Russell Andrews - Midas

“I doubt it,” Justin said. “Maybe orange, but I guarantee you cranberry’s out of the question.”

Donnie, the bartender, wandered over to their table and, lo and behold, he had both orange and grapefruit juice. She ordered grapefruit. Justin wanted a beer but settled for a club soda.

Before Donnie could even get back to the bar, Regina Bokkenheuser reached into her inside jacket pocket, pulled out a piece of paper neatly folded into thirds, and slid it across the table at him.

“My resume,” she explained. “Figured it would help answer a few questions and maybe spark a few others.”

Before looking at the paper, he did his best to study her face. Justin realized she was quite attractive. She reminded him of the dark-haired assistant DA on Law amp; Order , the one from the earlier days of the show, the one who quit because she married Richard Gere. Well, maybe Regina wasn’t quite so perfect-looking as that, but the same type. Her hair was lighter than that actress’s hair, somewhere between blonde and brown, layered and cut close around her face. He didn’t let his gaze linger, but he took in the fact that her features weren’t perfect, which somehow made her even more attractive. Her nose was a little too big and her smile a little lopsided. Good teeth, though. Straight and very white. And her neck was long and elegant. Her blue eyes were clear and curious, and he thought he detected just a touch of sadness in there. Those eyes didn’t look away from him until they glanced down at her resume, letting him know he’d been watching her just a little too long.

Justin unfolded the paper, scanned the information. Impressive. She’d been a cop for six years back in Milwaukee. Before that, college at the state university in Madison. Her educational background was in forensic science. Her age wasn’t listed on the resume, but he put her in her late twenties, maybe thirty.

“What made you become a cop?” he asked, looking up.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” she said.

“I’m not actually all that experienced in this management position,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s supposed to ask the questions.”

“Oh, I’ll happily answer,” she told him. “I just thought your answer would be a lot more interesting than mine.” When he cocked his head slightly to the right, she continued. “I don’t like to come into something like this cold,” she said. “I Googled you.” His head cocked farther to the right and she said, “Not your normal mentions for a small-town police chief.”

“And what would I find if I Googled you?”

“Nothing comparable.” She smiled that lopsided smile. “And nothing particularly interesting. If I even popped up, which I won’t. Never been in the papers, never done anything exciting enough to be cited. My dad was a police officer for twenty-five years and I was always fascinated by it. Both my parents wanted me to go into something else. Business, law, teaching maybe. At least, my dad said he wanted that. I always got the feeling he was secretly happy when I decided to follow in his footsteps.”

“And why did you?”

“There’s the million-dollar question. I’m sure there’s some psychological baggage involved. . father-daughter stuff. . but my guess is neither one of us wants to go there. Mostly I think it’s fairly uncomplicated. I just like the job. I like helping people. I like solving things. I know it’s not really glamorous, but if feels glamorous to me. I like saying I’m a police officer. I enjoy the respect it brings, especially these days.”

“Next question: Why here ?”

“Why did I leave Madison? Or why did I come to East End Harbor?”

“Both. This is not exactly a teeming hotbed of crime.” Well, not usually, he thought. But he decided to keep his thought to himself.

“Lifestyle,” she said. “My father died a few months ago. .”

“I’m sorry. In the line of duty?”

“No. Heart attack. On his way to the grocery store. Fifty-eight years old.” She hesitated a moment, it was still an emotional subject for her. She quickly got her voice under control and went on. “He left me a little bit of money, so I decided it was time to get out of the Midwest. And I thought I wasn’t quite ready for New York City. A friend from the Milwaukee force knew someone on the NYPD who knew Leona, yada yada yada, so I checked out the town and fell in love with it and. .”

“And here we are.”

“And here we are,” she echoed, flashing one more tilted smile. “And my guess is you’re not the kind of person who likes to be pressured, so you’re figuring this meeting is just a courtesy. But I should tell you, I’m a really good cop and I know what I’m doing and I wish you’d at least check my references because they’re going to be glowing. I don’t think you could find anyone better than me.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. As long as you’re feeling pressure, I found a perfect little house and it’s for rent and I told them I’d let them know in a day or two. So I don’t just want you to hire me, I want you to hire me soon.”

She smiled, an acknowledgment of her brazenness, he relaxed enough to smile back, they both had a second drink-neither switched to alcohol-and they talked about some of the cases she’d worked on. Both police forces were reasonably small, so she’d covered a variety of crimes. She’d worked two homicides-not the lead detective on either murder. One remained unsolved, the other-a fairly simple family squabble; a jealous husband stabbed his wife, tossed her body in a Dumpster seven miles from his house, and tried to claim she’d gone missing-resulted in a conviction. She’d done a lot of domestic intervention, had no aversion to paperwork, and even liked the idea of walking the East End beat. She was clearly good at her interpersonal relationships-he realized she was pretty much wrapping him around her little finger.

“You’ve got more and better experience than anyone on my force,” he said after the conversation hit the hour mark. “I’d have to hire you as my second in command.”

“If your question is, will that intimidate me, the answer’s no. I’m ready for that kind of position.”

“Not lacking confidence, huh?”

“No, sir. I have quite a few flaws, but that’s not one of them.”

“Care to tell what some of them are?”

“My flaws?” When he nodded, she thought for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. Then she shrugged. “I bite my nails and I spend too much money on clothes, particularly shoes, and I’m not always the most patient person in the world. I don’t like bullshit, which I personally don’t think of as a flaw, but it tends to get me in trouble sometimes, so maybe it is. I think I get that from my dad.”

Justin stared at her, just for a moment-she didn’t back down from his gaze-then he polished off his second club soda. “Glowing, huh?”

“What?”

“Your references are gonna be glowing.” He checked the resume in his hand. “From Captain Frank Quarry of the Milwaukee PD and Captain Harvey Rizzo in Madison.”

“I think they will be, yes.”

He wasn’t wearing a sport coat and his leather jacket was hanging over the back of a chair, so he held on to the resume rather than jam it into his pants pocket. He folded it one extra time so it disappeared into his palm. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” he said. And then: “Where’s the house?”

“Excuse me?”

“The one you fell in love with. That’s putting all this unbearable pressure on me. Where is it?”

“On Division Street. Just a few blocks out of town, still in the historical village, though. I could get it for a year. And for a very reasonable price.”