AGGIE AND GRADY'S FIRST SHIFT
removed from FLASH, Chapter One
During the summer vacation schedule Aggie had ended up
paired with Ryan Grady for one shift, possibly as one of Sheriff Bishop’s
social experiments, possibly because there really was no other choice. It
hadn’t been nearly as bad as she had expected.
The only excitement of the night was a drunk and disorderly complaint,
and by the time they got to the scene the poor old fellow, who had to be eighty if he was a day, was
standing in the middle of the street in his underpants, chucking rocks at the
streetlight and singing “Son of a Preacher Man” at the top of his lungs. A small crowd had gathered, and lights were
on all around the block. Ryan had turned
off the flasher bar, approached the man casually with hands in pockets, and
chatted with him for awhile. Then
instead of taking him back across the bridge to the drunk tank, as procedure
dictated, he’d driven the guy home and made him a pot of coffee. Aggie would have done much the same thing.
They took their dinner break at Pete’s Place, and over
hamburgers and crispy fries Aggie told him that she liked the way he’d handled
that. He shrugged. “That’s just old Jacoby. He spent his whole
life running a shrimp boat, about the hardest work there is I guess. Lost his wife to Alzheimer’s last year, and
his only son to lung cancer two years before that. I figure if he wants to get shit-faced and
throw rocks at the moon every now and
then, he’s entitled.”
Aggie smiled.
“Yeah, I know.” By then she knew
just about everyone on the island, and most of their stories.
He said, “So all this must seem pretty tame to a big-city
cop like you. How’d you end up here
anyway? Everybody wants to know.”
She could have blown him off with a flip reply, like she
usually did, but for some reason that night she was in a sharing mood. So she told him about her roommate, and how
she’d joined the force to make a difference, and how the CPD had shown her
nothing except the worst of people, of life, of society. “The worst of it is,” she said, “Is that if you live like that long enough, right in the
middle of it, you start to become the same kind of person you’re supposed to be
protecting society from. I could see it
in the people I worked with, and I could feel it happening to me. And...” she
munched thoughtfully on a French fry as she tried to find the words. “I finally decided that was not what my
grandmother scrimped and saved her egg
money for all those years, to see me turn out like...” She almost said, “like
my mother”, but caught herself just in time.
She wasn’t ready to share that much, although she had the funniest
feeling, looking at him, that if she had it would have been okay. Nonetheless, she let it go with a shrug and
finished, “I’m not a big-city girl. I like tame. I like quiet.
I mean, I know what we do isn’t supposed to be social work but in a way
it kind of is, isn’t it? If we do our
jobs, other people’s lives are better.
And so are ours. At least, that’s the way it should be.”
She expected him to say something stupid and off-hand,
but instead he just nodded, understanding.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’s
why I never left the coast, except for the military, that is. I always figured that
if a man is lucky enough to find where he belongs and what he’s supposed to be
doing, he’d be a fool to mess with that.”
He told her about growing up on the island, and about his
family, and she found him a surprisingly easy man to ride with. At the end of the night he leaned against the
patrol car and smiled at her. “Good
shift,” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied, smiling back. “It was.”
She added, “I’ll write up the report on the D&D if you want.”
“Thanks,” he said, still leaning against the car, making
no move to go. “I’m not that crazy about
paperwork.”
She said, “I know.”
He smiled again, and there was something about his eyes,
about the easy way he looked at her that made her think that if he asked her
out then—if he’d said, “How about getting a cup of coffee?” or “Do you want to
go out for pizza one night?” --she would have said yes. And there was a moment when she thought that
was exactly what he was going to do.
But then he slid his glance away, almost shyly, and when
he looked back at her all he said was, “Well. See you around.” And he walked into the office to check
out. The next day they were back in
separate cars and he was back to being a jerk, and whatever might have started
between them never went any further.
Sometimes Aggie thought about that, and was sorry. But all in all, she supposed it was easier on
everyone not to mess with the status quo.
