Blazing Star

“You’ve gotta do something about Captain Curvaceous, Brick,” was Steve’s blunt greeting. “We’ve been talking it over, and we’re just not going to last. It’d be bad enough to take this kind of abuse from a man, even if we deserved it. But from a looker like that...”

“If I didn’t have another baby on the way, I’d quit right now,” vowed Clayton. “I’m a damn good cop, Brick. You know I’ve never shirked my duty, never run from a fight, never protested when you or Paul asked me to put in overtime. But I’ll be damned if I’ll take fashion lessons from a female!”

Each one of the men had a specific complaint to air. Some of them objected to writing meticulous reports; some objected to being told to shine their shoes. All of them objected to having to put the word Captain in front of a woman’s name. And all of them looked to Brick to make Karen vanish so everything would be the way it used to be.

Brick himself was torn. Up until this morning, he’d been quite certain that Karen Keppler was the enemy, a vicious-hearted woman who had no redeeming human features despite her tantalizing beauty. But during their latest sparring session, he’d glimpsed something in Karen he hadn’t seen before. A reason for her toughness...and a powerful longing for respect.

She wasn’t at all the cold fish he’d first expected. There was a genuine person inside that protective shell...an intelligent woman with hopes and fears and maybe even a sense of humor. Karen was determined to do her duty, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed being disliked. Brick was quite certain that his own resentment had truly wounded her.

After promising not to stab her in the back, he now felt a curious obligation to defend her from this communal onslaught. “Look, guys,” he said carefully, “we’ve got a difficult situation here. At the moment, this woman is the boss. Paul can’t help us anymore. I think our best bet is to try to play the game her way, at least until we get the lay of the land.”

“Why doesn’t somebody lay her instead?” one of the men joked.

“Well, hell, Brick’s got the best shot at it. He’s sleeping right next door to her.”

Brick battled with a sudden memory of the morning’s tango in the bathroom...Karen in her robe, he in his towel. He was rarely uneasy with women, but this morning he’d felt positively disconnected...and, to his absolute fury, he’d also felt aroused. He didn’t know what she’d been wearing underneath her robe and that magnificent black mane, but he knew it wasn’t a uniform. And he also knew, though he hated like hell to admit it, that he’d spent entirely too much time imagining what she looked like in the altogether.

His imagination was speaking to him now.

“I don’t know if ol’ Brick could stand sleeping with that porcupine. Talk about whips and chains! Can you imagine—”

“My point,” Brick said firmly, uncomfortable with the tone the men’s jokes were taking, “is that the oath I swore when I became a police officer means I have to obey her...at least when I’m on duty.”

Steve shook his head. “You can’t mean you’re just going to roll over and play dead, Brick! You can’t mean you’re just giving up.”

Brick’s lips tightened as he thought about the job that was rightfully his. But Karen’s rank required his public respect, and to his surprise, her honesty this morning commanded his personal respect as well.

Swallowing his own apprehensions, he insisted, “As long as she’s the captain, she’s the captain. No matter how bitter this pill is to swallow, in the line of duty we’ve got to give her the same allegiance we’d give any other cop.”

Orson Clayton said, “Hell, Brick, I’d like to strangle that broad, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever forget she’s a fellow cop when the chips are down.”

“Neither would I,” agreed Steve. “Neither would any of us. But I can’t see her rushing to an officer-in-need-of-assistance call if she’d scheduled the afternoon to dictate some damned memo.”

A day-shift guy said, “It’s just not fair.”

Another growled, “Dammit, we can’t count on her out there! I don’t want to get shot just because she does something stupid.”

Brick wondered, as the men shuffled out of the room grumbling, if Karen’s worst-case scenario might someday come to pass. What if she gave an order in a crisis and they all looked to Brick instead? Professional prudence would dictate that he relay his captain’s commands no matter what his own judgment told him. But his career wouldn’t be worth a damn to him if he ignored his own conscience and one of these fellows ended up dead.

* * *

BRICK LOOKED uncomfortable, but not surprised, when Karen asked him to give her a tour of the town later in the morning. Their odd encounter in the bathroom seemed to have cleared the air. She decided to ignore his whimsical farewell—bunkie, indeed!—and he seemed willing to give the illusion of respect during their encounters at the station house. There was a difference in the other men this morning also. They didn’t look quite so sullen and shocked as they had the day before.

