Brodie watched him walk away for a moment, then said, “And don’t remove any more evidence.”
Evans turned around. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Brodie stared into the man’s eyes for a moment. “How does it feel to be everyone’s hardship duty?”
Evans glared at him. “You think you’re better than me?”
Brodie didn’t reply.
“It was less than an eight ball.”
“Great.”
“A nice Saturday night for me and the boys, or a year in prison for our young private on top of everything else he’s facing. What do you think?”
“You’re a saint, Evans. A real class act.”
“If I go back in there and find a kilo in the toilet tank, we got possession with intent to distribute. Until then, let’s keep it in the family.”
“Get out of my face.”
“No one told me you were a fucking narc.”
“Everyone told me you were a useless burnout.”
“Eat shit.” Evans walked back into the house.
Well, that had gone well. Brodie had been looking for the right reason to terminate this particular relationship. He wasn’t going to rat the guy out to Dombroski, but this gave him all the justification he needed in his own mind to demand a new partner and maybe reassignment. Evans would second the motion.
Brodie looked down at the dog, which was whining for more food. He crouched and scratched behind her ears.
He’d never had a dog, or a cat, or any pet higher on the food chain than a goldfish. He also couldn’t imagine himself with kids, and he had never stayed in a relationship longer than six months. He told himself that he needed the freedom to do his job and live his life the way he wanted.
But what good was that freedom now? He was tooling around the Eastern Seaboard arresting petty crooks and wife beaters, and solving blockbuster crimes like the curious case of the missing chili. And for the first time in his career, he had a partner who was even more screwed up than he was. This didn’t work for him. This sucked in a whole new way.
Brodie walked around the house to his parked Impala. He climbed in, pulled out of the driveway, and navigated the narrow roads that led back to the highway.
It was past five and dusk was settling in. He noticed string lights and other holiday decorations on a few of the houses he passed.
Christmas was three weeks ago. Brodie was supposed to have gone back to his folks’ place in upstate New York, but he hadn’t. He wasn’t sure why. He’d lied and said he was spending the holidays with a friend, which he allowed them to interpret to mean his girlfriend, whom he’d dumped a month earlier. So he spent the holiday alone, eating takeout and watching alien abduction documentaries on Netflix. He’d actually enjoyed himself, which worried him.
Whether in the infantry or the CID, his Army career had always required him to exist outside the rhythms of the civilian world. He’d spent Christmases in Riyadh and Tokyo and in South Korea a few miles from the DMZ. He recalled his first and most notable Christmas away from home—Baghdad in 2003, manning the mounted .50-caliber machine gun of anarmored Stryker vehicle protecting a Christian quarter of the city from insurgents and car bombs.
He remembered rolling down the narrow streets at dusk. No lights or decorations, no music. Just the quiet air, thick with fear. He recalled passing an old church where he could faintly hear prayers, beautiful and solemn, in a language he did not recognize as Arabic and would later learn was ancient Aramaic.
He didn’t miss being home. Who needed a ticky-tacky holiday when a place like this existed? A place full of history and meaning and consequence. A place where he had a mission and a purpose.
That same feeling carried him through his career. At some point he realized he’d structured his life so he didn’t have things to miss. And that was fine. It was nice to be a lone wolf. Except once you’re defanged, you’re just alone.
He thought about his last partner before Brad Evans. Maggie Taylor. Despite her lack of experience on the job, she was one of the smartest and most capable people he’d ever worked with. She was also a knockout blonde, but that had nothing to do with his high opinion of her. Except that he had sort of tried to sleep with her in Caracas. But he blamed that on the stress of the mission and the strength of the Venezuelan rum. Also, she’d sent mixed signals. But they all do.
He’d struck out, which in retrospect would have been good for their continued professional relationship had there been one. But after the Mercer case she was transferred to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where she was assigned a new partner along with—as Brodie had heard through the grapevine—a new rank of CW2. She and Brodie hadn’t spoken since, despite Brodie’s half dozen attempts to contact her. He assumed she was under orders to have no contact with him, and that those orders had come from either the Pentagon, who didn’t like how the mission had turned out, or from the spooks at Langley, who were nervous about the classified Intel that Brodie and Taylor both now possessed. Or maybe her Army shrink had advised her to rid herself of toxic relationships. Or perhaps Maggie Taylor figured out all by herself that Scott Brodie was hazardous to her continued well-being.
Brodie got on the northbound ramp for I-95 and slipped into a streamof slow-moving taillights. He’d probably be a few minutes late, which in the Army was a crime close to desertion.
