Vice never even heard of Officer Brooke Fury.
Neither had anyone in K-9.
When I finally caught back up with Lydia, I told her I really didn’t think a date was the best thing to happen between us, and we should continue our strictly professional friendship.
“What? Why?” she asked, giving me a disgruntled face. “Are you being serious?”
“Yes,” I said, gathering all my stuff on my desk. I offered her nothing more.
“What the fuck?” she said, slamming her hands on her desk. “I cancelled plans with my girlfriends this weekend to go out with you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sure you can call them back up, and everything will be fine.”
“But you haven’t given me a reason. You’re kind of being a dick.”
I stopped in my tracks and spun around, “No, all the things you said about Brooke Fury? That was being a dick.”
“What? I was just repeating what I heard. It’s not my fault she was sleeping with everyone and anyone—”
“Right. Well, for your information, all the people you named before, have never met her,” I said, walking away.
“You asked everyone?”
“I’m a detective, Martinez. I find out the truth. It’s what I do.”
“You are so fucking rude,” she whined.
“I’m not being rude. You’re just feeling insignificant and tearing down someone else to make yourself feel better. I’m not going to take that personality trait out for dinner.”
I didn’t get back home until almost ten that night.
It was on the drive home, tired and stressed, when I realized how I had anticipated seeing Brooke all day. The call after call, the dead bodies, finding truth in evidence, watching someone’s blood dry up while his family members wept on the front steps. I walked the perpetrator to the investigations room as he mumbled and cursed when he realized he didn’t kill the cop he’d shot at. I listened as he called me a pig—how he said I’d beaten him—when I hadn’t even shown up to the scene yet. His name was Adonis. He even spit on a black officer’s face, and screamedfuck the police.
Through it all, I kept thinking when I get home, Brooke will be there.
When I walked in, she was sitting on the couch, watching the news. Cameron was asleep in the guest room. “Hey,” she whispered, groggily. “Busy day, huh?”
I stood frozen in the doorway, staring at her.
She had on a baggy tee-shirt with a pair of shorts that looked like they’d come straight out of the 1970s.
“Hungry? I saved you some dinner.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. “You waited up for me?”
She shrugged, “Yeah, is that okay? I just wanted to make sure you ate.”
“Yeah. I’ll eat.”
No matter what was happening at work—no matter what she’d done with all her wrong decisions—it was staggering how perfect it felt coming home to her.
