it’s odd now that you mention it that we never talked much more about it after the one conversation. School picked up and the administration let it drop. The drug war never happened and no news is good news, I guess.”
“Did Terrence work any late nights, extra shifts?”
“That describes most of his career.”
I smiled. “You’re right. Dumb question.”
She smiled back, but the look was tired. Genuine, but without any wattage behind it. “I haven’t been much help, have I?”
“I don’t know yet, Flo,” I said truthfully. “Like I said, it’s the spaces in between that I have to fill in. The things you’ve told me might be just what I need or not at all. I have to talk to a lot more people before I’ll know where the lines connect.”
We were quiet again. The music continued to trickle in, maddeningly unidentifiable. I watched as the ice in my glass melted, the cubes slipping past each other and down, then bobbing back to the surface. Someone was baking cookies and the sweet smell came in on the same breeze as the music.
“It’s been so hard,” she said, finally, her voice warbling as she started to lose control, then regained it. “So hard. His death, of course. And how it happened, how brutal. How terrible. But what hurts most of all is the idea that it might be someone from around here. A boy I might’ve taught or someone T gave a ride after a basketball game. We’ve been trying to help this community for twenty years and someone three doors down might’ve killed my husband. When I walk down the street, people look at me and they say they’re sorry, but maybe they’re the ones that did it or know who did or are happy that it happened.”
This time I reached out and grabbed her hand and squeezed. I didn’t have any better answer for her.
Chapter Seven
The black bronze of the lion’s head was hot as a branding iron in the late May sunshine, and it hurt, but I kept my hand on its mane anyway. Frozen in its protective crouch, the life-sized statue glowered over the low granite wall, ready to pounce on anyone foolish enough to threaten the two bronze cubs it guarded.
I left the lion in its permanent state of readiness, rubbing the sting from my fingers as I walked. Following the circular wall, I let my eyes wander over the almost twenty thousand names of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, all cops killed in the line of duty. They went on and on. Wreaths on wire stands lined the tops and bottoms of the walls, remainders of the annual ceremony held just a few weeks before to honor all the fallen officers of the past. And add new ones to the roll. Halfway around the loop, I came across a young woman kneeling next to the wall, taking a rubbing of a name with charcoal and paper. There weren’t any tears, but her face was pinched and red. I veered to one side and moved past her quietly.
I hadn’t meant to stop. I’m not nostalgic. Sentiment makes me cynical and uncomfortable. But, on the way back from the Witherspoons’, my hands turned the wheel and—almost without thinking about it—I steered my car straight downtown and on to the memorial.
The site was in Judiciary Square across from the venerable Building Museum, what was once the Civil War Pension Office, a monument for a different generation of heroes. I’d been at the dedication of the memorial in 1991, standing in a row of other MPDC cops, all of us in our dress uniforms which we wore almost exclusively, it seemed, for the funerals of other cops. Fitting, I supposed. The feel of the uniform, like the emotion of the ceremony, had been unfamiliar. While I had agreed with the motive of the idea, I had been impatient at the time with the pomp and circumstance of the event. And not a little bit cynical. The granite slabs and bronze statues seemed a grand, hollow tribute, the kind of architectural statement that stood in for meaningful action a lot in DC.
But I had a different perspective now. Twenty
“Did Terrence work any late nights, extra shifts?”
“That describes most of his career.”
I smiled. “You’re right. Dumb question.”
She smiled back, but the look was tired. Genuine, but without any wattage behind it. “I haven’t been much help, have I?”
“I don’t know yet, Flo,” I said truthfully. “Like I said, it’s the spaces in between that I have to fill in. The things you’ve told me might be just what I need or not at all. I have to talk to a lot more people before I’ll know where the lines connect.”
We were quiet again. The music continued to trickle in, maddeningly unidentifiable. I watched as the ice in my glass melted, the cubes slipping past each other and down, then bobbing back to the surface. Someone was baking cookies and the sweet smell came in on the same breeze as the music.
“It’s been so hard,” she said, finally, her voice warbling as she started to lose control, then regained it. “So hard. His death, of course. And how it happened, how brutal. How terrible. But what hurts most of all is the idea that it might be someone from around here. A boy I might’ve taught or someone T gave a ride after a basketball game. We’ve been trying to help this community for twenty years and someone three doors down might’ve killed my husband. When I walk down the street, people look at me and they say they’re sorry, but maybe they’re the ones that did it or know who did or are happy that it happened.”
This time I reached out and grabbed her hand and squeezed. I didn’t have any better answer for her.
Chapter Seven
The black bronze of the lion’s head was hot as a branding iron in the late May sunshine, and it hurt, but I kept my hand on its mane anyway. Frozen in its protective crouch, the life-sized statue glowered over the low granite wall, ready to pounce on anyone foolish enough to threaten the two bronze cubs it guarded.
I left the lion in its permanent state of readiness, rubbing the sting from my fingers as I walked. Following the circular wall, I let my eyes wander over the almost twenty thousand names of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, all cops killed in the line of duty. They went on and on. Wreaths on wire stands lined the tops and bottoms of the walls, remainders of the annual ceremony held just a few weeks before to honor all the fallen officers of the past. And add new ones to the roll. Halfway around the loop, I came across a young woman kneeling next to the wall, taking a rubbing of a name with charcoal and paper. There weren’t any tears, but her face was pinched and red. I veered to one side and moved past her quietly.
I hadn’t meant to stop. I’m not nostalgic. Sentiment makes me cynical and uncomfortable. But, on the way back from the Witherspoons’, my hands turned the wheel and—almost without thinking about it—I steered my car straight downtown and on to the memorial.
The site was in Judiciary Square across from the venerable Building Museum, what was once the Civil War Pension Office, a monument for a different generation of heroes. I’d been at the dedication of the memorial in 1991, standing in a row of other MPDC cops, all of us in our dress uniforms which we wore almost exclusively, it seemed, for the funerals of other cops. Fitting, I supposed. The feel of the uniform, like the emotion of the ceremony, had been unfamiliar. While I had agreed with the motive of the idea, I had been impatient at the time with the pomp and circumstance of the event. And not a little bit cynical. The granite slabs and bronze statues seemed a grand, hollow tribute, the kind of architectural statement that stood in for meaningful action a lot in DC.
But I had a different perspective now. Twenty
Similar Books
![Hard and Easy [High-Country Shifters 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)](https://fs.collectorofbookboyfriends.com/601893/thumbs/152x264/hard-and-easy-high-country-shifters-5-siren-publishing-menage-everlasting.png)
