|
Breathe, Vecchio. Just--just breathe, Vecchio. It
was a bad sign that he had to keep reminding himself to do that,
but it was starting to get to him--all those questions and all
those suspicious looks. Being on desk wasn't helping, though it
was better than being on suspension. How had Welsh kept him off
suspension? At least this way Ray could catch up on his paperwork.
By the time this was over, he'd be the most caught-up cop in the
precinct.
Willson. Brendan Willson--that was the guy he'd shot.
Brendan Willson, age 32, small-time gun dealer, small-time thief,
small-time a lot of things. Like his cousin, Alessandra, who'd
never showed for the meeting. Geez, Aless, did you set me
up? Which didn't really make sense, since after all Ray wasn't
dead; Brendan was, because Ray had killed him. Would Aless set up
her own cousin? Something about that didn't click with Ray, but
in that case it meant she'd set up Ray instead, which didn't really
make sense, since Ray wasn't dead--
IA kept popping up, always with real cheery news: no
powder burns on Willson's hands; no gun in the alley; no shell
casing; and where did Detective Vecchio think that spent bullet
from Willson's gun was? Detective Vecchio couldn't imagine, which
wasn't the right answer because it wasn't a riddle because IA
couldn't find a spent bullet anywhere. Anywhere at all, Detective
Vecchio; wasn't that strange?
Thank god the attorney from the Police Protective League
stepped in then, because some stuff wanted to come out of Detective
Vecchio's mouth that wouldn't have helped him a bit with IA.
It was weird in the squad room, how many people kept coming
by to shoot the breeze. Cops gathering around their own,
protecting their own. Made him feel good. Of course, some were
avoiding him, keeping away from the taint of a maybe-bad cop.
Weird to see who was who. Dewey was a shoot-the-breezer, though
that breeze had a way of getting real chilly real fast; Laruski,
who usually said hello every morning, was an avoider. Daniella
Brown brought him a couple donuts.
Even Frannie showed up, supposedly to get the story
straight from the source, because Ma had found out something
happened when IA had tried to get him at the house that morning,
since that was still the home address the precinct had on him--
Ray hustled her out of the squad room and out someplace privater
for coffee.
"What did she tell them?" he asked.
"You know Ma when she gets her back up:
clams talk more than she does. She didn't tell them
anything."
He grinned. Ma, mad at Ray but still protecting him--or
protecting her family from public disgrace. Either way, it helped.
"How is she?"
"She's in her pissed-off-at-the-world stage."
Ray grunted. That could last an hour or that could last
a decade. He was betting on the latter.
"Though now she's mostly pissed off at me," Frannie went
on. "'Cause now I know about you and Fraser, and she can't martyr
herself by keeping it from everybody."
Ray snorted a laugh. Vintage Ma! "So, how you getting
along?" he asked. "You got enough money?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "You know, you don't have to keep
leaving us money like that."
"Like what?"
"You know--you don't have to leave money in the mail slot.
We're fine."
Money in the-- "What money in the mail slot?"
Frannie blinked at him. "The money. The money you left
in the envelope."
"I didn't--Frannie, I got a key. If I was gonna leave
money, I sure wouldn't have to put it through the mail--"
The thought seemed to strike them both at the same moment:
"Fraser."
Ray felt a warm glow inside him. That big lug. He
grinned. He'd have to say "thank you" to Fraser in an extra-nice
way.
"Hey, Frannie--Tony get a job?" he asked as she was getting
ready to leave.
Her mouth dropped open. "Tony?" Her tone answered
him.
Hmm. Those cash deposits nagged at him. Check into it--
Not that he had time that day. He filed it away for later.
Right now, he had enough to do, just going through all
they'd pulled from Jeremy Seggebruch's apartment. It turned out
that the reason the computer wasn't working right was because
somebody had reformatted it and wiped out all the stuff that was
on the hard drive. Ergo, what was on the hard drive must have been
important to somebody--important enough, maybe, to get Seggebruch
killed. And maybe Seggebruch had copied it onto a disk somewhere
in all those boxes of--
"You gotta be kidding me," Elaine Besbriss said when she
heard what Ray had in mind. "There's gotta be a million disks in
there."
"Not quite."
So, really, it wasn't all that bad being kept to his desk
right now, since probably he would've been just sitting here anyway
with Elaine, looking at file after file on disk after disk.
Really. It wasn't all that bad.
