Part 7 (2/2)
”Used to?” Barrett asked, trying not to focus on his ringless finger.
”Maybe still does, we don't talk much. They put her on some pills, Xanax or something.” He looked at her, ”But you and I haven't talked in a while, have we?”
”No,” she said, noting the fine lines around his deep-brown eyes, the furrows etched in his brow; those seemed new.
He gave a bitter laugh as the waitress set down their coffee. ”Not a good year.”
”Is that why you're on the babysitting patrol?”
He sipped and nodded.
”You don't have to, Ed,” she offered, but felt curious as h.e.l.l, and touched by his sadness.
”I'll give you the abridged version. And if I start to sound like a perp, just kick me.”
”That bad?”
”Not good. You might have seen some of it in the papers.”
”I don't read them ... too much like work.”
”Just as well. Not long after the Charlie Rohr thing, I got a heads up that one of my men was taking bribes from a s.m.u.t dealer. I did what I thought I was supposed to do, because G.o.d help you if you point the finger and you haven't done everything by the book. So I made a report to Internal and the next thing you know it blossomed into one h.e.l.l of a conspiracy. Some good men-or at least I thought they were good-got kicked off the force, or resigned. And I, as their incompetent supervisor, was strongly urged to follow.”
”I'm so sorry, Ed.” She resisted the impulse to touch his arm.
”Not your fault, and that, as they say, was the start of the deluge. Margaret couldn't take it, and she wasn't about to stick with a proven loser. We signed papers a couple months ago. I get Alice and Becky on weekends and half the holidays. That is if I keep up with child support and alimony. So I let them bust me down to grade three detective, while I try to figure out what comes next. I guess I'm lucky they kept me at all. And you?” he looked up, plastering on a smile. ”Please tell me that you're still moving forward brilliantly.”
Barrett spread cream cheese onto her bagel, ”Or...we could turn this into a twisted game of I Can Top That.”
”What do you mean?”
”Well, at least work's going okay; at least I think it is.”
”And Ralph?”
”I don't know,” she heard her words resonate in the s.p.a.ce between them.
”Really?”
She put down the uneaten bagel, ”I don't know why it feels like I did something wrong, but I caught Ralph cheating. G.o.d, that sounds like something from a country western song.”
”You're sure.”
”Yes, I'm sure,” she snapped, sounding harsher than intended. ”I came home to find him in bed with somebody I considered a friend.”
”Ouch! You don't have kids, do you?”
”No,” she stared at the speckled Formica tabletop.
”You want kids?”
”You giving some away?” she tried to make a joke, but he'd honed right in on the issue. ”It's so f.u.c.ked up. Yes, I want kids, and the funny thing is we've been talking about it. So why the h.e.l.l did he do this? My eggs don't have all that many years to go and I don't want to be some forty-five-year-old woman with no husband and a Down's Syndrome baby ... It's like you get up one morning and everything's the way it's supposed to be, and twenty-four hours later it's all different. And then I start looking back, and maybe things haven't been okay for a while, and maybe I've been walking around with a paper bag on my head. He says he's 'sorry,' says 'he loves me, wants to get back together.' I have no clue what I'm supposed to do.”
”No wonder you're having panic attacks,” Hobbs offered. ”Jimmy was just the straw that pushed you over.”
”You're right,” she met his gaze. ”And that's a whole other can of worms.”
”What do you mean?”
”You know his case?”
”Not much,” Ed admitted. ”I read through his arrest report, pulled up the court files, and even looked at his release agreement, but it doesn't give you a strong feel for him as a person.”
”I'd forgotten,” Barrett said, remembering Ed's intelligence and attention to detail.
”Forgotten what?”
”What it was like to work with you.”
”Those were some fun cases,” he agreed.
”I guess, if you think that looking at pictures of people with knitting needles sticking out of their eyes is fun.” She smiled, ”I can't really talk to most people about what I do. But the sick thing is if it weren't for work, I'd be losing it. But back to Jimmy, it sounds like you've got as much information as I have. Even going through volumes of evaluations and a summary from his last psychiatrist, there's hardly anything.”
”The one who just died,” Ed inserted.
”Right, Morris Kravitz ... any chance you could track down his death certificate?”
”Not a problem, why? You think Jimmy had something to do with that?”
”Just curious. You know the strangest thing-I have no clue who was in that room with me.”
”What do you mean?” he asked.
”When we first worked together you gave me a piece of advice that I've used ever since.”
”Really? What was it?”
”You said something about 'jagged data,' about things that don't fit,” she said. ”And that jagged data needs extra consideration-because if it doesn't fit, there's a reason.”
”So what does that have to do with Master James?”
”Nothing fits,” she sipped her coffee.
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