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Hearts of Sand(34)

By:Jane Haddam


“I want to talk to her now,” Gregor said. “Even if you have to get her out of bed.”

3

It took Angela Harkin nearly twenty minutes to get into the station, and when she arrived she was not in uniform. What she was wearing instead was one of those sundresses whose tops were made out of something ruched and elastic, with thin spaghetti straps and a hemline that ended above her knees. Gregor noticed first that she did not have the kind of body usually associated with that kind of dress. She was stocky and short, built more like a man than a woman in many ways. The next thing he noticed was the way she walked. She kept her back very, very straight. She always looked straight ahead.

“Military?” Gregor asked her as she threw her huge tote bag down on the table in the middle of them.

Angela Harkin nodded. “Army, ten years. MP the last six. Then my knees gave out. I felt like an idiot, you know? I mean, what do MPs do if they’re not in a war zone? Mostly, they pick up drunks who’re overstaying their leave or causing some kind of trouble. You’d think anybody would be able to handle that kind of thing. Well, one of my drunks had a baseball bat and went right for my knees, and a couple of months later another one tried to drive over me, and here I am. Not that I mind being here. It’s a great place. It’s just that I always intended to make a career out of the service.”

“Angela gets a little bored,” Jack Mann said.

“There’s a lot to get bored about in a place like this, Jack,” Angela said. “Nothing ever happens here that can’t be cleaned up by a call to Bridgeport or a call to Hartford, and I much prefer Bridgeport.”

“There are always the calls to Washington,” Mike Held said.

Angela Harkin rolled her eyes and sat down. “I take it this is Mr. Demarkian,” she said, turning to him and holding out her hand. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you. You been over to Beach Drive yet?”

“He’s staying at the Switch and Shingle,” Jason Battlesea said.

“Good,” Angela said. “Then you know what it’s like. Great, big houses, set back, with their backs to the sea, and then on the other side with their faces to the sea. The ones that are right on the beach itself are more expensive. The Waring house is one of the expensive ones. So I patrol that, and I start at six o’clock. It was June, so it was light out. I made maybe three turns that night without seeing anything. And I mean not anything. I didn’t see any cars on the road. I didn’t see any people walking. Then I had to stop in at the Atlantic Club and check that out.”

“What was going on at the Atlantic Club?”

“Fund-raiser for Virginia Brand Westervan’s Senate campaign,” Angela said. “Virginia Brand Westervan is the congresswoman from this district, and now she’s running for Senate against an absolutely brain-dead jerk whose idea of fiscal responsibility is to eliminate homeless shelters.”

“That’s not true,” Jason Battlesea said, “and you know it.”

“All right, I’m exaggerating a little,” Angela said. “But not my kind of guy. Anyway, there was a huge fund-raiser over there and there was lots of security. We had a couple of guys on extra shifts, and Virginia had her own private security people. So I was supposed to stop in and look around and make sure everything was going okay. And I did.”

“And everything was going okay?” Gregor asked.

“Everything was fine,” Angela agreed. “Virginia came out and talked to me herself, and then she got this waiter to get me a bunch of these canapé things with lobster that were absolutely stellar. And I don’t want to hear one thing about what I was or wasn’t supposed to be doing on duty. I didn’t drink the champagne.”

“If this was a serious police department,” Jack Mann said, “you’d have been fired months ago.”

“I don’t like to hear that this isn’t a police department,” Jason Battlesea said. “This isn’t a high-crime area, but—”

“Trust me, this is a high-crime area,” Angela said, “it’s just Federal crimes and they’re all financial. We’ve already had five people from Alwych go to Danbury for fraud, three of them for mortgage fraud, which, as far as I’m concerned, is as bad as it gets. But anyway, I took a little time eating the canapés and then I got back in the patrol car and started another round.”

“And was it still light out?” Gregor asked.

Angela nodded. “It was a little,” she said. “It wasn’t full dark, and wouldn’t be for a while, but the lights in the Atlantic Club were all on, and the lights were on in most of the houses I passed after that.”