BIG GONES - OUT OF UNIFORM

by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Liz Carlyle, Nicole Camden

  I chewed, looking around at the other diners. "I was just wandering around mostly. I had an idea for taking some photos using the old lighthouse as backdrop, so I came by one evening and found this place."

  "And the rest is history."

  "It will be. I did a couple prints. They're amazing. And there are some even better ones if the contact sheets are anything to go by."

  "That's the one with all the negatives printed on it."

  "What a man."

  "I can't wait to see the ones from last night. As long as I'm the only one seeing them."

  "What, you're not willing to give it up for posterity?"

  "Not on your life. Those are going in my private collection."

  "Along with your Playboys from 1978 to 1986 and your signed photo of Alyssa Milano?"

  "How'd you know about the Playboys?"

  "Stevens."

  "Is nothing sacred?"

  "He's probably told the whole station about us by now," I said, and waited uneasily for his reaction.

  "He didn't have to. Everyone was sitting around innocently when I got in yesterday. Never mind that the mayor's daughter had turned up dead, the package on my desk still looked as rumpled as my date the morning after prom."

  "They saw the photo," I guessed, already picturing the scene.

  " 'What's the photo for, Scott?' " he mimicked, wiggling his eyebrows. " 'I never got a photo, Scott,' " he said, doing Barnes's high-pitched Boston accent so perfectly that I snorted with laughter. "And then they began a rousing rendition of 'Scott and Debbie sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.' "

  "Cops are so juvenile."

  "That's why they like you so much."

  "Ha ha. Did you always want to be one?"

  "A cop?"

  "No, a juvenile. Yes, a cop."

  He looked down at his plate, then back up at me. There was something in his eyes that made me think of a five-year-old who just shoved his sister's Barbie down the toilet. "Actually, you wanna know a secret?"

  "Oh, yeah," I crooned, leaning over my half-eaten salad. Unfortunately, one of the many DeTavola men showed up bearing a heavy tray with steaming plates of pasta and vegetables.

  I smiled at him, he was gorgeous after all, but I really just wanted to hear Marshall's secret. I had a feeling he didn't make that offer lightly.

  Our plates were set in front of us. Chicken cacciatore for me, mussels in clam sauce over a bed of linguini for him. It looked delicious, but I had another kind of sustenance in mind.

  "So, don't leave me hanging here. What?"

  He wasn't paying me any attention. He'd just wrapped his fork in his pasta and taken a bite. Even I couldn't mistake the look of divine bliss that passed over his face. DeTavola's restaurant had that effect on everyone.

  I smiled and shook my head at him.

  "This is… this is…"

  "I know," I said, taking pity on him.

  We ate in silence for a while—Marshall letting out an occasional moan of pleasure while I laughed at him.'

  When we were finished, a different handsome Italian boy came over and took our dishes. Isabel followed shortly after him, smiling at our empty plates as they passed her in the strong arms of her grandson.

  "Nonna said you were to have tiramisu and coffee. Is that all right with you?"

  "We'd love it," I said immediately. I'd had their tiramisu before.

  The gorgeous, multilayered dessert was brought out to us on china plates while the coffee was poured from a silver urn. I wouldn't let Marshall touch it until he'd told me his secret.

  "No, don't take a bite until you tell me."

  "Can I sip my coffee at least?"

  "Fine, but I have to warn you, it doesn't taste like the coffee down at the station."

  "You mean it doesn't taste like it was run through someone's dirty socks? What a disappointment."

  "So—the secret. I'm dying here."

  "Well," he began, sipping his coffee, "my first look at the inside of a police station actually happened the first time I was arrested."

  I'm sure my jaw dropped. I couldn't have been more shocked if he'd smacked me one. He snickered at the look on my face.

