The Odds (28 page)

   COLLEEN WENT TO THE GROCERY store to fill her refrigerator, grabbing whatever looked good on the way in—vegetables and fruits displayed outdoors. Cherries, strawberries, sweet potatoes. Inside she tossed lettuces and broccoli and zucchini and tomatoes, yogurt and Coke and chicken into her cart. The pork chops she chose would have to do, even though they weren’t of the highest quality. There, like a normal person, a few meals at home.

Her house was hot, but she put a sweet potato in the oven anyway. She chose one thick pork chop, zucchini, and salad ingredients. She smeared the chop with olive oil and garlic and salt, sliced the zucchini lengthwise, cleaned and tossed a salad. She had to go to her backyard to fire up the grill, and when she came back, she set out a place mat on a tray, with a dish and utensils on top. Next to it, she placed a tall glass of wine. Light a candle, why don’t you, she urged herself, but she didn’t.

She carried everything to the table in the yard. It was a sweet yard— even with the weeds popping up through the bricks. The neighbor woman with the screechy voice came out on her back deck to say, “Haven’t seen much of you. Busy?”

“Real busy lately.”

“You eat right, honey. That’s important.”

“I’ll try.”

“How’s your folks?”

Her family had visited her only twice, but the neighbor had latched on to the idea of family. “They’re doing well,” she lied. Her father wheezed, he looked thin and weak, he refused to go to the doctor or to quit smoking and drinking. Her mother stuck by him, having something to drink with him every day, picking up the ashtrays, scrubbing the house clean. They loved each other. Her brother was living in the apartment over the garage. His basic activity outside his job at Wal-Mart was smoking pot. “Thanks for asking.”

When she was able to make a break, she picked up her tray and started indoors.

“You didn’t finish.”

“No, I’m full. I think I’ll go in, have an early night.”

She went in through the basement, carried her tray upstairs, and, standing at the kitchen counter, fell upon the food.

   THE NEXT MORNING SHE MET Potocki at seven. They signed in and out quickly and got on the road.

“I need breakfast,” he said. “Just some drive-through, whatever we see.”

She’d had cereal, but she ordered again with him at a truck stop— the house special—egg, bacon, cheese on a croissant. “It’s a wonder we’re still alive,” she said.

“My cholesterol isn’t what it should be.”

“You’re being very bad, then.”

He smiled whimsically and put on a pair of sunglasses. She found herself studying him. He wore a muted shirt that had a glaze of lilac in it, of good cotton, well laundered, and a sports jacket that was also cut well. The coat would be a forty-four average, if her guessing was good. She was just taking note of his belly—not big, simply, say, a three-month pregnancy—and he caught her looking and sucked it in. “Going to the gym is on my schedule,” he announced. “For my three years of desperate dating.”

She laughed. “You’ve always been a high achiever. Maybe you can do it in two.”

When she thought, as they drove toward central Pennsylvania, how she often avoided a much shorter drive to see her parents, she got a tumble of conflicted feelings.

They got to the prison at eleven o’clock.

Soon after, they were talking to one of the guards on duty about Nick’s prison life.

“Markovic,” the guard volunteered. “George Markovic was always talking to him.”

She practically hit Potocki with excitement.

“Their relationship?” Potocki asked simply.

“Markovic guy more or less protected Kissel. You know. From the others.”

“And Markovic? Was he interested in Nick that way?”

“I might have thought maybe, but we never saw any reciprocation.”

“Nick Kissel hook up with anyone?” Colleen asked.

“No, he stayed to himself.”

“Who did Markovic hang out with, otherwise?”

“He talked with everybody. He was a big shot. Nick hardly talked to anybody.”

“What did Nick do here? School? Reading?”

“Neither. Jobs. When there were jobs, he always went for them. Any task. Needed to be busy. He took kitchen duty for a while.”

“Did his work?”

“So well he got points for it.”

“That’s what got him out early?”

“That and a little help from somewhere. Pretty soon there was a lawyer on his case and his record here was good, so suddenly there was a hearing and he was gone. Voom.”

