She closed the blade on the knife.
Tomorrow, an office.
The knife, she'd think about.
Chapter 20
The hours after a cop is killed are always a nightmare: telling the family, figuring out what went wrong, deciding if some living person is to blame-and Nadya was taking a hit on the last item.
She insisted that Reasons had initiated the relationship, telling her that his marriage was essentially over. Her argument was good enough, and detailed enough, that it made the Duluth cops angrier than ever. To have one of their own killed, and thus automatically qualified for sainthood-nobody liked to see a dead cop, but on the other hand, it never hurt the budgetary process if you lost the occasional flatfoot-and to have all of that tarnished by a Russian and maybe even a Commie…
Lucas took some of the heat off in a quick, illegal, and private meeting with the police chief, where everybody agreed that Lucas hadn't actually been stopped, shot at, or really handcuffed while he was pursuing the killer… that wouldn't have been good for the budget.
There was also a general agreement that it wouldn't be necessary to mention the sexual liaison to the press. Reasons had actually been guarding Nadya when he was murdered-he had given his life to save hers.
Lucas got back to Weather, late, waking her, telling her what had happened. Nadya had moved to a new room, and Weather said she would call her.
'I can tell you she ain't asleep,' Lucas said.
While all that was going on, so was the chase: Duluth cops went to every pizza place in town, trying to see who might have bought the pizza. They knew it was a fresh one-Nadya said she could smell it, even after the shooting.
'Must have been a hungry sonofabitch, hanging on to the pizza when you're chasing him all over the fuckin' hill,' Kelly said.
'Weird shit happens,' Lucas said.
Several pizza places had customers who might have fit the vague description they had of the killer: thin, blond, blackjacket or white shirt. None of those had any more details.
The women at the hotel's front desk had seen nothing but the back of the pizza-man's head.
In any case, nobody found anything: the killer was gone.
In the morning, Andreno, calling upstate from Virginia, asked, 'What the fuck happened down there?'
Lucas told him, and Andreno said, 'Maybe she needs a bodyguard. Somebody with a gun.'
'You want the job?'
'It's either that or go home. The Spivaks are in a bunker.'
'Come on down and let's talk,' Lucas said. 'I need some theoretical bullshit.'
'I'm on my way.'
Lucas tried to go back to sleep, failed, eventually got up, cleaned up, looked at the clock, and realized that Andreno could be there at any minute. He called and Andreno said, 'I'm just coming into town. If I don't get lost, I'll be there in ten minutes.'
Lucas called Nadya's room. She was up, dressed, and sounded like she had a cold.
'Breakfast,' he said. 'Ya gotta eat.'
'I need advice,' she said. 'And I need coffee.'
'I'll see you upstairs in two minutes,' Lucas said.
Lucas took the elevator. It stopped two floors up-she'd changed rooms-and Nadya got on, eyes and nose puffy, and said, 'Oh, God.'
'Yeah.' Lucas was tempted to give her a hug, but he wasn't a hugger, and she slumped in the corner, staring at the control buttons. At the top, they went into the restaurant, got a booth. The restaurant was already rotating, and they were overlooking the city but turning toward the harbor. They could see two long, low freighters standing offshore, heading into port, and another one, on the horizon, a dwindling lump.
The waitress came and they ordered coffee and Lucas asked for a waffle and bacon. The waitress left and Nadya said, 'Do you think the… news… of our relationship will be successfully suppressed?'
Lucas shrugged. 'I don't know. It doesn't help anybody if it gets out, but police departments are the biggest rumor mills in the world. Everybody in the department knows by now. The police reporter here, the guy we met down at that shack… he's no dummy. He'll probably hear about it.'
'But will he print it?'
'If he does, it could hurt him with his sources in the department-everybody would be pissed off at him. I don't think anyone would confirm it, officially, so he'd have to worry about printing rumors…'
Nadya took a napkin out of a napkin holder and folded it, precisely square, then folded it again. 'I have to decide whether to tell my superiors what happened. If I do, it would not be good for me. If I don't, and they find out, it would be worse. But if I don't, and they don't find out, and if we get the killer…'
As she was talking, Lucas noticed another woman approaching their table-not a waitress, but a woman in jeans and a nylon windbreaker. She was dark haired and stocky, and she was moving quickly, beelined toward them, and Lucas said, 'Uh…' but the woman ignored him and said to Nadya, 'Are you Nadezhda Kalin?' She pronounced the name with authority and a light went on in Lucas's brain and he started to get out of the booth just as the waitress appeared with two cups of hot coffee and blocked him, and Nadya looked at the woman and said, 'Yes?'
'I am Jerry Reasons's wife,' the woman said, and she launched herself into the booth on top of Nadya, her fingernails flashing, and Lucas said, 'Oh, shit,' and the waitress with the coffee went down ass-over-coffee-cup and Nadya screamed and slashed back.
Lucas was out of the booth and grabbed Reasons around the waist and tried to pull her off Nadya, but she was strong, angry, out of control, and when Lucas got her back a foot she turned in his arms and slashed at his face with inch-long, highly polished fingernails, cut him across the nose and he grunted and lost her, and she went back after Nadya.
Nadya had gotten her feet up into the booth in front of her and kicked Reasons in the chest, and they were both screaming and waiters were running toward them, and Lucas got Reasons around the waist again and tried to pull back while avoiding the fingernails. Both women now had blood on their faces and Lucas, trying not to hurt Reasons, but at the same time hold on to her, lost her again, and she went back into the booth and Nadya picked up the silver-metal napkin holder and smashed Reasons in the forehead.
Reasons stopped, hung over Nadya for a second, and Lucas wrapped himself around her and pinned her arms, and then Nadya, now screamingly angry herself, smashed her a second time in the forehead, and Reasons went limp.
Lucas was shouting 'Whoa, whoa, whoa' at Nadya, who came out of the booth with the napkin holder, looking for a third shot, and Lucas let go of Reasons with one arm, put his hand in Nadya's face, and catapulted her back into the booth.
'Whoa!' he shouted, and the combination of the shout and the impact she took at the back of the booth stopped her. Lucas pivoted away, with Reasons still wrapped up. She was conscious, but loopy, like a fighter who's been tagged hard, but not quite dropped.
The restaurant manager was running toward them and Lucas said, 'I'm a state cop. Call the police, tell them to get a car up here.'
Without a word, the woman turned and ran the other way. The waitress was back on her feet, holding her coffee-stained shirt away from herself, saying, 'I'm really fucked up. I'm really fucked up.'
'Are you burned?' Lucas asked.
'Look at my blouse. This is like three days old,' she said, and Lucas decided that if she was burned, she wasn't burned badly. Lucas looked back at Nadya, said, 'Stay in the booth,' and pushed Reasons further away, put her in another booth, and blocked it with his body.
'Jesus…'
