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Foster let a beat pass. This was the moment, one of several over the last weeks when she had a decision to make, a side to take, in or out, as she’d had to do five years ago after losing Reg. “Yes, boss.”
Griffin didn’t miss the pause. “I talked to Sergeant Traynor. He told me you and Thompson were a star team. A real buddy act. It’s a loss . . . but not the only one you’ve suffered.” She flicked a look at the photograph on her desk. “Losing a kid. I can’t imagine anything tougher than that. I can see from your face you don’t want to talk about it. I respect that. It’s not common knowledge out there with the team. Up to you what you share.”
Foster heard Griffin, her words made sense, but she’d detached, distanced herself from the pain behind the wall she’d built for just that purpose. She watched Griffin’s mouth move, heard the words, but she was elsewhere, somewhere safe.
“Foster?” she heard Griffin say. “Harriet, you all right?”
She cleared her throat and dialed back in. “Yes. Sorry. Slight headache.”
Griffin reached into her top desk drawer, pulled out a bottle of aspirin, and slid it across the desk to Foster. “Take two.”
Foster grabbed the bottle and watched as Griffin rolled her chair back, reached into a tiny fridge behind her desk, and pulled out a squat bottle of spring water, which she offered to her. She swallowed two tablets and washed them down. Foster started to push the aspirin bottle back across the desk, but Griffin held up a hand. “Keep it.”
Foster slipped the bottle into her bag and nodded thanks.
“You always this subdued?” Griffin asked.
Their eyes held. “I don’t know what you’re asking.”
Griffin leaned forward. “I’m asking, Detective Harriet Foster, if you have your head in the game and your waders on tight. You’ve had two devastating gut punches. One of them would have been enough to sideline most people. I need to know that you’re solidly on the beam. Traynor says you’re steady. I believe him. I’ll believe you, too, if you say it.”
Foster’s breath caught. She wanted to scream and run out of Griffin’s office, out of the building. She needed air. Only pride, stubbornness, and concern that it was this job or nothing nailed her to the chair. “If I weren’t ready, I wouldn’t be here,” Foster said. “Boss.”
The women sat watching each other. This was the start of it. Foster’s road back, Griffin’s necessary ask. “I had a suicide on my team,” Griffin began. “He’d been on the job twenty-five years. A bit of a loner. Dombrowski. One day he’s the same old Dombrowski, cracking jokes, clowning around; the next day he’s strung up from a pipe in the john. He hung himself with his own tie. We found his star in the toilet. You’ve lost a son, a marriage, now a partner. What have you got outside this building, Foster? Faith? Family?”
“A mother. A brother. A niece and nephew. Cousins, aunts, uncles.”
“Close?”
Foster thought about it. Some families fractured after loss. Sometimes the fractures were slow to repair. It was complicated, too complicated to go through here and now. “Enough.”
“Hmm. You couldn’t see yourself staying with your old team?”
How could she stay when she couldn’t bear to park in the lot? To sit at her desk? To see someone who wasn’t Glynnis sitting at hers? “I needed a change. I left on good terms. Traynor can vouch for that.”
“He has. He was also sorry to see you go, but he understands. As I do.” Griffin smiled. “You’ve had your fair share, Foster, that’s for sure. But you’re still kicking, and that shows me what you’re made of. Still, CPD can’t be what you hang the rest of your life on. I’m glad to have you here, but don’t bury yourself here. Understand?”
Foster nodded but said nothing.
“I’m going to need to hear it,” Griffin said.
Foster cleared her throat before speaking clearly. “Yes, boss, I understand.”
“Then you’re in. Here’s the spiel. I don’t do the old boys’ club here. I actively recruit women to fill my spots. In my opinion, women are smarter, faster, more intuitive. You’re a woman, Foster.”
“Yes, boss.”
“And you’re a Black woman. That doesn’t go unnoticed.”
“Well, how could it.”
Griffin nodded. “Ah, there it is.”
“Boss?”
