Acquainted With the Night (8 page)

“Tell me about that.”

Alex sighed. “When CJ was nineteen, she met a woman at college. She fell in love with her, and CJ told her family she was gay. They basically disowned her, never spoke with her again. She stayed with this woman, believing they were in love and going to build a life together. They lived together for four years, then CJ walked in to find Laurel with another woman in bed. CJ threw her out, and then she ran away, left Georgia and moved here. She hasn’t been back since, not even when her father died a couple of years ago, because she knows her family doesn’t want to see her.”

Wheeler said gently, “And you believe this is the same thing as before?”

Did she? Alex thought about it a minute. “I guess I do. I don’t know. I didn’t cheat on her, but I must have done something. All I know is when something went wrong with her first relationship, CJ left. So I must have done something wrong. What else can I think?”

“Was there another occasion where CJ acted in this way?” Wheeler asked.

“She had another serious relationship with a woman, after she moved here,” Alex said. “But after they broke up, she didn’t take off. In fact, I met the woman, her ex, last year. In fact, almost exactly a year ago.”

“Did CJ seem disturbed by that meeting? Do you think it precipitated her leaving?”

Again, Alex thought a moment, then shook her head. “No. I met Stephanie in March, and CJ didn’t take off until July. She mostly seemed worried about my reaction to meeting her. And we did fight about my belief that Steph was responsible for the accident, although I’ve never been able to prove it.” Alex looked away. “Maybe that disagreement was more serious than I thought.”

“What accident?” Wheeler asked, frowning.

Alex briefly explained what had happened last March. When she was finished, Wheeler asked, “CJ left the relationship with Steph but she didn’t leave town, then.”

“No. That’s true.”

“But you think she ran away from you.”

“Look,” Alex said in exasperation, “I see what your point is. Maybe a pattern I thought I saw isn’t there at all. I think she really left Georgia, not so much because of what happened with Laurel, but because her family cut off their relationship with her. That hurt her a lot, I know.”

She thought she saw a brief flicker of something in Wheeler’s eyes. “But you still believe that CJ left because of you?”

“Yes,” Alex answered. “You don’t know how hard I tried to find her.

“Talked to her friends, even tried to talk to her family, not that they would speak to me. I called every police department and sheriff’s office in the state, I think, trying to locate her. She must have wanted to disappear really badly. Disappear so even I couldn’t find her.” With a slowly dawning realization, Alex added, “And I think I can give you a real answer to your question.”

“Which question was that?”

“You started out today by asking what I was looking to get from therapy.”

“Yes. And what do you think that is?”

Alex took a deep breath and released it. “I want to know—no, I
need
to know why she left me. If I can resolve that, somehow, even if it’s only in my own mind, maybe I can move on. I’ll always love her, but maybe someday I’ll be able to see a life without her, a future, if I can just understand the past.”

Wheeler looked at her speculatively. “Knowing what other people’s motives are isn’t always possible,” she said. “But I do believe that you can come to understand what has happened in your life, from your own perspective. If you can come to understand your own motives, why you made the decisions you made, you can change your behaviors.” She smiled at Alex and added, “It’s a goal we can work toward.”

* * *

It was dark by the time Alex got home to the condo. She turned on the lights in the foyer as she took off her jacket and threw her keys on the table. As she hung up her coat, she looked down, as she had every evening since last July, hoping to find a pair of CJ’s discarded shoes on the floor of the entryway.

CJ always stepped out of her shoes as soon as she walked in the door, a habit that had driven Alex a little crazy. Why didn’t she walk a few more feet and take them off in their closet? Alex had to avoid tripping over them every time she came home.

But there were no shoes on the floor after CJ had come home that last time. Alex looked every night, waiting for CJ to come home and make everything right again.

The session with Dr. Wheeler, helpful though it was, had exhausted her. She couldn’t decide which was more difficult: talking about CJ to her therapist, or not talking about CJ to everyone else.

