Dayer, the owner of the stolen car, had been visiting her sister and had gone out to get eggs. She was dismayed to find that even though she was visiting a swanky suburban town, crime happens, and her lovely little red Corolla was gone when she emerged from the store. Jackson was in that car when I was chasing him. He was on his way to dispose of Terri’s hands and feet, which he revealed he had tossed into the East River, the repository of many a dead body or parts of dead bodies.
The hole that he had buried her in had been started by Trixie; that dog just loves to dig and had been working on that hole for a long time. Fortunately for Jackson, the developing hole, coupled with my absence during my stint in state trooper jail, afforded him the location and the time to bury Terri and get out of town before I even returned.
Jackson had forgotten one thing in his haste to leave: his passport. His goal was to start a new life in Canada, but bless their hearts, United States Customs had instituted a new rule that made everyone crossing our borders show a passport. In the old days, traveling to Canada consisted of a wink and a nod at the border. I don’t know to what part of Canada Jackson was going to go, but the thought of him sullying my homeland with his stupid hair and murderous ways made me furious.
And just as Crawford suspected, the cop who didn’t follow up on the 911 calls coming from their house had made a sudden and unexpected career change. Last I heard, Officer Bruno was a conductor on Metro North.
So, how did I end up with Trixie? I made Crawford pry that out of Hardin and Madden, who had pried it out of Jackson. Seems Terri hated that dog, which moved her up on my most-hated list. How could you hate Trixie? Jackson said that Terri knew how much I liked the dog and viewed their leaving as a good way to get rid of the dog, complicate my life, and make everyone happy in the long run.
As for Miss Blurry Tattoo Ass, Julie Anne Podowsky had made one more trip into the Fiftieth Precinct, but this time she didn’t lie. She wasn’t there to help but to admit something that had been eating at her since her first visit to the precinct: she had broken into Ray’s apartment to find a sex tape that he had made of the two of them. Seems her father was a building superintendent in Queens and she knew her way around locks and had even picked a few in her day. She told Crawford that she had never found the tape and was wondering if the police had it. Crawford assured her that there was no sex tape and he said that when he told her that, she had turned the color of cement.
I must have done a pretty good job of wearing a poker face, because Crawford didn’t seem to suspect that I knew anything about the tape. I was really proud of myself because, despite having the biggest mouth in the world, I had been able to keep the fact that I possessed the world’s worst, most unsexy sex tape from Crawford.
Julie Anne Podowsky found an envelope in her mailbox the following week. I know, because I watched her open it from my position across the hall from the mail room, and smiled when I saw the relief etched on her face. It wasn’t a letter telling her that she had gotten an A in Modern Literature, but it was something that I’m sure she wanted just as badly. Maybe even worse.
Mrs. Helpful strikes again.
Crawford came by my house early on a Wednesday morning, two weeks after everything had happened, and took me to school. Sister Mary had kindly given me a week off so that I could recover from my microsurgery. I had been prepared to take the rest of the semester off, but the doctor had assured me that my line of work wasn’t terribly taxing and that I would still recover nicely, even while delivering the boring lectures that I was known for. I had discovered the joys of Percocet—even better than Vicodin—but weaned myself off lest my lectures stopped being boring only to become wacky and weirdly fascinating.
I got in the car with Crawford and leaned over to kiss him, whacking