She licked her lips. What had she been thinking, going cold turkey? Because you didn’t need a quit strategy, she thought, if you didn’t have a problem. Just one would make it better. Half a one so she wouldn’t feel quite this bad.
If she didn’t want to talk about what she knew damn well was withdrawal, and she sure as hell didn’t, she could bring the conversation back to roll call. She could continue poking around the edges of the investigation into the beatings, trying to see how far along things had gotten and running the risk of exposing herself. Could she find out how much Lamb knew, what theories he had, if any? She wondered again if Preacher suspected her, but she couldn’t devise a way to discern that from him without leading him to suspect her, if he didn’t already.
He was smarter than she was, and decades more savvy. That she might con or cajole him into revealing his thinking was a ridiculous idea and she knew it. She worried that the real reason they were on the street together was so he could be alone with her, so he could question her without really, officially questioning her.
She felt like that loony guy in the Edgar Allan Poe story, the guy with the beating heart hidden under his floor. She remembered the end of the story. The guy was batshit crazy. That was the point and the punch line. He was crazy with rage. With guilt. Too crazy and angry and guilty to shut the fuck up and sit still. Like any other criminal. Was that where she was headed?
“Nothing’s up,” she said. “I’m fine. I just, I’m anxious, like I was saying before. I feel like a dog that’s been cooped up in the house all day, you know, like for weeks.” She gestured at the crowded bar a block ahead of them. “I’ve been in a cage and we drive to the dog park and now you won’t let me out of the car. I just, you know me, Preach. I want to be moving.”
Preacher shook his head. “No. No, you’re not the usual you. I’ve never seen you, never seen anyone crush half a pack of cigarettes like you have in the past two hours. Bored dog, my ass. You smoke like someone who’s cuffed up in the interrogation room. Like inside the cigarette is the only place that there’s any air.”
A neon-green Jeep packed with college kids, the music cranked, caught his attention as it sped past. He watched it continue on in the rearview. Maureen watched his eyes, his hands, his right foot, urging him in her mind to start the car. Please.
She dropped her half-finished cigarette out the window. She was that dog again, panting, watching her master stand there ball in hand, waiting, dying for him to throw it.
Instead Preacher said, “How is it you smoke like you do and run like you do? Those things don’t go together. You got an extra set of lungs at home in the closet?”
“The nuns in high school used to ask me the same question,” Maureen said. “I’m a walking, running contradiction, Preach. It’s part of my charm.” She lit another cigarette. “I make it happen like I do everything else. Through sheer force of will.” She shrugged. “I’m in great shape. I have the resting heart rate of a professional athlete.”
“That’s the thing,” Preacher said. “I know you can run for miles. I saw you cruising around the track in the park. Graceful as a racehorse. But when you stop moving, and I can see you, you don’t look healthy. That’s my point.”
Maureen looked away from him. “What the hell does that mean? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes me wonder what’s driving you. I need to know my officers. I need to know what they carry, and how much it weighs.”
She climbed out of the car. “I need to stretch my legs. Boredom, that’s what’s driving me. And it weighs a fucking ton.”
It wasn’t untrue; she needed to stretch. Not that she was about to start bending over and doing stretches in the middle of Magazine Street. But she felt better standing than she did sitting.
She walked around to the front of the car, leaned her backside on the hood. The night was cold. The wind picked up. She crossed her arms, rubbed them. She’d left her leather jacket in the car. It would have to stay there. She couldn’t even look at Preacher. Not right then. Every now and then someone standing around in front of the bar glanced her way. The wind carried music and voices to her. She jammed her fists into her armpits. She looked down at her boots. The chemical withdrawal was appropriate, she thought. November was now her white-knuckle month.
*