I Shall Not Want

They made Hadley talk to the mayor, too; she had lived in California for fifteen years, and Californians believed in that sort of stuff.

The deputy chief kept them updated with calls to Kevin's cell phone. 'He's gone into surgery.' That was good. 'His heart stopped again.' That was bad. 'He survived surgery.' Hadley and Noble thought that was good. Eric thought it was pretty thin gruel. 'Survived?' Eric said. 'What's that, the minimal? Like batting.100?'

Kevin didn't say much. Thinking about the chief dying made him feel sick to his stomach. His head was stuffed with death: the sprawled and bloody bodies of the Punta Diablo gang members, the slack- mouthed corpse of the CFS woman, and the mutilated remains of Amado Esfuentes. He couldn't seem to stop tears from rolling down his cheeks at odd moments. One of the staties made a crack, but Eric McCrea dragged him aside and said something to shut him up.

Eventually, they finished. One after another, the counselors and investigators and technicians and morticians rolled away down the drive, until it was only the MKPD and it was time to go.

'Get in the car,' Hadley called from behind the wheel of her cruiser.

He was standing in the spot where his squad car had been. 'MacAuley took your unit,' she went on. 'For God's sake, let's get out of here and get something to eat. I'm starving.'

He got in. He wasn't sure he could eat anything. He looked out the window while she drove, the green fields, purpled with loosestrife and thistles, the indigo mountains standing against the long western rays of the sun. It didn't seem right, that everything went on, beautiful and oblivious, while people who had been alive this morning lay on cold slabs this evening.

'What was the last word from the dep?' Hadley's voice was quiet.

'He's on a ventilator. He hasn't regained consciousness.'

Hadley worried her lower lip. On another occasion, he would've thought it was hot. 'Sometimes, that's good,' she said. 'You know. Like a healing sleep.'

'Yeah.'

They both watched the countryside unfold as they rolled up and down the Cossayuharie hills. Suddenly, she said, 'You got anything to eat at your place, Flynn?'

'Uh… yeah. Frozen meals. Leftover pizza.'

'Good. Give me directions.' She looked over at him. His confusion must have been plain. 'I just… I can't face my kids and my granddad yet. And I sure as hell don't want to hang out someplace where anybody can gawk at my uniform.' She was right. The word had probably already gotten out. Whoever didn't know about the shooting already would get the news tomorrow, when the Post-Star hit the doorstep. 'So let's go eat at your place.' She glanced at him again. 'You don't live with your parents, do you?'

He wheezed a laugh. 'No.'

He told her how to reach his duplex in Fort Henry. He had the top half of a Depression-era workingman's house, plain as crockery, but the street was quiet and shady and he had garage space for his Aztek.

'Nice.' Hadley parked in front of his space and dropped her rig in her cruiser's lockbox. Upstairs, he showed her the kitchen and excused himself to secure his own gun. 'Get changed,' she said. 'Believe me, if I could get out of this damn outfit, I would.'

He locked up his.44 and traded his uniform for baggy shorts and a T-shirt. It felt weird, stripping with her right down the hall in the kitchen. By the time he got back, she'd turned on the oven, found his stash of Miller's amber ale, and unwrapped four packages of frozen stuffed potatoes. 'You know,' she said, 'these aren't that hard to make from scratch. Takes six minutes to nuke a potato.'

He held out a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. 'You want to borrow these? I mean, they'll be big, but the shorts have a drawstring.' She stared at the clothes. He felt his face heat up. It had seemed like a good idea in the bedroom.

'Yeah,' she said, finally. 'I do.'

He showed her the bathroom. Got the potatoes in the oven. Tried very hard not to imagine her undressing. Opened a beer. At least he wasn't feeling so stone-cold miserable anymore. It was hard to be depressed and awkward at the same time.

He heard the toilet flush. She was laughing. Oh, shit. The bathroom door opened. 'Flynn,' she said, 'you've got the rules of admissible evidence taped to the inside lid of your toilet seat.' She laughed some more. 'That's about the geekiest thing I've ever seen.'

'It was from a long time ago,' he protested. 'I was studying. I forgot to take it down.'

She picked up her beer. His T-shirt hung off her like a beach cover-up. 'I bet you put a new topic there every week.' She grinned at him. 'Maybe I ought to try that with Hudson. He's been having trouble with his fractions.' She wandered out the other end of the kitchen, where a table and four chairs divided his small living room from the enclosed porch. 'Wow. You have a ton of books. Maybe I should just send Hudson over here. Let you tutor him.'

'Sure,' he said. 'I like kids.' He rolled open the glass door to the porch.

She rested her bottle on one of his bookcases. 'That's because you are one.'

He picked up her beer. 'Come out to the porch. It's cooler.'

She sat on the rattan couch that used to be his parents' and he stretched out in an Adirondack chair that had been his oldest brother's shop project. They propped their feet up on the rattan coffee table. The early evening breeze sighed through the screens. They sat in silence, drinking their beers. Hadley studied the beads of condensation rolling down the amber glass.

'I'm going to quit the force,' she said.

He stared at her. 'What?'

'It hit me, today.' She looked at him. 'What the chief told me. This isn't like working at an insurance office or a restaurant. This is like signing up for the army. People get killed.'

No officer on the MKPD has died on the job since 1979.'

'Thank you, Kevin,' she singsonged. Her voice hardened. 'That statistic's about to change.'

He pushed himself out of his chair. He couldn't sit still and talk about this at the same time. 'The chief will be fine.'

'We don't know that! Even if he lives, he could be disabled, or have brain damage from his heart stopping so many times, or-'

'Don't. Please, don't.' He crossed to one screened-in window, then another.

'I'm sorry.' She got up herself, now, and blocked his pacing. 'I'm sorry.' She looked up at him. 'It's different for you. To you, it's still like a kid's game of shoot-'em-up.'

'No,' he said. 'It's not.'

She dropped her eyes. 'No,' she said. 'It's not. I'm sorry.'

He took a step closer to her. 'And for once and for all, I'm not a kid.'

'No.' She looked up at him again. 'You're not.'

Then-he had no idea how-she was in his arms and he was hoisting her up, crushing her against him, and they were devouring each other, kissing, biting, sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

'I don't want to be alone tonight,' Hadley gasped. 'I don't want to be alone.'

'No. No.'

She hugged her arms and legs around him so tightly she nearly cut off his circulation. 'Take me into your bedroom. Now.'

'Yes. Oh. Yeah.' He staggered down the hallway, and then they were in his room, then they were throwing off their clothes, then they were in his bed, and-oh my God-she was hotter, softer, wetter, sweeter than anything he could have imagined. He almost lost it, trying to touch her everywhere at the same time, but she slowed him down, said, 'Here' and 'Like this,' and, 'Oh, yes, that's just right.' Let her show you what she likes, he had read, so he did. He was good at following directions, damn good, maybe, because she shook and then she clutched at him and then she arched off his bed, her voice strangling in her throat, and he felt amazed and powerful and tender all at the same time. Then she drew him over her and wrapped her