was thrilled with his signed admissions, but what really clinched the case were the fibers SID vacuumed out of Bailey's camper. They were the same color and material as Ladeenia's sweater, but of course there was no evidence to match them to. Frank had been keeping Mr. and Mrs. Pryce informed of the investigation's progress, and when told about the fibers, Mrs. Pryce ecstatically produced the matching Pooh shirt that went with the sweater.
She still hadn't had the heart to throw it away. She'd sealed Ladeenia and Trevor's clothing in plastic tubs, opening them now and then to sniff the fading scent of her children. Frank gave the shirt over to SID and the fibers turned out to be a dead-bang match to Ladeenia's shirt. Case closed. Now the outcome is up to McQueen and how well her prosecutors play the jury.
Frank is sprawled on the couch, an almost empty bottle of Black Label at her side. Since handing Pryce over to the DA's office, Frank has given up trying to control her drinking. She can't summon the monumental energy it takes to keep away from the bottle. Gone too is the will to even limit her drinking. She just doesn't have the fight for it. Giving in is so much simpler than going rounds every night only to lose in the fifth. She rides the liquid line between sobriety and oblivion, despairing of falling to either side.
But tonight Fubar is on call. She has taken the extra precaution of unplugging her phone. No midnight pleading for her to take over a scene will interfere with her drinking. She's been at it steadily since end of watch. She started with a pint of Jack Daniel's while driving home, then plowed through a six-pack of Coronas in the backyard while barbecuing hotdogs she ate straight off the grill.
Food doesn't interest her and she forces herself to eat. Her life revolves around clawing through morning hangovers then working as long past end of watch as she can before bowing to the hunger for that first drink of the day. She's quit going to the Alibi. There's no one there she wants to drink with and Nancy is frosty.
She's taken to stopping for a pint on the way home and by the time she hits her driveway she's got a gentle buzz on. She spends the rest of the night tending it. Somewhere between eleven and twelve she's had enough to help her sleep. She swallows Advil and vitamins, brushes her teeth and wakes up around 2:30. Sometimes she can go back to sleep. Usually she can't, until she has a tumbler of Scotch. Then she dozes until 4:30, gets up woozy and starts the cycle all over again.
She is watching
This is the terrifying thought she has been dancing around since that morning at Nancy's. What happens when the alcohol doesn't work anymore, when the tail is thrashing the dog?
Not much frightens Frank, but the thought of being unable to escape herself is more than she can handle. She swallows from her glass, as much as her mouth will hold, and repeats the motion. She watches a cop in Houston trying to reason with a drunken wife-beater. She should be smashed by now, but she hasn't heard the click yet. That lovely, comely, magical click.
' 'Did you say click?'' she whispers, quoting from
''Yes, sir',' she answers in Paul Newman's drawl. ''That click in my head that makes me feel peaceful. It's like a switch clicking off in my head, turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and of a sudden there is peace.''
Like Burl Ives, she growls, ''Boy, you're a real alcoholic.''
''That is the truth. Yes, sir. I am an alcoholic.''
Frank turns the glass in her hand.
'Yes, sir,' she repeats in her own clear voice. 'That is the truth. I am an alcoholic.'
She sits with the statement, unashamed and unrepentant. Just tired. Very tired.
On the coffee table, next to her feet, rest her .38, .357 and Beretta. Each weapon is meticulously cleaned and oiled. They gleam in the TVs blue light. Each fully loaded.
Frank levels her glass between her eyes and the handguns.
'Cop on a hot tin roof,' she muses through the jeweled refraction.
Colors glitter and twinkle in the crystal. She squeezes her hand and the crystal shatters. She crushes the shards into her palm. Hanging her hand over the couch she lets it bleed onto the tile floor. She considers the fiery little stabs of pain. They feel good and she tightens her hand into a fist. The shards bite deeper.
Studying her macerated palm, she notes, 'You are one sick puppy.'
She watches her hand until the bleeding slows, then assiduously removes the shards over the bathroom sink. She takes pleasure in the pain. When she is done she pours rubbing alcohol over her hand and wraps it in a towel. She returns to the couch with a fresh bottle of Scotch. She doesn't bother with another glass.
Unbidden, like a butterfly in a garden, a sparkling long-ago afternoon flits across the landscape of Frank's memory.
It was early in their partnership, at the start of their shift one day, when Frank and Noah got the crying-baby call. They'd pulled up at the address dispatch gave them, to a house overgrown with weeds. The neighbor who'd called in the complaint met them on the sidewalk. The man who lived in the house had only recently moved in after winning his son in a vicious custody case. The last time the neighbor had seen the man was yesterday afternoon. He was walking into his house with his son in one arm and groceries in the other. The baby had started crying around 8:00 pm. She'd thought maybe it was just fretting, but she'd heard it again in the middle of the night and it hadn't stopped since she woke up this morning.
'He seems like a good father,' the woman said.
Noah thanked her and told her they'd take it from there.
Frank knocked, calling loudly, and got no response. They walked around the house and peeked through windows with drawn curtains. Seeing nothing. They kept calling and knocking, trying each lock. Finally they busted a small pane and were able to reach inside to unlock a window. Noah, the skinnier of the two, went in first, calling out so he didn't get shot for a burglar. He let Frank in the back door. Even though the sun was high and hot, lights were on throughout the house. A baby's subdued, rhythmic cry came from down a narrow hallway.
Noah, in the lead, glanced into a room off the kitchen. 'Uh-oh.'
A man fitting the father's description was sprawled on the floor in front of the television. It looked like he'd taken a shotgun blast to his head and neck, the resulting wounds dark and coagulated.
Frank checked cursorily for a pulse, as Noah exclaimed, 'Holy fuck.'
She looked up to see him backing away from a bookshelf over the TV, pointing.
'See it?'
It took her a moment to track his finger, then she saw the vacant eyes of an over-under 12-gauge aimed just above her head.
'I think we better get—' Frank's words were engulfed in a boom. Noah had fallen to the floor and Frank had flattened. They looked at each other, afraid to move.
'Did you touch something?' she whispered.
Noah searched around himself. His foot was inches from an end table.
'Jesus Christ, we're fucking booby-trapped. I got fishing line on this table going under the couch. Can you see it at your end?'
Frank tentatively crawled around the couch. She saw the line appear briefly from the couch and disappear under another table. She inched along beside it, eyeballing it up the wall and behind a shelf to another shotgun.
'Shit,' Noah said, seeing the barrel at the same time. 'We gotta get outta here.'
Frank nodded. 'Let's just crawl out the way we came in.'
They crept from the room on hands and knees, hugging the floor and searching for tripwires. Frank had forgotten the baby but remembered it as they approached the kitchen. The sudden gun blast had triggered hiccupped crying.
'Noah,' Frank said.
He looked behind himself, at her.
'It's gonna be hours before we get a demo team assembled and in here.'
'The baby,' Noah finished for her.
'Yeah. What if there's something wrong with it?' Tossing her head toward the body in the living room, she
