"I can hear your thinking," Phoebe said with a laugh. "You're such a little mercenary."
It wasn't the first time Carly had heard the word, so she grinned, too. "But if you don't ask for a present, and don't say would you please, please, take me to Six Flags, it's not mercenary. Is it? I mean, Gran always says when somebody gives you something, you should thank them and make them pleased they gave it. Even if you don't like it. That's manners."
"You're a tricky one, Carly Anne. Slippery as an eel. You make me proud."
Phoebe returned from a suicide threat that had amounted to a sad and pathetic bid for attention to find Sykes waving her away from the squad room.
"Just a heads-up, LT. You got the rat squad in your office."
"IAB's in my office?"
"One of them. Got here about five minutes ago."
"Thanks." She should have known it was coming. Had known, she corrected. But it didn't make it any less distasteful.
Lieutenant Blackman from IAB was a salt-and-pepper-headed fifty. He had a sloping belly, a ruddy complexion and thin, dry hands.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, to keep you waiting. Did we have an appointment for this afternoon?"
"You didn't keep me waiting. I thought we could have a conversation here rather than a formal interview, at this point. If you'd rather the latter, we can arrange that."
Like a fashionable suit, the Southern-woman polite slipped onto Phoebe. It generally served her well. "I don't know if I'd rather the latter until I have a better idea what conversation you'd like to have."
"Regarding statements and accusations made against you by Officer Arnold Meeks."
"Arnold Meeks is no longer a police officer, as you well know."
"He was when he made the statements and accusations, as you well know. I hope you're recovering from your injuries."
"I am, thank you. Lieutenant Blackman, if we're going to be having this informal conversation, would you like some coffee?"
"No, thanks. I'm fine. Prior to the attack on your person, you suspended Officer Arnold Meeks?"
"I did."
"And your reasons for taking this step?"
"Are outlined, perfectly clearly, in the file." She plastered a cooperative smile on her face. "Do you need a copy?"
"I have one."
Hard-ass, Phoebe thought, but kept the smile as she tipped her head. "Well then."
"Officer Meeks disputed your reasons for his suspension." Phoebe leaned back, dropped the smile, sharpened her tone. "We both know he attacked me, that he lay in wait and assaulted me. We both know a deal was cut. And I suspect we both know Arnold Meeks has some significant problems with authority-particularly when it's female authority-anger management and control. Why are you pushing this?" Blackman's dark eyes stayed pinned on hers. "He made serious accusations against you and the captain of this division."
Her temper wanted to leap and bite. And that, Phoebe knew, would only add fuel to a fire that needed to be stamped out quickly. "Yes, he did. He made some of them right here in this office, to my face."
"You have a personal relationship with Captain David McVee, do you not?"
"I certainly do. I have a personal and platonic relationship with the captain, whom I've known and respected for more than twenty years. If you've looked into this matter, into me, then you know the circumstances of how I came to know Captain McVee."
"You left the FBI to work in his division."
"I did, for a variety of reasons. None of which are unseemly or against departmental regulations. I've worked in this division for nearly seven years, without a single mark on my record. I believe my reputation and certainly the captain's are above reproach. Certainly from accusations made by a disgraced police officer whose answer to being disciplined was to beat the hell out of me."
Blackman puffed out his cheeks, the first sign Phoebe had seen that he felt anything at all. "I understand you'd find this conversation, the need for it, distasteful, Lieutenant."
"Distasteful? Lieutenant Blackman, as a police officer and as a woman, I find the need for this conversation deplorable."
"So noted. The officer in question also contends that you made inappropriate sexual advances to him, and used your authority over him to intimidate in a sexual context."
"So I've heard." And enough, Phoebe thought, was damn well enough. "I never made sexual advances of any kind toward Arnold Meeks. You can take his word or you can take mine. I wonder how much pressure the 'officer in question's' father and/or grandfather might be putting on IAB to pursue this matter."
"Complaints were filed against you, and Captain McVee."
"You ought to consider the source of those complaints. You ought to consider the fact that Captain McVee has served this department and this city for more than twenty-five years, and doesn't deserve even the hint of a smear on his record by the pointing linger of a son of a bitch like Arnold Meeks."
"Lieutenant-"
"I'm not finished. I want you to put that in your report of this conversation. I want you to put in your report that in my professional and personal opinion, Arnold Meeks is a lying son of a bitch who's trying to cover his disgraceful and criminal behavior by damaging the reputation of a good man, and a good cop."
She shoved to her feet. "Now I want you out of my office. I have work to do. If you want another conversation with me, it will be a formal one, and my delegate will be present."
"Up to you."
"Yes, it certainly is. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Blackman."
It took Phoebe only about forty-five seconds to admit she was just too pissed, too insulted to sit there doing paperwork. Even the pretense of doing paperwork wasn't possible.
She grabbed her purse, strode out of the office, through the speculative, and sympathetic, glances of the squad. "Lost time," she said to the new PAA. "I'll be an hour."
She had to walk. She knew herself and understood air and exercise were two vital components to cooling herself off. She walked fast, before she said or did anything she'd regret later, straight out of the building. Out of the cop, she thought to herself.
She could have chosen an easier career. Psychology, psychiatry.
Hadn't she considered both? But no, through all the years, all the schooling, all the choices, she'd kept circling back to this.
She knew it had given her mother more than anyone's share of sleepless nights. God knew it wasn't the best choice for a single mother with a child who needed her. It hadn't been the smart choice, really. She had a family to support, and could have done so with more style charging for fifty-minute hours instead of putting in countless nights on the job. And for what? For what? To be accused by a man who brutalized her? To be questioned by her own over those accusations before the last bruises had completely faded?
She'd swallowed what in her heart was no more than a slap on the wrist of the man who'd used his fists on her. She'd accepted the politics of it, the face-saving, and to be honest had some small seed of relief inside her that she wouldn't be called on to sit in court and replay what he had done to her.
But this? She didn't know if she could swallow this.
And where were her choices now? Phoebe asked herself as she turned into the relative cool of Chippewa Square. She could give the department the finger, walk away. And toss away a dozen years of training and work-good work, she reminded herself.
She could demand a full and formal investigation, and blast the ugliness into the air for those who enjoyed such things to snatch at like ribbons on balloons. Or she could remember that sometimes pride was less important than doing what had to be done.
She dropped down on a bench-the one Forrest Gump had sat on, waiting for a bus.
"Box of chocolates, my ass," she muttered.
But she was calmer. It was good, she decided, that she'd said what she wanted to say to that rat-bastard Blackman when she hadn't been calm. Good that she'd stood up, showed him she wouldn't let herself be walked over by IAB, by politics, by any old-boy network or variation thereof.