Into the Night

The interrogation seemed endless. There were times when it proceeded like a fencing match, with her parrying their thrusts and deflecting everything they thew at her. There were times, too, when the three of them went through the motions of searching jointly for the truth.

The captain’s eyes, when they caught hers, seemed to have a fatherly glint in them. I have a daughter your age at home, they seemed to say. And she knew it would be easy to relax into the embrace of those eyes, to let them put her entirely at ease, but somehow she sensed that was how he wanted her to react. She couldn’t afford to let her guard down, no matter how warmly some man turned his eyes on her.

She steeled herself and went on playing her part.

A patrolman stuck his head in the door, said, “Captain Barry says Miss Chalmers can go home whenever she wishes.”

She got to her feet at once, the current instant being the “whenever” of her wishes.

One of the men said, “Good night. Hope we haven’t been too rough on you.”

She knew she ought to answer. She didn’t feel much like it, but reciprocal politeness is a habit hard to break. “Good night to you men too,” she said without any warmth.

She closed the door after her. A moment later she reopened it and stuck her head back inside the room. “Did I leave my handbag over there by the table?” she asked them.

Smitts glanced down at the chair she’d just been occupying, gave his head a shake. “I didn’t see one with you when we left the hotel. It’s my impression you came away without it.”

She backed a hand between her eyes. “What’ll I do for taxi fare?” she blurted out without stopping to think. A moment later she realized the hotel desk could pay it for her easily enough.

But Smitts’s teammate, who seemed to be a decent sort of person, had already reached down into his pocket. “I’ll stake you,” he offered.

To her surprise she saw Smitts slice the edge of his hand at him in dissuasion. She wondered why.

He turned around to her and said, “I’ll drop you off, if you don’t mind waiting for me a couple minutes outside by the sergeant’s desk. I’m going off at twelve.”

She would have preferred the offer to come from someone else, but the heat of battle had subsided now, and with it her grievance. She was too tired even to dislike him very heartily anymore.

She sat down on a bench out there. The desk sergeant looked her over curiously, then went back to his own concerns.

The “couple minutes” became ten, the ten, fifteen, the fifteen, twenty. She started to steam up again inside. She fidgeted, but she clung stubbornly to the bench. She kept hoping she could get some hint out of him as to where she really stood in the case. “Miss Chalmers can go home whenever she wishes” was too indefinite. She had to know: Was she in or was she out?

When he finally came outside to her at twelve-twenty, he put a worse finish to an already bad situation by clapping himself dismayedly on the forehead and exclaiming, “I clean forgot about you!”

“Obviously,” she said coldly, getting to her feet. The cutting look she gave him, if he had passed a finger in front of her eyes he would have lacerated it badly.

They got into the same car she’d been brought down in, and this time she was able to make out clearly that it had no markings.

“The cap had us all in for a last-minute briefing,” he remarked as he pushed off. “That’s what held me up.”

She wondered if it had had to do with her, and wondered if she asked him, would he answer. Before she could get up the nerve, a man with an itchy pedal foot in the adjoining lane started across the intersection before the light had changed.

“Wait for the light, bud. That’s what it’s there for,” Smitts said in a low-register growl.

The man turned and looked at him. She held her breath for a minute, remembering there was no insignia on the car. Then the man looked forward again and glided off, this time permissibly. He didn’t know what a close shave he’d had just then, she said to herself. One word spoken out of turn and...

When they reached the hotel, he got out on his side, closed the door, came around, and opened the one on her side. Before she’d caught on to the maneuver, he’d closed that one after her and they were both out of the car.

“All right if I come up for a minute?” he asked tentatively.

She turned swiftly and faced him. “Don’t you think I’ve had enough for one day? Don’t you think I’m tired? Didn’t the captain send out word I could go home?”

“You are home,” he said.

“Yes, but I want to be there alone, without any” — she looked him resentfully up and down — “supervision.”

“I’m off duty.”

“You’re never off duty. You’re trying to trip up someone even in your sleep, I bet.”

“I’ll only stay a minute. Can’t I have a cup of coffee?” Then he reminded her, “I bought you a cup of coffee.”

“And now you want your ten cents back, I suppose, is that it? Well, come on up.” And under her breath she muttered, “I hope you choke on it.”

“I’ll try,” he said accommodatingly, and followed her inside the hotel.