his way around the side of the house to the back patio. Trixie peed quickly and stood at attention at my side, waiting to see if the person in the yard adjacent to mine was friend or foe.
I walked toward the hedgerow that separated the two yards and peered over the prickly shrubs. The person in the yard swung around suddenly and trained a very powerful flashlight on me, temporarily blinding me. I put my arm to my eyes. Trixie let out a loud bark, something that I had never heard; she sounded very, and uncharacteristically, menacing.
“Police, ma’am,” the flashlight owner called out to me. He swung the flashlight to the ground and approached me holding out a badge.
I patted Trixie’s head. “It’s okay, Trix,” I said, keeping the hedgerow between me and the cop. After all, I was still in my pajamas; no need to get arrested for indecent exposure. “What’s going on?” I asked him.
He didn’t respond directly to my question. “Is there anybody in this house?” he asked, swinging his flashlight in the direction of Terri and Jackson’s house.
I shrugged. “I think they left. There hasn’t been anybody there for several days.” Trixie tensed again, and I rubbed the top of her head. “Why?”
“A 911 call came from inside,” he said, a bit perplexed. “But if there’s nobody living there, then that’s impossible.” As if to punctuate his puzzlement, he took off his hat and scratched his head. “Happens sometimes. The system gets quirky when it rains.”
Well, that’s comforting, I thought. I hoped I never needed a cop during a thunderstorm. “Did you look around?” I asked, the rain beginning to soak through my pajamas.
“Yep,” he said. “Nothing going on. Looks deserted. I’ll write it up but it must be the system. It gets quirky when it rains.”
So I’ve heard. Well, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open, I thought, not as content with the quirky-system explanation. I looked over at the house. It certainly seemed empty. I watched the cop amble down the driveway, spend a few minutes in his car, and drive away. I looked down at Trixie. “Are you done?” I asked, and she stuck her nose into my butt. I took that as a yes and went back inside.
“So, what do you think, Bobby? Bobby?”
Crawford looked up from the stack of papers on his desk and turned toward Champy. “What?”
“Diamond stud earrings. For Patty.”
Crawford grunted. The precinct was quiet at five in the morning on that Saturday and he was hoping to get some of his paperwork done. It was another one of those Saturdays when he wouldn’t be with the girls. Christine had taken them to an all-day swim meet somewhere in Connecticut, so he had decided to come in and do some paperwork in peace; once he saw Champy saunter in, all hope of a quiet morning was gone. “Good.”
“Have you heard anything I was saying?” Champy asked.
“Not really,” he admitted. “Did it have anything to do with fellatio?”
“No. She hates Cuban food,” Champy said.
Crawford sighed. “Blow jobs, Arthur. Did it have anything to do with blow jobs?”
Champy smiled. “Guilty as charged.”
“Then I didn’t really miss anything, did I?” Crawford said. He stood and refilled his coffee cup from the pot next to Champy’s desk. “Did you review the notes on the neighborhood canvass on the Stark case?” he asked, leaning back against the desk that the coffeemaker sat on.
“Nobody seen or heard nothing,” Champy said. “It’s Van Cortlandt Park, Bobby. Unless you had some middle-of-the-night lovebirds, or someone cruising on the down low, you ain’t gonna get nothing.” He smoothed his tie down. “I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying,” Crawford muttered, and made his way back to his desk. He sat down and looked around for the file for Ray Stark’s case.
“Champ, who has the Stark file?” Crawford asked when he couldn’t find it.
Champy picked a file out of a giant stack on his desk and tossed it over to Crawford. Crawford caught it before the papers inside came spilling out. He reread the interview with the fencer, Julie Anne Podowsky, and came away even more convinced that she had had nothing to do with Ray’s death. He wasn’t sure why she came in exactly, but he didn’t dwell on that too much. Champy, on the other hand, saw her as a viable suspect and kept bringing her name up.
“So, what do you think about the diamond studs?” Champy asked again.
“They couldn’t hurt, Champ,” he said. “Does she like jewelry?”
“Are you