The Quickie Read online

  Paul rolled over and kissed my stomach.

  “Hey, wait. We haven’t thought about a name. Any suggestions?” I said.

  “Emmeline,” Paul said. “A little House of Windsor, I know, but if she looks half as regal as her mom, she’s going to need a name that fits. Besides, she has to get a leg up on the competition at Greenridge pre-K.”

  “My, my,” I said. “Sounds like you’ve been thinking about this. But it could be a boy.”

  “Hmm,” Paul said. “Let’s see. Melvin has a certain ring to it, don’t you think? I’ve always been partial to Cornelius. Call him ‘Corny’ for short.”

  I tickled Paul under his arms until he sat up. “You’re the one who’s corny, buster.”

  “Hey, I just thought of the coolest thing this windfall is going to do for us,” he said.

  “We can up our anytime minutes? We’ll be able to simonize now at the car wash?” I said and grinned. This was the way Paul and I used to be — silly.

  “Very funny, Lauren,” Paul said. “I’m serious. You can finally quit that screwed-up job of yours.”

  I stared at him. Paul had always been supportive of my career. Was he serious?

  “I know how important being a cop is to you, and I’ve never said this before,” he said. “But, c’mon. The hours. The smell of death. Do you have any idea how you look when you come home sometimes? God, I hate it. I’ve always hated it, actually. It takes too much out of you.”

  I stared into space, remembering the recent confrontation I’d had with Mike Ortiz. Maybe Paul was right. I loved my job, but family was more important. I’d certainly proved that during the past week.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I finally said. “This is what we’ve always dreamed about. You and me and our baby together. Now it’s here. It’s just . . . wow. It feels surreal. Don’t you think?”

  “You’re my world,” Paul said, tears starting in his eyes. “You always have been, Lauren. This job offer — it’s just an offer. I’ll do whatever you want. Go. Stay. I’ll quit my job, if you want.”

  “Oh, Paul,” I said, wiping his eyes. “Our ship really has come in, hasn’t it?”

  Chapter 68

  MIKE’S DESK WAS EMPTY when I came into the squad room the next morning. When I asked my boss where Mike was, he reminded me of the mandatory two-week leave for officers involved in a shooting.

  As I sat down, I felt another stab of guilt about what I had said to Mike. How do you like that? Mike was traumatized, extremely psychologically and emotionally vulnerable, and I had gone and threatened him. Some partner I was. Some friend.

  I rocked back in my chair, looking around at the sallow walls of the squad room. So I was actually going to leave. It almost seemed crazy, after all the work I’d done to get here. I remembered how intimidated I’d been when I finally received the assignment. Bronx Homicide was one of the busiest and most renowned squads in the world, and I was unsure about what I could contribute.

  But I’d done it. It had taken a lot of hard work, guts, and straight A’s in college Spanish to make a place for myself here, and I’d managed to pull it off.

  But everything I’d accomplished was pretty much gone now, I knew. As I sat there, I could feel it. Or couldn’t feel it, actually. What sustains you as a cop is the pure joy of being one of the good guys. That’s where the movies usually get it wrong. Most cops I knew were good people. The best.

  But with everything that had happened, I’d squandered that feeling. Good guys don’t cheat. Good guys don’t lie.

  Paul was right, I thought, turning on my computer.

  I was a stranger here now. I didn’t belong anymore.

  It was time to get out, before something else happened.

  Chapter 69

  I BROUGHT UP SCOTT’S FILE and, for the better part of an hour, went over all the reports I’d written, every one. Then I planned to go over them again.

  The news of my pregnancy and Paul’s good fortune would cover the reason behind my early retirement, but some cynical eyebrows would still be raised. Definitely the IAB’s. Before I made things official, I needed to make triple sure I’d covered my ass. Not to mention my tracks. And Paul’s.

  I was forty minutes into the paperwork when my LT came out of his office, carrying a set of bolt cutters and a cardboard box. He dropped them both loudly on my desk.

