by Baxter Clare
"Take your time. I know it was a while ago. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night." Noah's standard line. She can see the big, friendly grin attached to it.
"I don't know nothing about that afternoon. Just like any other I guess."
"What do you usually do in the afternoon?"
Frank hears the shrug in her voice as the woman answers, "Watch Oprah, I guess. Get dinner ready."
"For the record, who else lives here with you?"
"My two boys and my husband."
Noah asks for everyone's names and she tells him.
"How old are your boys?"
"James is nineteen, Levon’s seventeen."
"Must take a while to make dinner." Again Noah's grin comes through the tape recorder and Frank almost turns it off. " Who was home with you that afternoon?"
The tape hisses, picks up shuffling noises.
"Kevin 'd be working and the boys wasn't home yet. I don't know where they was at, but they wasn't with me."
"Where does your husband work?"
Frank pauses the tape to hunt through the interview folders. That Noah doesn't follow up on the boy's whereabouts tells her he's already placed them during the critical time frame. His notes on Levon indicate he and James were doing blunts and videos at a friend's house. Satisfied, she continues the tape.
"Over to Grand Tire, off 'n Hoover."
She hears more shifting, then Noah asks, "Can you recall anything unusual about that day?" There's no answer and Noah prompts, "Did you notice anyone unfamiliar outside or hear any funny noises you couldn't place?"
"No. Nothing I recollect."
"Mrs. Ferris, are you sure there wasn't anyone else home with you that day?"
More shifting, then over-bright, the woman says, "I forgot. My brother was visitin'."
Consulting the notes, Frank reads that the interview was done as a follow-up to identifying the vehicles photographed within the vicinity of the dumpsite. Noah's disembodied voice asks where the brother was visiting from.
"From up north. Up to Bakersfield, where our folks live."
"Where was he that afternoon?"
"Right here with me. He ain't never far from the kitchen when Fm in it. He's always pestering me something awful about when's the next meal and what's it gonna be. Lord, that man is worse than both my boys. You'd think he had a worm the way he eats."
"How much of the day did he spend here with you?"
"All of it, as I recollect. We went to the Ralph's in the morning and I made him bring the groceries in, then I fixed him lunch and we watched TV and played Mexican Train until suppertime."
"What's Mexican Train?"
"Dominoes. I recollect it was rainy and I made a stew. I thought it would last Kevin for lunch next day, but didn't Antoine eat it right up!"
"Dang! You must be a pretty fair cook."
"I know my way aroun' a kitchen."
"I'm jealous, Mrs. Ferris."
Frank hears the grin again and recalls Noah's prodigious appetite. He was always hungry, always noshing on something and never gaining a pound. He got written up in his rookie year because he waited for his order at the drive-through before responding to a Code 2 burglary.
Frank hits the stop button. She can't do this. She needs a drink. Being on call, she can't get ripped, but by-fucking-Christ she can at least get a sweet buzz on. Drinking on call is a gross violation. One Frank often overlooks for a drink or two. Tonight she needs more than a drink or two and considers calling Fubar.
"Fuck it," she declares. "End of watch."
She grabs her jacket, willing to take the chance that she doesn't get called out.
But it's a bad bet. Just as she's oiled herself into bed after Nightline, the phone rings. The watch commander calls her out to a domestic with an ugly ending.
Frank dresses while assessing her condition. She's tired but fairly clearheaded. She rinses with Scope and runs a little soap through her hair, hoping the combined scents will camouflage the ethanol seeping from her pores.
"Not good," she reprimands the Frank in the mirror. Her eyes are bloodshot, but she justifies, "What do you expect for the middle of the night." Then, "Still, girlie-girl. Tail's startin' to wag the dog."
Frank packs her ID, gun, cuffs, wallet, notebook and change. Stuffing a stray latex glove into her jacket pocket, she takes off into the night that never really gets dark in Los Angeles. She drives fast, with the windows down, and the cool air makes her feel sober. She's got to make a limit to her drinking and stick to it, especially on week-nights and call duty. Though exhausted, she feels better by the time she gets to the scene.
