The Front Read Free Page B

my chest,” she says. “Nothing personal. I tell all the men that when I’m alone with them in the back of the shop.”
    â€œDon’t assume I’m hitting on you,” he says. “Nothing personal. I tell all the women that when I’m alone with them. Tell men, too, if the need arises. So to speak.”
    â€œHad no idea you were such a cocky dude. So to speak. Arrogant, for sure. But wow.” She looks intently at him. Sips her soda.
    Green eyes with flecks of gold in them. Nice teeth. Sensuous lips. Well, a little wrinkled.
    â€œAnd here’s another house rule,” she says. “I have two legs.”
    â€œGoddamn. I haven’t said a thing about your leg.”
    â€œThat’s my point. I don’t have a leg. I have two. And I’ve seen you checking.”
    â€œIf you don’t want to draw attention to your prosthesis, then why do you call yourself Stump? For that matter, why do you put up with anybody calling you Stump?”
    â€œI don’t guess it might occur to you that I was called Stump before I had a bad day on my motorcycle.”
    He doesn’t say anything.
    â€œSince you’re a biker boy, let me give you a tip,” she says. “Try not to let some redneck in a pickup truck run you into a guardrail.”
    Win suddenly remembers his soda. Takes a swallow. “And another word tip?” She tosses her empty can into a trash bin that’s a good twenty feet away. “Stay away from literary allusions. I taught English lit before I decided to be a cop. Walter Mitty wasn’t a lot of different people, he was a day-dreamer.”
    â€œWhy the nickname, if it’s not about your leg? You’ve got me curious.”
    â€œWhy Watertown? That’s what you should be curious about.”
    â€œObviously, because the murder occurred there,” he says. “Maybe because Lamont knows you—even if she acts like she doesn’t. Or at least she used to know you. Before you got short and fat.”
    â€œShe can’t stand that I saw her drunk, and know a lot about her because of what happened that night. Forget it. She didn’t pick Watertown because of the case. She picked the case because of Watertown.”
    â€œShe picked the case because it isn’t just any old unsolved murder,” Win retorts. “Unfortunately, it’s one the media will love. A blind woman visiting from the UK is sexually assaulted and murdered. . . .”
    â€œNo question Lamont will milk it for all it’s worth. But it’s worth more than one thing. She has other agendas.”
    â€œAlways does.”
    â€œIt’s also about the FRONT,” Stump says.
    Friends, Resources, Officers Networking Together.
    â€œIn the last month, five more departments joined our coalition,” she goes on. “We’re up to sixty, have access to K-nine, SWAT, antiterrorism, crime scene investigation, and most recently a helicopter. We’re still making bricks without straw, but we’re on our way to needing less and less from the state police.”
    â€œWhich I think is great.”
    â€œThe hell you do. State police hates the FRONT. Lamont most of all hates the FRONT, and what a coincidence. It’s headquartered in Watertown. So she’s siccing you on us, setting us up to look like the Keystone Kops. We have to have some superhero state police investigator come in and save the day so Lamont can remind everyone how important the state police is and why it should get all the support and funding. A wonderful bonus is she gets back at me, makes me look bad, because she’ll never forgive me for what I know.”
    â€œWhat you know?”
    â€œAbout her.” It’s obvious that’s all Stump intends to say about it.
    â€œI don’t understand how our solving your old case makes you look bad.”
    â€œ Our solving it? Unh-uh. I keep telling you. You’re on your own.”
    â€œAnd you