I woke (with too much damn sunlight shining through the window, a sore everything inside and all over, a mouth dry enough to soak up the bay, and a God-awful throbbing behind my eyes) to the grating, headache-magnifying banshee scream of my Spartus 1121 alarm clock, a cursèd purchase from a flea market circa middle school. ((Why am I in so much agony?)) My night of MDMA and slow dance and unprotected sex and alcohol and attempted murder flashed through my pain-clouded brain. ((Oh. That’s right. I fell off the wagon and landed ass-first in a blissful Hell.))
I tried to silence the alarm, but my arm refused to move. ((Fuck me. Why do I have to feel so God damn shitty right now?))
My phone rang, but I couldn’t reach it with the limp piece of meat and bone hanging from my shoulder. ((Is this what polydrug)) hangovers are always like? I swear to God, I’m never touching alcohol or ecstasy again.
One-by-one I was able to twitch my fingers and toes, then flex my knees and bend my elbows, then finally roll over, reach for the clock, and silence the alarm. After managing to sit up, I clumsily swung my legs over the edge of the bed and set the room spinning around me like a speeding carousel—a very colorful carousel. I waited for my dizziness to subside before carefully placing my weight on my feet then standing with the grace of a newborn giraffe.
I checked the clock: 6:31. ((Fuck, I’ve got less than 10 minutes to get out the door. If I don’t get dressed right now, I’m going to be late for work.)) I whined at the shitty situation I was in. I worried for a moment that taking off my dress might be difficult before realizing I was already nude. I made a mental note to thank Judy for removing my dress before putting me to bed, while getting a little turned on by the idea of her undressing me while I was unconscious… though it was very un-petlike of her to do that and very unownerlike of me to get off on it. I would have to ask my owner about undressing me while I was asleep (or pretending to be asleep, anyway).
((I have to get ready,)) I reminded myself. I was able to keep my balance while putting on my charcoal pants by leaning against the wall. With those on, my greatest challenge was out of the way. I pushed my shoulders to their limits while bending my arms to hook my bra and don a green shirt, skipped the hair ribbon, struggled with dialing the combination to my safe to retrieve my cop things, strapped my piece on, nearly strained my shoulders once more in the process of putting on my dark gray jacket and blue coat, dropped my keys and groaned at the soreness afflicting my legs and spine as I squatted to pick them up, struggled through more pain as I stood straight, and shuffled out the door—nearly forgetting to lock it behind me. I pushed myself to get down the stairs as quickly as possible, nearly taking several ‘face-first shortcuts’, but made it down without injury. I walked to the parking structure as quickly as my wobbly legs would allow, thanked God the parking spots were assigned so that I didn’t have to remember where I parked my car, and got the hell on my way.
The drive was typical, except that even though there was nobody else in the car, for the first time on my way to work I didn’t feel lonely—because right now the last thing I wanted was someone next to me talking or breathing or merely existing in my peripheral vision. I kept to the speed limit like any responsible driver, in spite of the rush I was in, and checked the time obsessively, crimson numerals glowing to the right of the cassette player. I found a good parking spot in the garage and managed to persuade my muscles to jog to my desk. I collapsed in my chair and checked the clock for the last time before starting my work day: 6:59. I giggled a little, then leaned back for just a moment…
“Bachman.”
I awoke with a start. “Wha?!” I turned around to face the voice. Captain Nichols stood there with a rather thin folder under his arm, looking unamused. ((Caught sleeping. I’m fucked.))
“I grabbed the Brookvale case for you,” he told me cheerily as he handed me the folder that (presumably) contained the original copy of the dispatched officer’s notes from their in-person interview with Geraldine.
