I didn’t want them warmed up, I’d said. I wanted them to do their jobs.
He’d looked at me, and though he hadn’t said it, I’d heard it anyway: You’re young, Mike. Trust me on this.
I was young, and that was why I wanted formality. Thirty-three was damned young to be taking over as precinct captain. I had the credentials—youth correctional programs in high school, college completed in four years, volunteer services for the department in my free time, top of my academy class, made detective by twenty-five, lieutenant by twenty-eight. Every officer in Seattle knew the only thing I’d ever wanted to be was a cop, and they respected the effort I’d put into it.
My hair had also gone silver by my thirtieth birthday. I wasn’t kidding myself: if it hadn’t, I’d still be a lieutenant instead of preparing to take over the North Precinct when Tony Nichols retired at the end of the month.
But I was young, which was also why I listened to Nichols. Why I trusted him. He’d been a cop longer than I’d been alive, and he’d been a captain since before I reached double digits. If all I wanted was to be a cop, then I’d be a fool not to learn from men like Nichols. So I was at the picnic in shirtsleeves and slacks, as informal as I would let myself get, even surrounded by men and women in shorts, tank-tops, t-shirts and skirts. Plenty of them were in uniform, too: men—mostly men—coming or going from their shift, but mostly they were casually dressed, and I was a little too formal.
That suited me just fine.
We worked our way through the picnic—this is Bruce, bad hamstring injury sideline him to desk work, that’s Ray, real fireplug of a guy, Jenn works Missing Persons, over here is Sandy, yes, he knows his hair is red, not blond—and I’d relaxed enough to accept, if not drink, the bottle of beer someone offered when I first saw her.
She was sitting on the hood of a purple car that had been rolled illegally far onto the grass. A dozen or more big men sat around the vehicle’s front end, passing beer and whiskey bottles back and forth, frequently via the woman on the hood. One bottle tipped as it was passed over, and the guy who’d spilled wiped the splash off the car’s paint job without thinking about it, like making sure the Mona Lisa didn’t get stained. I knew nothing about cars, but the paint job had to be Mona Lisa quality: the purple glowed with an internal shimmer, like someone had layered starlight into it. Its shadows were black and in sunlight the purple looked deep enough to dip your hand into. The only reason I was certain you couldn’t really was because she was sitting on it, not sinking in like it half-seemed she should be.
She was as startling as the car. Even from the distance she looked as tall as I was, just under six feet. Her black hair was cropped boyishly short. Aviator sunglasses rested on a beaky nose above a full mouth, and her shoulders were broad and square. She had muscular arms bared by a white tank-top. Not the slender long muscles women got from careful gym regimes, but bulk, real strength, like she did heavy work for a living. Her legs were muscular too, and her bare feet dangled over the car’s grill. She made me think of pin-up models, except strong and lean instead of bombshell curves.
“Thought you liked petite redheads.”
“What?” I looked away from the woman.
Nichols hid a grin, poorly. “Thought you liked petite redheads. Curvy ones. Seems to be what you date.”
Heat built around my collar. “She caught my eye, that’s all. Who is she?”
“Joanne Walker. One of our mechanics.”
I hated that I said it: “She’s a mechanic?” She looked like a mechanic’s girlfriend. She looked like the luckiest mechanic in Seattle’s girlfriend, but like a girlfriend.
“Mm. She rebuilt that car she’s sitting on. Calls it Petite.”
“Her car has a name?” Worse than having a name, it was emblazoned on the license plate, suddenly visible as someone leaned over to get another beer.
“A lot of people name their cars, Mike. Anyway, she put herself through college on scholarships and working at Chelsea’s Garage over in the University District,” Nelson went on. “I’d seen her a few times. Recognized her when she came in to apply for the Motor Pool job last fall.”
“She’s hard to miss.”
Nichols nodded. “She’s half Cherokee. I wanted her to join the force, but the idea scared her.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “She’s six feet tall. How can anything scare her?”
Nichols laughed. “She’s a kid, Mike. About twenty-three. She doesn’t know a damned thing about herself, and she’s not ready to stick her head out past what she’s familiar with, not yet. She’s smart and she’s great with cars, and right now that’s all she’s ready for. I talked her into going to the Academy before she started in the Motor Pool, just in case it woke her up to her own potential.”
Twenty-three. Ten years younger than me. Too young, even if she wasn’t an employee. I shook my head without knowing I’d done it and saw it reflected in Nichols’ eyes. Not just his eyes, but in his expression, too, like he was seeing something I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. “Did it? Not if she’s one of the mechanics.”
“She graduated in the top third of her class. Too proud to do worse, I think, and too cautious to do better. Except in the defensive driving course. They said she was the best driver they’d ever had come through the school. She was a good shot, too, not afraid of guns. But she wanted the Motor Pool when she came back, and I thought it wasn’t time to push her. Not yet. So she’s down in the garage for now. I’d wondered at first if she’d get along, the only woman down there, but…”
He gestured, encompassing the ring of men littered around the purple car. Walker sat above them like their queen, laughing and passing alcohol back and forth. She leaned over and stole somebody’s burger for a bite, then handed it back, and he didn’t complain. “Not a problem,” I said dryly.
“I think she’s their mascot, if you can put mascots on a pedestal. That’s most of the Motor Pool over there. You want me to introduce you?”
“Maybe later.”
Nichols failed a second time to hide his grin. “Right. Well. I think I’ll go grab some of Elise—that’s Bruce’s wife—some of her potato salad. If they ever invite you to dinner, say yes. Elise is one of the best cooks I’d ever met.”
“Will do.” I watched Nichols retreat—because that’s what he was doing, and without a hint of subtlety—then went back to studying Joanne Walker.
Smart money was on walking away, or waiting for Nichols to come back and put a badge and a formal introduction between us. The woman—the girl—was an employee, and I wasn’t going to start my captain’s career with a score like that against me. I hadn’t come this far this fast by making stupid mistakes.
But for some reason I had to see which of us was taller. I was halfway to the gathering at the purple car before I realized it, and then Walker noticed me and it was too late to find another destination.
She slid off the car’s hood and stepped over one of the men surrounding it. Long legs and Daisy-May shorts: the man she’d stepped over grinned until he couldn’t anymore, and one of the others hit his shoulder in a combination of envy and praise. Walker ignored them and came up to me, stopping a few feet away. I was taller, but only just, and she was barefoot, which put her at the disadvantage.
It didn’t seem to bother her. She tipped her aviator shades down, revealing hazel eyes that tended toward green. She looked me over from head to toe and back again, then gave me a slow smile. “Hi. I’m Joanne Walker. Joanie.”