding he wasn’t standing completely upright. That happened sometimes, without a horizon to fix on, if he was concentrating on something else, he’d find himself leaning one way or another, his posture less than perfect. He let Hank into the car, then followed, slamming his door in time with Karen’s.

“If everyone slammed their car doors at the same time in this city, we’d be in big trouble,” Karen grumbled, starting the ignition.

“What now?” Jim asked, hooking in his seatbelt.

“Head back. Maybe run Mr. Hanson through CBI again.”

Jim rolled his window down, grinning. “You had too much fun with that last time.”

“Okay, so I’ll Google him.”

Hank jutted his panting face next to Jim’s head in order to look out the windshield, or join the conversation.

A tune played by bells sped past the car. “Was that the ice cream man?” Jim asked. He followed the sound, listening ahead, straining his ears the same way he used to squint into the distance. Being blind was more three dimensional, forming pictures behind as well as ahead, but it was also more confined, sounds moving in and out of range.

“You want me to pull him over for speeding?”

Jim grinned. “Yeah, I kinda do. It’ll be better than spending all morning on paperwork.”

“I’ll buy you a popsicle when we get back, okay? I don’t think it’d go over to well if I was the one who had to arrest the ice cream man.”

“Something to tell your grandkids.”

“Don’t start.”

Jim loosened his tie. “Start what?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really.”

“If this heat doesn’t let up, we should ask to work the night shift for a while.”

“Really, Karen.”

“Yes, really.”

“Do I often ask about your grandchildren? I didn’t realize you had any.”

“Jim—”

“Karen.”

“My mom called. “Karen, Karen,”” Karen imitated with a slight accent, sounded very Jersey, to the point of almost being Jewish, “”how’s your man friend?””

“Your man friend?”

“She always asks that.” She sighed heavily. “”’Cause you know Aaron’s got a girl and they’re going to be getting married.””

“Aaron’s your brother?”

“Yeah. “Karen, dear, I’m not getting any younger and you should settle down. You’ve done the exciting thing, now it’s time you settled down.””

“She’s not getting any younger?”

“She wants grandkids, Jim. Doesn’t your mom ever ask you why you and Christie haven’t…?”

He shook his head. “She died. I was 18, so I joined the army.”

“Oh. I, uh—”

“Get out, see the world.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. I saw the world. Saw a little more than I wanted to.” He imagined her nodding in the silence. Hank pulled back and stuck his head out the window, panting hard into the wind. “But Karen,” he said, focusing on her impersonation, “how long’s your mother been Jewish?”

She laughed. “Since her best friend is Jewish. She moved up here from Puerto Rico, she thought everyone talked like that.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twelve

The 77 had a certain smell Jim had never consciously noticed before. It was like the building itself had an odor different from that of the 8th. As he followed Hank, Jim could hear voices around him that sounded more familiar than those at the 8, even after two years of being away. He didn’t know if he actually knew anyone around, and no one came up to say anything to him, it was just the overall sound that was more familiar. The talk, the tone, the pace, the laughter.

Jim found himself suddenly homesick. He was walking slower, savoring the feel, trying to picture his surroundings. He swallowed a lump in his throat, but he kept going. He could almost see it, that sickly green color on the concrete block walls… He’d never seen the 8, none of it, not the walls, the desks, the offices, the lighting, the people.

The 77 wasn’t his home anymore. Now he had Karen and Tom and Marty…

He missed the guys he used to work with. Maybe Doug’s suggestion, to see if he could transfer back—

No. That would never work. Jim wasn’t the same guy he had been when he left. Karen and the guys had learned to accept him for whoever he was now. The chances of him being able to slide back into his old department were nonexistent. He could only visit.

If he went back to the old squad, wouldn’t they expect him to step up where he always had before? He’d hate for them to overestimate him in the field, leaving the squad vulnerable. He didn’t have that feeling at the 8 anymore; the guys new what he was capable of. It was relaxing and it worked well; he had his place, even blind.

His pace slowed even more as he neared the elevator. He had that twisting in his gut that he’d had his first day at the 8. The feeling hadn’t quite materialized last night, when he heard Doug Bergan’s voice in the department store, but now it had settled into his stomach. He’d been able to feel Doug’s nervousness last night. Berg had just been going through the motions, inviting him back for old-time’s sake, to reminisce, but he obviously hadn’t meant it. He’d probably wanted nothing more than to escape.

