Being The Steel Drummer Part 20

"h.e.l.l no! I don't know anybody with a van like that. Holy Mother of G.o.d!" gasped Red as we hit a b.u.mp in the road and literally made air under all four tires.

The Astro's front end bounced up, and when the back wheels struck the pavement again sparks flew from the tailpipe hitting the road, and we had a full view of the white van behind us. I peered hard, trying to see through the windshield, but it was covered with some kind of mylar reflective coating. All I could see was the reflection of the dented rear end of the minivan we were in and my own face.

Huh. So that's what I look like when I'm in a life and death situation. My face looked far calmer than I felt.

We were now speeding along the cliff's edge. Kathryn was doing her best to hold the Astro away from the forty foot drop as the road curved up the mountain, but she was going twice as fast as the posted speed limit. And the big Ford van behind us was going faster than that.

"It's going to hit us again!" called Kathryn. Her voice was even, almost calm. Yet I didn't have time to dwell on how proud I was of her.

"Hold it steady, Kathryn. I'm going to kick out a back window."

"Hurry," yelled Kathryn. "Here it comes."

The back windows were hinged at the top. I kicked the lower edge of the one on the driver's side and the plastic lock popped open. The window swung from the top but crashed back down. I grabbed the scissor jack that was in the wall pocket of the van, hefted it over my head, and hurled it at the top hinge of the window. The window broke out and the jack sailed out as well. Both hit the grill of the white van, which swerved and braked, slowing it down for a short moment.

It was a good thing it did. I could feel Kathryn taking a sharp outside curve. If we'd been hit then, we would have gone over. I grabbed one of the paint cans and shook it hard. Paint sloshed inside. I thrust my hand in my pocket for my keys and used one to pry open the lid. Swirling the paint in the open can, I crawled on my knees to the window and holding the can like a water bucket I tossed the liquid out. It covered almost all the van's windshield in one broad splash. There was an immediate squealing of brakes as the white van desperately fought to hold the road.

"Kathryn, slow down. We're losing 'em."

The white van's powerful windshield wipers came on. I saw an arm stick out the driver's side. The hand held a gun. It fired one shot and then turned off on a side road. The shot from the white van had gone way wide over the cliff.

If Fenchester had had 500 police officers with nothing else to do, they could have combed the countryside for the slug. So long, slug.

Chapter 14.

"Maggie says she found this guy Sidney Kibbey selling junk at a flea market..." Sergeants Marc Freligh and Ed O'Brien were briefing their team and I was invited to put in my two cents.

I sighed inwardly at so many shaved heads. Fenchester Police Department was still following a paramilitary model. The paramilitary model hires officers based on rigid physical fitness requirements most easily achieved by large-sized males. Women applicants can score 100% on the written test, have a black belt in Karate, an IQ higher than Steven Hawking, be able to run fast enough to win Olympic Gold, and have x-ray vision, but if they can't jump sixteen and a half inches from a standing position, they fail the entrance exam to the academy.

Now don't get me wrong, I fully support the Fenchester Police, and I know a dozen officers, including both O'Brien and Freligh, who are as smart and wily as any star on a fictional cop show. But the two big problems with the paramilitary police model is that it doesn't recognize that a diverse group of people with unique skills and attributes is a better team at complex problem solving than a group of people where everyone thinks, looks, and is even sized the same.

In ten years on the force, I never had to jump sixteen and a half inches from a standing position, but twice during a pursuit I squeezed through a tiny window to nab a suspect, leaving the rest of the bulkier police team behind. One time, when the rest of the squad was readying a battering ram, my smaller hand was able to reach through a mail slot and unlock a steel door, ending a hostage situation without anyone getting hurt.

The second reason the paramilitary model isn't appropriate is that it doesn't necessarily fill the police ranks with people who are the most likely to understand how to deter or solve crime. An applicant with a Ph.D. in criminal psych gets no more consideration than an applicant with nothing more than a lackl.u.s.ter high school education. Not saying that high school grads can't figure things out, but they haven't studied how to gather information from diverse sources. In my police experience, when it came to a complex case, uninformed preliminary conclusions were the biggest deterrent to solving it.

Cutting crime in a small city isn't like fighting a war. The two most likely reasons for violent death in a small city are gangs, or domestic violence in families. Fighting most crime has a lot to do with working on stopping it before it happens. Calming community tension, getting the confidence of citizens so they'll alert police to problems, getting young people to avoid gangs, figuring out how to stop gangs from forming altogether, gathering the best information in the fastest way, setting up programs to curb domestic violence, communicating with diverse cultures are not things that soldiers are trained to do. What's needed for police in small cities is a social work model.

You never see a team of young social workers who all just recently shaved their heads. Just saying.

Sergeant Ed O'Brien said, "Maggie thinks he didn't do it. I'm not so sure. I think we should hold him. Maggie, go ahead on your take..."

