head at the building, nodded at Morrison, said, “Captain,” just like a good little police officer and made a break for it.
“Don’t you think it’s rather odd that a quarter of the North Precinct police force can’t get out of bed this morning?” Corvallis called after me. “How do you suppose you’ve escaped the illness, Officer Walker?”
I nearly tripped over my own feet. A
A quarter of the force? It didn’t seem possible. The lot was empty, but that empty? It’d only been Billy, yesterday, and Mel this morning. Hollow laughter built inside me and faded away again. Funny how I assumed it was the same thing striking everyone, but Corvallis had said people couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t know how else to construe that.
Morrison was going to want to talk to me. Morrison was probably going to want to kill me, but if I got into uniform before he came back into the building, maybe it’d remind him he shouldn’t go around killing police officers. I barged off to the locker rooms, which were noticeably emptier than was normal a few minutes before shift change. I changed clothes and escaped the echoing chamber feeling like I was getting out of solitary. For a moment I just leaned on the wall outside the locker room, eyes closed and my cheeks puffed out. This was not going to be a good day.
What a firm grasp of the obvious I had. I huffed a breath and wrinkled my face, eyes still closed. Someone chuckled. “That’s not such a good look for you.”
My eyes popped open. Thor had just exited the men’s locker room, the door swinging shut behind him. He looked, as usual, like a thunder god, all blond and broad-shouldered and chisel-jawed as he grinned at me. “Thor.” I’d been going to try to call him by his real name. That was one of my new Joanne resolutions. “I mean, uh, Ed. Hi.”
“Edward.”
“What?” I needed a better comeback than that, for when I missed a beat. I felt like I was saying, “What?” a lot lately.
“Edward’s better than Ed. Leftover childhood trauma.” It took me a couple of seconds, but I got it: “Mr. Ed, huh?”
He smiled, brief twist of one corner of his mouth. “Yeah. As far as nicknames go, ’Thor’ doesn’t seem that bad when you’re used to being called after a horse.”
“I guess it wouldn’t.” As if missing a night of sleep wasn’t enough, I was now having a nearly normal conversation with the guy I’d been considering my arch nemesis ever since Morrison gave him my job. This was, once again, a whole different kind of weird than the weird I’d gotten used to. “Did you…want something?”
He cleared his throat. Actually cleared his throat. Put his hands in his pockets and pushed his mouth out in duck lips before asking, “You ever go out clubbing?”
“What,” I asked in astonishment, “like cavemen?” No way the one night in the last however-many years I’d gone out a coworker had seen me. It just wasn’t possible. Especially when it was a good-looking coworker. Especially when it was a good-looking coworker who didn’t like me.
Edward laughed, an out-loud belly laugh that nearly knocked me off my feet from sheer surprise. He had a nice deep laugh, infectious enough to make me give him a confused smile in response. “No,” he said a moment later, still chortling. “Dancing. I coulda sworn I saw you last night.”
I was going to kill Phoebe. Or Mark. Or both of them. “Uh. I, um. Yeah. Was out last night. At Contour. Sort of a freak occurrence. Like, never happens. Probably never will again. Like, you know, a perfect storm or something. Not that I’m perfect. I dance like an accident victim.” I bit my tongue to keep from babbling any more.
“Well, I thought you looked pretty good.”
“So why didn’t you ask me to dance?” I asked, suddenly full of inexplicable piss and vinegar.
“I figured you’d say no.”
I stared. “Why would I do that?”
Edward shrugged one shoulder and did the half smile again. It was a kind of nice smile. “Told you. It’s like trying to follow Roth. We haven’t exactly gotten along. Besides, you looked like you had a date.” He hesitated, then crooked another half smile and said, “Promise you won’t sue me for sexual harassment if I say this.”
My eyebrows went up. “You’re probably safe.” To the best of my recollection, no one in my entire life had ever said anything to me that might set them up for a sexual harassment suit. I was almost hopeful.
“Well, you’re usually…” He gestured at me: bulky blue uniform, clodhopper boots, broad-shouldered and without a discernible waist beneath the Kevlar. “I’d never seen you dressed up before. You were kind of intimidating.”
“Intimidating?” I was beginning to think someone had replaced me with Folger’s Crystals and I hadn’t noticed. “You must be very confident to confess that to me.”
He flashed me a genuine grin. “Yeah. Just not confident enough to ask a coworker to dance.” He waited out my jaw-dropped, stunned silence for a few seconds, still grinning. “Maybe I’ll catch you at a club sometime. Right now I better get to work.”
He left me standing in the hallway, blinking in astonishment after him.
I lurked around the hall outside Morrison’s office, mostly out of sight, until he came back from the Channel Two interview. He wasn’t quite in dress uniform, but his clothes were crisper than usual, as if he’d known the interview was coming. But crisp or not, there were worried wrinkles around his eyes, and his gaze was concerned as it roved over the empty desks in the room outside his office. A frown pinched his eyebrows, and a wave of wry exasperation filtered through me. I was pretty sure he was looking for me. Even in the midst of a crisis I could annoy him with the mere question of my presence. Go, me. Morrison went into his office and I lurked for a couple more minutes, giving him some time to wind down after the interview before coming out of hiding to tap on his door.
He said, “There you are. Good job with Corvallis,” as I came in. I actually looked over my shoulder to see if there was someone else behind me, which got a faint smile out of my captain. “I’m talking to you, Walker.”
“So I see. It just seemed incredibly unlikely.”
“Take what you can get,” Morrison suggested, and gestured toward a chair. “Now tell me what the hell is going on with my police force.” I sat, then sank into the chair as weariness swept over me. Morrison’s mouth soured as I fought and lost to a yawn big enough to make my eyes water. “Did I interrupt your beauty sleep, Walker?”
“No.” I squeaked it out on the last of the yawn. “Robert Holliday did. Mel’s gone to sleep, too.”
A subtle flinch went through him. “Melinda Holliday? She’s not—” Morrison’s expression darkened until his blue eyes were almost as gray as Gary’s. “What’s going on, Walker?”
“She’s not a cop,” I finished for him. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Morrison. Billy and Melinda kind of make sense. They’re—” I struggled with the right way to say this. “Like me,” I finally said, though it was incomplete. “I don’t know why I’m still awake.”
“Because they’re not like you,” Morrison said flatly. “Holliday’s a believer, Walker, but he can’t do what you do. You want to see the roster of people who are out today?” He shoved paperwork across his desk at me. I leaned forward to pick it up, not wanting to see it at all.
Almost everyone from the garage was on it. Nick, who hadn’t smiled at me in months, except in the dream that morning. The guys I’d been drinking with on the Fourth; all the old friends I’d bantered with in my sleep. Bruce was there, and so was Ray. For a moment I thought I was onto something, but I let it go with a hoarse laugh. Morrison wasn’t on the list, and he’d featured heavily in the dream. Damn. It’d been a good thought.
I slid further down in my chair and put one foot against Morrison’s desk and my elbow on the armrest so I could push my knuckles against my mouth and rub my thumb over the scar on my cheek. Somewhere during the fidgeting I got the impression Morrison was looking at me disapprovingly, but I couldn’t stop. “All I know is