*****
AGGIE BRIEFS HER TEAM
Removed from THE SOUND OF RUNNING HORSES
Aggie
ran a three-woman police
department and she trusted each one of those women with her life. Back when
she’d still been a deputy with the Murphy County Sheriff’s Department and
Maureen was the only other female in the department, they’d barely been on a
nodding basis. But when Aggie had been
shot, and sent home from the hospital after ten weeks barely able to walk or
feed herself with only a determined Grady and a four month old Flash to take
care of her, Mo had barged her way into Aggie’s house armed with chicken
casseroles and righteous indignation, declaring that no woman wanted a man to
help her to the toilet. She’d shooed Grady away, put the house in order, and
showed up every morning before her shift to help Aggie to the shower, change
the sheets, and leave a meal.
When Aggie
was appointed Chief of Police of Dogleg Island, there was only one choice for
her second in command. Maureen had won the spot not because of her acts of
charity, but because she was the only person Aggie knew who could make Grady
back down.
Sally Ann Hodges was a beauty-school drop out who’d grown
up on Dogleg, knew everyone in town, and was quite possibly the most efficient
person Aggie had ever met. Her father was the island’s only residential real
estate broker, which explained how Sally Ann could afford her own one-bedroom
cottage two blocks from the beach on what the township of Dogleg Island paid
her. Though she wouldn’t be
twenty-one for another two months, she ran the administrative aspects of the
office with such ease that Aggie often thought of herself as little more than a
figurehead. The office was open six days
a week from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., and, even though she was only supposed
to work five of those days, Sally Ann
was there every morning at seven.
The Dogleg Island Police Department, which included Flash,
worked as a team, and it was important to Aggie that every member of that team
be kept as up-to-date as possible. So
she called a staff meeting that morning at eight o’clock for the sole purpose
of bringing her team up to date.
“The bad news is,” she announced, “no paid lifeguard
program. The good news is, no shark
attack, either, at least not yet. Sally
Ann, put in a call to the victim
sometime today, I want to follow up personally.
Good PR and all. We’ve got another three weeks until the end of the
tourist season so let’s do our best to avoid a
Jaws-like panic, okay?”
Maureen, leaning against the edge of her desk with her
arms folded, gave a grunt of laughter that shook her bosom. “That child never
even heard of Jaws.”
Sally Ann rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s heard of Jaws. It’s a theme park ride, for heaven’s sake.”
Aggie hid her amusement behind her coffee cup. She was also leaning against her desk, since
the office was too small to encourage sitting when everyone was there at once,
and Flash stood alertly at her side. He
knew these meetings never lasted long, and he was ready to go on patrol.
Aggie took a sip of coffee and added, “There’s more good
news. The district attorney’s office will be announcing later today that Roy
Briggs will begin serving a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of
parole as soon as the paperwork is signed.
So we can say adios to another bad guy and put this case behind us.”
Maureen gave a grim nod of satisfaction and Sally Ann
said, “Good. I’m glad for you, Chief
Malone, and for Captain Grady.”
Aggie smiled.
“Thank you, Sally Ann. In other
good news, Jerome Bishop was officially sworn in this morning in a private
ceremony as Sheriff of Murphy County.”
Maureen broke into a broad smile, her white teeth flashing.
“Now, that is good news if I ever
heard it. Never met a finer man.”
“He’ll be
deputizing all the local police officers over the next few days,” Aggie told
her. “Call the office and see when is a
good time for you to come in and take the oath, but if you go today, Grady said
there’s cake. And Sally Ann, let’s send a congratulations card,
something tasteful and dignified, you know what I mean. We’ll all sign it.”
Sally Ann nodded, scribbling a note to herself. Flash
grinned up at Aggie. So far the meeting
was making perfect sense to him. The
sharks were under control, the bad guys were going to prison, and the good guys
were getting cake. But his grin faded a
little as he sensed Aggie’s change of mood.
She said, her tone sobering, “Okay, the rest of this
doesn’t leave this room. Yesterday
afternoon Roger Darby, a ranger with the park service, was assaulted with a
club on Wild Horse Island by a person or persons unknown and rendered
unconscious.” She lifted a reassuring
hand at Sally Ann’s gasp of concern.
“He’s okay. He was treated and
released last night, the FDLE is investigating, and the park is open
today. If anyone inquires, refer them to
the investigating agency. But that’s not
the part I want you to keep quiet. In
the course of investigating the assault, Flash...” She dropped her hand to Flash’s head, and he
pressed against it, leaning his shoulder into her leg. “Discovered the body of
a young woman buried in a shallow grave near the marsh.”
