John Sandford - Rules of Prey

"God, I'm a wreck, my makeup. I can't do this press conference… God… can I use your phone?" She poked at her face with a tissue. "I want to call the station, tell them to let Kathy Lettice take it. God, I'm such a mess…"

"Jesus, stop crying, use the phone," Lucas said desperately.

Still sniffling, she picked up the phone and dialed. When it was answered, her voice suddenly cleared. "Don? Jen. The guy's name is Smithe and he works for welfare-"

"Goddammit, Jennifer!" Lucas shouted. He grabbed the phone, twisted it out of her hand, and slammed it on the hook.

"I cry good, don't I?" she asked with a grin, and she was out the door.

"Davenport, Davenport," Daniel moaned. He gripped handfuls of hair on the side of his head as he watched Jennifer finish the broadcast.

"… called by some the smartest man in the department, told me personally that he did not believe that Smithe is guilty of the spectacular murders and that he fears the premature arrest could destroy Smithe's burgeoning career with the welfare department…"

"Burgeoning career? TV people shouldn't be allowed to use big words," Lucas muttered.

"So now what?" Daniel asked angrily. "How in the hell could you do this?"

"I didn't know I was," Lucas said mildly. "I thought we were having a personal conversation."

"I told you that your dick was going to get you in trouble with that woman," Daniel said. "What the hell am I going to tell Lester? He's been out there in front of the cameras making his case and you're talking to this puss behind his back. You cut his legs out from under him. He'll be after your head."

"Tell him you're suspending me. What's bad? Two weeks? Then I'll appeal to the civil-service board. Even if the board okays the suspension, it'll be months from now. We should be able to put it off until this thing is settled, one way or another."

"Okay. That might do it." Daniel nodded and then laughed unpleasantly, shaking his head. "Christ, I'm glad that wasn't me getting grilled. You better get out of here before Lester arrives or we'll be busting him for assault."

At two o'clock in the morning the telephone rang. Lucas looked up from the drawing table where he was working on Everwhen, reached over, and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Still mad?" Jennifer asked.

" You bitch. Daniel's suspending me. I'm giving interviews to everybody except you guys, you can go suck-"

"Nasty, nasty-"

He slammed the receiver back on the hook. A moment later the phone rang again. He watched it like a cobra, then picked it up, unable to resist.

"I'm coming over," she said, and hung up. Lucas reached for it, to call her, to tell her not to come, but stopped with his hand on the receiver.

Jennifer wore a black leather jacket, jeans, black boots, and driving gloves. Her Japanese two-seater squatted in the driveway like red-metal muscle. Lucas opened the inner door and nodded at her through the glass of the storm door.

"Can I come in?" she asked. She was wearing gold-wire-rimmed glasses instead of her contacts. Her eyes looked large and liquid behind the lenses.

"Sure," he said awkwardly, fumbling with the latch. "You look like a heavy-metal queen."

"Thanks loads."

"That was a compliment."

She glanced at him, looking for sarcasm, found none, peeled off the jacket, and drifted toward the couch in the living room.

"You want a coffee?" Lucas asked as he closed the door.

"No, thanks."

"Beer?"

"No, I'm fine. Go ahead, if you want."

"Maybe a beer." When he got back, Jennifer was leaning back on a love seat, her knee up on the adjacent seat. Lucas sat on the couch opposite her, looking at her over a marble-topped coffee table.

"So what?" he said, gesturing with the beer bottle.

"I'm very tired," she said simply.

"Of the story? The maddog? Me?"

"Life, I think," Jennifer said sadly. "The baby was maybe an attempt to get back."

"Jesus."

"That little scene with you today… God, I don't know. I try to put a good face on it, you know? Gotta be quick, gotta be tough, gotta smile when the heavy stuff comes down. Can't let anybody push you. Sometimes I feel like… you remember that little Chevrolet I had, that little Nova, that I wrecked, before I bought the Z?"

"Yeah?"

"That's how my chest feels sometimes. All caved in. Like everything is still hard, but all bent up. Crunched, crumbled."

"Cops get like that."

"Not really. I don't think so."

"Look, you show me a guy on the street for ten or fifteen years-"

She held up a hand, stopped him. "I'm not saying it's not tough and you don't get burned out. Awful stuff happens to cops. But there are slow times. You can take some time. I never have time. If things get slow, for Christ's sake, I've got to invent stuff. You show me a slow day, where a cop might cruise through it, and I'll show you a day when Jennifer Carey is out interviewing some little girl who got her face burned off two months ago or two years ago because we had to have something by six P.M., or else. And we don't have time to think about it. We just do it. If we're wrong, we pay later. Do now, pay later. What's worse, there aren't any rules. You don't find out until later if you're right or wrong. Sometimes you never find out. And what's right one day is wrong the next."

She stopped talking and Lucas took a swig of beer and watched her. "You know what you need?" he said finally.

"What? A good fuck?" she asked sarcastically.

"I wasn't going to say that."

"Then what?"

"What you need is to leave the job for a while, get married, move in here."

"You think being a housewife is going to fix things?" She looked almost amused.

"I didn't say housewife. You said housewife. I was going to suggest that you move in here and not do a fuckin' thing. Take a class. Think things over. Take a trip to Paris before the kid gets here. Something. That argument this afternoon, those fake tears, my God, that's so tough it's not human."

"The tears weren't fake," she said. "The alibi was, afterward. I was thinking, I couldn't break down and cry on the job. Then I got home, and I thought, why not? I mean, I'm not stupid. You gave me that little lecture about Smithe, you think I don't know I might have hurt him? I admit it. I might have hurt him. But I'm not sure. I'm-"

"But look at what you're putting yourself through the wringer for. You got the name out to Kennedy, and for what? A ten-minute lead on the other reporters? Christ…"

"I know, I know all that. That's why I'm over here. I'm screwed up. I don't know that I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that I'm right. I'm living in murk and I can't stop."

Lucas shook his head. "I don't know what to do."

"Well." She took her leg off the love seat. "Could you come over and sit next to me for a minute?"

"Um…" Lucas stood up, walked around the table, and sat down next to her.

"Put your arm up around my shoulder."

He put his arm around her shoulder and she snuggled her face into his chest.

"You ready for this?" she asked in an oddly high-pitched, squeaky voice.

He tried to pull back and look down at her, but she clung to him. "Ready for what?"

She pressed her face against him even more firmly, and after a few seconds, began to weep.

No sex, she said later. Just sleep. He was almost asleep when she said quietly, "I'm glad you're the daddy."

Louis Vullion did not laugh.

Home late the night of the announcement, he neglected to look at his videotapes and learned of the arrest the next morning in the Star-Tribune.

"This is not right," he said, transfixed in the middle of his living room. He was wearing pajamas and leather slippers. A shock of hair stood straight up from his head, still mussed from the night.