Jack was fast asleep on the living room couch, a well-thumbed copy of Stephen King’s The Stand — the unabridged version, naturally — open on his stomach. He had retired, or retreated, depending on the point of view, to the couch and the world of Trashcan Man and the Walking Dude after a rather strained dinner with Karen. His return to work, to 51 in particular, continued to be a source of conflict between them, an irritant in their daily lives, and he had hoped to give her time to cool down. Instead, he had fallen asleep.
The doorbell rudely jerked him from his slumber. He lay quietly, wondering if he had dreamed the sound of the chimes. He decided on dream chimes and his eyes were sagging comfortably shut when the bells tolled again. He swung his feet to the floor as he checked his watch, confirming what the twilit sky was saying.
“I’ll get it, Jack,” Karen called as she thumped down the stairs to the front door. How someone so delicate could thump so loudly always amazed him.
“Unless it’s a kid selling good chocolate, tell whoever it is to go away and call first next time.” Jack resumed his napping position, squirming his shoulders into the cushions piled behind him. He cracked open his book as a huge yawn cracked his jaws. “Sorry, Steve. Maybe later.” He deposited the book on the glass coffee table and folded his hands on his stomach.
He heard voices from the front hall but tuned them out; Karen was handling it, he could go back to sleep. Unless, of course, they had company.
“Jack! Don’t go back to sleep; my parents are here.”
Oh. Fucking. Joy.
“Did we wake you, Jack?” Evelyn was her normal resplendent self in a green silk blouse and slacks; she blew into the living room like some fairy something-or-other from the Emerald City. And, wherever the fairy mother-in-law was, Jack’s favourite bridge-troll-in-law couldn’t be far behind.
“Jack, good to see you.” George Hawthorn was ultra casual tonight. A sports jacket and no tie? Jack was tempted to look outside, convinced he would see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bearing down on the house.
Hawthorn stuck out a hand and Jack shook, noting — with petty enjoyment — a fleeting twinge across his father-in-law’s face. And Hawthorn was man enough to admit it as he rubbed his hand. “Quite the grip you’ve developed, Jack. All that time in the gym must be paying off.”
“Oh, it certainly is,” Evelyn agreed. “Jack, you’re growing like an adolescent boy. Pretty soon you’ll be bigger than that Arnold fellow.”
“I’ve got a long ways to go before that happens, Evelyn.”
Her eyebrows twitched — in surprise or annoyance? — at the use of her first name. It surprised Jack as well. He hadn’t intended to call her Evelyn; it just slipped out. What the hell, she’d been asking him for years to drop the Mrs. Hawthorn thing.
Guess she never figured I would.
“Sorry about the greeting. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have cut the nap short.”
“Jack,” Karen scolded him, “I told you at dinner my parents were coming over for coffee and dessert.”
“Oh, sorry. I guess I forgot.”
“Perfectly understandable, son —” Son? “— I imagine you have a lot on your mind these days now that you are back to work.”
“That’s no excuse, Dad, and he knows it. And just for that, Jack, you can help me with the cheesecake.”
In the kitchen, Karen busied herself with the coffee and cups while Jack got out plates for the dessert. The cheesecake, a behemoth of chocolate, occupied centre stage in the fridge.
I must have been tired to miss that sitting there.
“Did you catch that?” he asked her in a hushed whisper as they arranged everything on trays. “Your dad called me ‘son.’”
“Well, you called Mom ‘Evelyn.’ I think it’s nice. Maybe the three of you are finally getting closer.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, hoisting a tray. Yeah, right.
They were sipping contentedly on coffee after the first round of cheesecake had been reduced to scraped plates. Jack was the only one who had opted for seconds.
“So, Jack, how’s 51 Division treating you these days?” Hawthorn asked with all the subtlety of a hammer applied to a stubborn nail.
Jack paused, a fork full of cake halfway to his mouth. “Fine,” he replied, suddenly on guard. He finished his dessert and swapped the empty plate for his coffee mug. Mug, not cup, and it all fell into place. His in-laws just stopping by for dessert. On a weeknight? Their casual — casual for them, at least — mode of dress. Karen’s homemade chocolate cheesecake, his favourite. An oversized mug for him when everyone else had a cup. No way would Karen let that pass, not with her parents visiting. And no way would she have let him wear the jeans and T-shirt he had worn home from work.
He looked at the sitting arrangement. Karen next to him on the couch, between him and the front hall, and her parents opposite them in chairs, blocking the exit to the kitchen. He was cornered. Had they pinned him in purposefully? Or had it just happened? Either way, he was trapped and now that the chocolate bait had been taken, they were going to close the trap on him.
