Louis looked to see Bjork standing next to him. He accepted the napkin and wiped his chin.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I was sitting in the back and saw you come in,” she said. She wasn’t in uniform. She was wearing jeans and a heavy, cream-colored sweater.
“Join me?” Louis asked.
“You buying?”
“Sure.” He pulled his coat into his lap and Bjork slid onto the stool. She looked different, softer. Her braid was gone and her hair was a red washboard of ripples down her back. She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears and gold earrings glimmered in the neon lights of the bar. It took Louis a moment to realize they were tiny handcuffs.
Bjork saw him looking at them. “A gift from my ex,” she said.
“Was he a cop, too?”
She shook her head. “Lumber worker.”
Louis hesitated, wondering if he should get personal. There had been only one woman back at the academy and he never worked with one.
“What did he think about you being a cop?” he asked. He didn’t know what had prompted the question. Maybe the idea that something in Bjork’s experience could give him a clue about Zoe.
“Wasn’t crazy about it,” Bjork said. “Guess that’s why he finally split.” She fingered the earrings, smiling. “He got these for me one Christmas. It was a hint after the black nightie didn’t work.” She waved at the bartender. “Ed was not the most subtle guy in the world.”
Louis stared at her, questions swimming in his head. He looked away, finished off his beer and set it out in the well. Another appeared, along with a Stroh’s for Bjork. She held up her bottle.
“To catching the son of a bitch.”
Louis clinked his bottle and took a sip.
“You finish reading the file?”
“Almost. I got hungry,” Louis said.
“Looks to me like you’re drinking your dinner.”
Louis covered up his mild annoyance with a smile. “Occupational hazard.”
“Want to bounce a few things off me?” she asked.
“Like what?”
Her face grew serious. “Two dead cops. Maybe I can help.” Louis hesitated then looked around the tavern. There was an empty booth and he picked up his beer, motioned for her to follow. He slid in one side, Bjork across from him. Neither said anything for several long seconds. The jukebox launched into Artie Shaw playing “Summit Ridge Drive.”
“So tell me about how they died,” Bjork said.
“Both surprised by a shotgun to the chest, both off duty,” Louis said.
“Ballsy little bastard, isn’t he?”
Louis nodded. “One was an easy target, a retired old fart who drank a lot. He was out fishing at six a.m. The other was active duty, young, alert and experienced. He carried his gun to his own front door. Lacey was on his porch and blew away the door with him behind it.”
“Christ,” Bjork said.
“It gets sicker. He leaves these cards.”
“What kind of cards?”
“A military thing, death cards. A sign that was supposed to tell us ‘I was here.’”
Louis caught the bartender’s attention, circling a finger to indicate another round.
“Kincaid, what is Lacey after?” Bjork asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why is he targeting your cops?”
Louis hesitated. “Revenge. Two of his kids, teenagers, were killed by us in a barricade situation five years ago. They fired on the cops and refused to surrender. The girl drew on one of the officers.”
Bjork took a sip of her beer, digesting his words. “What about Cole?”
“He’s at Red Oak until he’s twenty-one.”
“Stiff sentence for a kid.”
“He pulled a shotgun when they took him into custody.”
Bjork shook her head. “Well, pardon my bluntness but given what you just told me why did it take you guys so long to name Lacey as a suspect?”
Louis was glad it was so dark; she couldn’t see his embarrassment. Over what? That Jesse had fucked up? That the DOC was filled with incompetents? That no one bothered to bring up the raid? That Gibralter was too pigheaded to ask for outside help? That he himself had let Lacey go?
Her question hung in the smoky air, waiting to be answered. Maybe he was embarrassed because he had no idea how to answer. Hell, maybe he was embarrassed because he didn’t know what in God’s name to do next.
He met her eyes, seeing again the spread of fine wrinkles at the corners, seeing for the first time the depth on the inside. All right, she was a woman. But she was also a cop. A cop with decades more experience than he had. If anyone could understand about his letting Lacey go, she would.
“We had him once,” Louis said.
“Lacey?”
Louis nodded. “Day after Christmas. We picked him up for running from us when we walked into a bar.”
Bjork waited for more.
Louis sat back. Just say it. “I cut him loose.”
“You didn’t check on him? You didn’t put two and two together?”
“I didn’t know who he was. The name meant nothing. And the DOC had him listed as being in prison. It turned out to be a typo.” Louis let out a breath. “A damn typo.”
Bjork studied him.
Louis stared into his beer. “It was Christmas. I tried to do something decent.”
“Well, Louis, there is decent and then there is dumb.”
“Thanks,” Louis said.
“Did you expect sympathy from me?”
He met her eyes briefly then looked away. “I don’t know what I’m expecting anymore.”
“How come nobody in the department thought of him, thought the barricade situation would — ”
“I have no idea,” Louis interrupted. He stared at a set of carved initials in the tabletop.
“Louis,” Bjork said. “You will get him.”
He looked up at her. “Right.”
She shook her head and glanced at the bar. Her eyes lit up and she waved to someone, who hollered a friendly hello across the room.
Louis stared at her. “You like it here, don’t you?”
“I love it. It’s my home,” she said with a smile. “I mean, I’ve traveled some, lived below the bridge for a year even. But I always come back. I belong here.”
He could almost feel his mind slowing, slowing as it approached this strange bend in the road. Home. That’s what he had thought Loon Lake would be. A safe place that he could settle into. But it was not as it had first seemed. Nothing was as it first seemed. Loon Lake wasn’t a postcard paradise; it was a place of death. Jesse wasn’t a partner he could count on; he was a coward, his judgment clouded by blind loyalty to Gibralter. And Gibralter, what was he? Certainly not the perfect chief.
And Zoe…what he had felt with her. What was that?
“Louis?”
He glanced at Bjork. “What are you thinking?”
“About Loon Lake, the job. My chief.”
“I talked to your chief today. Strange man.”
“He called you?”
“Ya, wanted to make sure you arrived okay.”
