Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano - All Fall Down

Kelly’s stomach churned. She didn’t like fights. She didn’t do them very well, or she didn’t think she did. And she was damn glad she’d already nursed Deborah, because if she hadn’t the baby would be chowing down on sour milk right this minute.

Deborah was just going back to sleep when Colin walked in. On the off chance that she might be, he closed the door quietly. When he walked into the front room, he stopped short. “Good God in the foothills!” he said. “I’ve seen guys we tased who didn’t look so ready to bite holes in things. What did I do? Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

“ You didn’t do anything,” Kelly said, and not another word.

“Uh-oh.” Colin didn’t need any fancy DNA analysis to work out what must have happened. “You and Vanessa fired away, huh?”

“Yeah, we did.” Kelly sighed. She wasn’t proud of it, not even slightly.

“What went on? Do I want to know?”

She told him. It didn’t take long. She finished, “You go upstairs, you’ll hear a different version, though, I bet.”

“Uh-huh. Hearing a bunch of different stories comes with being a cop. So does deciding which one you believe, or whether you believe any of them,” Colin said, the corners of his mouth turning down. “I already have a notion about that, but I am gonna go upstairs.” And he did, more slowly than Vanessa had. He knocked on her door. She said something. Kelly couldn’t make out what, but Colin answered, “It’s me,” so she must have asked who was there. The door opened, then closed again.

Rocking Deborah, Kelly could hear Colin’s voice and Vanessa’s, but, once more, she couldn’t follow what they were saying. By their tones, she counted herself lucky there. Then Vanessa was, in the classic Nixonian phrase, perfectly clear: “Get out of here! Everybody hates me!”

If she’d been thirteen, that kind of thing would have come with the territory. Kelly remembered screeching the same words in the same tone. But since Vanessa was more than twice thirteen. .

The door to her room opened and closed again. Colin came down the stairs. His face held no expression at all. Kelly got to her own feet as fast as she could without bothering Deborah. The baby muttered, but her eyes stayed shut. “I’m sorry,” Kelly said.

“Not your fault.” Colin went into the kitchen. Kelly followed him. He got the Laphroaig bottle down from the top shelf of the pantry and poured himself three fingers’ worth.

“I’m gonna put her in the crib. Fix me one, too, would you? Not quite that much,” Kelly said.

He gave her a surprised look. “You don’t drink this stuff.”

“Tonight I do.”

Deborah went into the crib with another mutter, but no more. Kelly hurried back to the kitchen. Colin handed her the dose of scotch. That was how she thought of it, all right. They clinked glasses. She drank. She still didn’t see how he could enjoy the taste, but she wasn’t drinking it for the taste. She was drinking it for the booze.

“How was the rest of your day?” she asked. “Better than this, I hope.”

“Not so you’d notice,” Colin answered. “Darren Pitcavage. . deals everything this side of real estate and old Buicks. Setting up a buy is gonna be a piece of cake, looks like. Not just a felony bust-a big-time felony bust.”

“I’m sorry.” Kelly felt the inadequacy of words.

“Yeah, me, too.” Colin’s eyes slid toward the stairway. “But I’m not sorry Vanessa doesn’t know thing one about this. Way she is right now, if she did she’d probably get hold of Darren and let him know we were looking at him.”

“She wouldn’t do that!” Kelly exclaimed.

“Oh, I think she might,” Colin said.

“But that’s illegal, isn’t it?”

“Sure, if you get caught. Lots of things are illegal if you get caught.”

“Mm,” Kelly said. “Uh, does Marshall know not to talk with her about this?”

“Well, I haven’t told him not to,” Colin answered. “But I don’t think he wants to talk about it with anybody. He wants to make like it never happened and he never had anything to do with it. And he doesn’t talk to Vanessa any more than he has to, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I did,” Kelly said. “I wondered if you had. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”

“She will get a place of her own pretty soon,” Colin replied, which might or might not have been a non sequitur. “We’ll all be happier once she does, too. She’s okay in small doses-and she’ll decide we’re okay in small doses, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Kelly said once more.

He shrugged. “Nothing to be done about it. Yeah, she’s prickly. But she’s honest as the day is long. I don’t have to worry that Mike’s getting ready to come after her the way I’m going after Darren.”

“That’s so,” Kelly said, which was as much praise as she felt like giving Vanessa just then. She changed the subject, or at any rate deflected it a little: “What will Mike do after you grab his son?”

“I’m not looking forward to that.” By the way Colin set his jaw, he really wasn’t looking forward to it. He went on, “When Darren got in trouble before, Mike always dickered it down to a misdemeanor. Five gets you ten he tries it again. But I don’t care how hard he tries. Not a chance in church the DA will play along, not this time.”

“Can he stay chief if his son gets arrested for something like this?” Kelly asked. Under that question lay another one, one she left unspoken. If he does have to step down, will they offer you the job? Will you want it if they do?

“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any rule that would make him quit, but it wouldn’t be easy for him to go on like nothing was wrong.” Colin also heard the underlying question, which surprised Kelly very little. He went on, “If he does resign, I wouldn’t take the slot on a bet. No way, not after I went and knocked him off his perch. Besides, I don’t want it any more.”

He’d told Kelly the same thing before, and more than once. But when he’d told her before, he’d had about as much chance of being elected Pope as of being named Chief of the San Atanasio PD. If Mike Pitcavage did have to resign now, in offspring-induced disgrace, the city council and the DA and the other people who ran San Atanasio might well want to put him in charge of the department for a while so he could straighten it out and get it back on its feet.

And she could see how, with his strong sense of duty and responsibility, he’d be tempted to accept the job, at least as a caretaker. But his reasons for steering clear looked good to her. There was also one he hadn’t mentioned: “If they did name you chief, you’d start telling them to piss up a rope in about three days. Or if you didn’t, you’d want to so bad you’d explode like the supervolcano.”

“I wouldn’t tell ’em to do that in three days.” Colin affected righteous indignation-brief righteous indignation. “I’d hold out for a week, easy. A week and a half, if everything went good.”

Laughing and liking him very much in that moment, she gave him a hug. “Think so, do you?”

“Darn right I do.” He laughed, too-again, though, not for long. “Mike, he can tell those people what they want to hear. What they need to hear, the way they need to hear it. That’s an art. Honest to God, it is. I’ve watched him do it, and I’ve watched him get what he needs ’cause he can do it. When I realized he could and I can’t-and you’re dead right; I can’t, not for beans-that was when I figured out I was barking up the wrong tree when I put in for chief to begin with.”

“You’re fine the way you are. Better than fine,” Kelly said. “I’d rather have you than somebody who pats me on the back so he can feel where the best place to stick the knife is.”