Sally Ann’s eyes went big behind her glasses. “Do you mean like a skeleton?”
Aggie shook her head.
“No, we think the death was recent, maybe only a few days ago.”
“Any idea who killed her?” demanded Maureen.
Aggie sipped her coffee.
“We’re not sure how she died.
We’re waiting for the autopsy. We
think she might have been homeless, camping illegally. But until we know for sure, or until we’ve
given up reasonable expectation of making an ID, the investigator has asked us
not to release any information. This
isn’t our case. Grady and I—and Flash,
of course—are just witnesses. But I
wanted you all to know what was going on.”
“Lord Jesus,” muttered Maureen, poking out her lower lip
in a thoroughly unhappy fashion. “The
things that go on in this world.”
“I couldn’t agree more, Mo,” said Aggie. She finished her coffee and set the mug on
the desk with a muted thump. “Okay,
let’s hit the streets. Mo, I want you at
the corner of Ocean and Main between ten and noon, and if anybody even looks
like they’re thinking about ignoring that ‘pedestrian crossing sign’, nail them
to the cross. I mean it, a kid almost
got hit there last week. After lunch,
set up at Island and Sea Breeze. I’m
tired of people flying across that bridge like they’re on the interstate when
they’ve got a good half mile warning that the speed limit on the island is
thirty-five. And if anybody asks whether
we have a quota, the answer is yes, we do—but it only applies to people who
actually break the law.”
Maureen grinned and slapped her ticket book against her
palm as she sauntered toward the door.
“I do love me a day full of citations,” she said.
*****
GRADY TEACHES A CLASS
Removed from THE SOUND OF RUNNING HORSES
The car was a white Chrysler with broken
tail light. Conditions were dry, traffic
was moderate, and the time was two-forty-five in the afternoon. As they watched, the Chrysler approach a stop
sign, slowed, and made a right turn without stopping.
Grady said, “Deputy Brown, take it.”
“Yes, sir!” The
young man shot to his feet.
“Please remain seated while inside your patrol car,
Deputy,” Grady said mildly, and a rustle of
laughter went around the room.
Sam Brown flushed and sank back to his chair. “Yes, sir.
Lights and sirens, sir.”
Grady clicked the computer mouse and the video resumed,
sound muted. After a few hundred yards,
the white car pulled over in front of a school crossing sign. Grady stopped the playback.
“Go on,” he said to Brown.
Brown cleared his throat.
“Well, first I’m going to run his tag.”
“Wrong,” Grady said.
He looked around the room.
“Anybody?”
Several hands went up and Grady nodded to one of the
female recruits. She said, “First, I’d
radio in my position and a description of the vehicle.”
“Yes sir,” Sam said quickly. “I mean, I thought I’d already done
that. Before I made the stop.”
“Let’s think a little faster next time, Brown,” said
Grady. “Okay, you’ve run his tag and
found out it’s associated with a driver who has two previous DUIs and a bench
warrant out for failure to appear. Now
what?”
“I take the suspect into custody, sir. I mean,” he added
quickly, “first I radio in my findings and my intention, and then I approach
the vehicle and ask for identification.”
Grady started the video again and they watched as the
Chrysler suddenly swung out into traffic, tires squealing, and took off
at a high rate of speed. “Now
what?” demanded Grady.
“I initiate
pursuit, sir,” said Brown quickly.
Others in the room shifted restlessly, eager to speak up,
and Grady gave them a chance.
“He’s got an outstanding!
He’s going to jail!”
“Give chase!”
“Call for rolling roadblocks! He’s probably armed.”
Grady jabbed a button on the computer angrily and stopped
the fleeing vehicle in a blur of motion as it approached an intersection. “Why not just shoot out the tires?” he
demanded, dark-eyed.
Eyes dropped around the room beneath his hard gaze until
finally someone spoke up. “Because I
might miss, sir.”
That was Brown, and Grady looked at him without
compassion. “First smart thing you’ve said all day, Brown. Worse yet, you might not miss, causing the
driver to lose control and drive up onto the sidewalk. Can anybody tell me why we don’t want that to
happen?”
No one spoke this time, not because they didn’t know the
answer but because they could tell by the look on Grady’s face that whatever
they said, it would not be good enough.
