"We're just worried, is all."
"What's the consensus out there?"
"What consensus?"
"Do you think I'm gonna go postal and spray the squad room with a shotgun, or just eat my gun and make a helluva mess on the bedroom wall?"
"Nobody thinks that," Jill flares, her timidity vanishing. "It's just that you haven't been on any of the call-outs lately. That's not like you. And your door's closed all the time and you barely talk to anyone, except at brief. We're just concerned."
"Well, you don't need to be. All you need to do—and you can pass this on to the boys—is mind your own business and do your jobs. If you spent more time worrying about your sixty-days than me, you might be able to get them in on time."
Jill's lips purse up and she glares.
"Anything else?" Frank repeats.
Jill shakes her head, slamming Frank's door when she leaves.
"Christ, what a cabal," Frank speaks into her fingers. Talking to herself is another recently acquired habit that Frank's beginning to notice.
She leans back with a rushing sigh, wishing everyone would disappear into a black hole and take their goddamned concern with them. She knows Jill meant well, and knows she shouldn't have shot the messenger. She'll admit things have changed around the squad room. She seems to have closed her door literally as well as metaphorically and can't get it open again. Isn't even trying. She doesn't care that she's locked it behind her and she wishes no one else did either.
And again her temper's gotten the better of her. Now she'll have to apologize to Jill, make nice to the squad. Frank's job is to maintain morale even though her own is lower than piss in a gutter. She sighs again, unable to get enough air.
Frank pulls herself out of her chair. Jill is on the phone. Frank lays a hand on her shoulder, points to her office. Jill nods and joins her a few minutes later.
"Do you want the door open or closed?"
"Open. Sit down." She waits until her detective is perched on the vinyl office chair. "Jill, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I guess I'm not dealing with this the way everybody would like me to. But I am dealing with it. And you're right. It is hard. But I don't want you guys worrying. If you have concerns about the way I'm running things, tell me. I'll listen. It's just going to take some time to readjust, that's all. We've taken a lot of punches lately, but we'll bounce back. We always do, right?"
There she is, Stoic the Magnificent again.
"Yeah," Jill agrees. "It's just that we care a—"
"Look. I know," Frank interrupts. "But don't worry. That's my job. Everything's gonna be okay."
Jill nods and Frank dismisses her gently. She returns to the work on her desk, satisfied she's extinguished another fire. Frank's been pushing so much of it lately she's starting to believe her own hype.
Chapter 11
Something else the squad's probably noticed—after having spent her career practically living at Figueroa, Frank's been leaving the station promptly at quitting time. Too many ghosts wander the halls. Nor does she want to be at Gail's. There she has to pretend too hard. Pretend everything's okay, pretend she's fine. She is, of course, just not the way Gail and anyone else with half an opinion would like her to be.
Her house is empty and it echoes, but there at least Frank can spread the Pryce case across the dining room table and get lost in their world. Grim as it is, she prefers it to her own. She likes long stretches of time with the case and a full bottle of Black Label. Even on the nights she has to go to Gail's, if she leaves at two and traffic is fair, she can manage a solid four or five hours on the case.
Frank's tired at end-of-watch today; too tired to think well, but drink in hand she reaches for the binders anyway.
"Light reading," she tells herself.
Ladeenia Pryce was killed on her way to a friend's house. The friend, Cassie Bertram, lived in a duplex three blocks away. She never got to Cassie's house. Her friend called Mrs. Pryce to ask when Ladeenia was coming. Mrs. Pryce told Cassie that Ladeenia had already left. And Trevor went with her. Mrs. Pryce told Cassie to have Ladeenia turn around and come right home when she did get there—Ladeenia had fooled around getting over there and now it was almost suppertime. That was at 4:30 pm.
At 5:30, Mrs. Pryce called Cassie to tell her daughter to get her butt home, but Ladeenia still hadn't arrived at her friend's house. That was when Mrs. Pryce started to get scared. Ladeenia was a good girl. Her daddy spoiled her a little but she minded well. Mrs. Pryce hoped she'd been sidetracked by another friend. Maybe that little Guatemalan girl that lived down Gage, or some children at the playground. Ladeenia was a friendly girl, and responsible. She took good care of Trevor. She wouldn't do anything foolish if he was with her.
Mrs. Pryce planned on giving Ladeenia a good hiding when she got home. Teach that girl to tell her mama where she was and to be home when she was supposed to be. By 8:30, Mrs. Pryce was panicking. Her husband called the Figueroa station. Adults and older teens had to have been gone for at least twenty-four hours before they were officially considered missing. It was different for a six- and nine-year-old in the middle of winter, four hours after sundown. The desk sergeant told Mr. Pryce to come down and file a report. He did so and his description of the kids was read at the next roll call. Not that it mattered. The autopsy reports would later conclude that Ladeenia and Trevor were dead by then.
At 1:12 the following afternoon a hysterical woman called the station. One of her laying hens had come up missing and she'd been searching the nearby vacant lot. She didn't find her chicken, but she did find Ladeenia and Trevor.
The suits were called, and just the luck of the draw, Frank and Noah were up. But Frank was in Ventura, stuck in a weekend empowerment seminar, so Noah fielded the call alone. He didn't leave the scene until well after dark, long after the coroner's wagon had taken the bodies away, long after the SID techs had finished bagging and tagging, long after every last picture had been snapped and every diagram sketched. Noah had walked into the darkened squad room as Frank was walking out. They'd turned the lights on and she sat and listened to him, promising to help as soon as she could. "As soon as she could" wasn't soon enough and Noah worked the case alone.
Frank reads Noah's interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Pryce. She reads the interviews with their other children. While she reads an interview with one of Ladeenia's friends, Frank refills her tumbler. She drinks and reads, making occasional notes until the alarm on her watch tells her it's time to go to Gail's. A stone sinks in her chest. With effort, she closes the binder.
Chapter 12
A contentious lieutenant's meeting on Thursday goes well past dinnertime. Frank returns to the office for her things. The squad room is quiet, her cops long gone. It's not so bad at night. Not so many memories, no interruptions. Frank finds the stale Camels in her desk drawer. She fires one up and sinks into her chair. The smoke makes her dizzy but she drags it in anyway. She savors the weight in her chest. It displaces all the other ones. She spits tobacco off her lip and when the cigarette burns to within a half an inch of her fingers, she pinches it out between thumb and forefinger. It's a residual reflex from a two-pack-a-day habit. Now it hurts like hell because she has no calluses. Frank smells burnt skin and a fleeting, rigored grin slices her face.
If she could see herself in a mirror, she might see glimpses of the scum she's spent a lifetime trying to put away: the fourteen-year-old who raped his grandmother with a serving spoon; the father who admitted to daily intercourse with his four- and six-year-olds because that's what he had kids for; the mother who giggled when she shocked her infant with a stripped electrical cord then beat the baby because it cried; the old man who suffocated his wife of fifty-two years because he was tired of wiping her bedridden ass and changing her soiled sheets; the ten-year-old who shot her grandmother because she wouldn't let her stay up to watch Survivor.