Long Bright River(11)

Homicide doesn’t contact us the next day, or the next day, or the next.

Two weeks go by. Ahearn keeps partnering me with Eddie Lafferty. I miss Truman. I even miss the solo duty that succeeded his leave. It’s unusual, these days, to be partnered long-term—the budget is tight, and one-man cars are becoming increasingly common—but Truman and I made a compelling case as a pair. We worked so well together that our responses were practically choreographed, and our productivity was unmatched in the district. I doubt very much that Eddie Lafferty and I will be able to duplicate that rapport. Every day, now, I listen to him tell me about his food preferences, his music preferences, his political affiliations. I listen to him rant about ex-wife number three, and then about millennials, and then about the elderly. I am, if it is possible, even quieter than I was to begin with.

We switch over to B-shift, working four p.m. to midnight, tired all the time.

I miss my son.

Several times—possibly too many—I ask Sergeant Ahearn about the woman we found on the Tracks. Has she been IDed, I want to know. Has a cause of death been declared? Does Homicide want to speak to us further?

Again and again, he shakes me off.



* * *



—

One Monday, mid-November—it’s been nearly a month since we discovered the body—I walk up to Ahearn at the start of my shift. He’s inserting paper into the copy machine. Before I can say anything, he whirls on me and says, No.

—I’m sorry? I say.

—No news.

I pause. No autopsy results? I say. Nothing?

—Why are you so interested? he says.

He is looking at me with an odd expression, almost a smile. As if he’s teasing me, as if he has something on me. It’s very unsettling. Except with Truman, I never talk about Kacey at work, and I have no intention of starting today.

—I just think it’s strange, I say. It’s been so long since we found the body. Just very strange that there’s nothing on her, don’t you think?

Ahearn lets out a long breath. He places his hand on the copy machine.

—Look, Mickey, he says. This is Homicide’s territory, not mine. But I did hear that the autopsy results came back inconclusive. And since the vic is still unidentified, I imagine it’s probably not top of their list.

—You’re joking, I say, before I can stop myself.

—Serious as a heart attack, says Ahearn. A saying he likes and uses often.

He turns back to the copy machine.

—She was strangled, I say. I saw it with my own eyes.

Ahearn goes quiet. I know I’m pushing him. He doesn’t like to be pushed. He stands there for a while with his back to me, hands on hips, waiting for his copies to finish. He says nothing.



* * *



—

Truman would tell me, in this moment, to walk away. Politics, he used to tell me. It’s all politics, Mick. Find the right person and buddy up to them. Buddy up to Ahearn if you have to. Just protect yourself.

But I have never been able to do this, though several times I have tried, in my way: I know that Ahearn very much likes coffee, and so once or twice I’ve brought coffee for him, for example, and once, for Christmas, even a bag of beans from a local shop next door to Thomas’s old nursery school.

—What is this, Ahearn said.

—Coffee beans, I said.

—They make you grind them yourself these days? Ahearn said.

—Yes, I said.

—I don’t have one of those, said Ahearn.

—Ah, I said. Well, maybe for next Christmas.

He had smiled, stiffly, and said not to worry about it, and thanked me politely.

Unfortunately, those efforts did not seem to thaw relations between us. And Ahearn is the leader of my platoon, and as such he rotates with me from A-shift to B-shift and back again, and is generally the sergeant I report to nine times out of ten. The officers he favors are people who buddy up to him, mostly men, people who ask for his opinion or advice and then listen carefully, nodding while he dispenses it. I have seen Eddie Lafferty doing this very thing, actually. I can picture them both on their high school baseball team: Ahearn the leader, Lafferty the follower. At work, this is a dynamic that seems to suit them both. So maybe Lafferty, actually, is smarter than he seems.



* * *



—

When the copies are done, Ahearn takes them out and drops the edge of the stack against the copier a few times, evening the pile.

I’m still standing there, silent, waiting for a response. Walk away, Mick, I hear Truman saying in my ear.

Ahearn turns, abruptly, toward me. His face is not happy.

—Talk to Homicide if you have any more questions, he says, and strides past me.

But I know what will happen if I do. No concerned telefriendly parents means no media coverage. No media coverage means no case. Just another dead junkie hooker on Kensington Ave. Nothing to worry about too much for the folks on Rittenhouse Square.





All shift, I’m upset, and quieter than ever.

Even Lafferty notices something is off. He’s drinking a coffee in the passenger’s seat. He keeps glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

—You okay? he says to me, eventually.

I look straight ahead. I don’t want to speak badly about Sergeant Ahearn to him. I’m still not certain how close they are, but their history together makes me tight-lipped when it comes to my feelings. I decide, instead, to frame things more generally.