Maximum Bob Read Free Page B

coming—when was it, fifty-nine? You’ve just about taken over.”
    “My dad was a police officer in Miami,” Kathy said. “Retired now on a disability. He was shot.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “My two brothers are cops, also in Miami. One with DEA, the other Metro-Dade. My sister’s married to an assistant state attorney.”
    “And here you are a probation officer. I’d call that a law enforcement family. How long you been with Corrections?”
    “Almost two years. I went to Florida Atlantic…”
    “Got married when you were in school?”
    “After I got out. While I was working in screening at South County Mental Health.”
    That seemed to interest him, the way his eyebrows went up.
    “I was working on my master’s in psychology, but changed my mind. Those seventy-hour weeks were too much.”
    “So you’re familiar with mental patients, how they act.”
    “At South County we had ‘consumers.’ They’re not patients till they’re admitted somewhere for treatment, or we sent them to detox. Most of the ones we saw were on drugs or alcohol, or both.”
    “You quit there to work for Corrections?” the judge said. “All you did was trade crackheads for fuckups. You like dealing with misfits, huh, losers?”
    “My ex-husband used to ask me that.”
    “He was after you to quit?”
    “If I could find a job that paid more. I was supporting him. He was in medical school when we got married, a first-year resident when we divorced. No, the problem, he was a superior being, but I didn’t find it out till after we were married.” Bad, talking too much about her personal life and the judge liked it, grinning. She got back to her job. “Working for DOC at least I’m outside most of the time. I have close to eighty-thousand miles on my car.” If he wanted they could talk about her VW she’d bought secondhand that needed new tires again, a battery…
    “You’re in the wrong profession, the Probation Office? A bright, attractive girl like you? It’s a dead-end street. Where do you go? Isn’t there something you want to be?”
    “When I grow up? I don’t know,” Kathy said, “I’ll probably get married again someday. I’d like to have kids.”
    “You already tried that. You have any offenders on Community Control? Wear the anklet, can’t leave the house?”
    “In the office. I don’t handle any myself.”
    “Sometimes you call it house arrest? Like being in jail at home. Or married to the wrong person. Am I right?”
    Kathy said, “I guess you could look at it that way,” wanting to get out of here. Next thing he’d be telling her his wife didn’t understand him, they were married in name only, had separate bedrooms, and that was why he saw other women occasionally and it would be okay if they had dinner together.
    But he didn’t. He said, “You studied psychology, you were at South County awhile… I can see you’re a person who naturally feels sympathy for others, their problems.”
    He was back on the track, coming at her.
    “What would you do if you’re having a conversation with someone and all of a sudden she becomes a different person?”
    He had to be talking about his wife.
    “Like a mood swing,” Kathy said.
    He leaned close over the desk to shake his head at her. “I’m not talking about a change of mood or tone of voice.” The judge speaking now, laying down the law. “I’m telling you she becomes somebody else, in voice and manner and what she says.”
    “Your wife,” Kathy said.
    “Leanne,” the judge said. “Originally from Ohio.”
    Chronically undifferentiated popped into Kathy’s head, but she wasn’t that sure it applied and didn’t want to get too far into this anyway. She tried to pass it off saying, “You’re different now, Judge, than you were in court. Don’t you think?”
    “You can call me Bob, or Big, if you like.”
    No she couldn’t. She said, “I’m different from time to time…”
    “How different?”
    “Well, like if