Grady pushed away from the table against which he had
been leaning and jabbed a finger at the frozen video projected on the screen
before them. “What time is it?”
The blurred ticker at the bottom of the screen reported
the time as 14:54, and someone reported the same.
Grady’s voice was low and tense. “And where are you?”
“Sir,” someone volunteered, “hot pursuit law permits an
officer to pursue a suspect beyond his jurisdiction once it’s become clear the
suspect’s intention is to evade arrest.”
Grady shouted, “Where the hell are you ?”
He swung around, clicked the mouse again, and they
watched in silence as dashboard video from the pursuing patrol car showed the
Chrysler barreling through the intersection, swerving hard to turn, and
clipping a mini-van head on. The van
spun into traffic where it collided with a school bus that was making a left
turn out of the school parking lot.
Grady turned up the volume of the video and, beneath the wail of the
siren and the gasping shouts of the pursuing officer, the horrified screams of
the bystanders could be clearly heard.
Grady stopped the
video and turned back to his audience.
“You were in a school zone,” he said distinctly, “at two-forty-five in
the afternoon on a school day. Three children were taken to the hospital that
day. The driver of the mini-van did not
survive. She left behind a two year old
daughter.”
He paused a moment to let this sink in and then stared
directly at Brown. “My wife
could have been on that road,” he said lowly. He drew in a quick, short breath, pressed his
lips together hard for a moment. Then he
swept the group until he found one of the recruits who had spoken up earlier
and directed the next words, distinct and measured, to him. “Your children
could have been on that bus.”
He said nothing else for a moment. When he spoke again it was in a controlled,
slightly more detached tone. “You’ve all
taken the Academy class on traffic stops, folks. You’ve all done these exercises. The purpose of this course is to evaluate
your judgment. What do you say you start
showing a little before I put you on the road where real families could be in
danger?”
He turned back to
the computer and added flatly, “The
internal policy of the Murphy County Sheriff’s Department is to break off
pursuit of any non-violent offender if chase makes public streets too
dangerous. Read your manual. Okay, new scenario.”
But it was a moment or two before he could cue up the
next video, because it took him that long to get his hands to stop shaking.
Pete’s Place Bar and Grill was located on Island Drive,
convenient to the bridge for those who wanted to drive over from the mainland
for a quick bite, and convenient to the island locals, for many of whom it was
a second home. It specialized in
seafood, sandwiches, beer and—as far as Flash was concerned anyway—the world’s
best hamburger. It was a big rambling
place with multiple outdoor patios and upstairs decks, and its parking lot was
almost always full. Today was no
exception.
Flash sprang out of the window as soon as Aggie stopped
the car, and led the way to the entrance at a brisk pace, tail waving. A lot of people called out, “Yo, Flash!” and
“Hey, pooch!” when he came in, and other people turned on their barstools or
leaned out from their tables to grin at him.
Flash barked once, just to be polite, and also to let Pete know he was
here. Pete called from behind the bar,
“With you in a minute, Flash.” And one
of the waitresses knelt down to ruffle his fur and kiss his head. Flash loved going to Pete’s Place. His fur smelled like onion rings and fried
shrimp for hours after leaving.
Aggie came up behind him and said, “Have you got anything
on the upstairs deck, Sherry?”
“Sure, Chief.” The waitress stood and grabbed a menu from
the hostess stand. “What can I get you
to drink?”
“I’d kill for a glass of lemonade.”
“Extra large, coming up.”
The three of them moved out onto the patio and started up
the stairs to the shaded deck where big ceiling fans broke up the muggy air
with a cool breeze and tall palms rustled and clattered outside the rail. There were no televisions up here so it
wasn’t very crowded, and it was a lot quieter than it had been inside.
Aggie said, “Is Mark working today?”
“I think he’s covering the west patio.”
“Ask him to come
up when he gets a chance, will you? I
want to talk to him about something.”
“Sure thing, Chief Malone.” Sherry put the menu on a rough cedar table
right beneath a big ceiling fan. “I’ll
be right back with that lemonade.”
“Thanks Sherry,” Aggie said as she slid onto the
bench. Flash jumped up onto the bench
opposite her and sat down to wait. “And
don’t forget—“
“To wash my hands after playing with the dog, I know,”
Sherry supplied with a grin and gave Flash’s chin a last scratch before she
left. “Health code.”
