Part 6

She was ready in six minutes, one full minute devoted entirely to locking up her trailer. Tobias doubted the local bank had as much security covering its vaults.

Dressed in jeans, black boots and a man’s leather jacket that was about as old as her, nobody would have looked twice at her in any major city. Hell, compared to some of the people Tobias had seen in the East Village her fashion sense was charmingly conservative. In Piper Ridge, her wardrobe choices smacked of the obscene.

Charlie threw a large brown knapsack into the back of the cruiser – it was in roughly the same shape as her poor, torn jacket – and climbed in beside it. Her long, pale fingers tapped impatiently at the mesh that separated her from the officers. The nails were chewed away.

“You look pale, Danny,” she said to Bounds, ignoring Tobias completely. “Did you see dead people? Were they scary? Did you have an accident in your starched blues? Do you need me to comfort you?”

“It’s been a long night,” said Bounds as he backed the car out of the driveway. He thanked any gods that might be listening that he was behind the wheel. Charlie was less likely to physically hurt him if he was driving. His temporary partner would have to fend for himself.

Tobias watched in the rearview mirror as Charlie stretched out across the backseat of the cruiser like it was a comfortable old couch. She was making herself at home in the back of a police car. Her eyes met his in the mirror, and he instinctively looked away.

“Who’s the new meat?” she asked, giving the first indication that Tobias was not just a figment of everyone else’s imagination. “Is he a mute? Hired to fill a quota? Or just charmingly shy?”

“This is Officer Tobias Master,” said Bounds. Charlie made a rough noise through her noise; her equivalent of a laugh. Bounds knew from experience what that noise meant. He forced himself not to speed. He was an officer of the law, and this did not warrant speeding.

Charlie made an elaborate show of inspecting Tobias, twisting her head this way and that like a snake to study him from every angle. Tobias found himself blushing under her gaze, and growing angry as the blush spread.

“The force is really scraping the bottom of the barrel,” she announced with the finality of a priest performing last rights, and slipped a bent cigarette between her lips. “Don’t you guys have an age requirement? Are we giving guns to fetuses now?” She turned to Tobias. “When exactly did you hit puberty? This afternoon?”

“Chief Foster has told you that there’s no smoking in police vehicles,” said Bounds. Not because it would do anything, but because when Foster demanded to know why the car stank, he could at least say he’d tried. The force had two official cars, and both smelled like cigarettes no matter how often you had them cleaned.

“Shut up Danny,” said Charlie as she rummaged through her bag for a lighter. Tobias thought he spied a long, nasty-looking hunting knife, but it could have been a nail file. He sincerely doubted it was a nail file. “You’re being rude. I’m chatting quite nicely with my new best friend Toby.”

“It’s Tobias,” said Tobias. Bounds smiled to himself in the dark, enjoying the guilty rush of being nasty in secret. Strike one.

Charlie cocked her head like a bird, lighter held aloft before her face.

“Tobias? Really? Hmm. Well, that is unfortunate, isn’t it?” There was a burst of light in the back of the car, and Bounds rolled down his window. Exhaling directly at the back of Bounds’ head, Charlie leaned forward to address Tobias.

“I must confess, I thought you were trying to be funny. Tobias is a name for sexually repressed accountants. Your parents must really have resented your birth. What are you doing in our humble town? I thought Foster had a moral issue against hiring those from outside the borders of our fair burg.” She waved a hand dramatically through the cloud of smoke, adopting what she thought was a posh accent. “Or jailbait. Must have been a decent fake ID, at least. How old are you, exactly? Has your voice broken yet?” Her voice dropped. “Do you have hair in strange and frightening places?”

Tobias was about ten minutes behind the conversation, so he didn’t yet realize that he was being insulted by a total stranger. He was too busy trying to comprehend how this could actually be Charlie Black.

In the brief time since he’d heard the name, Tobias had managed to construct a rather elaborate mental image. Charlie Black was a big, dark man. Quiet, but clever, and certainly thorough. Professional. Possibly former CIA, or ex-army, an old crony of the Chief’s. And while his assumptions had turned out to be almost comically wrong, he kept waiting for reality to conform to his preconceived notions of this person in the car.