  “I just got a call from the deputy chief’s office,” he said. “Scott’s wife, Brooke, requested that someone clean out Scott’s locker and bring his stuff by her house. You’re elected.”

  Yeah, like I really wanted to see Brooke Thayer again. Wallow a little more in the devastation I’d helped cause that family.

  “What about the guys on his task force?” I said. “Wouldn’t his partner, Roy, like to do it?”

  My boss shook his head.

  “How about you, boss?” I said. “Maybe it would be good for you to get out of the office. Get some sun.”

  Keane tilted his stoic Irish brow at me.

  “As nice as it is of you to think about my well-being,” he said, “Scott’s wife asked specifically for you.”

  I nodded my head. Of course she had. I didn’t really think I’d get off that easy, did I?

  “How’s this? You get that done and take the rest of the day,” my boss said. “I think you came back too early anyway. If you want my opinion. Who knows when your IAB buddies might come back. I was you, I’d milk the dizzy thing for at least another week.”

  “Aye, aye, boss man,” I said, saluting him as I stood.

  I didn’t know why, but I was going to miss Keane.

  The second-floor DETF offices were, thankfully, empty. Good, I thought, going back into the locker room and snipping through Scott’s Master Lock with the cutters. I was starting to realize why cops made people nervous. Guilty people, especially.

  There wasn’t much in Scott’s locker. I removed a spare uniform, a couple of cardboard boxes of .38 rounds, a Kevlar vest. Behind a dusty riot baton, I found a fancy bottle of cologne, Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier.

  I looked over my shoulder to make sure I was still alone before I dabbed some on my wrist. There was a bang as I dizzily head-butted the door. Yep. It was the same stuff Scott had worn that night with me.

  I was lifting out a pair of dress shoes from the floor of the locker when I spotted a fat envelope underneath them. Oh, Jesus!

  I’m not kidding, I dropped the black shoes as if they were burning coals.

  I didn’t want to look in the envelope, but I knew I had to.

  I opened the flap with a pencil. It was money, just as I’d suspected. A lot of it. Four or five fat rubber-banded knots of worn bills. Mostly hundreds and fifties, but there was also an impressive number of twenties and tens.

  Ten, maybe fifteen thousand dollars, I thought as a migraine exploded above my left eye.

  Let’s see, I thought. How does fifteen grand get into a Narcotics cop’s personal locker? Scott didn’t trust banks? The tooth fairy was making precinct rounds?

  Or, more likely, he was bad.

  Scott was a bad cop, wasn’t he?

  “Scott,” I whispered as I stared at the dirty green, crumpled edges of the bills. “Who in God’s name were you?”

  What was I supposed to do now? Hand it in to my boss? Scott’s case was all but closed. Did I really need the lid popping back open? Then I realized the solution was simple.

  I tucked the envelope into the right shoe as far as it would go and dropped the shoes into the box.

  If Brooke wanted to open up that can of worms, so be it, I thought, slamming the locker shut. It was up to her, not me.

  Bringing ugly truths to the forefront was definitely not in my job description anymore.

  Chapter 70

  IT TOOK ME ALMOST AN HOUR in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get out to Brooke’s house in Sunnyside.

  I left my unmarked police car double-parked as I trotted to the front door with Scott’s work possessions. This visit definitely wouldn’t be swe
et, but I was determined to make it as short as humanly possible. After I rang the doorbell, I noticed a child’s chalk drawing of an American flag on the driveway. I rang the doorbell a second time.

  It took me another three minutes of ringing to decide nobody was home. I was tempted to leave the box at the back door with a note, but I couldn’t be cruel to Brooke. I decided to head back to my Impala for a little sit-and-wait, when I heard something muffled and indistinct.

  It was coming from inside the house near the door. I finally identified the noise. Sobs. Somebody was crying in there. Oh, God, not this.

  I knocked on the door this time.

  “Brooke?” I called out. “It’s Lauren Stillwell. I’m here with Scott’s things. Are you all right?”

  The weeping only increased in volume. So I turned the knob and let myself in.

