Chapter Text
I was at my desk. I didn't remember sitting down. Val was there. I didn't remember calling him.
"You disturbed the crime scene," he said by way of starting conversation.
Had I? I looked over at where the photographers were working. Helen wasn't where I'd found her. I must have dragged her to the couch, which was now ruined.
"Sue me," I said.
"Come on," he said in the rough way he had when he was trying to be gentle. "Let's go to the station."
I followed him down the stairs and let him open the car door for me. Sitting in the back of a prowler without the bracelets was a new experience for me, but I couldn't savor it. Val was asking questions I didn't have answers for.
"Okay, okay," he said after my eighth or ninth I don't know. "We'll hold off."
We didn't talk for the rest of the ride, and he helped me out of the car and guided me into the police station. It took me a while to notice that people were staring.
There was a group of cops smoking and playing five-card draw in the bullpen. Maloney went from sitting to his feet in an instant. "Christ, Sturka."
I followed his gaze down the length of my body. My blouse and skirt were covered with blood; I didn't remember how it got there.
"You finally went and killed someone, didn't you?"
I didn't have anything smart to say to that.
"Shut up," Val said.
Maloney scoffed, but he returned to his seat and his cigar.
"You might want to use the bathroom," Val said, and escorted me there before I could say no.
I was washing my hands when I made the mistake of looking in the mirror. Someone I didn't recognize looked back. I didn't like her eyes, and the tear tracks that had run through the makeup and blood made them look worse.
I washed my face off and stared into the sink, watched the water turn red and then run clear until Val banged on the door.
I turned the tap off and went out. Val shoved a coffee mug at me, but I dodged it. "I'm not tired."
"It's bourbon," he said.
I took the mug and sipped its contents. "This is shit," I said, and drank the rest.
"It's what a cop's salary pays for. Have some more."
I had some more.
"I'm going to talk to the coroner. You talk to Maloney."
I didn't want to talk to Maloney.
I talked to Maloney for more than an hour.
"We were roommates," I said for what must have been the twentieth time. "I was worried when she didn't come home. I went to the office and found her like that."
"What did you do with the knife?"
"Nothing," I said, "because I never had the knife. I didn't do it, and you're wasting my time."
He sneered. "You got somewhere better to be?"
Yes; I wanted to be home with my scotch.
"How'd you get her blood all over you?"
"I tried to save her."
"Even though she'd been dead for two hours."
I didn't say anything. If I hadn't played cute with the feds, then maybe...
"Wanna know how I figure it?" He leaned forward over the table. "I figure you're not roommates. And I figure if you're lying to me about one thing, you're lying about the rest. I figure it's late, you're tight, and you two have some kind of lovers' tiff. I figure one of you ends up stuck and the other one of you ends up covered in blood."
"You figure a lot for someone who can't add," I said.
"You think you're smart, don't you?"
"Smart enough to know what Maloney rhymes with," I said. I leaned forward, too, to match his posture. "Want to know what I figure? I figure you're a draft-dodger, and I figure you want to seem tough and big in a department where everyone else went to fight, and I figure you pick on me because you're jealous that I have old war buddies and you don't even though I'm a girl."
"I got flat feet," he said.
"Sure you got flat feet."
The door opened. "Maloney," said Val. "Leave off."
"You're soft," Maloney sneered.
"Go home," Val said. I followed him down the hallway. He must have sensed my anger, because he spoke in Maloney's defense. "He's just doing his job."
"I didn't come here to be sweated," I said.
"He has a point," he said. "About domestics."
"Fuck off, Val," I said. "The last and only time I won a fight with her was 1945."
She hadn't wanted to open a detective agency. Too risky, too uncertain.
Too dangerous.
My fault.
I asked what the coroner had said.
"Cause of death was hemorrhagic shock thanks to a single stab wound to the left lung."
I swallowed. It hadn't been painless, and it hadn't been immediate.
