With all suspects checked out and eliminated, the Damato case became a gnawing embarrassment. Thankfully, the press turned its attention to other matters. The hostage crisis. The declining economy. The presidential campaign.
The Eggplant had assigned them to the boring routine of checking out natural deaths, which did not improve Jefferson's disposition. He didn't like being part of the Fiona's punishment. What she learned later through the grapevine was that Jefferson, too, was being disciplined for a brutal beating he had given a drug dealer involved in an earlier murder.
But the Damato case continued to bug her and, when she found the time, she would mentally retrace the investigation. Was there something she had overlooked? It was not a subject she cared to discuss with Jefferson.
She pressed Hadley, the firearms examiner, on the question of the gun and the bullets. He was a tall ascetic man, not given to speculation.
"As my report says, from the lands and grooves, it could only be an English Bulldog or a Wembley. Hard to tell the age. They stopped making them in '39."
"When did they start?"
"The design was first manufactured in 1880, a historic piece. Qualifies as an antique."
"And the bullets?"
"Old. Made, I'd say, about that time."
"Why a bullet that old?"
"I just identify them," he shrugged.
"You don't think it's odd?"
"In this business, everything's odd. Old ammo is not that rare. It hangs around. Sometimes it's not reliable."
"This was."
"Shows how good they made 'em back then."
"But why would someone go out of their way to use old bullets if they could get new ones?"
"You're the detective," Hadley said.
At the autopsy, she had watched Dr. Barton's strong dark fingers deftly slice into the cold alabaster flesh. In the glare of the overhead light the corpse looked like a bloated fish. Dr. Barton's rich voice, with its Louisiana back parish accents, fell soft and melodious in the quiet room as he dictated his findings. Deftly, he extracted the bullet where it had lodged in the pancreas. It had severed a main artery, and the man's life had quickly hemorrhaged away.
"Destructive devil," Dr. Barton said as the bullet pinged into a metal pan. His hair was white and cottony, his carriage stooped and scholarly, an authentic wise man's mien. Of all the men that she had met in police work, he seemed to have the most comprehensive understanding of human nature.
"It's as if he aimed straight for that artery," he said, pointing to the shredded lifeline. Autopsies rarely made her queasy, although she gagged when she'd have to put the garbage in her apartment's compactor chute.
"Purely accidental," Dr. Barton said. Gently, he opened the man's lids as if he were still alive. The eyes were glazed, as dead as his living dreams. "It was a fluke shot. A smaller projectile might have missed it."
"What kind of a person shoots another in the back?" she had asked him over coffee at Sherry's a few weeks later.
"A guilty man, perhaps."
"Of course he's guilty."
"I mean guilty of something else other than the crime. Why then not face his victim? Normally, your garden variety killer would shoot from the front, finding the heart. A contract killer, on the other hand, would go for the head on a rear shot. No. This man is guilt-wracked. Driven."
"You learned that from the autopsy?"
"From living. From seeing so much violent death. This was no random shot."
"Sounds more like instinct than science."
He sipped his hot coffee, smacking his lips.
"Science is nothing without intuition," he muttered, staring off into space.
He was a widower and lived in an attached house in Northeast Washington, a few blocks from Capitol Hill. It was stuffed, floor to ceiling, with books and magazines. Occasionally, he had invited Fiona in for Sunday afternoon tea. He had been deeply attached to his late wife, a lawyer, and memories of her were framed throughout the house: her degrees, photographs, awards.
"You don't think it was a crime of passion or revenge?" Fiona pressed.
"No. It wouldn't explain the rear shot."
"Maybe it got out of hand. Maybe he only wanted to maim?"
"It was not the gunman's to control," Dr. Barton said.
"Do you think the victim knew the killer?"
He was always open with her, treating her as an equal. She attributed that to his general respect for women, and a by-product of his happy marriage. He was the closest thing to a "Rabbi" that she had in the department. Unfortunately, as medical examiner, he was far outside the chain of command, and of little practical help.
"I don't think so," he said, mulling over the question. "If it was an act of passion or revenge, the killer would not forego the psychic pleasure of direct confrontation. The dramatist knows this, and he is right. This man killed for other reasons."
"And therein lies an enigma." The frustration was eating badly at her.
The enigma lingered in her mind, waiting to be supplanted by other more pressing concerns. And, they came, they always did.
She had promised Bruce she would go with him to New York for the Labor Day weekend, the deadline for their experiment in communal living. Outside pressures had intervened, making any definitive decisions impossible. He hadn't expected to be confronted with a formidable challenger, and she had not expected things to go badly in her work. The gallery case remained unsolved. Nothing was going right.
When the duty roster came down, marking her for the entire Labor Day weekend duty, she stormed into the Eggplant's office.
"I need this weekend," she said abruptly.
