11:05 P.M.
“I thought your car was in the lot over there,” Mason said, pointing in the direction where they had left her cruiser.
“That’s my official ride. My personal vehicle is over here.”
They walked without speaking until they arrived at a restored late sixties Oldsmobile convertible. “Hop in.” She slid behind the wheel and started the car. “Let’s go celebrate my humiliation while the wound is still fresh.”
“And where will this celebration take place?” he asked, easing into the passenger seat.
“The Bridge City Diner. It’s not far.” She lowered the top, then pulled out of the parking deck, heading west toward the river.
“Cop hangout?”
“Nope. You wanted to see the sights, remember? We’re going where the locals go. When I was a kid we’d go for lunch on Sundays. After ten it turns into a blues club.”
“Sad music? In your condition?”
“My cousin Jeff is playing tonight. He’s worth the risk.”
“Just him, or does he have a band?”
“The Closet Kings. They’re all straight sons of gay parents who came out at a time when that was more difficult. They see the name of the band as a salute to their parents’ courage.” Wallace looked over at him to gauge his reaction. “My mother’s brother is gay,” she injected into the momentary silence. “In case you’re wondering. Which I know you were.”
“How do you know I was wondering?”
“Because everybody always does. Even today.”
“So, what instrument does he play? Your cousin, I mean. Not your gay uncle. In case you’re wondering. Which I know you were.”
She smiled at his wordplay. “Guitar and piano.”
They rode quietly for the next few minutes, then she pulled into a spot right in front of the diner. The restaurant was near the Mississippi River, about a mile south of the mammoth bridge that spanned the giant waterway.
* * *
They took one of the few remaining tables. Within seconds two male hands landed on Wallace’s shoulders from behind and a ponytailed head of blond hair moved in alongside her right ear.
“I couldn’t help noticing that you’re not noticing me.”
“Only because first cousins are still against the law—even in Louisiana,” Wallace replied dreamily, tilting her head to accept a kiss on the cheek.
“So who’s this man at the table with you? He looks like the fuzz.”
“He is. A big-time federal something or other.” Wallace introduced Jeff to Mason, and they chatted for a few minutes. When a waiter arrived to take their dinner orders, Jeff excused himself and headed for the stage.
After a few drumbeats to set the rhythm, the band launched into a slow, heavy, slit-your-wrist blues number. A throaty harmonica dragged in the bass and, after several bars, the rest of the players moved in one at a time.
“They’re good,” Mason said.
“Mmm,” Wallace nodded, letting herself get carried into the music. When she glanced over at Mason, his eyes were closed and his head moved gently with the melody.
By her count they had already had four fights and then made up four times in the thirty-six hours he had been in Baton Rouge. And twice in one day he had pulled her out of herself and made her laugh when she had felt like murdering someone instead. Twice. In one day.
It had been a long time since anyone had so handily and expertly defused her anger and it felt good. Wonderful, in fact. He hadn’t passed judgment on her wrath. He had just been there, pointing out the shortest route to safer ground. It occurred to her that people didn’t do things like that for people they didn’t know well or care about.
Once their food arrived, brief bursts of chatter about the case alternated with stretches of companionable silence as they ate and listened to the band play a blistering rendition of Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s “Blue on Black”—one of Wallace’s favorites.
“Now that we’ve had time to catch our breath, tell me—what’s your story?” Wallace asked, after the meal was done.
“Sad music and a dull story. You’re a glutton for punishment. Well … let’s see … I’ve been doing this drug policy gig with the government since … what?” he asked, when he noticed Wallace trying to suppress an impish smile.
“Oh, nothing. This is fascinating.” She propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin on her upturned palm, the tip of her little finger jittering against the corner of her mouth, in time to the music.
Mason gave her a sidelong glance, then tried a new tack. “I grew up in Maryland, on the coast. I left after high school. Worked my way through college—the first in my family to go—then went to work for the DEA as a border patrol … what?”
“I was asking about you,” she said, laughing. “Not your résumé.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, trying to sound like a good sport. “Why don’t you just ask me some really specific questions and I’ll try to answer as truthfully as I can.”
“You don’t have to be truthful. We don’t know each other that well.”
“Fine,” he said, laughing self-consciously. “Then just ask what you want to know, and I’ll at least try to be intriguing.”
“Mmmm … the old bad-cop-and-the-cagey-suspect routine? With or without Miranda?”
“Now you’re just laughing at me.”
“I am not. I’m laughing near you.” She covered her smile with the back of her hand.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “With Miranda, but only if she’s good-looking.”
