Cutting edge s--1 Page 5

  He opened his wallet and placed his two badges onto the bar side by side, the gold and the silver, weighing them out in his mind as he sipped at his bourbon.

  He lifted and studied the Dallas gold shield, which looked liked most any gold shield in any city in America, save for the lettering. He superstitiously rubbed it between his large fingers for good luck before tossing it face up on the bar, where he stared into its gleaming, reflective light.

  His silver HPD shield was better than no shield at all, he rationalized; it had gotten him in charge of the damn Cold Room, hadn't it? It gave him slightly more weight than status as a former Dallas Police Department cripple with three-quarter Texas Cherokee premium red pumping through his battered body. Hadn't it?

  He couldn't let them see his pain, so he forced it back with a second shot of bourbon where he stood at the bar, not anxious to sit again for some time. He took the bourbon straight up and neat-best way for the pain, he kept telling himself. But also for the pain that claimed him and told him daily it'd be with him until his grave, Lucas knew to utilize that strict code of the ancient Zen-like masters of his tobacco-twisting, magic-making race.

  He just had to control it.

  Had to be smart.

  Had to second-guess the department. Beat them at their so-called spot-testing program.

  He could do it. If anyone could. He was smart.

  When he lowered the shot glass and saw her in the mirror, standing in the middle of the bar behind him, he brought the tumbler down with the sound of a gunshot. He wheeled, and his anger shone as thunderbolts flitting maniacally across each dark iris.

  “What're you, following me?”

  “I had to,” she pleaded, her arms wide, palms up as she approached.

  “Did that bastard, Lawrence, sic you on me?”

  “Christ, Stonecoat, I'm not an attack dog! And no, quite the contrary; he warned me to steer clear of you.”

  “Said that, did he?”

  “That's right,” she lied, but it felt right.

  “So you disobey him, like-”

  “Disobey? I'm not a child, and I don't take orders from the likes of Phil Lawrence. Technically speaking, I'm a civilian and not part of his paramilitary organization.”

  “Who do you report to, then?”

  “Commander Andrew Bryce, or at least his office. That's where my reports go.”

  “And Bryce is over the division?”

  “You got it.” Good, she told herself, now you've got him interested.

  “You followed me here from the station house? Last time we talked, you said you weren't interested in me. What's with you, Dr. Sanger?”

  “What I said was, I don't need another wigged-out cop on my couch, if you'll recall.”

  'Then what do you want from me?”

  “Buy me a drink, and we'll talk,” she offered.

  “Like to play the bad girl? Is that it? This your way of getting back at Lawrence for some slight?”

  “Bad girl?”

  “Madonna, all that.”

  “Jesus, you're hard to talk to. You always so hard to approach, Stonecoat?”

  “No, only when I'm expected to perform, and I've got a notion you're looking for a performance of some sort.”

  “Please, Lucas… can I call you Lucas?”

  When he failed to answer, she stared into his eyes, finding herself swimming in a deep brown warmth and hidden hurt for a moment before she barreled on. “I think we could help each other out.”

  “I really don't recall asking for your help, Doctor!”

  The bartender, without shouting, demanded, “Either take it to a booth or outside, but keep it down, will you? I run a quiet joint here.”

  “So,” he said to her, indicating the second bourbon in his hand and leading her to a booth, “now you know my secret.”

  One of them, perhaps, she thought, carefully considering her words. “One of them is painfully obvious, but listen here, Lucas, I see a lot of cops with hard-core problems every day, problems you don't come near, so…” She paused, picking her way over the minefield of his emotions. “Fact is, there's very little I haven't seen on this job. So what if you drink while on duty? Half or more of the force does. I'm not here as a police shrink or to pass-”

  “Sit,” he ordered. She silenced herself and slid into the corner booth. “What'll you have?”

  “A Coca-Cola's all.”

  “Coke,” he shouted to the bartender. “Make it two. Wouldn't want you drinking alone in a bar.”

  “I'm sorry if I startled you, but-”

  “Startled me?” He half grinned, and this made his face more handsome, the scar more easily tolerated. He tried a flagrantly lazy laugh, repeating the word startled as if the sheer impossibility of his being startled by her was as remote as finding a winning lottery ticket in this place. He turned his eyes and his scar tissue away from view in a practiced, now habitual fashion.

  “I'm not exactly on Lawrence's guest list for the Christmas party, believe me,” she continued again. “I guess I came after you because… because I need a… an ally, a professional connection, and because your record indicates a distinguished career.”

  Now he did laugh openly.

  “You won two medals for valor before the accident.”

  “I don't want to talk about medals or accidents.”

  “All right, but what about it? I could use a friend, someone who-”

  “A friend?”

  “-somebody who hates that bastard Lawrence as much or more than I do, and I figure you're it.”

  “How do you figure that? Lawrence hasn't done anything to me.”

  “Are you kidding? He's a racist, for one. How do you imagine you wound up in the Cold Room in the first place, Lucas?”

  “By his request?”

  “It wasn't via lottery.”

  Lucas breathed this information in. “He heard plenty about me in Dallas, didn't he?”