“Who was the lawyer?”

“We can get you that. I heard Kissel went and broke parole after all that. Stupid after getting a break.”

“Real stupid,” Colleen said.

From twelve to one Colleen and Potocki talked with several of the prisoners, all of whom seemed to be glad to be called away from their cells for any reason at all, like children getting out of class, getting a hallway pass. Detectives knew they’d say about anything to extend the visit. Even accounting for elaboration and invention, they didn’t have much to go on. Nobody knew where Nick would go if he broke parole. They simply made the usual guesses. Family, hometown.

“His hometown is only sixty miles away,” Colleen said brightly. “Let’s drive there. Eat in the car?”

“Ugh. If we have to.”

“Okay, let’s sit down, then.”

The guards advised them to go to Mary Ann’s Homestyle Restaurant. Unfortunately Mary Ann and the slow-moving waitresses were like old aunties who, once they got you to sit down, simply didn’t want you to leave. Colleen resorted to foot-tapping.

“I know. I know,” Potocki said. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. You were just trying to be normal.”

“I should know better when you have a head of steam up.”

Finally they paid their check and made it to Milton in under an hour. The gym, hotel, and real estate offices yielded nothing. In fact, the detectives couldn’t find anybody who knew Nick Kissel.

“We’d better get back,” Colleen said resignedly. It seemed she would have to do the press conference after all—put Nick Banks on the TV and in the paper. Someone might have seen him, and she’d put it off for too long, hoping for some other kind of break.

The drive back was long and punctuated by Colleen’s phone calls to Christie, the
Post-Gazette
, the TV stations. She set the press conference for seven, giving herself little time to get her head together. Every cell in her body was terrified she was doing the wrong thing.

“Is Christie at the office?” Potocki asked.

“Was earlier. He’s home just now.”

“How’d he sound?”

“Like he’s trying to get his voice up to full volume and speed and just can’t.”

   AT SEVEN, POTOCKI CAME TO her, saying, “go in together?”

“Yes. We’re in the conference room.”

“You go in front of the camera. I’ll stay in the wings.”

Two TV stations and the newspaper had sent representatives. It wasn’t a hot case, so far as they were concerned. They felt they were doing the police a big favor bothering at all.

And so there wasn’t much to say.

What she said was, “We have reason to believe this man, Nick Banks, might have been hurt during the shooting that took the life of Earl Higgins. We are interested in any information as to his whereabouts, and we are interested in any information he could give us.”

“What do you know about him?” the reporter asked.

“Nothing else significant at this point,” she said, feeling the whole world could read the lie on her face. “We have a source who says Mr. Banks has information important to this investigation. That’s it.”

What with lights being set up and equipment malfunctioning and needs for retakes, what with the polite seeing out the doors of the media people, the whole pathetic mess of getting her five sentences on the air took until eight when Potocki caught her elbow lightly and said, “Would you want to make it dinner, too?”

She thought of the food she’d put into her refrigerator and of her determination to make her life more normal, and yet she said, “Where do you want to go?”

“Atria’s.”

“Good choice.”

It was so easy. Dinner led to coffee—and a drink after—until it was ten thirty.

“We should watch the news together. See how it goes,” he said.

She said, “Yes.” She couldn’t face being alone just now. They stared at the TV in the bar for a while. Potocki said, “I’m just …”

“I know. Just around the corner. Let’s go.”

So they went in two cars to his new place, only blocks from Atria’s, to put on the tube.

“I have some scotch.”

“Okay.”

The news finally came on. The report happened some twenty minutes into the half hour, just before sports and weather.

“You look good on TV,” Potocki told her.

She shook her head.

“You do.”

Potocki gave himself a little more scotch. “
Nightcap
,” he said, “is an interesting word.”

“I like words.”

“I know.”

She plunked her glass down. “Oh, man.”

“What is it?”

“Everything.”

“What?”

“Kissel. Could go haywire. I’m worried I’m making it worse.”

“Why doesn’t he turn himself in, then?”

“He doesn’t know how. He’s scared. He’s independent, a loner.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

She stood. Potocki stood, too, and hugged her. It was great, a hug that didn’t seem to end.

