Jane closed the door to her apartment in Tribeca. Lieutenant Monaghan had ordered her home for something to eat and a good night’s sleep. She’d been working forty-eight hours straight.
She’d objected perfunctorily and then left, even though it was only afternoon.
She listened for the din of tinny voices from below. Situated over a twenty-four-hour corner bodega on Broome Street, her apartment was never really quiet. The owner watched Korean TV most of the day, and the bell over the entrance would chime at regular intervals as customers entered and left the store.
The bodega had been robbed twice in the more than twenty months she’d lived here. The owner almost died the second time. Lucky for him, she’d reacted swiftly to the single gunshot just after one in the morning and saved his life. Third time she had to use CPR in her career. Got the perp too. Two in the chest when he turned his gun on her. Earned her a lifetime of how-are-you-really-feeling assessments and paperwork, and free dinner from the store’s fridges whenever she wanted it.
Johnny Bahk liked her. Said he’d marry her. Too bad he was seventy-two and she as gay as they come. And not of the happy variety either, she’d been forced to explain as he’d held her hand a moment too long as he thanked her.
She could have moved months ago already, to somewhere quieter, but she didn’t have the energy to do so.
Amy-the-bitch got the house after she cheated on her. In fact, she got the girl—their neighbor, what poor taste—and the house. And most of their friends. Especially those who knew Amy had been cheating on her but said nothing as they sat across from her at Saturday barbeques sipping their dainty glasses of chardonnay while checking their investment portfolios.
Jane had just wanted to get out of there. She’d packed two suitcases and her gun and came to Tribeca because she didn’t know anyone here. It seemed as good a place as any if life was forcing you to make a U-turn. Because this sure wasn’t starting over. Nobody ever started over. Not even in fairy tales. You picked up your shit, went somewhere else, and tried again—everything that had happened either part of you, or running alongside you like a rabid dog waiting to strike as soon as you dropped your guard.
Funny how forever could turn into a messy pile of paperwork, recriminations, and contribution calculations. Not that her contribution amounted to much, according to Amy—financially and otherwise.
Jane placed her gun on the coffee table, walked to the fridge, and opened a beer. She took the last one from the empty shelf. Shit. She would have to stop at Bahk’s place to stock up. And she needed milk. As it was, she would have to crunch down on dry cereal for breakfast tomorrow morning.
She lifted her shirt and peered at the flat stomach underneath the white button-down. She was getting too thin again. Maybe she should go out for dinner, a nice greasy steak or something.
Maybe not.
She sat on the couch and lifted her feet onto the steel chest that doubled as a coffee table and switched on the TV. She flipped through the channels as she drank the beer slowly, savoring the taste, hoping the hunger would go away.
Nothing on TV caught her interest. The beer finished, she rose from her seat, her stomach growling. Time to face Bahk. If she was lucky his son would be working tonight.
She picked up her gun and walked out of the apartment, locking the door behind her. She didn’t have much, but she’d become quite fond of what she’d accumulated over the past few months. It was her stuff. Her frigging stuff. Her own hand-picked furniture from secondhand markets, restored to their original state. Her pride and joy was the mahogany bookshelf in the bedroom. She loved that. She was still working on the teak dresser, sanding it down by hand to smooth perfection.
She put on her coat and rushed down the stairs into Bahk’s place. She sifted through the ready-made meals in the freezer, selecting five different ones. Then she loaded apples, cereal, beer, coffee, and milk into her arms and struggled to the counter. Bahk came to her aid as soon as the customer he’d been serving left.
He took the pile of goods from her arms and walked back to his spot behind the counter. He added a handful of the sour cherry lollipops she liked so much, putting them in the bag without ringing them up.
“Mr. Bahk, those things give me a sugar high.”
He scowled at her, making an indiscernible noise in the back of his throat and put two more lollipops in the bag.
She took out one while he rang up the rest of her shopping, popped it in her mouth, and turned to look out the window. “Things been quiet here?”
“Yes. No problems.” He frowned at the lasagna she’d chosen, walked back to the freezer, and came back with another, more expensive version of the same meal. “Everyone tells me this one is nicer.” It went into the bag without a charge.