But really, Christie was right: they’d talked a whole hour, could it really be that bad?

Walking through the old squad here felt like walking back home the first time after he’d been shot, holding onto Christie’s arm, feeling how everything had changed, even though she swore she hadn’t moved a thing.

Every time Jim thought he was getting used to the blindness, something happened, or he met someone he’d known before, or some perp laughed in his face. He’d just been getting used to Karen when Terry Jansen had shown up during the Oliver case. He’d just been getting used to Marty and Tom when he’d lost his gun. He’d just been getting used to the lieutenant when he’d given the gun up. Getting used to his wife again when she nearly left after that party her boss had thrown. Getting used to the 8, and here he was at the 77. It was obvious what the problem was—it wasn’t that he was blind, it was that he was a glutton for punishment. Why else would he have ever fought to get his job back if he didn’t thrive on this?

The elevator dinged and he stepped off, practically pushing Hank in the direction his feet still knew so well.

“Jim!”

Doug’s voice sounded surprised, yet happy to see him. Jim grinned. “Hey, Berg.”

“Didn’t think you’d come.”

“Told you I’d come.” He stopped Hank just short of the groupings of desks, wondering if anything had changed. It felt exactly the same. He hadn’t known the desks to move in all the years he’d been a detective here, and couldn’t imagine them moving now. Cops were creatures of habit. If they even repainted the walls, it would have to be the exact same color as before. If they got new desks, they’d have to be the same size and shape, put in the same formation, and the cops would soon etch on the old scuffs and abrasions, just to make themselves feel at home.

“You got a few minutes?”

“Got plenty of minutes. Our perp seems to be in a coma. Heart attack, hasn’t woken up yet. I guess this is why only young guys should commit crimes, right?”

Doug clapped him on the shoulder. “Then by all means, make yourself at home. This the dog?”

“Yeah, this is Hank.”

“Looks a little soft.”

Jim laughed. “Be careful what you say around him. He’s a killer at heart.”

“I meant furry… Wasn’t saying he wasn’t cut out for police work…” Doug turned abruptly and Jim tried to follow the movement with his head. The office was full, everyone active. There’d been a brief pause when he’d first walked in, but the cops had all resumed their previous duties. Doug moved off. “Have a seat.”

“Where?”

He felt Doug return suddenly to his side, taking his arm. He removed the hand with a smile. “Just point out a free spot. Like, “straight ahead” or “Miller’s old desk”…”

“We’ll do better than that. Sammy, get up! He took your old desk so he could stare out the window…” Doug’s voice trailed off, suddenly tense.

Jim ordered Hank over in that direction. His feet felt like lead, like it wasn’t right for him to be coming back, down that aisle like he owned the place, into his old desk, like nothing had changed.

He settled Hank on the floor, feeling the dog was out of place. He felt for the chair, which hadn’t been pushed back in. He never used to push his chair back under his desk, either, he realized with surprise. It was second nature now.

Jim swallowed hard as he sat down. The chair enveloped him and he felt like there should be a Welcome Back sign hanging from the ceiling with streamers and crepe paper.

Once he was settled and looked back up, he was met with silence. He didn’t know where to look, now that his perspective had changed. Even if no one had moved, he wasn’t exactly sure where they would be.

“Gabe, old fart, get your ass up here,” Doug said gruffly.

Jim looked over. He heard something click, like Doug was hanging up a phone. He smiled up at the big man.

“Sammy, this is Jimmy Dunbar.”

Jim held a hand out in the direction of the kid who had vacated his seat. A second later it was gripped in a stranglehold, the hand of a martial artist. “Good to meet you.”

“Hey, Clint! You’ll like this kid, Jimmy, he’s like twenty, but the best beat cop we got. He’s testing up this week. Clint, get over here. This is our old buddy, Jimmy.” Doug had taken to the hosting, now that Jim was safely settled, pride back in his voice.

“Jimmy? Oh!” a younger man said.

Jim laughed, knowing the kid had recognized him.

Clint. Jim tried to put the names into memory, but Sammy hadn’t said anything yet. In a few minutes, he had a feeling Doug would have introduced him to half the 77 and he’d never remember anyone. It seemed the entire squad had been rearranged, what with Gabe moving up and leaving an open place. Then Terry had gone and shot himself, leaving another empty slot. And Glenn was on desk duty.

