The chief was on the phone, one hand cupped over the receiver. "Hang on," he said. MacAuley tossed her folder onto an equally messy desk. She watched as the chief picked it up one-handed. Long, square fingers. Brown hair with an equal sprinkling of blond and gray, as overgrown as the philodendron.
"Yeah," he told the phone. "Okay. Put us on the list if you find out anything." He laid the folder down without opening it. "No, but send us any prints. We'll run comparisons when we do the ground search in August." Looking at Russ Van Alstyne, she found it hard to picture August. His face was winter-pale, with deep lines etched on either side of his mouth. Ice-blue eyes. She figured him to be about her dad's age, although there was a solidness to the chief that her dad, the king of adult ADD, had never had.
Van Alstyne hung up the phone. "Chief, this is Hadley Knox," MacAuley said. The chief nodded to her. "What's up?" MacAuley went on.
"The rental truck." He glanced at Hadley, including her in the story. "Somebody abandoned a Ryder truck last week at a local farm stand that's still closed for the winter." He looked at Lyle. "Stolen from Kingston. We're getting copies of any prints CADEA pulls."
"Cad-dee-ay?"
Both men looked at Hadley. Uh-oh. Maybe she was supposed to know what that was?
"Capital Area Drug Enforcement Association. It's a sort of regional cooperative, with investigators from departments all over the area." The chief handed another folder to MacAuley. "Their lab tech agreed with your theory that the bales were shrink-wrapped. They didn't find a trace of plant material or THC on any surfaces."
MacAuley tapped his sizable honker. "They don't have this."
"Mmm. Maybe we should hire you out."
"What was it?" Hadley asked. In for a penny, in for a pound, she figured. "In the truck, I mean."
"Marijuana," MacAuley said.
"Pot?" She didn't mean to sound so disbelieving, but pot? Who cared?
"Ten million dollars' worth." Van Alstyne tapped the paper on his desk. "If the truck was full."
"Holy shit!" The second it was out of her mouth, she wanted to call it back. Swearing on a job interview. Genius. "Sorry," she said.
MacAuley looked amused. "I'll just leave you both to it, shall I?"
"Thanks, Lyle," Van Alstyne said. MacAuley exited the office, leaving the door ajar. "Sit down, Ms. Knox."
There was only one chair that didn't have junk on it. She took it.
For a minute, he studied her. If it had been someone else, she would have been getting the creepy vibes that came with unwanted sexual interest. But Van Alstyne wasn't looking at her like a man looks at a woman. It was more like a doctor examining an X-ray. Diagnostic.
"You ask questions," he said.
Was that a complaint? A compliment? She swallowed. "I have two kids, and I'm always telling them there's no such thing as a bad question. I guess it's rubbed off on me."
"Why do you want to be a cop?" His question caught her off guard. Damn, she had prepped for this. What had she been going to say?
"I worked as a prison guard for three years in California." She nodded toward the folder still lying on his desk, unopened. "I found it challenging and fulfilling-"
"Why do you want to be a cop?"
She was left with her mouth half open from her incomplete canned response.
"Just give it to me straight."
She shut her mouth. "I've got a family to support. I need a good-paying job here in Millers Kill. I don't have any college, but my DOC training in California means I already qualify as a probationary peace officer, if I'm enrolled in the Police Basic course."
"What about administering justice? What about getting the bad guys off the street and behind bars?"
She let out a puff of air. "When I was working as a prison guard, I met a lot of guys who claimed they were innocent. I don't know. I figure, administering justice is somebody else's job. As for getting-uh, the bad guys…" She trailed off. "I suppose everybody wants that."
He tilted his head to one side and gestured for her to keep going.
"I'm sorry, sir, but if you're looking for Robocop, I'm not the right person. I guess I see policing as sort of like being a mom. I don't want to catch my kids doing something wrong. I want to stop 'em before they do it. Or head them off before a little problem becomes a big one." He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't define. She snapped her mouth shut. Policing is like being a mom. Great. Maybe she should tell him she wanted to knit scarves and serve hot cocoa.
"If you're hired, you'll be the only woman sworn into the department. The first woman, actually." There was an edge of discomfort in his voice, but she couldn't tell whether it was from the prospect of letting a girl into the club or embarrassment that they hadn't integrated the force up to now. "Have you thought about how you'll handle that?"
He had said he wanted her to give it to him straight. "Are the men in your department likely to require handling?"
"No. Well…"-he pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his steel-rimmed glasses-"not most of 'em, of course not. I was referring to the job itself. It's not like guard work. You'll be doing traffic stops, pulling apart guys who've had too much to drink, walking into houses where the husband and wife have been beating up on each other. You'll be shorter and lighter than any other officer here. How do you deal with that?"
That was a question she had prepped for. "Just like I did as corrections officer. The trick is to never, ever, let them think you're vulnerable. That means controlling the situation, and that starts right up here." She tapped her temple. "It doesn't matter how big you are if you can't project control. And if it comes down to using force, I have an advantage your other officers don't. The drunk guys see these"-she thrust her forearm beneath her breasts and hoisted them, and sure enough, his eyes followed-"and they don't see me coming in with this." She touched the side of his head lightly with the magazine she had picked up with her free hand.
He let out a short laugh. "It's not always that simple."
"Nope. But men still tend to underestimate women."
His smile changed to something wistful. "Yeah. I know-I knew-a woman who used to take advantage of that fact."
"Did it work for her?"
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it did…" He shook himself. "Okay." His voice was once again no-nonsense. "If you want it, you've got the job."
"I do? I mean, great! Yes! I do want it."
"You'll be on probation until you've completed the Basic course. I don't want to throw away the time and money we're going to spend training you, so I expect you to pass. With high marks."