Until two months ago, everybody had been crammed in down there, desks, files, records, before the Galena Police Department moved into a remodeled second floor when the city hall took on newer, bigger digs on Green Street. The Dungeon was now used for personal lockers — extra uniforms, coats, bags — and the caged-in evidence room.
She took the stairs up to the department’s new home. At the top, she was greeted by a massive wall painting of a shield-style badge, its navy-blue background dominated by a solemn portrait of President Grant against a waving American flag as he loomed over a steamboat, back when the Galena River had been wide enough to accommodate such a vessel. Above him in yellow was
and below, just above the shield point,
The beige-walled reception area sported a pair of modern-looking chairs and a couch, fairly (but not too) comfortable, overseen by a bulletin board and a rack of tourist brochures. Facing this were the three office windows, with clerk-dispatcher Maggie Edwards at the center one. Slightly heavyset with big blue eyes and a head of curly red hair, Maggie — the chief’s late mother’s best friend and formerly an administrative secretary at Galena High School — was a doggedly pleasant person, perfect for the job.
Put it this way: an eleven-year-old Maggie had played the title role in a local production of Annie, and had been well cast. Even today, working in a police station with all its ups, downs, and tragedies big and small, she felt the sun would come out tomorrow. Maggie and Krista smiled and nodded at each other as the chief was buzzed into the bullpen area.
How different from the Dungeon! The first third of the space was barely taken up yet, except by a row of file cabinets along the left wall. Krista passed the short hallway at right, off of which were the doors to the two interview rooms and Detective Clarence “Booker” Jackson’s office, then moved past the doors of the conference room and continuing-education classroom. At the Front Street end, facing her glassed-in office, were four desks for the uniformed officers, three men, one woman, each with his or her own generous space forming a collective U, joined by a common Plexiglas barrier.
Krista said her hellos to the four officers and went on into her office, which was a good-size area, with a small table and chairs at right and three windows onto Main Street under which was a low-slung file cabinet. In the corner at left was her L-shaped desk with computer screen and keyboard at its juncture. She kept the office neat, the desk only mildly cluttered, considering how much work passed through this place.
Maggie, as if the clerk didn’t already have enough to do, came in and, unbidden, delivered a cup of coffee. Normally Krista would take care of that for herself, but she had walked by the table of coffee and snacks in a daze, distracted by the thought of what lay ahead, and Maggie had noticed.
A civilian employee, Maggie wore a light blue blouse and tan slacks, casual but not sloppy.
“Lovely morning,” the clerk said.
Maggie had brought the chief a napkin, too, and a doughnut, unfrosted, out of which Krista promptly took a bite.
“Lovely morning,” Krista echoed, chewing.
“Are you all right?”
“Now I am, thanks to this.” She sipped the coffee.
When Krista began here — down in the Dungeon, anyway — she’d taken on Maggie’s role. Unlike the older woman, she had used it as a stepping-stone to becoming a uniformed officer. Truth was, Maggie had one of the most demanding jobs in the department — part receptionist, part dispatcher, part file clerk; she even worked up certain monthly reports.
Maggie went to the door, paused there, and said, “They could have sent Ben, you know.”
“He’s mostly sports.”
Maggie’s understanding, compassionate smile was something Krista knew well, usually finding it comforting or at least benign. Today it mildly irritated her.
“Are you all right, dear?” Maggie asked. With no one else in earshot, at least, the clerk could get away with calling the chief “dear,” having known Krista since childhood.
“Fine,” Krista said.
“How’s your father doing?”
“Fine.”
“All settled in?”
Krista smiled and nodded.
“Big job, was it, moving all his things?”
“No,” Krista said. “One U-Haul load. Everything else went at the tag sale.”
“That must have been hard for him.”
Krista just sipped her coffee.
Maggie smiled in a sad-eyed way. “I bought a few things myself. Just to remember Karen by. Your mother.”
Yes, I know Karen was my mother.
“That’s nice,” Krista said.
Maggie closed the door, as if that would provide privacy for an office fronted with a wall of windows onto the bullpen.
The chief of the Galena police realized that her clerk would not likely go on and on so, if Krista would just open up to her a little. But even as a girl, Krista had not been one to blather, and in this job, she had emphasized that stoic side of herself even more.
If she were to be taken seriously, as Galena’s first female chief of police, particularly at her age, she could convey nothing girlish. She must be steady, serious...
... like her father, when he was a cop across the river in Dubuque.
Her visitor wasn’t due till eight thirty, so Krista got to work, going over the weekend’s activities (this was Monday), starting in on approving completed reports on arrests made, tickets written, and so on. But by a quarter till nine, she was still at it, with no sign of her scheduled guest.
Then at a quarter after, she saw him moving along the edge of the long bullpen, a good-looking guy her age with dark curly hair, nice dark brown eyes, a purposely scruffy barely-a-beard.
Jerry Ward wasn’t short but he wasn’t tall, either — maybe an inch over her own five eight. He wore a black jacket over an untucked white shirt, distressed blue jeans and Chelsea boots, and moved with confidence and ease.
He knocked and she called for him to come in — in an uninterested, businesslike way, of course.
“Sorry to be late,” he said, and flashed the James Franco grin. Not why — just “sorry.”
She gave him a perfunctory smile, barely looking up from her work to acknowledge his presence. His existence.
He stood there, close enough for her to smell his Armani cologne, possibly waiting for her to tell him to pull up a chair, which she didn’t. She finished reading the report, signed off on it, stood, smiled in as slight a way as possible and still have it register, then gestured toward the small square table with its several chairs on the other side of the room.
They sat across from each other. He set his Yamaha Pocketrak on the table, which she knew he’d gotten back at the Des Moines Register, before they downsized him. Being back in his hometown (he had frequently let her know) was just a way-station stop on his path to becoming a bestselling novelist.
Which he’d been trying to be as long as she could remember. They’d been in high school together; senior year, an item, before Astrid Lund came between them.
But that was a long time ago. Water under assorted bridges. The big city reporter had moved back in with his parents while he worked toward fiction-writing fame. Taking a job at the Galena Gazette — one of the nation’s oldest established weeklies — was just another way-station stop. Slumming, he’d called it, one night after a beer or two too many at the Galena Brewing Company.