Jim felt the hulking form of his old friend move along behind him. “Hey. Glenn’s not here, right?” he asked quietly.

“Lunch break. Could be a couple hours.”

“You know Glenn Semple?” someone asked, the voice coming from the spot where he’d shaken hands with the death grip. Jim guessed the voice to belong to Sammy and just hoped he was right.

“We’ve met.”

“How?”

“The Oliver case.”

There was silence in the room again, that same momentary vacuum that had succeeded his entrance.

“What is going on in here?” Gabe asked suddenly across the room, huffing as if he’d run from whatever department he now worked in. The steps came to a fast halt as Jim turned. “Oh god, Jimmy. I’m seeing a ghost, right? The old squad, all back together.”

“I’m not dead, Gabe,” Jim said, standing up as Gabe stepped around Hank and grabbed him in what would have been a crushing hug if Gabe had been any bigger, but he had a slight frame, thinner than Jim, meant more for ducking and dodging than for crushing and fighting.

“What are you doing here?”

“Doug figured if I could pick out his wardrobe, I’d have plenty of time for a visit.”

“You’re working the Hanson case, right?” Gabe asked.

Jim settled back in his old chair. “Yeah.”

Gabe sat on the corner of his desk. “With that broad.”

“What broad?” Doug asked, suddenly sounding intrigued.

“Date didn’t go so well?” Jim asked as they crowded in.

“Went like crap in an outhouse. What broad?”

“My partner, Karen.”

“They partnered you up with a girl?”

Jim almost had to laugh at the cooties sound in Doug’s voice. “Hey, she’s a good detective, and a good partner.”

“Wow, that means a lot, coming from you.”

Jim had to agree. He hadn’t thought about it much, but after his partnership with Terry went to hell, and after Terry shot himself, well, it was a miracle he’d been able to trust Karen at all, especially to be his eyes. But he did, and that said a lot about her. She’d grown so much as a partner and a detective in the year they’d worked together. It was amazing to realize the amount of respect he had for her. The way his life had been going, he should have been partnered immediately with Marty Russo, who wouldn’t have given him the time of day. He’d have been taking the bus to crime scenes, begging descriptions of rookies in uniform. For some reason, Karen had gone with it—grudgingly, admittedly, but she’d handled it. Despite a few of her quirks, she was probably the best partner he’d ever had.

“But still… she’s a good detective? Can she take care of herself?”

“She could probably take you both on.”

“Ha! She’s one of those, huh?”

“Amazonian,” Gabe supplied.

Jim almost laughed at the thought. Karen the Amazon. “No.”

“No?”

“No. She’s actually really beautiful—”

“And you think we believe you? We know you can’t see.”

There was a quick scuffle, the sound he’d learned to recognize of arms moving through the air, rapidly pantomiming. He had to laugh, now that he’d finally pegged the sound after dealing with it so often at the 8.

“You guys don’t have to believe me. Maybe we’ll have to meet for drinks some night.”

Groan. “And have to watch our mouths? Not likely.”

Jim let the chair lean back. He knew this chair, an old-fashioned swivelly desk chair with a spring getting ready to poke out the side of the fabric. It had always tilted back just right, so he rode with it now as he looked between Gabe and Doug. “What have you guys been up to?”

“We’ve been sitting here watching you get written up in the paper for the past two years.”

Jim groaned. “No, seriously.”

They ran him down a few cases, things they’d been working on when he went down at the bank, things he’d missed while he was in the hospital recuperating. He fired questions at them about old cases and people they’d all known before.

“Alex!” Gabe called. “Jim, this is Alex Waterson, our new computer guru and rookie detective.”

Jim heard footsteps coming closer, still several desks away, amidst the hustle and bustle of the other cops. That was one thing about the 77, it was nowhere near as quiet as the 8. “Alex Waterson?” he asked. “The kid who cracked the hacking scheme at North Bank last year?”

“You don’t miss anything, do you?” Gabe asked.

“What’s he doing in homicide?”

“Getting a break,” a new voice said. “White collar crime’s a pain in the ass. Homicide’s downright entertaining.”

Jim grinned and held his hand across the desk to where the voice had stopped. He thought he’d like this kid. Okay, so the “kid” was nearing thirty, but he was still a newbie in the field, having graduated from MIT only a few years before. “Jim Dunbar.”

“I know. Alex Waterson, whiz kid.” The voice dripped with sarcasm.