“I’m—sorry for—sleeping…”
He surveyed the room, and I followed his eyes: empty desks all around. Without dropping his helpful tone or his gentle smile, he explained, “Detective, I do not care what you do at your desk. I do not care what you do away from your desk. I do not care if you actually try to solve your cases, because I do not expect you to give them even the most incompetent and half-assed of attempts. Your fellow detectives make a point of arriving at work half an hour early and leave the squad room for field work before open of business. You, on the other hand, can play hooky and I will look the other way. You’re a special girl, and you get special treatment. Have I made myself unofficially clear?”
((They expect nothing from me.)) The realization that they expected me to quietly fuck around and accomplish nothing even if I did try—on top of the fact that I had only gotten the job because I was someone’s ‘special girl’—compounded with the knowledge that I was inexperienced and incompetent and too wanting for professionalism and devotion to my work to arrive early like everyone else—left me in an even worse state than the hangover had put me in.
“Well?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I had a rough time last night, what was that last bit, the question?”
“I expect nothing from you. Am I clear?”
“To be honest, I wish you could have been a little more vague, so that I could continue to live with the fantasy that I’m actually here to solve cases.”
“If you wanna work, be my guest. I’m just letting you know I won’t be disappointed in you if you fail miserably, but ya aren’t getting any gold star stickers for actually doing your duties.”
“Thanks… sir.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and left for his office. I leaned my head back and felt tears begin to flow. ((As much as I love Diane, taking this job was foolish. No one expects anything from me, because no one respects me. I’m a joke.))
I picked up my personal phone to call Diane to tell her I didn’t want the job anymore, but saw in my notifications that I had a missed call and a voicemail. I dreaded informing Diane of my resignation. I justified delaying our conversation by checking the voicemail from earlier, which had come in at 6:01 that morning; I recognized UCSV psychiatry’s number and groaned. ((I fucking slept through my appointment.)) I sighed and tapped ‘play’. ‘Good morning, Miss Bachman, this is UCSV Adult Psychiatry calling to verify that you will be able to make it to your 5:30 AM appointment with Doctor Huygen. If you need to reschedule, please give us a call as soon as possible. You can reach us at—’ I deleted the VM and spent a few minutes loathing myself, but it didn’t take long for me to build up the resolve I needed to give up.
I dialed Diane’s personal phone. After one-and-a-half rings she picked up. “Good morning Sweetie, how are you feeling?”
“Honestly…” I didn’t want to tell her, it would just make her feel bad.
“Oh,” she uttered softly. “Go ahead, Drea. I’m here to listen.”
“I feel—” My throat cinched tight. “—pretty awful.”
“Oh, no. Come to my office.”
“Thank you.”
As I approached her office, Tricia told me with sympathetic softness, “Go right in, Andrea.”
I entered, and my Mistress-cum-partner was seated in one of her visitor chairs, with the other positioned opposite her. “Come in Drea, have a seat.” I sat down. “What is the matter? Bad hangover?”
“Well, yes, that, but also… I think if Captain Nichols hadn’t told me what he told me earlier, I would have gotten through my morning just fine.”
Her voice froze over as she commanded, “Tell me what he said to hurt you.”
I repeated his words, verbatim and in his voice, and her face grew vengeful.
“That insensitive—disrespectful—condescending—bastard!” Her fury was a novel and disturbing sight to behold—pitch boiling above silently crackling flames, ready to scald one moment, cool-to-the-touch and solid by the next. “This is hardly out of character, though, he treats all of his detectives like shit.” She crossed her arms. “I should have known that putting you in Crimes Against Persons was a bad idea. I will have you moved to Vice as soon as you are finished with—”
“I want to quit.”
Her anger rapidly cooled into tender concern, with a hint of shock. “I have changed my mind, moving you to Vice would be the wrong thing to do for you…”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“…but so would be allowing you to quit. You are the only person I trust to solve Xander’s case. If you quit, whoever inherits it will neglect it, because not a single one of the bastards in this organization cares what happens to the people on Adams, and if they knew whose blood was in that hotel room, they would care even less. Alex needs you to remain in CAP. I need you to solve this case, for the sake of my own conscience. Everyone who loves Alex needs you on it, so that they can have him back.”
