Clean Slate

Chapter 34

When Mac woke the next morning, he was alone in her bedroom.

It was six thirty. Not enough time, Mac realized, to go home and change clothes and be back at Fannie Annie by eight. Nothing like planning, he thought sourly, and thinking things through. But, he reflected, this was one situation where wearing the same wardrobe to work every day paid off. No one would notice he hadn't changed.

From elsewhere he could hear male voices. Throwing on yesterday's pants and teeshirt, he went to the bedroom door. In the living room sat Libby with her back to him, at the corner computer desk, motionless, studying the screen. Across the room the big TV CNN blared endlessly recycled news with breathless urgency. Mac came out to her. "Good morning."

She turned, looked up at him, smiled. She wore a snug blue halter top and some kind of thong underwear and absolutely nothing else. Her lightly freckled face was pale, and her red hair was a spiky bed-head sight. "Hi yourself. Sleep well?"

"Beautiful," he said, bending to kiss her. "You?"

"Oh, I was up and down for the bathroom all night."

"You okay?"

"Nothing unusual. Aside from the oozing boy goo." She struck him lightly. "What was with you? Just finish a prison term?"

"Something like that."

She smiled with immense satisfaction, turned, gestured at the computer screen. "I can't get any of these files to open up. What do you think?"

"I'm the wrong guy to ask, babe." She had a Windows Explorer file screen up. It listed a handful of files, with cryptic alphanumeric names. "What is this?" he asked.

"That disk Jessica gave you."

Mac stared at her. "You went through my pockets?"

"Sure. Why? What's wrong?"

Mac took a deep breath. "Well. I just thought – we can't go public with any of that, so --"

"I wasn't going to go public," she said easily. "I just want to see if it's part of the hooker papers." He didn't answer. "I'm nosy, okay? Get over it."

"Okay. All right." He hesitated. "But I need to take that disk to work with me today."

"No problem." She hit the button on her laptop and ejected the disk. "It's right here. You want the shower first?"

"Unless you need it right quick."

"Not really. I'm flying over to Sheffield to cover a press conference, flight's not till 10. You go ahead. There's coffee in the kitchen too."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you."

As he went in for the coffee, she trailed behind him. "Want some breakfast?"

"No thanks, coffee's generally it for me."

She came over, slithered an arm around him. She had the pleasant aroma of female and bed and love. "I can throw your clothes in the wash."

"They're okay. Thanks." She leaned up and kissed him, and he kissed her back, enjoying her warmth against him, idly thinking over a morning reprise, and, withal, feeling like a jerk.

"There's some throwaway razors in the bathroom," she told him. "And you can use my toothbrush."

He glanced at her as he poured. "You sure?"

She smiled wickedly. "After all the fluids we exchanged last night, what's a toothbrush?"

---

"Oh, Smackie. You got to be kidding."

"Yeah, well."

"When you turn the corner, you really turn it."

"Guess so."

Mac sat at the wheel of his Suburban in a monumental traffic jam at the infamous, ever-under-reconstruction Ninth Street Curve. The morning sun was reddish in the haze that blanketed the valley and the hills surrounding St. Marys. His windows were notched -- he did not like to run air conditioning unless absolutely necessary -- and the traffic sounds outside competed with the murmuring of NPR on the radio, and the voice of his friend Scott on the mobile phone.

"So," Mac said, trying to keep it light, "you're suggesting this was perhaps not the wisest move I've ever made?"

"In our survey of the red flags, with which the horizon is ablaze, which dimension do we start with?" Scott wondered. "Moral, physical, logistical?"

"Your call, buddy."

"How about logistical," Scott suggested. "You met this woman when?"

"Yesterday."

"What time?"

"Eleven thirty, thereabouts."

"And went to bed with her when?"

"Yesterday."

"Thank you, I'm sure. What time yesterday?"

"Um. . .seven or so?"

"Making the elapsed time seven hours, all in."

"Yep."

"What kind of woman does that?"

"Same as the kind of man that does that, I guess."

"But you're not the kind of man that does that!"

"You forget Darlene."

"That was different. You were both drunk. Single. In your teens, for heaven's sake."

Mac goosed the Suburban into an opening in the next lane, and drew up to a halt behind a truck bumper. "You know, that Ben Perkins guy, the detective who was here? Told me what I needed was a good romp in the hay with a trashy don't-give-a-shit babe."

"Oh! So therapy is what this was then!"

"Just reporting what the man said."

"His credentials as a therapist are perhaps a bit weak. Though on the topic of trashy women I have little doubt of his bona fides."

"And trashy Libby isn't, anyway. She's smart, she's professional, she's connected around town."

"And," Scott added, "quite the markswoman. Drew a bead on you and dropped you with a single shot. In fact, I don't think she even had to aim. You flopped 'em and spread 'em, right at her feet."