“You really shouldn’t do that, Mr. Bahk. I’m eating all of your profits.”
“Johnny. And no. It’s a gift. For a beautiful lady.” He flashed her a smile, his sturdy square face happy behind the rimless glasses.
He’d always looked like a doctor to her.
She’d wondered what he was before he came to New York. What he could have been. Wanted to be. His children were studying something in IT. Both of them. His wife had died ten years ago.
She picked up her bag, then froze as she felt a tingling at the back of her neck. She turned her head just in time to see a woman standing beside an old Chevy looking directly at her. Realizing she’d been busted, the woman opened the car door and slid into the vehicle.
Jane frowned, leaving the bag on the floor as she stepped out into the cold, hand on her gun. Around her, passersby swore as they were forced to step around her.
The Chevy sped away.
“Jane…what is it? Everything okay?” Johnny called, tension in his voice.
She punched the plates into her phone, and frowned as she tried to think. She hadn’t been able to tell the age or much about the appearance of the woman before she got into the car. She was swaddled in a coat—an expensive coat, if she remembered correctly. And she wore gloves and a fur hat, as if she had been out in the cold for quite some time.
She put her phone away and stepped back into the bodega. She tutted at Bahk as she picked up her shopping. “Just someone I thought I knew. Don’t worry.”
He sighed with relief.
She popped the lollipop back into her mouth. “Thanks for these. I owe you.”
Bahk smiled broadly, a twinkle in his eye. “Enough to go out with my son?”
She returned his smile. “You’d need about a million more of these. And I’d need to suffer from some serious amnesia.”
* * *
Back home, she phoned the Major Case Squad to run the plates. Russo was still at the office, chasing down some leads on a Russian they’d identified prowling near Hampton’s building the day before her murder.
The Chevy was a company car, he said. Belonged to an NPO named Ma Soeur.
That name again. The place with Andrea Bouchard, the furious blond lawyer, and the mysterious redhead and her funny dreams.
Why would the woman be watching her? She hadn’t been there by accident. No way. Jane had never believed in coincidence. No good cop ever did. No cop who lived to retirement, anyway.
“I’ll have some news on that Bouchard woman’s DNA later,” said Russo. “The lab said it should be ready anytime now.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah. You coming in later?”
“Yep. I only left you to the wolves because Monaghan ordered me home. Said I was shouting at everyone. I’m going to sleep for a couple of hours and then head back in. I’ll be there as soon as Monaghan has left. Let me know, will you?”
“Will do,” he said before hanging up.
She put the phone down and inched open the blinds in the living room. A quick scan of the street below revealed nothing but normal people doing normal things for a Friday afternoon. Rushing home as the sun was closing in on the horizon. Shopping. Taking their dogs for a walk.
There was no sign of the woman.
She stripped as she walked to the shower, exhausted to the bone. She put the shower on full blast, scrubbing down her body under the steaming hot water. She stepped out of the bathroom and put on sweatpants and a T-shirt she fished from the laundry bag.
She studied her reflection in the mirror, the thinnish line of her mouth, the angular Roman nose. Her skin was not too bad for someone on the wrong side of forty. There were a few crow’s feet around her eyes, but she liked it. It looked good on her, as if she was forever squinting the truth out of someone. As if she’d seen stuff, and you couldn’t lie to her. No, sir. Not Detective Jane Wright. Built-in bullshit detector, that one.
No single gray hair, either. She could thank her father for that. English genes that had refused a single gray hair on his head till his fifties.
Stubborn man. Retired English professor. She should call him. Maybe even go visit as soon her caseload allowed her to do so.
She flipped through the channels until she found a repeat of the Olympic ice skating finals. She settled down to watch until she fell asleep, her alarm set for eight.
Halfway through her lasagna and second beer, her phone rang.
It was Russo.
“Monaghan gone?”
“Yeah.”
Something in his voice made her sit upright. “What’s up?”
“It’s the DNA. Got something funny here, Janey.”
She stuck the fork in the pasta. Russo would know not to yank her chain. “Funny how?”