“I’m not a detective.”
She stared at me like bugs were crawling in and out of my orifices. “That will be quite enough self-deprecation, girl. Listen. You have talent. You just need some experience to nurture that talent and make it bloom. Once Xander is safe at home and our perpetrators in custody, I will double-check your evidence to make sure you have a solid case against the people who have him, and I will also help you with your investigation report. You will learn. No, you are not a good detective, but no-one is good from the start. I sure as hell did not; it took me many weeks without sleep or progress to climb my way up to captain. Out of all my assignments throughout my first year as a detective, 56 cases spread across every investigatory unit in the department… Can you guess how many of them resulted in convictions?”
“Half?”
“None.”
“None?”
“Zero. Nada. Zilch. I sucked. Well—I was intentionally fucking up on most of them, but the 6 DVs, 2 sex crimes, and single homicide to which I was assigned—the only ones I gave honest tries—those were all rejected by the DA. If your case makes it to court, you can count yourself a better detective than I was after my whole first year on the force.”
“You’d be helping me, though. That isn’t a fair comparison.”
“My captains helped me on my first few cases. And they were better at it back then than I am now. But I think you’ll do better even without my help. You sniffed out a trail no-one else would have picked up. You have talent, Drea. Don’t squander it by giving into self-pity.”
Had the words come from anyone besides either her or Judy, I would not have been persuaded. But I loved her, and I trusted her, so… “Thank you, Mistress.” I smiled. My gratitude was strained by the dying tempest in my heart, but no less sincere. “I’m going to give it my all.”
“Good. I prefer you staying willingly over me ordering you to finish the case.”
“You would have… Oh.”
((I didn’t have a choice in the first place.))
((—And yet… I know that I will do whatever she tells me to do, even when she doesn’t expect me to want to do it.))
((—If she doesn’t have the deed to my soul, there’s no point in following her orders.))
((—But I’m loyal to her of my own free will, and I would have followed her order if she had resorted to commanding me to stay on the case. The way I feel about her…))
((I’m not sure I know how to say ‘no’ to her.))
I nodded. She stood, took my hands in hers, and raised me up. “I am happy that you see things my way.” She kissed me, and what remained of the tempest cleared, and as the kiss carried on with our tongues intertwining, I thought my hangover disappeared as well. She pulled away too soon. “Justice, Andy. Pursue Justice. Don’t stop running towards it even if your legs fall off.”
At last, my smile was unstrained by suffering. “Yes, Mistress. I exist for Justice. Thank you for reminding me.”
She kissed me quickly and slapped me on the ass, forcing from me the first sound of happiness of the day—of many, it would turn out. “Go, Drea.”
With a pounding agony in my head and a misery-defying smile on my face I returned to my desk and opened the Alex folder, finding only the initial report. Disappointed but unsurprised, I checked my CaseCloud evidence vault for findings from the hotel, but saw nothing. On that note, I emailed the crime lab asking for an ETA on the fiber, hair, and fingerprints; and sent another to the medical examiner requesting that they pull all unidentified males between the ages of sixteen and fifty so that I could attempt to make an identification myself. With no other desk chores to do, I set myself to following up on my leads.
First, the blue sedan. If I knew who owned it, I would have my first suspect—and it happened to be the easiest lead to pursue. (After the fingerprints, of course. For whatever reason, the forensic evidence, which I ought to have gone over first, slipped my mind.)
I ran a partial plate search and received 46 results, of which 32 were sedans. Car-by-car I called manufacturers and asked them to decode each sedan’s VIN to tell me its factory color.
After two-and-a-half hours of call after call of reciting license plates, I came to the conclusion that not one of them was blue.
With no way to narrow down my search, I sent Sergeant Matthews an email asking him to query NCIC for the criminal histories of each of the sedan owners—and received an automatic out-of-office response.
