"Murderer!" Anne had screamed. Had she filled the girl with hate over the years? Was that what kept those gray eyes so steady and noncommittal whenever they met his?
McKinnon wrenched himself away from that night and put the years behind him with a sigh. Better to keep it all official, perhaps. Personalities complicated things. If he had to take on a woman officer, Lieutenant Harald seemed one of the best. At least he hadn't been stuck with a sex bomb who could keep his staff room teetering on the edge of an explosion. The loose, tailored pant-suits, the dark hair skinned back into a knot at the nape of her neck, the minimal makeup-hell! There were times like tonight when she looked closer to forty than thirty. No trouble on that score.
And yet it pained him to see Anne's daughter looking so finely drawn.
"Not burning the candle at both ends, are you, Harald?" he asked, attempting a jocular note.
"Sir?"
"A joke. What I mean is, you're not working too hard, are you? We're supposed to be using the pass-along system, remember?"
Sigrid remembered. Difficult not to with the city going deeper into the red every year. There had been severe layoffs among personnel, and cutbacks had been ordered everywhere. In an effort to reduce departmental overtime, officers going off duty were encouraged to pass their cases along to the officer on the next shift. The procedure had indeed cut down on overtime, but no one really liked it. 'Pass along' meant losing your identification with a case, your pride in a job well done when you cracked it wide open. Sigrid sensed that McKinnon didn't like it any more than she did, and others in the bureau complained of feeling like pieceworkers on an assembly line. Overtime dropped, but further compliance was a sometime thing. Unless a situation was really coming unraveled with a need to act quickly, many officers tried to hang onto cases they'd begun until the next shift.
"This department is officially committed to eight-hour shifts, Harald, and it's nearly ten now."
"I had no intention of filing overtime," Sigrid said with the first hint of heat she'd allowed into her voice. "Anyhow, you're still here, sir."
"The privilege of rank," he said loftily.
There! That almost got one of her rare smiles. Inordinately pleased, he dismissed her with a wave. "No more work tonight, Lieutenant. Leave Szabo till tomorrow and that's an order."
Driving uptown, Sigrid was bemused. Burning the candle at both ends, indeed! As if she spent the nights dancing in chiffon until dawn. Had it been Duckett or Lyles, the two who most resented her presence in the department, she would have looked for the insult buried in the gibe. But McKinnon? No matter how she looked at that last exchange, there was only one conclusion: the captain had felt fatherly toward her. It was a novel idea. And strangely warming. She could never remember getting that sort of reaction from a man. Her father's uncles had offered a kindly solicitude that arose more from duty than from choice. Looking back on it, Sigrid didn't blame them. All had possessed grandchildren of their own, and she knew-regretfully but objectively-that she had not been a lovable child. In formal greeting or departure she had given the ritual kisses that the family expected, but never had she hugged one of them impulsively. Too, on those long-ago Sunday afternoons she had been eclipsed whenever Cousin Hilda came over from her house just down the street. Cousin Hilda had been plump and winsome with silver blond curls and delft-blue eyes, and she had always elbowed Sigrid aside to hold Great-uncle Lar's hand on those walks to the zoo. Carelessly, lavishly, she bestowed kisses at the slightest provocation. The family pet. And the more demonstrative Hilda had been, the more touch-me-not Sigrid must have seemed.
Hilda had grown into a blithe young matron, still as plump and merry as in childhood. Married to an insurance broker or a C.P.A.-Sigrid could never remember which-she now lived in Port Jefferson out on Long Island with a family of plump and merry children. Four of them, the last time Sigrid heard.
While I've grown into a dried-up old maid, she told herself. She peered through the windshield, momentarily distracted from her thoughts by a dilemma familiar to all drivers: the misty night air had deposited enough moisture on the glass to bead up soot and grime and to make seeing difficult, but was it really misting enough to wash all the dirt away if she turned on the wipers? The windshield was now so obscured that further debate became academic. She pushed the washer button and wipers simultaneously, and one feeble stream of water jetted up. Just enough to make a complete smear when the blades swished back and forth.
I remember to get gas, she told herself savagely, I remember to check the oil and the transmission fluid, so why the hell can't I remember to keep the washer bottle filled?
And no, dammit, it was not misting enough to clean the glass. Briefly she wondered if Cousin Hilda ever had these mundane automotive aggravations, or did acquiring a C.P.A. husband free you from that?
Which brought a rueful smile to her lips, because however much she might wish she were less stiff in social situations, no way did she envy Cousin Hilda's life. She was chagrined by the circuitous path her thoughts had taken, all because Captain McKinnon had given her a couple of casual fatherly words in passing. The mist thickened into a slow drizzle, and now the wipers managed to clear the windshield, she enjoyed driving through the streets at night. Especially in mid-town when she was in no hurry to get home. Traffic begun to pick up as movies and theaters emptied out onto the sidewalks. There were more cabs, buses and private cars and knots of people descending into the subway. Few people cared to go down alone at night anymore, which was a shame.
Violence or the fear of violence kept so many from utilizing fully the only sensible way of getting around the five boroughs; but violence was a fact of life, and it was futile to feel that spasm of anger.
"Do what you can and don't let the rest eat on you." All rookies got that lecture. Good advice. If you could follow it during your shift, pass everything along when you left and keep your eyes averted when you were off duty, there would be fewer policemen nursing ulcers. As it was, every precinct house in the city could furnish enough antacid remedies to stock a small drugstore.
A smell compounded of gasoline fumes, buttered popcorn and wet pavement slid in through her slightly opened window as she stopped for a red light at Times Square. The drizzle was starting to take itself seriously; might almost be called true rain; yet the boy and girl who passed dreamily in front of her car were oblivious to it, to the changed lights, to everything except each other.
Sigrid drove on automatically, her mind only half-aware of the mechanics of driving. Without noticing where her thoughts had drifted, she found herself going over the earlier part of the evening as she contrasted Captain McKinnon's kindly air of solidity with Oscar Nauman's brusqueness.
Nauman was older than McKinnon as calendars run; but there was a curiously youthful, unfinished quality about the artist. He was a mature man, no little-boy-not-grown-up, yet he had retained an indefinable youthful quality. As if he were still in a state of becoming. As if the world still held new surprises, new possibilities, after all these years.
Probably the artistic temperament, Sigrid thought scornfully; but a sudden impulse made her head the car crosstown toward her mother's apartment.
She told herself it was time to anyhow. Whenever Anne was out of town, Sigrid stopped by to pick up mail and to make sure everything was okay. It was her duty, she told herself firmly, and curiosity about what Oscar Nauman had looked like fifteen years ago had nothing to do with it.