Nancy Holder - Daughter of the Flames

“That’s how much my earrings weigh,” Yolanda said, mocking herself as she wagged her head. “You confiscated my earrings in drugs. Good for you.”

Cratty looked confused and pointed to the form. “That’s what I wrote down. Two hundred forty-eight Undertaker.” Undertaker was a brand name for heroin. There were all kinds of brand names, and sometimes rival dealers murdered each other for trademark infringement.

“No, you said two hundred fifty-three,” Izzy replied. She was confused. “Didn’t you just tell me it was two fifty-three?”

“What?” Cratty paled. He looked from her to the scale, then craned his neck to read his paperwork upside down. She glanced down at his hands, clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white.

“You said two-five-three. When you walked up,” Izzy insisted. She thought back, replaying the last couple of minutes, and realized that he hadn’t.

“No.” He ducked forward and reached out his hand as if he were trying to yank the paperwork back from Yolanda. “I wrote—”

“Two hundred forty-eight, Izzy,” Yolanda read off, pointing at the appropriate spot on the form. She held it up for Izzy to inspect. “See?”

She recognized Cratty’s writing: 248 gm.

“I’m sorry. You’re right.” She rubbed her eyes and shook her head as if to get rid of the cobwebs. “I don’t know what’s up with me.”

“I never said two hundred fifty-three,” Cratty insisted.

“I know. It’s okay, John,” Izzy replied. She understood his unease—to an extent. Drugs were a delicate subject in Property rooms. Cops were human, just like everyone else, and drugs posed a serious temptation even for saints. Skimming off a few ounces of heroin here, a line of cocaine there, whether for personal recreation or to sell on the side—drugs brought cops down.

“Hey. No big deal,” he said generously.

But there were droplets of moisture on his forehead and a muscle in his cheek jumped. She wondered if he’d been written up for something. Maybe he’d been told to get it together. His love life seemed to be going okay, by the looks of Yolanda’s flushed pink cheeks. But cops as a rule had a lot to contend with—usually alimony somewhere, child support…

“All right,” Izzy said, lifting it off the scale. The jittery feeling was threatening to return. What the heck was up with her? She had anxious cops for breakfast.

Yolanda and Cratty continued to chat while the room whirled faster and faster. She felt as if she were standing in the middle of a whirlpool.

And then she heard a voice in her head.

He’s on his way. You had better be ready.

Or he will kill you.

I zzy jerked her head up.

“What?” she said out loud.

Not this one, said the voice.

Then it all faded like a strange, bad dream and she was left to wonder if it had happened at all.

The Prop elevator opened, to discharge the one guy in the precinct who didn’t think of Isabella DeMarco as a semi-guy. Detective Pat Kittrell entered the reception area and ambled up to the window beside Cratty, loose and easy and minus the balled-up tension tearing at Izzy this morning.

Or maybe he was just better at hiding it. Their previous captain, Hal Schricker, had said that anyone who spent more than six years in law enforcement was certifiable, himself included. Pat had been at it a lot longer than that.

He was six-two; white-blond, including his eyebrows; sunny green eyes; no visible scars in the field of tanned skin, but she knew his history. He had a wound: his pregnant wife had been murdered by a drunk driver years ago. Maybe the tragedy had healed over into a scar by now, but she didn’t know that yet. Texas born and raised, he had been with the Dallas police at the time of the murder.

Afterward, he’d bounced around; there was a stint in Arizona, one in Albuquerque and then New York. He’d put in enough time with the NYPD to become a detective, and he had transferred into the Two-Seven just before Thanksgiving.

But there was nothing New York about Pat Kittrell. He was all Southern gentleman, with plenty of time for the niceties. Courtly, old-fashioned, and in some ways as traditional as Big Vince. He talked slowly, he smiled broadly…and she was beginning to suspect that he really liked her.

They had been out a few times—coffee, a quick meal after work, cut short by a call back to the precinct for him—what to outsiders would appear to be ridiculous and short-circuited attempts to date. There were reasons so many cops were divorced and drank too much.

They were trying to go to a movie, but so far their schedules hadn’t cooperated.

And I’m going to invite him over for dinner, she thought, her stomach doing a flip. Big Vince wants to sit down with him and make sure he’s good enough for me, even if he is a non-Italian.

“Mornin’, Iz,” Pat said as he came up behind Cratty at the window.

She put up a hand in greeting, but shifted her attention back to Cratty as Yolanda smacked his hand. He was attempting to fish out one of the pens in Izzy’s Walk for the Cure coffee cup beside their terminal.

“I want to spell ‘contraband’ right,” he whined.

“Too late. Unless you want to do the whole page over, like Yolanda said,” Izzy told him.

“You go, Iz,” Yolanda said in support, pointing a red nail at Cratty. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll try to flirt you into it.”

Cratty whined some more. “Wrong. That would be sexual harassment.”

“Not coming from you,” Yolanda teased him. “Because it has to be sexual. ”

“God, she’s mean,” Cratty said, sighing as he turned hopefully back to Izzy. “C’mon. You’d let Kittrell here change it.”

Izzy felt her cheeks go hot. She hadn’t realized anyone had noticed their mutual interest.

“Wrong,” Izzy said sternly. “The rules are the rules.”

“Woof,” Yolanda said approvingly. “Venga, mami.”

“Okay, okay,” Cratty muttered. “Let it stand.”

“No one is going to care,” Izzy reminded him, glad they could proceed. “The bosses are after collars, not spelling errors.” Cratty was a very ambitious cop. Izzy wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him make captain—unless whatever was bugging him was big enough to tarnish his sterling reputation.

With rapid-fire efficiency, she finished his paperwork and added one of her bar codes. She handed him back some dupes, his receipts for the drugs, which she would keep in one of her lockers until there was enough accumulated in the department sufficient for a pickup. Then it would go to central holding, supposedly for destruction, but no one really believed that. The Justice Department used a lot of contraband to pay for the return of CIA field personnel and other clandestine activities.

“Thank you, ladies,” Cratty said, recovering his charm. “Your turn, Detective,” he said to Pat.

He moved off and Pat took his place. Pat had a five o’clock shadow. His beard was light brown. There were deep dimples in his cheeks when he smiled, and he was smiling now. He was wearing a black suit and he looked sharply masculine, more like a businessman who had just tiptoed out of a date’s bedroom than someone who put away bad guys for a living.

He said to her, “I pulled an all-nighter. Had an Aided I picked up in Two-Seven David. He got messed up by some At-Risks trying to loot a Bombs R Us.”

An “Aided” meant he’d had to accompany someone, victim or perp, to the hospital—the Metropolitan, in this and almost all cases. That meant reams of paperwork and, usually, hours and hours of overtime. An “At-Risk” was a juvenile offender. And “Bombs R US” was any electronics store where a wise perp could buy all the components he needed to build a bomb, which had been located in the sector referred to as 27D.