After several hours of wasting time, I was stumped—so I thought back to the beginning of my investigation. Scouring social media in the coffee shop, tracking down Geraldine, convincing her to let us find him, reassuring her that he wasn’t dead—
((Ah shit, Geraldine…)) I had been putting off what I should have been doing on a daily basis since she hired me for the case. She deserved a long overdue update on the state of my investigation.
Upon arriving at the apartment building, I gave Chance a nearly perfect (if slightly high-pitched) impression of Judy, and he let me in. I knocked on her door and hoped that she was home. The door cracked open cautiously, much as it did the first time I knocked on it. “It’s me, Andrea Bachman,” I told her through the crack. “I wanted to give you an update on your husband.”
The door closed, the chain scraped in its track, and the door opened all the way, revealing a face without the stubble but not without the worry she had been wearing when we met, and a fashionable medium-length wavy blonde hairdo. “Thank you. Do you have any idea where he is?”
I steeled myself for tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”
Her bottom lip quivered and, sure enough, dew formed at the corners of her eyes.
Sensing a storm of negative emotions on the horizon, I quickly lied, “But I sincerely believe that he’s alive. And I’m absolutely convinced that I’ll find him.”
Despite my reassurances, she began to sob.
((Shit. She’s crying now. I’ve made her cry. What the hell do I do? I need a drink to clear my head.)) I had never needed to comfort someone worrying or grieving a loved one before this woman. Hell, I’d never needed to comfort anyone, not even Shosh—she was always the one there to comfort me. I felt a little like I needed her.
“(Hug her,)” I thought I heard somebody say, closely and quietly. I didn’t see anyone else around, but it was my best bet.
I took a chance without asking permission and wrapped my arms around her. She nestled her chin on my shoulder and cried. I had expected an emotional reaction. Disappointment. Maybe worry or panic or frustration or even anger. But of all the negative emotions she might have felt, I was not expecting a widow’s grief. We didn’t know for absolutely certain that he was dead—it was merely almost certain. She seemed to have gotten the impression that her husband was beyond all doubt deceased, that we would never catch the people who did this. “I’ll make them pay. I promise.” Her misery doubled. “Geraldine, I’m going to throw the whole book at them. I’ve got evidence. I know the body color and part of the license plate of the kidnappers’ sedan. I know exactly when and where he was abducted, and the first place he was taken.”
Her sobbing subsided. “You know where he’s been?”
“Yes. I’m on his trail. I have multiple leads. I have DNA to work with. I have fingerprints which I can run through IAFIS, which will tell us at least one of the people involved—if they’ve ever been booked. And once we know who did it, either we’ll know where to find him or we’ll know someone we can interrogate to find out. There’s lots of hope. The odds are on our side.”
She had stopped sobbing. “You honestly think he’s still alive?”
“Honestly.” After struggling for hours calling automobile manufacturers for each vehicle of interest’s factory color under the delusion that it would help me find the instrumental car, I had decided that, more likely than not, he was buried next to a patch of incienso with an ocotillo serving as his grave marker. “I can’t imagine anybody having the guts to kill him, not even the people who say they want him dead.” I surprised myself with how convincing my lies were.
“Oh.” She sniffed. “I love him so much. I can’t imagine living without him.”
Out of nowhere came an emotion I had last felt 12 years, 11 months, and 4 days prior. ((He’s dead, I know it. A great human being, a pioneer, a muse, a husband… stolen from the one who loves him more than anyone.))
She muttered something morose to herself.
((No. Whether he was great is irrelevant. He was a human being; that’s all that matters. He was a person, and now he is dead. And nothing can bring him back.)) I choked back a sob. I couldn’t cry in front of her. I had told her there was hope just the moment prior, and if I showed my dismay she would know that I had lied, that I was a manipulative hypocrite. Even if it had been out of practicality or out of sympathy, my lie would be proof that I couldn’t be trusted. If the only gumshoe willing to help her turned out to be a liar, Geraldine would be absolutely crushed, and if I was wrong about him being alive, she would know I was a fraud. I knew that once I found him—if I found him, if he hadn’t been dissolved in lye and poured down the drain, or ground up and mixed in with cow feed—it was going to be either under six feet of soil… or under 6 feet of sand. I had doomed my reputation as an investigator, and I had doomed her to distrust and misery.
