tries a chuckle, swiping her cheeks. Frank wraps her arms around her best friend’s wife and for a minute they share the load.
The spring night is balmy, so they picnic on the patio. Tracey confides that they’ve been eating dinner everywhere except in the dining room. She can’t stand seeing Noah’s chair empty. After dinner, Tracey brings fresh beers. Leslie has disappeared into her room, but Mark and Jamie color near them.
Frank tilts her head, asking so they won’t hear, “How are they?”
Tracey blows her sorrow and frustration out in a sigh. “Markie follows me everywhere I go, and at some point during the night Jamie joins us in bed. They’re so confused. But at least they’re talking about it. Les just hides in her room. She answers me in monosyllables but won’t volunteer anything.”
“It’s harder for some people.”
“I guess.”
Frank lets Tracey study her.
“I was always amazed how you just sat and drank. You never said a word about Maggie. I used to push No to get you to talk but he’d just tell me to butt out. He said you would if you wanted to. Did you? Ever?”
Frank squints into the past. “Couple times. When I was drunk enough.”
For almost a month after her lover had been killed Frank would come over and pass out on the Jantzens’ couch. Noah would stay up with her until she fell asleep. The poor bastard had almost died trying to match her drink for drink and Tracey finally made him stop. But still he’d stayed up with Frank. They talked about little things, work and news. They shared silences interrupted only by the gurgle of Frank’s bottle.
Frank asks, “You remember the Pryce case?”
“Do I? Christ Almighty, Noah lived that case. He ate, drank and breathed it. Why? Did you get a bite on it?”
Frank’s head shakes in the negative. “I was thinking about taking a look at it.”
“Good luck,” Tracey says. “Excuse me, but I hated those rucking kids. Noah’d obsess about them all day at work, then when he finally came home he’d go straight upstairs to watch the kids sleep. He’d fall asleep on the floor and I finally stopped waking him up. I’d just cover him with a blanket and leave him there. That’s where I found him Christmas morning. He stuck around long enough to open presents then he spent the rest of the day at work. He stayed with his kids all night then went back to those goddamned dead ones in the morning.” Tracey shivers. “I hated that case.”
“Kid cases are tough. Worse for people with their own. Joe knew he was taking it hard, but he said every cop’s got to go through it. That it’d either make him or break him.”
“Yeah, well, it almost broke him. And then when the evidence came up missing? Christ, Frank, I honestly thought he was going to kill somebody. I’d never seen him that angry.”
“I remember.”
Most of the physical evidence in the Pryce case had been lost after analysis at the Scientific Investigation Division. Noah had gone on a rampage and practically instigated a lawsuit against SID.
Frank grins. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him any madder. The SID techs wouldn’t work his cases for months afterwards. Said they’d only work with me or his partner.”
“That’s right. You’d just gotten promoted.” After a pause in which Frank again reflects on how she wasn’t there for Noah, Tracey says, “It was good to see Joe, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Glad he came.”
“I assume you’re the one who told him?”
Frank nods. The beer is mildly anesthetic. Because she fears undoing its tender effects, she focuses on someone else’s pain. “How are No’s folks?”
“I don’t know. His mom still can’t talk on the phone, and Larry, well, Larry’s Larry. ‘Fine, fine, all right. Everything’s just fine. Awful business, but we’ll get through.’ He’s got that whole Leslie Howard, stiff-upper-lip thing going on. But he’s right. We’ll muddle through somehow, huh?”
Stretching for Tracey’s