Kay Howard paced the familiar length of the squadroom,
unconsciously avoiding anyone who dared cross her path. It was
four in the morning, and she was far from thrilled about starting
her shift this early, but she'd asked to be paged if anything unusual
showed up in the Lutz case, and sure enough, it had.
Harry Lutz had been killed by an overdose of morphine. His
confessed killer was now down in the drunk tank, loudly proclaiming
his innocence to whoever would listen. Either one of those facts
alone wouldn't have made a difference, but together, they were making
her wonder.
There were a dozen reasons for Virgil Platt to be their
killer-and only one to put against them. 'Why morphine? The blow on
the head probably would have killed him. Why go to all the trouble?'
She knew Lewis, for one, didn't see it that way. He simply saw
another dead homeless man and his murderer. Platt thought he hadn't
killed Lutz with the bottle, so he came back and finished the job with
a drug he'd gotten God only knew where, and then confessed in a spasm
of remorse. It fit, but it didn't fit.
The only good thing about this whole situation was that she'd
been able to pass on the aggravation to Lewis and Bayliss. They were
down in the morgue right now, getting all the details from Alyssa
Dyer.
Tired of the exercise, Kay sat down at her desk, propping her
head in her hands. Lewis and Bayliss. She'd thrown them together on
an uncharacteristic whim; she knew as well as anyone that they weren't
a good fit as partners, but Lewis had gotten on her case one time too
many. She'd show him who was boss, she thought. Shake him up a
little.
But, she admitted, that wasn't her only reason. Part of
her-the part that she kept hidden from almost everyone who knew
her-had been incredibly, unexpectedly turned on by what had happened
in the Waterfront a few nights ago.
'Meldrick with his tongue in Tim's mouth,' she thought,
mentally reliving the scene. 'There's something I'd pay to see.' In
slow motion, too, so she could savor every last nuance. That picture
had fueled her fantasy life for the past several nights. The thought
of Lewis, straight as they come, aroused by another man's lips and
hands on him, being held prisoner by a body as strong as his own,
excited her in ways she'd never wanted to examine until now. And the
fact that it was Bayliss, normally so gentle, who had bent Lewis to
his will, made the image all the more arousing.
Having seen him this way was her perfect revenge on Lewis. She
knew that. But there was something else involved-something that she'd
denied even to herself. She wanted both of them; wanted to be both of
them, prisoner and captor, in lust fueled with anger or in desperate
surrender; wanted to feel what they had felt in those few moments when
all rules were broken.
She shook her head angrily at the images she had conjured up.
This wasn't about that, she told herself. They were shorthanded.
With Pembleton still in rehab and Russert on leave for no one knew how
long, she had to assign the few people she had left in the most
expedient way. What she saw in the bar had nothing to do with it.
Her own feelings had absolutely nothing to do with it. Lewis and
Bayliss had probably forgotten about what had happened by now, or
dismissed it as a fluke. Everything was probably the way it had
always been between the two of them-except in Kay's dreams.
She didn't realize Bayliss was standing behind her until he spoke.
"Uh. . .Kay?"
"Yeah, Bayliss. What'd you find out?" she asked.
"Dyer says Lutz would have died even if he hadn't been injected
with
morphine," Bayliss said as Howard turned in her chair to face him.
"He got whacked on the head pretty good."
"He bled pretty good, too," Lewis said, coming up behind them,
a cup of coffee in his hand. "So Platt had to have hit him first,
then given him the overdose."
"If Platt did it," Bayliss reminded him. "He said he can't
remember."
"Any chance that he could have injected himself? Was he an
addict?" Howard interjected.
"Dyer only found one needle mark," Bayliss answered. "And
Platt said yeah, he drank, but that was all."
"See, there you go again," Lewis remarked. "Seventy-year-old
derelict comes in, tells you he killed his buddy. Now he says he
didn't do it, and you're still gonna trust him to tell you the truth."
"Why would he lie about this?"
"Everybody lies to the po-leece. You know that."
Kay knew he was right-hadn't she seen it enough herself?-but
something still didn't fit.
