V Is for Vengeance

instead of sitting around in a stew of misery. Anger is about power. Tears are about weakness. Guess which category I prefer?
    I put a call through to Cheney Phillips at the STPD. Cheney was a fabulous resource and usually generous with information. I thought I’d start with him and work forward from there. Lieutenant Becker picked up the call and told me Cheney’d just gone out for lunch. Lunch? I checked my watch, trying to figure out where the morning had gone. It was clear I’d have to go hunting for him. I knew his favorite haunts—three restaurants in a four-block radius, within walking distance of the police department. Since my office was in the area, the trek couldn’t have been easier. I tried the Bistro first, the closest of the three eateries. I struck out there and struck out again at the Sundial Café. My efforts finally paid off at the Palm Garden, which was located in a downtown arcade, replete with art galleries and jewelry stores, leather shops, high-end luggage and travel goods, along with a boutique that sold trendy clothing made of hemp. The palm trees, for which the restaurant was named, survived in large square gray boxes, responding to their cramped conditions by sending out air roots that crept over the edges like worms. Really appetizing if you were sitting next to one.
    Cheney was at a table on the patio, accompanied by Sergeant Detective Leonard Priddy, whom I hadn’t seen for years. Len Priddy had been a friend of my first ex-husband, Mickey Magruder, who’d been killed two years earlier. I’d met and married Mickey when I was twenty-one years old. He was fifteen years my senior and working for the Santa Teresa PD. He left the department under a cloud, as they say, accused of police brutality in the beating death of an ex-convict. On the advice of his attorney, he resigned long before he went to trial. Eventually, he was cleared in criminal court, but not before his reputation had sustained major damage. Our marriage, shaky from the start, imploded for largely unrelated reasons. Nonetheless, Priddy had seen my leaving Mickey as my abandoning him when he needed me most. He’d never said as much but on the rare occasions when our paths crossed, he made clear his contempt. Whether his attitude toward me had softened was anybody’s guess.
    I’d heard plenty about him because his career had taken a similar left-hand turn after a shooting incident in which a fellow officer had been killed in the course of a drug raid gone sour. Len Priddy was a maverick to begin with, written up on more than one occasion for violations of department policy. Twice he’d been the subject of a citizen’s complaint. During the months-long Internal Affairs investigation, he was suspended with pay. IA finally concluded the shooting was accidental. He’d salvaged his standing with his colleagues, but his career had stalled out. It was nothing you could put your finger on. Rumor had it, if he took an exam, hoping for advancement, his grades weren’t quite good enough and his annual reviews, while acceptable, were never sufficient to rectify the blow to his good name.
    Mickey swore he was a stand-up guy, someone you could count on in a fight. I had no reason to doubt him. In those days, there was a posse of cops known as the Priddy Committee—Len’s boys, rowdy, rough, and given to busting heads when they thought they could get away with it. Mickey was one of them. That was the era of the Dirty Harry movies, and cops, despite protests to the contrary, took a secret satisfaction in the lawlessness of the Clint Eastwood character. The department had changed radically over the years, and while Priddy had hung on, he hadn’t been promoted since. Most cops in his position would have moved on to other work, but Len came from a long line of police officers, and he was too identified with the job to do anything else.
    In Priddy’s company, Cheney seemed to take on a different coloration. Or maybe my perception was affected by my knowledge of Priddy’s notoriety. Whatever the case, I was tempted to avoid the pair, postponing the conversation with Cheney until later. On the other hand, I’d searched him out in hopes of getting the lowdown on Audrey Vance, and it seemed cowardly to veer off when he was only fifteen feet away.
    Cheney spotted me as I approached and stood up by way of greeting. Priddy glanced in my direction and then diverted his gaze. He made a faint show of acknowledgment and then became