Part 13 (2/2)

Alison had no idea what time it was, only that it was much earlier than she had planned on waking. There was someone knocking on the front door and not just the paper boy or a Jehovah's Witness, either. The evenly s.p.a.ced banging was too loud and persistent for that.

Wonderful. She swung her feet over the side of the bed. Carla and Stacy were still dead to the world.

”All right, all right, I'm coming,” she called crossly. She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her robe and then stomped to the door and snapped open the lock. Only after she had jerked it open did she realize that she should have looked first-they all needed to be extra careful-and only a second after that did she realize that her robe was on inside out.

”Oh,” she said, an acknowledgement not a greeting. ”Dad.”

”Oh, yourself,” he answered, sweeping past her as if he had been invited.

”Have I got a date with you?” She followed him into the living room, as confused by his presence as she was by the b.u.t.tons on the inside of her robe. She clutched it over her chest. ”Did I forget to write it down?”

”No, you don't have a date with me. How could you, when you were supposed to be out of town and I didn't even know you had changed your plans until I heard it through the grapevine?” That one was going to be a sore topic for a while. ”But I know trusting you to answer anything on that machine of yours is like whistling into the wind.”

Oh. He was not of the era of answering machines, but she hadn't realized that he knew she used hers to screen calls.

Her father caught her look. ”Do you think I'm stupid?” he asked in a scathing voice. ”Do you think they just keep me around because I cut such a fine figure in a uniform? Guess again. I thought I'd better get over here and talk to you before you got yourself in some real trouble.”

She resisted the impulse to regress to fourth grade and whine. ”Now, Dad,” she began calmly.

”Get dressed, I'll take you out to breakfast and we can talk about this.”

”Dad I...” she began, searching her mind frantically for a tactful way to say there were two naked women in her bed, and after she had dumped one, she was planning on spending the morning f.u.c.king the brains out of the other. Maybe lunch?

She was saved from this tactical dilemma, however, by Stacy's timely appearance at the door of the bedroom. Fortunately, she was in a state of semi-dress-a T-s.h.i.+rr of Alison's that she must have picked up off the floor. When her eyes. .h.i.t Frank Kaine in uniform, they flew open wide and she gave Alison a very readable, very reproachful look, accusing her of calling the cops after all, and after everything that had happened the night before, too!

”No,” Alison protested, ”Stacy, this....”

”Uh.” Carla staggered in next, rubbing her face with both hands. She was still stark naked except for the scarf wound around her head. Her eyes were tightly shut. Stacy took her by the arm and tried to steer her back into the bedroom, but she resisted, saying loudly, ”I've got to p.i.s.s like a racehorse.” Alison winced and felt her father do the same. Stacy opened one of Carla's eyes forcibly with two fingers and pointed her face into the living room. ”Oh, s.h.i.+t,” said Carla, ”don't you guys ever give up? I told her every d.a.m.n thing I know about everybody in the whole world. I feel like my G.o.dd.a.m.n brain is empty.” She jerked away from Stacy and marched into the bathroom.

”Stacy...” Alison was feeling a bit frantic. Her father's eyes were wide. Great, how was she going to explain to him that she had not been up all night in an orgy? He was probably expecting a couple more naked women to pop out of the bedroom. On the other hand, who had invited him to come over without calling first anyway? Let him think what he wanted. Again she tried the introduction. ”Stacy, this is...”

There was a knock on the connecting door and Mich.e.l.le came in carrying a measuring cup. ”Hey, Alison,” she began, and then stopped and gave a squeal of delight. ”Mr. Kaine!”

He opened his arms wide and she ran over for a hug. ”Mikey!” Alison looked on sourly. Mich.e.l.le got the hug while she was going to get bawled out. If they started talking football she was going to slap them both.

In the end Alison's father insisted on taking all five of them out to breakfast. There had been no turning him down. During the meal he paid attention to everyone in turn, insisting that Mich.e.l.le and Janka tell about their latest commissioned pieces, that Stacy give a small lecture on quilt making, and that Carla, oblivious to Mich.e.l.le's elbow in the ribs and Alison's discrete signals across the table, be oooed and ahhed over as she described her attack. Although he had seated Alison at his elbow he ignored her, except for a sad look in her direction during Carla's story. He had never called her to task in front of her friends when she was a child, either. Oh, well, she supposed she should be grateful that Carla had remembered, under his charm, to delete the s.e.x scene.

In fact, Alison was beginning to hope that she was going to escape a lecture altogether when Stacy clued into her father's hums and long looks and suggested brightly, ”Why don't we all go get a donut and let Alison have a few minutes alone with her dad?” Thanks, traitor.

”Now listen here, my girl,” he began immediately after they left. ”I don't know what you've been doing, but you've caused a big stir at your station house, and your chiefs not too happy with you. You tell me the detectives aren't doing their job, and what I'm really finding is that they're angry, and rightly so, because you've been trying to do it for them. And puttin' yourself in danger doing it as well!”

”No, Daddy.” Christ, there she went right away. She took a deep breath. ”I saved that woman's life!” She said in an angry whisper. ”Did you see her head? That was her throat he was trying to do that to. Are you going to blame me for that? What should I have done? Held up my hands and said 'Sorry, I'm not a.s.signed here and I don't want to step on anybody's toes?'”