As long as he kept himself from thinking about IA and what
they were probably cooking up to go after him with right that very
minute.
. . .
The minute Fraser took the forms into Inspector Thatcher's
office to be signed, he knew he should have sent Turnbull instead.
Something about the way her face changed when she caught sight of
him: shifted from distance to cool wariness mixed with
anticipation. The look, he thought uncomfortably, of a
woman still--interested.
He had tried to make his retreat from their deepening
relationship as gently as possible, but to his panic she had--well,
she hadn't retreated to quite the same extent. At first she had
pursued, evidently puzzled when he persisted in politely
misunderstanding her actions; then she'd become--well, petulant
was perhaps too strong, but it was accurate. Now she took refuge
behind the armor of her title, sometimes emerging for some quick
sniping; she often seemed angry.
Fraser felt vaguely guilty now as he looked down at the
part in her dark hair while she signed the forms. He was happy,
and he felt she was not; and he couldn't explain it to her. She
was beautiful and intelligent--and Canadian--but he was no longer
hers; and he couldn't explain it to her. She deserved better.
He presented a polite blankness to her polite smile as she
handed back the forms and carefully didn't notice her appreciative
glance at him. It was a relief to be out of her office.
Their courtship had been pleasant, once it had been tacitly
acknowledged; but there'd always been something there that had made
him uncomfortable, that had kept him distant from her. She'd kept
dodging behind her position as his superior, fending him off with
protocol, shutting him out in painful ways. Now he had Ray; and
he couldn't explain it to her. Frankly, it was a relief to have
Ray, whose love was less complicated. Thatcher had always seemed,
like Churchill's Russia, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma.
Fraser's heart sank when he saw who was waiting outside his
own office. Constable Renfield Turnbull, a riddle tangled up in
itself and probably tripping over its own bootlaces. And the
riddle was this: however had he become a member of the RCMP?
Whoever had thought it prudent to actually give him a firearm?
How was it Turnbull hadn't yet accidentally shot himself?
Oh, there was that expression again: the one that made him
look so much like a puzzled Labrador retriever puppy that Fraser
wanted to give him a dog biscuit--
"Yes, Constable."
"Are you--are you in, Constable Fraser?"
Fraser took a deep breath. "Yes, Constable."
"So, you're actually in for someone who wants to
talk to you."
"Yes, Constable."
"Because I thought that if you were to say that you were
out, I could explain that to your visitor."
"But, I would have to be--here in order to say that
I wasn't. And, since I am, well, then...."
"Ah. Understood." Turnbull turned, started out of the
suite of offices, and turned again. "Shall I--ah--shall I show up
the visitor in question?"
Count to ten. "Yes, please, Constable. By all
means."
And so Francesca Vecchio was shown into his office by
Turnbull, who seemed in danger of falling onto his face because he
was--well, walking sideways, facing her, eyes riveted to her face.
She in turn seemed equally--riveted.
"--And, so, Constable, how does Mrs. Turnbull get your
uniform to look so--pressed?" Francesca smiled at her companion,
looking through eyelashes so long Fraser suspected they were hers
only because she'd purchased them. Oh, that was such a
transparent line--
"Oh, my mother doesn't--"
Fraser's heart sank as Francesca smiled and became even
more demure than before. Oh, Turnbull. Oh, dear.
"Francesca!" Fraser's greeting was perhaps a bit effusive.
"Oh, hi, Benny." Francesca put her hand on Turnbull's arm,
gave him a melting smile. "I want to thank you so much,
Constable."
"Oh!--er--you're welcome, Miss Vecchio."
"Francesca."
"Miss Francesca. I'm sorry; American names are so--"
"No, it's Francesca Vecchio. Miss Francesca
Vecchio. But you can call me Francesca--Constable...."
"Turnbull. Constable Turnbull."
Pause, while the smile froze on Francesca's face.
"Ah--you may go, Constable," Fraser said.
Turnbull nodded and walked backward out of the office,
managing not to dodge the wall on his way to the stairs and then
managing not to-- Fraser winced at the thud.
"I'm fine! Just fine!" Turnbull sounded breathless.
Oh, dear.
"I just wanted to--" Francesca leaned through the office
door, listening hard for a minute. Fraser leaned with her. There
was a satisfactory thumping of two very large RCMP-issue boots on
their way safely down the stairs, and Francesca visibly relaxed.
"Is he going with anybody?" she asked, settling in
the chair Fraser offered her.
"Turnbull?"