“He’s Lisa Baer’s son,” said Bounds when it became obvious that Tobias would not or could not answer Charlie’s barrage of questions. “If you leave any cigarette burns in the car again, you have to pay for the repairs. Chief says.”

“What are you, an infant?” snapped Charlie. “Wait, Lisa Baer shat out a kid? Why didn’t I know this?” She seemed to look at Tobias for the first time. “Fuck, I feel old. She used to babysit me back in the day. Her boyfriend would come over after she’d put me to bed. Total slut.”

“She died this spring,” said Tobias sharply, torn between anger and trying to imagine Charlie Black as a little girl his mother would be capable of caring for. All his brain could settle on was a shorter version of this woman, with bleached hair and a cigarette stuck where her front teeth had fallen out. Bounds sped up the car. It didn’t count as speeding if you were within ten miles of the speed limit, he decided.

“She died? Really?” asked Charlie. “That’s devastating. I am overwhelmed with grief. After all, nobody has ever died before in the history of the universe. And she was such a saint.”

“Jesus Christ, Charlie,” said Bounds. “Back off.”

“How’s Joan, Danny? Still a small-minded, swollen shrew?”

“My wife is fine,” said Bounds. Speed limits were really just suggestions. And he was an officer of the law. This was an emergency, after all.

“You married her? No shit. I thought she just started calling herself ‘Mrs. Bounds’ after you knocked her up.” Bounds gritted his teeth. He knew for a fact that Charlie didn’t actually dislike Joan. They’d even exchanged polite conversation in public. Bounds often wondered if Charlie was physically incapable of saying kind things about people.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?” Tobias interrupted. Since his mother’s death, he’d become accustomed to the sympathy of strangers. Contempt and mockery was a new response. Charlie wrinkled her nose, briefly nonplussed.

“To Joan? Bounds got her with child,” said Charlie, throwing her dead cigarette out the front window and narrowly missing Bounds’ ear. “You know how babies are made, right? I don’t need to pull out the diagrams, do I?”

“To Lisa,” supplied Bounds.

“Why, was her death especially entertaining or horrific?” Something outside the window had caught her attention, and her voice trailed off. Tobias craned his neck, but couldn’t see what was so entrancing. Bounds’ eyes never left the road. He seemed to be blinking as little as possible.

“She had cancer,” he said. Charlie twisted her mouth into an ugly smirk.

“Shocking. Danny, why don’t I hop out of the car and meet you at the bar, because really, I could walk faster than you drive.” She reached for the door handle.

“You know they don’t open from the inside,” said Bounds in a rush. “And please don’t kick out the window again.”

“One time,” grumbled Charlie.

“Don’t you want to know what happened at the bar?” asked Tobias. Bounds winced. Tobias, besides being a dour bastard, was also apparently suicidal. Charlie rubbed her eyes like a child.

“Could you possibly tell me a single thing that Foster couldn’t tell me, only with greater intelligence and comprehension?” A splash of red and blue light fell over her face. “Shit, is every cop in town here? All five of them? Who’s watching the park?”

The sky was turning paler, although sunrise was still a few hours away. In the growing light, Bounds could see that Charlie’s face looked haggard, the circles under her blue eyes large and nearly black. He’d never seen her look so bad, and he vividly remembered the month when she’d discovered energy drinks.

“Is Charlie short for Charlotte?” asked Tobias, just to say something. Still feeling like he had missed something vital, and would never get another chance to discover it. Bounds pulled the car to a jerky stop and stepped out.

“No, not really,” said Charlie, her attention on the bar. Bounds opened her door. “Send a few guys over to the park. There should still be a regular patrol,” she told him, like he was supposed to listen to her. “Use the volunteers if you have to. Tell them, I don’t know, suspicious activity.” She stalked past an affronted Bounds and headed into the bar. Turner froze upon seeing her. Officer Morgan was briefing a few sleepy volunteers, but leapt back as if she was going to rush at them. Charlie didn’t notice.

Tobias got out of the car and leaned on the hood. Bounds was quietly trying to figure out if it would be worse to follow an order from Charlie, or get dressed down by the Chief for not following an order from Charlie. He noticed Tobias, whose Adams’ apple was convulsing in his throat.

“Did you really ask her about her name?” Bounds asked, rubbing his temple with his long fingers.

“Yeah.”

“Strike two.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m going to see if there’s any more coffee.”