Chapter 7

That first night, after I came in her the second time, her garrulous, easy-going and intimate acceptance of me pulled back a little bit. She got up and, in the middle of a naked cleanup, got dressed. I'm not stupid. I got dressed too. She finally turned to me and said "I like you too much."

"I'll expose some of my less attractive qualities to you if you like," I said. It was an attempt at levity, because her sudden seriousness and the tone in her voice suggested that something that had been very nice might also end up being very temporary, and I suddenly found that idea to be singularly unattractive.

"My life really is complicated enough," she said.

Like I said, I'm not stupid. I know when a woman is trying to talk herself out of making what she thinks is a mistake.

"I should go," I said. "Early day tomorrow. Thank you for a lovely evening."

"Isn't that supposed to be my line?" She looked conflicted.

"Take a few days to think about things," I said. "Then you can give me your line. Whatever it is, I'll honor it."

"Why do you have to be so damned attractive like that?" she moaned.

"Because I like you too," I said.

"I just need a little time to work through my thoughts," she said.

It was interesting to hear her say that, because only one other woman had ever said that to me. She was the one I let get away when I was a rookie cop. I gave her too much time ... so much that she thought I'd lost interest. She didn't want to waste her youth pining over me, and moved on. It broke my heart. Now that woman I might have married.

I was opening the door of my car when Eva yelled "Wait!"

She came running, barefoot on the cold cement walk, and into the street, where she crashed into me for a warm-lipped kiss.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I don't mean to be a bitch. I just have a lot on my mind right now."

"You're welcome," I said. "I had just as good a time as you did, remember?"

"Okay. I'm freezing."

"Then go back inside," I said, grinning.

"I have to go get Timothy," she said.

"Well go put on some shoes first, and maybe a coat," I suggested.

"Right," she said.

Then I was watching her ass cheeks rising and falling as she ran back to the house.

I wasn't used to thinking about a particular woman that much. After my heart was broken I had had the occasional fling, and I had always known that none of them would last that long. I had generally gone with the flow, easing off when it was clear that she was losing interest, or, on two occasions, getting too interested. I usually had a few regrets about backing away. Some of the women were pleasant companions, or fun sexual partners. But there was never that spark that electrified me.

Eva was unique in that sense. It felt good to be with her. I'm not talking about the sex here. That was fantastic, but the reason I wanted to go back was because she was fun to be with, no matter what we were doing. And we hadn't done all that much, up to that point, that might be considered potential for non-sexual fun.

But, just as I had backed off from potential mates in the past, some of them had backed away from me too, when I didn't generate that spark in them either.

So I thought about her a lot over the next week. I appeared at Wally's arraignment, where the judge raised an eyebrow at the number of charges. I kept a tight lipped silence about it other than to present the initial evidence and testimony that got him bound over for trial and bond denied because he was on parole.

The week after that I was summoned to the prosecutor's office. His name was Dennis Stuart and we had worked together reasonably well for a few years. He had some of the common prosecutorial quirks, but won more cases than he lost. He was also a donor to the Santa Claus fund, but didn't do anything other than that.

"You want to tell me what the stacked charges are all about?" he asked, pointing to a file on his desk with Wally's picture on the front.

"He did all those things," I said.

"You know I can't take all that into court," he said. "There are six offenses listed, some of them with four counts each. And three different felonies. And parole violation? What do you have against this guy, anyway? Is it personal for some reason?"

"He tried to rob Santa Claus and then stabbed him," I said, straight faced. "What jury is going to acquit him on that?"

He smiled, but only briefly. "I'm more worried about the judge screaming at me in court," he said.

"Look, Denny," I said. "The guy got out of prison and the first thing he did was get high. The next thing he did was mug three people, putting one of them in the hospital. Then he burgled the home of the woman who put him in prison. If I hadn't been there he probably would have killed her. Or raped her at a minimum, and whatever he did would have happened right in front of her seven-year-old kid. This guy is an abscess on the cancerous tumor of a diarrheic colon. The only way to save the patient, which in this case is society, is to cut him out and seal him up where he can't hurt anybody ever again."

"It is personal," said Dennis, unmoved by my diatribe. "You know this girl?" He frowned. "Other than her being a recipient of your program?"

"It's personal because he tried to kill me," I said. "Isn't that a good enough reason?"

"Then let me try to convict him of trying to kill you, and get rid of all the ash and trash that will distract everybody," he suggested.

"Hey, you're the prosecutor. You can drop whatever charges you like," I said.

"You know I don't work that way," he said. "You guys and I are on the same team. It's a team, Bob."

"Then let me talk to the judge," I said.

He sat, looking at me for a full minute.

"I'll go for attempted murder on you. I'll go with the aggravated assault on the man he put in the hospital. I can get in the other two mugging assaults. Keep the resisting charge in as part of a possible deal, but the stalking and burglary and attempted theft of an art set have to go, Bob."

"What about the PCP?" I asked.

"Lab can't identify what was in his system," said Denny. "If his defense wants to bring up that he got high on something and therefore violated his parole, then let them. It won't make any difference. Your testimony, and that of Miss Sinderson will be enough to show he was cognizant of what he was doing."

"So they cop to violation of his parole and all he gets is two more years," I said.

"You're not looking at this through a lawyer's eyes, Bob," he said patiently. "I go to the judge and tell him I'm letting go of this, this, this and that, but I want to go forward on two felonies and two misdemeanors. Shithead's lawyers can't yell that I'm stacking charges and persecuting their client. They try for a deal with a guilty plea on the two misdemeanors and I tell them to go fuck themselves. We have a trial and he gets convicted on the things we know we can prove. It's how the game is played, Bob."

"So the fact that he broke into a woman's house, scared the shit out of a little boy and tried to steal Christmas presents is just tossed in the trash basket," I said, disgusted.

"The door was open," said Denny, playing devil's advocate. "He rang the bell, but the festivities inside were simply too loud and nobody heard it. So he invited himself in. He'd been there before. He only wanted to wish Miss Sinderson a Merry Christmas. And he was only admiring the art set when you misunderstood and things got out of control."

"My testimony will prove otherwise," I said, knowing that he was playing defense attorney and devil's advocate.

"You have a relationship of some kind with Miss Sinderson," he said. "You were jealous that her former lover returned and wanted to pick up where things left off." He was looking at me closely. He didn't need to know about our date. Nobody needed to know. It was our business and nobody else's. Besides, for all I knew, it was the only date we'd ever have.

"He was never her lover," I growled.

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