“Well played.” She grabbed his hand and flashed a playful look. “So, how many times have you been married?”
“Zero,” he said, flinching at her directness.
“Please, let the witness respond only to the question asked, without amplification or elaboration,” she said, lazily baton-twirling the swizzle stick from her drink through the fingers of her free hand.
“You’re the master interrogator. You’re the one who asked a question that only required a one-word answer,” he poked back.
“What was growing up like, way up there where you’re from?”
He stared off into the middle-distance, obviously trying to connect with something, started to speak, then stopped.
“Sorry,” she said, although she wasn’t. “Was that too…”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just not a story I tell very often.”
“I could have been more tactful.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” he said, turning to look directly at her. “My father was quite a bit older than my mother, and I was the last of four children, with a big gap between me and the first three—the proverbial accident. He worked in one of the big shipyards. One of those men who was so sure his importance was far greater than anyone else ever suspected.”
“Mason, I wasn’t trying to be nosey. Really. If this is—”
“I’m not letting you off the hook so easily,” he said, giving her a gentle smile. “Anyway, dear old dad got pushed out. Forced retirement. The very last year it was legal to do that.” Mason looked into his glass, swirling the remnants of his drink, his lower lip pushed out. “Every morning for a month after that he pulled on his coveralls and his boots and waited out on the front porch—grinning like he knew something they were about to find out the hard way. He was absolutely convinced that any minute they’d be sending someone over to pick him up and rush him back down to the yard. You know, just as soon as they realized they couldn’t build the boats without him. Of course, no one ever showed up. He was forgotten the minute he walked off his last shift. After that, you couldn’t so much as crack a smile in front of the man. You might have just heard the funniest joke on earth, but he’d assume you were laughing at him, and that fist would come flying.”
“Oh, Mason.” She studied his face like a nurse examining an accident victim.
He gave her a rueful smile but didn’t elaborate.
“Are you close to your siblings?” she asked, hoping to find a bright spot.
“I keep in touch with my sister.” He turned to watch the musicians.
Wallace had other questions, but she could tell from his posture and expression that story time was over. He still hadn’t asked her a single thing about herself. Maybe his wounded childhood made him overly cautious in that regard. She knew, from her years as a cop, that rising above the crippling effects of an abusive family was never easy, but Mason had clearly done it. If the only lasting effect was a reluctance to dig into others’ lives for fear of bringing up unwelcome memories, then he had achieved something rare and heroic.
The band finished their set, and the musicians left the stage. Mason remained motionless, staring vacantly across the room. Wallace gently poked him with the swizzle stick.
“Sorry,” he started, turning to face her. “You caught me daydreaming. Are we ready to go?”
She smiled and nodded. A sweet expression warmed his face when he realized she was still holding his hand.
FRIDAY 1:00 A.M.
“One more thing worth seeing in the nighttime,” she said, as she started the car and dropped the top. They pulled away from the diner and she quickly made her way to River Road and headed south for several blocks.
“Have you ever seen the river … up close, I mean?”
“Once, up in Minnesota, right near the source.”
“That doesn’t count,” she said with a dismissive wave. She pulled onto an access road that took them to the top of the levee, and then turned back to the north and stopped the car on a level spot just below the crest on the river side.
The bridge was straight ahead. The river, down to their left, was over half a mile wide. Oceangoing vessels steamed past each other through the center of the channel. Rafts of barges shoved around by tugs glided sedately through the water closer in. Everything on the river moved in slow motion. The bridge lights formed a huge cantilevered constellation floating above a skyline backlit by the hazy glow rising like radiation off the factories stretching far to the north along the river.
Wallace left the car and moved lightly down the slope toward the water, along a footpath barely visible in the light from the ships. Mason gamely followed. She stopped a few feet above the water line.
“It feels dangerous this close to the water.”
“It is,” she said, looking at him, then turning to look toward the far bank.
Whirlpools spun off by the passing river traffic wheeled through the murky shallows in front of them. The only sound was the low thrum of marine engines. Mason stood perfectly still. Wallace couldn’t tell whether he was petrified or mesmerized. After a few minutes she led them back toward the car. As they reached the top of the levee, Mason snapped a picture of the bridge and the city behind it. Wallace turned at the sound. He raised his phone again and snapped a shot of her in the gauzy light from just a few feet away.
“Give,” she said, pulling the phone from his hand.
She held it at arm’s length, then pulled him into the frame with her and took a selfie.
“How’s that one?” she asked, handing the phone back to him.