  Brooke was on the stairs curled up into herself. She looked like she was in shock. Her eyes were open, but her face was expressionless. Tears were running down her cheeks.

  I panicked for a second. Had she hurt herself? I looked around for an empty pill bottle. At least there wasn’t any blood.

  “Brooke,” I said. “What is it? What’s going on? It’s Detective Stillwell. Can you talk to me?”

  I kind of patted her tentatively at first, but after a minute of the muted sobbing, I put down Scott’s box and hugged her tightly.

  “There. C’mon. It’s going to be okay,” I said. It wasn’t, but what else could I say?

  The house, I could see, was messy on a level only toddlers could achieve. The toy-strewn living room looked like a page out of an I Spy book. I knelt down on the floor. I spy with my little eye a woman in the midst of a complete nervous breakdown, I thought.

  It took another couple of minutes for Brooke to snap out of it. She finally took a deep breath that probably relieved me more than it did her. I went and found a box of tissues in the pantry.

  “I’m sorry,” Brooke finally said, taking one. “I was napping on the couch. I woke up when you pulled in, and then I looked out and saw you holding his things and . . . it was like it was happening all over again.”

  “I can’t imagine your pain,” I said after a pause.

  Brooke’s tangled blonde hair fell in her face as she bowed her head.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” she said, beginning to cry again. “My mom took the kids, and I still can’t function. I can’t leave the house, answer the phone. I thought the panic attacks would stop after the funeral, but they seem worse now.”

  I struggled for something to say, something that might help her. “Have you looked into group therapy?” I tried.

  “I can’t get into all that,” Brooke said. “My mother-in-law and step-mom help with the kids so much as it is and —”

  “I’m not a psychologist, Brooke,” I said. “But maybe you need to be with people like you, who have lost a spouse. Nobody else can understand what you’re going through. How could they? And don’t worry about leaning on people in order to get better, honey. You’re a parent. You have to heal yourself in order to be there for your kids.”

  I don’t know if Brooke bought my little pep talk, but at least she’d stopped crying and her eyes were focused.

  “Is that what you would do?” she said. Her desperate gaze seized me, pinned me to the wall. “Please tell me what to do. You’re the only one in this whole thing who seems to remotely understand.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. Brooke Thayer was looking to me for guidance? How could I go on and on fooling this woman? How could I just stand there, continuing to keep my mouth closed about what had really happened? What was I made of? Talk about scraping the bottom.

  “I’d get the therapy, Brooke,” I said.

  Who are you kidding? I thought. You’re the one who needs therapy.

  Brooke glanced at the cardboard box I’d brought.

  “Could you take those things downstairs into Scotty’s office for me?” she said. “I haven’t been able to go in there yet. I can’t deal with all that now. I’m going to put some coffee on. Will you have some with me, Detective?”

  I wanted to say no. With a bullhorn. Brooke and I were the last two females on Earth who needed to bond. But like any red-blooded American woman given the choice between her sensible desires and a guilt-laced obligation, I, of course, agreed.

  “That would be really great. I could use some coffee. And please, my name is Lauren.”

  Chapter 71

  I BLINKED AS I MADE MY WAY down the Thayers’ creaky, musty basement stairs. Wasn’t the point of love affairs to have no strings attached? I had to get out of here before I was put in charge of sorting Scott’s grammar school pictures, and then his underwear drawer.

  I walked past a water heater and the laundry room and finally opened a plywood door covered with a Giants poster featuring Michael Strahan.

  I stood still on the threshold after I turned on the light.

  After the dark, oily-smelling outer basement, I was expecting to enter a typically male basement office. Tools scattered on a plywood desk. Maybe a dot-matrix printer on top of piles of Sports Illustrated in the corner.

  So when I feasted my eyes on what looked like Don Corleone’s office from The Godfather, I have to admit, I was a little surprised.

  The walls were paneled in dark-stained oak. The antique mahogany desk looked like something made from an old ship. On top of it sat an Apple PowerBook.

