Ramsey blinked and then looked sideways at Sullivan. “Sully? You let him call you Sully?”
“You know he’s the chief, right?”
Bailey offered up a Cheshire cat smile. Sullivan Day simply grinned back.
Ramsey shrugged, shook her head. They had just communicated in some sort of man code that a Turing machine couldn’t crack. “May I?” she asked, sliding the document toward her. When they both nodded, she picked it up and began to read.
“I need a pen,” she said when she’d finished. The chief offered her a fountain pen from a stand on his desk. She shook her head. “I can’t use it. I know. I’ve tried. I’m left handed. I always smear whatever I write. A ballpoint will do.” She accepted the pen he pulled out of a drawer and signed the document. “Who gets this now?”
“I do,” said Sullivan. “I have to file it.”
She pushed it in his direction. “I suppose that’s all. Thank you.” Ramsey started to rise, but the chief waved her back down. She sat more slowly than she had when she first came into the room. Her chin lifted a fraction; her dark eyes registered curiosity.
“What you did out at Southridge got me thinking,” Bailey said.
“You mean following a shopper when I suspected he might not intend to pay?”
“Yes.” He said the word slowly and after a pause that held certain significance. “Yes, that’s what got me thinking. Have you ever considered becoming an officer, Ms. Masters?”
The question was so unexpected that she twitched like a tweaker. “What? No. Never.”
Bailey went on anyway. “You’d have to apply, take a test, and demonstrate that you’re physically capable. I don’t anticipate that either the exam or the physical demands would be a problem for you. Once you’re hired, you’d go to the academy for sixteen weeks of training. You would return as a probationer and be assigned to a field-training officer for five months. Once you’re through the levels you’re off probation.”
Ramsey stared at him. She couldn’t help it. “You’re serious.” She hardly knew if she were asking him or stating a fact.
“Of course, I’m serious. I’ve been talking to the council and the mayor for months about hiring more women. Detective Heidenreich took maternity leave and then chose not to return.” He shrugged. “It happens. I always thought we were fortunate that she came back after her first child was born. The second one was just too much of a pull to stay at home—at least for the foreseeable future. Officer Glaspell didn’t work out. So now we have no women. A few have applied but I won’t hire just to hire. How long have you lived in Clifton?”
“Four years. The same amount of years that I’ve lived in West Virginia.”
“So you’re not a native. We wouldn’t hold that against you.”
“That’s kind of you,” she said because no other response came to mind.
“This is something you can think about, isn’t it?” Bailey asked. “Now that I’ve planted the seed?”
She nodded dumbly, not trusting herself to speak.
“Probably need to give you some time. Can’t say that I can tell if you’re stunned or overwhelmed.”
She managed to push a single word past her hammering heart and the lump in her throat. “Both.”
“That’s all right, then. You give that seed some time to sprout. See what comes of it.”
That damn seed was going to turn out to be a pumpkin. She just knew it. Her head was going to explode. “Yes, sir. Chief.” She stood quickly, and turned, not waiting to see if Bailey gestured for her to sit again, then she was out the door and out of the station as if she were being chased by the K-9 unit.
Sullivan caught up to her in the parking lot where she was just opening the door to her Ford Escape. “Wait,” he said. “Can we talk for a minute?”
Sure they could, she thought. Once she caught her breath. It wasn’t her quick exit that left her lungs short of air. It was the panic attack. She couldn’t quite get it under control. She held up an index finger, signaling she needed a moment. A deep breath in through the nose and a count of ten to exhale through her mouth. That’s what she’d been taught and that’s what she practiced. She closed her eyes, not caring what he thought, and repeated the breathing twice over. She kept her hand on the door handle, felt the shape of it under her fingertips, absorbed the heat into her palm. It grounded her. Kept her in the moment.
She opened her eyes, stared into Sullivan Day’s smoky gray ones, and nodded. “Sure. We can talk.” She paused, and added, “Sully.”
A dark eyebrow kicked up and the smoke left his eyes as they narrowed ever so slightly and turned gunmetal gray. “You’re not the chief.”
That steely-eyed stare kept Ramsey immobile until she realized his features were set too stonily to be serious. Unfortunately, understanding seized her only a nanosecond before implacability collapsed under the weight of his juvenile humor.
“Had you,” he said unapologetically.
Ramsey offered him a humorless smile. “Yeah. You had me. For all of a second.”