”No, you did the right thing, and you did save her. But what I'm asking is, what were you doing there to begin with? And on a week night, too,” he added, as if the next issue they were going to tackle was her study habits.

”I'm a lesbian, I was on-”

”Ah, don't try to feed me that line of c.r.a.p! Maybe you can shock those two jerks, but I don't buy it. You were snooping, is what you were doing. You've always been a snoop, ever since you were a little kid. You never could keep your nose out of anyone else's business. If anybody in the neighborhood got in trouble you were always the first one to know and the first one to tell.”

”Yeah, well you always told me that was what was going to make me such a good detective.”

”If you ever get recommended for a promotion...which is never going to happen if you keep this up!”

”Anybody can ask questions. I didn't get a word out of anyone by telling them that I was a cop!”

”Right, anybody can ask questions, but only if she's discreet about it, and can give up what she finds in a tactful way. Not if the detectives find out that she's been interviewing all their witnesses before them. Not if they find her directing traffic at the scene of the crime and telling them what to do.”

”I didn't do anything wrong!” said Alison in frustration. ”If it had been anyone else they would have thanked me. But those men don't like lesbians. Read my lips. They think we are the sc.u.m of the earth, and they are not busting their b.u.t.ts to solve this case. What they resented was that I had everything set up so that they had to follow through. Come on, you called them jerks yourself-you must know there's a problem.”

He pursed up his lips and turned his head, caught, but not about to admit a thing.

”They're not even admitting that these attacks are related, are they?” she pressed.

”There's no evidence that they were. There was nothing found at the scene of the crimes that indicates one attacker. They have to go by what evidence they find.”

”Look, Dad,” she said, ”what would you do if you ever found out that I was taking bribes?”

His face blanched, and for a moment she thought he was going to faint. Hastily she a.s.sured him. ”No, no, I'm not, it was just an example. It was just to say that you wouldn't be able to deal with it if I were. Because you taught me not to be a bad cop. Dad, if I know that something is happening in a murder and it is not being brought to light because of someone else's incompetence or bigotry, and I don't do something about it, then I'm still being a bad cop. And if I don't do anything, if I say, okay, I'll give it up so I can get a promotion, isn't that promotion a kind of bribe?”

”If you really think that the officers involved aren't doing their best because they're prejudiced, you should go in and talk to Sergeant Obrachta.”

”And he's going to listen to what I think, based on interviews while I was in a highly emotional situation that took half my face off, and put them over the word of two men who have been on the force for twenty years?”

”He's a fair man.”

”I know that. But let's get real. You were concerned when you heard that I had come out to Jorgenson, because you knew that it amounted to coming out to the whole department, and you were afraid that I would be discriminated against. The official policy, the G.o.dd.a.m.n law is non-discrimination, but you were still afraid that it was going to happen. Now if you can think that, without a minute's hesitation, about people that you can call fair and good, then why the h.e.l.l can't you believe it about a couple of guys that even you call jerks?”

He was silent and she felt that for once she had scored her point.

All the women unloaded noisily from Mr. Kaine's large sedan at Alison's house. Alison gave her father a hug.

”Well, at least,” he said, returning it in the style of the old Irish cop who treated all farewells between family members as if one of them were emigrating, ”at least if you find out something, tell me or Rob so that we can leak it with some tact. You never were a tactful child.”

”A promise.” She waved as he drove off.

”I can walk home,” Carla announced. It was the first thing Carla had said all morning that Alison was actually glad to hear. If Carla left immediately maybe she would still have time to jump Stacy's bones. She s.h.i.+vered deliciously with antic.i.p.ation, a feeling heightened by a long sensual look that Stacy shot at her.

Alison was so excited, in fact, that she almost had her hand on her front door before she noticed that anything was wrong. Then she acted automatically.

”Get back!” she barked, accompanying the command with a sweeping motion of her right arm that caught Stacy in the chest with a thud. There was some confusion, but Carla who had already been attacked once, dropped not only immediately down, but tumbled off the side of the porch, pulling Janka with her. Stacy and Mich.e.l.le followed a moment later. Alison's gun was already in her hand. Cautiously she flattened herself against the side of the house and then reached sideways to push the front door open-the door that had been locked with a deadbolt when she left for breakfast. A million questions ran through her head: Was it the Crusaders on Carla's tail? Were they armed? Was it related at all, or just your normal Capital Hill rapist or burglar? But these were like background noise, like the chattering of a crowd to which she paid no attention. She was thinking in slow, careful steps. Pus.h.i.+ng the door open and drawing no fire, she could hear the intruder now; it sounded as if he were in the kitchen. More than one? She thought she heard voices. Cautiously she entered the room and crossed it, still against the wall. Now, as she approached the kitchen, she realized that she should have sent someone to phone for backup. Procedure had gone out of her head in the heat of anger at having her own home violated. It would be all right. The intruders were either idiots or novices, for they were chattering to one another as if they were making coffee in their own home. In fact, she thought she could hear dishes clanking. She took a deep breath and leapt into the doorway, the gun extended in both hands. ”Freeze!” she shouted.

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