“What else?”

“Commander, for another thing. You must feel it, too. You called him daddy yesterday.”

“Sure. He’s the father none of us ever had. Maybe the father nobody ever had. The one I’m trying to be to my son. Failing miserably, of course.”

He continued to hold her. She spoke into his shoulder. “And everything else. Everything I can think of.”

He ran a hand up her arm, and she leaned back for a moment, then moved forward and kissed him. He held on to her tight, kissed her. “Colleen,” he said, “I know this is … Well, we know there’s a lot between us. I just have to say I wouldn’t want to hurt you for anything.”

“I know. You’re a good guy.”

“If you don’t like where this is going, just say.”

“I don’t know, that’s the thing. It feels good. Nobody has touched me for a long time.”

“I can name plenty who would have given a lot to try. I’m honored.” He moved closer and pressed into her. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, but I want you anyway.”

“We seem to want to do the wrong thing—both of us.”

They walked up his stairs, holding on to each other.

“We should stop,” she said without conviction. “It’s our careers. And your marriage.”

He stopped.

“I should turn around and go home.”

“So long as you know I want to and you don’t doubt that.”

They stood in his upper hallway in a deep embrace again. “You realize we’ve been on these two cases only a week?” she said. “Seems like a long time.”

“I know.”

“Christie was diagnosed only over a week ago. And he’s been down, treated, unable to move or eat, and somehow he came to the office yesterday and today.”

“I was glad to see him fighting.”

“I adore him.”

“I know.”

They walked into the bedroom and then lay down together.

“Is Judy back from Florida?”

“Yep. There’s only psychological distance between us now.”

She watched the way Potocki’s body moved as he rolled away from her 180 degrees and turned on the radio. It was tuned into the country and western station. For a moment he didn’t roll back to her, and then he did. They heard the end of an Alan Jackson cut, the very end, and then a good-bye song came on, or maybe it was
the
good-bye song, the saddest one she knew.
Lay your head upon my pillow
. Ray Price was singing it, not some new pretender, but Ray, parceling out regrets and good-byes and understanding. Potocki began singing in a small husky voice that was surprisingly tone-accurate, and she joined in as a joke. Soon they were both singing the song she might have called schlocky or laughed at on another day. Tonight it made her cry. She wasn’t sure she could explain it, but old Ray had pushed some button. Potocki saw that and nodded, eyes closing a little. He kept singing softly, and then she managed to squeak out the rest of the words.

“Nobody has to know,” she said finally. “We just carve tonight out of reality.”

“That doesn’t work.”

“I know. Just tell yourself nobody has to know. We’ll work at it.”

He put a hand on her back and began to trace her, every part of her with the flat of his hand. His touch was full and deep. She thought, My neck? What does he get from the back of my neck? But he seemed to be investigating all of her. His hands traced her thighs; he murmured appreciatively and kept going. When he kissed her, she tasted the salty, musky flavor of his excitement. He groaned and began to kiss her neck, her breasts. Her own arousal peaked suddenly and nothing else mattered. So, she thought, slipping off her blouse, she would lose her partner, be shamed; everyone at the Branch would know she couldn’t keep her knickers on. It didn’t matter at the moment. He was so solid, big and solid, heated, and after her. He unbuttoned her pants and she let him—oh, it felt good.

The hairs on his chest were a light brown, almost blond. His thighs were large, all muscle. He had a hard-on a man of twenty would be proud of. “Oh, man,” she said, “Oh, man.”

“Say no at any time.”

“Are you kidding? We’re way past that possibility.”

They held off for a glorious thirty minutes, but then she told him she didn’t want to wait any longer. He nodded soberly and gave himself over to her.

“Please don’t go,” he said at three in the morning when she whispered that she had to go home.

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t leave.”

“I have to. I have to pull my head together. Compartmentalize. Find a different set of clothes for tomorrow.”

“Maybe tomorrow we could fall off the wagon again,” he said.

“Maybe tomorrow.” She tried to dress subtly, half under the covers.