I pointed out something they were all still ignoring, that Nora Hasan had seen Red empty-handed when the second shot was fired and so had I. Since there was no evidence, they couldn't hold him on a murder charge. All Red could say about Frankie's murder was that someone standing in a dark crypt shot him. He wasn't even sure where the crypt was, just that it was near some bushes. I told them about Frankie's relationship to the home invasion crew of bogus water company workers, too.

Sgt. Marc Freligh said, "Forget about either Cue or Willie doing the shooting; they were both in custody at the time it happened. That's thanks to Maggie, by the way."

"But they're out now. One of them could have been driving the white van that rammed Maggie," suggested t.i.to Rodriguez, one of my old partners from vice squad.

"Maybe, but where would those guys get a van like that?"

"Boosted it?" said t.i.to.

"Why ram us though?"

"Maybe they wanted the stuff Frankie was selling...."

I thought about this, but it seemed unlikely that they'd even known about the merchandise Frankie was selling. Unless Frankie had stolen it from them and not told Red that. Hmmm, that was an idea.

"Might there be something else hidden in the van that they wanted? Money, drugs, jewelry from one of their home invasions?" asked Marc. He went ahead and a.s.signed two officers to search it carefully.

That was more likely. But it still seemed wrong to me.

I'd given the police my information. I felt like I was done there. Earlier in the day, I'd dropped Kathryn off at the loft on the way to the police station.

Before I drove away, Kathryn had said, "I know you have to work, but I have quite a buzz going. I'd hate to waste it." I could see the telltale glow of adrenalin surge in her expression. The last thing I'd wanted to do was leave her to take Red in, especially because this was supposed to be a day we spent together.

Dealing with Red at the police station had stretched from the afternoon into the evening. I ached each time I looked at my watch and remembered that last searing glance Kathryn had sent my way.

"Maggie," said Ed, "you're going to have to go through this stuff with the evidence clerk to catalog it now. These old things are probably pretty valuable and we don't even know what half of them are called."

"Ed, that'll take hours," I sighed.

Ed smirked. "All you have to do is tell us what the stuff is called so we can look it up. What, you have some better place to be?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

It had taken hours to catalog the impounded antiques Frankie had found. The police wanted exact values for all thirty-five items. Value determines both the severity and the punishment of a property crime and accurate descriptions are required in identification of ownership. The Austrian vase with its Russian enamel decoration that Red had lobbed at me, for example, was worth about $5000.

It was nearly 9:30 p.m. by the time I got back home.

I took the steps two at a time and fairly burst through the main doors of the loft when I got to the third floor. Not being very cool here, detective.

Kathryn wasn't there, though her blue and white mini Cooper was in the small parking lot. I could smell her perfume, but the whole place had begun to smell faintly of her all the time. I put my Beretta away in the gun safe and then went into the bedroom. No Kathryn in there, or the laundry room, or bathroom either.

I was figuring she may have gone for a walk when I heard the door at the top of the spiral staircase open. She came down the steps and crossed the room to the counter in the kitchen area. She had in her iPod earplugs so she didn't notice me. I could faintly hear the driving rhythm of the Gypsy Kings. A hot dance tune was making her hips sway. She went through the mail on the counter, putting things addressed to her in a separate pile.

I came up behind her, pressed against her, and kissed her neck.

"Oh, are you still here?" she said. "You better get going before my girlfriend gets back."

I laughed. "Uh huh, very funny. Well, I deserve that for leaving you alone all day."

She reached up a hand and stroked the side of my face to my throat.

I turned her around and lifted her up to the countertop.

"Pay attention to me now," she said.

"Do you want to go to bed?" I asked in low voice.

"As a matter of fact, I do, but I think you should have dinner first and tell me everything that happened after you dropped me off. I'm Della Street, remember? Shall I fix you something to eat? Do you have more work to do or can I have you all to myself now?"

I kissed her again and smiled. "I had something to eat at the station. Um, I just have to make a few notes in my computer, and I have to charge my phone. It ran down."

"I know. I tried to call you and it went right to voice mail. Oh, and Lois Henshaw tried to call you. She said she's tried six times!"

"She said? Did she call you?"

"Indeed she did. She wants you to call her. She sounded desperate."

"I'd better call. I pulled out my little Mac and noted the details about Red in chronological order as I tried Lois Henshaw's number.

"There's no answer at the Henshaw residence," I said typing.

When I was done with the notes I told Kathryn everything that happened at the police station as I had a cup of coffee. She asked questions about procedure and the evidence impound.

"Maggie, are you sure about me working with you? If you don't want me to, then skip the formal hiring and we'll pretend I never asked."

"You're already hired. I checked with the insurance company, added your name to the rider, filled out the W-2 papers, and put you on the payroll as an intern. All done while I was waiting around the police station. You'll have to sign a few papers. By the way, interns only get out-of-pocket reimburs.e.m.e.nt."