Evelyn leaned forward to pat his knee. “We’d like to take this opportunity to express our condolences to you again for your loss and to remind you we’re here for you, for the both of you. If you need anything, all you have to do is ask.”
“That’s awfully kind of you, Evelyn.” No surprised twitches that time. “But we’re doing okay.”
“That’s not what we hear, son.” Hawthorn had his hands folded on crossed legs, the picture of an understanding adult ready to hear his child’s woes. Was that how he looked when his students grovelled for extra time on assignments?
“It isn’t?” Jack eased back on the couch, mug in hand. This was his house and no way was he going to let Hawthorn play the adult. He turned to Karen. “I seem to be at a . . . disadvantage here, hon. Maybe someone can bring me up to speed?”
Evelyn spoke. “Jack, we’re all worried about you. Karen has told us all about it. How you’re not sleeping well, your nightmares. . . .”
“Gee, Evelyn, I guess watching my partner have his throat slit open in front of me might have something to do with that. Or maybe it was trying to stop him from bleeding to death by shoving my fingers inside his throat. Either one, I would imagine.” He sipped his coffee.
Evelyn flinched.
“Don’t you see, Jack? This is exactly what we need to talk about,” Hawthorn said earnestly, no doubt seeing the perfect segue to his argument. “Before you transferred to 51, you would never have spoken to Evelyn in such a tone. What happened to your partner was a tragedy, without a doubt, and you witnessing it is an ordeal we can only imagine. But the changes in you were occurring before that tragic night.”
“So, am I to understand this is some kind of intervention? You want me to realize 51 is destroying my life?”
Karen scooted over next to him and took his hand in hers. “Jack, I love you and I’m worried about you. My parents are worried about you.”
He relinquished his mug and wrapped his hand over hers. She was the one he needed to convince, not her parents, so he spoke only to her. “Karen, what happened to Sy could happen anywhere in the city. Yes, 51 is rougher than 32 and other divisions, but I’ve told you, that can actually make it safer in a way. I’m more aware now of my surroundings at work and my own safety than I ever was in 32. I was complacent up there. Now, I’m not.” He laughed bitterly. “And besides, the odds of something like that night happening to me again in my career are astronomical. I could probably spend the rest of my career working naked and nothing would happen to me.”
He smiled at his feeble attempt at humour, hoping for a smile in return, but he got nothing.
“It isn’t just that, Jack, although I never laid awake at night worrying about you when you worked in 32.”
“I told you, hon, I’m safer now than ever before.”
“It’s not just that!” She snatched her hands away and clutched them in her lap. She began to cry. “You swear more, you spend every day at the gym like you need to become some huge, scary animal and that’s what I’m afraid will happen. It is happening! You told me that Simon warned you about the division, how it could change good men into criminals, how it could ruin lives. I don’t want that to happen to you! To us!”
“What would you have me do, Karen?” he asked quietly. “Quit? I’m a cop. It’s all I know. It’s the only thing I’m good at or qualified for.”
“I’m not asking you to quit,” she argued through her tears. “I’m proud you’re a cop; I just don’t want you to be a 51 cop.”
“Oh.” What was there to say to that?
Karen wiped away her tears and, for a wonder, her parents didn’t jump into the silence.
“Karen, would you do something for me, then?”
“Of course,” she sniffled.
“Stop teaching grade school. Become a university professor like your parents.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about, Jack? I don’t want to be a professor.”
“I know. And I know why.” He took her hands again. “You love teaching the kids, reaching out to young minds and helping them learn. You admit being a professor would be easier —” he saw her parents stiffen “— and it pays more, but that’s not why you became a teacher. I would never ask you to stop doing something you love.”
“I hardly think Karen’s decision to teach grade school is the same as your desire to work in 51. If any —”
“But it is!” Jack snapped, cutting Hawthorn off. “It is the same. Karen, you love being a teacher because you feel like you’re contributing to the world, making a difference. Well, I feel the same way about being downtown. In 32, I wrote traffic tickets, took reports and arrested shoplifters. Once in a while, I did something valuable. For the city or an individual person. In 51, I do that every day.”
He wanted to stop, to collect his thoughts, but he couldn’t. Any opening, no matter how small or brief, and one of her parents would jump in with both feet.
“Do you know what I did just this week? In the last four days?” He spoke to all of them, hoping to convince all of them. “I put two husbands in jail for beating their wives, another for beating his child. And I don’t mean just a little slap here and there. These guys beat their families. One of them used a belt. The seven-year-old girl ended up in the hospital with broken ribs.”