“What kind of system you got on your computer?” Alex asked.

Jim fired a rundown at him, and they tossed pros and cons back and forth for a minute.

“Oh shut up,” Doug said.

Alex laughed. “Berg would be happy with a stick and a pile of sand.”

“After I was done writing my message, I could piss in it like a good dog and build a sand castle,” Doug said. “You two talk techno geek stuff on your own time.”

Jim suddenly found his hand resting on top of a chia pet. He felt the cool grass of the plant, and the small ceramic head. He hadn’t even realized his hand had strayed across the desk, checking out his new surroundings, but he pulled back, hoping no one had noticed.

“Porcupine,” Sammy said. “Once the plant gets big enough, I plan to put needles in there.”

Jim raised his eyebrows.

“Sammy’s into hidden weaponry, especially for everyday objects around the house,” Doug explained.

“You’re most vulnerable in your own home.”

“So I’d be careful playing around your desk there, Jim. Whatever you do, don’t open the bottom drawer.”

“The element of surprise is crucial.”

“They’re booby-traps, essentially,” Doug explained. “But deadly.”

“Say a woman gets attacked in her apartment. She has a plant by the bedside. All she has to do is grab the plant. Not only is the pot a weapon, but the needles, or the stake, or the vial of mace, add a secondary surprise. With that chia pet, she could gouge out the eyes of her attacker and—if you don’t mind my saying that…”

Jim shook his head and motioned for the kid to continue.

“But she’d be more likely to see morning, than if she relied solely on her strength to break the pot over the head of her attacker, in hopes of knocking him unconscious. Which, if she didn’t know where to aim, isn’t likely with a small porcupine. Versatility is key.”

Jim swallowed hard. He’d have to talk to Christie about this kid. He wondered if he’d feel safer, knowing she was alone with a deadly houseplant at her disposal.

“Sammy was born in China,” Doug supplied.

“I don’t remember it. I was adopted as a baby. But it’s in my blood.”

Jim grinned. “I’ll have to get back here more often. I might learn something.”

“Like I said,” Doug said, “transfer back. We got a place for you. I wouldn’t recommend you taking your old desk back, after Sammy’s done with it, but—”

Jim waved him off. “Nah, I got a place, but thanks.”

“You kids are too young, but back in the day…” Jim could hear the grin in Gabe’s voice. “Jimmy and Doug and Terry and I went out one night and—”

Gabe cut himself off, causing Jim to look up. “What?”

“How’s Terry doing?”

“Why are you asking me?” Jim ran his thumb nail through an old groove he’d carved in the top of the desk after years of rubbing over the same spot. “Just tell the story. You got me curious. Tell us, what’s the highlight of our life?”

“I wouldn’t call it the highlight…”

“Then what?”

“First thing that popped into my head.”

“Which is?”

“The night we chased that guy into Central Park Zoo.”

Jim laughed.

“Stupid criminals,” Doug added.

“Lions?” Sammy asked.

“Ice cream.”

“This guy found one of those ice cream carts, you know, with the lid, you can scoop it out? He’d just beaten up this broad and taken off running. The four of us show up, and we take off after him, panting across the Park, next thing you know, he’s trying to dive headfirst into this cart of ice cream to hide.”

“Speaking of stupid criminals,” Doug said, “whatever happened to that guy you used to work with? What was his name? Sonny?”

“Yeah!” Gabe agreed. “We get this case, right, where this hooker’s been murdered, in cold blood, on a rooftop, middle of January. Jim calls in this snitch he picked up, god knows where—”

“Sebastian’s,” Jim supplied.

“Sebastian’s?”

“It’s a bar down on 10th. Filled with pictures of Liberace.”

“’Kay. So we got this prostitute, what was her name? Monique? Went by Mona Lisa.”

Jim sat up straighter and leaned toward Gabe. “And the week before, we’d been solving a murder about Whistler’s Mother.”

Gabe snorted. “Whistler’s Mother was the pimp.”

“Ran his brothel out of Sebastian’s. All his girls went by names of painters or famous paintings.”

“Didn’t he have that picture of his girls doing that nude picnic scene? But he wanted real girls? Not as artistic as the original, mind you,” Gabe said.

“That’s the one with the fifteen fur coats?” Doug asked.

Jim nodded. “That’s how we caught Whistler’s Mother before—he’d been buying all those fur coats. Cash only.”