  There was a black leather couch and, on the wall to my right, a 42-inch Plasma TV. On top of a low bookshelf behind the desk, I counted three cell phones and a BlackBerry busily charging.

  Oh brother, I thought, dread plunging through my nervous system as I put down the box beside the laptop. First, the money in Scott’s locker, now this fancy hideaway in the basement of his house.

  I’d chosen a real multifaceted guy to sleep with, hadn’t I?

  Maybe between stuffing dirty money under his footwear and sleeping with married cops, Scott was Batman.

  I sank into the leather office chair and closed my eyes for a few seconds. Discovering Scott’s executive den made me more than a little concerned. Could he have made an itinerary of where he was heading the night he was killed? In my mind, I pictured a leather-bound calendar book with Lauren 11PM written right under the date of his death. Stranger things had happened in homicide cases.

  I hastily looked through the laptop, BlackBerry, and cell phones but, thankfully, didn’t find my name or number anywhere.

  After I was done, I noticed a file cabinet and an armoire-size metal locker standing in the left-hand corner of the room.

  I listened for Brooke’s footsteps on the stairs as I stepped toward them.

  Both, of course, were locked.

  I tossed Scott’s desk before I found a tiny key ring among the contents of the pencil holder. The key opened the cabinet but not the locker.

  My sweaty fingers nearly slipped off the handle as I rolled open the first heavy drawer.

  I was partially relieved when I saw that the files looked like typical home office stuff. Folders marked “Income Tax,” “Credit Cards,” “Car Repairs,” “Dentist.”

  “Lauren?” I heard Brooke call down from the top of the stairs. “Are you all right?”

  I hope so, I thought.

  “Just a minute,” I called, riffling through more files. “I’m almost finished, Brooke.”

  I turned to leave after closing the last file drawer. But then I had to stick my hand under the top drawer of the desk, a nasty Homicide cop habit.

  And found a DVD carefully taped to its underside.

  Chapter 72

  MY HEART RICOCHETED off my chest as I peeled the DVD away from the double-sided tape.

  “INSURANCE” was written across it in blue marker.

  Turning it in the fluorescent light, I found Scott’s ever-increasing mysterious side really intriguing. Well, maybe terrifying was a more accurate description.

  What kind of i
nsurance comes in DVD form? The kind a man who keeps his 401K under his shoe might need, I answered myself.

  Take it or leave it? I thought.

  I slid it into my bag.

  I guess I was taking it.

  A white minivan was pulling to a stop outside the café curtained kitchen window when I got to the top of the stairs.

  “Oh, they’re back already,” Brooke said with disappointment. “Taylor’s a real bear about transition. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know how Scott’s mom will react to seeing you. She’s more devastated than me, if that’s possible. Can we take a rain check on the coffee? Maybe it would be best if you left by the front door so she doesn’t see you.”

  “Of course, Brooke,” I said. She seemed to have pulled herself together enough to throw me out on my ear politely. That was some progress, I guess. Though, in truth, she didn’t have to tell me twice to get the hell out of there.

  “And don’t forget,” I called back as I hit the front door, “find out about group therapy. Okay, Brooke?”

  Wow, I thought, as I turned over the Chevy’s engine. Group therapy. If that wasn’t the most clichéd nonsense to bleat at somebody in real distress, I didn’t know what was. Why didn’t I recommend past-life regression therapy while I was at it?

  The words that I could make come out of my mouth were just incredible lately. I glanced down at the pilfered DVD in my bag. Not to mention the actions I was capable of.

  The squad car’s tires made the asphalt bark as I dropped the transmission.

  I was really getting this cold-hearted bitch thing down pat.

  And I hated every second of it.

  Chapter 73

  IT WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER when I pulled off the Van Cortlandt Park South exit off the Major Deegan in the Bronx.

  I swung a quick U-turn onto the service road for the Van Cortlandt Park Golf Course, reputed to be the oldest public golf course in the United States. I wasn’t looking to improve my short game, just to get some privacy in the course’s parking lot, one of the oldest NYPD patrol car hiding spots in the United States.