"Dyer give you a time of death?" she asked.
"Best she could do was sometime yesterday," Lewis said. "Man
had nothing in his stomach. And with the heat…you know."
"Was he robbed?"
"Platt doesn't think he had anything worth stealing, but it's
kind of hard to tell. He could have been hiding anything in his
clothes. Can you believe it? In this heat, he was wearing everything
he owned," Bayliss said, shaking his head.
"Harder to steal your clothes when you're wearing them," Lewis
observed.
"I'd rather have somebody take my clothes than die of heat
stroke."
"You ever been homeless?" Lewis shot back.
"So what have we got here?" Howard interrupted them. "A
homeless man, hit over the head, left to die, and then shot full of
morphine."
"That's it, Sarge," Lewis said.
"And nothing at the scene that would show he died of anything
but a head wound."
"Nothing. Not a thing," Bayliss told her.
"I want you to go out there as soon as it gets light. Both of
you. Now you know you're looking for a hypodermic needle, you might
get lucky."
"What about Platt? We can't hold him much longer," he
reminded her.
"Then talk to him now," she said.
"Why?" Lewis asked innocently. "You comin' around to my way
of thinking, Sarge?"
"Just do it, huh?"
"Yes, ma'am," he answered sarcastically, turning away from
her. "Whatever the Sarge wants."
She stared stonily at his retreating back. Beau Felton had
always
teased her about her leaps of logic, but more often than not, they
were right. She would let Bayliss and Lewis question Virgil Platt
again, but if he continued to insist he was innocent, the most they'd
be able to charge him with at this point would be assault. And a
halfway decent lawyer would have him out of their hands soon after
that. Without evidence to show Platt had access to the drug that
killed Harry Lutz, they'd be left with an unknown perp and a
forty-eight-hour clock ticking down to zero all too fast.
Bayliss had been thinking along the same lines, she guessed.
As he
waited with Lewis for Platt to be brought in, she heard him going over
what they needed to cover.
"We've got to find out who was with them that night. Strangers,
friends, anyone. Especially anyone who might have had access to
morphine."
"We won't need to. When we find that syringe, it's gonna have
his prints all over it."
"Why would an old wino go to all that trouble?"
"Maybe he had a reason for doing it that way. Maybe he's not
just an
old wino."
"Look, who's the primary on this case? You or me?"
"What, you gonna get all bureaucratic on my ass? He don't
confess,
he's gonna walk out of here. Then he drops out of sight, and Lutz
stays red forever."
"My case, my call. And I say we don't go in there and scare
the man
into another bogus confession. We'll be in a shitload of trouble if
he decides to turn around and sue us."
Muttering under his breath, Lewis stalked into the Box and
slammed
the door. Bayliss waited until Platt was brought in and escorted him
personally into the small room.
The interrogation was doomed from the start, Howard thought.
Tim and
Meldrick weren't playing good cop, bad cop; they were each going in
there planning to use Virgil Platt to prove his own theory about the
murder. She kicked herself mentally for not stepping in to remind
them they were supposed to be on the same side.
'Too late now,' she thought ruefully. She decided to step into
the observation room for a few minutes. If they got into dangerous
territory, she could always call a halt while they got their act
together.
When she looked through the one-way glass a couple of minutes
later, the two detectives were sitting next to each other, facing
Platt across the table in the Box. Bayliss was leaning forward,
exuding sympathy, while Lewis sat back, arms folded, an expression of
disgust on his face.
"Now he's saying he didn't do it," he said sarcastically. "Can't
even keep his story straight from one day to the next."
Platt's hands were shaking and his eyes looked haunted. "I
wasn't
nowhere near Harry."
"Where were you?" Bayliss asked in a gentle voice.
"Somebody stole my bottle. I went looking for the guy. Next
thing I
remember is Harry layin' there with his head busted open."
"That's convenient," Lewis said. He drummed his fingers on the
table. "Very fucking convenient for you. This guy who stole your
bottle have a name?"
"We need you to tell us why you confessed to the murder."
