Father Christmas

by Judith Arnold

  “You put me in a Santa suit because you thought I was stressed out,” John reminded him. “Well, I’m not stressed out. I want real work.”

  “Undercover Santa wasn’t real work?”

  “No.” It was, but John wasn’t going to win Coffey over by agreeing with him about that.

  Coffey had assigned John to the Santa gig because he’d believed John was overwhelmed by the finality of his divorce and his child-care crisis. If John wanted to get put on a case, all he had to do was persuade Coffey that neither of those issues was in play anymore. Thanks to Molly, they weren’t.

  But he wasn’t ready to discuss her, not yet. He wasn’t ready to tell Coffey about the woman who had helped him to understand his son, who had entered his house and transformed it into a home with her mere presence, who had spent the weekend with him, shopping, shooting the breeze, making him feel comfortable enough to talk about himself. He wasn’t ready to describe the woman who had spent the night in his arms, so soft and lovely the next morning that he’d been aroused before he’d been awake. They’d made love again in the muted dawn light, warm and dreamy. They’d conquered worlds together. They’d glimpsed heaven. They’d become a part of each other.

  He could do anything now—run investigations, chase criminals, direct traffic, hold press conferences—anything except talk about Molly. That part of his life was too new.

  “Trust me, Coffey,” he said, trying not to beg. “Let me take a case. I’m ready.”

  Coffey looked dubious. But before he could speak, Bud Schaefer leaned in through the open doorway. “Coffey? I’ve got a shooting at a bar down on East Fifteenth. There’s already some uniforms there. Who should I take with me?”

  John knew Coffey wouldn’t let Bud work the case by himself. Nobody went solo on a shooting. “I’ll go,” he volunteered, starting toward the door.

  “Russo—”

  “He’ll be primary. I’m just backing him up.”

  “What kind of back-up can you be?”

  John held up his right hand, displaying the flat strip of adhesive with which the doctor had replaced the immobilizing wad of bandaging. He wiggled his fingers to show his dexterity. “I can do it.”

  Still doubtful, Coffey glanced toward Bud. “You want him partnering you?”

  “If he says he can do it, he can.”

  Coffey turned back to John and shrugged. “All right. Keep me updated. And don’t take any chances. The holidays always bring out the worst in people.”

  Anxious to get away from Coffey before he changed his mind, John strode out of the office ahead of Bud. He slowed as he neared the squad room door, and checked his gun to make sure it was loaded. Tucking it back into the holster beneath his jacket, he waited for Bud to grab his cell phone. They left the squad room together.

  Light flurries swirled through the air as they crossed the lot and climbed into one of the pool cars. Bud took the wheel and John settled into the passenger seat. The smell of the car pleased John. All the pool cars had a similar smell, a mix of stale cigarette smoke and coffee and doughnuts spiced with a whiff of motor oil. John welcomed the distinctive fragrance. It confirmed that he wasn’t playing undercover Santa anymore.

  “So, what happened?” Bud asked as he steered out of the lot.

  “I told Coffey I wanted to get put on a case.”

  “No. I mean, this weekend.”

  John shot him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

  “Something happened this weekend, Russo. You’re a changed man.”

  It was John’s habit to keep his private business private. But Bud had known him long enough to be able to read him. He considered refusing to respond to Bud’s prying, but Bud might be insulted if he didn’t toss him a scrap. “Mike and I did some Christmas shopping,” he said. “We trimmed the tree. It looks good.”

  “You trimmed the tree?” Bud snorted. “Come on. This is me you’re talking to. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “We did trim the tree,” John said, then relented. “Molly helped us.”

  Bud nodded, as if he’d known all along that Molly was the reason for John’s spirits. “Hey, I think it’s great. She’s cute, she’s a teacher, she works with kids. She’s kind of on the short side, but nobody’s perfect.” He braked to a stop at a red light. There was no need to blast the siren and run traffic lights. Whatever had gone down in the bar was past tense; uniformed officers were already at the scene, and John and Bud had no cause for high-risk speeding.