"Yeah. Is he going with anybody? What is
his first name?"
"Er--Renfield."
"Excuse me?"
"It's--it's Renfield."
"Renfield?" She sat back and seemed to be savoring
the word. "Renfield. Renfield Turnbull." She smiled. "Benton;
Renfield--don't Canadians give their children first-name kinds of
first names?"
"Ah--"
"Renfield. I like it!"
"Is that why you--"
Francesca suddenly seemed to hear him. "Oh!" she said.
"No! No--I--I came to find how--how Ray's doing." She seemed
uncomfortable.
Fraser found himself blushing and wished he could stop:
the reason the Vecchio family didn't already know how Ray was doing
was--well, was him.
"Er--ah--as well as can be expected. The police department
is, of course, very concerned about the incident."
"You're investigating, right?"
"Well--" Well, he and Ray had visited the site last night,
after work, where Ray had walked him through the events of the
shooting, but Fraser wouldn't call what he was doing
investigating, exactly.
"Because if you aren't--well--well, things just seem to go
better when you do, if you know what I mean."
That was very flattering. "Well--ah--"
"Because, I mean, I know Ray would feel better, and I know
I would feel better. And I'm pretty sure Ma would feel
better, even though she'd never say so."
"Well, I can't participate in any official--"
"After all, Fraser, you owe it to him. He's your--" Under
her makeup, her face was reddening in a very attractive way. She
was almost whispering. "Well, if you really--love him--you--well,
I think you'd kind of want to--well, help."
The warmth had returned to his cheeks; he felt as
breathless as she looked. "I--you're right, Francesca. I do.
Actually, I had planned to-- I'll--I'll do what I can."
"Good!" She visibly relaxed and smiled at him. "Good!
Oh, I feel better. I feel a lot better now."
When Francesca rose to her feet, Fraser also felt a lot
better: loving Ray was wonderful; discussing loving Ray
with Ray's sister was--nightmarish.
Fraser escorted her to the stairs. "Did you say Renfield
isn't going with anybody?" she murmured.
That Turnbull charged up the stairs at that very moment was
a blessing; Fraser handed Francesca over to him with relief.
"Oh!" Francesca said to Fraser, as she and Turnbull started
down. "You don't have to keep leaving money at the house; we're
doing just fine. Is Renfield really your first name?" She
fluttered her eyelashes at her escort. "I like it! Do people call
you 'Renny' for short?"
Fraser fled before he had to hear the answer. Not until
he was back in his office did it register what she had said first.
What money? Fraser hadn't left any money.
. . .
Money. It was all coming down to money. Money in
Willson's wallet--a lot of money--and all from the robbery
Huey and Dewey were working, the strip mall job over the Columbus
Day weekend.
And also one of those ATM receipts for a cash deposit--$500.
Into a real familiar account.
The Vecchio family account.
Ray tried not to look as sick as he felt as he stared at
the receipt in its evidence bag. Those cash deposits--
"Is there something you'd like to tell us, Detective
Vecchio?" Sullivan asked.
Ray's head was shaking "no" even before his brain kicked
in. No. Nothing that would help him.
"May I see that?" The attorney from the Police Protective
League picked up the receipt. "Has this been fingerprinted?"
"Ah--" Sullivan and Bailey looked nonplussed.
"Gentlemen, anyone can pick up a receipt off the
ground. And this one--" The attorney studied it, then shook his
head in disgust. "This is one of those receipts with the PIN
number information printed right on it. Mr. Willson may have found
it and kept it, intending to use the information to steal from the
account later. After all, he allegedly did rob banks."
"Kind of coincidental that he happened upon a receipt for
an account belonging to the man who later shot him," said Bailey.
"Coincidence is just that, gentlemen: coincidence. It's
not proof."
Yeah, but it soon would be, Ray thought as he walked
back to his desk. Welsh was getting that "turn-in-your-badge"
look. Ray's gun was still confiscated. By rights, Ray should have
been suspended; he had Welsh to thank that he wasn't. But, damn,
his life was starting to go right down the tubes.
"Welsh wants to see you," Elaine said.
Ray frowned. Usually Welsh just bellowed. Oh, god, was
this it?
It wasn't. For in Welsh's office was a familiar brown
uniform encasing a very familiar figure--
"Vecchio," said Welsh. "Our cousins to the north have
become interested in our Internal Affairs procedures and have
requested that we--accomodate an observer. Do you have any
objections?"