Jack could have left it at that, but they needed to see, to believe. “We caught a crackhead breaking into a woman’s home. He was stealing her jewellery. Most of it was cheap, but it had belonged to her grandmother and losing it would have crushed her. The crackhead probably would have sold all those memories for less than a hundred dollars.”
He squeezed Karen’s hands. “And the best? I identified Sy’s murderer on Tuesday. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. He’ll spend the rest of his life in jail.”
“You did? That’s wonderful.” She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He laughed at her exuberance. “I didn’t know if it was something you wanted to hear. The job hasn’t been exactly a comfortable topic between us these last few days.”
Then Hawthorn opened his mouth and ruined the moment. “That is wonderful news, Jack, but it doesn’t solve the problem. You’re putting your work and yourself ahead of Karen. A man doesn’t do that to his wife.”
Jack slowly released Karen and turned to his father-in-law. “No offence, George, but I really don’t think what happens between Karen and me is any of your business.”
“Of course it’s our business,” Hawthorn scoffed. “She’s our daughter. Her happiness is of the utmost importance to us.” He tried to calm his voice. “You’re a good man, Jack, and —”
Whatever he had been about to say was drowned out by Jack’s shocked laughter. “A good man? Get off of it. When have you ever treated me like I was good enough for Karen? From the day we started dating, you were looking to break us up. Every chance you got, you put me down. I was never good enough in your eyes. My upbringing, my family, my education, my job. Nothing I was or did ever met your standards. So, please, don’t try that tactic with me.”
George and Evelyn looked dumbfounded. Jack wished he could take a picture, capture their shock at the son-in-law’s sudden turn.
“Jack. . . .”
“Sorry, hon, but it had to be said.” He turned to his in-laws. “Maybe you are right. Maybe 51 is changing me and that’s what worries you. You’re afraid you’ll lose your docile punching bag and have to come up with some other form of entertainment at Sunday dinners.”
Silence. It filled the room, a tangible presence.
“Jack, that’s not fair.”
“It’s all right, dear heart,” Hawthorn comforted. “We understand Jack didn’t mean it. He’s been under a terrible strain lately, but now that he has identified his partner’s killer, he can leave the division with a clear conscience.”
“What do you mean by ‘clear conscience,’ George?” Jack asked slowly, dangerously.
Perhaps Hawthorn didn’t hear the menace in his son-in-law’s voice, or perhaps he was just eager to trade Jack back for his earlier comments. “It’s obvious you feel guilty about your partner’s death. It doesn’t take a trained psychologist — although I have discussed your case with one — to see that you blame yourself for his murder. You can provide a variety of reasons to stay in the division: fulfillment, job satisfaction, personal feelings of accomplishment, but you’re using them to mask the true reason for staying: guilt.”
“Dad, please —”
Jack blindly reached out and placed a calming hand on Karen’s leg. “No, hon. I want to hear this.”
Hawthorn beamed with approval. “Thank you, Jack. As I was saying, you feel guilty because you couldn’t stop the culprit from killing your partner. You feel guilty because you let him escape. You feel guilty because you couldn’t save your partner’s life. All of this is eating at you, but you don’t have to shoulder the entire responsibility alone. A goodly portion lies with your partner.”
Karen tried one more time to stop her father. “Dad, don’t. This isn’t the time or place. Please.”
But Hawthorn didn’t heed her warning. Possibly, Jack figured, he didn’t even hear it. This was between him and Jack now, and in no way was the bridge troll going to let such a golden opportunity to slam the unworthy, uneducated commoner who had dared to sully his daughter pass by.
“As much as you hold yourself responsible, your partner must accept a share of the blame. What was he doing in that laneway alone? How did he allow a lone man, armed only with a knife, to overpower an armed police officer? You see, Jack, you are not the only one to blame. But that can all change now. Now that you have identified your partner’s killer, you can leave the division free of guilt and a need for vengeance. After all, didn’t you say the killer will spend the rest of his life in jail? And aren’t you responsible for that because you identified him? And if he is foolish enough to request a trial to refute the allegations, then you will play a pivotal role in that trial. It will be your testimony that convicts him.
“So you see, Jack, your vengeance is complete. All you need do is allow others to carry it out. You have done all you can to lay your partner’s ghost to rest.” Hawthorn smiled. “I’m sure if you could summon up his spirit and ask your partner —”
“His name is Simon, you asshole! Simon!” Jack was on his feet, his fists clenched in fury. “He was my friend and he was more of a man than you could ever dream of being, you worthless shit. He has a family and friends. He was more than a name you happened to read in the paper.
