Stephen White - Blinded

We covered a good chunk of dormant Notre Dame turf before Carmen answered. “Yes, for now we can assume that. We almost have to.”

“That means that Holly’s now in danger. Pure and simple.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Maybe?”

“Sam, nobody was looking for Sterling when he killed these other women. He had the cover of anonymity. Now? He has to assume that we’re after him.”

“Is this devil’s advocate time?”

“The risk factor has changed. He has to think that some cop-somebody like you and me-doesn’t believe he drowned. If I’m him, I’m lying low.”

“Why? The Georgia cops think he’s dead. My guess is that your superiors have already suggested you go home, too. Or even ordered you back to work.” Her eyes confirmed my supposition. “I bet you’re using vacation days right now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

She could have lied to me. Would’ve been easy. I said, “Sterling might think he’s home free, Carmen. That this is like a free play in football, you know? After an offsides call?”

“We still don’t know his motive, Sam. And we don’t know where Brian Miles fits.”

She was right about that. We certainly didn’t know where Brian Miles fit. But the possibilities concerned me. I said, “Half the collars I get I never understand what the idiots were thinking, Carmen. Criminals are goofy.”

“Goofy? Is that a Colorado word?”

“Nope. Minnesota.” Intentionally, I said Minnesota the natural northern way, accentuating the “so” syllable so that it became “soooo.”

“That’s what that accent is? Minnesota? That’s where you’re from?”

“The Iron Range. That’s up north.”

“Interesting,” she said.

“Not really.”

I wasn’t sure she was going to let it rest there.

She did. I was impressed.

Ten more steps. I asked, “Do you think they call this the Quad?”

“Don’t know,” she said.

On the way back over to Holly Malone’s neighborhood, Carmen said, “Since I left San Jose, this is the most time I’ve spent with another cop without being asked why I left town without my pension.”

“Some things are personal.” I was thinking about Sherry and me, but I was also thinking about Alan and that bug in his office, and about Sterling and Holly and their time down near the pedals of the pipe organ. Secrets? They don’t mean shit. “You want to tell me what happened before you changed jobs, that’s cool. You don’t, I understand completely. I’m sure you had your reasons.”

Traffic was light on the streets of South Bend. Everybody was either watching football or cooking a turkey or taking a nap or playing with nieces or nephews or grandkids that they hadn’t seen in way too long. In a perfect world I wouldn’t be spending my holiday driving through the streets of some strange midwestern town with a California cop who liked disco.

In a perfect world Simon and I would be cuddled up in front of the TV making fun of the Detroit Lions.

But in the imperfect world where I spent most of my time, being with Carmen wasn’t the worst of alternatives.

Carmen seemed to read my thoughts, sort of. “This your first holiday by yourself?”

“My wife took our kid to see her parents.”

“Yeah, right, that’s the reason you’re alone. And I left San Jose because I like the beach.”

It was a good comeback. The traffic light changed to red over the intersection in front of me. I thought of running it-mine was the only car in sight-but I braked instead. I tried to think of something smart to say back to Carmen, but nothing came to mind.

“It’s mine,” Carmen confessed after we’d been sitting at the light for a while. “My first holiday without my daughter. And it’s not going to be the last, either.”

I admitted something to her that I hadn’t even admitted to myself. “Probably won’t be my last, either.”

She touched my knee. A quick little fingertip thing. There, and then gone.

“It’s easier to be working,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed.

I pulled into the parking lot of a gas station so we could both use the john. As we walked inside, I was thinking that Carmen and I had covered a lot of important emotional ground in that one block of West Angela Boulevard Road in South Bend, Indiana, and we’d done it without using too many words.

If damn Alan had been in the backseat, he would have made us jaw on and on until we reached the Canadian border and probably wanted to kill each other.

Until we definitely wanted to kill him.

I wondered how he was doing with his problems. The office thing. How Lauren was feeling. Whether that thing he’d made for his big dog was still keeping her tongue off her paw.

I’d call him later on, after I called Simon, probably just about the time they were sitting down to their turkey dinner.

Lauren was trying. She was really, really trying. As I cleaned up the kitchen counters and readied Grace for her afternoon nap, I knew that behind my wife’s beautiful closed lips her white teeth were busy biting down on the tip of her soft tongue over my various venial sins of omission or commission in the kitchen or the nursery.

I could tell that she was grateful for the way I was picking up the domestic load. And I was grateful for her diligent effort at smoothing out the speed bumps that figurative boatloads of Solumedrol had injected into her mood.

While Grace slept, Lauren and I snuck in a quickie. The urge surprised both of us, I think.

An embrace became a kiss became hands beneath shirts became a jog to the bedroom.

It was amazing to me how tentative two married people could be with each other while they were rushing headlong into compressing a familiar, intimate act into an unfamiliar window of time after an extended period of tension. While we were stripping each other naked we were simultaneously sprinting across a field of eggshells. Thankfully, we reached the finish line before the time limit, which, of course, was Grace’s awakening.

In the naked moments after-naked both literally and figuratively-Lauren said, “You know Dennis, right? He’s one of our paralegals.”

“Sure.” Dennis Lopes was happily gay, buff enough to be selected Mr. January on a firefighters’ calendar and, as far as I could tell, solely responsible for the fiscal well-being of Ralph Lauren’s clothing empire. In a field that’s replete with professionals who have more agendas than a cut diamond has facets, Dennis was a hell of a nice guy who said what was on his mind.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t fathom what he was doing making an appearance in our bed at that particular moment.

While I considered the destination of Lauren’s segue, I couldn’t help but notice that her diet of IV steroids was beginning to turn her usually svelte frame more Rubenesque.

“He was walking between the Justice Center and the Court House earlier in the week, and he went down Walnut.”

Dennis was a fitness nut. That he walked, rather than drove, between the two county buildings was no surprise. “He went right past my office,” I said.

“Yes.” She paused. “He was on the opposite sidewalk, and he saw Jim Zebid park his car and walk into your building. He mentioned it to me yesterday.”

Instinctively, I pulled the sheet up to my waist. But I didn’t reply.

She went on, her tone full of caution. “I hope you’re not seeing him for therapy, babe.”

“You do? Why?”

From the way she blinked-she held her eyes closed for a split second too long-I could tell that she had been hoping that Jim had been in the building to see Diane, or even to visit the funny Pakistani man who ran his software empire out of our tiny upstairs, and that she no longer had the luxury of that illusion.