"No, sir! No objections, sir." Could Welsh hear
the glad hammering of his heart?
"Well, then, Constable Fraser, observe away."
"Thank you, Leftenant."
"Yeah, thanks, Lieutenant!" Ah, god, things were looking
up.
"They got an ATM receipt that ties me in with Willson," Ray
said when he and Fraser got to his desk. "Cash deposit to the
household account."
"Is it one of your transactions?"
"No. And it's not the only big cash desposit there's been.
Ma takes care of the account; I haven't been seeing the bank
statements."
"Well, we need to look at them."
"We can get the records. There's more: Willson had a lot
of cash on him from a bank robbery Huey and Dewey caught this
week."
"So the implication is that Mr. Willson was involved in the
robbery and may have deposited cash from that crime into your
household account, which would implicate you in the robbery. Did
they find an automatic teller machine card?"
"No. Which means either A: he picked up the receipt off
the ground after some lunkhead in my family made a deposit and
threw it away, which seems unlikely given that in my family we're
happier withdrawing than we are depositing; or, B: he was using
a phony card and somebody else has it."
"We need to see the videotape of that particular
transaction."
"I'm betting IA has it."
"Hmm."
"And I'll bet they'll want to keep it to themselves."
"Mmhmm."
Pause.
"So, what do you think?"
"I'm--thinking, Ray."
Ray watched him think. It was a process worth watching.
"So, they've got a receipt from my account and no shell casing and
no gun and no spent bullet and no Aless to back up why I was really
there. And what do we have?"
"Well, Ray, we have your reputation as a fine police
officer."
Ray blinked at him. "So, they've got a receipt from my
account and no shell casing and no gun and no spent bullet and no
Aless to back up why I was really there. And we have...."
"We have our wits, Ray."
Ray blinked. "So, they've got a receipt from my account
and no shell casing and no gun and no spent bullet and no Aless to
back up why I was really there. And we--"
"And we have the truth, Ray: that you acted in self-defense.
We have the truth: that you had no part in that robbery.
Ray, we have the truth on our side."
And the truth, Ray thought, shall get you
life. But, looking in Fraser's clear, honest eyes, he didn't
have the heart to say it.
But he kept thinking it the rest of that day, while he and
Fraser searched the alley where he'd shot Willson, searched the
street just at the alley's mouth, searched across the street from
the alley's mouth. In the movie theater Ray could hear Martians
nuking the world again, and he wished his own problems were as easy
to solve as those people's.
Up and down Stratmore; and then up and down the alley,
retracing Willson's steps, retracing Ray's steps. As usual, Ray
felt like a nitwit tagging along behind Fraser, who was memorizing
everything on the sidewalk and going "Hmm" and "Mmm" and "Mmhmmm"
and sometimes picking something up and examining it. Did Fraser
know how irritating that was? Did he care?
Up and down the alley, Fraser duck-walking through most of
it, picking up garbage and doing his "Hmmm"ing. So help him, if
Fraser tasted any damn thing, Ray wasn't kissing him on the mouth
for a week.
"Someone's been bedding down here," said Fraser.
"There was a wino. Guy by the name of Weird Waldo." Ray
didn't want to go where this was taking them: if even the other
winos called him "Weird", Waldo would be no prize as a witness.
"Someone's been running through here."
Oh, for-- "Fraser, it's an alley."
"Yes, Ray. But most people using an alley walk down the
center; our runner went along the side, disarranging the discarded
papers and bottles. You can see from the pattern of fading on this
hamburger wrapper--stop that, Diefenbaker!--that it hasn't been
lying long in this position." Oh, Ray could? He'd take Fraser's
word for it. "And our runner got dirty: you can see here where
grime has been rubbed off the wall. The trail appears to end--here."
He patted a firedoor and jumped at the rumble as about a
million Martians blew up.
"Theater," said Ray. "Somebody leaving the theater in a
hurry."
"Well, actually, someone leaving the theater would walk
down the center of the alley."
"Drunk. Stoned. Confused. Agoraphobic. Hugging the wall
because he really likes walls."
Fraser just looked at him.
A whole afternoon like this, with Ray trailing along while
the Mountie found interesting gum wrappers and intriguing pizza
boxes, and lectured on the personality of whomever had chewed on
one of those little fancy toothpicks. Here was the Mountie in all
his glory. It was something to see all Fraser had being used to
champion Ray.
And awful damn sexy.
