Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

shot that he would even be in the precinct but I figured it was worth taking a drive.
    I rehearsed what I was going to say to him once I got to the precinct. I didn’t think that blurting out “I love you!” in the middle of the detectives’ squad room was the right course of action, but it was approaching dinnertime and I was hoping that we could sneak away for a drink or even something to eat so I could explain to him why I was the way I was. I went over all of my concerns in my head ranging from “how will your daughters feel about this?” to “my closet isn’t big enough for your giant clothes,” realizing how inane all of these objections sounded. I didn’t want to go to the lying, cheating husband well again—Crawford was right, he wasn’t Ray—but I had to get it all out.
    And then, answer his question once and for all.
    The precinct was its usual beehive of activity or den of iniquity, depending on how you looked at it. I had found a parking spot that seemed like three miles from the building, so by the time I jogged through the front doors, I was sweating, disheveled, and more than a little ripe. Any of the makeup that I had put on earlier in the day had melted off. It wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to begin my “Please Forgive Me” tour but it would have to do. I walked up to the front desk and spoke to the sergeant on duty.
    I tried to catch my breath. “Um, hi,” I said, realizing, too late, that I was more out of breath than I originally thought. “Is Detective Crawford here?”
    The desk sergeant, one Sergeant Tierney, a florid fellow reaching retirement age, stared down at me. “Um, hi,” he repeated, obviously getting a kick out of my attempt at a greeting. He looked sideways at another police officer who was pretending, unsuccessfully, to be engaged in typing a form on a computer.
    I took in a stale gulp of police station air. “Let me start over.” I smiled. “Is Detective Crawford available?”
    “Are you here to report a homicide?” he asked.
    If you call murdering a relationship a “homicide,” well, then, yes. “Uh, no.”
    Sergeant Tierney looked at me expectantly. “Then who should I tell him is looking for him?” he asked, taking in my sweaty St. Thomas T-shirt and wrinkled jeans. “The flip-flops are a nice touch,” he said.
    I ignored that. I already knew that I looked a mess. “Tell him it’s Alison Bergeron. “ I smoothed down the front of my T-shirt. “Is he even here?”
    “Well, we’ll just see,” he said. He snickered a bit with his cohort at the computer but I wasn’t in on the joke. He picked up a phone and turned his back as if he were privy to the Pentagon’s secrets. After a few seconds, he turned back around. “You’re in luck! He’s here,” he said, and waved his arm toward the flight of stairs that I knew would take me up to the detectives’ squad room. “Right this way.”
    I left the main area and trotted up the stairs wondering if the job made you crazy or Sergeant Tierney was just somewhere on the manic spectrum. I stepped behind the flimsy partition that separated the hallway from the squad room and looked toward Crawford’s desk, trying to judge his mood from twenty feet.
    When he saw me, he smiled. That was a good sign.
    And he held up a sheet of paper with both hands and proclaimed, “I know where Kevin is.”

Seventeen
     
    We were in Crawford’s “personal vehicle,” otherwise known as his Volkswagen Passat. He had logged out of work with the lovely and talented Sergeant Tierney and we were headed down the Henry Hudson Parkway at an alarming speed, me hanging on to the door handle for dear life.
    “So what’s Sergeant Tierney’s issue?” I asked after we took a hairpin turn on the parkway.
    “He’s a tool.” Crawford is a man of few words but the ones he uses are usually right on the mark.
    “I’ll say.”
    “Did he give you a hard time?” he asked.
    “I wouldn’t say that. I would just characterize him as exceptionally sarcastic.”
    Crawford gave a little harrumph. “Well, charm isn’t really a prerequisite for a desk sergeant but he’s just a—”
    “Tool?” I offered helpfully.
    “A tool.” Crawford slowed down to pay the toll at the E-Z Pass machine and waited for the mechanical arm to rise. It didn’t. The cars behind us, stacked up during rush hour, began honking noisily. Crawford reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his badge, and held it aloft outside the car window in full