  "I was a bad, bad kid. Stole, did drugs, ran wild. My mom and I lived in a trailer just outside a small Georgia town. We were dirt poor and I had no idea who my father was. I got teased by all the other kids. My mom did the best she could for me, but I was always bored in school. Thought I knew everything. When I was about thirteen, I got hauled into the local station by a big, burly cop named Ted Fields. He called my mom to pick me up, and when she came tearing into the station, it was love at first sight. My little sister was born eight months and one wedding later."

  I smiled, hearing the affection in his voice.

  "She was beautiful. A little moppet with big green eyes and a silly smile. It took us a while to figure out that she was deaf." '

  I nodded, remembering what I'd learned at the crime scene that day. "That's why you know sign language."

  "Yeah, the sergeant and I learned together, and I figured out that I wanted to be like him more than I wanted to be a badass."

  "So you became a cop," I said quietly.

  "Yeah. I started going to school, skipped a couple grades, and eventually went on to Georgia State."

  "Did you play football?" I'd always been a sucker for football.

  "Yeah, only second string. The girls liked me anyway, though."

  "I'll bet."

  He laughed and reached across the table to take my hand. "So, now you know why I like you so much. At heart, I'm a man who likes his women hot and just a little wild."

  "Isn't that a song lyric?"

  "No, that's 'I like my women on the trashy side,' or something like that." He winked and let go of my hand, picking up his fork. "Can I eat my dessert now?" he asked.

  "Sure," I replied, still reeling a little from the tale. I couldn't get over the idea that my detective had been a bad boy. Maybe we really did belong together.

  Chapter Twelve

  The fair was in full swing when we arrived about nine P.M. We went by the photography displays first, and I showed him my name on the list of contributors. He bought me cotton candy, and kissed me on the Ferris wheel.

  The air smelled like popcorn, peanuts, and sea air. Trash-cans were overflowing with wrappers and paper cups. There were stands for fried sausages, crepes, pretzels, smoothies, deep-fried Oreos (which I refused to let Marshall try), and other disgustingly fattening treats.

  I looked for the twin, but didn't see anyone whose body even remotely resembled the one we'd found. Marshall told me to stop staring before some strange guy thought I liked him.

  We went into the funhouse, one of those ones with a maze of full-length mirrors on the walls. It reminded me of my old apartment.

  Marshall was following behind me and would occasionally squeeze my butt or drop a kiss on the side of my neck. I was giggling as much as the teenage girls ahead of us.

  I walked up to a mirror that had a spot in its center where my face was in perfect focus while the rest of me stretched outward crazily, like the reflection you get when you look in the drain stop on a bathtub. I touched my lips, my nose, my eyes.

  "Hey, baby," Marshall murmured, putting his face next to mine, so that we were both strangers in that little spot of perfection.

  "Hey," I said, and he wrapped his arms around me.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked, rocking me a little.

  "I'm thinking about a question I asked my best friend, the morning after you told me you wanted to be with me."

  "What was that?"

  "I asked her how it could really be love, when I'll never recognize your face. I'll never be able to look at you across a crowded room and know your thoughts just by the look on your face. You'll never look in my eyes and see that recognition, that joyous connection that says I belong to you."

  "You're wrong about that. You might not recognize it, but I want you to know that the look you see
on my face right now—that's love." He gave me a squeeze. "And the look on your face, that's love, too. It's there, even if you can't ever see it."

  "She said we could find other ways of loving each other," I whispered, covering his hands with my own.

  "She was right."

  "Are you sure?" I asked, knowing that I was making a huge commitment.

  "Uh-huh. I've had a lot of time to study you. And you don't look at anyone the way you look at me. It's a great start. We'll just take it one step at a time."

  I bit my lip and twisted around, hugging him tight. "Promise you'll tell me all the time."

  "That I love you?"

  "No. Well, yes, that, too. I want you to tell me how I look at you. Every day."

  "I will," he murmured, placing a kiss on my forehead and then my lips. Suddenly the little funhouse was a little too public, even for my taste.

  "Let's go home," I said, tugging on his lower lip with my teeth.

  "We're gone," he agreed, setting me away from him and taking my hand.