“Do I feel guilty? Of course I do. Only a heartless bastard like you wouldn’t. If I could have, I would have killed that fucker before he had the chance to kill Sy. And if I hadn’t been trying to save Sy’s life, I would have gladly gunned him down as he ran away from me. You want to know something else? My vengeance isn’t complete, far from it. I pray to God I’m there when he’s arrested, because I swear to you, I’ll blow his fucking head off without a second thought.”
Jack stormed out of the room, grabbed a coat and his car keys, walked out of the house and slammed the door behind him.
Karen caught up to him in the driveway. “Where are you going?” Her voice was cold.
“I don’t know. But I’m not staying in there with them. With him.” He jabbed his finger at the house, as if she needed further clarification.
“That him is my father, Jack.” She folded her arms and pinned him with a piercing stare. “Tell me, Jack, honestly. Were you serious in there? Would you really kill him if you found him?” No need to clarify whom she meant.
Jack faced her squarely, his face expressionless. As were his words. “In a heartbeat.”
She dropped her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know who you are anymore, Jack, but I do know one thing.” She lifted her gaze and it was her turn to speak impassively. “It’s appropriate your shirts at work are now black. They match the man you’ve become.”
Karen turned and walked into the house. Jack watched her until the door shut behind her, then got in his car and drove away.
Jack had no idea where he was going when he pulled out of the driveway, but it was no surprise when he headed into the city. The drive was a complete blur; he functioned on autopilot as a suppressed anger shattered its social chains and, with a roar of ecstasy, broke free.
Who the fuck did they think they were? Her father, especially. Laying all that guilt shit on him, acting concerned and friendly when Jack knew all Hawthorn wanted to do was break them up. Nothing would please that smug, righteous prick more than Karen leaving Jack and coming home to Daddy. It would be the ultimate put-down, the final confirmation that Jack wasn’t good enough for George fucking Senior’s daughter and never had been.
And Karen, sitting there, taking her father’s side against him!
“‘Leave 51, Jack,’” he mimicked. “‘It’s changing you. I don’t know you.’ So, I have a black heart, do I?” He angrily wiped away a stray tear. “What am I supposed to do? Run away like a coward? Run away while that murdering whoreson is still out there? Fuck that!”
Before he realized it, he was exiting the Parkway onto Richmond Street. He stopped at the red light at Parliament and wondered where the platoon would be. It was pushing eleven o’clock, so the beach party would probably be warming up.
The light changed and Jack took his foot off the brake only to have to hammer it again as three young thugs sauntered in front of his car against the light. He laid on the horn and the one nearest him, a young white guy with greasy hair and ridiculously baggy jeans hanging more than halfway down his ass, gave him the finger . . . with a hand wearing a black leather glove.
Jack slammed the car into park. He was going to make that piece of shit eat those gloves. The three gangster wannabes jumped when he flung open the door.
Jack was halfway out the door when a horn blared behind him, penetrating but not banishing the red haze that saturated his thoughts. He had one foot on the pavement, the other still in the car. His intended targets were staring at him nervously from the sidewalk.
The horn sounded again and Jack cast his red-stained scowl at the other driver. The driver lifted his hands and sunk down into his seat. Jack stalked up to the wannabes and stopped inches from the one with the gloves. The kid was tall; he could have towered over Jack, but he shrank from the rage in Jack’s eyes.
“Why are you wearing those gloves?” Jack snarled, his jaw barely moving.
“Huh?” the kid squeaked. His buddies had retreated a few steps.
“Why are you wearing those gloves?” Jack repeated.
“Ev . . . everyone’s wearing them,” he said tentatively. It’s . . . it’s cool?” The last word squeaked out as a question or a plea, as in Please don’t hurt me, I don’t know what I’m doing.
“The gloves. Give them to me.”
It wouldn’t be till later, when his buddies were relating the story to others, at his pride’s great expense — although they would manage to avoid having to say what they were doing during the whole confrontation — that the similarity to the opening scene of The Terminator would be discerned. Luckily for them, all Jack wanted was the gloves, and he didn’t rip anyone’s heart out.
The kid stripped off the gloves — cheap imitation leather — and handed them to Jack with a trembling hand.
Jack took the gloves and held them up to the kid’s face. “Do you know what these signify?”
The kid shook his head, his eyes locked on Jack’s, fear welding their sight together.
“The gutless coward who wears these — the person you’re idolizing by wearing them — killed a police officer, a good man. Killed him from behind like the coward he is. Do you think it’s a good idea to make a hero out of someone who cuts a person’s throat from behind? Someone too fucking cowardly to face a real man? Do you?”
The kid shook his head again and managed to get out a mousy “No.”
