Page 5 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
Knox blew on her coffee. “Quiet. Granddad’s sick. I’m hoping it’s not the flu.” She looked toward the ceiling, as if asking for strength. “He refused to get his flu shot or the pneumonia shot this fall. Said it’s all a con by the pharmaceutical companies.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t even have to pay for them, for crying out loud.” Considering her grandfather was in his late seventies, diabetic, and had survived a massive heart attack a few years back, Russ could see why she was so frustrated.
“We could sic Clare on him. ‘No working if you don’t have your immunizations.’”
She laughed. “I may take you up on that.” She took a sip. “How are you doing? With…” Her vague sweeping gesture encompassed his life post-resignation.
“Not bad. I took a couple weekends and went up to the lake, to work on our place before the snow flies. My winter project is going to be clearing out the rectory’s carriage house. One hundred and fifty years of priestly junk.” He shook his head.
“Great. That sounds great! Anything fun?”
He paused. “We went to the tractor parade in Greenwich.”
“Oh, I was going to bring the kids, but we just didn’t get our act together in time. How was it?”
“Uh. It was… bright. Lots of lights.” No need to mention the “white Christmas” float.
“Are you,” she sounded hesitant, “job hunting yet?”
“Nope. Thought it would be good to cool off for a bit. Take my bearings and figure out what I really want to do between now and retirement. I started working as an MP when I was what, twenty? Twenty-one? I’ve been a cop ever since.”
“Do you miss it?”
He smiled, showing his eyeteeth. “No more than I’d miss my foot if it were lopped off.”
She took another drink of coffee. “Ah.”
The children in the choir began singing, then stopping, then going back to the beginning.
“How about you? How are things at work?” What the hell, she brought it up first.
She seesawed her hand. “MacAuley’s doing fine as interim chief. You know how he is—very organized and methodical. He was always good at scheduling and stuff like that.”
That Russ’s deputy chief had been less good at personnel and conflict resolution went unsaid.
“Eric’s back working full time, but we’re still shorthanded, and theboard of aldermen isn’t showing any sign of opening up their pockets for another officer.”
Russ hummed agreement. “We were understaffed even before Kevin left. I should have replaced him immediately, instead of letting the board get used to a skinnier budget for us. For the department.” Kevin Flynn, the youngest member of the MKPD, had taken a job at the Syracuse Police Department not quite a year ago. Russ could see now, as he hadn’t then, that he’d been unconsciously hoping the kid would return to Millers Kill. “You heard anything from him?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I’ve left a couple messages on his cell and on Facebook, but…”
“Have you tried calling Syracuse again?” Three weeks ago, he had done just that, to be told Kevin had taken a leave of absence for family business. Except Knox had called the Flynns, and they had no idea where their son was.
“No, I don’t want to be stalker-y.” She made a sound of frustration.
“Look, working undercover was hard on him. He’s probably also taking his bearings and figuring out what he wants to do next.”
“You think so?” Knox sounded dubious.
“Imagine you were trying to infiltrate hate groups for months on end, on alert all the time, having to watch every word out of your mouth for fear it would expose you. That sort of thing gets inside your head, Knox. It’s hard to shake.”
She sighed. “And in the end, it didn’t come to anything. He told me when the joint task force he was on got canceled. He was so mad.” She smiled a little. “Not something you expect from Flynn.”
“No.” Russ took a swig of his coffee. “It’s not. So yeah, I think it’s entirely likely he’s trying to decide if he wants to continue being a cop, if he wants to go someplace else, if he just wants to stay at home and raise his kid.”
Knox looked at him sideways. “I don’t need to point out Flynn doesn’t have any kids, right?”
“You know what I mean.” He took another drink of coffee to avoidsighing like a sad sack. “It’s a tough field. People leave for something else all the time.”
“Kevin once told me all he ever wanted to do was be a cop. He said he got hired as soon as he turned twenty-one.”