I struggled against my sorrow and despair. I shrank under the realization that I had harmed her ex-ante. I simmered in my self-disdain. I wanted to be alone so that I could cry. I wanted tequila.
But she needed me to be there. More than that, she needed me to be confident and optimistic. I felt the threat of snot and tears bubbling up within me; soon would follow the sore throat, a dead giveaway of the treachery I would no longer be able to keep hidden from her.
I pulled back and told her, “I’m sorry to cut things short, Geri, but I have to get back to work.” I gave her a pat on the shoulder.
“It’s brunch time, though.”
((Brunch? On a Monday?)) “I suppose it’s always brunch time in California.” My throat was already sore.
“What are you having?”
“Oh. Well… I don’t… usually… eat brunch. Not on weekdays, anyway.”
“I made kale chips and a scallion eggless frittata to tide us over into lunch, enough for Alex to have some, too, out of habit, so there’s food for one more.”
The thought of eating anything made me nauseous. The thought of eating an egg dish not actually made out of egg filled me with despair. “That would be lovely, but I eat while I work.”
“You really shouldn’t, meals should be times of relaxation. You’ve been working hard, you deserve a break,” she insisted, probably having not taken one herself in days. “Did you have a hearty breakfast this morning?”
“No, I… didn’t have time to eat.”
“All the more reason for you to eat something now!”
“Sorry, I really hafta go.” I about-faced and took one step.
“Please! You remind me of him.”
I stopped.
“You both have such strong drives for justice, you both care about people, you both know the right things to tell people, you always know when to have hope. You both speak the truth. You have ideals you work towards and you would never trust a cop and you’re both about as far away from being cynics as human beings can get. You’d be doing me a great service if you kept me company for a few minutes.”
Fortunately, I was facing away from her, so she couldn’t see the wretched agony twisting my face. “Um… Now that… you… put it… that way… I suppose… I owe it… to you.”
“Thank you so much. This way.” I swallowed my distress, then let her lead me into the kitchen-slash-dining room and seat me at the table. I noticed on the way that there were 4 plated slices of ‘frittata’ on the counter. The doorbell rang. “Oh that must be Alicia.”
I wanted to cry. And because I couldn’t cry, I wanted to vomit. And because my hangover wanted me to be as miserable as humanly possible, I couldn’t vomit. And because I couldn’t vomit, I wanted a shot of something strong.
She answered the door and let Alicia in. Alicia Brown, that is, president of SVPDefund, the activist organization that sought to cut funding for the police department.
While they greeted each other and came to the table, I heard the sound of running water, before another familiar face appeared from what I presumed was the bathroom: Christina de la Torre, director of Abolish Modern Slavery, which fought to dismantle the school-policing-prison nexus.
I would not need to mention that both of these women were vehemently anti-police, were it not for that very knowledge seizing me that moment, in light of the fact that I was myself a cop, and sending me into a silent panic. I grasped at the escaping threads of my sanity, caught one, and it told me to measure my breaths. I did exactly that, and by the time everyone had reached the table, my anxiety had come down to a tolerable if excruciating level.
I still wanted to barf, but that would have to wait until I had something in my stomach to barf up.
“Good afternoon, friend,” said Alicia. “I’m Alicia Brown, she/her.” She held out her hand, and I nodded as I accepted it. “And… who would you be?”
“Andrea Bachman. Um, she/her.”
“Nice to meet you, Andrea.”
“Christina de la Torre, she/they,” self-introduced the other with a raised eyebrow. “‘Andrea Bachman’… That name sounds familiar.”