She walked down the hall to the master bedroom. Her service weapon, a Glock semiautomatic, went locked into a small safe built into the closet. She tossed her blouse into the hamper, carefully hung up her slacks and then unstrapped her backup gun from her ankle. The Smith and Wesson revolver was a short-barreled hammerless thirty-eight caliber. She put the smaller gun, still holstered, in the drawer of the bedside table on her side. Loaded, it weighed just about a pound, and she was always happy to get it off her leg.

Alex slept only on her side of the bed. Both the phone and the alarm clock were on her side. CJ’s side held only a lamp, and a volume of Robert Frost poetry, the book she’d been halfway through rereading when she left. Alex sometimes wondered if the cleaning service was curious about why they kept having to shift the same book to dust twice a month.

She hadn’t gotten rid of anything, given away CJ’s extensive shoe collection or moved her clothes out of the closet. Sometimes, when she was really hurting, she could go into the closet and put her face in one of CJ’s jackets and catch the faintest breath of her scent clinging to the clothes. It had taken her weeks before she had been able to wash the sheets on their bed.

Alex pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt, then went back out into the kitchen to search for something to eat. There wasn’t much, but she found a container of leftover pasta salad that would do. She was never very hungry anymore, but she ate whenever she remembered to do so.

She finished the food, rinsed out the container and put everything in the dishwasher. She didn’t have to run it very often anymore, not like when CJ was cooking. Alex often complained to her partner that she could use half the pans in the kitchen to make a simple omelet. Alex wished that she had to clean up after CJ now.

She lay on the couch and picked up a book, but nothing caught her attention. She closed her eyes, exhausted but not sleepy.

When the phone rang, she jerked up, the book falling to the floor with a thud. The caller ID surprised her.

“Hi, Vivien,” she said. “Have you heard something?”

She’d only talked to Vivien about once a month since that first frantic week, when everyone CJ knew was exchanging what seemed like constant phone calls, text messages and emails. Now every conversation Alex had with Vivien, or for that matter with Rod Chavez or anyone else, began with the same words, and Vivien gave the same answer as always.

“Nothing.” Vivien sighed. “How are you doing?”

“About the same,” Alex answered honestly. “How are you?”

She tried to remember that she wasn’t the only person CJ had left behind, that she didn’t have exclusive rights to missing her. Vivien had suffered, in a different way, almost as much as Alex had herself.

This time Vivien hesitated over the question. After a moment, she said, “I have kind of a weird request. Could we go out sometime, like dinner or maybe lunch this weekend? I’d really like to talk to you.”

“Of course,” Alex said automatically. She and Vivien had never been as close as CJ might have liked—best friend and wife were too different for that. But Alex liked Vivien, in moderate doses, and she knew how much CJ loved Viv. She felt as if she’d gotten custody of Vivien somehow.

“Good,” Vivien sounded relieved, as if she’d been afraid Alex might refuse the invitation. “I need a friendly ear. Well, some advice, actually.”

“Is this about CJ?” Alex had to ask.

“Not at all. Though I have to tell you that if she were here, she’d be the one I’d be asking.”

Alex wasn’t sure how to take this news. “So, what, I’m pinch-hitting for her?”

“Sort of. Not exactly, I just…oh, fuck, Alex. I just don’t know who else to talk to. About this. And you’re the only other person I know who would really understand.”

Really confused now, Alex asked, “Are you having trouble with the law, Vivien?”

“No! Nothing like that. I just want to talk to you. In person, okay?”

They settled on lunch at the Great Northern Tavern on Saturday, and Alex hung up, still wondering what Vivien wanted to talk about.

Chapter Eight

Late on Friday afternoon, Alex was doing a quick read through the latest
Police Chief
magazine when Frank Morelli knocked on her open door.

“Got a minute?” he asked.

“Of course. I was just thinking about you, in fact.”

“You were reading the magazine and thinking about me?” he kidded her.

Alex smiled a little. “I was, actually. I was thinking about asking Wylie if I could take you to the IACP conference in October.”

“Really?” Frank looked pleased and surprised. “And why would I be going to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference?”

“Because they have a lot of training sessions. For example, you could take a session on first line supervision.”

“Something you’re trying to tell me, boss?”