Karen usually drove the first time she got in a car with a man, just to set him thinking of her in an equal light. This time, however, she decided that she needed to listen and observe. It was Brick’s town and Brick’s beat. She sat on the passenger side of the cruiser as he effortlessly took the wheel and filled her in on all the subtle things that a police officer needs to know about a new town. She couldn’t remember everything, but she made mental notes and a few written ones, too...especially on everything that pertained to Judson Ingalls.

As he drove, Brick recounted the highlights of Tyler’s history: tall tales of a Winnebago burial ground, stories of the original German and Swedish settlers, the beginnings of the now-fading tradition of dairy farming. When he told her a funny story about a local man who’d lost his favorite cow and found her in the middle of the town-square fountain, Karen was inspired to regale him with the highlights of her own disastrous first day as a rookie. They shared a hearty laugh together, and a little more ice was broken.

“This is the poorer side of town,” Brick informed her as they cruised to the south after riding for half an hour. “Not that any part of Tyler is really slummy. We’re not rich, we’re not poor. We’re just heartland.”

Karen took the opportunity Brick had unwittingly given her to probe into the subject of her secret investigation. “Does that go for the Ingallses, too?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you know about the Ingalls clan?”

“Not a whole lot,” she replied vaguely. “Your aunt and uncle were talking about them last night at dinner. Tisha was bringing me up to speed about a lot of things.”

“Tisha!” He laughed. “You’d be surprised how many tips we get from her. Not that anybody confesses to her, you understand, but she’s a shrewd observer with some experience in these things.”

“What kind of experience?”

Brick shrugged. “The story’s a bit cloudy, but I understand she used to be a gangster’s moll.”

“You’re kidding! And she lives under our roof?”

“Captain, give her a break. It was a long time ago. Besides, Tisha’s a good person at heart. She’s just...distinctive. I’d rather have a woman like that than one who’s colorless.”

Karen wondered if he was talking about her. She did her best to appear colorless on the job—she didn’t dare come across as sexy, especially with men under her command—but that didn’t mean she wanted a hunk like Brick Bauer to think of her as a dishrag. Her potent response to him this morning didn’t change the fact that their professional situation precluded even the most subtle of flirtations.

Before Brick could divine her thoughts, Karen asked, “So when Tisha comes across some evidence, does she report it to the station?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. This is Tyler. She deliberately drops some seemingly innocent remark over dinner that no one can ever trace to her. I put two and two together and go check things out. Sometimes it doesn’t add up to anything, but sometimes I make an arrest based on her tips.”

Karen watched him closely. “Is that the way you carried out investigations under Paul Schmidt?”

Now his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s only one part of the picture, Captain. I use every tool. There’s doing it by the book, and there’s doing it by the seat of your pants. Sometimes you need both approaches.”

Karen took a deep breath before she asked carefully, “Which one is helping you find out the identity of that woman they found out by Timberlake Lodge?”

Brick turned a corner and waved to a toddler digging a hole in the front yard before he nonchalantly observed, “That’s not really an active case, Captain. We figure she was either Margaret Ingalls or one of Margaret’s out-of-town guests. Nobody local was reported missing around that time, and we’d have no way of knowing who all was invited to those wild bashes.”

“The Judson Ingalls I met at the Schmidts didn’t seem like the partying type.” Tall, gray-haired, still robust, he hadn’t seemed like a candidate for Worthington House, but he’d given Karen the impression that he’d just as soon spend his Saturday nights at home.

“He’s not. That’s one reason Margaret left him. But before she did, she often brought her Chicago crowd back to Tyler.”

“You’d think Margaret would have noticed if one of her friends had disappeared,” Karen observed, certain that some names could be unearthed with sufficient legwork. “Judson doesn’t remember her mentioning anybody?”

“No,” Brick replied unhappily. “He doesn’t like to talk about Margaret. His daughter is one of Aunt Anna’s best friends, and she says she’s almost never heard him mention Margaret since she walked out on the two of them.”

