"Look, I agree with you, Frank," O'Malley said. "It stinks. But it doesn't matter. Until I can convince the mayor otherwise, Lake stays. just try to keep him out from under our feet. Give him lots of busy work, make him read all the reports. if something comes up you don't want him to see, or there's trouble, come to me. Any questions?"
Turner muttered something about the mayor and Grimsbo shook his head in disgust. O'Malley ignored them.
"Okay, get outta here and back to work. You — all heard Klien. We have to stop this psycho fast."
Nancy Gordon's stomach growled. She guessed it was a little after six.
Her watch said it was almost seven. She had been writing reports and lost track of time. On the way out of the station, she walked by the task force office and noticed the lights were still on. Peter Lake was in shirtsleeves, his feet up on the corner of the desk. Near his elbow were a large stack of reports and a yellow pad.
He was making notes as he read.
"You're not going to solve this case in one night," Nancy said quietly.
Lake looked around, startled. Then he grinned sheepishly.
"I always work this hard. I'm compulsive."
Nancy walked over to Lake's desk. "What are you doing'?"
"Reading about the Reardon and Escalante disappearances. I had an idea.
Do you have time?"
"I was going to eat. Want to join me? Nothing special. There's an all-night coffee shop over on oak."
Lake looked at the stack of reports and the clock.
"Sure," he said, swinging his legs off the desk and grabbing his jacket.
"I didn't realize how late it was."
"I was caught up in something too. If my stomach hadn't yelled at me, I'd still be at my desk."
"You must like your work."
"Sometimes."
"How did you get into it?"
"You mean, what's a nice girl like me doing in a job like this?"
"That never occurred to me."
"That I was a nice girl?"
Lake laughed. "No. That you're not suited for police work."
Nancy checked out at the front desk and followed Lake outside. After sundown Hunter's Point was a ghost town, except for a few spots that catered to the college crowd. Nancy could see the marquee of the Hunter's Point Cinema and the neon signs outside a couple of bars.
Most of the stores were shuttered for the night. The coffee shop was only a block and a half from the station. An oasis of light in a desert of darkness.
"Here we are," Nancy said, holding open the door of Chang's Cafe. There was a counter, but Nancy led Lake to a booth. Chang's wife brought them menus and water.
"The soup and the pies are good and the rest of the menu is edible.
Don't look for anything resembling Chinese. Mr. Chang cooks Italian, Greek and whatever else strikes his fancy."
"You're not from Hunter's Point originally, are you?" Lake asked, after they ordered.
"How could you tell?"
"You don't have the accent. I'm a transplanted westerner myself Let's see. I'd guess Montana."
"Idaho," Nancy said. "My parents still live there.
They're farmers. My brother is a high school teacher in Boise. Me, I didn't love Idaho and I wanted to see the world. Fortunately I run a mean eight hundred meters and the U. offered the best scholarship. So I ended up in Hunter's Point."
"Not exactly Paris," Lake commented.
"Not exactly," Nancy said with a smile. "But it was New York, and without the scholarship there was no way I could afford college. By the time I realized New York City and Hunter's Point, New York, were worlds apart I was enjoying myself too much to care."
"And the police work?"
"My major was Criminal justice. When I graduated, the Hunter's Point P.D. needed a woman to fill its affirmative action quota."
Nancy shrugged and looked at Lake, as if expecting a challenge.
"I bet you made detective on merit," he said.
"Damn straight," Nancy answered proudly, just as Mrs. Chang arrived with their soup.
"How did you end up here?" Nancy asked, as she waited for her minestrone to cool.
"I'm from Colorado," Lake said, smiling. "I went to Colorado State undergraduate, then I served a hitch in the Marines. There was a guy in the judge advocate's corps who went to law school here and suggested I apply.
I met Sandy at the U."
Lake paused and his smile disappeared. He looked down at his plate. The action had an unnatural quality to it, as if he suddenly realized that a smile would be inappropriate when he was discussing his dead wife. Nancy looked at Lake oddly.
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I keep thinking about her."
"That's okay. There's nothing wrong with remembering."
"I don't like myself when I'm maudlin. I've — always been a person in control. The murders have made me realize that nothing is predictable or permanent."
"If it's taken you this long to figure that out, you're lucky."
"Yeah. A successful career, a great wife and kid.
They blind you to the way the world really is, don't they?
Then someone takes that away from you in a second and and you see…"
"You see how lucky you were to have what you had, while it lasted, Peter. Most people never have in their lifetime what you and I had for a little while.
Lake looked down at the tabletop.
"At the station you said you had an idea," Nancy said, to break his mood.
"It's probably just playing detective," he answered,
"but something struck me when I was going through the reports. The day Gloria Escalante disappeared, a florist's truck was delivering in the area. A woman would open the door to a man delivering flowers. She would be excited and wouldn't be thinking. He could take the woman away in the back of his truck. And there's the rose. Someone who works in a florist's would have access to roses."
"Not bad, Peter," Nancy said, unable to hide her admiration. "You might make a good detective after all. The deliveryman was Henry Waters. He's got a minor record for indecent exposure and he's one of our suspects.
You probably haven't gotten to Wayne's report yet. He's been doing a background check on Waters." Lake flushed. "I guess you were way ahead of me."
"Peter, did Sandy have any connection with Evergreen Florists?"
"Is that where Waters works?'."
Nancy nodded.
"I don't think so. But I can look at our receipts and the checkbook to see if she ever ordered anything from them. I'm pretty certain I never did."
Their dinner arrived and they ate in silence for a few minutes. Nancy's spaghetti was delicious, but she noted that Lake just picked at his food.
"Do you feel like talking about Sandy?" Nancy asked. "We're trying to cross-reference the activities of the victims. See if they belonged to the same clubs, subscribed to the same magazines. Anything that gives us a common denominator."
"Frank asked me to do that the night of the murder.
I've been working on it. We were members of the Delmar Country Club, the Hunter's Point Athletic Club, the Racquet Club. I've got a list of our credit cards, subscriptions, everything I can think of. I'll complete it by the end of the week. Is Waters your only suspect?"
"There are others, but nothing solid. I'm talking about known sex offenders, not anyone we've linked to any of the crimes." Nancy paused.
"I had an ulterior motive for asking you to eat with me. I'm going to be totally honest with you. You shouldn't be involved in this investigation. You have pull with the mayor, so you're here, but everyone on the task force resents the way you forced yourself on us."
"Including you?"
"No. But that's only because I understand what's driving you. What you don't understand is how selfdestructive your behavior is. You're obsessed with this case because you think immersing yourself in detective work will help you escape from reality. But you're stuck in the real world. Eventually you'll have to come to terms with it, and the sooner you do that the better. You've got a good practice. You can build a new life. Don't put off coming to grips with what's happened by continuing to work on the murders."