Quintic (3 page)

“
Grab your
chance, Kiddie,” she whispered without looking at him. “Dead guy in
the field. Through the back. Straight line out after the bathroom’s
cabinet.”

She heard
Charles’s ‘
Holy
Moses
’ as he went back to the room but
she was already heading back to Christopher’s truck. She locked the
door and sat with her eyes closed, breathing hard, trying not to
think. At least, she thought, Christopher hadn’t been there to see
her storm out of the room.

F
rom the office where he was
listening to the manager and the officer in charge going on and on
without saying anything worth a shit, Chris saw both Patricia race
to the car and Charles rush inside the room. Now what, he wondered?
Surely the guy hadn’t been improper, not the type. Granted she had
been a little flirty, but the kid looked too shy for it to lead
anywhere. Then again, with her, anything was possible. Considering
that the interrogation was going nowhere, the manager hadn’t seen
anything, hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t known the girl, had watched
television all night and hadn’t seen the client before or after,
Chris decided he had heard enough. She might accuse him of being
overprotective as usual but so be it. He headed back to his
truck.

Patricia was
sitting with her eyes closed. She looked pale, and he noticed she
was breathing through her mouth. ‘Something is up,’ both his
instinct and the knot in his stomach screamed.

He knocked
and waited for her to unlock the door. When she didn’t move, he
used his key fob and
barely
wrenched the door open. It
could be a delayed reaction, the last weeks, months, had been
straining to her. Her denying it all hadn’t helped any.

Sh
e spoke, eyes closed, before he
had time to say anything. “You were right, this is not much fun. I
think I want to go now. You can stay and finish up. Could you call
a cab or have someone drive me back?”

Shit,
something was definitely wrong. “How about I ask Charles to bring
you back to your hotel?” He suggested, to see how she should
react.
Tell me, Angel, if the
rookie was out of line
.

A shaken but
excited
Charles dashed out of the room.
“I saw the body of a dead man,” he announced. “Naked Caucasian
male, in the field behind the motel. Shall I go tell the
chief?”

Fucking
shit, those stupid suburb cops had left a dead guy out back? What
kind of shitty organisation was Floyd running?!

“
Why the
fuck did I bother asking if you had searched the place? You had
searched it, right?” He should have done it himself. Fucking
incompetents. Incompetents infuriated him. Fuck, he was pissed and
more than a little worried. What had she seen? The knot in his
stomach tightened, and so did his fists.

Patricia
opened her eyes to look straight at him. Pondering his next move,
Chris stared back. “Considering Officer Charles just found this new
dead body,” she said. “I think you should let him take the lead,
Big guy. I’ll take a cab.”

Yah right,
Officer Charles.
Mentally composing
himself, Chris took a deep silent breath. On the surface, he was
cool and composed, but his fists remained clenched, the knot
tight.

Before she
could add anything,
Charles saved Chris
from arguing with her. “I’m sorry to say, Sir, that I did not find
the body. Ms Patricia did. It would seem that we have not
searched the place completely.” No shit. Floyd might be lazy, but
the kid had potential.

“
OK,
Charles. Since Patricia here thinks you’re up to it, you go tell
your chief. You’re in charge of securing the scene.” Charles left
right away, leaving them to glare at each other. “Anything specific
you would like to share with me, Princess?” Depending on how she
answered, he would know if she was in shock.

She sighed
a
nd gazed away for a few
seconds.

“
Anything to
tell me
, Patricia?”

“
Tell you
what?
I do not know what you mean,” she
whispered. The shadow of a smile at the corner of her mouth told
him she was going to be all right.

“
OK then,
Darling of mine. I will have an officer drive you home.”

Even if this
were
n’t his patch, with a double murder
and a rookie in charge, he would be staying awhile. Leaving it all
to this lazy crew would be unprofessional. But if they had
questions that Charles could not answer about their finding, well,
they were going to suck it up and wait for tomorrow when she was
less unsettled.

Even if the
chief didn’t really have a man to spare, Chris asked for a patrol
car to drive her home. Under the circumstances, Floyd knew he
couldn’t afford to say no. Chris helped her in the
blue-and-white.

She leaned
out the car window to wave him goodbye. “Don’t work too late. And,
Christopher, I do hope that I, hum, didn’t step on any pieces of
evidence.” And off she was. Damn woman.

Her
Interlude

A
s soon as she closed the room of
her hotel suite, Patricia stripped and threw her clothes in the
trash before taking a long shower to clean herself of the sweat and
dirt from the field, and the smell of the dead. Rationally, she
knew, since she had not touched the corpse, that she did not stink
of dead, and yet the irrational part of her smelled
something.

At her
request, Luis, the hotel barman, brought her up a glass of red wine
from the hotel’s secret selection. The colour was beautiful, almost
raspberry red and the taste subtle but deep, with just enough
tannins, once again a delectable choice. Maybe she could get drunk.
Or go to bed. She hadn’t eaten in what seemed like days. Those
suburb cops had not learned how to drive correctly; she had felt
like throwing up during the whole ride over.

So she was
grouching. Bitching was an important part of her instinctive
reaction pattern to the recently departed, nothing more than an
automatic reflex. See a corpse, throw up, grumble. She wondered yet
again what it meant. Perhaps she simply hated dead people? She had
yet to get used to them. How did Christopher do it? He always
looked so imperturbable at crime scenes, not a muscle
flinching.

An
o
ld instructor of Christopher had told
Lou, Christopher’s Captain, that the Big guy had been like that
even in police school. It might explain why he was so good at what
he did. No reaction to impair his brain, and quite a brain he had.
She suspected he didn’t see corpses as people, more as problems
with a multitude of possible solutions, like a challenging
puzzle.

