Nobody Lives Forever (18 page)

“Maybe she's getting screwed on city time,” Jim said thoughtfully. “Who is she…”

“I wouldn't know,” Rick said curtly. “To hear her tell it, nobody.”

“Not with that body,” Jim said. “Somebody's tapping that. We know it ain't you, right?” He cut questioning eyes at Rick.

“Damn right,” Rick said.

“Then why do you sound just a little bit jealous?”

Rick shrugged impatiently and shook his head. “Some habits are hard to break.”

“You gonna write her up for this?”

“Damn straight. I'm her supervisor. I couldn't ignore it if I wanted to. But first I want to hear her story, find out what the hell's going on.”

They got into the car and Jim switched on the ignition.

“This thing that happened up here tonight. It's weird, Jim. Something's not right. I've got a gut feeling about it.”

When they walked into the station, Dusty was at her desk, prim and proper, manning the telephone. She avoided Rick's glare.

The first time she cradled the receiver, he jerked a thumb toward a glass cage. “We need to talk, Detective.”

Jim watched from his desk as she reluctantly followed him, like a misbehaving schoolgirl being marched to the principal's office. He thought a moment, then removed the coconut from Dusty's desk drawer and dropped it in the wastepaper basket. He replaced the cardboard box of Kleenex after stuffing a fistful into his jacket pocket. She'll need it, he told himself. He hated it when women cried. He sighed. The last thing Dusty needed now was a practical joke, much as he would have enjoyed it. He liked to banter with her and tease. She reminded him of Molly, feisty and full of personality. He yearned to be the one to comfort her, but Dusty would never turn to him, he thought. He was no young stud or ladies' man like Rick.

He shuffled through the phone messages and sighed again as he saw two from Terrance McGee. Fortunately they were for Dusty. One bore the scribbled notation: “He says everything okay now.”

Jim raised an eyebrow. Thank God for small favors, he thought. McGee doesn't think he's being poisoned anymore. Dusty's chats with the man might actually be doing him some good. He hoped Rick would not be rough on her. God knows, he thought, we all have times when we are not where we are officially supposed to be. The job constantly intrudes on your life, so if your life occasionally intrudes on the job and no harm done, what's the big deal? It was just her bad luck to be caught. Who could foresee that a gun battle would go down in the damn shopping center she was supposed to be canvassing?

He glanced curiously into the glass-enclosed office. Rick had closed the door and assumed the position of authority, behind the desk. Dusty sat in a straight-backed chair in front of him. Jim saw with satisfaction that she was not crying—yet. Hang in there, kid, he thought, silently cheering her on until overcome by a paroxysm of sneezes.

“What the hell is going on with you?” Rick said heatedly. “You've always been dependable, reliable. What is this shit?”

“Okay, so I wasn't at the shopping center. I”—she hesitated, her voice weary—“I'm having a bad day, and I needed a break. I was wrong. Write me up, give me a suspension, do what you have to do.” Her eyes looked past him, focusing on the darkness outside the single window.

“Where were you?” he demanded.

She seemed reluctant to answer. He waited.

“I headed toward Bal Harbour, but I felt down, depressed, turned off the radio and just drove. Stayed on the expressway, picked up the turnpike and drove. At Palm Beach, I turned around and came back.”

“You took the city car outside the county without permission?”

She nodded, with a sigh.

“Oh swell. What then?”

“I stopped at my place, realized I had to get my shit together and so I came back in. On the way I heard about what happened up at the shopping center. If I'd been where I was supposed to be, I might have stopped it. I'm sorry.”

“You seemed fine at the diner.” Rick studied her more closely. Pissed off at Laurel after his close shave that morning, he had found himself comparing her to Dusty. As exciting as all the quirkiness and role playing could be, there was something to be said for constancy. At least he always knew where Dusty was coming from. His concern on the way to the shopping center had made him realize that he did take her for granted. Though he saw her every day, he had not really looked at her lately. And she was worth looking at. She was wearing her hair different, a little longer and more wavy. Her knees were suntanned. She always did have the best knees in the station. She stared back, her eyes soft and sad.