Until Jill storms up to her, firing off, "Johnnie's pasted."
She follows her detective into an apartment with a lot of crying kids. The battered body of a female Hispanic lies on the kitchen floor. Johnnie stands next to her making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When he sees Frank he grins, "Hey, Freek! You hungry?"
She steps to him and puts out her hand. "Give me your weapon and your ID."
Johnnie laughs. "What for?"
"You're suspended."
"What for? For making a sandwich? I'm hungry. It was sitting right here."
"You're drunk, Johnnie. Turn 'em over."
Certain Frank's bluffing, he says, "Whoa, lighten up, ol’ Freek. I'm not drunk."
He tries wrapping a beefy limb around her shoulder, but Frank knocks it away.
"Hey, come on," he says, startled, swaying gently.
Frank motions two of the uniforms but Johnnie backs away from them.
"Quit it. You can't do this to me."
"Watch me." She advances on Johnnie and the uniforms follow her lead.
He bellows, "Fuck you, Frank. Who the fuck you think you are? Your shit don't stink? How many times you come on lately smelling like a fuckin' barroom, huh?"
The uniforms have stopped. Jill and the onlookers glance between Johnnie and Frank.
"Who'za one always closing the Alibi with me, ripped to the tits? And on call too, huh? How many you had tonight? Everyone knows you been sluggin' 'em back since—"
Later she will realize it was a suicidal move, but Frank doesn't have the luxury of hindsight as her fist connects under Johnnie's chin. The blow staggers him, but the following left to his temple wakes him to murder. Frank steps out of Johnnie's first swing but can't avoid the second. It glances off her shoulder and slows her long enough for his third punch to land on her jaw. Frank's head snaps 180 degrees and she thinks of Trevor Pryce as the lights go out.
Chapter 23
"What in God's name were you thinking?"
Slumped on Gail's couch, Frank mumbles that if she were thinking she obviously wouldn't have swung at a man with over a hundred pounds on her.
Gail only glares.
Frank is tired. Foubarelle, the deputy chief, the IAD rats, even the drug-recognition expert who took Johnnie's urine sample (Frank was ordered to give hers, almost as an afterthought, well past dawn), they've all pointed out how stupid that was. She doesn't need to be reminded, thank you very much. She just wants to get some sleep, but Gail won't let it go.
Frank's jaw feels like it's packed with wet cement. She tries to minimize movement inside her mouth as she asks, "Shouldn't you be at work?"
"You know, I should. But my girlfriend picked a fight with a three-hundred-pound subordinate last night and I'm kind of curious why."
"Got a lot on my mind. Johnnie just hit a nerve and I reacted poorly. End of story."
"End of story."
Gail is pacing back and forth in front of the couch. The hypnotic motion makes Frank sleepy, but Gail's precarious balance on the edge of fury keeps Frank wary.
The doc grits out, "I'm trying to be sensitive here, Frank. I know you're under a lot of pressure. Granted, most of it is self-imposed, but I'm trying to overlook that. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, that you know the best way to work this out for yourself, but frankly, I'm losing patience. It's been almost four mo
nths, Frank. Four months in which you have done nothing but obsess about a six-year-old case and drink yourself comatose. I feel more inconsequential in your life than that sofa you're sitting on. Now you breeze in at eight in the morning and tell me you've been suspended for decking one of your own men, and I'm just supposed to take this in stride too?"
Frank doesn't need this. She feels stupid enough. Knowing Gail would find out sooner or later, Frank had decided she'd rather tell the doc herself. It was as dumb to stop by Gail's as it was to swing on Johnnie. Frank reckons she's on a dumb streak.
Pulling herself from the couch's warm embrace, she tells Gail, "I don't care what you do with it."
Gail half barks, half laughs, "Oh, don't even think about leaving, Frank. Don't even think about it."
Frank turns, as cold as the backup piece she clips onto her belt. "Why stay? I made a mistake coming here. Shouldn't compound it."
Gail looks like she's been bitch-slapped but answers, "Because good or bad, we're in this together, Frank, and that's how we'll work it out. Together. We can't do that if you keep running away."