“Then tell everyone you know who wears these gloves they are making a hero out of a fucking, ball-less coward. His name is Anthony Charles and if you ever meet him tell him I’m looking for him. Tell him he won’t be able to hide behind anyone next time and when I do find him, I’ll kill him. And if I ever see you wearing these again —” he slapped the kid’s face with the gloves “— I’ll shove them so far down your throat, the doctor will have to go in through your ass to get them out. You got that?”
“Sh — sure thing, mister. Uh, thanks?”
Jack stepped back, favoured the kid’s cronies with a glare that sent them stumbling, threw the gloves in the car, got in and drove off.
Crossing the first drawbridge on Cherry Street south of the Lakeshore, Jack left the city behind him. Down here, on this man-made splat of land jutting into Lake Ontario, high-rises and towering office buildings ceased to exist. Most of the structures along the grid of roads south of the drawbridge resembled the land on which they sat: flat and broad. There was always talk of developing the area; the Docks nightclub had opened, but beyond that there was nothing much new.
Jack crossed the second drawbridge, a much more massive affair than its conservative cousin up the street. The water beneath the bridge was calm as his tires hummed over the steel grating that made up the bridge’s body. At this hour, on a weeknight, the district was all but deserted. Jack didn’t come across another car as he headed for the beach.
Instead of driving straight into the beach’s parking lots, he hung a left on Unwin Avenue and plunged into the perfect setting for a horror movie. The narrow, two-lane road was paved, but it might as well have been dirt considering the condition it was in. Stunted scrub brush lined the road’s southern flank, hiding a twisted warren of bike trails and footpaths, some official, most not. The other side of the road was a stereotypical slasher-film backdrop: old, shuttered buildings, mostly abandoned, poorly quarantined from the world by rusting chains and decrepit fences. Not far down the road, a solitary smokestack jutted into the night sky like a skeletal finger flipping off the distant city.
The brush opened up briefly on his right to reveal a dirt road — a driveway, really, to a little boating association clubhouse — stabbing arrow straight into the darkness. The streetlights along Unwin were intermittent; the tiny dirt road was nothing but a darker scar upon a dark landscape.
He turned into the darkness and flicked on his high beams. Faint red dots jumped back at him and grew brighter as he approached: the tail lights of parked cars, letting him know he wasn’t too early for the beach party. Being too late had never been a concern; it wouldn’t be the first time for the platoon working day shift to get calls from early morning joggers complaining about the vagrants passed out on the beach. Vagrants with badges. If they only knew. . . .
He tucked his aging Ford Taurus in behind someone’s Lexus — bought with paid duties or a pile of court appearances, no doubt — and climbed out into the cool night air. It was a little chilly by the water and he was glad he had brought his old jean jacket. Karen hated the threadbare embarrassment and kept threatening to toss it into the nearest incinerator. Jack pulled its comforting familiarity around him and set off for the beach.
He returned to the car to retrieve the gloves he had seized from the kid. Or would that have been, technically, a robbery? Whichever. He tucked the gloves into his back pocket and went off to find his friends.
It didn’t take long. Before he could see the leaping flames through the thinning bush, he could hear the familiar sounds: laughter, clinking bottles, classic rock playing in the background. It felt like coming home. The anger he had felt when the kid had given him the finger crept back into its lair deep inside him. It went willingly and without complaint; once free, it would never be shackled again. It could now come and go at will.
The natural barrier of brush separating road and sand gradually thinned, then disappeared just before the road came to an abrupt dead end. The secluded cul-de-sac was a choice parking spot for lovers. Except when the cops were having a beach party, that is.
The bonfire was a blazing beacon and Jack trudged through the soft sand to its siren’s call. Silhouetted figures ringed the fire, drinking and laughing like modern-day pagans performing a sacred rite. And, in a way, they were. After-work platoon get-togethers — beach party, wing run, breakfast after night shift, a simple drink-fest at the nearest cop-friendly pub or bar — were a time-honoured police tradition. And a necessity.
Where else could you go to blow off steam about a job no one understood or tried to understand? Where else could you laugh at the criminals, the botched suicide attempts, the everyday violence? Who else but other cops could appreciate such black humour? If you didn’t let loose once in a while, vent the mounting pressure, then you ended up a burned-out cop who didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything.
“The Jacker’s here!” Paul Townsend was the first one to spot him and hailed him gustily.
“The Jacker?”
“It’s perfect for you,” Paul declared, throwing a tree trunk of an arm across Jack’s shoulders. The big guy wobbled a bit as he spoke. Seemed Paul had been venting for a while. “You’re a Batman fan, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for Jack’s agreement. “The Joker, the Jacker. See?”