“It's personal, Sergeant.”

“Hey, cut out the ‘sergeant' shit. It's me you're talking to. Listen,” he gestured casually. “If you were off playing a little kissy-face somewhere, hell, we've all been there.”

Her mouth tightened and a flush crept across her cheekbones. She leaned back in the chair, threw one leg over the other and fumed.

“I don't mind telling you, I envy the new guy.” He was watching her carefully.

“There is no guy,” she said, her foot swinging impatiently, “since you.”

To his surprise, he felt relief. He
was
jealous. Dusty and he had shared a life he and Laurel never could. Just as he could never picture Dusty as the perfect housewife, bustling around a kitchen, wearing an apron instead of a gun.

“I love it when you get mad. You turn me on,” he teased.

“I don't
believe
you,” she chided, her tone exasperated. She glared at the ceiling. “Look. It's the first time I've done anything like this…”

He shifted his chair slightly for a better view of her long legs, his gaze settling on the curved instep and the smooth line of her calf. “There's something else I need to know. The night I asked you to drop the composites of those Colombian body snatchers on the ERs and the clinics … did you?”

“I papered every clinic in town with them, Sergeant.”

“I thought you'd go to the county ER first. Makes sense. Yet when Jim and I swung by there that night to talk to the wounded store clerk, you hadn't been there.”

“I figured those guys would go to a Spanish-speaking clinic first. When I heard you and Jim take a signal at the ER, I knew you'd think of it, so I scratched it off my itinerary.”

Satisfied, Rick rubbed his palm across his face. “You want to go talk to Doc Feigleman?”

“The department shrink?” She put both feet on the floor and drew her spine up straight in her chair. Her voice and her expression shared indignance. “Look, I'm having a couple of bad days—everybody's entitled.”

“I don't want you to ever think you can take advantage of our past relationship,” he said quietly.

“I'm not taking advantage of it!” she said angrily, her perfect teeth gnawing her rosy lower lip.

“Well then,” he said, “with that settled, you want to get together later … for a drink?”

Silently she searched his face and found the answer. “You're serious.”

“Never more so.” His eyes were fixed on hers.

She let out her breath, stood up abruptly and strode to the door. Her hand on the knob, she turned, “You would be better than the shrink. Probably do me more good.” Her voice was shaky.

“Guaranteed for what ails you.”

“You are so bad,” she said, “and I love it.”

“Your place okay? Let's keep it low-profile,” he said quietly. “I don't even want Jim to know.”

She nodded and glanced out at the detective bureau.

He cleared his throat and looked around sternly. “Well, Detective, I guess that's enough of a tongue-lashing, so to speak. For now.” He grinned. “We'll finish this later. I'll bring the wine.”

“Right, Sergeant,” she said briskly.

She marched out of the office, chin up. Jim admired the fact that there were no tears, though her hands were trembling. Hell of a girl, he thought.

After an hour, Rick told her to take comp time and go home early. Jim caught the look they exchanged. She was glowing. Oh, shit, he thought.

“Cover me, Jimbo,” Rick said thirty minutes later. “Raise me if you really need me. Otherwise I probably won't be back tonight. There's something I have to take care of.”

“At Pigeon Plum?”

“I didn't say that.”

Jim shrugged. “Didja find out what was bugging Dusty?”

“It was nothing major. Dusty'll be okay,” he said, the sheen in his eyes an admission.

“If Laurel calls?”

“I'm out at a scene.”

Jim sighed, part envy, part concern. These young guys never learn. “I hope you know what the hell you're doing, pal.”

Rick did not hear. A man in a hurry, he was already on the elevator, punching the down button.

Jim picked up the ringing telephone on Rick's desk not a quarter of an hour later and wished he hadn't. “Hi, Laurel.” He tried to sound casual and friendly. “Naw, he's not here right now. I think he's out at a scene. Well, I stayed here to finish up some paperwork.”