He studied the shot. He had been looking into the camera. She had been looking at him.
She relaxed against the car, her eyes locked on his. The moment was heavy with possibility, and she could see him struggling. Maybe trying to think of something clever to say that would close the remaining space between them—and wrestling with whether to say it.
“It’s okay,” she said, breaking the spell. “Words can be so awkward at this point. Just come close.” She pulled open the door and climbed into the backseat.
They were wrong-footed from the start. After a frenzied shedding of clothes, Mason became slow and deliberate. Wallace wanted to give in to the moment, but all of the turmoil and upheaval of the last twenty-four hours were reasserting themselves. She felt distracted and combative, like she was about to jump out of her skin. The more unhurried Mason became, the more feverish she felt.
“Feels like we’re fighting,” he whispered.
“I need you to fight back.”
He moved with greater urgency, but she needed something more. Again and again she got close to the edge, then her thoughts would intrude. Her heart was in it but her mind wouldn’t shut up and her body refused to cooperate. She hoped he wouldn’t take it personally. She also hoped he wasn’t one of those men who needed a lot of post-game commentary.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, Wallace squirmed into a sitting position, facing him with her back against the door. She covered herself with his shirt and watched him as he struggled back into his pants. He leaned against the opposite door, looking at her, his knees drawn up.
“The backseat of a car makes me feel like a teenager,” Mason said.
“Was your first time in a backseat?” she asked, taking the bait, trying to separate her thoughts from her emotions.
“Yes. I’m that cliché,” he admitted. “You?”
How odd, she thought, that this would be the very first real question he asked about her. “I’m shocked you would just assume this wasn’t my first time?” She smiled, thinking maybe a little verbal jousting would chip away some of her physical discontent.
“Sometimes I can be an idiot.”
Extra points for honesty, she thought. “So … I’ve wasted my first time on a caveman? I’m late to the game and I’ve chosen poorly. This may have to be my last time.” His expression told her he was unsure of the tenor of her response. She studied him carefully for several seconds, before deciding to continue. “My first time was the most embarrassing moment of my life. I had just turned seventeen. We got caught … in my room … by my dad.”
“Do we jump-cut to Daddy walking down the aisle with you on his left arm and a twelve-gauge in his right?”
“You’ve been reading too much Faulkner. Actually it was nothing like that. He gave us two minutes to make ourselves presentable, then he explained himself very thoughtfully. He didn’t object to what we were doing, only when we were doing it.”
“As in, before that walk down the aisle?”
“He was very old-fashioned about some things.”
“Was that the end of that boyfriend?”
“My father was a realist. He liked Kenny quite a lot and our little bit of monkeyshine didn’t change that. He encouraged us to pursue the emotional side of the romance, but on the physical side he laid down the law. If any player attempted to advance beyond second base, the game would be called on account of injury.”
“He actually used those words—second base?”
“It got the point across.” She raked her hair back with both hands.
“You know … I can’t even fathom having a father like that.”
“They don’t make men like him anymore,” she said reverently.
“So, was Kenny content to … uh … hit doubles, after that?”
“He tried so hard to be good, but I just couldn’t keep my hands off him.” She smiled self-consciously at the recollection.
“Poor guy. Do you know where he is now?”
“Row 88, plot C.”
“Jeez. I seem to be stepping wrong every chance I get.” He hung his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
“We eventually got married and life was truly lovely. Then one day, a few years ago, he and my dad and Martin, my older brother, they were headed off on a hunting trip when they got zeroed out by a serial drunk driver.”
“My God,” he whispered, wide-eyed, shaking his head. “Wallace, I have no idea what to even say.”
“No one does.”
“You still have close family nearby?” he asked.
“My mother. She teaches English at a private girls’ school here in Baton Rouge. And my little brother, Lex, who’s a priest. A Catholic priest.”
“Religion wasn’t part of my upbringing. I don’t think I would even recognize what would get someone headed down a path like that.”
“Lex was desperately in love during college. The girl, Angela, was beautiful, smart, from a good family, the perfect mate in almost every way.”
“Almost?”
“By accident, one day, Lex discovered she had a little side business turning tricks in the parking lots between classes.”
“And that drove him to become a priest?”
“He lost faith in his ability to judge women, so he committed himself to a faith where he felt he wasn’t likely to be deceived.”
“Has that worked out for him?”
“He’s making progress. He’s gone from naïve idealism to informed disillusion. Whether he can make the final step to mature belief … only time will tell.”
Mason’s eyes were closed. A gentle lapping sound drifted up from the river as the wake from a passing boat washed onto the bank. The faint warble of a police siren sounded in the distance.