“Makes perfect sense. Maybe I should get a mask to go with it.”
Paul stared at him, drunkenly perplexed. “Sue!” he hollered, brightening instantly. “Here comes your Dark Chocolate!” He staggered off in pursuit of the redheaded PW. Jack grinned and made a mental note to keep an eye on the big guy, make sure he didn’t try driving home.
The heat from the fire was baking his skin before he got within ten feet. The flames were stabbing well over six feet into the starry sky, feeding off a new batch of wood. He surveyed the turnout. Most of the platoon was there — hell, even Boris was in attendance — as well as the officers from the CRU.
“Glad to see you made it, partner.” Manny sidled up beside him, a bottle of Strongbow cider in hand. “Does that mean things went well or ill at home?”
Jack pointed at the cider. “You got another one of those?”
“Ooh, that good, huh? One medicinal cider coming up.”
Manny was as good as his word and within seconds Jack was twisting off the cap and tossing it into the consuming flames. The cider, sharp and cold, hit his throat like ambrosia.
Manny waited for him to get down that all-important first slug before raising his bottle. “To . . . ?”
Jack considered for a moment. He looked about him and back at Manny. “To friends. To friends who understand.”
“I’ll drink to that.” They clinked and drank and, wrapped in the warmth of the fire and friends, Jack felt the evening’s shit melt away.
“I’ve got a case of those in the cooler over there by the picnic table,” Manny informed him. “Help yourself. I’m not going to finish them; I’ve already promised to drive Paul home.”
“Good man.”
“Paul said you’re a Batman fan. Guess that makes me Robin, huh?” Manny didn’t sound pleased with the sidekick role.
“You sure as fuck ain’t Batman.”
Jack let the party flow around him and carry him where it would. He listened to and shared stories, laughed, cried bullshit when some stories grew too fantastical to be real. He was awarded best gross-out of the night with his cockroach-toe man. Sy had been right about that one; it was a keeper.
He kept an eye open for Jenny but never saw her. Surprisingly, he felt a pang of disappointment. He tried to analyze it, figure out why he, a married man and happily at that — most of the time, anyway — was disappointed that a woman, married as well, a woman he barely knew, wasn’t there. It wasn’t like there were no attractive women on the beach. In fact, 51 had a startlingly high number of good-looking PWs. Either that, or he was drunk already, which he doubted, having just cracked open his second cider.
Sue, Jenny’s partner that day, was there, her crimson hair hanging in loose ringlets past her shoulders. She was wearing tight — no, exceptionally tight — jeans and no jacket and her Toronto Police T-shirt was cut off just below her breasts. She certainly was popular, flitting from male to male, but he noted with a critical eye that her belly-baring days were a few six-packs past their prime.
“Looking for another shaggle?”
Jack jumped. “Damn it, Manny. That’s the second time you’ve snuck up on me tonight. How the hell do you do that?”
Manny smiled smugly. “Ninja training. Shh, don’t tell anyone. So, does she have a good shaggle?”
Jack laughed. “Sheuggle, not shaggle. Shew-gul. It’s Scottish for swagger, as in the sheuggle for a kilt.”
“How do you spell that?”
“I have no freaking idea.”
Manny tipped his bottle, just a Coke, toward Sue. “She has quite the reputation as a party girl.”
“Tsk, tsk, Manny.” Jack waggled his bottle reprovingly at his partner. “I would have thought you of all people would know to look past a person’s reputation.”
“There’s reputations based on opinions and rumours and then there’s Sue. You can ask her and she’ll tell you. Hell, she’ll show you.”
“I’m married and besides, I like my women a little leaner.”
“Hey, nothing wrong with a little padding.” Manny patted his own padding affectionately. “So, you’re saying, even if you were single and the opportunity arose, you’d turn her down.”
Jack gagged on his drink and had to spit some of it back into the bottle. “Hell, no, I’m not saying that. If I was single and if the opportunity presented itself . . .”
Manny clapped him on the shoulder. “I got news for you, partner. She doesn’t care if you’re married — she actually prefers it — and she’s been eyeing you all night.” He released Jack and hurried off, mumbling something about needing to water the lake.
“I’m surprised to see you here.”
Again, Jack jumped, but this time it was Jenny next to him and being startled never felt so good.
“A little jumpy, are we?” she teased.
“You must go to the same ninja school as Manny. Can I get you a drink?”
“One of those would be nice.” She gestured to his cider, then followed him to the cooler.
Jack cracked open a fresh one and passed it to her. “They’re actually Manny’s, but he told me to help myself. He has to stay sober to drive Paul home.”
