Chapter Twelve
Eric
The phone in his jeans pocket vibrated again. Eric ignored it for the third time. He was off-duty, and Bree had agreed to dinner.
Bree looked at him over the top of her wine glass. “You have cop face,” she said. She stated it as a fact, not an accusation. It seemed she was still too observant for her own good.
“No, I don’t. I don’t have anything on my plate right now.” It was mostly true. Adam was lead on the Jane Doe case. They were dead in the water with the other three homicides. They were frustrated as hell, but Eric didn’t want to dump that on Bree. She used to be a good sounding-board, but she didn’t need that from him right now. He had to earn her support. Speaking of support, “How’s Allison doing?”
“Can we talk about the Bombers instead?”
Bree hated football with a passion. If she had to tolerate it, she preferred the Stampeders to the always-playoff-absent home team. “That bad?” he asked.
“Allie’s giving it a good fight.”
She wasn’t the only observant one. She was avoiding details like a pro. Eric had no idea Allison’s situation was as bad as Bree thought. “How are you liking playing full-time auntie?” he asked instead.
She finally gave him a real smile. “Oh my God. Taylor is addicted to My Little Pony movies. Do you have any idea how many talking horse cartoons there are? Tons. Taylor says we’re going to watch them all. She’s determined to convert me.” The sparkle in her eye said she really didn’t mind that much. It sounded like hell to him.
“How’s Adam doing as a sergeant? I mean, I know he wouldn’t have been promoted if he didn’t deserve it, but it seems like he started by being thrown into the deep end. You’ve had more than your fair share of murders this year, and it sounds like Adam caught a bad case.” Bree dropped her voice to ensure it wouldn’t carry out of the booth.
Normally he’d say ‘I can’t talk about it’, but Eric didn’t need to. Bree wasn’t digging. “Adam caught a Jane Doe. He’s taking it personally, and you know we can’t do that.”
“Of course not.”
He heard the teasing in her voice. Because it was bullshit. Of course they took their cases a little personally. Then, when they closed them, it was easier to let them go, knowing the victim got justice and the family got answers. It was the cases they didn’t close that dripped on their consciences like acid.
The waiter came by to check on their meal and top up their water glasses. The steakhouse was a good middle ground. Quiet booths provided the privacy they needed, but the dining room was large enough they wouldn’t stand out. The food was fine; the inoffensive recipes tasted good, but they lacked the personal touches Eric preferred to use when he cooked at home.
“What are you doing these days?” Eric asked. He’d been following Bree as much as he could without making it obvious he was keeping an eye on her, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“I got hired on as a contract translator with CBSA. It’s not overly busy in Winnipeg, but I’ve been called down to Emerson a couple times. They’ve offered me a full-time gig in Vancouver. It’s tempting,” she admitted.
Eric hadn’t heard that, but part of him was pleased for her. Law enforcement of all flavours preferred to keep their personnel under wraps, and the Canadian Border Security Agency would be a big deal for her professionally. They were a step up from local police and provincial courts.
It was good that he and the boys hadn’t screwed her career when they distanced her from her contacts in the WPS. But Vancouver was twenty-three hundred kilometres away.
His phone buzzed again. Eric couldn’t avoid it any longer. Neither Adam nor Mackie would interrupt more than once out of curiosity. To be pains in the asses, sure, but only once he and Bree were settled again. If this were an emergency, it would have rung non-stop. It was either genuinely urgent, or a whole lot of people had really bad timing. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
“It’s okay. Answer it already or they’ll keep calling,” Bree said.
He slipped it out of his pocket. “Parker,” he barked.
“It’s Collingswood. I am really sorry to interrupt your date with Bree but we caught a break,” Adam said.
“And it can’t wait till tomorrow?”
“We have a tattoo to add to Jane’s description.”
“What the fuck? How did we miss a tattoo?” The victim had been examined when she’d been brought into the emergency room. All distinguishing marks were supposed to have been recorded by the doctors and the forensic analysts.
“It was under the scabbing and massive bruise on her back. It was pink and purple so the doctors didn’t notice it while she was on the ward. The coroner found it when he was doing his post. The bruising had faded enough so the tattoo was barely visible,” Adam said.
“Will it help?”
“We think the perp might have given it to her. The medical examiner said it was new.”
“What is it?”