“I could have saved him,” she said.
“Your brother?” Mason chuckled. “From the priesthood?”
“Kenny. My husband. I could have saved him. All of them.”
Mason opened his eyes, a fearful expression rising in his face.
“We argued about something that morning, just before they left. I can’t even remember what, anymore. But we had a way of handling things like that. It wasn’t anything we had consciously agreed to, it just came naturally to us. Whenever we fought we made up—right then, right there. Always, always, always.”
“Except that day,” Mason said quietly.
Wallace nodded, quiet tears flowing freely. She ran the sole of one foot along Mason’s shin, her eyes squeezed shut. “He tried, but I turned him down. I walked away. Just one kiss, one word, one anything, and they would have been a few seconds later leaving. That drunk driver would have run the red light and they wouldn’t have been there to meet him.” She looked at Mason. “I know you want to say something. That I couldn’t have known. It wasn’t my fault. Kenny could’ve forced the issue. But don’t. I know all those things. I’ve always known all those things, and they don’t make any difference. I should have done what I could have done, but I let my stubborn ego get in the way, so I didn’t.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together and continued to cry. After a few minutes, she looked up at Mason. He was looking at her with the same sweet expression he’d had just before they left the restaurant.
“You probably think I’m a mess.”
“What I think is that you must be unbelievably strong.”
“I’m not playing that part very well,” she murmured, wiping her face with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Not so.” He put his feet on top of hers, then reached toward her. “You bear it with a great deal of grace.” He took one of her hands in both of his. “We’ve spent a lot of time pretty close together over the last few days, and I never had an inkling you were carrying something so heavy. You can be so lighthearted and funny and gentle.”
“I shouldn’t have thrown all this at you,” she said. “We were supposed to be celebrating.”
“Actually, I’m glad you told me. I have to confess I’ve been so curious about you.”
“Well, you sure have a funny way of dealing with your curiosity,” she said, with a disbelieving smile. “It wasn’t until after you had your way with me, in the backseat of my car, that you asked even one question about me.”
Mason chuckled at her attempt to cast him as the playmaker. “To be perfectly honest, you frighten me just a little. You’re … intricate … unexpected … a lot to hope for in one person.”
Wallace hadn’t anticipated as much revelation and feeling as Mason’s words implied, but she wanted to hear what else he had to say. She waited for him to speak again.
“I’m not explaining myself very well.”
“But I’m enjoying it,” she said, with a soft smile.
Mason’s gaze traveled meticulously from her face to her toes, then back.
Wallace watched him, his eyes making her feel naked, despite the shirt draped over her body. She blushed.
Mason cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.
“I think that’s my shirt you’ve got there,” he said with a straight face.
“You can’t have it back, just yet.” She laughed and crinkled her nose, tucking the shirt protectively around her. Her face heated up with unaccustomed modesty.
“I’m afraid you can’t keep it. That would be theft. And you being an officer of the law and all…” With a raffish look, he extended his hand toward her, palm up, crooking his fingers in a slow hand-it-over gesture.
“Fine. Be that way.” She balled up the shirt and tossed it over his head toward the darkness beyond. As he reached high to catch it, she crawled on top of him, her hands quick and sure as they unfastened the button on his pants.
2:30 A.M.
They were mostly quiet on the ride back to Mason’s hotel. It felt like an intimate silence, if not completely comfortable. She could tell Mason didn’t want the evening to end, and she didn’t either, but she also needed to be alone for a while. A lot had happened in the past few days and she needed time to think through everything without more variables getting added to the equation. They agreed to talk in the morning.
She stared after him for a few seconds, as he walked from her car to the front door of the hotel, then she pulled away and headed toward home—a small bungalow in the Garden District that she shared with Lulu and Boy Howdy, a pair of overweight black-and-white cats.
2:45 A.M.
The detective certainly had good taste in cars, Don thought, when Wallace’s convertible pulled in front of the hotel. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, but the expression on Mason’s face as he exited the car made Don think that their being out so late together on a school night might have involved more than police work. And while he couldn’t see the detective’s expression as clearly, there was no doubt that her eyes followed Mason from the car to the front door of the hotel.
The big convertible was easy to follow as she drove off and the traffic around the hotel was heavy enough to give him cover. As they approached a residential area, however, most of the traffic evaporated. Don hung back a ways, losing sight of the Oldsmobile as it rounded a corner into a quiet, leafy neighborhood. When he turned the corner, her car was nowhere to be seen.