“Really?” I asked, my mind instantly jumping to the conclusion that she might be trying to remember the fact that I was a cop. “I can’t imagine why. I’ve never been in the news.”
“It wasn’t in the news. I heard it from… somebody. Somebody I trust. You have a reputation that would have preceded you if my memory wasn’t overloaded at the moment with statistics and facts about the prison pipeline.”
“Oh. I can’t imagine what that’s like. I have a very good memory for faces and reputations.”
“Brunch is served,” announced Geraldine as she set down the last plate before me. I didn’t want to look at it. Brunch was missing mimosas—or, better yet, sweet, citrusy, delicious screwdrivers.
“Maybe your memory can help her figure out who told her about you,” suggested Alicia.
“Oh, well, maybe,” I admitted.
“It was me,” said Geraldine. “She’s the private eye I told everyone about.”
Both of the activists brightened up and said, “Ahh…” and Alicia asked eagerly, “How’s the investigation going, Magnum?”
I didn’t want to talk about the investigation, I didn’t want to think about the investigation, I just wanted to be somewhere private so that I could cry while praying over a porcelain shrine. “I prefer not to talk shop over meals. If you don’t mind.”
“That’s understandable. You can tell us all about it after brunch.”
“I have to get back to work as soon as I’m done eating.”
“That’s too bad. If there’s anything we can do to help you find Xander, just let us know.”
“Thank you.”
They got to eating, and talked shop (leaving me to focus on forcing down the uncanny flavors and textures of this counterfeit egg substance that my stomach was quickly coming to suspect was made from some kind of legume). All of their conversation had to do with the SVPD and their major revenue streams, nothing that wasn’t public knowledge, and eventually they got hung up on civil forfeiture. “This is the next front. We need a way to cut them off,” opined Christina.
“There’s nothing we can do,” responded Alicia.
“Stop being pessimistic, it’s very unlike you. We need to have a real meeting of minds and discuss possible solutions.”
“There. Is. Nothing. All we can do is campaign for legislation to do away with it.”
“I refuse to believe there’s nothing we can do right now.”
Their bickering was exacerbating my anxiety and my headache and my fatigue and my alcohol craving, so I interjected, “Excessive Fines Clause, Eighth Amendment.”
“What does that have to do with asset forfeiture?” asked Alicia.
“Your lawyers never told you about Timbs v. Indiana?”
“We don’t have lawyers. Our annual budget is less than what the police make off of parking fines on Adams in the daytime.”
“3 years ago,” I explained, “the Supreme Court ruled that the Excessive Fines Clause applies to forfeitures by local and state governments. Spread the word, and you might help a few people get their stuff back. There probably won’t be a huge tidal wave of victories, most will probably die on the first day of court, but win or lose, I would expect that encouraging as many victims of police theft as possible to challenge forfeitures in court would pressure the PD to hire more lawyers, which would eat into their budget—and if enough forfeitures are found unreasonable, that could shine a spotlight on the department’s abuse of civil forfeitures.”
“See?” said Christina.
“That’s a wild goose chase,” insisted Alicia. “And even if it does have an effect, that effect’s gonna be limited to our city, and it will be temporary. Plus, the judges are best buddies with the pigs.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But just knowing they have the right to challenge a forfeiture might help anyone with the resources to sue. A little extra knowledge never hurt anyone except the people who don’t want you to know. And… if it works here, other communities will certainly give it a try.”
Alicia shrugged. “Alright. Maybe it’s worth a shot.”
“And make a big event of it, make it sound like you’re going after all their forfeitures. They might reel in seizures out of fear of hemorrhaging money on hiring lots of lawyers and paying plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees. They’ll cut off their own stream of income to avoid the risk of it turning into a costly liability.”
Christina nodded, convinced. Alicia ran a few calculations through her head before admitting, “Alright. I’ll run it by our budget committee and ask another org to lend us a lawyer. The ACLU or NAACP might be able to give me an hour with one of theirs.”
