Free Blood Line by Rex Burns

ex-wife.”
    “Lorraine? She hasn’t spoken much about her.”
    That was a relief, and Wager hoped that his younger sister—who had taken Lorraine’s side even more stridently—could manage the same self-control.
    “I didn’t realize how young you were when your father died.”
    “Sounds like you’ve been getting the whole family history.”
    “Don’t get huffy—you’ve never told me much about your family.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Nothing specific. It’s just that I’m interested in you, and your family is part of you.”
    Whether, it seemed, he wanted it to be or not. “I haven’t had too much to do with them for a long time.”
    “Not since your divorce from Lorraine?”
    “That what my mother told you?”
    “She said you felt very guilty about it.” Elizabeth added quickly, “That’s about all she did say, except that there was no reason to feel guilty—that Lorraine simply couldn’t take being a cop’s wife, and you couldn’t stop being a cop.”
    That about summed it up, but it was the first time Wager heard that his mother finally saw things as he did. “She said that?”
    “You seem surprised.”
    “It’s what I tried to tell them at the time: I didn’t blame Lorraine, and I sure as hell don’t blame myself. It just didn’t work out, is all.” His voice calmed. “I guess I’m surprised that all of a sudden my mother accepts it.”
    Elizabeth looked out the window at the spidery arcs of the Lakeside roller coaster gliding past above a fringe of trees. “I think she wants to see more of you, Gabe. You’re two very proud people—and very stubborn, too. But I suspect she would be happy to forget any ill feelings that came out of your divorce.”
    “Well—” Wager concentrated on guiding the Camaro through a cluster of slower traffic that filled all three lanes. He wanted to say it was about time, but the truth was that not all of the estrangement was the fault of his mother and sisters. For a long time Wager had avoided them not just because they had been—and still were—friends of his ex-wife but more because they had been reminders of that bitter time. Which really wasn’t their fault. “Well,” he said again, “I guess I ought to visit my own mother more.”
    He saw that for some reason, the comment pleased Elizabeth.
    Elizabeth did not subscribe to the Sunday Denver Post —she preferred the Rocky Mountain News ; their editorials tended to attack her for being too liberal—she supported sex education and free lunches in the schools, not necessarily in that order—and she said it was good to know what her opponents’ latest lies were. So Wager did not see Gargan’s article until he came in to work and found a clipping centered on his desk. Whoever put it there had circled the department’s public relations photograph of Wager in his uniform and scrawled, “Do You Know This Criminal?”
    There were other photographs, too, a full-page spread with a yearbook picture of Julio, Aunt Louisa standing outside the church after the funeral and unaware of the camera, a shot of their house taken from across the street. But the story Gargan wrote dealt less with Aunt Louisa and her son than with the fact that Julio was the cousin of a Denver homicide detective.
TRAGEDY TANGLES POLICE WORK! Denver’s increasing violence is a daily routine for the members of its police department, but even one of its homicide detectives, dulled to the pain of others by long experience with death, could not escape feeling emotion when seventeen-year-old Julio Lucero was viciously gunned down Thursday evening as he returned home from the corner grocery store in the Barnum neighborhood by an unknown assailant or assailants who fled in an automobile after the shooting.
    The youth, who attended West High School and is the son of Mrs. Louise Lucero, is also related to Detective Gabriel V. Wager of the Denver Police Department’s Homicide section. Although the case is officially being