I know I would."
"You don't know that, there's no way that you can know ahead of time-it's not like eating chocolate or learning to square-dance. You just might not be cut out for it. Or worse, you might be."
"This doesn't sound like the course in psychological stress management they teach at the state police academy," Tee said, lowering the gun slightly.
"It's not. I save this lecture for my friends."
"You've got more than one friend?"
"Tee, if you shoot this shithead between my legs, I'll be so scared I'll never forgive you."
Tee lowered the gun until it pointed to the ground. "McNeil, you asshole, stop cringing and get into the cruiser, you're under arrest,"
Tee said.
"What for?"
"Calling a federal officer in the middle of the night," Becker said.
"That, too," Tee agreed. "And Christ, what happened to your face?"
"Becker did it," said McNeil, warily eyeing Tee's holstered gun as he lifted a hand to test his bleeding nose and swollen mouth.
"Charge me with brutality, you ungrateful sonofabitch, and you'll find yourself in an empty field in the middle of the night alone with me. And you won't have time to make a phone call because I won't turn on a siren before I show up, I'll just be there, you understand me?"
"I wasn't going to-"
"Get in the car," Tee said. McNeil slid gratefully into the back of the cruiser. "I'm not going to thank you," Tee said to Becker. "I'm not sure you did me a favor."
Tee stood at the open dfiver's door, his elbows on top of the car. His eyes looked wild in the headlights, his manner disconnected from the scene.
"Tee…" Tee began to shake and then was weeping, loudly, hoarsely, breathing in desperate sobs. He dropped his head to his arms atop the car and tried to muffle his cries.
"It's okay," Becker said, patting him ineffectually on the back.
"I don't know what's wrong with me. I've been doing some awfully strange things lately. If I'm not careful I'm going to get myself into some trouble."
"It's okay, Tee," Becker murmured. "Fuck it is. I stood in the reservoir."
"So what?"
"Up to my neck."
"That's all right."
"It's not all right," he sobbed. "I'm the goddamned chief of police!"
He released what little control he had left and began to sob uncontrollably. Spasms racked him, his shoulders heaved and his face fell to his chest. He covered his face with his hands at first, but after a few moments he did not try to hide anything. He wandered away from the car, crying loudly, and Becker followed his friend helplessly, wondering what to do besides offering the occasional pat on the back. At length Tee came to a stop with his head leaning against a tree. "My baby!" he bayed, in one of the few intelligible sounds that Becker heard. "My baby." The chief had drifted fifty yards away from the cruiser and McNeil seized the opportunity to slip out of the car. Down the road, Tee turned abruptly and pulled his automatic from the holster again. Becker ducked instinctively and Tee fired a round in McNeil's direction. After the previous shot and all the bowling, this report did not seem nearly as loud.
McNeil leapt into the back seat of the cruiser headfirst, then squirmed around to close the door behind him, carefully keeping below the level of the seat backs.
"That was justified," Tee said, his gun hanging limply by his side.
A car approached on the road, slowing as it came abreast of them. Becker waved it past irritably, aware of the ludicrous sight he made, directing traffic in his bikini underpants as the chief of police stood beside him, sniffling. The car pulled to the side and Karen got out. Her service revolver was in the shoulder holster outside of her halter top and she looked more angry than alarmed.
"Oh, hi," said Tee, as casualty as if he had just encountered her at the local shopping center.
"Holster the gun, Tee," she said crisply.
Tee did so without hesitation. "I didn't kill him," he said, sniffing.
"Good. Sorry I'm late. I took the time to get dressed." She looked pointedly at Becker.
Metzger arrived with siren screaming and lights flashing.
"I got a report of gunshots," he said, his voice trailing off as he became aware of Becker's attire. "Everything all right?"
"Outstanding," said Becker.
"John, get in a car," Karen said. "Any car."
"I'm going to drive Tee home," said Becker. "Karen, McNeil is hiding in the back of Tee's cruiser. He fell and landed on his face-he may need medical attention, but I doubt it. Would you mind driving him to the station and slapping him in a cell?"
"McNeil's in the car?" said Metzger. He looked around him in bewilderment. "He's arrested?"
"We're putting him there for his own safe-keeping at the moment," said Becker. "I'll pick you up at the station when I get some clothes on, and we can come back for your car."
Karen nodded. Although Becker's superior at the Bureau, she was not so enamored of her power that she felt obliged to assert it in such a situation. If this was any of the Bureau's business in the first place, it had yet to be demonstrated. She took Becker's arm after he had guided Tee to the passenger seat of his car and spoke to him quietly.
"We live in Clamden, John. That doesn't make us members of the police force here."
"Put Metzger in the same car with McNeil and McNeil would be driving inside two minutes. I'll drive to the station, if you don't want to, but I think I'd better stay with Tee a bit longer."
"I don't mind, I just don't know what's going on. What have you and Tee been up to out here in the middle of the night?"
24
Captain Luv became aware of the car following him home from Trumbull while he was on the Merritt Parkway. At one point he found himself trapped in the right lane behind a car with its distress lights flashing, while the cars behind Luv continued to slide into the left lane and pick up speed, effectively sealing him into place. He drove with his eye on the mirror, looking for the opening that would allow him out of the pocket, and that was when he noticed the Toyota keeping pace with his enforced forty-five miles per hour yet staying a hundred yards back. When the opening came in the left lane, it was available to the Toyota first but the Toyota driver ignored it, staying behind Luv as if invisibly attached. Only when Luv managed to pass the distressed vehicle did the Toyota also slide into the left lane, still maintaining its discreet hundred-yard distance.
Once he was aware of it, it was a simple matter to confirm that the Toyota was following him. Luv pulled off the Merritt one exit early and made his way through the local roads, the Toyota tagging along turn for turn, varying the distance, sometimes almost disappearing, allowing other cars to slip in front of it, but never falling completely out of touch.
Disturbed but not frightened, Luv drove home and left his car parked conspicuously in the driveway. He locked himself in his study for a time, ignoring his wife, who wanted to prattle on about some grievance or other, and paced and thought. Through some stroke of dumb luck the police, or more likely the FBI, had stumbled onto him. It wasn't the result of a mistake he had made, he made no mistakes; it had to be another calamitous misfortune, like the freakish flooding that had started the investigation. Whatever it was, it could only be suspicion.
If they had anything concrete, they would have arrested him. If they were going to follow him, it meant they were only fishing, hoping he would do something stupid. Luv grinned. He didn't do stupid things, that was why he was Cap'n Luv. That was why he had lived his life for years without detection. They would have to wait forever if they waited for Luv to get dumb.