Blue Smoke

father’s decided to be hurt and insulted because she didn’t leave him anything. He’s seen her maybe twice in the last five, six years, and he’s playing the grieving son.” He stopped himself, shook his head. “Sorry.”
    “Families are complicated. I should know. She made her choices, Bo. It was her right.”
    “I get that.” But he rubbed his fingers hard over the middle of his forehead. “I could give him a cut when I sell the house, but she wouldn’t like it. So I won’t. She did leave my uncle and my cousin a few odds and ends. I guess she made her statement. Anyway.” He shook it off. “Hungry? Why don’t I fix you dinner?”
    “You cook?”
    “A little turn of the leaf I made a long time ago—and by happy coincidence, I learned that having a guy cook is like foreplay to a woman.”
    “You’re not wrong. What’s on the menu?”
    He smiled. “I’ll figure that out. While I am, why don’t you tell me why you look tired?”
    “Do I?” She sipped while he opened the freezer. “I guess I am. Or was. Hard day. Want me to bore you with it?”
    “I do.” He found a couple of chicken breasts, put them in the microwave to defrost, then opened a vegetable drawer.
    “My partner and I worked this case. Flop hotel in south Baltimore. Single victim, female. Her head and most of her torso were . . . and I’ve just realized this is not really pre-dinner conversation.”
    “It’s okay. I’ve got a strong stomach.”
    “Let’s say she was badly burned, in an attempt to hide the fact that she’d been beaten to death. He didn’t do a good job of it, either. It’s all right there, like flashing lights.”
    She ran him through it, watching as he whipped something up in a small stainless steel bowl, dumped it over the chicken.
    “It’s hard, what you do. Seeing what you see.”
    “You have to walk a line between objectivity and compassion. It gets shaky. I guess it shook a little for me with De Wanna. All her cosmetics piled on the back of the toilet, the meal she was trying to put together.She loved the son of a bitch, and he’s so annoyed she’s pregnant again—like it was all her fault—he smashes her face with a frying pan, then beats her to death with it, panics, sets her on fire. Sets her hair on fire. It takes a special kind of callousness to do that.”
    Bo poured her more wine. “But you got him?”
    “Wasn’t hard. He’s dumb as a brick. Used her credit card—or tried to. Made us, though. Smelled cop the minute we walked into this sluggy little bar. Ran out the back, tipped my partner over with a garbage can. I’m in pursuit, catching up with him, climbing over a fence, rain’s pouring. I’m not even thinking then, just doing. He doesn’t know the city, traps himself in a blind alley. Turns around and pulls a knife.”
    “Jesus, Reena.”
    She shook her head. “I’ve got a gun. A gun, for God’s sake. What does he think, I’ll go eek and run away?” But a part of her had wanted to. “I’ve had to draw my weapon before, a few times before, but it was almost an afterthought. This . . . my hands were shaking, and I was so cold. Inside, not from the rain. Because I knew I might have to use it. I’ve never had to fire my weapon. I was cold because I might have to fire. I was cold because I knew I could. Maybe wanted to, because . . . I still had the picture of what he’d done to her in my head. I was scared. It’s the first time I’ve really been scared on the job. I guess it caught me by surprise. So . . .”
    She took a breath, and a drink. “Your offer of wine and dinner was well timed. I’m better off with company than alone. And it’s not the sort of thing I like to talk about with my family. It worries them.”
    It worried him, too, but that didn’t seem like the right response. Instead he gave her another that came to his mind. “Regular people don’t—can’t—understand what you deal with. Not just the stress, which must be through the roof, not even the personal danger. But the emotion of it, I guess. What you see, what you have to do about it, and how that sits inside you.”
    “There are reasons I got into this type of work. What happened to De Wanna Johnson’s one of them. And I feel better, so thanks for letting me go on about it. Writing a report doesn’t have the same cathartic benefit. Want a hand with dinner?”

    “No, I got it. It loses the seductive value if I ask you to peel potatoes.”
    “You seducing me,