“The steel, Foster. You’re down but not out.” She closed Foster’s file and stood. Foster stood too. Griffin held out her hand for a shake. “Welcome, Harriet. Just promise me you won’t suffer in silence. If you need help, ask for it. No dishonor. If I find you in my lot with your brains shot out, I will literally walk to the ME’s office and beat your dead body to a bloody pulp. Got it?”
Foster’s heart raced as she beat the image back, but she met Griffin’s gaze without a flinch. “Understood.”
“Good. I paired you with Jim Lonergan. Full disclosure: he’s an asshole, but he’s serviceable. Don’t take his crap. He’ll give it, guaranteed. Ignore what you can; challenge the rest. You’ve dealt with assholes before?”
Foster managed to grin. “Everywhere I’ve worked.”
“Then you’re ahead of the game. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll find you someone else. Now get out there and catch me some killers.”
Dismissed, Foster stood outside Griffin’s door, her eyes sweeping over the office with the strange cops milling around it. She could do this. She knew how to be a cop. Glynnis’s loss hadn’t stripped that away.
“Symansky.”
She jumped, startled by the stumpy white guy who’d shot out of nowhere. He held out a hand, grinning. “Al.” He looked like Bela Lugosi in a loud plaid blazer and a tie that cried Father’s Day 1985. “Welcome aboard.”
“Harriet Foster,” she said, going in for the shake. “Thanks.”
He pointed to a desk at the back of the room. “You’re over there with Mr. Personality. Try not to kill him. He ain’t worth the time you’ll do.”
Foster shook her head. Yet another warning about Lonergan. “Is he that bad?”
Symansky’s bushy gray brows lifted. “Decent. No finesse. Part of the team, though.” He winked. “Hang in there.”
The desk was a piece of garbage facing another piece of garbage just like it. City issue. A metal, dinged-up block with half the drawer pulls loose, a desk shared by hundreds of cops over hundreds of hours of round-the-clock shifts. It was beaten down, dirty, with decades of coffee rings on its surface, foul words etched into the raggedy blotter with crude sketches of penises. Foster knew she’d find wads of old chewing gum tacked to the underside of the chair if she bothered to check.
Underwhelmed right out of the gate, she glanced over at the broad, doughy white man sitting at the other desk, leaning back in a squeaky roller chair, assessing her through squinty brown eyes. Lonergan. She scanned his desk, but there was nothing on it but paperwork, a half-eaten stromboli, and a chipped Bears mug with coffee in it. A breakfast of champions.
Lonergan’s eyes never wavered as he sucked on a toothpick, the short, pointed piece of wood toggling up and down like a seesaw between dry, thin lips.
“You’re Foster,” he said. “Boss told me we’d be partnering up. Jim Lonergan.”
Foster nodded, then ran a finger along the top of the desk. It came back sticky. She wiped her hand against her pant leg.
“They’re all slobs on third watch,” Lonergan explained. “You’ll get used to it.” He stood and stretched. “Welcome to the nuthouse. Let me show you around.” He pointed at the sticky desk. “That’s you.” He flung his arms wide. “This is us. End of tour.” He sat back down and worked the toothpick some more.
Griffin and Symansky had been right. Asshole. Foster pulled out her slouchy chair and dropped her bag into the seat. “Thanks.”
“Now we’ll transition to the get-to-know-you portion of our program. You married?”
Foster checked the desk drawers to see where she could eventually stow her stuff. “No,” she answered absently. She looked around the office, noting the significant distance between her and Lonergan’s desks and the hub of activity half a room away. She’d gotten the new-kid spot next to the blowhard no one wanted to sit next to. Great.
“Ever?” Lonergan pressed.
Foster stared at him and then decided to answer, hoping to shut his line of questioning down. “Once.” She figured that would do it. Her frosty tone alone would have signaled to a normal person that more intimate details were off the table.
“Gay?”
Foster looked up, giving him another good, long sweep. The man with the twenty questions, her new partner, didn’t look like he was going to be an easy fit, not like Glynnis. She hadn’t yet cleared off her workspace, and already she wanted someone better than him.
“No, but would that matter to you?”