  “So,” Bud probed, “what does Mike think of her?”

  The question made John uncomfortable. He didn’t want to admit that part of Molly’s appeal was her rapport with Mike. If John thought of her in relation to Mike, he’d think of her in the role of a step-mother, and if he did that he’d of her in the role of a wife. He couldn’t let himself do that, not when he had so many misgivings about himself in the role of a husband.

  He forced a smile. “At this point, it’s too soon to matter what Mike thinks.”

  “Well, whatever else got trimmed besides that tree—” Bud glanced conspicuously at John’s crotch “—it’s done wonders for you.”

  John didn’t consider that remark worth acknowledging.

  Bud lost his smirk. “If she’s good for you, hang onto her,” he advised. “I’m your partner, and I like you better when you’re happy.”

  “I’m not happy,” John argued, just to be contrary.

  A block ahead of them, they saw several black-and-whites parked in front of a bar, with a few onlookers milling around the sidewalk outside the door. “Who goes to a bar this early on a Monday morning?” Bud wondered out loud. “It’s too early for people to be getting drunk and blowing each other’s brains out.”

  “Let’s find out what happened,” John said, shoving out of the car as soon as Bud turned off the engine.

  What happened, they learned after talking to the uniformed officers and interviewing the pale, trembling woman who owned the bar, was that she and the victim, a fellow she identified as Alvin Hampton, were setting up the bar for its ten-thirty opening, when a woman barged in, screamed, “I’m gonna kill you, Alvin!” and shot him in the thigh. He had already been taken to Arlington Memorial, but one of the EMT’s heard him mumble the name “Sheila.” At first, the bar owner insisted that she had no idea who Sheila was, but eventually her memory sharpened enough for her to recall that the shooter just might have been Alvin’s wife, Sheila Hampton. A bit more prodding, and the bar owner also recollected that she and Alvin had been having an affair for three months.

  John and Bud got Alvin’s home address from the bartender and drove to the modest apartment building, where they found Sheila Hampton. She was thin, with disproportionately large hands and an odd shade of red hair with black roots along her scalp. When Bud told her he was going to bring her to the station for questioning, she insisted she’d done nothing wrong, but she left the apartment peacefully with them, locking the door behind her before John could see any farther into it than the front foyer. He and Bud were going to have to get a search warrant. He’d bet a week’s salary there was a gun somewhere inside that apartment.

  “Aren’t you gonna read me my rights?” she asked as they escorted her outside to the car. She turned up the collar of her pea coat and dug her hands into the pockets.

  “You haven’t been charged with anything,” Bud explained. “We just want to question you.”

  “Yeah, well I know my rights.”

  “Good for you,” he said as John helped her into the back seat and shut the door.

  “I’m not talking without a lawyer,” she warned as they took their seats in front of her. “I’m just telling you that. I know my rights.”

  John noted that she hadn’t asked what she was being brought in for questioning about—which implied that she already knew. She knew because she’d been the one to send her husband to the hospital with a gunshot wound to his thigh. If she’d shot him there, she’d probably been aiming at his groin. Scorned women w
ere awfully predictable sometimes.

  But all his hunches weren’t going to get her behind bars. Procedures had to be followed. She’d have to be questioned, and if she wanted a lawyer, she’d get one.

  Back at the station house, they ushered her through the lobby, refusing her the chance to admire the tree. They escorted her up the stairs, through the squad room and into an interrogation room. The last time John had been in this particular room, he’d been grilling two pint-size bank thieves. He had a feeling this interrogation wasn’t going to be quite as much fun.

  “I want a lawyer,” Sheila Hampton reminded them, as if they could have forgotten.

  “I’m going to get a search warrant,” Bud whispered to John. “You deal with her.”

  John shrugged. He hated doing the paperwork necessary to secure a warrant, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to spend his morning with this phony redhead. He waited until Bud had left the room, then said, “Who’s your lawyer?”