Bayliss
interrupted, projecting even more empathy into his voice. "I mean, it
seems to us like you must have done it. You came up to us with half a
bottle in your hand and told us you did. Why'd you change your mind?"
Lewis' fingers were still tapping the table, beating out a rhythm
that seemed to say, "He's lying," over and over again. Kay could tell
it was driving Bayliss crazy.
"I don't remember picking up that bottle," Platt said,
troubled. "I
figured we musta got into a fight. But for the life of me, I can't
think why. Harry was my best friend. Went all through the war
together. Hell, he carried me on his back for two days after I got
shot in Italy. I know that, but I can't remember what happened
yesterday."
He put his head down on the table, mumbling, "I wouldn't a' hit
him.
I know I wouldn't. It musta been someone else."
Lewis leaned forward. "Look at me." There was no response.
He slammed his hand down on the table. "Look at me!"
Bayliss touched his arm. "Go easy on him."
Lewis shook the hand away. "I ain't going easy on a man who
kills
his best friend and then lies about it. Look at me, old man."
Platt raised his head. Traces of tears shone on his face. "You
gotta believe me. I wouldn't do that to Harry."
"We want to believe you, Mr. Platt. We do," Bayliss told him
earnestly. "But you have to give us a reason. Do you remember
anything unusual about Harry? Any friends you didn't know?"
"No, sir. It was just us. We were gonna go to the mission
together,
get cleaned up. Maybe get a job. The Reverend said he had jobs for
us. Said we could learn computers. 'You're never too old.' That's
what he said."
"What mission's teaching a bunch of old winos how to use
computers?"
Lewis asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Dunno. Never heard of it before. He comes around saying it's a
shame for two veterans to be out on the street. Says there's a place
for us whenever we want to sober up."
"You ever see him before?" Bayliss asked.
"Don't think so. But me and Harry were gonna check the place
out."
"Do you know where the mission is?"
"No. . .Harry said he thought he knew. He bet we could get there
on the
bus. We get our senior citizen discounts, you know," he said, drawing
himself up proudly.
"You know what I think, huh, Virgil? You know what I'm thinking
right now?" Lewis asked in a soft voice, leaning across the table,
practically nose-to-nose with the old man. "I think you killed Harry.
I think you're jerking us around just because you think you can. We
got your prints on the bottle-we got your confession-and that's all we
need. Senior citizen like yourself, they're not gonna stick a needle
in your arm. Fact is, you might be dead before your case even goes to
trial."
Kay was maddeningly aware of something teasing at her memory,
something the detectives had skipped right over. She saw it clearly
in her mind-a well-dressed, well-spoken man, recruiting old homeless
men for a mission that didn't exist. But it hadn't happened in
Baltimore, had it? Where had she seen that man?
Giving up for now, she tuned back into the conversation in the
other room, starting in surprise at what she heard.
"Hey, I forgot something," Lewis continued. "You know all
about needles, don't you, Virgil?"
'Great,' Kay thought. The whole thing would fall apart if
they mentioned the morphine now. This guy probably wasn't as dumb as
he looked, now that he was sober; if he had killed Lutz, he'd clam up.
And if not, she wouldn't put it past him to ask for a lawyer. They'd
end up tipping their hand either way. Should she let them skate
closer and closer to thin ice, she wondered, or should she rein them
in? She hesitated for a moment.
Platt opened his mouth to speak, but Bayliss forestalled him.
"Mr. Platt, I'm going to take you outside. You can have a cup
of coffee if you want," he said. He led Platt out to the fishbowl.
Lewis sat, mute, until Bayliss returned. Then, in one smooth
motion, he stood up and kicked his chair over.
"What the hell are you doing? You got your killer right
here," he shouted.
"We don't have our killer. We don't have anything."
Turning his back on Lewis, Bayliss began pulling the shades.
"Look," he said. "You've had a bug up your ass since we came
out of
the morgue. I'm the primary here. You're supposed to be following my
lead. And that means getting everything we can out of Platt so we can
find out who did it and close this case."
"You turning into one of those ACLU liberals? Huh? 'Poor guy,
he
couldn't have done it,'" he mocked. "'We'll go real easy on him and
let him back out on the street.' Then when he kills somebody else,
you're gonna be all surprised."
