First Avenue Read Online Free

have kept his mouth shut.
    “I wish I could take a shower,” she said.
    “Go ahead. I don’t mind waiting.”
    “No towel. I never thought I might need one.”
    He unzipped his bag, pulled out a towel, and tossed it to her.
    “I’ll wait for you here.”
    “You sure you don’t want to use it?”
    “I’ll wait until I get home. Go ahead. It’s all right.”
    “Thanks. I’ll hurry,” she said, and she was hurrying already as she went out the door to the locker room.
    His sergeant was in the patrol office waiting for the paperwork to be brought to him.
Sam
placed the slim stack in front of him and sat down in a chair beside the sergeant’s desk. The reading glasses that rested low on the sergeant’s nose made the old veteran look scholarly. When he wanted to look at
Sam
, he lowered his head a little more and peered over his glasses. He took them off and stuck one of the bows into his mouth.
    “So, you’re sure we’ve got two homicides here?”
    “I think that’s likely.”
    “Likely.” The sergeant repeated
Sam
’s word, not as a question, and not as a statement either. “You knew this Alberta pretty well?”
    “I knew her a little.”
    “Don’t you think you could just walk upstairs and give the detectives the benefit of your opinion? You’re kind of telling them here what they should do. They don’t usually like that. What if you’re wrong about the mother?”
    “Then I’m wrong. It’s no big deal.”
    “Maybe. So why not let them find her first? They’ll be looking for her anyway.”
    “They might not look in the right places. I think it should be written down. It seems like we owe her that much.”
    The sergeant nodded his head, the contour of his mouth slowly revealing a decision. He signed the report and handed the papers to
Sam
.
    “Drop them in the box, will you?”
    “Thanks, Sarge. Mind if I take a few hours of comp time? It feels kind of late to hit the streets.”
    The sergeant looked at the round wall clock above the door.
    “Don’t worry about the comp time. Give it back to me later.”
    Sam waited for
Katherine
in the report room. He propped his worn tennis shoes on top of the table and shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights overhead. The dark green chair on which he sat and the table beneath his shoes had not changed in the fifteen years he had assembled reports here, and the walls were the same lime color they had always been. Somebody had been fond of green. The typewriters had not changed either, and it was difficult to find one that had both a ribbon that printed legibly and keys that didn’t stick. This morning it was a particularly dreary place. He had heard that there were plans to remodel the whole building, to bring it up with the times and make it more efficient. It was said they were going to use soothing colors in the holding rooms to make the prisoners easier to handle. He thought they should use the same colors in the report room.
    Fifteen years ago he had not thought about colors in the police department. He had not thought about much of anything. The police job was only to be a temporary fill-in until he decided what he was really going to do. When he was twenty-one, nobody could have told him how quickly thirty-six comes, how time would stumble forward, day by day, paycheck by paycheck, until one day he would find himself wondering why he was still around.
    It was more interesting, he remembered—those first years back in the early seventies when he took literature classes at the university during the day and stood against his fellow students on the streets at night. He remembered the riot gear, the plastic shield of his helmet, and the long ironwood riot stick. With that stick he could block a blow aimed at him or strike one if necessary—maybe even if not so necessary. Cracking books by day and heads by night, he was quite certain then he could travel in both circles and not be touched by either. During that strange time, it did not seem