She did like
the Big guy. A lot. A whole lot more than like, in fact. Crazy
about him. Which was a problem with no solutions. Impossible man.
How could I have let that happened, she cursed herself again? The
cursing was more and more one of wonder than anger. She might just
say yes to moving in with him. Maybe. That glass of wine was really
hitting her hard. Time for bed.

When
Christopher called around ten on his way back from the crime scene,
she was already fast asleep on her couch thanks to some red wine
and didn’t hear a thing.

The next
morning, she went to that little French café
she had discovered a few months ago close to Main Street
and worked on her manuscript. She had a routine for writing days.
Get up. Drink the fresh orange juice waiting for her on the entry
table that Benjamin, the hotel’s weekday valet, brought up around
seven. Take a shower, no matter if and how many she had taken the
day before. Get dressed. Her writing dress code was casual; today
she had on sleek jeans, a loose navy blue t-shirt falling on one
shoulder, a strapless navy blue bra, navy blue panties and a pair
of sandals to complete the navy blue workday outfit.

The routine
continued with: g
rab breakfast in the
hotel’s small restaurant. She sat on the kitchen’s countertop to
watch Lewis prepare the breakfast orders for the other guests,
scrambled eggs that morning. The eggs were delicious: farm
eggs scrambled with milk and a touch of cream,
some shallots, red peppers and slices of browned maple sausages,
all served with thick slices of white
pain de ménage
buttered all
the way to the crust. Perfect. Once she packed her laptop and
wallet, she was good to go.

She almost
called Christopher but figured he had got home late the night
before hence she didn’t. She almost cheated and packed her mobile
phone. She was trying to quit her mobile dependency. It wasn’t that
she chatted on the phone a lot, but she did photograph (spy on
might be more accurate) the world around; the habit was becoming
way too addictive.

Mario had
installed all kinds of applications on that thing, turning it
into
a simile James Bond phone. Mario’s
phones were not of the type an average person would or should find
useful. She loved her phone, but since she aimed to be normal, she
left the phone back in her room. Besides, if Christopher called
today, he was going to ask about the motel incident for sure. If
she didn’t bring her phone, she’d miss
that
call.
Childish.

As she
walked to the
café
, a good half-hour walk, she
observed her fellow early birds rush along on the sidewalks, in
their cars, coming in and out of apartment buildings and offices.
Lucky her, she was in no such hurry. As she did not allow herself
to ruminate on the previous afternoon, she was enjoying her morning
stroll.

At the
coffee shop, she sat at her usual table in the front window, her
back against the wall. There again she studied people on the
street. She also had a front-row view of the coffee shop, not that
she had much to admire at this hour.

With its
dozen small tables, barely big enough for a laptop, this was not
the kind of place where students hung out. Their
los
s. The coffee was excellent and the
owner, Marcel, a true Frenchman. When she took breaks after a
couple of pages of writing or an intense scene, they talked about
the weather, the news, films coming out, anything really, all in
French.
C’était
charmant!
Marcel kept her informed on the
hockey, football, baseball and whatever-ball scores or the players’
injuries or exchanges. In French, it all sounded much more
interesting. Sometimes, she would talk about the game with
Christopher. The man was an ex-jock, but he was gentleman enough
not to ask her about too specific questions that might have
betrayed her limited interest of the games.

She drank
way too many latte
s and worked straight
until the evening; the sandwich Marcel had made her was long gone.
She grew tired from her full day of sitting. Time to go home, take
a long bath and go to bed.

Her
answering machine flashing light indicated two messages; her mobile
phone message icon showed one missed call. She listened to
Christopher’s messages first.

He had left
one on her machine in the late morning. “
Call me
.” Then, early
afternoon, he had left a more detailed message on her mobile. That
message demonstrated his gentlemanly ways once again as they did
not mention the dead guy in the field. Had he foreseen she didn’t
want to talk about the motel thing? So perceptive of
him.

“
I’ll be working late, Angel. Have a nice evening, and try
to think about me some
.” Cute.
“
I have to go out of town for
a few days for some police business. Last-minute meetings with the
big Brass
.”

A
f
ree business trip, she translated;
Central’s way of sucking up again. Didn’t they know he hated the
trips as much as the sucking up? Too bad for him but quite good for
her, she was off the hook. When he got back, in a black mood from
the bootless errand, his workaholic tendencies were going to kick
into overdrive. Each week, the Big guy went over each of the team’s
cases with each of the guys, pondered the latest developments and
discussed the findings with the team; upon his return, he’d want to
play catch-up in the cases. The motel murders weren’t his, so she
considered herself off the hook for her motel trespassing.
Hopefully.

“
And Patricia? Please stay out of trouble. I hear the
library is lovely this time of year
.”
Damn him.

It had been
a while sinc
e she had gone to the
precinct. For some reason, she kept postponing it. Of course, the
team would be happy to see her, as would she them, but with
Christopher away, it wouldn’t be as much fun, would it? Besides, no
doubt they would all keep an eye on her as their damn
usual.

Her fun was
foremost, in the Monday morning meeting reviews. Going out with the
team to interrogate a person of interest was good research too. She
had missed this week’s meeting, and no way was the team going to
let her tag along without Christopher’s permission. They had their
orders, and they all were very conscientious about following them
(when Christopher issued them at least). Had she burned the team
too many times? During her first weeks, she had successfully tagged
along with each of the Big guy’s officers (tricked them into it
most of the time). Unfortunately now, they saw her coming from
parsecs away and kept her busy at the office when Christopher
wasn’t there. Such was his leadership. Her manuscript would be
getting her full attention then.