"There's nothing to work out, Gail. That's my whole point. And you keep insisting there is."
"Is that really the way you feel?"
"It really is."
Gail's fury is instantly quenched by tears. Guilt tries to pierce Frank's armor but fails. She pats her pockets, making sure she has her keys. It'd be embarrassing to slam out and have to come back for them.
"Frank?"
When Frank meets her eyes, Gail says, "If you walk out that door, don't bother coming back."
Frank pauses, squaring her shoulders. It's a big threat and she gauges Gail's sincerity. She looks serious enough, and probably has every right to an ultimatum, but Frank doesn't give a shit. That's really the bottom line. She just doesn't fucking care.
"Sorry," she says, and slips out the door.
Chapter 24
The new sun is fresh and pretty. When Frank gets home she remains in her car, soaking in it. Her anger has cooled to remorse, and the morning's clarity emphasizes how brilliantly she's erred. She tells herself that yes, Johnnie was drunk, and yes, he would have been suspended anyway, but none of that negates the fact that she'd been drinking too. Despite his unjustifiable method of delivery, Johnnie's message was dead-bang true. Frank had swung because she didn't want to hear she was just like him.
Dropping head into hand, she massages her eyebrows while rats chew at her guts.
"Christ on a fucking pony." She's acting as badly as Briggs, a man who needs professional help. A man who can't control his drinking.
This last is unacceptable. She can control her drinking. She's just been under a lot of pressure lately and hasn't policed herself closely enough. She is not like Briggs, who barely has the discipline to bathe himself. She can control her drinking and she will. She's just gotten sloppy. Lazy. She'll go that far in comparing herself to Johnnie. But no further.
Frank is beyond exhaustion. She tips her head toward the headrest and is almost asleep before it gets there.
"Come on," she rouses herself. "Discipline. Word for the day."
Despite how odd it feels to slide between sheets at nine in the morning, Frank is soon deeply under. She sleeps through to sunset. Her jaw still hurts when she wakes up but she likes the pain. It distracts her from anything deeper while reminding her what an asshole she was. She turns the volume on the phone back up and listens to six messages, hopeful that one is from Gail. Jill, the lab, Bobby, a clerk in admin, Darcy and Fubar. The captain tells her she's to report back to work on Monday. Frank won't admit relief over the last call, or disappointment that Gail's not on the machine.
She works up a hard sweat in the gym, then showers and returns phone calls. Jill backed her following the incident, stating that Johnnie was drunk and belligerent. When IA asked if Frank had been defending herself, Jill hadn't hesitated to say yes, despite every other witness stating that Frank had swung first. She calls Jill, admitting that she was wrong, that Johnnie got her goat and she lost it. Having worked with him, Jill can empathize. Having worked with Frank, Jill's grateful Johnnie's the one she finally chose to blow up on.
That evening, Frank drinks moderately, by her standards, refilling her tumbler only once. Saturday morning she is surprised that she went to bed early and slept through the night. She feels good outside, but dirty inside. At noon she calls Johnnie. He sounds awful.
"How you doin'?" she asks.
"All right, I guess."
After a beat, she confides, "Sorry about the other night."
"Fuck, I don't even remember it."
"Remember getting called out?"
"Sort of. I remember getting dressed and driving. That's kind of where I lose it."
Frank is relieved. There's no need for her to come clean. Johnnie doesn't remember a thing. He has been suspended, pending further review after completion of a mandatory 30-day in-house treatment program. She listens to his ensuing alcoholic admissions like a priest. A dirty priest. When he is done, she apologizes for not helping him sooner. She's known he's had problems and she's hoped they'd go away.
"Me too." He chokes out a laugh.
"It was hard for me to call you on your shit, 'cause it meant calling me on my own. You were right, you know. You accused me of drinking too much, and I have been. I gotta take care of that."
"Yeah, before you get a thirty-day rehab. Man, I don't want to go, Frank. Can't you get me out of it?"
"No can do, buddy. You gotta take this bullet."
"Fuck," he moans and Frank's heart aches for him. Johnnie's a pain in the ass, but he's her pain in the ass. And like it or not, he's become her conscience.
