Other Worlds Than These

Had it been Ricky Carstairs, then? About a month before the nine-year-old, she had been on her way out of the precinct house when she had passed two uniformed officers bringing him in and recognized him immediately. She had no idea how she had managed that mental feat—he had been skinny, dirty, and obviously strung out, and she hadn’t seen him since he and Jake had been in the seventh grade together but she had known him at once and it hadn’t been a good moment.

“It’s just plain wrong,” she had said when Rita asked her why she looked as if she had just found half a worm in the middle of an apple. “Your kid’s old school friends are supposed go away and live lives with no distinguishing characteristics. Become office workers in someplace like Columbus or Chicago or Duluth.”

“And that’s just plain weird,” Rita replied, her plump face wearing a slightly alarmed expression. “Or maybe not weird enough—I don’t know. You been watching a lot of TV lately? Like the Hallmark Channel or something?”

“Never mind,” she said, making a short dismissive wave with one hand. “It made more sense before I said it out loud.”

Rita had burst into hearty laughter and that had been that; they’d gone with the rest of the day, whatever that had involved. Probably a dead body.

The dismaying sight of one of Jake’s old school friends sweating in handcuffs had lodged in her mind more as a curiosity than anything else. Uncomfortable but hardly critical—not the fabled moment of clarity, not a short sharp shock or a reality check or a wake-up call from Planet Earth. Just a moment when she hoped that poor old Ricky hadn’t recognized her, too.

So had the Dread already been lodged in her gut then?

She tried but she honestly couldn’t remember one way or the other—the incident was just too far in the past and it had lasted only a minute, if that—but she thought it was very possible that it had.

It was unlikely, she realized, that she would ever pinpoint the exact moment when something had shifted or slipped or cracked—gone faulty, anyway—and let a sense of something wrong get in and take root. And for all she knew, it might not even matter. Not if she were in the first stage of one of those on-the-job crack-ups that a lot of cops fell victim to. Just what she needed—a slow-motion train-wreck. Christ, what the hell was the point of having a breakdown in slow-motion unless you could actually do something about it, actually prevent it from happening? Too bad it didn’t work that way—every cop she knew who had come out the other side of a crash described it as unstoppable. If it had to happen, why couldn’t it be fast? Crack up quick and have an equally rapid recovery, get it over with. She pictured herself going to the department shrink for help: Overclock me, Doc—I got cases to solve and they’re gaining on me.

Ha-ha, good one; the shrink might even get a chuckle out of it. Unless she had to explain what overclocking was. Would a shrink know enough about computers to get it? Hell, she wouldn’t have known herself if she hadn’t picked things up from Jake, who had blossomed into a tech head practically in his playpen.

Her mind snagged on the idea of talking to the shrink and wouldn’t let go. Why not? She had done it before. Granted, it had been mandatory, then—all cops involved in a shooting had to see the shrink—but she’d had no problem with that. And what the hell, it had done her more good than she’d expected it to. She had known at the time that she’d needed help and if she were honest with herself, she had to admit that she needed help now. Going around with the lead weight of the Dread dragging on her wasn’t even on the extreme ass-end of acceptably screwed-up that was in the range of normal for a homicide detective.

The more she thought about it, the more imperative it seemed that she talk to the department shrink, because she sure hadn’t talked to anyone else about it. Not her lieutenant, not Tommy DiCenzo, not even Rita.

Well, she wouldn’t have talked to Lieutenant Ostertag—that was a nobrainer. Throughout her career, she had always had the good sense never to believe any my-door-is-always-open bullshit from a superior officer. Ostertag hadn’t even bothered with the pretense.

Tommy DiCenzo, on the other hand, she could have talked to and counted on his complete confidence. They’d gone through the academy together and she’d listened to plenty from him, both before and after he’d dried out. Tommy might even have understood enough to tell her whether she was about to derail big time or just experiencing another side-effect of being middle-aged, overworked, and underpaid. But every time she thought about giving him a call or asking him to go for coffee, something stopped her.

Maddeningly, she couldn’t think of a single good reason why. Hell, she couldn’t even think of a crappy reason. There was no reason. She simply could not bring herself to talk to him about the Dread and that was all there was to it.

And Rita—well, there had been plenty of reasons not to talk to her. They were busy, far too busy to devote any time to anything that didn’t have a direct bearing on the cases piling up on their respective desks. Not that Rita wouldn’t have listened. But whenever she considered bringing it up, saying, You know, Rita, lately I’ve had the damnedest feeling, a sense of being in the middle of something real bad that’s about to get a whole lot worse, the image of the nine-year-old boy in the dumpster would bloom in her brain and she would clench her teeth together.

Of course, she could go to Rita now. She could trot on over to her neat little fourth-floor condo, sit out on the balcony with her amid the jungle of plants with a few beers and tell her all about it. Only she knew what Rita would probably say, because Rita had already said it. That had been the night before she had put in her retirement papers; she had taken Ruby out to dinner and broken the news to her privately.

“I always planned to put in my twenty and get out while I was still young enough to enjoy it,” she said, cheerfully sawing away at a slab of bloody steak. “You could have done that five years ago. Do it now and you’ll be in good shape all the way around. Maybe you want to get in thirty but is putting in another five years really worth it?”

“Five years—” Ruby had shrugged. “What’s five years? Blink of an eye, practically.”

“All the more reason to get out,” Rita had insisted. “Before it’s too late to get a life.”

Bristling inwardly, Ruby had looked down at her own steak. Why she had ordered that much food was beyond her. The Dread didn’t leave anywhere nearly enough room for it. “I have a life.”

“The job is not a life,” Rita said, chewing vigourously and then dragging her napkin across her lips. “The job is the job. What do you do when you’re not on the job?”

“Talk to the grandkids on email. Shop. Rent DVDs—”

“You ever go out to a movie? Or out to dinner—with anyone other than me?” Rita added quickly before she could answer. “Hell, girlfriend, when was the last time you got laid?”

Ruby blinked at her, startled, unsure whether it was by the question itself or by the fact that she didn’t know the answer.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard—” Rita leaned over the table and lowered her voice confidentially. “But there are more alternatives for people our age than the cone or the rabbit.”

“Yeah, but my idea of sex doesn’t involve typing.” Ruby looked at her sidelong.

“Keeps the fingers nimble.” Rita laughed. “No, I wasn’t referring to chat room sex. I’m talking about going out and meeting people.”

“Dating sites?” Ruby made a pained face.

“Please.” Rita mirrored her expression. “Social groups. Meet-ups for people with similar interests. Hobbies, film festivals, shit like that. You know I’ve got a boyfriend?” Pause. “And a girlfriend.”

“Sounds exciting,” Ruby told her. “But I don’t know if that’s really for me.”

“I didn’t know either,” Rita said. “I sure didn’t go looking for it. It just happened. That’s how it is when you have a life—things happen. You ought to try it.”

“Yeah? Well, what I really want to know is how come I haven’t gotten to meet these people you’ve been seeing.” Ruby folded her arms and pretended to be stern.

“Well, for one thing—and I’ve got to be perfectly honest here—” Rita put down her knife and fork. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

Ruby’s eyebrows went up. “What? All this time we’ve worked together and you don’t know I’m not a