Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

dark, stringy hair, sallow skin, and another three inches and twenty pounds.
    That first night on patrol with Orlando had been ordinary, even boring. Nothing happened until they got a 10-10, code for a fight in progress. It was in a dark, dirty bar and had already turned into a pretty decent brawl when they arrived. By the time she and Orlando got the three drunk ringleaders cuffed, the pair of officers who had been called in asbackup were standing there with their mouths gaping. Orlando had a bloody nose and a bite on one hand. But Sheila hadn’t been black belt in karate for nothing. She was unscathed, even though she’d taken down the two biggest guys by herself. And she only had to do it once. From then on, the word was out. “Dawson gets the job done, whatever it takes,” they said. “She does what she has to. She hustles.”
    She wasn’t one of the guys—Sheila knew she never would be
that
. She would always be an outsider, a woman in the biggest boys’ club in America, and like the other rookie women, the target of a barrage of immature, frat-boy hazing stunts involving dead rats, used sanitary napkins, and porn photos. Sheila wasn’t privy to everything that went on in the locker rooms at PSPD, but she suspected that Kidder and the three other women on the force were probably getting the same treatment. Or maybe not. The harassment was likely to be more subtle these days, after the civil suit that had cost the city a bundle, forced Bubba Harris into retirement, and resulted in her being hired away from her post as chief of security at CTSU to take charge of a department that was in serious trouble.
    Anyway, over the years she’d been in police work, Sheila had learned to give as good as she got, and while she saw plenty of discrimination, she stopped feeling that she was being singled out. Orlando had become her mentor and her friend, as well as her partner. They’d made detective together, and for a couple of years in Homicide, they’d been partners, been a team. She had learned from him, and he had a lot to teach. She’d gotten bloody for him and when she was shot in a stakeout, he’d taken a bullet, too. For a while, their working relationship seemed to offer the promise of something more personal. But then Dan Reid had come along and pulled Sheila into his irresistible orbit. And a few months later, Orlando found the right woman.
    But neither he nor Sheila had forgotten their time together. He had gone on to be chief of police in a rural Oklahoma town, and she was here in Pecan Springs. They traded Christmas cards, and he’d sent a note when she got the job as chief. “Don’t forget what you’re there for, Dawson,” he had written, in his sprawling script. “You’ve got a job to do, and it ain’t just the paperwork. Do whatever you can to keep yourself from getting stuck behind the desk. You hear me? Just
do
it.”
    Stuck behind the desk
, Sheila thought uncomfortably. Well, she wasn’t totally stuck. There were other things in her life. Her glance went to the silver-framed photograph on the corner of the gray metal desk. She and Blackie, looking relaxed and happy in the easy, everyday outfits they’d decided on for their wedding—nothing like what her mother thought they should wear. If her mom had had her way, Blackie would have been trussed up in a tux and Sheila would have been on display in a white satin wedding dress with a six-foot train and her grandmother’s wedding veil, a couple of acres of floating tulle capped with a pearl tiara.
    “Now that you’re past thirty-five, you’ll likely only be married once, dear,” her mother had said, with only a hint of her usual snarkiness. “It should be an occasion to remember. You’ll let me pick out your dress, won’t you, sweets? Pretty please?”
    Well, she was nearly forty and old enough to plan her own wedding, thank you very much. It had been memorable without her grandmother’s wedding veil and the kind of dress her mother would choose. Memorable because officers from both their departments had been there. Memorable because Maude Porterfield had come down so hard on the words “’Til death do you part” that a titter ran through the audience. Memorable for the wonderful food and the warmth and affection of their friends, and for the idyllic three-day honeymoon they’d managed to steal at Blackie’s fishing cabin on Canyon Lake. They’d taken a couple ofother short trips together, of course—once, they’d even