“Nah. I live and let live.”
“Then why ask?”
“Just trying to get a bead on you. See what I’m working with. Got kids?”
Foster let a moment go. “Maybe we can ease into the personal details over time.” She opened the top drawer on the desk, peeking inside. “Or not.”
Lonergan plucked the toothpick from his mouth and chucked it into the trash basket beside his desk. “Suit yourself. But know this: I move fast, and I’m an old-school cop. Keep up, and we’ll get along great.”
“Do I look like a rookie to you? I’ve switched teams, not rank.”
Lonergan smirked. “I got twenty-two under my belt.”
“And I’ve got a solid seventeen.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “All right. Take it easy. No offense.”
Foster grabbed her bag and shoved it into the bottom drawer, then sat down. Lonergan went back to his computer screen, a satisfied smirk on his face. She glared at the top of his block head, distrustful of his buzz cut. Old-school cop was right. But she was sure he meant that as a badge of honor, wholly unaware it might mean something entirely different to her.
“Just know, if you’re worried about it,” he said, not bothering to look at her, “I know how to keep my powder dry.”
“What’d you say?” Foster asked, a warning in her delivery.
“Meaning my gun is for the bad guys, not for me, in case you were worried about what kind of partner I’d be. I don’t mean to pick at sore wounds—my condolences and all—but I thought I’d put it out there so we’d know where we stand right from the jump.”
Slowly she rose, her fists clenched, her jaw tight. She didn’t know the man, having just met him minutes ago, but what she saw so far was a problem. Callousness. That was how she’d peg it. A screw loose somewhere.
She could feel the heat rising at the back of her neck. It took everything to keep her voice neutral, professional. “You don’t talk about my partner. Get it?”
Lonergan rolled his chair away from his desk but said nothing. He didn’t even blink.
“You don’t talk about her, and nobody here talks about her. Pass it around so they all know.”
Lonergan smiled. “I never mentioned your partner, did I?”
“Not you, not anyone. We clear?”
Foster held Lonergan in her angry sights. This was her nonnegotiable. Lonergan shrugged, smiled, and let it go like it was nothing. “Whatever you say, partner.”
She reached into the drawer and grabbed the aspirin bottle Griffin had given her from her bag, then slammed the drawer shut with great force, the sound getting the attention of the cops around her. “Bathroom?”
Lonergan jabbed a fat thumb behind him. “Down the hall. First left. Gents and gals. We don’t do none of that unisex shit here. You’re gonna have to choose.”
He was a goddamned dinosaur. She spotted a lone paper clip on the desk, plucked it up, and slipped it into her pocket. “Anyone ever tell you you make a lousy first impression?”
Lonergan swiveled around, giving Foster his back. “Nobody I give a shit about.”
She looked where he’d pointed. “I’ll be back.”
He turned back to watch her go. “Roger that. Oh, and Foster?” She stopped, not bothering to turn around. “Anybody ever tell you to lighten the hell up?”
She tightened her grip on the bottle. “Nobody I give a shit about.”
A minute later, Foster stood at the sink in the women’s bathroom, staring into the streaky mirror. Things weren’t going well. She’d been in the building less than an hour, and already she’d had enough. What the hell was wrong with him? Who said things like that?
She turned away from the sink and leaned against it, taking the dim room in. It looked cleanish, the smell of industrial-strength disinfectant strong, but the porcelain toilets in the stalls and the sink looked as though they’d been there since the first Daley administration. She turned back to the tap and downed another two tablets to chase the ones she’d taken in Griffin’s office. Bad for her liver long term, but she had more immediate needs at present.
“He knows how to keep his powder dry,” she muttered. “Bastard.”
She let the cold water run a bit before wetting her cheeks to get the heat out. Foster stared into the mirror again, past the streaks in the glass, at the strained stranger looking back.
“It’s only the first day. Pull it together,” she told her reflection. “You don’t have to go home with him; all you have to do is work with him. Cop up.” She tried a smile, but it wouldn’t stick. How long had it been since she’d smiled genuinely? “Do it. Focus.”