"I promise not to get in your way. This is really just so we can talk about things and keep them confidential. If we were straight... we could have... uh."

I knew what she was thinking. If we were straight and legally married, we would have spousal immunity if either one of us was subpoenaed. Same-s.e.x couples lose out on that right, federally and locally, because even same-s.e.x marriages from marriage equality states like Connecticut aren't recognized in Pennsylvania and no same-s.e.x marriages are recognized by the federal government. Of course... we aren't at that stage, not yet anyway.

I said, "We haven't had a chance to talk about Victoria Snow's papers."

"Oh yes. Well, the Charlotte Cushman part is so frank! I would never have imagined that a thirty-year-old Victorian Era woman would have had the boldness to write down that graphic story even in her private journal. If someone had found it, I suppose terrible things could have happened to her. Still I've read that more than one of Charlotte Cushman's young devotees wrote her letters like that and she responded in kind. She got those women to promise to burn the letters, but of course they didn't and some still survive."

"So did Victoria and Evangeline hook up, or did Evangeline stay true to her rich fiance, Merganser Hunterdon?"

"I only had an hour and a half with the papers, but I managed to look everything over. There's nothing further about their relationship anywhere in the file. Whether her courage held up once she got to Fenchester or if she just had to be content to love Evangeline from afar is still a mystery."

"But I want to know whether she made that little sculpture while looking at that lovely woman in all her natural glory, or if Victoria just used her imagination."

"I do too. But this journal doesn't tell us. Anyway, I'm having the first volume of the journal made into a digital file."

"Uh huh, I heard about the young woman who is devoted to you in the media department."

"Devoted? I wouldn't say... Well," Kathryn paused to consider, then she smiled a little.

"And you're concerned about my fidelity?" I laughed.

"I'm sure she's just concerned about adding to her resume."

"Yeah, another notch on her resume."

Kathryn smirked. "But seriously, surely that journal is the first book of a set. Where are the others? There's so little historical information about Victoria's personal life, and she lived right here in Fenchester!"

"Well, it's a big archive. Maybe there are more files down there. How many miles does Irwin College say it is?"

"Not as big as some huge systems. The New York Library has eighty-eight miles of stacks. Bryant Park Library in Manhattan has over forty miles. Irwin's is more like twenty."

I stared at her. "Twenty miles of stacks? That would reach to downtown Wa.s.sailberg!"

"The stacks connect underground to the old library buildings as well, all the way to College Street. Expanding the stacks is really why they had to build the new Wellington Library ten years ago."

I imagined a cross-cut of the campus showing both above and below. Like a drawing of a tree showing both its branch and root systems.

"If we want the answer to the fruition of Victoria's and Evangeline's romance we may have to search for it."

"You could ask Isabella Santiago to help you find it. Did you see her while you were there?"

"I was hypersensitive, darting my eyes up every few minutes just to catch a glimpse of her. I didn't see her, though."

"Did you ask Amanda about her?"

Kathryn nodded. "I did. I called her. I didn't exactly ask if Isabella is alive. I just asked Amanda to tell me about her and she said rather calmly that she has spoken to Isabella several times and was lucky to have her help. When I asked her if she knew anything else about her, Amanda told me, 'Dr. Santiago was very private, so I find further research in this area is better left undone.'"

"Left undone?"

"Really Maggie, we may just have to leave this alone. What's that line from MacBeth? Life's but a walking shadow."

"Why is it that Shakespeare keeps coming up? I feel like I hear it everywhere these days."

"Well, Victoria's journal certainly shows that Charlotte Cushman peppered her seductions with it. And Gabe Carbondale. And Nora!"

"Yes, Nora, I'd like to mention once again that though Nora's flirty with everyone, she's certainly in your devotional harem. Her voice hushes when she speaks of you. It's enough to make me into a green-eyed monster."

Kathryn laughed. "Green-eyed monster that was coined by Shakespeare, too. It's from Oth.e.l.lo. Iago says: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; But, O, what d.a.m.ned minutes tells he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!"

Kathryn thought for a moment. "But, maybe Portia uses it better in The Merchant of Venice when she says: How all the other pa.s.sions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy! O love, Be moderate; allay thy ecstasy, In measure rein thy joy; scant this excess.

I feel too much thy blessing: make it less, For fear I surfeit."

"Kathryn, do you fear surfeit? I thought you were a fan of pa.s.sion."

"I am indeed. So I'll have to find another way to rein in doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair." Kathryn found something in her shoulder bag and brought it over to the table. It was a paper sack.

She said, "In pre-celebration of your birthday, I got you an early present from the antique market this morning, before all the excitement began. This is just one in a series of surprises I have for you. Oh, and Farrel and Jessie want to have a little dinner party for you on Friday evening."