Free Ice Shear by M. P. Cooley

of his pants, revealing a pale soft stomach with a trace of dark black hair. “For tonight, we’re done.”
    I raced into the squad room, aware of Hale’s light quick step behind me. The room was busy, even at 10:00 P.M. A state trooper and Pete had phones to their ears and were typing notes into computers. Both the desks and the computers were ancient: the desks were brownish gray metal, from the fifties, and were almost completely taken up by the computers, which were grayish brown plastic, from the midnineties. The congresswoman had posted a big reward for tips leading to the capture of her daughter’s killer and the calls were flooding in: fifty thousand dollars was almost two years’ salary for most people in the area. Lorraine was up front on dispatch, fielding phone calls. “Please hold. . . . Please hold. . . . Oh, Lesley, wait till I tell you what our lordship, Jerry, said when he came in. Hold on a sec. . . . Hopewell Falls Police Department, please hold.” The radio next to Lorraine was silent, which was good; one big crime was more or less our limit, manpowerwise. I wove my way back toward the locker room, stopping in front of Pete’s desk as he hung up the phone. “Anything good?” I asked. Pete gestured to three blinking lights. “Apparently our girl went to a party. Last year . Apparently she went to a lot of them. Also, she went to college in Los Angeles. Also, she went to high school.” Pete made a show of checking his notes. “Also, grade school.”
    Pete’s phone rang again. “Hopewell Falls Police Department Tip Line, this is Officer Sheehy, how can I help you?”
    The women’s locker room had been carved out of the men’s in the seventies, when they first let women on the force. No more than two women served at any given time, and when I joined, there were zero; the last female officer had retired three years before I started. Lorraine and Lesley tended to keep their bags and coats up with them at dispatch, so I had the place to myself. They didn’t put in a lot of effort, installing a wall of pale yellow lockers and showers. Rather than rewiring the lights, they cut out holes near the ceiling where the fluorescents ran from one locker room into the other. No one could see any part of the other room, even when standing on a chair; I had tested. You could, however, hear everything. Sometimes the guys yelled to me, but for the most part they forgot I was there, bragging about the overtime they were racking up, or complaining about their tanking house values, or bullshitting about how the River Rats did last weekend. Sometimes I heard snippets of other conversations: “How am I supposed to get past this? I love the kids, shit, I even still love Sue, but I don’t know, I just don’t know. . . .” “Is she sorry?” “She says she is, I think she is, but . . .” In those situations, I got my stuff together quietly and left. They wouldn’t have had the conversation if they’d remembered anyone else could hear it.
    I grabbed my purse, my red fuzzy hat, and my wool coat, so long it almost skimmed the ground, pulling things on as I walked out. I waved to Dave, who put his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone: “I’ll pick you up at seven. And oh, no uniform tomorrow.”
    I made my escape. My Saturn was in the back corner of the parking lot. I spied Hale resting against an SUV, its black body and tinted windows making it a formidable vehicle, even in the dark. I was too tired for conversation, especially with him, and walked faster, but Hale intercepted me. So close, and yet so far away.
    â€œHold up a second, Juniper.”
    â€œThe only people allowed to call me by that name are my hippie mother and the priest who baptized me. You are neither.”
    â€œSorry, now, June. Just trying to wind you up a little.”
    He really didn’t need to work