Free The Drowning Pool by Jacqueline Seewald Page A

began discussing the case with Bert St. Croix, fully aware she had barely spoken at all during his questioning of the Wallings.
    “What do you think of Martin Walling?”
    “Not much. He’s a slob, but I notice he never got around to lighting up that cigar.”
    He smiled at Bert’s observation. “True. A small penance to pay for the fact that he humiliated his wife in front us.”
    Bert nodded in agreement. “He’s got a very low opinion of women in general. You notice he didn’t talk to me, only to you. Then again, being a woman of color gave me a second strike.”
    Gardner decided it was safer to change the subject. “Did you think they were telling the truth?”
    “Hard to say. In spite of the fact that ol’ Martin’s got a bad case of diarrhea of the mouth, just like his wife said, I wouldn’t trust him to speak the truth any more than a snake oil salesman.”
    “And his wife?”
    “She was playing it close. Can’t say that I really care much either.” Bert’s eyes were dark and unfathomable.
    “What worm’s eating on you?”
    She didn’t answer him right away. Gardner understood instinctively that they’d arrived at a moment where St. Croix had to decide whether or not to trust him, and clearly, it wasn’t an easy decision for her to make.
    “The whole case stinks. I hate it. All we do is talk. No action, no doing anything real. It’s like being buried alive.”
    “Not exactly like New York, is it?”
    “I’m used to being where there’s excitement, things happening. That’s my lifestyle. I’m out of my element here, and I feel damned useless. In New York, I felt like something was being accomplished, even if most of what I did proved futile in the long run. Even when I was scared and gone beyond my limits, the adrenalin rush made me feel real. At least, I was alive. I don’t find any challenge for me here. I don’t belong.” She ran her hand over braided hair as dark as a raven’s wing. “How could I expect you to understand? In all your life, have you ever had to shoot another man?”
    “I served in the military. I’ve also been a policeman in the inner city, and yes, I’ve been forced to take several lives. Does that make me less of a wimp and more of a good cop in your eyes?”
    She looked away, obviously embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Maybe some of the things I’ve seen and done have brutalized me, but I know I can’t take this sitting still very well. Don’t get me wrong. I know there are all kinds of ways to be a cop. I just wasn’t cut out to be a clerk and sit around typing out petty reports.”
    “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
    “Sounds familiar.”
    “Milton—now there was a fellow who could see without eyesight.”
    “I didn’t know you were a literary scholar too,” she said in an amused tone of voice.
    He shrugged, feeling embarrassed. “It’s Kim’s influence. She’s got me into reading some classics.”
    Bert gave him a knowing smile.
    “Look, we don’t always work on homicide cases around here. Usually, if there is one, it’s assigned to me. But like you said, this is just a small town police force. We handle everything. We also cover a lot of physical area, since there’s no teeming mass of people. A lot of the terrain is still farmland and forest, looking no different than it did fifty or a hundred years ago. So we don’t have the kind of violence and excitement that comes from policing an area of concentrated population. But things do happen around here, and your kind of police person is needed. Why don’t you give it a fair chance and try not to get too restless or impatient. Not yet anyway. This can work out for you. You couldn’t have been very happy in New York or you wouldn’t have left in the first place.”
    A look of pain passed over her face. “It’s the memories that were killing me.” She didn’t seem willing to elaborate and Gardner had no desire to push. He respected the right to privacy.