Alex sat back and looked at him. Frank had an open, friendly air about him that made him good with victims and helped calm tense situations. He was only a little younger than Alex, with almost twenty years’ solid experience behind him.

“Let’s just say I’m thinking about succession planning,” Alex said. “I hope you’ll be making lieutenant someday very soon, and maybe captain after that. Training is always a good thing.”

Suddenly he looked apprehensive. “Jesus, Alex, are you going somewhere? You’re not going to quit or anything, are you?”

“No, of course not,” she answered quickly. “Why would you think that?”

“You…” he stopped and suddenly sat down heavily in her visitor’s chair. “I just thought that maybe you were so unhappy you were gonna quit.” He stopped and looked at her with sad brown eyes.

“I am unhappy,” she said quietly. “Quitting wouldn’t help that. God, if I couldn’t come to work I’d be completely round the bend by now.”

“Oh, man. You had me scared there for a minute.”

“Frank, what did you want?”

He cleared his throat, clearly a little embarrassed. “I was just checking up on you. You were pretty upset with Fullerton the other day. Not that the jerk-off didn’t deserve it, but you’re not much for screaming. I just wondered how you were doing.”

He was being nice, and Alex tried not to resent being asked, once again, how she was feeling. How did everyone
think
she was feeling? What words could she use that would tell the story? Empty? Aching? Angry? All of those emotions, and others she could hardly name.

“About as well as I can be, I guess,” Alex answered him.

He continued to look at her steadily. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” he said softly. “Everything that happened last summer, but mostly I’m really sorry she left. I really am.”

“I know, Frank. Thanks for caring,” she said gently.

He got up and said on his way out, “Jennifer told me to ask you over to dinner sometime. If you can stand to have dinner with a fourteen-year-old smart-ass at the table, we’d love to have you.”

Jesus, Alex thought, what was it with the sudden avalanche of invitations to feed her? Chris, Paul, Vivien, and now Frank. Did she look like she’d lost weight or something?

“Thanks, Frank,” she said, without pursuing it. “And thank Jennifer for me. We’ll set it up sometime.” She glanced at the clock and saw how late it was. “And could you mind the fort for a few minutes? I have to go downstairs and do something. I’ll be back.”

“Sure thing.”

* * *

Sergeant McCarthy looked up from his desk as she went into his tiny office on the first floor.

“Captain,” he said in greeting, looking uncomfortable. “The chief told me you’d be by.”

“How are you, Chad?” Alex asked kindly.

“Okay,” he answered, rubbing the tiny bald spot on his crown. “Busy, you know.”

“I know,” Alex said. She fought an irrational urge to apologize, as if his having to manage the flood of work was somehow her fault. “I’ll need a box or something, I guess.”

“Yeah, I got an empty copier box in there for you. If you need another one, let me know, but I don’t think there’s that much personal stuff. Just the bottom couple a drawers in the desk. All the files and stuff are locked up.”

“Of course. Thanks for getting things ready.”

“Sure thing.” He chewed on his lip a moment, then blurted, “I’m really sorry, y’know. About the Inspector. I really liked her.”

Me, too, Alex thought. Everyone is sorry. “Thanks, Chad,” was all she could say.

She went into CJ’s small office. Crammed into the room were desk, office chair, one visitor’s chair and a trio of filing cabinets that took up most of the space. Alex went over and got the empty box, then sat in CJ’s chair.

She looked for a moment out CJ’s window. In the park on the other side of the parking lot the aspens weren’t budding yet, their pale trunks still stark against the slowly ripening grass. Soon they would be bright with green leaves that shimmered in the faintest summer breeze, before turning deep gold in the fall, a uniquely Colorado sight that had always lifted her heart.

But not last autumn. Most of the last year had been so filled with pain that all the beauty had been crowded out, as if everything were blurred with tears. Would she ever be able to see the beauty around her again?

She opened the drawers. In the bottom one was a small makeup case that held mascara, blusher and a compact, along with a mirror. There was also a hairbrush and a toothbrush, carefully capped, with a small tube of toothpaste. At the bottom of the case was a lone earring, the post broken. Alex dumped it all out onto the desk, staring at the earring for a moment.