TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11

Eric had hoped that somehow he could get by without telling Jennifer. Dawdle in the morning, maybe, so she didn’t see him not getting into his uniform. It wasn’t until he tried that he realized how set the three of them were in their morning routine. Jen in the shower first while he got Jake up and started the coffee. Then he showered while she dressed and yelled at Jake to hurry up. Downstairs, he and Jake ate breakfast while she blow-dried her hair. He put away the milk and cereal while Jake fed the cats and Jen checked to make sure the boy hadn’t forgotten anything that ought to be in his backpack. Then out of the house, look for the bus, wave good-bye, slamming doors, and they were all on their way, to the middle school and the elementary school and the cop shop.

“What are you doing?” Jennifer bent over, towel-drying her hair. “You’re going to be late.”

He mumbled something. Went into the bathroom. Turned on the shower. Sat on the toilet lid and considered exactly how far he was going to go to keep Jen from knowing about his suspension.

What the hell, he had to take a shower anyway.

He sat at the table and methodically spooned Cheerios into his mouth while Jake read The Last Olympian and occasionally managed to get a bite in without taking his eyes off the book. Jennifer’s blow-dryer cut off, and he could hear her putting it in the drawer. She came into the kitchen. Paused with her hand on the refrigerator handle. “You’re not dressed.”

Eric looked down at his khakis and shirt. “Sure I am.”

“Why aren’t you in uniform? Is there something special going on today?” She frowned. “Are you working plainclothes?” Which he did, once in a blue moon.

It was so tempting to say yes. He wiped his mouth. Stood up. “No,” he said. “I’m off for the next ten days.”

Jennifer glanced at Jake, still lost in Percy Jackson’s adventures. She beckoned Eric into the family room. “What do you mean, off? You don’t have any vacation coming until Christmas.”

He took a breath. “I’m on suspension.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Suspension? Oh, my God. What did you do?”

He felt a flare of irritation at her instant conclusion that he was the problem. It could have been an administrative action. If he had been involved in a shooting, for instance. Which he would have told her about as soon as he got home yesterday. His anger deflated. “I got into it with a suspect who resisted arrest. The chief thought I was too … physical.”

“Physical? As in what? You hit the guy?”

“Look, Jen, he was—”

“You hit some guy, right?”

He looked toward the bookcase, littered with pictures of Jake and half-completed craft projects. “Yeah. I hit him. Put him in the hospital.”

She covered her mouth. “Oh, Jesus,” she said into her palm.

“Listen—”

“No. You listen. First it was yelling at Jake and blowing up at me. Then it was threatening that doctor. Now it’s beating up suspects.”

“For God’s sake, Jen, he threw the first punch—”

She shook her head. “You have a problem, Eric. A serious, serious problem. You need help, and your little group isn’t cutting it. I don’t know if you need psychotherapy or drugs or what, but you find someone who can help you and you get yourself sorted out.” She gulped. “Or I’ll leave and take Jake with me.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to wait around for you to start beating on us, too.”

Her words took his breath away. His stomach ached and his chest was tight. “I would never, ever harm you or Jake. I love you. You two are my whole life.”

Her face fractured. “There was a time when you would have said the same thing about a suspect. That you’d never hurt anyone if you could help it.” She pressed her fingers against her mouth for a second. “You were always the most conscientious, sweet-natured man I knew. Sometimes you had to do hard things, but you never let them make you hard. I loved that about you.”

Loved that. Past tense. His gut knotted itself even tighter. “I just need some more time. To get my bearings again.”

“You’ve been home four months now. It’s getting worse, not better.” She stepped back. Looked around the room. Lifted Jake’s backpack off the desk. “Get help. Or I swear to God, I’m out of here.”

*   *   *

Clare had tried dropping by the Stuyvesant Inn, to see if she could meet with Arlene Seelye, but the two MPs had been out. She lingered as long as she could over her mother’s menu options, but there was only so much time she could kill debating brown sugar versus mustard glaze on the Virginia ham, and eventually she had to leave unsatisfied.

When she got home, she had a message on her machine. “Hey, it’s me. Are you there?… No? Huh. Look, I’m sorry. I know this whole thing with Tally McNabb has been hard on you. I shouldn’t have hammered on you like that. I’m flat out today—I gotta meet with the board of aldermen about Eric’s suspension—but maybe we can have lunch tomorrow? At the diner?”

She tried to reach him but had to settle for playing phone tag. Frustrated, she called her junior warden, Geoffrey Burns, Esq. Not about Russ—there was no love lost between the two men—but about Arlene Seelye. “She’s investigating a theft from the army,” Clare explained. “The suspect is dead, but her husband lives here, and Colonel Seelye thinks he knows something about the missing money. What does she do?”

“She’ll go to Judge Ryswick for a warrant.” Geoff didn’t hesitate. “She’ll want to search the house and, based on what she finds there, any accounts that might be in either spouse’s name or further locations, like a second home, cars, boats.”

“Can she arrest the husband?”

“As an accessory? Possibly. She might get the Feds involved. Undoubtedly, your fiancé as well, since the guy’s in his jurisdiction. Are you sure you want to marry him?”

“Yes.” Despite their disagreement over Tally McNabb. “And I expect you to at least pretend to have a good time at the reception.”

Next, she phoned Assistant District Attorney Amy Nguyen. She had met the woman just enough times to justify calling her on a fishing expedition. Unfortunately, Amy hadn’t seen anyone fitting Seelye’s description at the courthouse, and she hadn’t heard anything about a possible arrest involving the FBI in their area.

That evening, she sat for a long time with one of the sleeping pills Trip had prescribed in one hand, and a highball glass full of Macallan’s in the other. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.

He’s not going to spring a blood test on me the day after I got the prescription filled.

She chased the pill down with a long swallow of Scotch.