"Well, she didn't play hard to get, either. In fact," Mac commented, "between lunch time and the evening, she went home and changed clothes. And – she told me – shaved her legs."

"Well, there you go. Classic sign of intent."

"Chieko do that?"

"Chieko keeps her legs well shaved, if you must know." They chuckled together. "Let's talk physical for a sec," Scott said. "You really had sex with her without using a condom? What are you, crazy?"

"I was then," Mac admitted.

Silence. "What about now?"

"Well, no question – gotta walk away from it," Mac said.

"What makes you think that's going to happen?"

"She'll understand."

"Her I'm not worried about. It's you. You got a taste of the grape again. How're you going to resist going back for another helping or three."

Scott's comment reinforced Mac's uneasiness, because there was another dimension to it that he had not shared. Libby obviously wanted him, wanted him badly, and this, of all factors, made resistance the most difficult. His 18 months of total abstinence were over – with a bang, ha-ha – but with Libby in the picture there was no real relief, because being wanted as urgently as she wanted him was the most powerful aphrodisiac of all.

Even so, Mac told his friend: "Watch me."

"Oh, I will. Avidly." Silence again. Traffic edged forward. Scott said: "This why you called? So I can rough you up, tell you what you already know?"

"What I called you about is Suzanne."

"Ah yes, the moral dimension."

"Do I tell her?"

"Oh, please. Do you have to ask?"

"Humor me."

"You know what you have to do."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"You knew I'd say that."

"Why tell her?" Mac came back sourly. "She's been feeding me a line of horse shit for eighteen months now."

"That's the annoying thing about codes. The way it works is, you live by your own. Not hers."

"I'm not sure I'm a large enough human being to play it this way."

"Yes you are. I know you are." Pause. "Own up. Get out in front, like you're always saying."

"Thanks for feeding me my own words, buddy."

"Tasty?"

"Yum yum."

A while later Mac whipped his vehicle into its Stadium parking space, got out, locked up, and began his walk up the street toward Judiciary Square. People who passed the lanky man saw in his squarish earnest face a mask of creases and furrows, eyesight inward and away. Earlier he'd emerged from his shower to find that Libby had put out breakfast food, bagels and cream cheese and fruit. She'd brewed more coffee and poured him a fresh cup and insisted he sit with her at the table for a bit. At the door she'd stood on bare tip-toe to kiss him, her nipples beneath the halter top hard on his chest, her hand caressing the back of his head as she gave him a little playful tongue. "I'll be back by five," she whispered. "See you then?"

"I'll call you," he said clumsily, and left.

Waiting for the light at Third Street, he almost called Suzanne right then – when unpleasant things had to be done, best to get them over with. But then he remembered their lunch date Thursday.

Day after tomorrow.

It would keep till then.

---

Mac had just finished his second probationer meeting when Joe Pipestone came into his office. The big man's dark cherubic face was wreathed in a grin so broad his eyes were mere slits under the ball cap bill. "You see the memo?"

"No," Mac said shortly, banging at his keyboard. "I've been slammed all morning. No time for bureaucracy." Cheppy. Cheppy. No such name. What the hell. "Why?"

"Our fearless leader," Joe said, chuckling as he went, "evidently just got back from some kind of management seminar. And she's got a new organizational scheme for our humble little section."

Mac glanced at him. The bulky Pipestone wore a roomy blue shirt with emerald buttons over tan slacks that tapered at an alarming angle from his belly to his ankles. Mac could hardly help but laugh along; Joe was chuckling so hard Mac was afraid he'd wet his pants. "What kind of scheme?"

"She's grouping us into ‘clusters,'" Joe said, hardly able to contain himself.

"Clusters?"

Joe slapped his forehead. "Clusters! We're each going to be part of a cluster!"

Mac laughed, leaned back in his chair, staring at his colleague. "Don't tell me that's the term she actually used."

"Yes!" Joe wheezed, and banged back against the wall and, laughing uncontrollably, slowly slid to the floor in virtual convulsions, his legs sticking out at odd angles.

Abigail stepped through the archway from her office, staring at the men: Joe sitting on the floor, roaring with laughter, banging his head against the wall, and Mac leaning back, holding his head in both hands, chuckling also. "What's the joke?" she asked primly.

"Clare's grouping us in ‘clusters,'" Mac told her.

"This place'll be nothing but ‘clusters,'" Joe chimed in.

"I saw the memo," Abigail said, calm but unamused. "So what's so funny?"

"You know," Joe said, "it's like ‘cluster fuck.'"

"Which is what this organization is a lot of the time," Mac added.

"It's what dysfunctional organizations are often called," Joe said. "Cluster fucks."

"I'm familiar with the term," Abigail said. "I just didn't, uh, see the humor."

"Yeah, well," Joe said, calming down as he lumbered to his feet, "you're new here."

