One Cold Night

wheel in her hands to know who was boss.
    At twenty-eight, Lupe Ramos understood herself. She was young enough to call herself a girl and old enough to know better. She knew when people looked at her they labeled her in a thousand ways — girl, woman, girlfriend, cop, partner, bitch, fashion diva, life of the party, single mother, irritant — the list went on and on. She didn’t much care. In her relatively short life she’d been through it all, on the streets and off; these days, when she sipped her coffee, she paused to taste it. She paused because your thoughts were clearest when you took the time. And she tasted it because she knew that in her line of work every sip could be your last one.
    Mother at fifteen from dating some kid who was dead before their baby was born. Hector; okay, she’d loved him. Cop at twenty while working on her college degree. Detective at twenty-four while getting her master’s in criminal justice. Couldn’t have done it without her own mother, a “premature grandmother” she called herself, like all the other grannies on the bench watching their grandkids while their own kids finished growing up. Lupe hoped she wouldn’t be a grandmother at thirty, but if she was, so be it. She’d learn to knit and make the booties herself.
    She checked her watch: It was a little after two a.m. Most of the other detectives hated working the eight-to-four night shift, but she had requested it; it was a crazy schedule but it worked for her life. At home in the wee hours, she’d catch up on her e-mails and surf the Internet or do her nails or read a magazine to unwind, then have breakfast with her mother, Chiquita, and son, Orlando, before he went off to school. She’d sleep until about four, hang out with Orlando if he came straight home from school, then shower, pretty up, and eat her mother’s dinner before hitting the road for another night of Chase the Criminals. Wednesdays and Sundays were her days off, and today she and Orlando had a date to work on his social studies project after school. Ancient Mesopotamia, trade on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, early family life — the works. She’d looked forward to skipping her primping routine, throwing on some sweatpants and hitting the books with her son; and still did, if there was any chance of this call wrapping itself up neatly.
    She hoped the missing girl turned up soon, but as she was a family member of an MOS it could easily get complicated. Well, Lupe thought, there was hopeand there was hope. First of all she hoped the girl was safe; it was always a strange, angry kind of relief when the teenager came waltzing back home with that pissy look of triumph on his or her face. Look at me, I fucked with you, ain’t I just the cat’s meow! Oh, yeah, you’re super; now give me your cell phone and your iPod, and by the way, you’re grounded for, like, one year. Yeah, that was what Lupe hoped the MOS whose kid was AWOL would experience tonight: that teenage slap on the face that sent you to bed at dawn grateful that your baby was home safe. If not... well, Orlando would get the call that Mom was working overtime. It would break her heart to let him down, but he’d been there before; she’d find a way to make it up to him.
    As the car pulled to a stop on Water Street, Lupe dug in her purse for the lipstick tube that once again had gotten itself lost in her tangle of stuff. Her mother always said that a little makeup went a long way, and Lupe had learned never to meet a challenge without her lipstick. It gave her strength and volume. That white couple standing there, just behind Zeb Johnson, must have been the parents. They looked wiped out, really upset. Lupe hoped that stalker the other day had been a figment of the caller’s nervous imagination. She really hoped so. But then she saw a big mess of yellow paint on the street — and a footprint. Aw, shoot. Her antennae were getting that quivery feeling that usually meant a long night ahead.

Chapter 6
    Wednesday, 2:33 a.m.
    Water Street grew colder with deepening night, and the sour smell of fresh paint now seemed to permeate the air. Susan stood on a street that no longer looked familiar, her arm linked through Dave’s, feeling a pool of loneliness opening within her. Some terrible story seemed hidden in each stroke and drip of yellow paint on the sidewalk and cobblestones, and now it was more necessary and impossible than ever to make her confession to Dave. But how could she just