She shook her head. “Just some dude I like.”
“What’s his name?” Mazzetti found himself speaking slowly and loudly.
Miss Brison turned her pretty face up to his and said, “I call him Chuck.”
“Chuck what?”
She shook her head. “His name isn’t even Chuck. That’s just what I call him.”
“Why?”
“Because he looks like a Chuck to me.” As she spoke, she leaned forward and the robe opened, exposing the sexy white nightgown, only now her right breast had fallen loose.
Christina reached over and closed up the bathrobe and tied the belt in a tight bow. “There you go, dear.” She waited until Miss Brison slowly turned her way.
“Did you or Chuck see the shooters?”
“What shooters?”
“The ones that shot up the house across the street.”
“The house across the street was shot up?”
“You didn’t hear it?”
She shook her head. “We was in the back, and we didn’t hear nothing.”
Christina said, “What are you using, Miss Brison?”
“What’d you mean?”
“Please, we’ve been polite and you’re not in trouble, but I’m worried about you. What drugs are you on?”
Miss Brison smiled and reached up to touch Christina’s face softly. “You’re nice. I like you.”
“What are you using?”
“I took a tab.”
“A tab of what?”
She just pointed to a little dish on a bookshelf.
Mazzetti stood up and checked in the dish. There were a dozen little speckled pills that seemed familiar. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Chuck gave ‘em to me. I like them.”
He looked at Christina, who shrugged. He took the dish and stepped into the bathroom. He took one tablet as a sample but dumped the rest down the toilet. He wasn’t about to arrest this woman, no cop would, but he didn’t want her to overdose, and they were clearly contraband. Toilets served as the biggest evidence receptacles in the whole city.
Twenty-five
Patty Levine was not only exhausted, she had just taken two Ambien, knowing that this big lump that was her boyfriend, Tony Mazzetti, would either slide off her couch and trudge to bed or slide off the couch and drive home to sleep. She realized soon after they met that after long days at work neither of them was in any mood to make love. She also knew she was in no mood to stare up at the ceiling of her bedroom wishing she could fall asleep. The Ambien was her insurance against that.
She liked just sitting there on the couch with Tony’s head in her lap, fiddling with his hair. It seemed normal for a couple to do something like that. She wasn’t used to normal. Her life had been interesting, exciting, tiring, and unconventional, but never too normal. Meeting so late for a quick meal was one measure of her odd hours.
She said, “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“You have to be thinking about something.”
He sighed.
“You’re thinking about work, right?”
“I’m sorry, baby, but that’s years of habit. I think about work every night. It might take a while to change.”
She smiled. “Don’t sweat it, Tony. I think about work too. I just don’t want us to only talk about work at night.”
He sat up to look at her. “I know, and I agree.”
“How’s your triple shooting going?”
“If not for your invitation for a late dinner and my biological need for food and sleep, I’d be out there right now. No way can I have a triple murder unsolved on my watch.”
“You’ll find a way to clear it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ll catch the shooters.”
“Hope so, but a witness or two would be helpful.”
“Anyone talking?”
“No one. Even had one guy run from me.”
“Why’d he run?”
“Who knows. Married, at a girlfriend’s. Drug dealer. White guy in that neighborhood.”
“It’s not against the law.”
“No, but it’s suspicious.”
Patty sighed and changed the subject. “Anything I should know about the two files John and I took from you?”
He paused.
Patty said, “What, you worried about Stall trying to steal something?”
“No, not at all. I’m worried about him turning a simple suicide or OD into some wild-ass conspiracy.”
“What are you talking about, Tony?”
“The lab results aren’t in yet, but there are a couple of links between the two girls.”
“Like what?”
“The X in their systems and polyethylene glycol.”
“What’s polyethylene glycol?
“The chemical on Durex condoms.”
“So spring breakers had sex and did drugs.”
“Exactly.”
“But something made you notice it, so we can’t ignore it.”
Mazzetti said, “I’d like a better idea about the X. If it was from the same source.”
“We don’t have any of the actual tabs, do we?”
Mazzetti mumbled. “We might.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The suicide, Kathleen Harding, had a couple of unidentified pills in her purse.”
Patty said, “Please tell me you didn’t toss them out.”
“Oh, hell no.”
She relaxed slightly. “What did the lab say they were?”
“I didn’t turn them over to the lab. She was a suicide. I didn’t see the point. I just stuck them in evidence.”
“The lab would be the smart move.”
“But the fucking lab takes forever.”
She smiled. “I have a way to speed things up sometimes.”
“How?”
“Sweetheart, you don’t want to know.” She ruffled his thinning black hair and shoved him off the couch.
The sun had just popped over the horizon. John Stallings had several files he’d grabbed off Mazzetti’s desk stacked on the front seat of his county-issued Impala. He was still troubled by the idea that a cop could be shady