  “Everybody knows about Dallas, about John F. Kennedy's assassination there and about your accident there, but with Lawrence, when you went after the city in that court battle, that was enough to destroy any chance you had on his force.”

  “What a ya know… it all goes back to Dallas, doesn't it? They warned me that Houston's still a small town in many ways.”

  “Most Texas cities are…”

  He raised a hand to his chin and nodded in silent agreement.

  “And everything about a police department is small-town,” she added. “A lot of cable's been laid between here and Dallas, and you're something of an infamous fellow. And here you are, pretty much alone, and I'm… well, I'm pretty far out on a limb with Captain Lawrence, too.” She now stared purposefully once more into the rippling and layered pools of his marble-hard brown eyes. This time, he held her stare as if daring her to break it off, as if studying her level of intensity, or sincerity, or both. Or was he thinking sex? She did not know.

  “How do you know I'm not a racist or a sexist?” he asked her. “Many Indian men are proud to be both, you know…”

  She laughed lightly at this, realizing that he was kidding for the first time with her. Maybe the bourbon wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

  “Seriously, Dr. Sanger, just what is it you want from me? You certainly didn't come here to warn me about Phil Lawrence.”

  She snatched a notepad from her purse and slipped on a pair of reading glasses that made her look like a school teacher, he thought. “What I'm going to tell you, Lucas, must remain confidential if-”

  “So long as this entire meeting remains confidential, I think I could agree to that,” he countered with a snakelike reaction.

  She looked from her notepad over her glasses and across at him. “A greed. Like I said, I've got more important fish to fry than your ass over an indiscretion more suited to the concerns of Internal Affairs.”

  “But don't you work closely with IAD?”

  “IAD doesn't work closely with anyone. Listen, I am not your enemy.”

/>   “Shall we shake on it, to ensure the bond?” he suggested, still unsure of her motives, still not certain he could trust her. “God, next you'll be asking me to slit my wrist and mingle my blood with yours in some pagan ritual out of-”

  “Not a bad idea either.”

  “Okay, all right already.” She reached across the rough, scarred tabletop, and he firmly took her hand in his, testing her strength for a moment, allowing his hand to linger in hers as they shook. She frowned, tugged her hand from his and turned her attention back to the notepad now lying between them. “I've mapped out my suspicions for several weeks now, all brought on by the Mootry killing.”

  A glazed, unknowing blink was quickly masked, even as he said, “Okay…

  “A brutal mutilation murder like that doesn't go unnoticed and-”

  “Then this isn't a dead file case? It's not something out of the Cold Room?”

  “Well, it is and isn't.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, let me finish. The Mootry case is current, but a less recent killing, a senseless murder here ten years ago come Friday, held some fascinating similarities. I wasn't on staff here then, but I read about it in the Seattle papers.”

  “You've only been here how long?”

  “Four months come Tuesday.”

  “And you're from Seattle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your people all there?”

  “Yes, now let me finish. Anyway, it occurred to me… I mean, I… the Mootry murder immediately brought back memories of similar deaths both here and elsewhere. I wondered if the three crimes could possibly have been connected. So I did some checking.”

  “I don't get it. Why didn't you just turn your suspicions over to the detective bureau?”

  'That's just it. I did, but no one's taking me seriously, least of all Lawrence.”

  “Well, you are sticking your nose into his territory when you-”

  “God, I hate that kind of thinking.”

  “What a ya mean? What kind of thinking?” he countered.

  “We're going to let macho shit-head territorialism come before the truth?”

  “It usually does.”

  “With men, yes.”

  He smiled. “You got me there. Something to do with the testosterone levels, I believe.”

  Well spoken, well read, fast on his feet, she thought. “Will you just listen?” she suggested.

  “Shoot, Doc.”

  “I've found several suspiciously similar former cases, some of the information coming out of your dead file room down in the basement.”

  “Well, from all appearances, a lot of cases wind up in that twilight zone.”

  “One was the file I just gave back to you this morning.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Have you re shelved it yet?”

  “No.”

  “Good, then read it; see what you think. Then go back and check out the others I've read over the past few weeks. That's all I ask, Lucas.”

  “The way I had to remind you to check that file in this morning?

  How am I going to know which ones you've checked out before?”

  “I checked 'em all back in, in order.”

  “You mean you were just a little flustered this morning?” he teased. She managed a smile. “You might say that.”

  “All right, so what if these cases are linked?

  “What?” She gave him a confused stare.

  “If they're in the Cold Room, they're like me.”

  “Come again?”

  “They're not likely to be of any great interest to Lawrence or anyone out ranking him.”

  'They will now… or should.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Where've you been. Chief?” She realized now that he had no notion of the enormity of the Mootry case. “The Mootry case, the one that's been front page for the past week?”

  “I don't read the newspapers. They depress me. Besides, I've been working my tail off night and day as a rookie, remember? Work detail by day, class work by night.”

  “Couldn'tve been easy after the years of rehab you've gone through,” she replied, her tone consolatory, sincere.