“Not,” Aggie assured Flash sincerely when she was gone,
“that you’re not the cleanest thing she’s probably touched all day, and I don’t
mean to insult you. But we’re in the
ordinance enforcement business.”
Since Flash didn’t really understand what it was to be
insulted, he just grinned at her and turned to look out over the railing. That was when he heard that sound—the one
that Grady was so interested in, the one they’d both heard on Wild Horse Island
yesterday—and he swiveled his head in that direction. But before he could
decide whether or not this was something Aggie needed to be alerted to, Lorraine
swooped in, all sparkling earrings and swirling colors, with her spiky purple
hair and magenta fingernails. She placed
a metal bowl filled with ice water on the floor beside Flash and tugged his ear
affectionately. Flash sprang down and
started to slurp up the water. Next to
the hamburgers, the water at Pete’s Place was the best thing on the menu, and
the way the little squares of ice crunched between his teeth was amazing.
“How’re you doing, Flash?” Lorraine greeted him as she
took his place on the bench opposite Aggie.
Flash looked up from the water to smile at her, and that
was when he saw, between the bars of the railing, Mark on the patio below. Mark pulled his apron over his head and
stashed it behind the patio bar, then moved at a quick pace toward the parking
lot. Flash was disappointed. Mark was
the only one, besides Pete, who always remembered to serve his hamburger with
one leaf of lettuce and no ketchup.
“And more
importantly...” Lorraine went on,
thunking a big book filled with fabric samples in front of Aggie. “How’s my favorite sister-in-law?”
Aggie said,
“Unless those are samples for new summer uniforms for the Dogleg Island
Police Department, I am not interested.
I’m looking for Bermuda shorts, khaki or light blue, and white short-sleeved,
open collar shirts, wicking fabric only.
What’ve you got?”
“Sounds cute,” Lorraine said. “I can’t wait to see Mo in Bermuda
shorts.” She opened the book to a swatch
of sand-colored damask . “What do you think of this one for the sofa?”
“Black and white dog hair,” Aggie said. “It’s a non-starter.” She turned the page. “That one’s nice.”
She
pointed at random to a tropical print, and looked up as Sherry returned with
her lemonade.
“I told Mark you were looking for him, Chief Malone,”
Sherry said. “He said he’d be up in a
minute.”
Flash looked up, interested, and then back down at the
patio. Mark wasn’t there.
Sherry placed another tall glass, already weeping with
condensation, in front of Lorraine, this
one filled with sweet tea. “Pete
said to give him five minutes on your
amberjack.” She smiled and retrieved the
menu. “It’s really good. Anything else?”
“We’re good,
honey, thanks,” Lorraine said, sipping her tea.
“Will you tell Lindy on your way down that table twenty-nine needs more
napkins?”
“Sure thing, Ms. Grady.”
Aggie had to smile.
The way Sherry referred to Pete by his first name and Lorraine by her
title was evidence, if anyone had doubts, about who was really in charge
here. But even more telling was the fact
that Lorraine had noticed from across the room and without even looking up that
table twenty nine needed more napkins.
Aggie said, sipping her lemonade, “Ryan is driving me
crazy about that whole wedding reception thing.
He says it was his mother’s idea but why do I get the feeling he’s
really behind the whole thing?”
Lorraine gave an rueful half-grin. “Of course he is, honey. He’s been planning it since before you got
out of the hospital.”
“Well, it think
it’s silly. All that trouble, all that
expense, and for what?”
“The Grady men
are funny,” Lorraine said. Her tone was
indulgent. “Tough as nails on the outside but just like melted chocolate on the
inside.”
Aggie sighed. “I
don’t know, Lorraine. I just don’t get
this whole family thing. Every time we go
to Lucy’s for dinner I don’t know whether I’m supposed to bring something and
if I am whether it’s supposed to be homemade and half the time when I do bring something she doesn’t even put
it on the table.” Lucy was Grady and
Pete’s sister, the middle child, who lived with her husband and her pre-school
twin boys in a neat brick ranch house on half an acre of manicured lawn on the
mainland. Her husband was a CPA who did
all their taxes for free but had never spoken more than half a dozen words to
Aggie. Lucy was.. well, Lucy. “And those boys of hers,” Aggie went on,
repressing a shudder. “I swear they’re
enough to make me want to have a hysterectomy.”