Mac grinned. "Yeah, you'll see for yourself."

"Seems to me things run pretty smoothly around here," Abigail observed. With a wave, Joe left, dusting off his pants. Abigail drifted over toward Mac, eyeing him. Her blue denim dress with corduroy collar looked a little large on her long lean frame, as if she'd lost weight since buying it. Her brown hair was pulled to the back of her head and secured with a tan scrunchie. "So did you get lucky yesterday?" she asked.

Mac shot her a look, instantly realized the query was innocent, and nodded. "Little bit. Eddie's girlfriend gave us this." He slid the yellow sleeved data CD across the desk top. "Probably part of the hooker papers. Eddie was helping courier them to the incinerator, and he swiped it."

Abigail picked up the CD, studied it with her faraway cornflower blue eyes. "How do you know he had access to the hooker stuff?" Mac told her about Libby Lewis's encounter with him at the Department of Sheriff the night the papers were burned. "That's the woman with you yesterday," Abigail commented.

"Yeah. She's working the story for the newspaper. Been a big help," Mac added, somewhat uncomfortably.

She nodded, let it pass. "So what you're thinking is, if Eddie dipped into the hooker papers and tried to exploit them, maybe somebody got, uh, really mad at him."

"That's what I'm thinking. Can't prove it. No evidence. Yet." Mac fiddled his fingers on the desk top. "And there's something else came up, outside of Eddie and the hooker papers."

"What's that?"

Lowering his voice, Mac told her about Jessica's claim that Bucaro had raped her. Abigail's reaction was to straighten, and fold her thin arms tightly across her, and step away from him stiffly, haunted eyes staring off into space. "That's . . . how incredibly cruel a man he must be."

"If it's true," Mac added. "We can't just run with this, we need more evidence. Jessica spooks easy, she may not ever go public. But she did give us a couple more names of potential victims." He tapped the computer screen. "I found one of them, I'm going to see her in a bit. But the second one I can't find in the system. Maybe you could do some digging for me?"

"Certainly," Abigail said. "What's the name?"

"Kim Cheppy."

"All right. I'll look."

"Thanks. And that disk – would help to know what's on there. We tried opening it this morning, it was gobbledy gook."

"Ah," she said wanly, "my favorite Windows app. I'll check it out."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." Silence, and then Abigail said, quietly fierce, "He needs locking up, that son of a bitch does."

"Agreed," Mac said. "But I'm wondering if the statute of limitations hasn't run out already."

"There isn't one," Abigail said. "They abolished it last year."

Encouraging, Mac thought. They were again quiet for a moment. Abigail seemed to freeze in thought, halfway to the archway, not looking at him. Mac let the silence grow, then asked quietly, "What's up?"

"I hate to tell you this," she said, her eyes finding his. "But I've decided to quit."

Mac stayed poker-faced, as best he could, but inside, to his surprise, he flinched. "Why? Where are you going?"

"Sheffield probably." She resolutely made no eye contact with him, and gestured as she talked, as if giving herself a sales pitch. "I've worked over there before, I have friends, I can make a go of it."

"But why leave here?"

She shook her head. "It's Garry," she said. "He's just making my life a hell on earth. If I move out to Sheffield. . .put some distance between us. . . ."

Mac remembered a phrase he'd heard Eddie use: taking a geographic.

"Well," Abigail finished, "if I do this, eventually Garry'll find something else to obsess about."

"You can't let him run you off," Mac said.

She took a deep breath and shook her head, eyes shut. "I just don't understand," she mused. "I loved him so much. I was crazy about him. We were going to get married. And then I had my accident – and – when I came out of it -- so much was different. So many things."

"Came out of what?"

"The coma," she said, as if it were common knowledge. "I came to and he was this whole other person, a person I hadn't seen before. A person I was seeing with new eyes. I could see. . .all at once I just knew. . .about the awful things he's done in his life. I went from. . .from loving him, to being unable to stand being with him."

Mac still did not know the details of the "accident" she'd had. Something about falling through ice, from what Libby had said. He was determined not to pry. What he thought about was how much the mere presence of this woman had come to mean to him, in the barely two weeks they'd known each other. He pictured her office gone dark, the archway unused; he visualized never seeing her again, never hearing her voice, never again watching her wise young/old face as she listened, concentrated, reacted thoughtfully; a thumb pressed to her lower lip, palm cupping her chin. He imagined never again hearing her laugh. Or feeling her smile.

He took a deep breath. "You can't let him run you off."

She smiled wanly. "Like what? I'm so stupid."

"Abigail. Please," Mac said, unable to stand it. "Please stop saying that about yourself. I happen to think you're smart as hell."

She blushed. "May be," she allowed. "But on Garry – I've tried everything," she shrugged, and went back into her office.

We'll see about that, Mac thought.