“How much does it cost to broadcast a hoot a few times a month, or throw up a web page with whatever advice you can legally share?”
“The bare minimum? Not much. But a major campaign like this needs more than that if it’s going to have the reach it needs to make an impact, which means it has to be voted on by the committee, and it’ll also require us to borrow another org’s attorney to vet the project and write the legal advice we’re going to share—or pay for one out of our own pocket if we can’t find a loaner.”
“You gotta do what you gotta do. Plus… well, you only met me a few minutes ago, you don’t have any reason to trust me to give good advice.”
“As long as you aren’t a cop-lover, I’m willing to take your advice into consideration.”
My mouth ran dry.
“That said, P.I. is cop-adjacent, so you can expect me to scrutinize your proposal a little more closely than the average Jane off the street.”
“I’m used to being distrusted. I hope you don’t feel any guilt for taking every word that comes out of my mouth with a block of salt.”
“A lotta salt on top of some very thin ice,” said Alicia. “And not a grain of guilt. I took a look into your past.” She leaned towards me and said, quietly yet harshly, “You used to have a badge, Miss Bachman. That thin ice already has cracks in it.”
I swallowed. ((‘Thin ice’… that ice would vaporize in an instant if she found out I became a cop all over again. Should I have been hiding this for as long as I have? Shouldn’t I be honest with all of them, shouldn’t I have been honest from the beginning? Wasn’t that my policy from the beginning? If I’m caught lying to a single antifa about being a law enforcement officer, the rest will either refuse to trust me when they meet me, or cease trusting me if they were already my allies. And I can’t risk losing the few allies I have.)) The only cure for my dread would have been an old-fashioned. Trembling, I reached into my coat, pulled out my badge wallet and laid it out on the table, open-faced. “For the sake of honesty, I should have warned you as soon as you began discussing business matters in front of me.” All three pairs of eyes were wide with disbelief. “I should have revealed to Geraldine that I received this the instant the chief handed it to me, Monday morning. I should have warned her about my plan to become a Crimes Against Persons Detective the second I made the decision to accept the position, Saturday night. I regret not being as forthright as I should have been. I’m sorry.”
“You’re a cop,” observed Christina. Christina’s and Alicia’s faces, while civil, were more stone than flesh; Geraldine’s, on the other hand, was a blend of fury and incredulity.
“I chose to become a bastard… because only the police department has the resources and expertise I need to rescue Alex, but no blue-blooded police officer has the desire to help him. I had no other choice.”
“I’m still getting over the fact that you’re a police officer who thought she could hide that fact from us,” said Alicia, coldly but professionally.
“And I regret not being open about it from the outset. I’m sorry, that was a mistake, and I have no excuse for failing to be forthright.”
She shook her head. “I have no need for your apologies.”
“Geraldine?”
“You… lied to me.”
“I really was investigating privately when you hired me—but—I guess… contrary to my good intentions… I lied by omission. I’m sorry.”
“If you hadn’t hidden what you are—maybe I could have trusted you.”
I wanted to tell her, to make her understand, that she could trust me. That I wasn’t like other cops. But I had long ago taken what every reasonable person said to heart. I knew that none of what I wanted to tell her was true. “You’re right. You can’t trust me. You can’t trust me to be honest, you can’t trust me to tell you everything you deserve to know, you can’t trust me to comfort you when your despair becomes too much to handle. You shouldn’t trust me.” I pocketed my wallet. “None of you owe me your confidence. I only ask that, if you have any information about Alex’s enemies or his activities during the 24 hours preceding his disappearance, you consider sharing it with me to help me find him. Thank you for the brunch, Missus Pasteur. It was an honor filling your husband’s seat at the table.”
I let myself out, lumbered down the hallway, lurched down the stairs, and stumbled towards the entrance… before the nausea squeezing my stomach wrested control of my faculties.