  We hurried outside. I was so focused on him that I almost missed seeing her. I froze suddenly, and Marshall's grip practically yanked my arm out of its socket.

  "What is it?" he asked, suddenly tense and looking around like a wolf scouting its territory.

  "That clown, look at the face."

  "I'll be damned."

  She was short and skinny, dressed in hot-pink tights, a tutu, and a red curly wig, and her makeup matched the tattoo on the body exactly. She was walking fast, not looking particularly jovial, and I motioned to Marshall that we should follow her.

  He frowned, but nodded his assent, and took my arm again. He hustled me along, and I did my best to make it look as if we were hurrying off to have sex rather than stalking a demented clown.

  She went past the line for the Ferris wheel, waving to the man running the controls, then down past the corridor of food vendors, and we had to dodge a family carrying baskets of butterfly chips.

  We thought we'd lost her then, but Marshall spotted her wig going into a rickety shack painted like the night sky, with astrology symbols in a rainbow of colors. MADAM CARLA'S TAROT READINGS was written in gold letters over the top of the door.

  He whispered for me to stay put, and I did, though it chafed. I took my camera out of my purse, something I hadn't been able to do while Marshall was tugging me along like a rag doll. It was my tank, my heavy Nikon FE2, complete with flash.

  Marshall entered the shack, and I waited, jittery and tense, wondering how cops did this all the time. I felt as if I was going to pee my pants.

  When several minutes went by and there was no sign of my detective, I started to get nervous. My palms were sweating, but I managed to dig in my bag for the cell phone and keep my camera focused on the shack at the same time.

  I dialed Stevens's number from memory.

  He picked up. "Stevens."

  "Stevens, it's Debbie."

  "What's going on?" he said quickly, and I thanked God for smart cops who knew when something was up.

  "Marshall and I are at the fair. We saw a clown, a woman, with her face painted exactly like the tattoo on the body. We followed her until she went into a shack, a psychic's booth. Marshall went in to check it out. It's been five minutes and nothing."

  "I'll be there as soon as I can, but it'll be about twenty minutes. See if you can find a cop. And stay put," he ordered, and hung up.

  "Stay put. Stay put," I muttered. What am I? A Labrador?

  I could get closer. I was standing across the dirt path from the shack, right next to a bunch of tables covered in tacky silver jewelry. I made my way over, making like I was just browsing.

  I still don't know what possessed me, but one moment I was pausing indecisively next to a stand of wooden African masks, and the next I was heading for the door to Madam Carla's.

  It was dim inside and smelled like patchouli and sage. I blinked, trying to focus out of the bright lights.

  An old woman sat behind a card table covered in purple velvet. A curtain of the same fabric covered the wall behind her. She had sagging jowls and beady black eyes. She looked at me inquiringly.

  "Hello, my dear," she said in a voice like tearing paper, and I shivered, suddenly even more afraid for Marshall than I'd been before.

  "Hello," I murmured shortly.

  "Come closer and I'll tell you your future."

  I didn't want to, but I did it, figuring it would seem odd if I just glared at her for a while.

  I took a seat on the low stool she'd set up in front of her table. She began turning over tarot cards from a stack in front of her. I was barely paying attention, looking around the room, noting that there was a dim light showing underneath the purple curtain directly behind Madam Carla. There was probably a room in the back. If Marshall was still here, he was probably in that room. If he wasn't, then he still must've left through the back, because I was fairly certain he would've come straight to me otherwise.

  "Very strange. Very strange," the old woman muttered, and I jerked my gaze back to her.

  "What?" I asked, looking at the cards she'd laid out in front of me. There were three cards running along in a row: Death, the Devil, and the King of Spades.

  "I've never seen anything quite like this before. These three cards represent your past, the strongest forces of change. The Death card signifies a change in consciousness, but I think, also, in this case, you actually came close to death. The card tells the means of the change as well as the effect of it."

  I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end. This was a little too close for comfort. Was there a chance this woman knew me? My face and story had been in several newspapers and magazines as well as art journals. The Union Tribune had done a story on me a couple weeks ago at the same time as the gallery showing downtown.

