“ When he called, I made it clear I wouldn't work blind, that the more I know, the more I can reveal.”
“ Exactly my point.”
“ The Harkness boy's case must've hurt you very deeply. I'm sorry for your pain, Alex, and I can easily sympa-”
“ That's got nothing to do with it.”
“ I can sympathize completely. I had my own such heart-wrenching cases, the Hughes case I told you about.”
“ I remember reading about it,” he admitted.
“ I wasn't much more than a rookie that year.”
“ Ever regret giving up being a cop?”
She hesitated before responding. Thus far, she'd not had to lie to him directly, and was able to excuse this necessary lie by omission since she was working for the FBI, for Meade. “Yeah, sure…sometimes I miss it, but I've learned I can do far more good as a sensitive.”
“ Let's eat,” he said, and got quickly out of the car.
She waited to see if he'd open her door, and she was pleased when he did.
Over dinner she said, “You hate my being here, don't you?”
“ What?”
“ And you're uneasy with yourself, your own intuition, if you wish?”
“ Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.”
She barreled forward. “You're a tough guy, a former Navy SEAL. You don't have a sensitive bone in your body, or so you want the world to think, but-”
“ Hey, I don't hafta sit here and take this kinda ridicule and verbal abuse, Doctor, and I don't hate your being here, no.”
“ I mean in New Orleans, on your case.”
He hesitated before answering. “Eat, stay healthy.”
“ You really do make quite a sparring partner.”
“ What's that suppose to mean?”
“ You're very good at deflecting direct questions, Lieutenant.”
“ I've had a good trainer.”
“ Your father.” It wasn't posed as a question.
“ What a surprising and fortuitous guess. How did you ever come up with him, of all people?” Sarcasm had seeped back into his voice. “What exactly are those lovely eyeballs made of anyway? Transylvanian crystal? Or are you just an ex-tremely lucky guesser, huh?”
“ All right, okay, so much of what I do is instinctive, but that doesn't lessen the fact I know what I'm doing. Lieutenant, I'm the best.”
The restaurant's atmosphere was steeped in a French motif, a sidewalk cafe on a grander scale in a semi- casual and darkened series of rooms with quaint street-comer lamps posted every four feet, the windows overlooking the huge lake. It was in the heart of some smaller town outside the big city, far from Bourbon Street and the concerns of the French Quarter. It seemed a place where a different breed of people dined, natives not of New Orleans but elsewhere. Still, on the menu alongside the traditional French dishes were traditional New Orleans dishes from jambalaya to such specialties as shrimp Creole and Cajun gator tail. Alex was eating the gator, while she'd opted for vegetarian veal parisien.
He finally said, “I have every reason to suspect you're having us all on, Dr. Desinor.”
“ And you resent the implication that others, seeing me come in on the case, might construe you as a fool?”
“ I don't give a damn what others think, but think they do and the appearance of im-impropriety in a case is as bad as the real McCoy, Doctor. And we both know that your coming in on this high-profile case is going to feather your cap no matter the outcome while making the NOPD look like it's… well, jacking off.”
She bit back a snide smile and shook her head. “If the hand fits, Alex.”
“ Very clever, Doctor, but nothing's changed.”
“ Oh, I think a lot has changed. And it's about time you called me Kim.”
“ Such as what has changed, Kim?”
“ How we view one another for one, Alex. I think we can work together and not at odds, if you will just give me a chance. Your partner Ben's willing to, Jessica Coran, P.C. Stephens, your own Captain Landry.”
“ Yeah, so why do I get the feeling I'm the last holdout in The Invasion of the Body Switchers? Ben's got a wife and children to go home to. He can turn the case off when he wants, he's gotten so used to partitioning off the separate lives he leads. Me, I'm on my own, so maybe the case is a little more important to me than-”
“ Is it importance or self-importance and a little obsession thrown in for good measure?” she asked quickly, stopping him.
“ I'm no more obsessive about my work than most cops.”
“ Bullshit. You're as bad as… as… as Jessica Coran. You're a workaholic from what I can see.”
“ There are worse things in life.”
“ Your father's nearby. Why don't you spend more time with your family?”
The muscles of his jaw tightened. “That's really none of your business, now, is it?” He wondered from whom she had learned that tidbit of information with which she thought she could astonish him.
“ He's a former cop. Someone you could share your thoughts and feelings with on the case.”
“ I got Ben for that.”
“ And that's enough?”
“ It is.”
She nodded. “Your father hurt you very badly, didn't he.”
“ What the hell's with you, lady? I'm not in the market for psychoanalysis, not even your brand, so let it go.”
“ My father hurt me very badly too, when I was young. He pretty much destroyed all faith I had in him. Took me a long time to get over it, and I'm still not sure I am. Over it, I mean. He gave me up to the state for safekeeping. How do you like that?''
Alex dropped his gaze and said, “I'm sorry to hear it.”
“ You can rationally rid yourself of a thing like that, but emotionally it's like a growth or a virus that's still very much within, biding its time, waiting for you to slip and when you do, it'll be there to take you into the depths of pain stored up over the years. Out of sight but not out of mind, or is it stored in the human heart?”
“ My problem with my father is not the issue here, Kim, nor is it a matter for discussion, do you understand? And while we're on it, my every waking moment isn't predicated on how I view my relationship with him, understood?”
“ Perhaps…perhaps I do understand more than you know.”
He stared across at her and felt her eyes probing into and through him. “You don't understand anything about me.”
“ I understand your anger, your frustration and even your fear.”
Now he gritted his teeth and pulled back, as if physically severing the eye contact between them would help his cause, before he said, “I'm not afraid of a damned thing. Lightning doesn't scare me; dying doesn't scare me. So, what's left? I've faced death in a goddamned jungle a world away from home, and here on the streets as a cop. No, there's nothing I'm afraid of.”
'You're afraid of the small things.”
He shook his head and frowned, pushing away his plate.
“ Dark spaces from which you cannot retreat?”
“ You're crazy, you really are.”
“ Relationships from which you can't hide.”
Shut up-his thought leaped but did not cross the table, yet she caught it as if on some sort of telepathic tractor beajn, yanking it into her.
“ I'll shut up, Lieutenant, when you aecept me for what I am, and while you're at it, accept the fact there are black holes in everyone's mind.”
