Dead Center by David Rosenfelt Page B

ask. I promise that I will, and he finally leaves.
    Tara and I are no sooner settled back on the bed to watch basketball than there is another knock on the door. It’s probably the bellman offering to brush my teeth for me. As I get up to answer the door, I make a silent vow to undertip the rest of my stay here. “Just a second,” I call out.
    I reach the door and open it, but the bellman is not standing there. Laurie is standing there. I’m positive of this; there is absolutely no similarity between them.
    “Hello, Andy,” she says, but before I can answer, a missile comes flying past me. This particular missile is named Tara, and she has literally leaped across the room and up into Laurie’s arms. Tara always loved Laurie, but I thought I had talked her out of that during these past few months.
    Laurie lands on the floor under Tara’s weight, and she struggles to get up, laughing and petting all the while. I stand there watching in a state of semi-shock, which is actually my home state, but finally, I reach a hand down and help Laurie get to her feet.
    She comes inside the room and closes the door behind her. We look at each other for probably five seconds, though it feels like an hour and a half. Then she moves toward me and kisses me, and the anger I have been feeling for the last four and a half months is overwhelmed by something that feels nothing like anger.
    Our clothes are off and we’re in bed so fast that it’s as if we’re in a movie and the scene has been edited… as if the director has mandated they do a quick cut from the clothed scene at the door to the naked scene in bed. In all the times I pictured meeting Laurie, never once did it wind up like this. I need to work on my picturing skills.
    It is the most intense experience I have ever had; I even think that for a moment I lose mental control. I have always, and until now I really mean always, had the ability, or curse, to be able to remain somewhat detached from whatever might be going on. I can view anything with some semblance of reason, and it gives me a feeling of control.
    That control is lost in the excitement, fun, and incredible intensity of these moments. When we are finished, when Laurie is lying back and laughing her joyous laugh, I have to consciously bring myself back into the world of reason. I’m not sure why I do, since not to have to reason gave me a feeling of exhilarating freedom, but back I come.
    She looks over at me and smiles. “Hi, Andy.”
    I act surprised to see her. “Laurie, how are you? I hadn’t recognized you.”
    “I was just coming over to see you, that’s all, I swear. I wanted us to be able to talk without a bunch of people around.”
    I nod. “You did the right thing. This would have created something of a stir at the diner.”
    We both get dressed, maybe a tad self-consciously, and we start some small talk. Laurie wants to know how some of our common friends are doing, and I’m surprised to hear that she’s been in occasional contact with them. I had thought, apparently incorrectly, that they had taken my side in the Andy-Laurie war.
    I ask her how she came to be acting chief of the Findlay Police Department, since she had taken a job as captain, the number two person in the department. She tells me that Chief Helling has been quite ill and has been on a leave of absence. Laurie likes him very much and is rooting for his quick return, but it’s becoming increasingly unlikely. She doesn’t say what the illness is, and I don’t ask.
    A town council vote installed her as acting chief, and the deciding vote in swinging things her way was Richard Davidson. It’s a major reason that she is so sensitive about how it would look if her role in luring me to Wisconsin ever got out; it could seem like she is repaying a political favor.
    Laurie doesn’t think we should even talk about the Davidson case, even after I tell her that I am not likely to take it on. There’s an awkwardness here, and even though