  “I don’t have one. You’re supposed to provide me with one. I know my rights.”

  “Okay.” He left the room, locking her in, and asked one of the clerks to contact the Public Defender’s office. Then he returned to the interrogation room. “You want some coffee?” he asked Sheila.

  “Yeah. Cream and sugar. Lots of sugar. Three packets.”

  Strolling down the hall to the coffee lounge and preparing a cup of coffee for her ate up a few minutes. He brought her the steaming drink, then sat across from her at the painted wood table. It was an ugly thing, the surface scratched and the legs scuffed, but it was indestructible. John knew this from personal experience; more than once, he’d seen perpetrators kick the table, hit it, and attempt to lift it to throw at him. Sheila Hampton didn’t have enough meat on her to try anything like that. The table probably weighed more than she did.

  “So,” he said casually, letting her sip her coffee. “Do you have a job?”

  “What do you mean, do I have a job?”

  “Well, it’s almost eleven o’clock. I was just wondering if your boss might be expecting you at work.”

  “I called in sick,” she said, then took another sip, looking extremely proud of herself.

  John kept his expression blank, but inside he was grinning. Why would she have called in sick? She obviously wasn’t ill. She’d planned to take the morning off for a reason. The word premeditated flashed through his brain.

  “What kind of work do you do, Mrs. Hampton?” he asked.

  “I’m a secretary.”

  “And your husband? He works in a bar on East Fifteenth, doesn’t he.”

  Her gaze darted away. “I’m not saying another thing until you get me a lawyer.”

  He was grateful for the light rap on the door. Shoving back from the table, he opened the door and found himself face to face with a compact woman with straight blond hair and hazel eyes, wearing a grim gray suit and carrying a bulging leather briefcase. She seemed to flinch when she saw him. Then she regrouped and glared at him, her gaze bristling with hostility. “You have someone in there for me?” she asked, her voice level enough for John to know that her hostility had nothing to do with his being a cop and her being a defender.

  Her hostility had to do with him. “Hello,” he said, unable to push a smile past his uneasiness.

  “We need to talk,” she snapped, then eased the door fully open. “Later. Right now, I’d like to confer with my client.” She entered the room, right hand extended toward Sheila. “Hi. I’m Gail Saunders from the Public Defender’s office.” After shaking Sheila’s hand, Molly’s sister turned and reached for the door knob. She sent a final, lethal stare across the threshold to John, then slammed the door, shutting him out.

  ***

  BY THE TIME Bud returned to the station house with the gun he’d found in Sheila Hampton’s apartment, John was worn out from one of the most fruitless interrogations he’d ever conducted. The only glimmer of information he’d gotten out of Sheila was that her husband was a satyr, though she pronounced it “say-der,” like the Jewish meal at Passover.

  “A sadist, you mean?” he’d asked.

  “No, a satyr. You know, one of those old goats that’s always humping up against ladies.” But she vehemently denied shooting him. “If I was gonna shoot anyone, I’d shoot the lady that messed with him,” she offered before Gail Saunders told her to shut up.

  Gail was the reason the interrogation was fruitless. She muzzled her client, censored her, interrupted whenever Sheila seemed on the verge of saying something useful. Once ballistics determined that Sheila’s gun matched the slug the surgeons at Arlington Memorial had cut out of her husband’s leg, she was booked on the charge of attempted murder. Not once in the course of the afternoon did she inquire as to her husband’s condition.

  John watched as she was cuffed and escorted through the squad room, destined for the detention cell in the building’s basement to await her arraignment. He’d seen perps walk that path many times before, and it always left him feeling bleak. He ought to be euphoric whenever he nailed one of the bad guys. He’d done his part to get a dangerous person out of circulation; he should savor the moment. But there was something pathetic in the sight, a feeling that in that bad guy’s tiny corner of the universe, things had fallen apart disastrously, the mechanisms had failed, the balance had been thrown off. It was sad, and he’d witnessed it enough times to be left with a bitter aftertaste.