After supper they went back to the station and got a
printout of Aless's known aliases and addresses. It was quite a
list. And they searched the computer for Rache; as Ray had
suspected, she didn't show up anywhere. But Brendan Willson did:
petty stuff, nothing to do with banks.
"Hmmm," Fraser said.
"What?" Ray asked.
"Oh, nothing. Hmmm."
"What? What?"
"Well--it's just that there's a--well, a gap in his record
in Illinois. A recent one. As if he'd been--"
"Incarcerated?"
"No, out of town."
Hmmm.
At the back of his mind, some voice was telling him that
there was something he should be wondering about that programmer
murder, but he really couldn't think what it was; and he really
didn't have time for it right now. Think about his own problems.
He shoved it away.
The thought returned as he and Fraser went to bed; but
Frasr's mouth looked especially tempting, and Ray really wanted to
show him how glad he was that Fraser was helping him clear himself.
So they necked a little, discussion of the case gradually becoming
that silly love talk that always made Ray feel so good.
When Fraser fell asleep, the thought returned, full force,
and Ray resigned himself to at least an hour of reviewing the
details in his head. Gunshot wound to the heart; wiped computer;
no fingerprints; no gun; no shell casing--no, that was the Willson
case. Well, both cases. Ray closed his eyes, stiffened every
muscle in his body, and then relaxed them, hoping to relax himself.
Even so, he couldn't seem to get to sleep. Fraser's even
breathing beside him just emphasized that Ray was awake, watching
the details of both cases tumble through his mind, jumbling
together. Every one of Ray's muscles seemed to have something to
do that didn't involve relaxing.
The crash in the street that jerked Fraser awake made Ray
feel like he was jumping out of his skin. He scrambled out of bed.
He'd gotten into the habit of just going to bed naked,
since he usually ended up that way sometime during the night.
Didn't have to worry about the cold: the bed was so narrow, Fraser
was always right there to warm himself against.
When the noise started in the street, Ray grabbed an old
t-shirt and pulled it on before going to the window to check things
out. The shirt had shrunk some in the wash--shortened--and he
tugged irritatedly at it as he went to the window, trying to tug
it down to cover his ass.
Usual dark night on Fraser's street: Riv gleaming under
the street light, cars passing, pool hall lit up, Jesse and Jerome
napping on the bus bench. Whatever the noise was, it had stopped;
whoever had made it, they were gone.
Fraser had sat up in bed when Ray got up; now Ray turned
just in time to see Fraser start, and jerk his eyes up to Ray's
face. The sky-blue eyes were wide with determined innocence.
What the-- Ray looked at him a minute, looked down, saw
nothing. Fraser had been looking right about-- "Are you checking
out my ass?" Ray asked him.
Fraser turned a shade of red just this side of apoplexy.
"Er--" he said. His eyes strayed away from Ray, darted to the hem
of Ray's t-shirt, then slid resolutely up to Ray's face.
"Er--ah--that--the hem of that--shirt doesn't--" He cleared his throat,
flicked a glance down again; his hands folded themselves to cover
his lap. "Actually--" His eyes followed Ray, who was coming
around to his own side of the bed. "Actually, Ray, that--that
shirt, coming down just halfway over--um--it rather accentuates--
It calls attention to what I think of as one of your--your
incredibly attractive features." His expression was a mixture of
embarrassment and lust.
Ray tried not to laugh as he stretched out on his side on
the bed. As erotic sleepwear went, a ratty old t-shirt that left
half his ass bare really shouldn't rate; but, boy, he could almost
hear Fraser's heart racing, and heat was just rolling off him. Ray
tried to tug the shirt down over his ass; felt his breath catch
when he saw Fraser's gaze follow his hands. There was a volcano
of heat in that gaze.
He tugged languidly at the shirt, watching Fraser. Fraser
was sitting really still, just looking, his gaze like a physical
caress. When Ray gave up tugging and drifted his fingers over what
the shirt didn't cover, Fraser's gasp seemed to suck all the air
from the room. Ah, gee--ah, holy gee-- Maybe it would make him
feel better.