“I hope he knows that being Paul’s designated driver also means keeping him out of the lake.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.” She laughed, then sampled the cider. “Mmm, that’s good. A lot of people think a beach party isn’t a success until the SS Townsend sets sail.”
“I hope he brought a change of clothes,” Jack commented, eyeing the big man across the fire. Whatever Paul was explaining to Boris and a couple of rookies, it involved dramatic arm flailing.
“Oh, not to worry.” Jenny smiled again. “He doesn’t need a change of clothes when he goes swimming.”
“Why not? Doesn’t — oh, I see. I don’t know if I want to be around for that.”
“Take it from someone who has seen Paul skinny-dip on previous occasions: if you have a fragile male ego, you don’t want to be here when it happens.” She waited for Jack to tilt his bottle up. “And that’s when the water’s cold.”
Jack sputtered and lost some cider. He wiped his lips while he laughed. “Okay, my ego may not be fragile, but . . .”
She joined him in the laugh. “Kind of like me standing topless next to Dolly Parton.”
Taking the opportunity, Jack gave her an appraising once-over. Her jeans weren’t nearly as tight as Sue’s, but they definitely had a comfortable look to them, a look that made Jack wonder what it would feel like to run his hands over the curves hinted at beneath the fabric. Her T-shirt — did all cops wear tees on their off time? — was unaltered and hung loosely on her lean frame, but it couldn’t hide the fact that she was small-breasted. Her hair fell in a thick, wavy black mass over her shoulders. His blatant assessment finished where it began, with her wonderful smile.
Jenny was eyeing him expectantly, lips quirked. “Well?”
“I’d take you over a dozen Dolly Partons any day.”
“Why, Mr. Warren, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were flirting with me.”
“I am flirting with you,” he admitted. He tapped his wedding ring against the bottle. “I’m married. I’m allowed to,” he explained earnestly.
“I’m not sure I follow you on that one. You’ll have to educate me.” She tilted her head to drain the bottle.
Jack watched the curve of her throat working as she emptied the bottle. God, how he wanted to feel that skin beneath his lips. “Because I’m married, it won’t lead to anything, so I’m allowed to flirt. And since you’re married —” he indicated her ring “— with children, it makes it doubly, if not triply — is that a word? — allowed. And anyway, there’s no way I could flirt with you if I was single. If I thought I had even the slightest chance of succeeding, I’d have embarrassed myself a half dozen times over by now and you’d be walking away thinking I was the world’s biggest jerk.”
“Ah, I see now.” She nodded sombrely. “And if I wasn’t married? Would you still be allowed to flirt with me?”
He pursed his lips, considering. “Yes,” he decided, “but I would have to flirt with caution.”
“Then you’d better proceed with caution, Jacker —” somehow that sounded so much better coming from her than it did from Paul “— ’cause I’m not married.” Jenny tapped her bottle against his chest and winked.
“And the ring?”
“I got tired of being hit on by horny firemen.”
“And the kids? I heard you say you have kids. Or are they a ruse as well?”
“Nope, they’re real. That’s why I was late. I had to go home and get them.”
Shocked, he looked around. “They’re here? Where are they?”
“Knowing my boys, they’re probably swimming right now.”
He cast her a look from the corner of his eye. “We’re not talking about human kids, are we?”
“I never said human,” she said in all innocence. “It’s not my fault you assumed they were human.”
“I’m a little disappointed.” He hung his head and toed the sand.
She slid up to him and ruffled his hair. “Are you sad ’cause you think I lied to you? I didn’t, you know.”
“It’s not that,” Jack replied in mock seriousness. “I was going to tell you that you have an amazing and sexy body for a woman who has had children. Now all I get to tell you is that you have an amazing, sexy body.”
She laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “You don’t stop, do you?”
He looked up and grinned. “Not really, no.”
“Why are you carrying around gloves? Expecting a cold front to come through?”
“Gloves? Oh, those. I forgot I had them.” Jack pulled the wannabe’s gloves out of his back pocket. As he slapped them idly against his hand, he cast a suspicious eye at Jenny. “Were you checking out my ass when I went to get the drinks?”
“Not at all,” she replied, offended. “I just happened to notice them flapping around when you were walking over to the cooler . . . as I checked out your ass.”
“That’s better.” He handed her a fresh cider and sat down on the picnic table next to her. The fire had died down some and they had dragged the table close to the flames, but the party was far from dying. If anything, it had grown in size as E platoon, the shift just starting evenings, had joined the party after they had finished for the night. Since this was E’s first day back, they had just learned that afternoon that Jack had identified Anthony Charles as Sy’s killer. Several officers from the shift, including one of their sergeants, Don Pembleton, had stopped to congratulate Jack on the ID.
