Five
The phone in her pocket felt heavier now that it had Roy's phone number in it. As if somehow the fact that she could call him if she ever, by some strange miracle, made it into Virginia was a sacrosanct promise. It shouldn't have felt as uncomfortable as it did, but she couldn't make the discomfort go away. So instead she turned it off and tossed it on the couch in her suite and laid back on the bed.
Nothing to watch on the TV, at least nothing without charging ten more dollars to her room bill at the end of the week. She wanted to see Roy again. Somehow they'd find a way to fill the hours, she knew. She had a sneaking suspicion how they'd do it, too, and she didn't mind that one bit.
But he was heading back to Virginia in the morning. Something came up, it was an emergency, so sorry. She thought about texting him for a minute. She even sat up, a few short movements away from standing up to go get her phone.
What would that have said about her, though? She wasn't trying to be clingy, but with the resort snowed in for what seemed to be the rest of the week, what else was she supposed to do? An old game console was in the cabinet beneath the TV, tied to the wall with a braided steel cable as if someone was going to be desperate to steal the hotel's fifteen year old technology.
She leaned back again. She didn't need more sleep. She didn't want more sleep. She wanted to have something to do. This was exactly why she never took vacations. There was plenty of fun to be had for a little while, enjoying sex with Roy. Then something came up, like something always does, and that was gone. Now she had a whole lot of nothing to do and a badge in her jacket pocket that said she was special somewhere else.
That was the other part that frustrated her. Her time on the job had gotten her a little stressed, sure. But being a detective meant that people's lives relied on you doing your damn job. Maybe a little bit of stress was part of the job. Had they ever thought of that?
Because every time some son of a bitch gets away with murder, gets away with rape, even gets away with a little armed robbery—that's a guy who knows, who's been shown, that the cops can't touch him. The first time is hard. It's scary. You never know. Maybe the police will catch you. Maybe they're going to put a ton of man-hours into the case and put the pieces together.
There are always pieces. Sometimes they're not the right pieces for a conviction, but the guy who works the case—he knows who did it. That's how it always was for her. Sometimes it was the wrong evidence, but she always knew. The work was making it stick, and that was a matter of combing the scene, compiling evidence, and finding the way that the puzzle pieces fit together into something like a compelling picture that says to the District Attorney, and then says to the jury, that this is the only guy who could have possibly done it.
Maybe everyone else had a family. Maybe they had their departmental bowling team, maybe they had their damn cocktail parties with the Mayor's office. Maybe those things were more important than making sure another woman didn't get raped tonight. But not for Erin. She sat up again, this time went over and reached for the phone. She had to look up times to get home. She had a job to do, and she had no reason not to be there. Especially not when the slopes were closed.
She canceled her tickets for Saturday morning. They didn't promise a refund but then they said that if they issued one, it wouldn't be for another day or two. Either way, she wasn't going to be on that airplane.
Tomorrow morning, six A.M. flight. She'd have to get up a little early, but that didn't matter. Five was sleeping in for her, anyways. She had to go back to sleep after she woke up a sweaty mess about every night. There was a time, before she joined the force, where it would keep her awake all night. No matter what time she went to bed, three or four in the morning she would be wide awake, images flashing in her head that she would never be able to get out.
She shook her head and pulled a water bottle out of the fridge, took a sip and used it to down her pills. Then she took a deep breath and laid back on the bed. She could go to sleep in a couple of hours, set an alarm for three-thirty. She would probably turn it off again before it went off, but the security would be nice to have until she knew she was up.
How in the hell was she supposed to pass the time, though? She took a deep breath. The only thing to do, then, was to find something else to do. She'd take a walk, maybe. There probably wasn't much to see. Families on vacation at the off-brand 'great spot' who had just as little to do as she did.
Well, either way, she could at least get something to eat. That would give her something to do, even if it didn't keep her busy for the three hours she had to kill before she could justify sleeping. She put on the work suit, already getting back into that mindset. It wasn't as if she had to worry about the impression she'd make on Roy.
He wasn't going to think she was a hard ass when he didn't see her. And she wasn't going up the mountain, either, because the blizzard had closed the way for emergency vehicles and it would be unsafe to wind down the mountain at twenty miles over the speed limit or something. She rolled her eyes.
It was their mountain, they could do whatever they wanted with it. But that was absurd. There were still cars pulling into the parking lot, even now. Obviously someone could get up the mountain. Were ambulance drivers prone to driving like madmen all of a sudden? If a dozen or more people a day could safely make it, with no wild stories of armies of people who hadn't, then every ambulance driver that Erin had ever known could make it.
She settled herself into the restaurant. She thought about sitting up at the bar, but it would have sent the wrong message. She wanted to take up as little space as possible, not get picked up one last time for the night. That thing with Roy had been a mistake. She pulled out her phone and scrolled down to his entry in her contacts list.
Her thumb hovered over it for a minute, hesitating for a moment. Then she long-pressed on it and hit 'delete.' A message asked her if she was sure, and she said she was. She would love to see him again. He was a great guy and she'd had a great time. But that wasn't the same thing as being a real relationship and it sure enough wasn't enough for her to keep a number in her phone in the hope that one of them moved across the country to have a repeat performance.