J. Robb - New York to Dallas

“Maybe, but I’m not green now, so I’m realistic. And McQueen wouldn’t break. Feeney worked him for hours, days. He let me observe. He even brought me into the box briefly, hoping seeing me would shake, or just piss off McQueen enough for him to say something, make some mistake. And I’m getting ahead of myself,” she realized. “I guess I’d better start at the beginning.”

“Twelve years,” he prompted her, wanting her to talk it out, for both of them. “You’d barely begun.”

“I’m trying to remember me, to see myself. To feel. I wanted to be a cop so bad. A good cop, solid. To work my way up to detective. I wanted Homicide, that was always the goal. Homicide detective. I didn’t really know anybody in the department, in the city for that matter. Most of the rookies who graduated with me were scattered around the boroughs. I got Manhattan, and that was big. I needed to be here.”

He topped off her wine, gave her a small opening. “I think of the photo you gave me for Christmas, of you at your desk at the Academy. Hardly more than a child, and your hair long.”

“I’d hacked it off by the time I graduated.”

“You had cop’s eyes even then.”

“I missed things. I had a lot to learn. I was working out of the Four-Six, Lower West. A little house. Central absorbed it, I guess, about eight years ago. It’s a club now. The Blue Line. Weird.”

She paused when a thought struck her. “You don’t own it, do you?”

“No.” But he filed it away, thinking she might enjoy owning her first cop shop.

She drew a breath. “Okay. So. I was only a few weeks on the job, on patrol or doing the grunt work they stick rooks with. It was hot, like this, late summer when you’re wondering if it’ll ever cool off again. There was a mugging that went way, way south. A couple in visiting their daughter. She’d just had a baby. They’re walking back to her place, did some shopping for the kid.

“Junkie, crashing, and he’s got a six-inch sticker. They don’t hand everything over fast enough, and he gives the woman a jab to hurry them up. One thing leads to another, and the man ends up dead with a dozen holes in him; the woman’s critical, but conscious. Manages to call out until somebody stops. It’s a decent enough neighborhood, and it’s freaking broad daylight. But there just wasn’t anybody around. Bad luck. Feeney caught the case.”

“That would be good luck,” Roarke prompted.

“Yeah. Jesus, Roarke, he was good. I know the e-work is his thing, and he’s the best. But he was a hell of a murder cop. He didn’t look that much different—less gray, not as many lines. But even back then he looked like he’d slept in his clothes for a couple nights running. Just watching him was an education. How he worked the scene, read it, read the wits.”

Looking back, seeing Feeney in her head, she settled a bit more. “I stood there, watching him, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want.’ Not just Homicide, but to be that good. He stood on the sidewalk with the blood and the body, and he saw it. He felt it. He didn’t show it, hard to explain.”

“You don’t need to.” Because he’d stood and watched her with blood and body, and knew she saw. Knew she felt.

“Well. The junkie went rabbit, and the wits gave conflicting descriptions. The surviving vic was mostly out of it, but we had a general to go on. They called in some uniforms to canvass because one of the wits said they thought maybe he lived right there on Murray, or knew somebody who did. I was partnered up with Boyd Fergus, a good beat cop. We ended up at two-fifty-eight Murray. We weren’t getting anywhere. Nobody’d seen anything, and most of the people who lived in that neighborhood were at work anyway. So when we got to that building, Fergus said we’d split up, and since I was younger and had better legs, I should start up on three. He’d take the first floor, and we’d meet up again on two. It was just . . .”

“Fate?”

“Or luck, or what the fuck. But I headed up to the third floor.”

And she saw it. Felt it.

The old building trapped the hot like a steel box, then mixed it with the smell of the veggie hash—don’t spare the garlic—someone was stirring up for dinner on the second floor. She could hear the various choices of evening entertainments vibrating against walls and doors. Trash rock, media reports, canned laughter from some sitcom, soaring opera banged and echoed dull through the stairway. Over it she heard creaks, voices, and somebody carping about the price of soy coffee.

She could relate.

She filed it all away, automatically taking note of the size and shape of the hallway, the exits, the window at the far end of the landing, the cracks in the ancient plaster.

It was important to pay attention, take in the details, know where you were. She appreciated Fergus for trusting her to do so, trusting her to handle the knock on doors on her own, even if it was just another routine.

Routines made up the whole, formed the structure for everything else. Boredom was a factor, sure, in the routine of knocking, identifying, questioning, moving on, and doing it all again and again. But whenever boredom tried to sneak in, she reminded herself she was a cop, she was doing the job.

For the first time in her life, she was someone.

Officer Eve Dallas, NYPSD.

She stood for something now. For someone. She climbed the stairs in the stuffy, noisy building for Trevor and Paula Garson.

Two hours before Trevor had been alive, Paula healthy. Now he was dead and she was struggling not to be.

And one of those knocks might, just might, result in information on the asshole who’d taken a life, broken all the lives connected to it.

So she knocked, identified herself, questioned, moved on.

At the second apartment, the woman who answered wore pajamas and exhausted eyes.

“Summer cold,” she told Eve. “I’ve been trying to sleep it off.”

“You’ve been home all day?”

“Yeah. What’s this about?”

“Two people were mugged in this vicinity approximately two hours ago. Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“You know, maybe. Head cold’s got me, so I can’t taste anything, brain’s fuzzy, and my ears are plugged up. But I thought I heard somebody screaming. Figured I imagined it, or it was from one of the neighbor’s screens, but I looked out the window. I did see somebody running, but I didn’t think anything of it, just went back to bed. God, was somebody hurt? This is a good neighborhood.”

“Yes, ma’am, someone was hurt. Could you describe the individual you saw running?”

“Maybe. I didn’t really get a good look. That window.” She gestured. “I’d come out to get a drink—lots of fluids—and thought maybe I’d try the couch awhile. I heard something, and walked over to look.”

“Do you mind if I come in?”

“No, sure. Better keep your distance. I’m probably contagious. Honestly, Officer, I was pretty out of it. All the meds, but I did see somebody running. That way.”

At the window, she pointed west. “It was a man. Long hair, um, brown, I think. He was running away, but he did look over his shoulder. I think. He had a scruffy little beard.”

“Height, weight, skin color?”

“Oh. White, I think. Not black. I guess he looked sort of skinny. Shorts! He was wearing shorts. Knobby knees. And he was carrying a couple of bags, shopping bags. I remember because I thought, ‘Wow, he’s in a hurry to get home with his loot.’ Jeez, it was someone else’s loot.”

“Was it someone you’ve seen before?”

“I don’t really think so. I’m usually at work during the day. I only moved in a couple months ago, and don’t really know anybody yet.”