Her Lawman On Call

Tony sat down and turned on his computer. A low grinding noise began to hum through the office as it went through its paces.

“Why?” he asked. “How far back would you go?”

“Two weeks.”

He looked at her. Two weeks was the amount of time separating the two murders. Was she making a backhanded confession?

“And maybe I’d start taking the bus to work,” Sasha added, thinking out loud. “Coming across one victim was bad enough. Two…” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head.

Then she raised her eyes to his and Tony found himself thinking that he’d never seen eyes quite that shade of blue before. Intense. Beautiful. And pretty damn hypnotic if he allowed them to be. Mentally, he pulled himself back.

“I know you’re overworked here and under-staffed,” she said, edging closer on her chair, “but you must have some kind of a lead, a clue, a hunch—”

Tony regarded her with mild interest. People didn’t usually attribute human frailties to the police department. They expected tireless, around-the-clock vigilance. And crimes to be solved in a timely fashion—as in yesterday. All the best crime dramas on television made it seem easy.

If only.

“How do you know we’re overworked and under-staffed?” he wanted to know.

Was the man born antagonistic, or had he just acquired the habit along the way? She was trying to be nice here.

“Well, aren’t you? Why should you be any different from the rest of the world? Besides,” she sighed, sitting back again, “that’s the way it always was when my father was with the two-six in Queens.”

She’d succeeded in getting his attention, Sasha thought. The look in his eyes changed. “Your father was on the job?”

Tony noted the way she smiled before she answered. Pride mingled with memories. A family girl, he thought. He should have realized that. Because of his own situation, he had a tendency to think of people simply as detached individuals. He wasn’t close to either one of his brothers, even though they both lived in the city and worked for it, Joe as a detective in Brooklyn and Tim as a firefighter in Staten Island. But for all the contact they’d had in the last five years, they could have just as well have been spread out all over the country.

“Twenty-six years,” she told him. Definitely pride there, he thought. It was audible in her voice. “Josef Pulaski. He made detective before he retired.”

Just like his father had been, he thought. Except that he was willing to bet that was where the similarity ended. If he’d ever been proud of his father, that had changed a long time ago—by the time he could understand what was going on behind his parents’ closed door.

He nodded in response to her words. “So that makes you more aware of procedure than most of the people who’ve sat in that chair.”

She couldn’t tell if he was attempting to extend an olive branch or not. “If you mean do I know that you have to rule me out as a potential suspect before you can move on, yes.”

Maybe she wasn’t going to give him trouble after all, he thought. The computer sat, ready, its grinding noise reduced to a soft, constant hum. Time to get started.

“No run-ins with—” Tony paused, referring to his notes. The victim’s name had momentarily escaped him.

“Rachel,” Sasha supplied before he could flip to another page. He raised his eyes to hers. “No, no run-ins. I don’t know all that much about her, actually,” she warned him. She and the older woman hadn’t been friends by any stretch of the imagination, although their paths had crossed a number of times. “Only that she was past retirement age.”

The woman had looked it, Tony thought. “Then why didn’t she retire?” In his experience, retirement was the carrot people coveted. “She love the job that much?”

Sasha thought of the couple of times she’d overheard the slain nurse complaining about conditions at the hospital, or about a supervisor who was riding her. “I think it was more of a case of her tolerating the job.”

“Then why—?” Tony left it to her to fill in the rest.

“The same reason a lot of people stay at a job they don’t like. Money. She needed the money,” Sasha emphasized. “Rachel had two grandchildren to raise. Her son’s sons. Eight and ten I think.”

She was making his job easier for him.

He raised his eyes to hers for a second. “Where’s the son?” he asked, tapping slowly on the computer keyboard. He typed like someone who had no knowledge of where the letters were arranged.

Sasha shrugged. “Ran off somewhere.” She tried to remember what the hospital gossip had been. “I don’t think she knew where.”

He stopped searching for keys. “So this son took a powder, leaving his kids high and dry, and Rachel stepped in?”

Sasha nodded in response to his question. “According to what I heard, he left the boys with her for the weekend two years ago. Mailed her a letter a month later, said he couldn’t handle being a father. Rachel complained about it.” To anyone who would listen, she recalled. “But she said she couldn’t just let the county raise the boys.”

Her words struck a chord. Aunt Tess had said something similar once. Tony shut down the momentary flashback.

Staring at the keyboard, he hunted and pecked in the new information. “Anyone else in the picture?”

He typed so slowly, she had the urge to push him aside and take over. Sasha knotted her hands in her lap. “Her husband. He’s a handyman. I think he does work for the apartment complex where they live.” She stopped trying to remember bits and pieces and looked at the detective who was engaged in a hopeless duel with the keyboard. “Why are you asking me this? Wouldn’t you get more information from PM’s Human Resources Department?” They all had forms they’d had to fill out when coming to work for the hospital. PM was extremely careful about who they ultimately hired.

“You’re doing just fine.” Hitting the period that brought the last sentence to an end, he sat back and regarded her for a second. “For someone who didn’t know the victim, you have a lot of information at your disposal.”

Was it her imagination, or was that a veiled accusation of some sort? Sasha could feel herself growing defensive. “I pay attention when people talk.”

The look he gave her was very pointed. “So do I.”

Except, she thought, in his case, what he listened to was probably all related to his work. Detective Santini didn’t seem the type to be concerned about people as people, the way she was. Concern was what had brought her into medicine in the first place. It was her overwhelming desire to heal, to fix, to make things right if she could that had made her decide to become a doctor. She’d gone into obstetrics because there she also had the added thrill of seeing new life coming into the world.

It helped balance out the times when she couldn’t fix things or make them right again.

“A man who listens. Your wife must be a lucky woman.” It was a flippant, sarcastic thing to say, but she was edgy and wired and heartsick all at the same time. She’d forgotten that he’d told her he was widowed.

Santini looked at her sharply. Had she been standing, Sasha thought, she would have reflexively taken a step back, like someone on the receiving end of a physical blow. Obviously, the wound was still very fresh. It wasn’t like her to have forgotten something like that, even if he was a stranger. She attributed it to the fact that she was very shaken.

“Sorry,” she offered.

His voice was completely dead when he responded. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

The silence hung between them, thick, uncomfortable. At least, it felt that way to her. Sasha took another stab at making amends. “I got personal and I shouldn’t have. It’s a habit I have.”

His eyes met hers again. “Talking first and thinking second?” he guessed.

That stung. “Your turn to apologize,” Sasha said after a beat.

A small, faint smile played along his lips before retreating. She had guts, he thought again. Brains, beauty and guts. On a good day, she was probably a very dangerous lady to tangle with. “I guess that makes us a couple of sorry people.”

She didn’t know if he meant it as a joke, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt and smiled anyway.

Tony asked her a few more questions, including inquiring about her immediate whereabouts around the time of the murder and if there was anything further she could tell him about the victim.

She noticed that he used the word victim rather than Rachel’s name. It made it sound so impersonal, so detached. But, she supposed that was probably a defense mechanism on his part. Otherwise, after all the horrible things he’d undoubtedly encountered as a homicide detective, he would have become completely paralyzed emotionally.

She wasn’t completely certain that he wasn’t now.