The words struck Karen hard. A father and daughter, left alone by a high-flying mother: this she could understand.

Ashamed of the tightness of her voice, she asked, “How old was Alyssa when that happened? Was she grown?”

“Oh, no. She was a little kid. It was a long, long time ago.”

“About the time that woman they found near the lodge probably died?”

Brick did not answer at once. When he did, his tone seemed more guarded than before. “Yes, it was, and yes, we checked to see if anybody had ever seen Margaret again. The answer is no. But we can’t find her dental records, to check them with what’s left of the body.”

Karen wanted to ask how hard he’d looked, but she knew that question would take careful handling. Brick must never suspect she was secretly investigating him—Commander Harmon’s directions had been most specific in that respect. “When we get back to the station, Lieutenant, I’d like to go over the file with you,” she suggested, deciding that the best course of action would be to covertly track down the dental records, then assign the task to Brick to see if he tried to dodge taking the same steps. “Sometimes a new pair of eyes can spot something that you miss when you go over and over the same thing.” Before he could take umbrage, Karen added, “It’s happened to me lots of times.”

Brick nodded without comment, then pointed to a cozy-looking diner near the town square. “This place belongs to Marge Peterson. It’s where Tyler cops eat on their breaks and hang out when they’re off duty.”

“In that case, it would probably be a good place to stop for lunch,” said Karen, who was getting hungry. She also wanted to see her men in a different atmosphere than the station house. She knew it wouldn’t be possible for her to be accepted as “one of the guys,” but she still might gain some valuable insights about her officers and their town.

“Is that an order, Captain?” Brick didn’t sound angry this time, just unsure.

“It’s an invitation, Lieutenant. My treat. Good heavens, I never had to explain it when I said the same thing to my partner.”

She’d intended the words as a cheerful pleasantry, but for some reason Brick’s tone was jarringly cool as he muttered, “I guess now’s as good a time as any,” and parked the car.

Karen was sorry to see that he was glowering again, just when she’d hoped they were making genuine progress. It was an old story, but sometimes it really wore her down. How many times in her career had she run up against professional hostility from men? How many times had they opposed her openly or sabotaged her career behind her back? Her file was bulging with undocumented petty complaints by misogynist fellow cops. She didn’t know why she’d ever hoped she could expect better from Brick Bauer.

“Sometimes I think you forget that I’m a police officer, too, Bauer,” she said bitterly. “I’m really not so different from the rest of you.”

“Captain, you convinced me you were a real cop the first night we met,” Brick snapped. “You didn’t even have to show me your badge. You just dumped me on my head.” He studied her gravely. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be working overtime trying to prove yourself?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Karen asked defensively. “I’ve taken over a substation where not one man likes me or trusts me. Every damn one of them would like to see my backside hightailing it out of town so you could take my place. I have nightmares about waking up with you standing over my bed with a knife!” She hadn’t meant to confess that, not to Brick, not to anyone. But the words were out, and now all she could say was, “I’m in an armed camp, alone against the enemy. In my position, don’t you think you’d be guarding your flanks, too?”

His square jaw jutted out as he faced her. “Permission to speak freely, Captain?”

Warily Karen answered, “Of course.”

“You’re right that the men don’t trust you. They think you’re mean as hell. But you’re missing the whole picture of the Tyler substation if you think you’re surrounded by the enemy. You haven’t yet managed to destroy the camaraderie that makes being a cop in Tyler something special, and at bedrock, you’re still an officer, still part of us. We’re sworn to protect the public, and by God, we’re sworn to protect each other, too. The men may joke about you in the locker room and curse each time they hold one of your stupid memos in their hands, but if you ever have to draw your weapon in the line of duty, Captain, there’s not a man on the force who wouldn’t lay down his life for you.” Before she could respond, he finished, “What hurts us all is that we don’t think you’d do the same for any one of us.”

Karen wasn’t sure how to answer that. She was touched and wounded, honored and crushed. Clumsily she said, “I’m good with a gun, Bauer. If I thought I could save a fellow officer’s life, I’d use it without reservation.”

“That’s what Sara Ralston claimed,” he hissed. “Brave as a man! Every bit as smart. She was teamed up with Mark McVey when I made sergeant. She froze during a robbery, and some bastard shot him right through the heart!”