"All I'm saying is, you mention the morphine, he's gonna deny
knowing
anything about it. You push him, and he's gone before we can find the
syringe."
"Five more minutes, he would've told us where he got it."
"Five more minutes with you and he would have asked for a
lawyer."
They were going around in circles, verbally and physically, Lewis
trying to make Bayliss turn and face him as each man tried to talk the
other down. It was hopeless, Howard thought. She should just pull
Lewis out-set him to tracing the movements of the two homeless men, or
pulling files on murdered vagrants, or something, so Bayliss could get
on with his questioning. She paused, hand on the doorknob of the
observation room, as Bayliss finally turned around.
"You know what? This isn't about the murder. This is about
you and
me."
"Whadda you mean, you and me? The only you and me I see here
is you
letting a stone killer get up and walk out in the middle of
questioning, and me not having the balls to stop you."
"No," Bayliss said angrily. "If I said he did it, you'd be
busting
your butt to prove me wrong."
"And why would I be doing that?" Lewis asked in a dangerously
calm voice.
"You know why." Bayliss turned away again, picking up a
handful of
papers on the desk and stacking them in a careful pile.
Lewis clamped one hand on Bayliss' shoulder, forcing him to turn
around. They were inches apart now, each glaring into the other's
eyes. Kay stood transfixed as Lewis stared his partner down.
"Tell me," he said in the same low voice.
Bayliss tried to shake off the hand that was holding him in
place.
"Forget it. We've got work to do."
"No. I wanna know what you think I'm doing here."
"You know what you're doing," Bayliss said, anger coloring his
words. "Two hours ago, you were begging me to touch you, and now you can't
even stand to look at me. You want to lock Platt up and throw away
the key so this case will be over and you won't have to be my partner
anymore."
"That ain't it at all," Lewis spat out. "You've been Platt's
little buddy since we brought him in here. What is it, he remind you of your
grandpop? Old white guy, he must be innocent. He says he is, so
we'll believe him."
Bayliss shifted his feet, bringing his body even closer to
Lewis'. "Yeah, that's it, Meldrick. You found out my secret. You're still
the big detective-still the big macho guy-even after you jumped me in
the motel." He looked into Lewis' eyes. "I bet you're hard right now, just
thinking about that. Aren't you?"
All her cop instincts were telling Howard to open the door, to
stop
this before it went any further, but she couldn't move. She felt a
shock of arousal race through her. This was what she'd dreamed about
since that night at the Waterfront.
"You wanna find out?" Lewis asked in a throaty voice. "I know
you
do. You don't care about the case. Well, go ahead," he added, his
voice becoming harsh. "Go ahead. Do it. Get it over with."
"Get it over with?" Bayliss shouted, finally twisting free.
"Yeah. Okay. Let's fucking get it over with."
Crushing Lewis' face between his hands, he forced their mouths
together in a bruising kiss. As Lewis began, almost unwillingly, to
respond, Bayliss let go abruptly and took a step back.
"Happy now?" he inquired, almost conversationally.
"No way, man," Lewis said with a bitter laugh. Moving faster
than Kay had ever seen him, he grabbed Bayliss by one arm. He drew
the other man back to him, twisting Bayliss' arm behind his back for
leverage.
"You want this, you're gonna get it." He ground his pelvis
into the other man's hard enough to force a groan from Bayliss' open
mouth.
"Not here," Bayliss said thickly, trying to pull away.
"Why not? You want it. Why not here? Hell, why not in the
middle of the squadroom?"
With his other hand, Lewis forced Bayliss' head down until it
was millimeters from his own. He whispered, "This what you want, huh,
Timmy? You like this?" as he bucked his hips against his partner's
groin.
"Tell me you don't," Bayliss ground out, refusing to let his
body respond. "Tell me this isn't what you want."
