Quintic (32 page)

“
I’ll take
care of the scene. I have to interview some witnesses,” Ham
offered.

Fine
by
him, it was Ham’s case
anyway.

Fuck. He
couldn’t get the image of the vic out of his mind. Curly brunette,
tallish, slim.

“
She looks
kind of like the Cake, doesn’t she?” Ham
,
stating the obvious.

Fucking
right he was. They could have been sisters, an older, taller, so
much more beautiful and vibrant woman and a younger, plainer,
worn-out and duller version. Patricia didn’t have any sister that
Chris knew of or any other relatives for that matter.

“
The hooker
too, come to think of it. Naked body, I hadn’t noticed the
resemblance befo
re,” Ham added
matter-of-factly. “Less gorgeous than the Cake; both vics way less
beautiful than her.”

Chris
didn’t
add anything. What was there to
say?

“
Think it’s
a coincidence
, Boss?” His guy’s voice was
almost steady. Almost.

N
o answer necessary. A hell of a
coincidence. For once, Chris wished he believed in coincidences,
for he might have been able to sleep later. He remained at the
scene for hours until Ham growled at him.

“
You put me
in charge, Chris. Get the fuck home, I’ve got this.”

As he drove
back, he hoped, wanted,
needed
Patricia to be at his
place, yet he knew she wouldn’t; knew it was better she wasn’t. He
didn’t drive to her hotel for she would have known something was
up.

What little
he slept, he slept
poorly. He might have
to put her back on the case. From a clerk to a hostile witness to a
potential target.

She’s a Library Geek
Now

F
rom the window, she watched as
Christopher’s truck peeled down the street. Another evening
interrupted by his job. Christopher loved being a cop, and he was
great at it, nothing else to say. She wasn’t upset but wasn’t going
to wait for him, though.

She
considered herself
a patient person, and
she was, and more than most, but not with him, definitely not with
him. Waiting for him made her imagination run wild. He had not told
her where he was going; she had not asked. Yes, she admitted to
herself, she had wanted to, but damn, this was her first day off
the job! Her self-control made her feel mildly euphoric.

M
aybe she should ask Reid out?
Although, first, she needed clean clothes since the window episode
had left hers, well, somewhat wrinkled. Before she left, she
retrieved the food from the over and set the plates in the
refrigerator.
The Big guy
will appreciate the leftovers when he comes back
. Had she expected him back soon, she would have kept them
warm in the over but past experiences had taught her that by the
time he got back, the fancy Italian meal would be overcooked. She
taped a note on his door. ‘
Food in the fridge.
Bon appétit!
Try not
to smoke too much.
’

A cab ride
later, she changed into comfy sweats and elected to stay in. She
ate a bowl of cereals wrapped in a blanket, watched television and
ended up falling asleep in front of a French film.

The days
dragged on. She barely saw Christopher. His workaholic side sure
was in full tilt this week. Not that she minded, she too had plenty
of work to do. She proved it by going to the library every day.
Arriving at eight o’clock every damn morning, leaving at six, she
researched and wrote and reread and reviewed and annotated and
corrected, putting more hours than a regular office day job. All
she lately, it seemed, was work, work, work! Apparently, everybody
had a life except her. The more time passed, the more she got
distracted.

On
Wednesday, she caught herself daydreaming about the diner case. The
sky outside her library window was flat grey, as bland as her mind.
She continued her research on PI investigators. What type of
background and training they had. What tools and equipment they
used in their work. Cameras were the universal tool of the trade −
Grand. She knew a lot about cameras; the one in her phone was state
of the art. For sure no PI had a camera (and-or a phone) quite like
hers − for it turned out PI did mostly surveillance work. As in
they sat in their cars day and night and waited. Definitely not her
kind of job. If she wanted to have fun writing the damn thing, she
needed to keep her PI character busier than just sitting her in a
car, however badass the car was.

She had
three or four stories simmering on her backburner at any given time
but only started writing a book only when she had all of the
storyline intricacies in her head. Not this time. For once, she was
crafting this story backward. The waitress case had seemed like a
good start but shouldn’t she have created the killer first? Who was
it going to be? The cook? An old beau? A scorned woman (as per
Dumb’s suggestion)? A serial with a diner-waitress
fetishism?

Came
Thursday morning, she hadn’t been in for an hour before she fell
asleep on the library table, head on the tabletop, her nose pressed
to the side of her laptop. She had watched movies with Reid quite
late. They might have drunk a little too. Well, hum, maybe more
than a little. Reid hadn’t informed her how the investigations were
going, and she had not asked. Hurray, another mention of excellence
for her and self-restraint!

“
The Boss’s
in a shitty mood,” was Reid’s only shop talk.

“
He’s not
the life of the party to start with.” More like the dark brooding
type. Attentive, funny, hot and protective in private. Observant,
controlled,
controlling
, sexy, and
overprotective on the job. To her at least. To Reid, he was
The
Boss.
She suspected the woman was more than a little impressed by
him.

“
I know,
Pat, but he storms in and out of the office every day like his
ass’s on fire.”

“
Maybe
Central’s sucking up came to an end, and now they’re dumping all
they were holding back since the murder accusation?”

“
It’s not in
Central’s power to make MacLaren slam his phone
down
. He did that, and more than once
yesterday. He even yelled at Charles just this
afternoon.”

“
Andropause?
He quit smoking?”
He misses
me?
What did the Big guy want? Really. He
should have been ecstatic. First, the hackers’ case had been filed
(he hadn’t talked much about those, but she could tell they had
been getting to him). Second, big plus here, he didn’t have to deal
with her on any of the cases anymore. She was euphoric herself.
Couldn’t be better. Her life was returning to normal.