She asked when Rick would be in the office. “He's pretty tied up out there. He may not be back tonight. You'll probably see him before I do. If he checks in, I'll tell him you called. Everything all right?”

She said it was and hung up.

A few minutes later, the middle-aged secretary took a call for Dusty. “I think she's off, let me check.” She put her hand over the receiver and called to Jim. “Is Dusty coming back tonight?”

He shook his head and she told the caller, “No, she's gone home.”

Jim turned in his chair. “Who was that looking for Dusty?”

“Don't know,” she said. “Didn't leave a name.”

“Voice familiar?”

“Maybe.” She looked puzzled.

“Man or woman?”

“It was hard to tell.”

He shook his head in disgust and turned back to his work.

Alex hung up the telephone. Personally, he didn't give a shit, but it was important to know just exactly what the son of a bitch was up to now. Laurel had been disturbed when Rick was unreachable. Frightened and lonely as usual, she had wanted to hear him reassure her that he would be home soon. When she became agitated, Harriet had surfaced, suspicious and anxious to know where the hell Dusty was and whether this was a threat to their household. Marilyn was furious if there was even a remote possibility that Rick was having sex with anyone else. Jennifer simply sniveled because it frightened her when the others got worked up. Harriet suggested that Alex call headquarters and ask for Dusty. The fact that Dusty and Rick were both gone for the evening and Alex could discern no mention of a homicide scene on the scanner heightened Harriet's suspicions. Flipping open the leather-covered address book next to the telephone, she found D, for Dustin, and dialed the number.

Dusty answered on the first ring, eager and throaty, not the voice of a woman planning to sleep alone. She said hello twice. Harriet hung up. The address was 1560 Pigeon Plum Circle, in the Grove. Alex agreed to go check it out.

Rick parked discreetly across the street, the rear end of the car in shadow so the official city tag would not stand out like a sore thumb to anyone passing by. He wavered between growing excitement and guilt. It seemed so long since he had been with her. That he was doing this astonished him, yet at this moment he could not image being anywhere else. Despite Laurel's spontaneous and creative sexuality and all her homemaking skills, he had yielded to something stronger, his powerful need for a woman who shared his fears and frustrations, someone who understood as he did the tragedy and black comedies played out on Miami's mean streets of night. Wanting her so much created a deeper inner conflict. He had always resisted serious relationships with women who also lived on the cutting edge of pain. Seeing the dark side of life and death somehow damaged people in his eyes. He could not remember when he had first begun to believe that they were no longer whole, that the cruelty of the job made them damaged goods. His mother was a single-minded homemaker whose life revolved around making his father happy. He wanted that too. Young, sheltered and protected, with no career ambitions, Laurel had seemed perfect. He must be crazy, he thought, torn by conflicting emotions. None of it made sense. But he knew that what he wanted and needed right now was waiting for him inside, between a pair of long legs.

He rang the doorbell and felt his trousers swell with his erection.

She opened the door immediately, the dim light behind her glowing in her blond hair. She wore something long and black and lacy that took his breath away. His throat ached when he looked at her. “Hi, blue eyes.”

She moved right into his arms like she belonged there.

“I'm so glad to see you,” she whispered.

He was taking off his jacket. She took the bottle. “Asti Spumante, you remembered.”

“I remember everything.” He was loosening his tie. “That's why I'm here.”

“I'll get the glasses.” She turned in the doorway. “Did you just call?”

“No, why?”

“Had a hang-up.”

“Humph. I bet it was Jim, unless you have somebody else checking up on you.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Jim?”

“Yeah, I think he's already onto us. You can't slip anything past that guy. He's too sharp.”

He turned down the volume on the walkie so that they could just make out the calls, stood it on the coffee table and sat in a rose-color armchair. “What are you doing?” she laughed, a glass in each hand.

He was taking off his shoes.

“Mister Romance, huh?”

He looked embarrassed. “We might not have much time. I'm still on call if anything happens.”

She stood in front of him, smiling softly, her face sweet. “It's all right,” she said. “Whatever time we have. It's enough.”