Page 66 of Deja Who
THIRTY-SIX
“You stabbed me,” Archer said for the third time, “which I generously overlooked—”
“Stalker,” Leah said as if talking to the air. “Stalker hired by my mortal enemy.”
“Okay, that’s a fair point, but you’re breaking up with me?”
“How can I do that? We were never boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“We were negotiating, dammit!”
“A month ago I didn’t even know your name. You, of course, knew mine. Because, as earlier: stalker.”
“I let you feel me up in your car!”
“Oh, ‘let’ me?”
“I gave you my innocence! Repeatedly! Which wasn’t part of the plan except you’ve got great hands and oh my God, your mouth...”
“That is quite enough about my mouth.”
“You used your sexuality as a weapon! And now, after you’ve callously gotten what you wanted—”
“What did I want, exactly?”
“—you’re breaking up with me because my daddidn’tkill my uncle? Cat will understand where I’m coming from,” he added darkly. “She, like me, was vilified for shit she didn’t do. Or people related to her didn’t do.”
“I’m breaking up with you—dammit!” As this was all happening outside a curiously empty desk (on TV the desk sergeants were always at their desks) while Detective Preston looked on with the unapologetic air most cops have (“yeah, sorry, I know this is none of my business, but you’d be surprised how often ‘none of my business’ turns into ‘totally my business,’ so I’m just going to linger and shamelessly eavesdrop, and sorry in advance”) while witnessing heated exchanges, she plucked Archer by the elbow, nodded a terse good-bye to a bemused Preston (who turned out to be almost okay given his previous life nonsense and propensity to yank the handcuffs off his hip before he had all the facts), and marched Archer out of the police station. As she expected, he bitched incessantly, and loudly, and didn’t appear to give a single shit about the stares and interest they were attracting.
Until then, the arrest-jail nonsense had been almost... not fun, but... interesting? Alarming yet intriguing? She wasn’t sure there was a word for it. She had never been frightened. She had never felt threatened. Mostly she watched and listened and, when she thought it was appropriate, commented. As at work, when she felt it was appropriate to comment, and when the person she spoke to felt it was appropriate, were often different. As at work, she didn’t especially care.
She had started on Preston in the car on the way to the, as Archer put it, hoosegow.
“All right. Here is my confession.” When she caught Preston’s startled gaze in the rearview mirror, she continued. “That was inappropriate. I should have prepared you before confronting you with past-life stressors.”
He made a strange noise from the driver’s seat, an amalgam of a sigh and an annoyed grunt. “That’s not even close to the confession I was hoping for.”
“Yes, well.” She watched the perfectly manicured lawns roll by, somewhat startled to observe that they looked exactly the same to her even though she was under arrest for murdering her mother. Was this her dearest dream or most awful nightmare? She had imagined Nellie dead so many times. She had imagined killing her so many times. Never by Emmy-induced head trauma, though. She had to give the killer points for symbolic originality. “I can’t oblige you on that one, sorry to say. But as to the other matter—”
“You’re going,” he muttered, occasionally glancing at her in the mirror, “to keep talking at me about this. Aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. Because it’s important, Detective.”
“How isnotconvincing me you didn’t kill the mother you admitted wishing dead important? How is anything else we could be discussing more important than you getting clear?”
“Sorry, I misspoke. It’s not important tome.”
“Aw, hell. Look, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Excellent.He was ignoring Cop 101, to wit, don’t engage with the psycho in the backseat. She had worried he would blithely ignore her, or feign interest while toting up an imaginaryscoreboard in the middle of his brain (Reasons I Can Justify Arresting That Pain in My Ass Leah Nazir).
“Nothing,” he said again, as if saying a word meant anything, or changed anything.
“Of course there is.”
He sighed. “The polite thing to do—”
“Don’t waste my time with Etiquette 101. You’re arresting people for homicide because they scared you and pissed you off—”