“Snazzy guy.”

“Then he turns up dead,” Gabe continued.

“A week later, we got Mona Lisa on our hands,” Jim said.

“Stabbed fifteen times,” Gabe said.

“And Jim meets this guy, Sonny, while we’re investigating. Cash for information,” Doug said.

Jim leaned back in the chair, staring toward the ceiling, picturing the bar with ten murals of Liberace all staring down at him. That had been the first time he’d ever seen Sonny Famigletti. Sonny’d come in just as Jim was leaving, defeated in his quest for information. Sonny’d had some old fedora pulled so low over his eyes that he hadn’t even seen Jim leaving the bar, but they’d got to talking after the collision. Sebastian’s had been closed down since Whistler’s Mother had been killed the week before, but here was this guy, strolling in as if he owned the place. Jim had to admit, he’d pulled Sonny through the door into the empty building, and he’d thrown him up against the nearest mural and held him there.

“Who are you?” Sonny’d asked.

“Detective Dunbar. What are you doing here?”

“Visiting my sister,” Sonny gasped.

“Tell me the truth.”

“I got a tip. Some guy wanted me to deliver a message, gave me a hundred bucks, told me to come down here, scope the joint, melt into the woodwork. I’ve been here once a week for a couple months, but I swear, all I’ve been doing’s casing the joint, I swear. I ain’t sampled the merchandise even once.”

Jim had let him go. “Some guy?”

“Some cop.”

Jim had pulled his badge with a grin. They’d been working together ever since.

Doug was chuckling. “That’s when Sonny lined us each up with a hooker, isn’t it? Gorgeous young things, no more than 15 years old. I was scared to breathe too hard, worried IA would come through the door and slam me with statutory.”

“Mine was legal,” Jim said. “She was thirty.”

“Bull.”

“Had a fake ID to prove it.”

The guys laughed.

“Those were the days,” Gabe said.

“Yeah,” Doug agreed. “Those were the days I was sure we were all going to get arrested on account of Jim’s little buddy there.”

A door banged open. “What is going on out—I don’t believe my eyes,” Lt. Schumacher said. “Jim Dunbar back from the dead.”

“He’s not dead, he’s just at the 8,” Doug said.

“Same thing. Kid, good to see you, stop distracting my detectives. Don’t you have work to do?”

“It’s called lunch break.”

“You should know my detectives don’t get breaks. Bug them on their own time.”

Jim started to stand, but the lieutenant clapped a hand on his shoulder, forcing him back into his old seat.

“You look good there.”

“Heeeeeyyy!” Doug yelled suddenly. Jim tensed. “There’s my buddy! My new partner, Quartzy! Eddy Quartsmeier, Jim Dunbar, you might remember him.” Doug lowered his voice and leaned across the desk at Jim, saying, “He was a little biddy rookie when you were here. Got the pretty uniform and everything.”

With all the noise Doug had been making, Jim wasn’t sure where Quartz was, nor where he had come from. Shake? Or not? That was always a big question, meeting someone new, or greeting someone. It was quickly becoming a pet peeve, to find himself introduced without a peep from the other voice. It was worst when there were multiple people being introduced—This here’s Bob and this here’s Joe—and to have neither Joe nor Bob speak up until later, expecting him to be able to sort them out. A blind man’s ESP, he guessed.

“I gotta go,” Alex said, jumping up.

“I’m out, too,” Sammy said.

“Nice to meet you both,” Jim said quickly, before they disappeared out of ear shot.

“Brave enough to sit at Sammy’s desk? Or too stupid to know better?” a deep voice asked, suddenly only about six inches away.

“It’s his own desk, Quartz,” Berg said. “Old desk, that is…”

“Dunbar, huh?” The voice was a low register, not like a smoker’s voice, deepened by abuse, but clear, the low note of a tuba.

Jim felt the man leaning over closer. He kept his ground. “Stupid enough to be Berg’s partner?”

Doug slugged him in the arm, but Jim didn’t flinch; he’d felt the punch coming in the silence of the squad. It felt like Quartz had somehow managed to clear the room.

Quartz didn’t feel quite as large as Berg, but he had several pounds up on Jim, even though Jim couldn’t tell, sitting, what the man’s height was.

“Yeah, I am, what’s it to you?”