Ray reached--
Not too many minutes later the t-shirt was gone--landed on
the other side of the room someplace--and Ray was on his other
side, tight in the curve of Fraser's body. Fraser's cock filling
him, thrusting, thrusting; teeth lightly gripping the back of Ray's
neck, holding him in place; one iron-hard arm around Ray's waist,
keeping him close; the other broad, warm hand expertly pumping
Ray's cock--oh, this definitely made him feel better. His mouth
was babbling "oh" and "yes" and "Benny"; his hands were knotted in
the sheet, gripping it tight, tighter--
Oh, this felt good. Benny's hips and hand pumping
faster now; Benny letting go of his neck to gasp, "Ray
Ray Ray Ray--" in time with his ever-faster
thrusts, with that hoarseness in his voice that meant he was really
starting to lose it--damn, it was good.
It felt so good, that when all the pleasure in his body
surged into his cock for a mind-blanking release, Ray stuffed the
sheet into his mouth, so he wouldn't wake half the neighborhood.
He still felt good the next morning when he woke tangled
up with Fraser and the sheet; felt even better when he kissed the
sleepy Mountie wide awake; felt positively great as he left with
Fraser for breakfast and a day of cracking the case.
Good thing he felt so good. Halfway down the stairs he and
Fraser met two little black kids playing.
"Good morning, Adam!" Fraser said. "Good morning,
Talisha!"
"Hey, kids!" said Ray.
"Hi." Adam was kind of shy.
But not Talisha. She looked straight at Ray as he passed
her, and then said in a voice they could have heard in Indiana, "Is
that your real nose?"
Yep--good thing he felt so great, because otherwise that
kind of remark would make a guy rethink the innocence of childhood.
. . . .
Ray's innocence was the starting point. Ray had fired in
self defense, returning fire; Fraser took a sudden deep breath,
consciously erasing the memory of Ray firing at a nonexistant gun,
hitting--
Ray had fired in self defense, aiming at the flash. This
meant that there should have been gunpowder residue on Brendan
Willson's hands. But, while a trace metal test had established
that Willson had held at least one gun in the twenty-four hours
before his death, a chemical test had revealed no powder residue.
And holding a gun was not the same as firing it, especially as the
victim was an illegal arms dealer whose hotel room contained a
Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol, a Ruger P94, two Colt .380s, and an
Heckler & Koch 9mm USP semiautomatic--or, Ray had quipped, the
armaments of the average American tourist.
Ray had fired in self defense. This meant that there
should have been a spent shell. But there was none, on the ground,
in the corners of the alley, or in the garbage bin near where the
body had fallen. Even Diefenbaker's keen nose had failed to find
anything more interesting than a bag of stale doughnuts.
Ray had fired in self defense. This meant that there
should have been a bullet from Brendan Willson's gun. But there
was none, not buried in a wall, nor in a building across the
street, nor in the street itself. Nor, presumably, in any
automobiles parked there that night; Fraser made a mental note to
return to the neighborhood at night, to see what vehicles were
likely to be there.
"So we got bupkis," Ray said after several hours of
searching.
"Not quite."
They knew that there had been half a dozen cash deposits
to the Vecchio household account over the last two months, at
uneven intervals, totalling about $4000. Fraser's heart smote him
at the shock on Ray's face when he saw the printout of the bank
record.
They knew that Brendan Willson had indeed broken the
jewelry store window--or at least been nearby when it was broken--from
the glass residue on his clothes; though why was a puzzle:
"What the hell was he going for, is my question," Ray said.
For, the shop owner, a genial little man who seemed to
specialize in dusty mother's rings and used-looking watches,
explained that he removed most of the merchandise from the tiny
show window every night, as a precaution against just such an
event. And the mesh on the metal curtain he drew over the window
would have been far too small for Willson to reach through.
They knew that someone had called the 27th Precinct from
the pay telephone on the corner, which was suggestive; though the
accumulation of fingerprints on the telephone would have told them
nothing.
"Besides," Ray said, "we know who called; we've just got
no proof of why she did it. Or where she is."
Where either of them were, more precisely: Rache, last
name unknown, whose sketch was identified by the pizzeria owner who
didn't know her name but thought she was too young to dress that
way, and by a convenience store clerk who didn't know her last name
but thought he'd like to date her; and Alessandra Willson, small-time
fence, who was not at any of the fifteen addresses the
Department had for her, under any of her nine known aliases.
Now Fraser's mind flipped through the unexplored
possibilities for an accurate address: voter registration,
register of deeds, the electric company, collection agencies....
Perhaps she had a library card. How many branches were there in
the metropolitan system?
"She was setting me up." Ray's voice was flat.
"Ray, you don't know that. You've said yourself that she
seems to like you--"
"She set me up, Fraser."