She lifted her palms off the sink and stretched her fingers, checking her hands for steadiness. Rock solid, nearly. She gave herself one final look, one final pep talk, and then went back to start again.
“About time,” Lonergan said as he slipped into the rumpled blazer that had been hanging on the back of his chair. “Thought you mighta fell in. We got a body. A woman. On the Riverwalk.” He grabbed his coffee and the stromboli. “I’m driving. You’re last one in. Besides, women can’t drive for shit.”
Foster grabbed her bag, glaring at Lonergan’s back as he brushed past her.
CHAPTER 3
A psych eval, probation, and a voluntary thirty-day stay at Westhaven Psychiatric Hospital. That was what his lawyer had worked out for him. What a crock. Since when was looking a crime? Since when couldn’t you walk on the same street, slip into the same bar, or follow a woman home just to see where she lived? In retrospect, he could see now how following someone could have been misconstrued. He’d been curious, that was all. Now he was prohibited from making any contact. Fine. There were other women. Special ones. He’d just have to be careful from now on. Bodie stuffed the last shirt into his battered duffel and zipped it tight. Thirty days. Up today. It had been intolerable even with the ill-scheduled home pass he’d been given just the day before. It was ridiculous, he’d argued, then. Why let him go, then make him come back, only to release him for good the very next day? Was it some kind of test to see if he could handle himself? Was it the result of some bureaucratic screwup the powers that be were afraid to cop to? It didn’t matter, he’d decided. He’d taken the pass, enjoyed his time, and now he was packing up and getting the hell out of here for good.
He glanced around the depressing cracker box of a room, his home away from not much, and cursed it. But that was all done now. He was clear, except for the ding on his record, and he had done the thirty days. He was as normal as the next man.
It was disheartening to be here like this at thirty-two, to still be flailing about, a good chunk of what should have been the finest time of his life behind him already, ruined by failure, self-insulation, and shame. He should be married with kids. He should have a profession, a stake, instead of an endless series of meaningless jobs. He should be out in the world setting it on fire, not pinballing his way from one slipup to another and then suffering the indignity of having his sister, Amelia, bail him out, pick up the slack, manage him like he was some kind of idiot who didn’t have the sense to run his own life. How had his twin come out on top? He felt horrible being both angry and indebted. Westhaven would have been the perfect place to unpack all that, but he couldn’t, not without telling, and he couldn’t do that.
He lifted the duffel off the bed and headed for the door. At least he was out of here. No more psychiatrists like Dr. Mariana Silva with her probing questions and freaky dark eyes. He’d lied about a happy childhood with loving parents, and Silva seemed to know it. But he had to lie. He and Amelia knew that no one, no one, could know their truth. They’d made a family pact with their father—all for one, one for all. Morgans stick together. Not a single revelation escaped their quiet house. But silence was complicity, and you were only as sick as your secrets. He’d learned that in AA. Only the adage assumed that once the secrets were released, there’d be a new, fresh person left behind.
What if secrets were a cancer? What if you cut away the cancer and there was nothing healthy left?
Silva saw him, and he hated her for it. He hated the way she’d tried to smugly wheedle his darkness out of him. Every look she’d given him had been predatory, grasping, greedy. She handled him as though he were unstable, the human equivalent of a ramshackle wagon of nitro rolling over a pitted road. It just showed how much she didn’t know. He knew what he was. Tainted, a creature of habits, of types. He was the cancer, the curse.
Smiling, he closed the door behind him and headed out, pushing through the hospital’s front doors, filling his lungs with freedom, starting again at zero. At thirty-two.
He passed through the gate and down the road where he knew Amelia would be waiting. He stopped when he saw his sister leaning against a silver Mercedes convertible, her arms crossed in front of her. Even in a weathered field jacket and worn jeans, her auburn hair a messy mop, she looked like she held the world on a string, like a model on a Ralph Lauren photo shoot. No makeup because none was needed. Flawless. Even Am knew she was exceptional. Was that her power? Knowing? Bodie loved that about her, but part of him resented her too.
