“Whatever you say, Sheriff,” I told her with my own injection of sarcasm. “Don’t leave town. Got it.”
“Crack jokes if you want, Mister Gant,” she retorted. “But, make no mistake, as far as I am concerned, both you and your wife are suspects.”
“You have got to be kidding me” was my incredulous reply.
“By procedure, maybe,” Constance interjected. “But, that’s ludicrous and you know it.”
“Is it?” Albright queried. “How did they know where to find the body?”
“We already covered that,” Ben told her.
“Did we?”
“Oh, gimme a fuckin’ break,” he snarled.
“I am,” she replied. “I’m not bringing you up on charges right this minute. Now get out of here. All of you.”
“I’ll be staying, Lieutenant,” Mandalay announced in a cold tone.
“I see no reason…” Albright started.
“I will be staying, Lieutenant,” Constance repeated, emphasizing the words as she cut her off. “If there is a problem with that, we can contact the Bureau field office, and I’m sure the SAIC can give you several reasons for me to be here.”
The lieutenant regarded her silently for a moment, then sighed and motioned toward us. “Suit yourself, Agent Mandalay, but I am still lead detective, and I want these three out of here now.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Constance told her evenly.
“See that you do.”
“One more thing, Lieutenant,” Mandalay replied in a careful but frosty tone. “I suggest that you don’t push me. I’m the last bitch you want to cross right now.”
“Yes, I am sure that you are,” Albright returned in her own cold voice and then paused before adding, “A bitch.”
They stared at each other for one of those time-warped moments that lasts only a few brief seconds but feels like an eternity to everyone within its sphere of influence. Albright finally turned and headed away from our small clutch.
At first, she retreated without a word, but after a few steps, she paused and called back over her shoulder, her voice thickly frosted with sarcasm. “By the way, I had Miz O’Brien’s Jeep towed and impounded as possible evidence. I do hope it won’t be an inconvenience.”
“ Fek tu saigh,” Felicity calmly issued the curse of mixed colloquial Irish and Gaelic.
This wasn’t the first time my wife had launched that particular phrase at the lieutenant and at one point, had even supplied her with the English translation. Apparently the meaning of the foreign words had stuck with Albright ever since, as evidenced by her reply.
“Funny you should say that, Miz O’Brien, because it is exactly what I was thinking.” She made the comment with an air of satisfaction and then continued on her way.
The lieutenant’s haughty attitude told us that as far as she was concerned, she had come out on top this go around, and truth be told, she had. However, whether she wanted to admit it or not, this was merely a single skirmish, and the war was far from over. Still, it took everything I had to stand there motionless and not say a word, and I’m sure the same was true for everyone else. In fact, I could tell by looking at Ben that he was struggling just to contain himself; and, though I’d seen him angry a number of times before, the darkness of the emotions seething from him at this moment actually worried me.
Right or wrong, the fact remained that there was nothing we could do; at least, not with a head-on approach, and not at this particular moment. It was beyond obvious that any further confrontation would only make the situation worse, so we stood our ground and kept silent.
In the end, it still took some swift talking from Constance, as well as Felicity and me, to convince Ben not to go after the lieutenant. While I doubted he would resort to physical violence, I knew for a fact that his mouth would get him into more trouble than he needed at this point in his life.
I can’t say that I blamed him. Albright was deep under everyone’s skin, not just his. I even caught myself having some intensely dark thoughts about the woman and had to mentally back away from the ill wishes for fear I might inadvertently manifest one or two of them. I glanced over at Felicity and couldn’t help but notice that even at a distance, she was systematically vivisecting the lieutenant with a razor sharp stare. I have to admit that the intensity of her gaze made my spiteful ruminations appear pleasant in comparison. Mandalay was probably the calmest of our small group, but even so, almost everything that came out of her mouth was clipped and official, no matter to whom she was speaking.
However, what really stood out to me was the mood of the cops working the scene. I certainly wasn’t about to diminish how horrific this crime scene was. They were all nightmares in the making. Still, over the past few years, I had worked some that were far worse than this. I thought I knew what the atmosphere should be like, and this wasn’t it. Considering that these men and women were veterans whose experiences were sure to overshadow mine in both volume and intensity, I was somewhat taken aback by their overall tenor. The emotional climate in this corner of the park had been barreling downhill since the arrival of the first uniformed officer, and that pace had been quickening. It had now progressed far beyond any level of edginess I would have expected.
At first, I assumed the air of discontent was simply due to the fact that they were working such a high profile homicide. Let’s face it; this wasn’t Jane Q Public, this was the daughter of the Saint Louis city mayor. There was bound to be more than the average amount of pressure on these cops. But, as I watched, it became clear that there was more at work here. While it might have gone unnoticed by a casual observer, paying attention to the various interactions between crime scene technicians and Major Case Squad detectives told a story. And, the story was that wherever the tension was greatest, Albright could be found at the center, pulling the strings.
As irritants go, she was at the top of the scale and virulent to a fault.
My concentration on the scene was shattered by a hard nudge against my shoulder, and I broke my stare away to glance up at my friend.
“Huh?”
“I said, c’mon,” he voiced, apparently repeating himself. “I’m takin’ you two home.”
Sleep was a welcome commodity to us all, although for me, it was nowhere near as restful as I would have liked. Even though my conscious mind knew Felicity was safe and was lying beside me in the bed, my subconscious had elected to unload the emotional baggage of the past few hours.
My slumber was plagued with more than one nondescript, but horribly intense, dream of loss and despair: each cycle driving me upward into wakefulness, only so I could dry my dampened cheeks on the pillowcase then roll over and repeat the process, or so it seemed. I’m not sure how long it took before I fell into something resembling actual sleep, but in the end, even that was shallow and fitful. I suppose that is why I’m the one who heard the noise.
I’m not sure which sound I heard first, the dogs barking or the banging on the door. In either case, there was enough racket to pluck me out of the twilight sleep I’d finally become semi-comfortable with and deposit me face first into the harsh world of the awake.
I opened one eye and saw that the bedroom was dimly lit by sunlight that was forcing its way between the slats of the closed mini blinds. I lifted my head and cast my monocular glance in the direction of the clock and saw that it was 3:43 in the afternoon. I closed my eye and let my head fall back onto the pillow then listened for a moment. All I heard were the muffled reports of various Sunday afternoon outdoor activities- children playing, lawnmowers running in the distance, an occasional car passing by, the usual stuff.
I struggled to think about it for a moment. Firstly, there was nothing more than ambient noise meeting my ears. Secondly, I really didn’t want to get up yet. And, thirdly, Ben was in the living room. We had convinced him not to drive, since he was surely as tired as we both were, so he had crashed on the couch. It stood to reason that if there had been any such noises as barking dogs and door banging, he would have heard it first and gotten up. My foggy brain tallied the column and then decided that since I wasn’t hearing anything now that I hadn’t actually heard anything before.