“Who do you report to, then?”
“Commander Andrew Bryce, or at least his office. That's where my reports go.”
“And Bryce is over the division?”
“You got it.” Good, she told herself, now you've got him interested.
“You followed me here from the station house? Last time we talked, you said you weren't interested in me. What's with you, Dr. Sanger?”
“What I said was, I don't need another wigged-out cop on my couch, if you'll recall.”
'Then what do you want from me?”
“Buy me a drink, and we'll talk,” she offered.
“Like to play the bad girl? Is that it? This your way of getting back at Lawrence for some slight?”
“Bad girl?”
“Madonna, all that.”
“Jesus, you're hard to talk to. You always so hard to approach, Stonecoat?”
“No, only when I'm expected to perform, and I've got a notion you're looking for a performance of some sort.”
“Please, Lucas… can I call you Lucas?”
When he failed to answer, she stared into his eyes, finding herself swimming in a deep brown warmth and hidden hurt for a moment before she barreled on. “I think we could help each other out.”
“I really don't recall asking for your help, Doctor!”
The bartender, without shouting, demanded, “Either take it to a booth or outside, but keep it down, will you? I run a quiet joint here.”
“So,” he said to her, indicating the second bourbon in his hand and leading her to a booth, “now you know my secret.”
One of them, perhaps, she thought, carefully considering her words. “One of them is painfully obvious, but listen here, Lucas, I see a lot of cops with hard-core problems every day, problems you don't come near, so…” She paused, picking her way over the minefield of his emotions. “Fact is, there's very little I haven't seen on this job. So what if you drink while on duty? Half or more of the force does. I'm not here as a police shrink or to pass-”
“Sit,” he ordered. She silenced herself and slid into the corner booth. “What'll you have?”
“A Coca-Cola's all.”
“Coke,” he shouted to the bartender. “Make it two. Wouldn't want you drinking alone in a bar.”
“I'm sorry if I startled you, but-”
“Startled me?” He half grinned, and this made his face more handsome, the scar more easily tolerated. He tried a flagrantly lazy laugh, repeating the word startled as if the sheer impossibility of his being startled by her was as remote as finding a winning lottery ticket in this place. He turned his eyes and his scar tissue away from view in a practiced, now habitual fashion.
“I'm not exactly on Lawrence's guest list for the Christmas party, believe me,” she continued again. “I guess I came after you because… because I need a… an ally, a professional connection, and because your record indicates a distinguished career.”
Now he did laugh openly.
“You won two medals for valor before the accident.”
“I don't want to talk about medals or accidents.”
“All right, but what about it? I could use a friend, someone who-”
“A friend?”
“-somebody who hates that bastard Lawrence as much or more than I do, and I figure you're it.”
“How do you figure that? Lawrence hasn't done anything to me.”
“Are you kidding? He's a racist, for one. How do you imagine you wound up in the Cold Room in the first place, Lucas?”
“By his request?”
“It wasn't via lottery.”
Lucas breathed this information in. “He heard plenty about me in Dallas, didn't he?”
“Everybody knows about Dallas, about John F. Kennedy's assassination there and about your accident there, but with Lawrence, when you went after the city in that court battle, that was enough to destroy any chance you had on his force.”
“What a ya know… it all goes back to Dallas, doesn't it? They warned me that Houston's still a small town in many ways.”
“Most Texas cities are…”
He raised a hand to his chin and nodded in silent agreement.
“And everything about a police department is small-town,” she added. “A lot of cable's been laid between here and Dallas, and you're something of an infamous fellow. And here you are, pretty much alone, and I'm… well, I'm pretty far out on a limb with Captain Lawrence, too.” She now stared purposefully once more into the rippling and layered pools of his marble-hard brown eyes. This time, he held her stare as if daring her to break it off, as if studying her level of intensity, or sincerity, or both. Or was he thinking sex? She did not know.
“How do you know I'm not a racist or a sexist?” he asked her. “Many Indian men are proud to be both, you know…”
She laughed lightly at this, realizing that he was kidding for the first time with her. Maybe the bourbon wasn't such a bad idea, after all.
“Seriously, Dr. Sanger, just what is it you want from me? You certainly didn't come here to warn me about Phil Lawrence.”
She snatched a notepad from her purse and slipped on a pair of reading glasses that made her look like a school teacher, he thought. “What I'm going to tell you, Lucas, must remain confidential if-”
“So long as this entire meeting remains confidential, I think I could agree to that,” he countered with a snakelike reaction.
She looked from her notepad over her glasses and across at him. “A greed. Like I said, I've got more important fish to fry than your ass over an indiscretion more suited to the concerns of Internal Affairs.”
“But don't you work closely with IAD?”
“IAD doesn't work closely with anyone. Listen, I am not your enemy.”
“Shall we shake on it, to ensure the bond?” he suggested, still unsure of her motives, still not certain he could trust her. “God, next you'll be asking me to slit my wrist and mingle my blood with yours in some pagan ritual out of-”
“Not a bad idea either.”
“Okay, all right already.” She reached across the rough, scarred tabletop, and he firmly took her hand in his, testing her strength for a moment, allowing his hand to linger in hers as they shook. She frowned, tugged her hand from his and turned her attention back to the notepad now lying between them. “I've mapped out my suspicions for several weeks now, all brought on by the Mootry killing.”
A glazed, unknowing blink was quickly masked, even as he said, “Okay…
“A brutal mutilation murder like that doesn't go unnoticed and-”
“Then this isn't a dead file case? It's not something out of the Cold Room?”
“Well, it is and isn't.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Well, let me finish. The Mootry case is current, but a less recent killing, a senseless murder here ten years ago come Friday, held some fascinating similarities. I wasn't on staff here then, but I read about it in the Seattle papers.”
“You've only been here how long?”
“Four months come Tuesday.”
“And you're from Seattle?”
“Yes.”
“Your people all there?”
“Yes, now let me finish. Anyway, it occurred to me… I mean, I… the Mootry murder immediately brought back memories of similar deaths both here and elsewhere. I wondered if the three crimes could possibly have been
