That didn’t mean, though, that Henning and his peers wouldn’t find anything. Many criminals attempted such cleanups, but good technicians still found what was left behind. Evidence could survive a long time under the right circumstances. It was entirely possible that technicians could find blood in the car and identify it as Shorty’s.
There was a rustling noise, of motion, in one of the bathroom stalls. The door opened and Roz, the MPD sergeant, came out. She stopped short and looked at me with frank surprise. I must have been looking at her the same way. There’s not a lot of reason for sitting or standing around a restroom in silent inactivity for ten minutes, and that’s what we’d just caught each other doing.
“What’s up?” I said lamely. I noticed that her eyes seemed red-rimmed.
“Ah, I’m not even supposed to be here,” she said. “I had to put Rosco down today.”
“Rosco?” I said.
“My first K-9 partner,” she said.
“Oh, hell,” I said. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, well, it was for the best. He could hardly eat anymore. I fixed him ground steak the day before yesterday and he just looked at it, didn’t touch it. I knew it was time.” She waved a hand in the air. “I thought there was something I could be doing down here, to get my mind off it, but there’s nothing.” She sighed. “What about you?”
“Looking for a ride home,” I said. “I don’t have a car.”
Roz didn’t comment on the fact that I was “looking for a ride home” by standing around alone in a restroom. She said, “I might as well give you a lift.”
We went down to the garage in silence. Then, behind the wheel, she said, “You want to get a drink instead?”
“Okay, okay. No, wait,” I heard my own voice saying. “Okay, I’ve been pissed on four times, but I’ve only been thrown up on once. I’m very proud of that.”
“You’ve been pissed on four times?” Roz demanded, over the bar noise.
“One of those times deserves a, what do you call it, an asterisk,” I clarified, my hands wrapped around an empty highball glass. “This suspect was strapped down to a stretcher by EMTs, he’d been hurt in a fight in a biker bar. None of us even saw how he managed to whip it out, much less aim for my leg. He was like a ventriloquist with that stuff.”
Roz and I had initially wanted to go someplace dark and quiet, but had chosen a lively urban-professional bar instead, because we didn’t want to run into fellow cops, and the Friday-night happy-hour food would be better.
We drank to Rosco, and over the next few hours drank nearly enough to toast her other seven dogs. When the chips and seven-layer dip the bartender had set out wasn’t enough, we split a basket of seasoned potato wedges.
She asked about Gen. I asked how her trainee, Lockhart, was coming along. She told me she’d never believed that bullshit about me being involved in some murder down in Blue Earth. I told her I’d never credited the rumors about her being a lesbian. Roz told me she was a lesbian. I bought the next two rounds.
After a blurry length of time, Roz told me the story of Rosco’s finest hour.
“So we’re all out in the sticks, searching for this dangerous escaped convict- this is four-thirty or so in the morning, and it’s still pretty dark. Rosco’s got a scent, and he runs until he stops at this tree. Then he doubles back, and runs around the tree again. He’s all excited.
“We think this guy’s up the tree, so everyone runs over and points their weapons and flashlights up at the branches. But there’s no one there. Rosco’s still circling the tree, barking at me, and I can’t figure what he wants. The BCA guys are getting kind of pissed, like Rosco’s screwing up. They want me to pull him back onto the trail, and I have to tell them: you don’t lead these dogs, you follow them. Then Rosco jumps up with his front paws on the tree and barks again, like to say, I’ve done my job, now you take over, stupid.” Roz peered at me, owlish from drink. “You know what it was?”
“The guy was hiding in the tree?”
“That’s right. In the tree,” Roz said, squeezing my arm for emphasis. “He’d climbed up into the branches to look around, and the tree was dead and the trunk hollowed out, and when he was climbing back down, he either slipped or he decided to hide in there.” She sipped at her beer. “He couldn’t get back out, and just about froze to death in the night. He was unconscious. But they thawed him out and put him on trial, and sent him to prison for life.”
“A happy ending,” I said.
“Yeah,” Roz said. “What time is it?”
“Little after nine,” I said.
“I don’t think I can drive,” Roz said.
“’Kay,” I told her.
“Dammit, this whole thing was supposed to be me giving you a ride home,” Roz insisted.
“’S all right,” I told her.
In the end, Roz’s girlfriend, Amy, ended up taking a cab downtown in order to drive her home. Amy assured me it was no trouble to give me a lift, too. She didn’t recognize the address I gave her. But Roz did.
“You live in a housing project?” she said, incredulous.
18
A loose-limbed teenage boy ambled by in the hallway of the 26th floor of the north tower. His eyes met mine and flicked away; he went on to the apartment at the end of the hall. I was in front of 2605, where I’d knocked on the door, but gotten no answer. I tried again.
Then Cicero opened the door, wet-haired, a towel held half-crumpled in one hand. His shirt was damp where he’d obviously pulled it on hastily, without adequately drying the skin underneath.
“Is this a bad time?” I said.
“No, no,” he said. “Come on in.”
Inside, a smell of Ivory soap and steam had drifted into his living room. I said, “Sorry, I’m empty-handed tonight.”
“You don’t have to bring me anything to come over here,” Cicero said. “But am I right in guessing that while you didn’t bring a bottle this time, you haven’t been abstaining tonight? I thought I detected a semiliquid s in your-”
A knock on the door interrupted him. Cicero rolled to the door and opened it partway.
“I burned my arm,” a female voice said.
Cicero rolled back, and his patient entered. She was a thin white woman with lank brown hair, dressed in a disjointed ensemble of spaghetti-strapped satin camisole over sweatpants, and she held a wet paper towel to her arm.
“How’d this happen, Darlene?” Cicero asked.
“Cooking,” she said, and looked at me. But I saw her eyes, and knew from her pinpoint pupils that drugs were probably at the root of whatever kitchen accident she’d had.
Cicero turned to me. “Sarah, would you mind waiting in the other room?”
I nodded agreement and withdrew into his bedroom. If I knew him, this would take longer than just cleaning the burn and putting a topical salve on it; I doubted he’d missed her contracted pupils any more than I had, and he would probably follow treatment with advice on where to seek drug-dependency counseling.
The blinds of the window were up, as always, and the lights of Minneapolis lay below; I went over to look down. Cicero ’s voice and Darlene’s were faint through the bedroom door. Other than that, nothing. It was surprising how thick the walls of this building were. There were people around us, but I heard none of their activities. Other than hearing Fidelio bark once, my visits here had been like coming to someplace high atop a mountain. Normally, it was peaceful. Tonight, it was unnerving.
Roz had been a great distraction, as had the noise and crowd of the bar and the war stories we’d told each other. But now the question I’d been pushing from my mind came back to me, unappeased. What would happen if the BCA found Stewart’s blood in my car?