She caught herself abruptly, apology already forming on her lips. Lorraine was a survivor of uterine cancer,
and she and Pete had never had children.
But Lorraine just chuckled. “Honey, those monsters are enough to make
anybody think about a hysterectomy—even Pete.”
Aggie went on, “And his
mother treats me like she’s known me all her life and I don’t even know
what to call her. Now what am I supposed
to do at this wedding party thing? Wear a white dress and dance with his
father? I just don’t get it. I don’t
think I know how to behave around a real family.”
Lorraine sipped her tea.
“Call her Lil. That’s her name.
And I think you know a lot more about real families than you think you do. Speaking of which...”
Lorraine put down
her glass and smiled at Aggie. Her smile
was a little distracted, almost false, and there was a trace of uneasiness in
her eyes. She rubbed a bead of moisture
from the outside of her glass in a gesture that was absent and nervous. “Have you got a minute to talk?”
“Sure,” said Aggie.
Even Flash could sense the change in Lorraine’s mood and he stopped
crunching ice, looking up at her in
concern. “Everything okay?”
Lorraine laced her fingers together atop the table. “It’s just that it’s been awhile since we sat
down and talked, and –“
Aggie’s phone rang and she winced. She glanced at the i.d., mouthed Sorry to Lorraine, and answered it,
“Malone.”
In another moment she said, “Yeah, okay, I’m on my way.”
She looked apologetically at Lorraine as she stood. Flash looked over his shoulder for his
hamburger. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Why is it nothing ever happens around here
except at lunch time? We’ve got a
complaint of a woman flashing her boobs on the beach causing a big scene, and
Mo is on another call. I’ve got to go. Tell Pete I’m sorry about the sandwich. I’ll try to make it by later.” She hesitated. “Did you want to talk about something?”
She waved a dismissing hand. “It’s nothing.” She smiled.
“Not important. I’ll catch you later.
You’d better hurry before you miss the show.”
Aggie replied with a roll of her eyes. “Right.
Wouldn’t want that to happen. Come on, Flash.”
It would never occur to Flash to shirk his duty, but he
was sorry about the hamburger. He was
sorry about leaving Lorraine, too, because even he could tell she was lying and
that was something she almost never did.
Once she’d looked Aggie straight in the eye and told her she had to work
on Aggie’s birthday when in fact she was planning a surprise party for Aggie at
Pete’s Place. That turned out to be the
good kind of lie, the kind that made Aggie laugh. And there was cake. Flash didn’t think cake was involved this
time and that bothered him. But what bothered him even more was that Aggie
hadn’t figured that out.
*****
AN EVENING AT HOME
removed from THE SOUND OF RUNNING HORSES
They never did get lunch that
day, but it turned out okay because when they got home Grady was taking a pizza
out of its box and the whole house was filled with the smell of Italian spices,
tomato sauce and yeasty bread. Aggie called out, “You are a prince among
men, Ryan Grady!”
He called back, “Yes, I am!”
Aggie hurried upstairs to change
her clothes and Flash went with her because she liked to try to run up the stairs
and it was his job to make sure she didn’t fall. Sometimes she only made it up three stairs
before she had to sit down, clinging to the rail and breathing hard while Flash
waited patiently for her to get up.
Grady usually watched from behind the kitchen door where she couldn’t
see him, his knuckles white with holding on to the door frame and his face
scrunched up because he wanted to run and help her up. He never did, of course. That was Flash’s job. Today Aggie dashed up five steps before she
stopped, wheezing and clinging to the rail but giving Flash the thumbs-up. “Getting better,” she managed, and went up
the rest of the steps more slowly, using both hands to hold onto the rail.
Aggie came back down wearing
baggy shorts and a faded Murphy County Sheriff’s Department tee shirt, no
shoes, no wig. She hugged Ryan from
behind and kissed his neck. “But we’re
supposed to be eating healthy,” she said.
He leaned backward to kiss the
corner of her eye, holding up a white paper take-out bag. “I also got salads,” he said.
She got a beer from the
refrigerator for him and a sparkling water for herself while he dished out the
salads and put pizza on the plates.
Grady transferred two slices—the kind without onions or pepperoni, just
ground beef and cheese, the way Flash liked it—to Flash’s bowl and added some
lettuce. Flash waited impatiently for
it to cool.