  Turning from the stairway, he started toward the coffee room. Gail Saunders blocked the hall, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed on him.

  He was tempted to ask her to kindly step out of the way. But he knew she was waiting for him. She told him they had to talk; he only wished he had a hint about what they had to talk about.

  He gave her a tentative smile. “You want some coffee?” he asked.

  “No, but I would like a few minutes of your time.”

  “Fine.” He shrugged and gestured toward the coffee room at the other end of the hall. “I’m getting some coffee.”

  She fell into step beside him, accompanying him into the lounge. He filled his ceramic cup with the sludge left in the nearly empty pot, then motioned to one of the vinyl chairs placed around the small room. She remained standing, projecting height and mass even though she was no more than an inch or two taller than her sister. She gripped her briefcase in one hand and let the other hang at her side. Only someone trained to pick up clues through body language would have noticed the tension in her furled fingers.

  He wasn’t sure why she seemed to resent him, unless it was because she’d been unable to crack him with her cross-examination when he’d testified during that murder trial a couple of weeks ago. But whatever the reason, he didn’t want to alienate her. She was Molly’s sister.

  He took a sip of coffee, laboring not to grimace at its burnt flavor. Leaning against the counter, he watched her. She was the one who wanted this conversation, so she would have to begin it. He wasn’t going to.

  She bought a minute by gazing around the lounge, skimming the jumble of messages tacked to the bulletin board on one wall, glancing up at the buzzing fluorescent light, making note of the antiquated refrigerator and the worn linoleum tiles checker-boarding the floor. Then she turned her attention back to him. “I had dinner with Molly last night,” she said. “She told me she spent the weekend with you.”

  John saw no need to confirm or deny it. If Molly wanted to talk about it with her family, he wasn’t about to object.

  “I’m her sister, and I love her,” Gail continued. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Don’t you think that’s her business?” he suggested, granting Gail a point for loving Molly but deducting a point for her nosiness.

  “I’ll tell you what I think, Detective Russo. I think Molly is awfully naive when it comes to men. I also think cops have the ability to induce trust where it might not be warranted or deserved.”

  Her words were like an assault. He held himself still, trying to tamp down his anger.
But inside, he was seething. Who the hell was she to be making such absurd generalizations about cops?

  She was a public defender, which—he supposed—gave her certain access to cops. They were her professional adversaries, arresting and testifying against the scum it was her job to defend. But that had nothing to do with his private life or her sister’s.

  “I think Molly is a lot smarter than you’re giving her credit for,” he said quietly, filtering the indignation out of his voice. She could bait him all she wanted. He wasn’t going to bite.

  “I know Molly is smart,” Gail retorted. “I also know she’s a soft touch. You’re a single father with a kid, and she can’t resist kids.”

  “You think she spent the weekend with me because of my son?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.

  Gail pursed her lips, obviously not a fan of irony. “I think she spent the weekend with you because she loves you. She has no idea who you are or what you are, or whether you can think past tomorrow. I know cops better than she does, Detective. I know it’s part of your creed to aim at a target and fire. You set your sights on a woman like Sheila Hampton, who’s been in an abusive relationship, who’s been through hell with her husband and now she finds herself charged with attempted murder. You don’t care about who she is or how she got from there to here. You don’t interview anyone who knows her, or go out in search of other possible suspects. All you care about is making an arrest and getting your collar.”

  He wasn’t going to get into a debate with a public defender about the way he did his job. “What does that have to do with Molly?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then reconsidered and sorted her thoughts. “My experiences with cops have not been good, Detective Russo.”

  “I know we’re opponents on the job, but—”

  “I’m not talking about the job, Detective Russo. I’m talking about my life. My experiences with the police don’t dispose me to trust you. You’re welcome to change my opinion, if you can. Promise me you’re going to take good care of my sister, and never hurt her. Promise me you’re not just going to enjoy her for a while and then send her on her way.”