Brick made no effort to cloak his grief, and Karen knew he couldn’t have done so, anyway. She knew what it meant to lose a partner. Rob Laney had once come perilously close to death. The bullet scar on her left shoulder was a permanent reminder of how she’d saved his life.

“Oh, Bauer, I know how that hurts,” Karen sympathetically confessed. “When my partner was shot, I—”

“You froze on him, too?”

Karen pulled back, angry and hurt all over again. “Isn’t it remotely possible that I did my part? My God, officers go down all the time when they’re teamed with men! Nobody jumps at the chance to cast blame in those cases!”

“Maybe you did your part and maybe you didn’t,” Brick growled. “Maybe your partner was too busy worrying about you to cover his own back. All I know is that Mark McVey was my partner, dammit, and I know that if I’d been beside him, he’d still be alive!”

“Then blame yourself for leaving him behind when you got promoted, Bauer! Don’t blame me and don’t blame every female cop!”

He jerked back as though she’d hit him. “You don’t think I feel guilty for moving on and leaving him? You don’t think I feel the weight of it bearing down on me at night like a tombstone on my chest?”

The anguish that filled his eyes made Karen ashamed she’d added to his pain. In hindsight she realized that Bauer wasn’t trying to attack her. He was only wrestling with his own despair.

“Bauer, I’m sorry.” Instinctively she gripped his arm. “I had no right to say that. This is a terrible business. People die in any war. Your partner’s death was tragic, but it’s not your fault.”

Through his regulation jacket, Karen could feel the masculine strength of his corded biceps. His tense breathing seemed to match her own, heightening her keen awareness of his powerful warmth. She didn’t want to be touched by his humanity, his maleness, the vulnerable corners of his heart. It was so much easier to see him as the enemy. So much easier to keep a hostile distance.

Brick turned away from her sharply, breaking her hold on his arm. While Karen swallowed her hurt, he stared out the window for a long, quiet moment, then confessed, “Captain, I’ve got a lot of reasons to resent you. Deep in my heart, I know that most of them don’t have a lot to do with you as a person. I’m sorry I’ve been so damn hard to work with.”

To her surprise, Karen said, “I’m sorry, too.”

He managed a thin smile. His dimples barely winked. “When I said most of them didn’t have a lot to do with you, I didn’t mean I like the way you’re running the station. You can be a bear. I just meant that...if I’m going to hate you, I ought to hate you for the right reasons. All this other baggage—my promotion, Mark’s death—well, that’s not playing fair.”

Karen had to admire Brick’s ethics. Even when he was angry, he seemed like a man she could trust. He’d come a long way in the past two days, and she didn’t want to push him. Still, she had to ask, “I don’t suppose you could consider not hating me at all? The men will take their cue from you. I’d rather not spend the next few years on the outside looking in.”

Brick studied her for a long, thoughtful moment. “You’ve spent most of your career that way, haven’t you, Captain?” he perceptively observed. “On the outside looking in.”

Reluctantly she nodded. It was too obvious to deny. “I’m a woman doing a man’s job in a man’s world, Bauer. I’m always staring at somebody’s back.” She paused a moment, then went on to say, “I am who I am, Lieutenant. I can’t be anybody else.”

“No,” he quietly agreed, his blue eyes finally showing a glimmer of warmth. “I guess you can’t. And frankly...I don’t think you should have to be. I’m sorry if I made you feel that...well, that the real Karen Keppler wasn’t welcome here.”

Karen had no idea how to reply to that, but fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything. Brick abruptly ended their heart-to-heart talk by opening his door and hopping out of the car. He didn’t open Karen’s door for her—some policemen actually had tried to—but he did keep the diner door from slamming in her face as she followed him inside.

Blocked by his impressive height and broad shoulders, Karen couldn’t see around Brick to get a good look at the place, but she could certainly smell the pepperoni and hear the cheery repartee. The instant he set foot inside, half a dozen people raised a hand or called out, “Hey, Brick!” while Brick himself gave the group one of those dazzling grins that felled Karen every time it was cast in her direction.

