The Apostrophe Thief

The Apostrophe Thief

A Marian Larch Mystery

Barbara Paul

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

1

When she woke up the next morning, Holland was gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, she padded barefoot through her apartment, praying he hadn't left her
a little note
somewhere.

He hadn't.

The shower head was turned to its strongest massage setting and the hot water pounded at her. She stood motionless under the barrage, wondering at the sheer animal need that had overtaken the two of them last night. He might as well have been a stranger; she'd never gotten inside his head, didn't truly know him. She didn't always like him, even. Holland was a curious man, very private, thought highly of himself, downright condescending at times. A cutting, sarcastic sense of humor, if humor was what it was.

The two of them had been thrown together almost against their wills—working allies, the FBI and the NYPD, joined by necessity, until last night when it had all come to a head. They'd turned to each other for … reassurance? Validation? For confirmation of some treasured cliché such as
Life goes on
? They'd needed something, and they'd needed it desperately.

Because he had killed a man, and she'd helped him do it.

A quick shampoo and she stepped out of the shower. The ventilator wasn't working properly and steam had fogged up the mirror; she rubbed a clear place with her fist and stared at her reflection. By no stretch of the imagination could she be called pretty; “plain” was the kindest adjective that came to mind. Always that same undistinguished face staring back at her. Plain yesterday, plain today, plain tomorrow. “But so was Jane Eyre,” she said aloud. And
she
had ended up with Mr. Rochester.

Yes, Jane and her Mr. Rochester had lived happily ever after.
But only after he had been symbolically castrated
. Not your standard romantic ending.

The man she'd spent the night with had his own kind of trouble. The killing had been self-defense … but no one would ever believe that, not in a million years. He and the man he'd killed openly hated each other, had done so for years. No one who knew the two of them would ever think that the shooting had been in the line of duty—which it was. She'd been there, she'd seen. She'd helped Holland get hold of the gun that got them both out of there alive. But even with her testimony to back him up, he had too long a history of doing things outside the limits of the strictly legal to escape arrest and trial. And because of that, she was going to live with a lie for the rest of her life.

So, live with it
, she told herself as she toweled her hair. When the time for accounting came, she had taken the credit/blame for shooting the criminal they'd tracked down together; no one would suspect
her
of eliminating a personal enemy. It all boiled down to one thing: she could take the heat, he couldn't. And take it she would; he'd saved her life last night.

She dressed hastily and strapped on her service revolver, completing the picture of who she was: Sergeant Marian Larch, NYPD detective. For a little while longer, at any rate.

It was nine o'clock and she was already an hour late. No sweat; no one was going to be yelling at her today. For a while, at least, she'd be the fair-haired girl of the Ninth Precinct. Marian figured she had about a week before the memory of last night's spectacular shoot-out began to fade, and by then she'd be gone. This was her last week as a cop. She had had it, she was fed up, she was
through
.

She was through working with a partner whose incompetence had endangered her more than once. No more spending the productive part of her life in a profession that had turned so sour that even its ablest practitioners no longer felt they could make a difference—a
practical
difference, not the idealistic, save-the-world, rookie-cop kind of difference. And no more putting her ass on the line to make some double-dealing bureaucrat of a precinct captain look good to his superiors.

Enough.

Marian wanted to walk in that very morning and announce her resignation, but too many loose ends were trailing about. Her hair still damp, she pulled on a raincoat and ran to her car; a gray, icy drizzle more suited to November than September was coming down. And it was Monday; oh yes, it was
very
Monday. On the drive to East Fifth Street she rehearsed her story. Tell the truth about everything that happened except who actually pulled the trigger. Lie about that. Lie like crazy.

She'd have to face down Internal Affairs. And the FBI would want a debriefing, since it had been a joint Bureau–Ninth Precinct investigation. She could handle that, presumably; but facing the precinct captain was another story. Somehow she'd have to find a way to keep herself from tearing his eyes out. How could
he
face
her?
He would, though; the man had no shame. Ambition, and industrial-strength self-interest, and a cunning ability to turn every situation to his personal advantage. But no shame.

The icy drizzle hadn't stopped when she pulled into the parking lot across the street from the Ninth Precinct stationhouse. It was the same lot where only a short time ago Marian and Captain DiFalco had gotten into a shouting match, where he'd threatened her with career death if she didn't fall into line. If Marian hadn't already made up her mind she was finished being a cop, that little scene would have convinced her.

