What really made Nell assent, despite misgivings, was that he’d broken his wife’s nose during the assault. Nell worried that at a subconscious level, she might be transferring feelings about her ex-husband onto this man, so she did not vigorously oppose the parole. Three weeks after his release, he located his wife’s new home, broke in, shot her to death, then his daughter, then himself.
The murdered child had given Nell a photo of herself in a Girl Scout uniform, and on a few occasions during the weeks following the killings, Nell had surprised herself by breaking into sobs. Always when she was alone, of course, because unlike TV cops, real cops don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves. And the one thing that female police officers absolutely could not do under any circumstance was to cry. Not in the presence of a male cop, nor in any situation where a male cop might hear about it.
Male cops. That was a big problem, as far as the females were concerned. It was never enough to be as good as, not if a woman wanted total acceptance. The woman had to be at least as good as, and not let the men know it. It was a very dicey business, the care and handling of male cops.
All the females talked about how, during stressful, emotion-packed moments, male and female police partners would bond and lose track of the “other” world, the civilian world. That bonding, those moments, could be sexually supercharged.
More than a few hard-nosed, veteran cops had walked into their lieutenant’s office to say: “My wife won’t let me work with females anymore!”
Nell had tried living with a male cop she thought she was in love with. Confident and competent professionally, he was a personal and emotional mess, just like almost every male cop she’d ever known.
Finally one day she said to him: “I’m not your mommy. I’ll never be your mommy. You should go back to your mommy.”
He’d seemed stunned, and said, “But I thought we had something together! I was thinking about … marrying you!”
“Go marry a nurse,” Nell told him. “That’s what you guys do, marry nurses and other care givers. But please, leave my life so I can chisel the crud out of my oven and scrape my kitchen table with a putty knife.”
The day he left, she went to Nordstrom’s and bought a new dress, after which she’d had her brown hair touched up with chestnut highlights. And she made a vow to date civilians.
That seemed like a good idea, and at first it was lots of fun regaling civilians with cops ’n robbers tales. They loved it, most of them: a dentist (sexy whiner), a flight engineer (unsexy whiner), a carpenter (great buns, no brains), a lawyer (seldom changed his underwear), and a mall developer (never wore any) who went broke and left town just ahead of subpoenas.
There was one common denominator: Most of the civilians were fascinated by her gun. She was always playing Mister Rogers show-and-tell with her 9mm Sig Saur.
“This is a Sig semi-automatic! Can you say Siiiig? It holds sixteen rounds and can make a biiiiig mess!”
She finally decided that the shrinks were right about pistols and penises. Mainly though, they just didn’t get it, those civilians. They didn’t understand what it is that cops see: i.e., not just the worst of people, but ordinary people at their worst. They didn’t understand the cynicism, and the gross-out gallows humor. They couldn’t understand dealing with horror by smacking it in the face with a cream pie full of maggots.
Nell finally decided that marrying a civilian couldn’t work, not anymore, not even if she found one she liked. And marrying a cop was unthinkable, unless she wanted to be tied to a forty-year-old infant with chest hair. Gilbert and Sullivan didn’t know the half of it about a policeman’s lot. They should’ve known a few female cops, or so her colleagues always said.
At last, Nell Salter decided that she needed a change. Not a huge change, not out of law enforcement entirely. So, Nell left the San Diego Police Department in favor of the District Attorney’s Office, and became one of two people investigating environmental crimes. And there she’d stayed, and there she’d learned to identify methyl-ethyl bad-shit and Big Fucking Red Clouds.
On the day that Fin Finnegan visited his agent with malice aforethought, Nell Salter, having had three cups of coffee with her morning poached egg, had to run to the John the moment she arrived at work. And as often happened with female investigators who were in a hurry, she forgot all about her handcuffs when she sat down to pee.
A few minutes later, when she entered her own office, her older partner, Hugh Carter, looked up over his bifocals and said, “Three more days and I’m gone. Three whole weeks. Salmon. Pine cones. Clean air …”
“Mosquitoes,” Nell said. “Psychotic hermits in camouflage fatigues with M-sixteens. Snakes!”
“Hope you can manage without me, and …” Suddenly Hugh Carter noticed that she was shaking the water out of her handcuffs. Again. He said, “Nell, you know how fastidious I am. Would you not shake those nasty drops all over the floor. Aim for my coffee cup, please.”
“Hugh,” Nell said, “I don’t know if it’s a good time for you to go on vacation. You know how we always talk about some evil and ugly genetic monster emerging from all the contaminants in places like the Tijuana River and the Rio Grande?”
“Yeah?”
“Some uncontrollable mutant life-form that’ll raise its horrible snout from the toxic muck and slime of California or maybe Texas, and flap its scaly ears, and terrify the entire nation with its wicked bellowing screams?”
“Yeah, yeah?” her partner said.
“It’s happened!” Nell cried. “Ross Perot is gaining in the polls!”
CHAPTER 9
When Fin came to work on Monday he discovered that Sam Zahn had neglected to make any hazardous material notifications on the van that was stolen at Angel’s Café. Because Sam had the day off, Fin thought he’d better cover his old pal’s ass by making the notifications. Sam had a short-timer’s attitude.
Nell Salter’s partner had only been gone on vacation for one day when she received the unusual call from San Diego P.D.
“This is Nell Salter,” she said to a somewhat familiar telephone voice identifying himself as Detective Finnegan.
Salter? He used to know a female cop named Salter. Was she the chubby one that could’ve used a Thighmaster if they’d had them in those days? “Did you have a sister with S.D.P.D. at one time?” he asked.
“I don’t have a sister, brother,” Nell said. “I left the P.D. in nineteen eighty-five.”
“I worked Central then,” he said. “Fin Finnegan?”
She couldn’t place him, and said, “I’d probably know you if I saw your face. How can I help you?”
“I gotta talk to a sludge drudge,” he said. “You know, a goop cop. Are you one of them?”
Sludge drudge. She hadn’t heard that one. “Yeah, I work environmental crimes. What’s up?”
“On Friday, a van got stolen down near Imperial Beach. Had some drums of toxic junk in it. Belongs to Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. Ever heard of them?”
“No, there’re quite a few hauling contractors around town. What’d the waste consist of?”
“All I know is the trucker picked up some stuff from the navy at North Island and from a place called Southbay Agricultural Supply down here in San Ysidro. I’ve notified our office of emergency management and HazMat and the county health department and now you. I’m all tuckered out.”
“Any suspects?”
“Nope. May’ve been a try at a cargo theft if they couldn’t read ‘hauling and disposal’ on the door of the cab. Just thought I’d let you know. In case the drums get found you’ll know where they belong.”
“Can you send me a copy of the report?” she asked. Then she added, “Where was the truck stolen from exactly?”