Chapter Seven

I WOULD HAVE followed her anywhere, but two things were working against me. The first was Hannibal, who decided that sixty on the freeway would be his absolute upper limit for the evening. The second was Hannah’s own vehicle, a BMW of fairly recent vintage. The car was fast, and Hannah drove it like a fighter pilot on steroids. I could only imagine the number of traffic tickets she’d have received without her detective shield. After numerous dirty looks, Hannah finally slowed down so I could follow at a Hannibal-approved pace.

To my surprise, Hannah lived in a house just a few moments’ drive from the street I grew up on in Cleveland Heights. One thing I always liked about my old neighborhood was no two homes looked exactly alike, and the same was true of Hannah’s street. Her small, brown colonial had a porch and two large picture windows. She drove into the garage, and I parked behind her in the driveway. She met me as I got out of my car.

“You drive like an old woman.”

“I thought women liked guys who went slow. Besides, they say a lot of international sex symbols are driving old, beat-up Civics these days.”

She gave me a long, wonderful kiss while we were still standing in her driveway. “Speaking of sex, I hope you’re better at that than you are at driving.”

I was, I think. Sex with Hannah was a revelation. She had a wonderfully full figure, and she took her time showing me all of it. We turned off all the lights. It wasn’t that either one of us was particularly self-conscious; everything just felt more alive that way. It might have been mutual loneliness, the fact we were alike in so many ways, or maybe we were both particularly horny that evening. Whatever the reason, we spent hours experiencing each other in every manner imaginable. I got to know her touch, her taste, and every curve of her body. We spoke little during sex, though she did come up for air at one point to let me know if I wanted to be Captain Kirk, she would be my green alien woman.

Afterward, we turned on the lights and talked. I told Hannah about John and what it was like growing up middle-class in that very neighborhood. She told me more about her parents and growing up rich in Hunting Valley.

“You were right about what you said in the restaurant,” she said. “Growing up with hyper-successful parents wasn’t always conducive to self-confidence.”

“I feel stupid asking this, but who are your parents?”

“My father is Congressman David Page, Democrat, Eleventh District. My mother is Amanda Patterson-Page, assistant district attorney.”

I’d only vaguely heard of her father. I was never interested in politics and only read the newspaper for the comics and the sports page. As a detective, however, I was familiar with Hannah’s mother. She had a reputation in the law enforcement community as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor with an interest in running for higher office. If these were her parents, Hannah’s political connections ran very deep.

“Most cops in the department,” Hannah continued, “assume I was given my gold shield due to family pull. If they knew my parents, they’d know how ridiculous that was. My mom and dad wanted me to become a lawyer. I attended law school for a year before I realized it wasn’t for me.

“You wouldn’t believe their looks of genteel disapproval when I quit. It was a constant topic of discussion between my parents and their patrician friends. I suppose becoming a cop was a rebellion at first, though eventually, I realized I really liked what I was doing. My parents still disapprove, but I’m good at my job. I deserve to be a detective, and I have no intention of apologizing for that.”

“No reason why you should.”

“Still, I would be open to working this case together rather than separately. For reasons having nothing to do with tonight, I just think it makes sense.”

“So you weren’t seduced by my manly charms?”

“No, but I’m open to the prospect.”

I caught her looking down at the lower half of my body. “What are you looking for down there?”

“I guess I was wondering what you would look like with man parts.”

“Man parts? What is this, the 1950s?”

“I’ll come right out and ask. Did you ever consider a sex-change?”

In a little over twenty-four hours, two people had asked me essentially the same question. One was a priest, and the other was the woman lying next to me in bed. Sometimes my life was like a bad Woody Allen movie.

“If you want to be politically correct, it’s called gender reassignment surgery. I signed up to start the process, but I have this overriding fear of hospitals.”

“If you change your mind, I wouldn’t mind being the first woman to break everything in for you.”

“I don’t know. There are dozens of women who’ve already asked. You’d need to get in line.”

“Do any of those other women carry a Smith & Wesson?”

With that, we fell asleep. The next morning, Hannah woke me up at seven o’clock with a donut and a glass of milk.

“No bacon and eggs?” I asked.

“I thought about slaughtering the pig out back, but you kept me up too late last night.”

I washed up in Hannah’s bathroom and brushed my teeth with an extra toothbrush from her medicine cabinet. As she dressed, I snuck into her kitchen and checked out her refrigerator, almost afraid of what I might find. Sure enough, it was filled with juice, a bottle of milk, and a case of Diet Coke. The only actual food items were in the freezer, which was packed with frozen dinners. From what I could see, she favored Mexican and Italian. God help her if the microwave broke down.

The rest of her house was, to use a nice word, disheveled. In truth, it looked like the average trailer park after an F-5 tornado. I poked my head in the laundry room doorway adjacent to the kitchen. After turning on the light, I could barely see the washer and dryer over the large mound of clothes waiting patiently to be laundered. The living room included three bookshelves, but there was clearly a need for more. Beyond the books on the shelves, two large stacks sat on a ledge by one of the front bay windows. At a glance, her taste in reading appeared to be rather eclectic, ranging from mysteries to horror and, somewhat incongruously, English poetry.

Afraid of what I’d find if I kept looking, I went back to the kitchen. Hannah came in a few minutes later, already dressed for work.

I had to ask. “Did you ever consider getting a housekeeper?”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

I turned to her at the front door. “Before we go, I need to ask how much of last night was about me and how much was about giving a symbolic middle finger to your mom and dad?”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about their reaction, but I don’t have sex just to make a point. We can overthink this and manage to screw up something nice, or we can take it a step at a time and see what happens. I’m in favor of the latter.”

“I’m fine with that. I just wanted to know if your father is going to shoot me if we happen to run across each other on the street.”

“My father is very pro-gun control. He wouldn’t shoot you. He’d hire someone to do it instead.”

“Okay then, problem solved.”