“Tell me how it happened.”
The guy blew out a raspy breath. I smelled sour booze and stale cigarettes. “Well, I—”
“All I want is the truth.”
The guy bobbed his head. “Okay, well, I had a fight with my old lady about our kids. She got riled up, and when she’s like that, you can’t argue with her.”
To keep him talking, I made my face sympathetic.
“I decided I’d leave and let the bitch cool down. I was at the bar for a couple of hours. No problems. But then the bartender pissed me off, told me I couldn’t have another drink.” The guy’s voice rose, still angry at the bartender’s audacity. “I wasn’t done drinking, you know?”
“I understand,” I assured him. “You needed another one. The bartender really didn’t have a reason to—”
“That’s what I told that asswipe!” the guy shouted, grinning at me as if grateful that I understood. “I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t need a damn cab.”
“What happened next?”
“I go outside. I’m thinking I’ll go home. But then I remember that the wife was pissed. Probably still is. Probably waiting to holler at me some more. I could picture her there, sitting in a chair, mad as a loon, hoping I’d come home so she could let loose.”
“So what did you do?”
“I opened the car door.”
“And?”
“I remembered the guns were in the trunk.”
“So you…”
“I popped the trunk, grabbed the guns, checked to make sure they were loaded, and then I walked back inside the bar…”
Hours later, I left the interrogation room rubbing the back of my sore neck. The chief and one of the assistant district attorneys waited. They’d been watching on a monitor. “Thanks,” the prosecutor said. A short guy in a pinstripe suit, he had a red silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. Around the cop shop he was known as Dandy. In the courtroom he put on quite a show, and juries loved him. “Great confession. When he said he checked to make sure the guns were loaded? Clear evidence of premeditation. You got everything on tape? Including reading him his rights?”
“It’s all on the video, including Miranda,” I said. I ran my hand through my hair. A few black strands had worked their way out of the tight bun at my nape. I tucked the stragglers in. “Do you need anything else?”
“Nah,” Chief Nevil Thompson said. A wiry man with shoulders habitually pulled up to his ears and a long, narrow face, he’d ruled over Dallas PD for my entire nine years with the department. I started as a dispatcher and got my criminal justice degree in night school. I admired the chief. He’d been good to me, promoting me up the chain. Sure I worked hard and gave it my all, but it meant a lot that he noticed. Usually he’d be home on a Saturday, but the media was all over the bar shooting. “Good work, Detective.”
“Thanks, Chief.” I’d been in the interview room so long my morning Egg McMuffin had worn off. Emphasizing the point, my stomach growled. “Since we’re all set, I’m going to grab a late lunch before I type this up.”
“Make it dinner,” the chief advised. When I shot him a questioning glance, he explained, “Check the time.”
I looked at my watch, the brown leather strap cracked and creased. The scratched face distorted the dial, but it looked like 7 p.m. “Guess you’re right.”
The chief shot me a sympathetic glance. “Clara, go home. We’ve got the video of the confession. Someone else can write the warrant. You can file your full report on Monday.”
“I’ve got to—”
“You’ve done enough. Get out of here. Unwind. Make yourself some kind of a life away from this place.”
I had to admit I was tired, but nothing waited for me at home. Actually, I didn’t think of my studio apartment in those terms. The space was barely furnished, my refrigerator embarrassingly empty. I’d been meaning to go grocery shopping, swear off fast food and take up cooking. Somehow that never happened. “I could put in a few more hours, finish my report and hang around. Saturday nights get busy, and—”
“We have a full shift on. They’ll do just fine. Go home,” the chief repeated. “That’s an order.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll leave. But first I’m going to type up my report.”
The chief’s eyebrows bunched together. “I give up. File your report.”
“Thanks, Chief, I—”
“But then get the hell out of here and go somewhere. Home. A restaurant. A bar. A movie. Visit friends, if you have any,” he growled.
“Chief, I—”
“Clara, tomorrow’s your day off. Take it!”
My cubicle had a view of Dallas’s glass-and-granite skyline, with the Chase Tower in the distance. As I finished my report on the bar killings, the city lights came on. I stood at the window and peered down at the streets. Folks drove by on their way to a Saturday night out. On the sidewalks, couples walked arm in arm. The city looked peaceful, and I considered how most people just wanted to live their lives with a bit of happiness and a minimum of pain. I thought about the small but dangerous minority who wouldn’t let that happen, the ones who had no second thoughts about taking what belonged to someone else, even a life.
My neck was still sore, my lower back felt tight. At thirty-four that shouldn’t happen. For the most part, I was in good shape, and I was too young for aches and pains. I considered the fine wrinkles webbing my eyes. One of my fellow detectives described them as laugh lines, but then noted that he’d never actually seen me crack a smile.
“Probably stress,” I muttered. I considered the next day, Sunday, and decided I would listen to the chief and try to sleep in. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had an entire day to myself. I grabbed my suit jacket and slipped it on over my white cotton shirt. I unpinned
