Possession by Ann Rule Page B

Danny. At least, we sure don't. If you 45

    could just see past your precious ego and go have those tests, maybe we'd find out what's wrong with our hat."

    "My hat, you mean," he'd said, and slammed out of the house, and immediately felt rotten. What she was asking of him wasn't that much, but he couldn't bring himself to jerk off into a bottle.

    He rubbed his eyes, trying to close out the picture of Joanne, her jaw set, her eyes furious. He hadn't even thought about her all night. Since he and Sam had reported in at a quarter to eight, neither of them had had time to think about anything, take a leak, or have a cup of coffee or a meal break. That was one way to avoid thinking about marital problems.

    It had begun with a squaw fight at the Bald Eagle—two of them clawing and scratching over the sorriest buck of a man he'd come across in a long time. When it was over, there'd been blood all over the Bald Eagle, and enough spilled beer to float the whole place right down Main Street into the Columbia River. One of the old gals had her breast laid open from her collarbone right through her right nipple, and the other had fought and kicked and bitten them as they wrestled her into their patrol car. Sam was nursing a dead-center hit in his family jewels and their unit was missing a back window. The object of the ladies' jealousy had sat at the bar boozing quietly throughout the fray, never looking up. Hell, he'd been smart; his balls weren't hurting.

    Danny glanced over at Sam who sat gingerly on the edge of the report desk, scribbling out the Field Investigation Report on the pickup they'd stopped right after midnight, an old beater full of bearded punks who'd given them a Seattle address and a lot of flak about being pulled over. Something was wrong about that truck, but they hadn't scored a hit on Wants and Warrants, and they'd had to let them go. They'd both figured the rig was a mobile cocaine stash, but they couldn't search it: no probable cause. The inviolate rights of the American citizen. Sure as hell, they'd get a call from the coast on that one in a week or so, but the old truck would be long gone by then.

    46

    Danny sighed. He wondered sometimes why they bothered. Every time they made a stop like that one, they were flirting with having a .45 shoved up their noses.
    The state cop—Richards, yeah, Richards—had bought the farm on the same stretch of highway last winter, just walking over to some vehicle he'd stopped. He and Sam had found the poor bastard sprawled face down in the snow with his ticket book still in his hand, his gun still bolstered. Richards's body lying there wasn't as bad somehow as the imprint left behind in the frozen bank after the hearse left. Angel in the snow. The perfect outline of arms and legs and head there, and the great splotch of red where Richards's blood had melted the snow beneath his heart. They'd thrown a great funeral, though. Cops from Spokane. Cops from Seattle, Wenatchee, Yakima, Ellensburg, even Puyallup, with a sprinkling of FBI guys, ATF agents, the Mounties in their red tunics, plus the whole damned State Patrol. Well, they should be good at funerals. Richards's was the third cop funeral in eastern Washington in a year. A familiar bleakness rose in his gut, and he drew a deep breath. Sometimes he could see himself lying beside a road someplace, as motionless as a drunk, only not drunk. Dead. He wondered if Sam ever felt that presentiment of doom, if Sam ever felt that his time was running out. Danny never asked him; talking about fear was an unwritten taboo with cops. Don't say it out loud and it won't happen.
    If either of them was living on borrowed time, it would have to be Sam. Sam was forty-eight, a veteran of two departments and twenty-seven years, survivor of two marriages, and with such a thirst for alcohol that his liver should have turned to stone years ago. Booze had gotten him booted off the Seattle Police Department, out of the homicide unit. Sam had made