“Any news from the FDLE?” Aggie
asked.
“Still waiting for the M.E.’s
report, but according to JC entomological evidence puts the time of death less
than five days ago. “
Aggie helped herself to a slice
of pizza from one of the plates and took a bite. “That’s bugs, right?”
“Right.” Grady put Flash’s bowl on the floor and
picked up his own plate. “Also they got
a match to Darby on the blood they found on the broken oar, no surprise there,
and even lifted some fingerprints.
They’re not showing up in the system, though, at least not yet. Did you get any lunch?”
“Almost. Pete has a new sandwich. But I had to go arrest a flasher before I
could try it. Flash and I stopped for ice cream this afternoon though.”
He put another slice of pizza on
her plate. “Do you want to watch the
news?”
“Sure.” Aggie took another bite of pizza and they
carried their plates into the living room.
“How was your first class?”
“Terrific. The kids are crazy about me, but then what’s
not to love?” He pointed the remote
control at the television and turned the volume down to a background level. He added, “I really suck at it.”
“You’re just saying that because
you don’t want to do it.”
He said, “I’m saying that
because one day I might have to work with one of those kids who was trained by
me, and that scares the hell out of me.”
Aggie paused with the pizza
slice halfway to her mouth, looking concerned, but he interrupted before she
could say anything. “How was your day? Other than the flasher, of course.”
“I went by to see Roger
Darby. He’s really shaken up.”
“I don’t blame him. I feel like
crap that he even got involved.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It’s his job.
Anyway, I think what really upset him was JC coming by last night to
interview him about the dead woman. I
guess it went from being an attack from behind to an attempted murder in his
mind, then.”
Grady chewed and nodded
thoughtfully. “Not out of the question.
You’ve got to admit, it’s fairly likely the same person did both crimes.”
“Unless,” she agreed, “that
deserted island has suddenly become a refuge for criminals. On the other
hand...” She gave a small shrug. “If you
were a criminal, that’d would be a pretty good place to hide out.”
“No way,” replied Grady. “Criminals are too lazy to rough it in the
wilderness like that. They’d rather hang
out downtown and make my life miserable.”
“Or get falling-down drunk on
the beach and try to auction off their bikini top to the highest bidder,”
Aggie
agreed, which made Grady chuckle.
Aggie ate her salad and finished
a slice of pizza. Grady took the remaining pizza from her plate
and almost finished his salad. Flash came
in and waited for the crusts.
They watched the news for
awhile: a hostage situation in Minnesota, a bomb threat in Georgia, a cop
gunned down in a liquor robbery, a teenage girl from Maine believed to be
kidnapped by someone she met online.
Grady turned the television off.
Aggie was glad.
She said, “Do you want to watch
a movie?”
“Sure. You pick one out; I’ll clean up the kitchen.”
Flash went with Grady as he took
the dishes to the dishwasher, just in case there were any leftovers that needed
to be taken care of, and when they came back Aggie had a movie ready to
go. Flash couldn’t quite follow the
plot, but it made Aggie laugh a lot.
Grady pretended to watch, and he smiled when she did, but mostly his
eyes were on her fingers, which were
curled inside of his, and the way the light from the setting sun that poured
through the tall windows glinted off the two gold rings that were nestled there
side by side. At one point he said, “I
like this.”
She glanced at him. “The movie?”
“Being married,” he said.
She smiled and snuggled against
him, her head on his shoulder. “We
forgot to open the champagne,” she murmured.
“Let’s save it until we have
something to celebrate.”
She looked up with a question in
her eyes but he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed her wedding
band. “Shh,” he said. “This is the good part.”
“The movie?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Grady,
smiling. “The movie.”
Aggie settled back to watch the
images flickering the screen, and Grady watched the play of light across her
face, and Flash stretched out on the sofa beside them and closed his eyes,
perfectly content. Sometimes, he had
learned, you had to take the quiet times where you could find them, because you
never knew how long they were going to last in their business.
I can not wait! Thanks for sharing the out takes. Is is hard to remember to add details from these to the part you keep?
ReplyDeleteBillie, it's very hard! Even harder is remembering NOT to refer to things I've taken out of the books that no one knows but me:)
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