“You?” Boldt asked his sergeant.
“Something you said just now …” LaMoia tapped his temple with his index finger, “… you got the juices going, Sarge.”
“Are you going to share this kernel of wisdom?”
“I’m gonna skate by Matthews’s crib and roast a few marsh-mallows with her. Anything comes of it, you’ll be the first to hear.”
“Why do I doubt that?” Boldt asked.
LaMoia flashed him the trademark smile, a Tony Randall smile complete with the animated sparkle coming off the front tooth.
“Get gone,” Boldt said.
Voices
“Hi, Mommy, I’m home,” LaMoia called loudly to the houseboat’s front door. He held up an Einstein’s Bagel bag, displaying it, knowing it was her favorite. “Trick or treat?” Matthews had yet to make a sound, but he knew she was in there, knew she wouldn’t want him waking the neighbors.
The front door opened slowly, the living room dark, Matthews looming as a gray figure in sweatpants and thin white Tshirt. She looked good despite herself-with no makeup and uncombed hair this was a Daphne Matthews he’d not seen before. But he liked it.
He attempted to pass the bagel bag through as an offering, saying, “You look like that kid in the Exorcist.” Standing at the door, he smelled the stale and closeted air from inside. But she wouldn’t accept the bag.
She said, “I’ve got all the Girl Scout cookies I need. How about a rain check, John?”
“I need your help,” he said. When a woman was locked up, he could nearly always find the key. He lived for such challenges.
He said, “I’ve got a riddle for you.”
“Pass.”
“Ah, come on.”
“I don’t want to play, Johnny.”
“Sure you do. And I’ll tell you why: Because you can’t stand anybody having the answers ahead of you, of being out of the loop, and I’ve got the answers, Matthews, answers you need. Believe it. You shut that door and I go to Boldt with what I’ve got.”
Sad eyes searched his face. The door opened a few more inches. LaMoia could taste victory. He said, “Little Joe knew you volunteer at the Shelter-do you remember that? Tonight he called your cell phone, a number he couldn’t possibly have turned up without a direct connection to you. Am I getting your attention?”
She swung open the door and LaMoia stepped inside.
“Love what you’ve done to the place. The Martha Stewart bomb shelter thing is fetching.”
“Fetching?” she said, as if he’d spoken a foreign language.
She locked the door’s dead bolt and latching hardware. LaMoia noticed the police bar to the left of the door, realizing she’d had it barricaded.
“Towels on the windows? Nice.”
“Lighten up.”
“Can I turn on a light?”
She said, “I like it this way.”
“That worries me.”
She snatched the paper sack and peered inside. “Sesame.”
“Toasted, with light cream cheese.”
“But how-?”
“Matthews, I know more about you than you even want to consider. Believe me.”
She looked askance at him. The bagel pleased her and he felt good about it. She lathered it up with cream cheese and took a ferocious bite. An appetite was a good sign. She spoke through a mouthful of food, uncharacteristic of her. “It’s a mandatory leave until they review it. I failed the Breathalyzer, did you know that?”
“I heard, yes.”
“A couple glasses of wine and I failed it. I was not drunk, John. I was scared,” she said. “But there you go.”
“Boldt’s on it. He’ll ramrod it through. It’s paperwork mostly. You’ll be back in the saddle in a day or two.”
“Four or five’s more like it. Meanwhile, I’m without my shield and my piece.”
He heard it coming then, realizing he’d been invited inside not for his offer of a bagel and shoptalk, but because she needed something from him. This wounded his pride.
“So, what is it?” he asked.
“A drop gun,” she said.
Her request hit him like a slap in the face. “You, of all people?” Matthews was the most vocal opponent of handguns on the department.
“Times change.”
“Not that much they don’t.”
“Funny what a good dose of reality will do for you.”
He said, “The Sarge asked me what I had to do with it.”
“You?”
“I got this feeling he thought we were … getting personal. Like that.”
“Us?” she asked.
“Not that it’s entirely unthinkable,” he said, in a tone meant to test her reaction. “I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility. You and me. I mean, stranger things have happened.”
“Name one,” Matthews said. She put on a pot of hot water.
Her movements seemed lighter all of a sudden, like she’d ditched a heavy coat. “You’re coffee, right?”
He said, “Eight … no, nine years we’ve worked together, and you have to ask what I drink?”
“It’s polite to ask.”
“Well it’s rude when two people have known each other as long as we have.”
“It’s espresso,” she stated. “See?” She was right, of course.
“I have an espresso machine someone gave me for Christmas.”
“It was for your engagement,” he said. “It was Gaynes.”
“You remember that?”
He shrugged. He felt his face warm. “Regular’s fine,” he said, “if you’ve got it, if it’s not a problem.”
“A souffle? would be a problem. Black coffee, I think I can handle.”
LaMoia asked to use the head, revealing a perceptive understanding that this was a houseboat. She pointed around the corner of the galley, asking aloud if he hadn’t been here before. He answered obliquely, as if maybe he didn’t remember.
As LaMoia urinated, his eye wandered into her medicine cabinet, left slightly ajar. An orange-brown prescription bottle presented itself. A white cap that was childproof, but not LaMoia-proof. He zipped himself up, flushed, and used the resulting noise of washing his hands to cover his reaching in there and spinning that bottle around. The script was a year old.
His eyes danced nervously to the door, ensuring the lock was in place. Amitriptyline. Ten or more in there. He liberated two of them and slipped them into the coin pocket of his jeans.
Safekeeping. A voice in him cried out, What the hell are you doing? But the answer came instantly. Insurance. Relax. It doesn’t mean I’m going to take them. He shut the medicine cabinet door to the exact position he’d found it-ever the good detective. He looked himself in the mirror, astonished that the reflection came back absolutely normal. As he unlocked the door and joined back up with her, guilt spiked through his system like a series of tiny