"I can't spare you." He did not look up from the pile of papers on his desk.
"It's okay with Jefferson," he growled. She stood over him a long time, fighting to control her anger. He looked up and smiled a big toothy grin, goading her.
"I won't beg you."
"I know," he said calmly. She could have called in sick. It was too late now.
"You're being unfair," she said.
"I'm being a boss."
A bastard, she thought.
"It's a big weekend. We need all hands." Although he was being official, his eyes told her otherwise. It was rumored that the Chief had given him the deadline of Labor Day on the gallery case, but things had quieted down. He was beginning to believe that the crisis was passing and he was celebrating the event by showing her who was boss. He picked up the telephone, dismissing her.
"You could have helped me out," she told Jefferson as they cruised the city on routine patrol. Their verbal back-and-forth had been so scanty that she realized she had never even broached the subject.
"You never asked, mama."
"I won't ask you for squat."
"You sure are an uppity woman," he grinned.
"I'm a cop."
They had maintained a kind of professional truce during their weeks together, and she had steadfastly avoided confrontations, hoping that nature would take its course and this unnatural alliance would fall apart on its own volition. Sooner or later they would have to be separated. But both knew the timing for such a divorce was still a long way off. It had become, for both of them, a test of patience.
"I can't wait for the day," she muttered.
"I'm jes gettin' to like it. Nothin' like a challenge."
"It's a dead end for both of us."
"Ain't nothin' but a woid."
"Those stupid ghetto expressions. They make me sick."
"Jes don't throw up on the seats, mama."
When she told Bruce about their lost weekend, he fell into one of his hurt child moods.
"What are you trying to prove?" he asked, after an evening of icy indifference. They were sitting on the patio of his townhouse, having their after-dinner coffee. She had cooked him a meal before breaking the news. "Call in sick. Ask for a transfer. Quit. Anything. Why should you let those bastards control your life?"
"I'm a professional," she mumbled.
"It's not worth the candle."
"You're asking me to understand your war. Understand mine."
"Dammit, Fi, you could be a senator's wife," he fumed.
"I am a senator's daughter. My mother was treated like an appendage and she hated the role. Being "wife of" doesn't thrill me."
"Better than having to take shit from a bunch of…" He paused and let the sentence hang in the air. "Besides, you're lost in a man's world, the lower depths at that, strictly blue collar."
"Bad for your image, you mean," she snorted. "The great liberal snob. At least we're not hypocrites."
"What is it you women want?" he shouted.
"That's what Freud asked," she said calmly.
The saucer shook, clattering the cup. He seemed to be making an effort to soften his anger.
"How about what I want?" he said more gently.
"I know what you want, Bruce."
"So then, why all this… stubbornness?"
"I'm not going to let the bastards do me in."
"At my expense?"
"I'm sorry. I have battles, too."
He took her hand.
"I can lean on them, you know. There's a way to horse-trade." He looked into his cup. "If I lose, I also lose the clout. That's the name of the game. Clout."
"You miss the point. What the good Dr. Freud couldn't know was the answer. I want…." She paused, clicked her tongue. "My own."
"Your own what?" He paused, observing her. "Penis?"
"Jesus," she responded.
"He had one."
"My God."
"Him, too."
The wisecracks loosened him and he framed her face in his hands.
"I love you and admire you." He kissed her lips. "You're a beautiful, sexy lady. How did you get mixed up in such a macho business? Your sex is an intrusion. Don't you understand that? I mean there is a difference. A cop is a father figure. It's a no-win career. And most of them are not even your intellectual equals."
"Who's the bigger bigot?"
To argue further would get them nowhere. Besides, she came from a long line of thick-headed micks who felt something sacred about their calling, like her father and his father.
"Well, if we don't have the weekend…." He moved closer and his warm breath tingled her ear. "We'll just have to compress the timeframe," he said, biting into her neck.
***
She moved out on Saturday morning. There were no tears or recriminations. No sad words, no bad words.
"We've got too much on our plates just now," she told him. "Maybe later."
"You're still my girl," he said, turning to embrace her as they lay in bed. She traced his profile with her fingers.
"Still your girl," she said.
"Maybe when we both stop trying to make it…," he began, his voice trailing off as he kissed her deeply. Make what? she wanted to ask, but held back, disinclined to start down that path again, questioning the priorities of their lives.
"Every once in a while, we'll run away," she breathed into his ear.
"To where?"
They made love, but the sense of loss weakened the pleasure; it was less sensual, more cerebral. It was a sharing neither of them could articulate. And in the end it boiled down to an airport farewell.
"I'll call you when I get back on Tuesday," he said. He kissed her lightly and picked up his bags.
"I'll be waiting."
When he left, she packed quickly. She did not want to stay in his house alone anymore.
