10th Anniversary - James Patterson [57]
“I brought you a fried-egg sandwich,” Claire told me as we passed the Berkeley exit and got a foggy-morning Bay view across the marina to the west. “I had the deli man put a slice of ham in there. And here’s your coffee. Extra milky.”
“You’re a sweetie, ya know?”
“I do know,” Claire said, chuckling. Man, she was glad to be getting out of town. By the time we hit the interstate, Claire was in full throat about her baby and my goddaughter, Ruby Rose Washburn.
She spared no detail in singing out stories about Ruby’s adventures in the pots-and-pans cabinet, her first taste of hot dog with relish, and how Ruby’s daddy was her favorite person.
“Edmund plays the cello for her,” Claire told me as I got in the Fas Trak lane. We crossed the Carquinez Bridge. I took in the view of San Pablo Bay and Mare Island, the site of the old Mare Island shipyard and the sugar refinery in the town of Crockett to the east.
“She lies in the puffy chair when he practices and coos along with the music. She loves Vivaldi, Edmund says. It’s all so delicious, Lindsay.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I couldn’t say more. I love Ruby Rose. I was looking for a missing baby. And I had babies on my mind.
I ached to have a baby with Joe. I wanted what Claire had — hot dogs and pots and pans and cooing babies. I wanted to hear Joe singing amazing arias to our child in Italian.
I didn’t even know they were there, but salty tears leaked out of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. I palmed them away, but Claire caught me in the act.
“What is it, Lindsay? What’s wrong?”
“Just tired,” I said.
“After all these years, you still think you can get away with lying to me?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“So, what is it?”
I told my best bud, “Once a month I get body-slammed by the loss of another opportunity, you know? Getting married makes me want a baby more than ever. It’s come over me like a freakin’ baby-love tsunami,” I said.
“You and Joe have been trying?”
I nodded.
“For how long?”
“A little while. Three or four months.”
“That’s nothing,’” Claire said.
By then we were on Interstate 5 about one hundred miles north of San Francisco. Knee-high thickets of scrub flanked both sides of the freeway, and wire fences separated the road from the plains of parched grass that stretched to the horizon.
The word “barren” came to mind.
“You having PMS right now?” Claire asked me.
“Yuh-huh,” I said.
Claire reached over and gave my shoulder a shake. “You’re getting a chocolate bar at the next gas station,” she said.
I croaked, “What is that? Doctor’s orders?”
Claire laughed. “Yes, it is, smarty-pants,” she said. “It most definitely is.”
Chapter 74
ANY COP WOULD SAY that emotional attachment messes with your objectivity. You just have to accept that innocent people get hurt, raped, scammed, kidnapped, and murdered every day.
But if you’re a cop and you don’t bring everything you’ve got to nailing the bad guys, what the hell is the point? For the same time and money, you might as well be punching tickets on a train.
We gassed up the Explorer outside Williams, then had lunch at Granzella’s, a restaurant that looked like a feed store on the outside and a hunting lodge inside. Claire and I sat at a table under the mounted heads of deer and bear as well as zebras, water buffalo, and long-horned goats.
Along with the exotic taxidermy, Granzella’s specialized in a very nice linguine with a spicy red sauce. While we ate, I groused about Avis.
“She’s wasted more than a week of our time, Claire. And she’s such a liar, even this could be a flyin’ goose chase.”
Claire clucked sympathetically as I ranted, then raised the heat by reminding me about the last big case we’d worked together. Pete Gordon, a bona fide psycho killer, had murdered four young moms and five little kids a few months ago in a murder spree that had torn me and Claire to pieces.
I went to the bathroom, sat on the rust-stained throne, and got some major weeping out of my system. Then I washed my face, came out, and said to Claire, “I’ve got the check. Let’s go, butterfly.