"He thinks the blade would have been thin and about four inches long. Have you ever seen a knife like that?"
"Not since the war. The colonel we worked for had a stiletto he never shut up about."
Helen and I had made fun of him for it and his apparently sincere belief that the uncle who had given it to him had really been in the mob. We never could decide whether he was telling the truth, or whether his uncle had bought it at a flea market for a dime.
"Could he have done it?"
The absurdity made me laugh.
"He lives in Florida and loves her, so I think not."
"Do you have any idea who did do it?"
"No. You knew her. You know that nobody who knew her could possibly want to."
"Yes," he said, dragging out the word. "I agree."
I stopped, forcing him to stop, too, and turn toward me.
"Sturka?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He looked reluctant to reply. "I think," he said even more slowly, "that someone thought she was you."
I bit down on my fist, too late to stifle the cry that had been wrung out of me.
Of course if someone didn't know us, then it would be logical to assume that the woman working at my desk in my office long after closing time was me.
I should have seen it first thing.
My fault.
"Be straight with me," he said. "This case you're working."
"It's wrapped with the college. Client's afraid making waves would be bad for her career and didn't want police involved."
"They never do."
The you should have known better remained unspoken, because he was being nice. I should have, I shouldn't have listened to Tarzwell and or shown any consideration for his snobbish, pathetic desire not to be connected to the police.
My fault.
"You should know the FBI is interested, too," I said. "They think my client is a spy."
"Do you?"
I shook my head. "I think they want to feel important," I said. "They're thinking they'll score big if they could arrest her for espionage, but they're going to turn up empty."
"Well," he said. He rubbed his jaw, which needed a shave. "I want a list of all the people you've riled up over the years. We'll start with your current case and work backwards."
"Can we do it tomorrow?" I asked. I sounded pathetic.
"Tomorrow," he agreed. "Do you know how to get in touch with her next of kin? We have to notify them."
I was thrown for a moment. Then I remembered that I wasn't her next of kin; her parents were.
Her parents, who had never liked me even though they didn't know the full extent of our connection. It was bad enough that she'd volunteered for the Army, bad enough that she hadn't come home after the war, bad enough that she had gone into a thoroughly unladylike business, and bad enough that she'd apparently given up on marriage. Letting them in on our secret would have destroyed the relationship entirely, and Helen hadn't wanted to do that, hadn't wanted to end up like me.
I knew that they would take it badly, and I knew that they'd blame me.
And I knew they'd be right to.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll do it tomorrow." I turned to go.
"Sturka," he said. "Carol."
I turned back. "Yeah?"
"Can I take you home? We have a guest room. My wife has pajamas that should fit and I can pick some clothes up for you."
"Why?"
"You and Miss Umstead. I thought maybe…" He hesitated. He didn't actually want to say it. "I thought maybe you might want company tonight."
"Never mind what you think," I said. "I'm going home."
🔍
Val gave me money for a cab to my office so I could pick up the car. It had another parking ticket on it. This one I left on the windshield and it fluttered annoyingly as I drove back to our (my) apartment building.
I pulled into the parking spot we (I) rented and let the engine idle and stared at the brown bricks. It was a little too far from the office for the walk to be comfortable, but Helen had wanted the room we'd taken for the partial view of the mountains the window in our (my) bedroom afforded.
I felt the last shreds of my self-control fraying and cut the engine. The walk up the four flights of stairs took an eternity, but the promise of the scotch I'd fantasized about Maloney had been yapping at me carried me forward.
Zosia sat up, blinking and rubbing her eyes, when I came in. I'd completely forgotten she was there.
"Carol?" she asked when she focused on me. "Carol."
She was at my side before I could think of anything to say.
"Carol," she said again. "What happened? Are you hurt? Do you need me to call someone? Where's Helen?"
I needed to calm her down. I needed to explain so she'd back off. And I needed to get myself a fucking drink and pass out and never wake up again.
Instead I fell to my knees and went to pieces.