That’s the way he’d felt for years after Alicia was gone. That, somehow, he had to be stuck in someone else’s life. It was only fairly recently that he’d felt as if he’d begun to return to his own existence, his own path. Now there was no denying it. Here he was. His house. His furniture. His job. His murder investigation. His missing victim. His life.
The question was: Where the hell did that life go from here and how much control could he have over it?
As the first cut began, he went to his Compaq, turned it on. He was anxious to take a look at the FAA site and see what he could dig up, but before he could even sit down he noticed that the message light on his phone machine was flashing.
Justin sighed. He disapproved of phone machines. He disapproved of anything that made him more accessible to the outside world. But his job required it. Somehow, his life required it, too, which he couldn’t quite figure out, but there you had it. So he went to the machine, pressed play, and heard the voices of two people he didn’t want to talk to.
The first message was from Marjorie Leggett, Jimmy’s wife. No-widow. He immediately made the mental correction. “Jay, it’s Margie,” she began. Then there was a pause, as if maybe she should give her last name. Which she did. “Marge Leggett.” There was another silence, a brief one. Justin could all but see her timidity, her confusion at having to do something for the first time without her husband’s guidance. Then she found her resolve and continued speaking. “I’m just calling to see if you’ve. . done anything. . after our conversation. Please call me. I need to know. Thank you.”
Justin’s face softened at her final instinctive politeness. Then he thought about her message. He had promised her he’d find out what Jimmy was doing in the restaurant. Why he’d died such an ignominious death. But he hadn’t done a thing. He’d been a little busy. He had a murder case on his hands. A murder case that no one knew was actually murder.
And now he had to add something else to the list of things that belonged in his life: his promises.
How much control would he have over them?
The second message was from Leona Krill, the mayor of East End Harbor. She wanted him to call the moment he got her message. It was urgent.
He erased both messages. Decided he’d wait an hour or so to call Margie back. So he could figure out what he could actually say to her. Decided he wouldn’t call the mayor back at all.
Justin went back to sit at his computer, began to go online, then the phone rang. He got back up, answered it.
“Justin, it’s Leona Krill.”
“Hello, Leona.”
“I’m assuming you got my message and didn’t call me back. Everybody I talked to said that’s exactly what you’d do. So I’m calling again.”
“I just walked in the door. Got the message ten seconds ago. And who’d you talk to who said that?”
“Were you going to call me back?”
“Eventually.”
“I need to see you right away. At my office, please.”
“Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“No, I’m afraid it can’t.” When he didn’t respond, the mayor said, “Justin, this conversation isn’t about anything bad. It is urgent, but it’s not going to make you unhappy.”
“Leona, almost all conversations make me unhappy.”
“Can you be here in fifteen minutes?”
He told her he could and hung up the phone. Then he reluctantly flicked off Arlo Guthrie and went back outside, wondering what he was going to hear that she thought he wasn’t going to hate hearing-and wondering exactly how much he was going to hate hearing it.
The mayor’s office was in the oldest building on Main Street, a town house built in 1839. It was four stores down from Deena’s yoga studio and five stores away from her apartment above Norm’s Contemporary General Store. Justin parked right in front of the studio, walked by the plate glass window that let passersby look in on classes of people stretching and contorting themselves into odd positions. He automatically sucked in his belly, which wasn’t nearly as large as it had been a year ago, but was a little larger than it had been three months ago. He’d stopped taking his yoga lessons the same time he and Deena had stopped seeing each other. He also realized it had been a couple of weeks since he’d been to the gym. Maybe three weeks. Shit, he thought. A month.
He glanced into the yoga class as he passed by. Deena happened to be looking his way, saw him and smiled. He gave a half wave and thought about stopping in, seeing if he could take Kendall, Deena’s nine-year-old daughter, out to dinner. Maybe a movie. Then he thought better of it-his stomach was suddenly pierced with a familiar ache when he spotted Deena; the uncomfortable pang that comes from dissipated love-and just kept walking.
Leona Krill greeted him warmly. Justin thought that she was probably looking for a friend. She needed one. Leona was gay and had just gotten married, quite publicly, to her longtime girlfriend. The weekenders who inhabited East End Harbor were fairly liberal by nature. But the full-time residents-the voters-tended to be blue-collar and more conservative. The mayor’s wedding had caused quite a stir. A lot of people thought it would cost her when the next election rolled around. Personally, Justin didn’t care who she slept with or who she married. His idea of a good mayor was anyone who was reasonably honest, didn’t screw up too much, and left him alone. Leona had scored well on all three points up to now. Now the third part of the equation was up in the air.
They spent thirty seconds asking how they each were, then she said, “Let me get right to the point, Jay. People do call you Jay, don’t they?” He admitted that some did, and was impressed that she’d done some homework in the few minutes it had taken him to arrive at her office. “I’m sure this has occurred to you, and I know it might seem a bit indelicate to bring it up so soon after Jimmy’s death, but we need another chief of police.”
It actually hadn’t occurred to Justin. Things had been moving too quickly. And everything at the station was proceeding smoothly. But he nodded, as if he’d done nothing but think about such a need.
“Well, I’d like you to take the job,” Leona Krill said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m appointing you the new chief of police. On a temporary basis. I’m hoping you’ll agree on six months. That seems fair. And at that point, we can review the situation and, I hope, mutually agree on whether you should continue or not. It makes perfect sense. You have the background, the experience, people seem to respect you-in a strange sort of way. There’ll be a nice pay raise, of course.”
Justin realized he was standing there, probably looking dumbfounded. It shouldn’t have been such a shock, it was the logical move for her to make. If he accepted, it made her life easy. No outside search, no unknown quantity. But every voice inside him was screeching for him not to do it. He didn’t want the responsibility. Or the pay raise. He didn’t want the bureaucratic dealings. Didn’t want people working for him. He didn’t want the extra ties to the community. Didn’t want to attend the social events or the town meetings or see any public-spirited liaison who would want to talk to him about whatever public-spirited people talked about. He didn’t want anything about this job. Nothing at all.