  “No one said it was going to be easy…”

  'Tell me about the most important single event in your life, the accident,” she blurted out, her training as a psychiatrist getting the best of her, coloring her tone with condescension, making her immediately sorry, wishing she'd found a smoother transition into this touchy, obviously unhealed wound. “I know you want to talk about it to someone…” she said, trying to repair the damage done by the blatant nosiness that accompanied her profession.

  “I'm going to make you work hard for this,” he said, his smile a curling snake.

  “So I've noticed. Look, I'm sorry if I've overstepped my bounds. I must appear nosy, but in fact I'm… well, just…”

  “Interested?”

  She nodded, smiling. “Yes, interested.”

  He shook his head like a big dog and then fixed his eyes on her. “I talk to the One God, the Great Spirit, about it.

  That's enough.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me about it; trust me, it'll only make you feel better.”

  “Me? Feel better? Not ever going to happen in this life, Doctor. Maybe when the Great Spirit comes for me, but not on this plane ever again. Besides, I had a shrink on my case, along with six physical therapists.”

  “Yours is a real success story. Surprised the movie people haven't sought you out for one of those-”

  They did and I refused. It wasn't exactly Robert Zemeckis and DeNiro beating down my door to make the offer.”

  He dropped his gaze, staring through the solid oak table, and he began to tell her the story in as brief a clip as possible, knowing that if he fed her this, maybe she'd see him as more than the cripple he'd become, and perhaps she'd better understand why he was here now, downing whiskey. She listened without interruption.

  “My partner, Jackson, and I, we had just gone off duty. We had hoisted a few when we heard the radio call on a heist nearby. In fact, we believed it had to do with a case we'd been working for months, so we responded.” He explained that the car accident had happened while he was on what had begun as a rather routine call, since it appeared the gunman had abandoned the scene long before they'd arrived.

  “So at this point it'd become a routine investigation of a robbery at a downtown liquor store in Dallas. The scene had actually been secured, cordoned off. It should've been routine. But it ended in a high-speed chase gone bad. Thanks to my now dead partner, who was a worthless drunk, a rotten wheel man, and the best cop that I've ever known.”

  “He was your senior partner?”

  “The best. Learned so much from Wallace Jackson, but the crazy bastard got himself killed and very nearly killed me with him.”

  “Stonecoat, you aren't still angry at Jackson, are you?”

  “Hell, yes… Hell, yes… All right, hell, no… whichever answer keeps me off your office couch.”

  She gave a little shake of the head, her silver-blond hair caught in the breeze created by the wafting overhead fan.

  “Anyway, Dallas PD was embarrassed to its shorts by a press corps that'd already been vilifying them on an 'inside' investigation of the 'excessive number' of high-speed chases in the Dallas area resulting in the deaths of civilians and officers.”

  “I get the picture.” She drank from her fizzling Coca-Cola.

  “So the force was sorry for the loss of their black detective-one of a handful-and neither were they crazy about the idea of returning their Indian back to active duty.”

  “You realize, don't you, that Captain Lawrence can't look favorably on a detective who sues his own department?”

  “I dropped the damned suit before it ever got to court.”

  “You dealt it out, I hear. You walked away without a fight.”

  “Let's put it this way, Doctor. I wasn't walking, period, at the time.”
>
  “I only meant that they paid you off without a fight.”

  “And I'm telling you, I fought from my hospital bed, on my back, like a goddamned overturned turtle. And trust me, I had a greater enemy to fight than with the Dallas Police Department.”

  “You'd have won a much heftier settlement. You had a good case. Obviously, no one was looking after your interests. What about the Police Benevolent League, what about the Patrolman's Fund, what about-”

  “I started an action against the force. Lawyers got involved and fees got too heavy and too many for me. Still payin' 'em each month, along with rent.”

  “But you won?”

  “Won the right to sit home and wait for a check, yeah. It took two years and a divorce for me to find a new situation while I lived on disability checks and TV dinners and beer. My so-called wife didn't even bother to come down to the hospital; said she'd had enough of life as a cop's wife. Meantime, the problem I was having with my own department in Dallas was due to a bureaucracy mired in itself, along with my police superintendent, who sold me and Jackson out. This creep was worried about his own job, so he just made certain that the redskin would stay off the payroll, nailing the coffin shut on the Indian problem he'd had all along.”

  “Nothing like having your superior go to bat for you,” she commiserated.

  'The bastard was nobody's superior. His main interests were his own interests,” he replied. “But it taught me a valuable lesson.”

  “Oh, and what's that?”

  “Never get blindsided. Never assume anything, and never underestimate the depths to which human nature sinks.”

  “So, you rehabilitated yourself physically, but it sounds to me as though you have a ways to come back emotionally. I mean, you've got to learn to trust again if you're ever to fully-”

  “As you have seen, and so you shall see, this man is fully recovered in every way. I wear more body armor, sure, and I like it that way!” he said with a flourish of his large right hand, tipping his bottle at her and downing the drink in a final gulp. “Thank the Great Spirit, Houston wasn't being too choosy. That explains why Lawrence was saddled with the likes of me, wouldn't you say?”