Free The Girl In The Glass by James Hayman Page B

large travel mug of black coffee. Crept into Casey’s room. Watched her sleep for a few seconds, her face softly lit by moonlight streaming through the window. A face so like Sandy’s. A personality so different. He kissed her softly on the forehead. Sleep well , my love.
    “G’night, Dad,” she murmured .
    He double-­locked the apartment door and headed down and out into the pleasantly cool night air. He walked over to the only good thing—­not counting Casey—­that had come out of his eight-­year marriage. A cherry-­red ’57 T-­Bird convertible he and Sandy bought the first year they were together and had spent innumerable weekends restoring. Even more weekends driving out to the Hamptons with the top down.
    He turned the key and listened with pleasure as the big Ford V8 came to life with a throaty roar. He took a minute to connect his smartphone to the newly installed Bluetooth player and tapped Bird: The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve. Hadn’t listened to much else since he’d downloaded the life’s work of the musician he considered the greatest and most innovative jazz man of all time. As the sounds of Bird’s sax tumbled out of the speakers, McCabe pulled his own Bird out onto the Eastern Prom and roared off to the left, heading for the interstate. He lowered both windows and sucked in cool, fresh air. He didn’t know where he was going, but there were plenty of empty places in Maine, and he just wanted to lose himself.
    As he drove, McCabe’s mind went back to the final scene with Kyra. She’d threatened to leave him before. Had actually done it a ­couple of times when he’d been so absorbed in a case he barely said hello. He knew that pissed her off. He’d be pissed if she did the same to him. He couldn’t count the times he told her he was sorry. Mostly she forgave him. Said it was just the way he was made. An obsessive personality obsessing about catching and punishing one slime ball or another who thought he could get away with rape, murder, assault, whatever.
    He’d asked her to marry him half a dozen times, and the response was always the same. “The day you stop being a cop.”
    “Kyra, ­people marry cops. My mother married a cop.”
    “Not a cop like you.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The problem with marrying you, McCabe, is that you’re already married to your job. When you’re in the middle of a case, you barely know I’m alive. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what happened with Sandy.”
    When she said that two months ago, she hit a hot button. He lost his temper and slammed out. When he came back four hours later, she was gone. He didn’t think much of it. She’d left in the past and had never gone far. Just down the hill, back to the small artist’s loft on Chestnut Street that doubled as her studio and bolt-­hole. When she’d come back days later, she’d tell him she loved him. And ask him once again to quit the department. Say she couldn’t take much more of either the loneliness or the angst of never knowing if he’d come home dead or alive or maybe not come home at all.
    He’d tell her he loved her too. Enough to want to live with her forever. But he didn’t know what he would do with himself if he stopped being a cop. It was part of his genetic code, his DNA, and he didn’t know if there was anything he could do about that.
    Her response rang in his ear. “Enough of this, McCabe. Either get another job or get yourself another girlfriend. You can’t have both.”
    He never thought she meant it. But then came that day eight weeks ago when the phone rang and he discovered she hadn’t just gone down the hill to Chestnut Street.
    “Where are you?”
    “San Francisco.”
    He frowned. She hadn’t said anything about going to San Francisco. “What are you doing there?”
    “Starting a new job.”
    He didn’t respond. Just tried to figure out what she was talking about.
    “A tenure track job at the San Francisco Art Institute,” she said. “Too good