"Your desk'll be waiting for you when you get back, big man. It's gonna be all right."
"Yeah. Okay," he agrees, sounding unconvinced.
Frank hangs up feeling worse for her self-serving noblesse oblige. Granted, she hadn't been as hammered as he was, but probably the only thing keeping her from a bunk next to Johnnie's was that her BAC had dissipated by the time the brass thought to collect her urine sample.
She goes cold turkey that afternoon and starts listening to the Pryce tapes. She's aware that she's waiting for the phone to ring. But Gail doesn't call. And she still hasn't called when Frank gets home from work on Monday night. Confident she can control her drinking because she was sober yesterday and only had two drinks on Saturday, she heads straight for the Scotch. She savors the liquor's torch as it lights up her belly.
Sipping slowly, making the glass last, she debates the lightless answering machine. It was Gail's ultimatum, she decides, so Gail will have to break it. If she doesn't, maybe that's just as well. Frank would be the first to admit that she's been awful company lately.
Sliding a frozen dinner into the oven, she decides the day went pretty well, considering. The first thing she did after clipping her Beretta and ID back on was to apologize to the rest of the crew. What she did was unprofessional and made the whole department look bad. Yeah, she's been stressed, but so has everyone so that's no excuse. The incident was being recommended to the Board of Review and Frank agreed to abide by whatever actions the BOR saw fit to impose.
The rest of the day was routine. Despite the disruption to her crime scene Jill had nailed the suspect in the domestic and brought him in. Frank had to go out to the range for her monthly qualification and Darcy rode with her. In between reloads, he casually reminded Frank that he didn't drink anymore and that he might be able to help with Johnnie, or whatever. Reflecting on the implication of "or whatever," Frank thanked him and let the comment pass.
Frank only has a quarter-inch of booze left in her glass and it's barely four o'clock. She has to get through the rest of the night with just one more drink. But, she allows, she can have a glass of wine before dinner and another with dinner, then the second half-tumbler of Scotch for dessert. That's reasonable enough, she decides, and puts her glass down to save the last swallow.
She wal
ks around the house, restless. She wishes she could talk to Noah. Which reminds her that Tracey called last week. She'd left a message asking where Frank has been, when are they going to see her again? Frank hasn't returned the call yet. She feels guilty as hell but Trace and the kids are bleeding raw reminders. She can't face them right now. She needs to forget for a while. Forget everything. Noah, Gail, Johnnie—all of them. Just get everybody out of her head. The only way she knows to do that is to work. And drink.
Downing the last sip of Scotch, Frank pours a glass of wine. She starts to carry it into the shower with her but then leaves it on the counter.
"Pacing," she tells herself. "Just slow it down."
She ignores the clamoring from heart, bone and fingertips, all telling her to guzzle the waiting drink and chase it with a hundred more. Walking away from the glass is harder than facing open fire and leaves Frank trembling almost as badly.
Chapter 25
Noah talks through her stereo. He sounds relaxed, like he's talking smack with his dawgs. It hurts to hear his voice, but she concentrates on Reginald McNabb's. He and Noah joke and Frank winces when Noah laughs. She plays the tape through, hunting for inconsistencies that aren't there. Or that she can't hear.
She's drinking beer tonight instead of the hard stuff. When she gets up to play a new tape, she opens another bottle. Noah dictates the date, time and place of the interview. He introduces himself and, for the record, the woman he is talking to. She's the last of the hookers McNabb talked to the night of the murders. After a few minutes of bio background Noah asks her where she was that night.
"Where I always am. Corner of Florence and Vermont."
"Was it a busy night?'"
"Hell, no! It was freezing. Warn't nobody out."
"Did you have any tricks that night?"
"Uh-uh. Not a one. I was fixin'a go home, and that's when Reg rolled on me. I told him I was freezin' my ass off for nothing and all he was gonna get from me that night was fuckin' pneumonia. He told me he'd be back in a hour and that if I wasn't there I'd better have some cash for him in the mornin'."
Frank hears her suck on a cigarette.
