Frank Zafiro - And Every Man Has to Die

Or three glasses with half a dinner. Whatever. She reached for the bottle and poured the last of it into her glass. Might as well finish it, she figured.

The telephone rang. She had a flash of panic. Maybe it was her mother calling to rebuke her for having those negative thoughts about her. That would be karma in a nutshell, wouldn’t it?

Katie decided she didn’t care. Maybe since she was a little tipsy herself, she’d be able to have something closer to a normal conversation with her mother. Maybe drunk to drunk they’d make more sense, like two people speaking the same foreign language.

Katie picked up the phone, then paused and looked at the caller ID attached to the cord. The rectangular gadget displayed a local number. She didn’t recognize it.

Katie took another deep breath and stared at the unfamiliar number. It had to be Stef. In the space between two rings, her mind raced with images of him. His smile. His short hair barely kinked from lying on the pillow next to her. The anguish on his face after-

No.

He hadn’t called her since the incident with the Rainy Day Rapist. What was that? Over two years ago? Before that, he’d called her every few weeks or so. Usually drunk or whacked out on the pain pills he took. Always a mess. It was not unlike talking to her mother.

Katie knew he was trying to grab onto her like some kind of life preserver, a last vestige of his days as a cop. Maybe he saw her as a way to validate or even redeem himself. But Katie didn’t feel like she was rescuing him from drowning in his own self-pity. It felt like he was going to drag her down with him.

The hard part was that she still cared about him. Maybe even loved him. But she couldn’t save him from himself. That was one thing she’d learned in police work that was always true. And right now, she wasn’t feeling like the strongest of swimmers for him to grab onto.

The phone rang again. After one more it would go to the answering machine. Maybe that was the best solution. Ignore him. Katie set her jaw.

No. Some people ran from their problems. Other people faced up to them. She knew which kind of person she was. She pressed “talk.” “Hello.”

There was a pause, then a female voice asked hesitantly, “Uh, Katie?”

Katie thought for a second that it was her mother after all, and that she was here in River City, not back home in Seattle. Her stomach fell. She started to ask who it was, but stopped. If it was her mother, that would set the ball rolling. Instead, she simply said, “Yes.”

The nervous laugh on the other end definitely did not belong to her mother. “Oh, good. I thought I had the wrong number.”

“Who is this?” Katie asked.

“Oh, sorry. It’s Billie Jo.”

“Who?”

“B.J.,” the woman said.

“I don’t know any-”

“B.J. Carson. From work?”

“Oh.” Katie’s mind stopped spinning. She remembered Carson, of course. She’d been the rookie’s first training officer back in the spring. The tall, slender woman had seemed a little bit too much of a lipstick cop to Katie, the kind of woman that became a cop more to meet other cops than to protect and serve. She’d felt a little bit guilty judging her right away, but then again, she’d seen nothing in their four weeks together that changed her mind. Then another thought occurred to her. “How’d you get this number?” she asked, her voice a little sharp.

There was a pause, then Carson answered, “I called Dispatch. Janice gave it to me.”

“Oh.” Well, that made sense then, didn’t it? Katie sipped her wine. She was solving mysteries left and right tonight. But the biggest one still remained. What the hell did Miss River City PD 1998 want?

“Is it all right that I called?” Carson asked.

Katie swallowed and said, “It’s fine.”

“Is this a bad time?”

Katie smiled at that. Was it a bad time? Oh nooo, princess. It was a great time.

“What can I do for you, B.J.?”

Another pause. Katie drew in a breath. How in the hell did this woman expect to be a cop if she didn’t show a little more confidence? She’d get eaten up. Forget the bad guys, even. She wouldn’t get past the other cops.

“Well,” B.J. began, “I wanted to tell you I was sorry to hear about your ankle.”

Katie’s eyes flicked down to her injured ankle propped up on a chair. Her sock-clad toes peeked out of the blue foam support boot her doctor had prescribed. She wiggled them at B.J. in a sarcastic thank-you.

“That’s nice of you,” Katie said flatly. She knew that she should be sweeter about it, but too many things got in the way. Her own lack of tolerance for bullshit was probably the biggest obstacle, but the wine came in a close second. Running in a strong third place was frustration at being sidelined while this woman, who she suspected of being a badge bunny with a badge, was out working the streets.

“Are you coming back soon?” Carson asked.

Katie detected the sincerity in the other woman’s voice and felt a small stab of guilt for her own cattiness. Still, she knew that wasn’t the reason Carson had called. “As soon as my doctor lets me. Is there something going on?”

“Going on?” Carson repeated. Katie heard a trace of panic in her voice.

“Well, you called me,” Katie said. When Carson didn’t answer, she went on. “We don’t exactly go to lunch together, so I was wondering why you were calling.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. She felt guilty for being so blunt, but then she shrugged and finished off the glass of wine. If someone was going to call her out of the blue, they got what they got, right?

“I’m sorry,” Carson said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”

Katie put down her wine glass. She wanted to say that maybe Carson was right, but that was a bit too harsh, and she knew she was already going to regret being as rude as she’d been. “No, it’s all right. You just caught me by surprise. I mean, we’re not even on the same platoon, so I’m a little confused, that’s all.”

Carson didn’t answer.

“Look, I appreciate your well wishes on my ankle, but you probably called for another reason, so what can I do for you?”

“Oh, right,” Carson said. “I called because you were the best training officer I had. Plus you were the only woman. And I need some advice.”

“Advice?” Katie shrugged.

“Yeah.On dealing with… it.”

“It?”

“It.The whole thing. Being a woman on this job. Dealing with the men. All the sexual tension. Just… all of it .”

Katie’s mind whirred in several different directions. No one ever taught her how to deal with it. She figured it out on her own, the hard way. By working hard. By being the best cop she could be. By never showing that she was any weaker than her male counterparts. Hell, by never being any weaker than her male counterparts.

Sexual tension? Sure, it existed, but you handled it the way you handled it anywhere else. Professionally. Prudently. And if anything ever happened with anyone on the job, you kept it discreet. Mostly you didn’t let it happen, because it almost always led to disaster. That’s what happened with her and Stef. She’d learned her lesson there on her own. No one pulled her aside and gave her the template for dealing with it. She certainly hadn’t called anyone at home and pleaded for advice.

And who did this Carson chick think she was, anyway? Time was, a rookie remembered his place. Open ears, close mouth. Work hard. Learn. It didn’t come to you on a silver platter. You figured it out over time and if you proved yourself to be a brave and hard worker, the veterans on the platoon gave you some subtle guidance, but you didn’t call them on the phone and ask for it. You earned it. At seven years on the job, Katie knew she was just now entering that veteran phase of her career. She’d earned that respect from most of her platoon mates, with the possible exception of Kahn, and who cared about that prick? She’d faced impossible situations and come through them. Maybe not whole, maybe not all right, but she’d come through. And no one held her hand or gave her some secret potion to deal with all of it . It wouldn’t have mattered if they had, anyway. Some knowledge has no value unless you learn it on your own.