After
t
he second film and somewhere down the
second bottle of wine, Reid got down to the deep stuff.

“
So Pat,
girlfriend, how’s your sex life going?”

“
I won’t
dignify that with an answer.”

Christopher
had yet to stop by since the
ir aborted
resignation festivity. Was she supposed to consider the window sex
as a celebration of some sort?
No way, Big guy
. Christopher
still owed her dinner, a dressy formal dinner in a fancy place.
Could she get him to wear a tuxedo? Damn, he would look awesome in
a tux. She might convince him to go commando. The Big guy was
willing to do anything as long as she returned the favour. Even
when she didn’t, he was more than generous. Impossible.
Dangerous.

By Friday,
she was in a terrible mood. Using the quiet of the library to plan
her weekend, she reluctantly admitted to herself she was perhaps,
maybe, a tiny smidgen tad, hum, bored. She remained overjoyed with
her decision, of course. After all, in truth, she had been in and
out of Christopher’s office for months. Finally, her life at the
library felt sooo normal; she felt great, really. No need to dwell
on the extent of said normality or lack thereof. She was good at
pretending, and her resignation didn’t lessen her, ah, gift? Curse?
Craziness? Abnormality? Hum.

C
hristopher had better not work
all weekend. Maybe she should cook him a special meal tomorrow
night. A Saturday night homemade
diner en tête-à-tête
. That
foreign thought snapped her out of her daze.
For sure I’m in withdrawal. Library might not be
my thing. I wish something would happen. Please, someone, anyone
burst it and rob the place
. No way she’d
cook for Christopher. She had done enough of that during the
quartet disaster. She had cooked like a maniac during those
excruciatingly stressful days. She was all out of cooking and
expected to remain so for a while. A long while.

She didn’t
cook. Christopher
worked all weekend. Not
that the second had anything to do with the first, the man was
simply an infuriating workaholic. She did wonder what had got into
him, though, and different scenarios crept into her mind. Like
maybe, since she wasn’t working with the team anymore, he wasn’t as
attracted to her? No, wait, she had turned him on before posing as
a filing clerk, so that mustn’t be it.

Had
he
hired a new consultant? Not that she
had been a consultant for real, more like a clerk turned research
assistant. Then again, she reminded herself, he viewed outsiders to
the team as unsolvable problems, so he wasn’t going to hire any
consultant. Although, with the depleted quartet, the Big guy was
running low on personnel.

Maybe he had
hired a consultant
that was both younger
and sexier than her. Hum. She was not the jealous type but, after a
week of library work, her mind was going crazy. She called Reid
just to be sure.

Nope, no new consultant.

One
possibility remained. Something was up.
Christopher might not have visited all week, but he had called
every day, and more than once each day. Thrice, she had invited him
over, but he couldn’t make it. Was he withholding something from
her?

Sunday
morning,
she lingered in bed alone with
her thoughts. Alone and naked. She had waited in vain for the Big
guy to show up the night before. Well, not waited exactly, she
wasn’t the waiting type, so not waiting but
hoping
. A little
eager, but not more than a little, she had things to do after all.
Hence, hopeful but busy doing other things. Not solely hopeful, no,
of course not. Surprisingly she had slept the night.

Specialists
did say exercising helped with insomnia
,
something about the endorphins kicking in, and right they were. On
Saturday night, she had gone to the gym. Busying herself during the
waiting, hum, hoping thing. She could have taken a walk, but the
weather had been crap. Wind and rain. She didn’t mind the rain, but
it got cold, and the walking in the rain-dead girl-shivering from
the cold-cop harassment episode was still too fresh hence the gym
it had been.

She visited
the gym on the other side of the park, to the east of the hotel. A
brisk five minutes walk, and she would have been there. Instead,
she had Carl call her a cab; a fifteen-minute ride later, she was
at the gym. Ironic, wasn’t it? Her first time in a gym in ages, and
she drove up in a taxi.

She wasn’t
big on exercises. She had
average upper
body strength. For some reason, the team (including Frédéric) chose
to differ. Not that any of them dared call her a wimp to her
face.
News flash, guys, not
everyone power-lifts in between spoonfuls of
cereals
. She had
average lower body strength but, thanks to her endurance and love
of walking, could march for hours. She thought it quite unfair that
Christopher could run an hour or more without breaking a sweat
while she struggled to breathe after ten minutes of jogging. Then
again, he was a guy. And a cop. Not much of a walker,
though.

While
Christopher had both speed and stamina when he
ran, she only had the speed part intermittently, so her dreams of
one day winning a race over him remained just that. Dreams.
Exercising was a good stamina boost, was it not? Came Monday, she’d
have plenty of energy for the library. How depressing. Moving
on.

Maybe she
should try binge-eating as additional motivation for the gym? She
wasn’t fat. Under stress, she tended to throw up, then hunger
vanished for hours after. During more relaxed days, she did gain a
few pounds and grow curves of sort, but nothing remotely resembling
love handles. She was rarely stress-free for long enough intervals
for curves to grow and show. This week had not left her anywhere
near peaceful. Bored, yes, absolutely, but not relaxed.

She
tried bicycling. Not her thing, pedalling
without going anywhere. She lasted a mere ten minutes. The elliptic
machine wasn’t a success either, less than five minutes. A guy
tried to pick her up at a bench press or weight machine or whatever
those contraptions were called. Lift and lower her own weight
repeatedly, now what was the point of that?