“You’re going to wear a hole in my linoleum, Cooper.”
 
I’m pacing back and forth between the utility room door and the rear patio one, swinging my arms, waiting on Weaver, mind bouncing recklessly between wishing she’d have major car trouble and wishing I was in cuffs already and laying my prints down for a uniform.

I just want it over with.  Whatever scene, whatever shit is descending on my head, I just want it done. 

McCafferty has showered and is wearing a pair of loose drawstring trousers and a matching tee, feet shoved into battered moccasins.  She’s flipping through a magazine, seated at the little breakfast table in the alcove at the rear of the kitchen.  

“You’re sure you’re okay with me leaving?” Jinny asks me for what has to be the thousandth time since she received the page requesting her presence at a homicide in the Mission district. 

“Hunky dory,” I say and try to lighten the bitter sound of it with a grin. 

“Uh huh,” she says.  “I’ll be back as soon as I can, alright?” 

“Well, you might want to check with your central booking first,” I say and shove my hands into my front pockets as I spin around for another tour of McCafferty’s kitchen.  The floor lino is in checkerboard pattern and I find myself stepping on only the white squares, listening to my head sing a children’s rhyme in falsetto. 

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back~~

“Let’s not go there until we have to, okay?”

“Mmhmm,” I say, glancing at her as I spin back around for the white squares leading me towards the front of the room.  “Well, there’s thinking pleasant thoughts and there’s expecting the best and then there’s just dealing with the shit and that’s where my head should be right now.  Dealing with the shit.” 

“I don’t see Kerry having you hauled off to jail, Cooper,” Jinny says, voice low and something only vaguely resembling laughter bursts out of me as I wheel around and make my way on the same squares in the opposite direction. 

“No?  Well, I don’t see her nominating me for a medal of honor either.” 

I stagger slightly when her hand flashes out and catches my elbow. 

“Don’t take it out on me.”

Her voice is very low and I look up into the exhausted pale green eyes and wince slightly before nodding. 

“Yeah,” I whisper.  “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay.  If you get booked I’ll bail you out.” She grins, hugely.  “I’ll use Massey’s SFPD money.  You can handle an hour or two in holding.”

I shake my head.  “It’s not the jail time I’m worried about.  Piece of cake.  I’m just dreading whatever happens with Weaver before that. And what happens with my L.T. afterwards.”

“Yeah, I know.  But you can handle that too.”   She hesitates slightly and cuts her eyes to where McCafferty is seated and then looks back at me.   When she speaks her voice is pitched intimately low and I shiver slightly in reaction. 

“You know I want to kiss you now, right?” she asks and I somehow manage to nod and look down at the hand gripping my elbow and caressing the skin there lightly. 

I look back up at her and there’s at least twenty seconds of breathless silence in which I am certain she’s going to kiss me anyway, even with McCafferty less than ten feet away.  We’re both leaning unconsciously towards one another and my line of focus has been slashed down to nothing but Jinny’s lips when McCafferty moves, making the chair creak slightly and then says casually, “You’re supposed to be making a different kind of scene, Inspector Exstead.” 

Jinny pulls back, winks at me and salutes her, grinning.  “Aye, aye Capitan.” 

She does a Terminator impression at the door, a rigid flat monotone, “I’ll be back” before winking at me again and I wait until the door’s closed completely before I turn and look at McCafferty. 

My mouth is way ahead of my brain when I ask it but I’m in a rash and careless mood at the moment. 

“So, you okay with that?”

It comes out rather aggressively, combative, as if I’m daring her to not be. 

She smiles slightly and adjusts the reading glasses on her nose to peer at me over them, before looking back down at the magazine in her hands. 

 “I can think of smarter things to have done.” 

Her voice is mild, the expression even more so.  She flips another page over and then adds, “But that’s more to do with her being under investigation and you being out here to pursue that rather than any sort of lesbian or gay phobia, so you can just settle down, Cooper.   And I wasn’t kidding about my linoleum.” 

She shoves the chair across from her out with a toe and I wander over and throw myself into it. 

“Better,” she says and I sigh, hard and slide until my ass is on the edge of the seat and my legs are extended straight out.  I cross my arms and manage to sit still for maybe ten seconds before I pull my knees up and let my right one jiggle and bounce at will. 

She takes it for less than two minutes before she groans and flutters the magazine closed on the table top and removes the glasses to peer at me. 

“You are driving me crazy.  Is it possible for you to stop?”

“No,” I growl.

She lays her fingers over her eyes and sighs something before peering at me between her hands. 

“What are you going to do if Kerry doesn’t want your ass hauled off to jail?  Have you thought of that?”

I snort. 

“Because then, I don’t know, you might have to actually deal  with what you did without SFPD slapping your hand for it. “

“Ooooh.”   I don’t even try to squelch the sarcasm.

“Ooooh,” she mocks me, eyes wide. 

I shove myself to my feet and resume my pacing.  Forty seven white squares to the utility room door; forty seven white squares back to the empty chair at the breakfast table and the one McCafferty is seated in, watching me. 

“Jase talked about me, right?” I ask after a few moments of silence, broken only by the sound of my boots on the linoleum. 

There’s no audible response so I glance at her.  I can’t read the expression on her face but after a moment she sighs slightly and nods. 

“So you know shit about me, in my background.  Right?”

“Some,” she concedes.  “Sure.” 

“So you know what?” I stop and glare at her.  “What exactly in what Jase shared with you, in whatever fucking files you’ve got, makes you think you know me?”

There’s a flicker in the dark eyes, but the smile stays, calm and bemused and contemplative. 

“What?” I demand.  “Because before you say anything, maybe I should tell you that not even Jase knew all that much and he knew me better than anyone.” 

“Did you ever stop and think that maybe that was one of the things Jase told me first?” 
 
God, I wish I was drunk.  Except I don’t want any alcohol in my blood when I get booked in, because I know they’ll take some; it’s standard on an officer related assault. 

“I think if Kerry were wanting you charged with assault she would have had me take you straight to the division, Cooper.” McCafferty says mildly and I realize that, of course, I’ve spoken aloud.

 “So what the fuck is she coming over here for?” I demand, belligerently, spinning and planting both hands on my hips in a way which would have made Magda hiss in mean-spirited envy. 

“I’m delivering evidence, I suppose.” 

The voice is small and when I whirl in the direction of the utility room she takes a slight step backwards before the green eyes flash and she defiantly reclaims it, fixing me with a steely, indignant glare.

“And I want to talk to you.

“I think.”


END OF 30