“So now you’re here.”
“So now we’re here. And so are you. You letting the ball drop? There’s gotta be someone with a headlight out to bust, someone going forty in a thirty-five mph zone.” A part of her is glad, that at least Collins and Reynolds are friendly enough now to joke. In the wake of Jenna’s disappearance she’s been even more regimented, more of a hard-ass. That same old compunction at work: When her personal life was messy, the other side of her life had to compensate. Some of the other guys on the squad are unhappy about it, but what are they actually complaining about? Doing their jobs?
“Har har har. More tickets, more funds. You guys want overtime back? We gotta get those citations up. Among our other issues.”
“Could use that OT pay, that’s for sure,” Reynolds says.
“Yeah, you owe me a shit ton of money from our poker game last week.”
“Not as much as Jimmy. And Frank.” Callie’s smile contracts. Maybe she was wrong about them warming up. Weekly poker games with the old guard. All of them talking to Frank all the time—no way she can ask any of them about Luke, about what might be going down at the nursery. But they can still be useful to her in this setting, loosened up and cheered by the drinks.
“What’s the latest with Fauver? We needed probable cause on him, like, yesterday.” She’s tasked her guys with monitoring him. She doesn’t have enough to get a warrant on the drugs, let alone anything relating to Jenna, but she’s asked them all to do more drive-bys of his residence, keep their ears to the ground.
Reynolds sighs. “Well we’ll never see him out this way. Pretty sure he’s barred from every drinking establishment for fifty miles.”
Callie watches two bikers make their way to the back of the bar, where there’s another door leading to the dumpsters, and behind that, woods. Could be going to smoke, could be going to do a deal. Back in the day she would have had an undercover team who could have gotten close to them. Could have used all this time setting upstings and surveillance ops. Instead she’s here, prodding two of her tipsy patrolmen to make sure they’ve been following up on her assignments.
“Reynolds, you would have gone to high school with him, right?” She hasn’t talked to them about Jenna’s phone call to Fauver’s garage, about the connection with the Baby Doe case. How she’s circling him like he’s got the key to it all and all she needs is one slipup on his end before she can crucify the slimy bastard. For now, they only think she’s on him for the drug rumors. She’s keeping everything else close to her chest. “What was his deal then? Was he selling? Who did he hang out with?”
Reynolds groans. “Look, can we talk about this when we’re on the clock? All I want to do is get wasted right now.”
One of the bikers she had seen slip out back moves past them. There’s a Pagan gang patch on the sleeve of his leather jacket and he gives Callie a stare that makes her go still. Even Collins and Reynolds are quiet until he slides back into a booth in the corner of the room.
Collins looks over her shoulder. “Who’s your guy? Someone from Major Crimes? Skinny nerds up there wasting away behind their desks, huh?”
“Not a cop, thank you very much.” Thank God, she thinks.
“No kidding,” Reynolds mutters.
“I better get back there.”
“All right, Hauser.” Collins has a wink in his voice but for once it’s not mocking.
Maybe it’s the beer. Maybe it’s that Collins and Reynolds have split from the other guys. But the question slides out before she can help herself. “Hey. Do either of you know who has been putting shit in my mailbox?”
Collins grins. “So Hauser, there are these nice people in blue. Not like us. They ride around in little trucks. They’re called postal—”
“Shut up. And I don’t get any mail except for thePine Barrens Gazette.” She thinks of the stacks of papers in her recycling, nothing more than a police blotter and listings for farmers’ markets, classifiedads filled with old boats and rusted out cars for sale. “You know what I mean. The animals.”
“What animals?” Collins asks.
“Dead ones.”
“You know? You gotta get off this man-hating, we’re-all-against-you thing, Hauser. Okay, so some of the guys gave you a hard time or froze you out. But we’re not barbarians. We’re not putting dead fucking animals in your mailbox. Jesus.”
He’s a good liar. His outrage is believable, a pulse to it but doesn’t feel too cooked up to be real. Callie will give him that. “Come on. Don’t bullshit me. I let you guys have your fun or whatever. But really. Just tell whoever is doing it… enough.”
Collins and Reynolds fix her with identical stone-faced looks. “I’m telling you, it’s not one of ours. Come on, Reyn. Why don’t we let the lady get back to her date?” Collins throws an arm around Reynolds and steers him away.
When she gets back to the table she apologizes to Adrian. “I knew I had to talk to them or else they’d keep staring. I’m sure they imagine me at home every night with my nose in a stack of duty logs and reports.” She hesitates, wanting to be honest. “Though maybe that’s not too far off from the truth.” She looks over to see Collins racking up for a game of pool, Reynolds chalking the cue, and is relieved that they’re distracted.
“Is that your usual type? Fellow cops?”
“Oh god, no. Not those guys. Well, the last guy I was with up north was a cop, but that was…” It sounds so feeble, so sad, to say it. It was about convenience. It was about understanding they were each too wrapped up in the job to give their personal lives a passing thought. It was about satisfying the animal need for a warm body next to yours every few weeks. “It was nothing, And now it’s over.”
“Glad to hear that.”
And just like that, she sees something new in his eyes, in the fierceness of his stare. Desire. She has to suppress the urge to press the cool of her glass against her flushed chest.