“So how is it? My ass, I mean.”
“It’s okay, I guess.” That sly smile he was beginning to appreciate belied the casualness of her words. “The gloves? When I asked you about them, you got this amused smile on your face. There a story to go with it?”
“A story or a robbery confession, depending on which way you look at it.”
“Now you definitely have to tell me.” Jenny turned to him on the bench and propped her chin on her hand.
“Well, you know how the shitheads have started wearing the gloves since Sy was killed?”
“Yeah, the little bastards are honouring a fucking cop killer.”
It was easy, looking at her, to forget that Jenny was a cop, but she belonged at this beach party as much as anyone.
Other officers standing nearby heard the comment and added to it. “Yeah, we saw pukes wearing them all over the place tonight.”
“Is that what they mean? Fuck that.”
“No way should we let them get away with that shit.”
“You take those off someone, Warren? Cool. What happened?”
Jack had an audience, and he was suddenly uncomfortable, worried they’d see him as a loose cannon or a nut job, set to explode at any time. He needn’t have worried. He finished his story to a rousing cheer and Jenny wrapped him in a delicious, congratulatory hug.
“That’s what we should do this week,” one E officer suggested. “Grab every fucking pair of gloves we see. We can burn them all at the next beach party.”
That idea got another round of enthusiastic approval; then Sergeant Pembleton pushed forward and quashed the excitement by yelling for everyone to shut the bleeding fuck up. Pembleton was not a small man and his voice carried, catching the attention of those who had drifted away from the fire. When everyone had wandered in to listen, he raised his voice again. He was a respected sergeant, was seen more as a senior pc who just happened to have stripes on his shoulders than an actual supervisor, and when he spoke, people listened.
“For those of you with cow shit jammed in your bleeding fucked-up ears —” he was also known for a love of profanity “— Jack Warren here identified the soulless motherfucking craven coward who stole our brother from us.”
Another swell of applause and calls of “Jacker! Jacker!”
When the praise faded, Pembleton continued. “Simon Carter was a God-blessed fucking great cop.” More cheers. “Jack lost a partner. We lost a brother. This shithole of a city and its spineless, good-for-fucking-nothing whoresons of politicians lost a good cop.” Pembleton paused and Jack was astounded to see him wipe away a tear, openly and shamelessly. When next he spoke, his voice was choked with emotion. “And the world lost a great man! To Simon!”
“To Simon!” the gathering echoed, and Pembleton was not the only one holding back tears.
The sergeant leaned toward Jack and asked, “May I?” with a quiet politeness Jack never would have guessed he possessed. Jack handed over the gloves and Pembleton held them high. “If we are fucking going to do this, we do it bloody right!” He brandished the gloves like an insane matador waving a red flag to rile up a herd of bulls. “This is not a God-fucking-damned contest to see who can bloody well get the most shit-smeared gloves. This is for Simon and for us! When a motherless, sister-fucking puke wears these, he’s bloody well spitting in our fucking faces!”
Veins bulged and throbbed in Pembleton’s temples. He scrutinized the pack of officers, a warlord judging if his troops were fit for battle. They were.
“I will talk to the other shifts, you bloody fucking well better believe I will. No fucking tickets, no piss-useless traffic stops. As long as one vile, putrid, shit-smeared, cocksucking puke dares — dares! — to wear a motherfucking pair of these, nothing — goddamn nothing! — matters. Do you motherless whoresons hear me?”
They did and roared with approval.
While the thunderous cry echoed across the still, dark waters, Pembleton formally returned the gloves to Jack. “Jack, the honour is yours.” He gestured to the fire.
Jack stood and the throng fell silent. All eyes were upon him as he stepped up to the flames. The heat seared his face. He looked at Jenny and wasn’t surprised to see tears streaking her face. Others were crying as well, and he finally comprehended that he was not the only one who had suffered a loss when Sy was murdered. As Pembleton had said, they had all lost a brother.
He fingered the gloves, rubbing the cheap, coarse fabric between his fingers. With the blaze scorching his skin, he held the gloves over the flames. He realized this was what he had intended to do when he had returned to his car for the gloves. It was where they belonged. Only fire could burn away this disease. He tossed the gloves into the heart of the inferno.
Somewhere at the back of the horde it began softly, mounting in strength as more voices picked it up, adding their fury to it, until it roared from scores of throats to batter at the heavens above.
“No more gloves! No more gloves! No more gloves!”
“No more gloves!”
Jack was struck again by the image of a pagan ceremony. Pure and heartfelt. Its emotional intensity unadulterated by civilized restraints.
War had been declared.