Because even though she sometimes hid, she didn’t ever run.
As if on cue, the telephone at Katie’s bedside rang shrilly. She jumped at the sound, then realized she’d forgotten to turn off the ringer. She reached for the telephone, unsure until the phone was at her ear, if she would answer it or simply turn off the noise.
“Hello?”
Maybe it had been a desire for human company that drove her to answer the phone. Something to extract her from her memories. If that were true, she instantly regretted it when the voice at the other end of the connection came through.
“Kay-die?”
The slurred version of her name caused her to flash to her mother, but the voice was distinctly male.
“Is thad yew, Kay-die?”
Stef.
“It’s me,” she answered, her voice tight. “What do you want?”
“Oh, Kay-die,” he said, his voice dissolving into several teary grunts and huffs. “Oh.” He took another breath, then said, “Hola, chica.”
Katie felt strangely cold. The natural response from the time they dated — hola, chico — never even threatened to come out. It was as if the pity and the anger that she had intermittently felt for Kopriva had called a truce. With the two emotions leaving the battlefield, all that remained was a strange emptiness.
“What do you want, Stef?”
“I jes’ wanna talk with you. I wanna — ”
“Stef, we have nothing to talk about,” she told him.
“Nu-nu-nothing?” he stammered back in a surprised tone.
“Nothing,” she repeated.
“How can you say that to me?” he asked her, pain evident in his voice.
Pity may have quit the field, but at that question, her anger reentered the fray. “How could you say the things you said to me? How could you be so selfish?”
“I–I-”
“You act like everything that happened last year only happened to you.” Her mind’s eye flashed to a picture of Amy Dugger that she had seen in the Dugger’s kitchen while she’d been assigned to wait with the family. Her jaw clenched. “Well, it didn’t. Those things happened to the rest of us, too.”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” Kopriva answered back, his slur seeming to dissipate with those particular words. “I did.”
“We all have our own ghosts, Stef. But you decided not to face yours. You decided to check out instead.” Katie shook her head. Now pity had heard the call of battle and reappeared on the field. “I can’t have you in my life. Not if you won’t face up to your demons. I can’t get dragged down into that.”
“Whaddayou know?” Kopriva snarled. “Little Miss Perfect Princess. You don’t know shit!”
An ironic laugh forced its way out of Katie’s mouth before she could stop it. “Oh, Stef. Like you know. You don’t know anything about me. Not really.”
“I tell you what I know. I know that you don’t care about-”
“Don’t call me anymore,” Katie interrupted, her voice hard. “If you do, I’ll get a no-contact order.”
Kopriva stopped talking. Stung silence radiated through the telephone receiver toward her.
“Goodbye, Stef,” she said, and hung up.
She turned off the ringer and curled up into a ball under the blankets. She let the ghosts and demons wash over her until weariness finally pulled her into a sleep so deep that even those specters could not follow.
EIGHT
Thursday, April 18th
0917 hours
Day Shift
Tower stood in the doorway of the crime analysis unit with a package of Hostess donuts in his hands. He waited until Renee looked up from her desk and spotted him there. Her expression remained momentarily angry. He raised the box of donuts and affected a contrite expression.
Renee’s features softened slightly. She waved him into the office.
Tower grinned.
“Don’t smile at me, John,” she said. “The donuts get you in the door, but not off my shit list.”
Tower’s grin widened.
“I mean it, John.”
“I know.”
“You can’t just talk to me like I’m some idiot or something.”
“I know.” He held out the donuts. “Peace?”
Renee stared at him, as if gauging his sincerity. After a moment, she accepted the box from him. Then she held out her empty coffee mug. The words on the side read, Given enough coffee, I could rule the world.
“Coffee’s over there,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tower said lightly, snapping a salute.
Renee raised a single eyebrow. “You might want to lay off the smart alec shtick for a little while. I still haven’t decided if I forgive you.”
Tower held up his empty hand in an open palm, mea culpa gesture and moved across the room. He filled her cup with the rich brew, along with a Styrofoam cup for himself.
“You could’ve brought flowers,” Renee said.
“Oh, yeah. That wouldn’t start rumors.”
“What’d I say about the smart alec thing?”
Tower brought her the cup of coffee he’d poured. “That was sarcasm. It’s different.”
“It’s close enough.”
Tower shrugged. “Probably. Anyway, you can’t eat flowers. You can eat donuts.”
Renee didn’t answer. She eyed the box, then cracked the lid. “One won’t hurt.”
Tower suppressed a laugh. If Renee wanted to eat twenty donuts, she probably could do so without gaining an ounce. She remained slender, despite spending her days behind a desk in a small office filled with snack food. It didn’t bother Tower, but he was pretty sure every woman in the department hated her for exactly that reason.
Renee bit into the donut and chewed slowly. Then she sipped her coffee. “You should’ve gone to the bakery,” she said. “You got these at a convenience store, didn’t you?”
“No,” Tower lied.
Renee turned the box and read the code from the label. “The Circle K, huh?”
“How’d you know that?”
Renee smiled humorlessly. “I know everything. It’s my job.”
Tower shrugged. “Can’t argue that. But a donut is a donut.”
Renee lowered the box. Her eyebrow arched again. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
She raised the half-eaten donut in the air. “This is barely a donut. Real donuts are things you buy at the bakery.” She raised her cup. “A real donut complements real coffee.” She lowered the cup. “You know, I’m only eating this because you’re trying to make up. Otherwise, I’d put them out for visitors.”
“I know.”
Renee took a bite and held the box out toward him.
Tower waved off her offer. “Can’t feed the stereotype.”
Renee swallowed. “But I can?”
“You’re not the police. You only work for the police.”
“The public doesn’t know the difference,” she said.
“True,” Tower agreed. “But the public is mostly ignorant.”
“I’ve developed a theory about that, by the way,” she said, breaking off another piece of donut and tossing it in her mouth.
“About what? Why the public is ignorant?”
“Uh-uh.” She chewed and swallowed and gave it another coffee chaser. “About cops and donuts. How the stereotype started.”
Tower raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
She gave him a slight smile and took the last bite of her donut, making him wait. When she’d finished chewing and tossing back another shot of coffee, she went on. “It’s simple, really. People forget that we haven’t always been this twenty-four hours, seven days a week society. The pace of life wasn’t always this fast. Take 7-11 stores for instance. Do you know where the name came from?”
Tower did, but he shook his head no. He didn’t want to interrupt her.
“Those were the store’s business hours. Seven in the morning until eleven at night. What was so novel about that, you ask? Well, everyone else except bars and taverns were strictly nine to five. Maybe eight to six. It was a big deal to be able to run to the store for milk at ten-thirty at night when the Safeway was closed.”