  "The Devil card appears directly afterward. Blindness and misconception. Strange, very strange. And then this King of Pentacles indicates a struggle, the battle you fought to attain your desires."

  "Uh-huh. Is that it?" I asked her, impatient now. The light underneath the curtain had gone out.

  "Not quite," she murmured, and turned over another card on top: the Hanged Man. I watched her hands as she laid it down, noting for the first time that something about them bothered me.

  "The Hanged Man means that something is not as it seems."

  I heard her as if from a distance. Her hands… they were trembling. I looked up, studying her, feeling the strange tingle of an idea tightening the back of my neck.

  She was looking down at her cards, turning over another. "The Tower," she called out in surprise, jolting me, and placed the card next to the Hanged Man. "The moment of understanding.''

  I blinked, hardly breathing, staring at the folds of flesh hanging from her jaw. There was makeup, white makeup, caked in the creases of her flesh.

  I knew my eyes widened, knew my fear and anxiety were probably written all over my face. She fixed me in her beady black gaze, and in her eyes I saw both hatred and a strange sort of acceptance.

  She turned over another card. "Justice," she muttered, and placed it carefully above the other two, snapping the corner as she released it.

  "Where is he?" I asked harshly, hands tightening on my camera.

  The old woman sighed and slumped in her stool. "In the room. Back there."

  I jumped off my stool and rushed for the curtain, realizing as I reached for it that I really didn't know if I could trust her, or what I could expect when I crossed through the veil.

  I turned back just in time to see the old woman swinging her stool at my head. I fell on the floor, instinctively cradling my camera, and she missed, her swing carrying her away from me. I scooted backward away from her, but couldn't seem to find my feet.

  She was like a cat, twisting and leaping toward me with the stool raised. I kicked out at her, catching her hip and sending her to the side, but the stool grazed my shoulder, stunning me.

  I hurried to my feet. I was twice
her size and weight, but I was terrified, terrified, of the look she was giving me, of her eerie strength. I started to run for the exit, but she reached into her robe and pulled out a gun.

  "Stay the fuck away from me!" I shouted, but my voice broke.

  "It's girls like you that take them away," she hissed, pointing the gun at my face. "Pretty young things."

  "Debbie, get down!" Marshall roared, rushing through the front entrance. The old woman turned the gun toward him, and before I thought, before I even knew what I was doing, I launched my camera at her head.

  The heavy metal body hit her in the head, and she went down like a collapsed tent, robe flaring outward and showing the pink tights that still encased her legs.

  Marshall was there in a second, taking her gun and putting it in the waistband of his pants before bending down to check her pulse.

  "She's alive, just unconscious," he murmured to me and hurried over to yank me into his arms. He held me, so tight I couldn't breathe. Not that I cared.

  A man with a gun ran in a few seconds later with a light of battle in his eyes. I tensed, but Marshall held me still. The man looked at the body, then at Marshall. "She okay?" he asked, and I recognized Stevens's voice. Marshall's chest moved as he nodded above me.

  Stevens put his gun away and nodded toward the exit. "We got the guy we think is the twin trying to drive off in the trailer."

  "Good," Marshall said shortly, and pulled out of our embrace. "What the hell were you thinking? I told you to stay put."

  "I told her, too," Stevens chimed in.

  I gave him a dirty look, then petted Marshall's chest. "When you didn't come out, I got scared and thought something happened to you."

  "I only went in for a second. I heard the clown talking to a man behind the curtain. I came back out, hoping that he would leave and I would get a glimpse of him. Didn't you see me?"

  I shook my head. "I must have been looking down, or I missed you in the crowd of people."

  "Jesus," he muttered, and grabbed me again. "You could've been killed," he said against my temple, and I hugged him tighter, whispering, "So could you."

  He pulled away again, and a look that I couldn't interpret passed over his face. He looked at the old woman and then at the camera lying forlornly next to her.