One grizzled old farmer called out, “I hear that new she-bear is blistering your backside, boy! How can we help you get rid of her?”

The fellow next to him joshed, “Oh, Brick don’t need no help. Just you wait. He’ll have that filly on the run in no time. Everybody knows that captain’s chair is Brick’s rightful place.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” said a woman behind the counter in a pink uniform, an old-fashioned beehive and nurse’s shoes. The name tag said Marge, and the tone of her voice announced quite clearly that she was proud to own the place. She snapped a dish towel at Brick, smacking him sharply on his badge as she grinned at him.

Brick stepped aside so Karen could see everybody in the restaurant better, and so everybody could see her. Marge swallowed a small gasp as she read the name on Karen’s badge, and gave an embarrassed grin.

“Marge, this is Captain Karen Keppler,” Brick declared with more dignity than Karen thought she could have managed in the same situation. And then, as the room went from jovially cheerful to starkly silent, he said, “I imagine if you serve the captain one of your corned beef sandwiches, you’ll have a friend for life.”

Under the circumstances, it was a gift...far more than Karen had expected from Brick Bauer. “Nice to meet you, Marge,” she said cordially.

“Nice to meet you, uh, Captain.”

Karen was about to feign an enthusiastic comment about corned beef—even though she hated it—when Brick started ushering her toward a booth in the back. As he sat down, her eyes met his with open gratitude, and he looked back with a curious blend of pleasure and discomfort.

Suddenly she felt ashamed of how crusty she’d been with him ever since she’d arrived in Tyler. He was a man, and her promotion had certainly stripped him of his pride before his friends. How many men would have treated her with warmth under the circumstances?

Yet abruptly, to Karen’s astonishment, Brick smiled. It didn’t seem like an accident this time; it didn’t seem artificial or strained. He looked like a man who was happy to stop for lunch with a friend or a colleague. Who was maybe even proud to be seen with a beautiful woman. Who might be pleased to know that the woman in question secretly thought he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.

Unable to stop herself, Karen found herself grinning back, thrilled to see those blue eyes sparkle, thrilled to share even the briefest moment of camaraderie with Brick. Her happiness grew as she heard him say to Marge with deceptive nonchalance, “The captain says it’s her treat today, so you better start running her a tab.”

Karen swallowed hard as she realized that Brick had just handed Marge Peterson—and everybody else within earshot—his personal letter of recommendation. He could have let this crowd assume that he was stuck with her today because he couldn’t refuse to eat lunch with his captain. Instead he’d found a way to say, “I’ll vouch for Karen Keppler.”

It was nickels and dimes, but it was a start.

CHAPTER FOUR

BY THE END of Karen’s first week on the job, Brick had resigned himself to accepting her captaincy. They were certainly on much better terms than they’d been the first time she’d rousted him from the shower, but most of the time she still remained pretty formal, especially at work. At home or alone in her office she sometimes said something downright friendly, and if Brick really worked at it, he could get her to laugh. But in front of the men she was still all business, and in their presence Brick made sure to treat her with the utmost respect. They were still wary around her, but they kept their anger in check. Steve still didn’t trust her, and said so on a regular basis. Cindy Lou cowered every time Karen entered the room. Orson Clayton had bought a larger shirt and had gone on a diet. Everybody knew but Karen.

Everybody also knew that there was no point in worrying about a woman who’d been dead for forty years, but Karen insisted on pursuing that investigation, too. She’d even set up an appointment to talk privately with Zachary Phelps, who’d been chief of police back then. Naturally Zachary had notified Brick at once and had confidentially reported the gist of the conversation. Karen didn’t know that, either.

She also didn’t know that although Judson had divorced Margaret on grounds of desertion years ago, he’d never gotten over her. Proof of her death, even now, would rock him. It would devastate Alyssa. Brick dreaded having to break such grim news, but it was not a job that he’d entrust to anybody else. The Ingallses were practically family.

When Joe Santori had discovered the body some months ago, Brick had gone through the motions of a preliminary investigation. When he’d found out that Margaret Ingalls’s dentist was dead, Paul had told him that the time-consuming task of tracking down her dental records would have to wait until after he finished the legwork on a current case or two. Paul had kept him busy with something else ever since.