Free Night Work by Steve Hamilton

was sitting in the office while Anderson kept bringing her tissues and cups filled with ice water. I was on the phone with Protective Services, arranging the emergency pickup. Something they’ll do at any hour, any day of the week. Sandra didn’t say anything.She stared off at nothing. While we were waiting, Anderson pulled me out of the office.
    “What do we do, Joe?”
    “They’re on their way over,” I said. “They’ll take her to the shelter.”
    “No, I mean what do
we
do? To the guy who did this?”
    “Anderson…”
    “We’ll go find him,” he said. “You and me, and we’ll bring Maurice and Rolando, let them do something useful for once.”
    I was tempted by the idea. I admit it. The four of us could have driven down there and knocked on the door. I could picture the look on the man’s face when he opened it, when he recognized me and saw who I’d brought with me. The old guy wouldn’t worry him much, but the two men behind me, all tattoos and arms busting right out of their shirts … He’d try to close the door on us, but we’d already be on top of him.
    “I made a promise to Laurel,” I said. “All those women who came to her shelter … She made me promise to never go after any of the men. No matter what.”
    “You saw her face, Joe. You know what she’s gonna look like tomorrow morning?”
    “I know, believe me. I’ve seen a lot worse.”
    “It’s not right, Joe. I can’t stand the thought of that son of a bitch walking around with all his teeth still in his mouth.”
    “If we went down there, it would be assault and battery,” I said. “A felony if it’s bad enough. And it might get that woman killed. If we beat that man half to death, he’d never come back at us. You know that, right? Never. He’d go after her instead.”
    “Your Laurel, she told you all that, huh?”
    “Yes, she did.”
    “This is what she dealt with. Every day.”
    “This was her job, yes.”
    He shook his head. “What a world we live in, Joe. What a world.”
    That’s exactly what I kept thinking for the rest of the night. When the woman from Protective Services came to pick up Sandra, when she got in that car and drove away … I said good night to everybody, went upstairs, and took a shower while Anderson locked up the gym. I put a frozen dinner in the microwave and ate it standing at the window overlooking Broadway. I didn’t play any music.
    God, Sunday nights.
    When I was done eating I sat on the bed and looked at my picture of Laurel. I traced the outline of her face with my finger.
    “I played that wrong from the beginning,” I said to her. She would have known what to do. She would have told me not to go over to that house, not to make a big scene unless I was ready to go all the way with it. Never show up the man when the woman is still in jeopardy. Never force her hand unless you absolutely have to. Unless her life depends on it.
    Thinking back now to the very first time I ever saw Laurel, in the Social Services building over on Ulster Avenue. I was dropping off the Christmas presents from my department, lugging those two big bags into her office and dropping them on the floor. The way she looked up at me, like she very much wanted to kill me for walking through that door without knocking. This was no man’s land, after all. The place where women came to escape the opposite sex.
    Me apologizing for not knowing the rules. Laurel apologizing for having a bad day and getting mad at the man delivering the Christmas presents. Me offering to buy her dinner so we could both apologize some more.
    “Sorry, I’m engaged,” she said to me. Usually words that would stop a man dead in his tracks. Not just engaged, either, but engaged to some hotshot investment bamboozler down in Westchester County. China pattern all picked out and everything.
    My whole life up to that point, spent knocking my head against one wall after another, never learning when to quit, my total lack of anything resembling