"Ray, was it her voice on the telephone?"
"I've never heard her voice, Fraser."
"But you said it was Rache who called."
"Yeah, but--" Ray stared through the Buick's windshield
at the gathering dusk. "Did you ever think you'd get a case you
couldn't crack?"
"I've had several cases I couldn't solve. This is not one
of them."
"It feels like--it feels like one of those dogfood bags
where if you could just get hold of the right part of the string,
it would unravel and the bag would open; but you just can't seem
to get it. We just can't seem to get it, Fraser."
"We will, Ray."
Hidden in the dusk, on the quiet street, Fraser leaned over
and kissed Ray lightly on the cheek. Ray's smile brightened his
hazel eyes. "You getting mushy on me, Fraser?"
"I'm just trying to remind you."
"Oh, you reminded me last night. You reminded me real
good last night."
Fraser felt his cheeks grow warm. The memory of Ray
leaning out the window, the curve of his bare buttocks highlighted
by the hem of--
Ray's light kiss was a sweet warmth. "It's Saturday
night," he said. "Date night in Chicago. We should have a date,
Fraser. How about I take you out for Chinese, maybe a movie after?
After that, who knows? Maybe if I'm real nice to you I'll get
lucky."
Fraser chuckled. "Maybe we'll both get lucky."
. . .
Get there. Get there. Get there and-- Dark night
and the alley was dark and if Ray could only get there quick enough
he could get the guy before he shot and then there wouldn't be any
flash to aim at and--
Get there. Get there. But his feet weren't moving
right; they didn't seem to want to get more than an inch off the
ground, no matter how he strained his legs and when he got there
the alley was dark and then he saw the flash and fired--
And it was Ma there, crumpled in the alley--
Ray jerked awake, bathed in sweat. Dream. It was just a
dream, one of those nightmares the psychiatrists would really love--
Arms slid around him; he was gathered to a hard chest where
a strong heart beat and a voice rumbled, "It was just a nightmare.
It's over now."
"I killed Ma."
The heartbeat sped up, evened out. "It was only a
nightmare, Ray."
"It was her in the alley. I killed her."
Warm lips caressed his ear. "Shhh. It was only a
nightmare."
Yeah, it was only a nightmare. But, oh god, what a beaut.
Still, better than that one with all the snow where he couldn't
find Fraser.
He held Fraser tight. "You think dreams are trying to tell
us something?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes they're telling us what we already
know and refuse to recognize."
"I shot her, Fraser."
"Symbolic, Ray. You're tense about what's happening to
you, and you're tense about--about your relationship with your
family. Your mind just put the two together."
"Yeah." But he could still see Ma lying in the alley,
still see the flash.
Ray pulled away and sat up. The shooting, the dream--all
of it was just spinning in his head, all mixed up together.
Suddenly he was both exhausted and wide awake; and he knew he'd
never get back to sleep.
"You know, Ray--" Fraser was watching him. "--I'd like
to take a look at that alley in the dark. I'd like to know just
what it must have looked like that night."
Ray kissed him before they got out of bed and kissed him
again as they got dressed. Trust the Mountie to know Ray needed
to do something, to take some action to keep from going nuts.
Canadians--you could always count on them.
So they stood in the alley at 4 a.m., looking at the
garbage bin and the no street lights and the garbage. No Weird
Waldo, either.
"So he was standing about--here," Fraser said,
moving to the dark patch on the pavement. It was brown in the
light of Fraser's flashlight; Ray was glad when Fraser turned it
off. "And you were...."
"Over here." Ray moved into position.
"I can just see you outlined against that light-colored
building across the street. Was that street light across the way
out that night?"
"Yeah. But there were some cars on the road then, some
trucks. Willson mighta seen me outlined against them."
"Can you see me?"
"Just barely." Like that night. Just like that night.
Fraser flickered the flashlight. "There. That's the flash
of his gun. Could you--"
"Do that again." Something was wrong.
The light flickered.
"No, lower." Yes, definitely wrong.
Fraser turned on the light. "Now?"
"No. Lower. And farther left."
"Now?"
"No, left! Left!"
"Oh, your left!"
"Yeah! Left!" Still wrong. "Lower."
"Ray--"
"Yeah, right there."
"Ray, are you sure this is the correct angle?"
"Yeah. Right there. The flash was just right there."
"Ray, aim your gun."
Aim his-- "I don't have a gun, Fraser!"
|