But if high on pot, they didn’t represent much threat of violence, no matter what the posturing. It didn’t fit the model. If the pot were an attempt at a comedown from an amphetamine high, though, she had problems. Her volunteer work at the Shelter had not gone for naught.
Another of the young toughs, this one with peroxide hair and a face that held enough piercings to set off an airport security check, followed on the heels of his friend. “She’s fine-looking, eh, Manny?” The kid coughed and spat, the phlegm attaching to the car he passed.
Matthews stood her ground. “There was a man up here. Up there,” she said, pointing to level two. “Just now. Maybe six feet tall, looking west. Maybe in a sweatshirt and jeans, maybe a uniform.”
“Take it somewhere else,” the bigger one said, but his eyes had locked onto her purse.
“She is damn fine,” the kid with the dye job whispered to his buddy, encouraging him forward, defining his own interest in Matthews.
“Did you see a patrol car? King County Sheriff’s?”
“Yeah, right,” replied the leader sarcastically.
“Up there on level two,” she said.
“There’s four of us, lady.” He stepped out from between the cars, now only a few feet from her.
Where was that sheriff’s car now that she needed it? This south end of town was rough at night-the very reason the Shelter was no more than a block away. Some of these hotheads carried weapons; she didn’t want that in the equation. Bribery, on the other hand, had its place. “Twenty bucks answers my question.” She tried to put his attention on her purse out of her mind, not wanting to see him as a criminal but instead as a source of information. If the blond kid wanted to try his doped-up luck at groping her, the purse carried a Beretta, a can of Mace, a single pair of handcuffs, a mobile phone, and a Palm Pilot. Connecting that purse to the side of his face would put the kid in the next county. Reaching into the purse, grabbing hold of the weapon, chambering a round-all that would probably take ten seconds that she wouldn’t have.
“Didn’t see no cruiser,” the leader said, “but maybe the uniform, yeah. How ’bout that twenty?”
The option presented itself for her to grab the gun while pretending to retrieve the twenty, though it upped the stakes considerably. She had no intention of shooting some stoned kid, nor of provoking the remaining three to fire on her.
She asked, “What color uniform?” This question would separate fact from fiction. Blue for SPD. Dark brown khaki for KCSO.
“Army maybe.” The kid took another step closer.
She found his answer intriguing, for if he’d believed a khaki uniform meant an army officer, it added credibility to why he and his pals hadn’t fled, whereas a blue uniform would strike the fear of God into any one of these kids. But khaki was more likely King County Sheriff, not army.
Evaluating her situation came down to mapping an exit route.
She felt confident she could outrun any one of these kids. The problem was that this leader stood between her and the exit. The only ramp available to her led up and into the garage. Cars streamed around this parking garage, their lights glinting like those of a carousel. So many people, so incredibly close by, and yet oblivious to her predicament. Her extreme isolation-one against many, alone and yet surrounded-bore down on her.
“What color shirt?” she asked.
“What about that twenty?”
She faced a choice then-her gun or the payoff? She clicked open her purse, and for a moment the sounds of the city surrendered to the intense drumming in her ears. She drew a twenty from her wallet, keeping her hands hidden behind the screen of her purse. There lay her gun. On the bottom of everything was the small can of pepper spray, a far more reasonable means of defense given the threat. She made one stab for it-fingers dart-ing through the contents of the purse-and by an act of divine intervention, she touched the can’s cold metal and drew the Mace from her purse, her hand concealing it.
They all heard the car enter from the other side of the building, saw the spread of its headlights as shadows crawled across the stained concrete. During this brief distraction, Matthews placed the twenty at her feet and, cradling the pepper spray, turned and walked toward the ramp that led to level two. She heard the big kid hurry to retrieve the money, the scratching of the soles of his boots on the concrete. She sensed the other kid’s bold advance as he tested the possibility of following her, maybe scoring a little payoff of his own-maybe money, maybe something else.
“Dude!” the big one called out as the headlights swung to encompass them all.
Matthews hurried then, not running, not wanting to signal her fear, up the ramp and straight toward her Honda. The lights flashed and the horn beeped behind the signal from her remote button.
She wondered what the message was, as she bumped the Honda out into the busy street, like stepping through a stage curtain and walking into the audience. She searched for significance in every incident, every encounter she experienced, the psychologist seizing upon every opportunity to learn something about herself.
In the process, she nearly forgot about the man in the khaki uniform overlooking the Shelter’s parking lot. Nearly, but not quite.
Old Friends, New Enemies
“You want peepers? We got peepers. But I gotta tell you, Johno: Your guys have been through these already, because of Hebringer and Randolf.” Marisha Stenolovski slid a file cabinet drawer open. The files went back twelve or fifteen inches.
Stenolovski stuck out a few inches in all the right places herself. He’d been there, done that.
“Last thirty days. I’ll know it when I see it.”
It had been a year earlier. A cop bar. Both of them flirting a little too openly. She stood a good three inches taller than he.
Lanky. Dark Slavic skin, brooding eyes. A screamer-he remembered that as well. It had lasted a week or two. He’d dumped her for someone, no doubt. Couldn’t remember for whom just now. The problem with relationships at work, they came back to bite you.
She lowered her voice. “You’re an asshole, John. Until you need my help, you don’t give me the time of day. What am I, damaged goods? Leftovers? I don’t care that you leave me for some singer. Good riddance. But the way you avoid me now.
It’s disrespectful.”
The singer. He remembered now. “I don’t avoid you.”
“Have we said two words in the last six months?”
“A woman got peeped over at the Inn. I’m looking for similar complaints.”
She slapped the steel file drawer. “There. All the peepers a guy could ask for. Look hard, Johnny. Maybe you’re in there too.”
She walked off. He remembered that walk. Strong. Alluring.
Legs to the moon. One foot placed exactly in front of the other, like a runway model, so her butt shifted back and forth like a pair of puppies in a paper sack. She’d donned a pair of his boxer shorts one morning. Topless, just the boxer shorts, nothing else.
They ate bagels together at the kitchen table, her, dressed that way. He remembered more about her than he might have thought.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that the one case file that interested him turned out to have Stenolovski’s name listed as the investigator. Life was like that. He should have known, because there were only a couple full- eights in Special Assaults-SA. The rest worked it part-time.
He caught up to her as she sat atop a metal stool in an office cubicle covered with magazine tear sheets of barefoot water skiers. A photo of a nephew. Another of Prague or Moscow, someplace gray, bleak with billboard ads he didn’t recognize.
Definitely Eastern European. In the photo she had her arm around a very old lady with hair the color of winter clouds.
He cleared his throat. “With me, you get what you get. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes not. If
