Melanie called Dan O’Reilly’s cell phone as she hurried toward her apartment from the precinct and, when he didn’t pick up, left him a voice mail. She told herself she needed to fill him in on what she’d learned today and check whether the surveillance of David Harris had turned up anything of significance. She also needed to schedule a team meeting. All of that was true. But deep down, she knew she’d really called so she could hear his sexy-as-hell voice. And let him know how much seeing him across the courtroom this afternoon had steadied her. And, okay, maybe ask if he wanted to stop by after Maya was asleep, when the next shift of surveillance guys came on duty. She was dead tired, and she imagined he was, too. But all the way home, she was thinking about how good his body felt next to hers in bed at night.
When Dan hadn’t called her back by the time she’d let her babysitter go home and given Maya her bath, she tried him again, and got voice mail.
“Hey, it’s Melanie…Uh, it’s about eight-thirty and…um, I’m just wondering what’s going on with the surveillance. Give me a call.”
She was too tired to cook, so she nuked some macaroni and cheese left over from Maya’s dinner and ate it at the kitchen table with her daughter sitting in her lap, snuggling and sucking her pacifier, her eyelids growing heavy. Maya’s little body was warm and compact in soft cotton jammies. The weight of her calmed Melanie’s frayed nerves. By the time Melanie had finished eating, Maya was asleep. Melanie got up gingerly and carried her to her room, putting her nose to her daughter’s silky dark locks as she walked, drinking in the fragrance of baby shampoo.
The nursery had white furniture and a wallpaper border of pink bunnies, and already it seemed too babyish for Maya. Melanie lowered the little girl into the crib and stood there marveling at how long she was. When had that happened? Time to buy a real bed. The days are endless, the years fly by. She’d read that somewhere, and it felt too true. Maya was growing up, and between work and the divorce and everything else, Melanie was missing too much of it. The thought depressed the hell out of her. She had another vision of Charlie Shepard, of his grief this morning, of how his life with his mother had come to such a brutal and unexpected end. What if that happened to her? Would she look back and feel like she’d spent her time in the right places?
“Snap out of it,” she whispered, and hurried back to the kitchen, where she cleaned up her dishes and settled down with a pile of photocopies from Pauline Estrada’s burglary file.
But the fact that Dan hadn’t called her back was nagging at her enough that she couldn’t concentrate. He always jumped right on her messages. Maybe something had happened on the case? If so, she needed to know. After pretending to read for a few more minutes, she gave up and went into the foyer to get Julian Hay’s card from her handbag. She’d page Julian. Maybe he would call her back.
About fifteen minutes later, she was sitting at the table with the phone beside her when it finally rang. She grabbed it, eager to hear Dan’s voice.
“Hello?”
“This is Detective Hay. Somebody page me?”
“Julian, it’s Melanie Vargas.”
“Hey, Melanie. What’s happening?”
“Are you still out on the Harris surveillance?”
“No, some guys doing the four-to-midnight tour relieved us a while ago. Everything was quiet. No news. Harris just went back to his apartment after court and didn’t come out. They’ll page me if anything unusual happens.”
“Okay, good. Where are you now?”
“Home. I was thinking about getting a little shuteye and coming in real early tomorrow, but if you got something important…?” He trailed off.
Come to think of it, here was an opportunity to put Suave Pierre’s special expertise to work. Bernadette had said Detective Hay was useless at the grunt work of regular investigations, but a genius at drug buys. Melanie decided to be a smart supervisor and utilize her staff strategically.
“Actually, there is something I need you to do, although it can wait till morning. Turns out there’s a drug angle on this case.”
“Gimme the skinny, sister. You know that’s my specialty.”
She filled him in on everything she’d learned about Miles Ortiz. Julian took notes on Miles’s birth date, Social Security number, last known address, and the dates of all his arrests.
“So you want to know what he’s selling, and who to?” Julian asked.
“That’s right. And anything else you can find out. Who supplies Miles? Is he a small-time guy, or does he play with the big boys? Where does he stash? Can you buy from him? If we can arrest him, maybe we can get him to talk, and tell us whatever he knows about the murder.”
“No problem. Pierre’s on it. I’ll have something back to you in no time.”
She smiled. “Great. Thanks…Oh, and Julian?”
“Yeah?”
She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You don’t happen to know where Dan O’Reilly is, do you?”
“He went to visit somebody in the hospital. Out on the Island, I think.”
“Oh. He didn’t mention that.”
“That’s what he told me. You have a good night now, hear?”
“Yeah. You, too.”
She hung up, wondering who was sick and why Dan hadn’t said anything to her about it. Two hours later when she got in bed and turned out the light, he still hadn’t returned her calls. It took her a torturously long time to fall asleep. Whenever she looked at the clock, her eyes burning with fatigue, she assured herself it was Detective Estrada’s coffee keeping her awake, and not that she was in over her head with this guy.