Inside, a solicitous greeting from the desk sergeant, sympathetic murmurs or overhearty hellos from a few uniformed officers. Up the stairs to the Police Detective Unit room, queries of
Are you all right
? and a friendly hand or two on her shoulder. They all knew she had killed a man the night before, or thought they knew. They also “knew” it was her first—always traumatic, sometimes insurmountably so. Marian didn't know what it felt like to kill a man, but she did know what it felt like to be a hypocrite, garnering so much undeserved sympathy.

“How you doin'?” Detective Gloria Sanchez stood before her, concern written on her face.

“I'm doing just fine, Gloria,” Marian said. “Don't you worry about me.”
Please
don't worry about me.

“I wish you'd let me go home with you last night. You shouldn't have been alone.”

I wasn't alone
. “It's all right. I'm sorry it ended in a killing, but I'm not lacerating myself about it.”

“That's cool. That's real cool. It had to end the way it did—you didn't have no choice.”

“No.”

Marian sat down at her desk, aware that her partner at the next desk was watching her out of the corner of his eye. “So you got him,” Foley said low so only she could hear. “You must be feeling pleased with yourself.” Resentful.

“Yes, to both.”

He let his anger show and he forgot about keeping his voice down. “You couldn't call me, could you? It'd really burn your ass to call me! You just had to keep the kill all to yourself.”

Marian didn't expect understanding from her partner, but he was being even more stupid than usual. “That's sick, Foley! I didn't know I was going to have to shoot him.”
Nor that anybody would
. “He was trying to kill us.”

“Us? Oh yeah, you and your FBI buddy—how could I forget? You doin' all your work with the FBI now, Larch? Ninth Precinct not good enough for you anymore?” He pointed a crooked finger at her. “You should have called me, you fucking glory hog.”

Marian stared at her partner. Foley was symptomatic of all the things that were so wrong in her job that she simply couldn't stomach it any longer. Ineptitude, laziness, bad attitude, lack of concern—they were all spelled
Foley
. “Why should I call you?” she asked him in a reasonable tone of voice. “You've already put me in jeopardy a couple of times by failing to back me up when you should have. You whine and you bellyache and you don't do a lick of work you don't have to do. You jump to conclusions and never check things out unless you're made to. You're never where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there. You're a menace to anybody you're partnered with, and you've always got an excuse. You're a bad cop, Foley, and you're never going to be any better than you are right now. That's why I didn't call you.”

The room had fallen dead silent. No cop ever told another cop he was bad at his job, at least not in front of other cops; Marian herself would never have said what she did if she'd been planning to stay on. The faces of the other detectives in the room reflected a mixture of shock and reluctant agreement with her assessment of Foley's abilities. Pleasurable scandal.
Great
way to start the week.

Foley's face went dark purple. “Who the hell do you think you're talking to, you bitch? You sleep your way to that sergeant's badge and you come in here and—”

“Knock it off, Foley,” someone said.

“Yeah, Foley, watch it,” Sanchez added. “Remember what she's been through.”

Marian sighed. “Thanks for riding to my defense, Gloria, but don't make excuses for me. Let it stand. I meant every word.” Change the subject. “Is Captain DiFalco in?”

“Yep, making important phone calls, he sez. Do Not Disturb.”

But Foley wasn't that easy to shut up. “You think you're riding high, don't you? But you're gonna get your ass kicked, Larch, that's what's gonna happen. You acted against orders and DiFalco's not gonna let that pass. You may even lose your badge.”

“She stopped a killer, for Christ's sake,” Sanchez said. “She's gonna get a citation!”

He muttered an obscenity and turned his back on them. Marian didn't give a damn what Foley thought; a few more days and she'd never have to look at his sneering face again. She winked at Sanchez as she rolled some forms into the old mechanical typewriter and started making out the report on how
she
had shot a wanted felon in self-defense. Marian was halfway through when her phone rang; Captain DiFalco wanted her in his office.

She was calm and distantly curious as she got up from her desk, wondering how DiFalco was going to handle it. He'd ordered her to lay off the investigation and she'd gone on with it, drawing in others to help her whose services she had no authority to commandeer. And in doing so she'd committed the worst offense possible: she'd proved herself right and her superior wrong. Captains didn't like being shown up by sergeants.

Last night when the shooting was over, DiFalco had gone before the TV cameras and taken credit for the resolution of the case, claiming Marian had been acting under his orders all along. Was that to be the deal—DiFalco would take no punitive action if she kept her mouth shut? Or would he follow through with his threats to make sure her career was at a dead end? Not that it mattered either way; Marian would listen, and nod, and hand in her resignation in a few days' time. And then she'd send registered letters to the Zone Commander, the Borough Commander, and the Chief of Operations, all of them aimed at exposing DiFalco's lies.