Jim rolled the chair back, only a couple inches, and stood, trying to gauge the man. He smiled. “Just looking out for my old buddy.” He kept his gaze trained on Quartz, but gestured down at Berg.

“Bet you are—” Then the voice broke off with a gasp. “What’s that?!” Jim felt him point.

“You expect me to fall for that?”

“Just curious how the infamous Dunbar operates.”

“Like a bat out of hell, is my guess,” Berg spoke up. Even he sounded nearly timid in front of Quartz.

Jim settled back into the chair. He wondered, if this were still his squad, what he’d think of the large man who settled onto the corner of the desk just across the aisle.

“I’m curious to know how the new Dunbar operates, myself,” Lieutenant Schumacher said.

Jim flicked his gaze in the direction of the lieutenant, who hadn’t taken a seat, but stood off to the side, nearly behind him. “You heard the man.” Jim rolled his hand at Berg.

“No different than before,” Schumacher said, a hint of sarcasm underlying his words, almost a question.

Jim set his jaw. He didn’t want to get into this, into explaining how he managed daily life, let alone getting back on the job.

“No gun,” the lieutenant said.

“News travels fast.”

“New partner.”

“A girl,” Doug informed them all.

“A dog.”

Jim shrugged it off. “You wanna see me work, put me on a case.”

The lieutenant laughed, that old laugh of his where he would throw back his head and chortle. There wasn’t a hint of derision about it.

“I don’t doubt any of it,” Berg said. “You handle that wife, you can handle anything.”

Jim sort of smiled. Berg’s voice had a forceful quality, but at the same time, it sounded like the sudden trust in Jim’s abilities masked something else. An apology? For bringing him into this situation? When Doug Bergan himself didn’t know if Jim could walk down the hall without bumping into the walls?

“I’ll take your word for it,” Schumacher said.

“I won’t,” Quartz said. He sounded more honest than malicious.

“I will,” Gabe piped up. “You don’t know our Jimmy.”

“We’ll see,” Quartz said.

“Absolutely,” Jim said.

“That Hanson case was a big deal,” Schumacher said. “Been following it.”

“The Hanson case is the biggest crock of shit I’ve worked in years, boss—I mean, lieutenant…” Old habits died hard. He smiled over at him, standing still behind where Quartz had taken a seat. “It’s up to the courts now, though.”

“Love to see you working some corporate shenanigans, Jim,” Schumacher said, laughing at him. “Now that would be a crock of shit.”

“That’s all this was. The rich guy’s word against that of his butler. The evidence was pretty cut and dry, but I don’t buy it.”

“I heard Smythe already missed parole. And then ran. What do your instincts tell you?”

“That he’s getting senile.”

Berg joined in the laughter.

Schumacher moved closer. “What I really want to know is, how’d you bust the Tongue Collector case? Your lieutenant and I go way back, and he’s as tight-lipped about that as a virgin.”

Jim shook his head. Marty still rankled about that on occasion, the fact that Jim came in, new to the case, and helped bust Randy Lyman in the serial homicides. Jim didn’t blame Fisk for being elusive about the case, either, not after the reception he’d given Jim, and partly because he’d hate the other precincts to think they’d given Jim preferential treatment and helped him along, in light of his disability. “The evidence was all there, boss, just depends how you look at it,” Jim said.

He could hear the grin in Schumacher’s voice as he said, “That’s pretty much was your lieutenant said. Two peas in a pod?”

Jim shook his head. “We all work together. My partner and I solved that case. Together.”

“Yeah, but what tipped you off?”

A young woman and her dog ashes, Jim wanted to say, but he smiled benignly. Even a year later he didn’t like to think too much about his first case back. It had been a hectic few days, and having Karen get hurt, even though not badly, had only added to the stress. That case wasn’t one of his prouder moments. There’d been too much going on, between learning to work around the new detectives, around his blindness, to dealing with Christie, and his own doubts. And Terry. Terry’d been in his mind the whole time, thanks to his untimely visit.

Jim’s cell rang. For a split second he was glad it wasn’t the pager, with the stilted phonetic male voice. “Dunbar… Okay, I’m on my way.” He stood up, stretching, surprised at how long they must have talked, if he’d already gotten tired of sitting. “I gotta go. We got a lead on our case.”

“Don’t be a stranger,” Gabe said.

“I dunno, Jim. I think that desk is still yours…” Doug added.

“Nah.” Jim shook his head and lied, “It didn’t feel right.”