Chapter XV
The day was starting to wear down. The investigation had opened up door after door, but those doors had led to dangerous places. If what Marvin Berryll had told them was true, and it seemed likely, then they were faced with difficult choices. In the first place, one didn’t arrest golems. They weren’t people, they were constructs. In the second place, Marvin had indicated that they were indestructible. From a dwarf’s perspective nothing was indestructible. But that didn’t mean that he could do it with no one but Jessica Church backing him up. At the very least, he doubted their guns would be of any use. And ultimately, they were left with the problem of the investigation’s next step. Discussing it between them, neither could decide if the case was done or not. Evelyn wanted the name of the elf in charge. They had the name of the tattoo artist, clearly a formidable elf that scared the crap out of Marvin Berryll, but not necessarily the elf they were looking for. In order to find that out, they’d need to question him. Two private detectives approaching an elf about an investigation violated all sorts of protocols.
In the end, they went back to the office, designed their own paperwork, and grew acclimated to their new surroundings. Owen called Evelyn’s office to report their findings. She accepted it all without comment and complimented them on their fine work. When the afternoon grew elderly and they couldn’t think of a reason to hang around, they went their separate ways.
Jessica Church lived by herself in a studio apartment in Chelsea. She was on the first floor of a three floor walk-up. It had been about ten years since she’d moved into that apartment. Before that, she’d been living with her parents on Staten Island. Commuting to and from work had been a real pain. When she’d begun to get comfortable as a police officer and her salary had started to rise, she’d made the move. Still, her parents treated her like a baby. Her mother wasn’t even typical about it. Most of her friends’ mothers wanted to know when they were getting married. At least, they had wanted to know that before they were married. Now, most of her friends were not only married, but on their second or third child. Jessica remained single. It wasn’t for lack of attention. She dated often. Well, she had dated often up until about a year before. That was when she and Travis had discovered each other. After that, she’d stopped dating altogether.
It hadn’t been a particularly brilliant move.
The apartment was meticulously arranged. Jessica had done a lot with the small space. She’d divided it into a bedroom and living room, using privacy screens to mark the individual territories. They weren’t very tall, but they accordioned out far enough and they were pink with roses on them so they were pretty. The paint in the apartment was also pink, but just barely so. It was like the walls were slightly blushing. She loved the paint. She had accented it with furniture that was brown and green with red and pink highlights.
As she entered the apartment, she removed her gun and placed it on her nightstand. Most of the cops she knew had a strong box. They’d unload the gun and put it away whenever they got home, but she didn’t feel the need to do that. It was extra time spent in an effort to protect people who didn’t exist in her life. Then she went to the bathroom, washed her hands and face, and began setting about dinner. Jessica was a fanatic about dinner. She never ordered in and she never poisoned herself with frozen dinners. First she turned on the oven. On the counter, in a freezer bag, there was a defrosted piece of steak. She put it into a small broiling pan. Then she pulled some fresh carrots, celery, and onions from the fridge and set about chopping them up. When that was done, she scattered them on top of the steak, seasoned the whole thing up, and pushed it into the preheated oven.
While the meal cooked, Jessica turned on her laptop and began perusing the day’s news online. There was nothing of any great interest there. The stories surrounding Troy Van Walls and Travis Anton had thinned. She didn’t even bother to read them or watch the videos. Salacious G had released a new album. She’d liked him when she was younger, but now he seemed like a desperate old man trying to compete in an arena that he’d outgrown a long time ago. Another bank had failed. It was the third bank that had failed in the last eighteen months. All of them had been owned by humans. That made the circumstances suspicious but no one was going to do anything about it. Looking at stories like that, at things that should have been handled by the police, she discovered a sense of relief at being away from that arena. She was prone to making rash decisions but maybe, just maybe, this one would work out for her. Owen seemed a very decent dwarf. He gave her respect that, as a woman, she was hardly able to earn from many of her peers. He’d needed her and, surprisingly for a man and for a dwarf, he’d admitted it to her on the spot.
After a few minutes, she turned over the steak and waited some more. When it was done, she put the laptop aside and ate at the small kitchen table in silence. It looked sad, a woman sitting alone and eating a meal, but Jessica never felt that way. Dinner was a way for her to decompress from her day. She occupied herself with the meal and allowed the day’s events to coalesce in her mind. By the time she’d taken her last bite, she had assimilated all of what she had seen and heard. Sometimes she came to a conclusion. Sometimes not.
Tonight…not.
After dinner she would sometimes take a walk. Tonight she was too tired. Instead she called her mother. They spoke for a while before she took a couple of minutes to say hello and goodnight to her father. Then she called her sister, Olivia. Her sister lived in St. Louis. Well, more specifically, her sister lived in one of the suburbs of St. Louis. It was one of the few places in the world where there was a mixed population of humans and dwarves. Jessica’s sister had always been interested in dwarf culture. For as long as Jessica could remember, there had been dwarves in her house. Olivia would bring them home to play when she was little and for dinner when she was older. Their parents, a kind hearted and open minded pair, had never discouraged it. The result had been that a number of their family’s friends had been dwarves. It seemed that for all of her life, Jessica had been tied to the dwarves.
Olivia started by telling Jessica about the vibrations the killing of Van Walls was having in other parts of the country. Olivia herself was excited. She saw it as the pathway toward a change for the better. Van Walls was a genocidal maniac and Anton had taken a rotten life to save a good one. She asked Jessica if she knew Owen well. When Jessica told her sister that she not only knew him but that they were partners, Olivia began screaming in glee. They were on the phone for three hours while Jessica told her all about it.
It was late when she hung up the phone and she was exhausted. Checking the locks on her doors, Jessica readied herself for bed. She took a quick shower, which she did every night, tied up her hair, put on some thin pajamas, and crawled under the covers. She was asleep in moments.