Lewis didn't answer. What could he say? Kay thought. She
knew what she wanted, what she'd dreamed of seeing: sweaty kisses,
Meldrick's caramel skin pressed firmly into Tim's much paler body;
mouths tasting, teasing, hands touching and stroking, until the final
explosive release. She squelched the little voice that told her this
was neither the time nor the place-that if she wanted to be a voyeur,
she could do it on her own time-as she waited breathlessly to see what
would happen next.
She watched, fascinated, as Bayliss' body betrayed his better
judgment. His stiff back relaxed as Lewis continued to rub
lasciviously against him. Slowly, languorously, he captured Lewis'
willing mouth, and just as slowly, Lewis released the iron grip on his
arm. They clung to each other, swaying together in a deliberate,
lustful dance, as their kiss became deeper.
Kay reached up to
touch her half-parted lips, brushing her fingers lightly over them,
and shivering as her own excitement began to stir. She couldn't have
said whether she stood there for one minute or ten, watching Bayliss
dropping fierce kisses on Lewis' face; Lewis, head thrown back, making
soft little noises as Bayliss bit and suckled at his throat; Lewis'
strong hands planted firmly on Bayliss' hips as their bodies shuddered
and pressed tighter and tighter together. Oh, this was better than
she could have imagined, she thought as her hands traced the path of
Bayliss' lips on her own body, back arching and hips thrusting against
an invisible lover as she imagined herself in Lewis' place.
"Don't stop," she whispered.
The sound of her voice brought her back to the real world.
What the hell was she thinking of? Fantasy fulfillment was all very
well, but they were in the middle of a case. Virgil Platt was sitting
in the fishbowl right now, waiting patiently to be questioned again,
and she was watching two of her detectives make out. In the Box. On
city time.
She took a deep breath, trying to still her own arousal, and
leaned against the cold brick wall for a moment before walking out of
the room. Then, quietly, hoping not to attract attention in the
squadroom, she opened the door of the Box and slipped inside.
They hadn't heard her, she thought in shock. Lewis had
managed to unbutton Bayliss' shirt by now, and had one hand inside it,
fondling a clearly erect nipple as Bayliss teased his earlobe with his
tongue. The only sounds they were making now were murmurs of desire
as they ground against each other furiously.
She cleared her throat. The two of them jumped apart faster
than she would have thought possible. Shirts unbuttoned, ties hanging
loosely, they stared at her, still glassy-eyed with arousal.
"Don't say anything. Do not say one word," she said, trying
to summon up her best imitation of Giardello on a rampage. "Get
yourselves dressed"-she looked at them scornfully as they hastily
tried to make themselves presentable-"and come with me. Now."
She led them out onto the roof, where both detectives
immediately exploded into explanation. She silenced them with a
gesture, and turned away. She wanted to get them good and nervous
before she let them have it.
Finally, she turned around and motioned them to the far end of
the fenced-in area.
"Now," she said sternly. "What did you think you were doing
in there? In the middle of questioning a suspect?"
"Thought he wasn't a suspect, Sarge," Lewis said,
irrepressibly.
She shot him a withering glare.
"You think we pay you to get your rocks off in the Box? No,"
she said, as Bayliss opened his mouth to speak. "I don't care what
you do on your own time. But when you're here, your time belongs to
the taxpayers. Your only concern is closing cases. Understand?"
They stood silently, chastened, like two little boys whose
mothers have just discovered them playing doctor.
"You know how lucky you are? Anybody could have walked in on
you," she continued. "Anybody. You're lucky it was me."
"Uh. . .Sarge. . .does this mean you're not. . ."
"Not what, Bayliss? Not going to put this in a report? That
depends."
"On what?" he asked cautiously.
"On whether or not you both swear you will work together to
close this case."
"Yeah, Sarge."
"Sure."
They were agreed on that now, Kay thought wryly. They thought
they were getting off easy. Better to leave them with something to
think about.
"Oh, and one more thing," she said, as she turned back in the
direction of the squadroom. "You boys ever think about selling
tickets?"
"Gotcha," she whispered, picturing the dumbfounded expressions
on their faces. She put a little extra sway and bounce into her walk
for their benefit as she headed back to the lighted building,
wondering just how she could get them to do it again. . .