Break and Enter by Colin Harrison Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t
want
another woman. All that had happened thus far was that they had lived apart for a couple of weeks; not so bad, really. But where the hell was she sleeping? A friend’s house? Possibly, but Janice had a lot of pride—too much, in his view, though not enough self-esteem. Besides, she had moved out, she said, to lose her dependence, not transfer it. It was possible she was still in the apartment but had her phone disconnected, meanwhile taking and making calls somewhere else. He had called Information and she was not listed anywhere, nor listed as “unlisted,” so the phone number she had given him earlier was just a number among millions and wasn’t tagged with her name. It wouldn’t be too hard to get the address of the phone number through the police, but that was illegal. But all this was the wrong track, perhaps. It was
unlike
Janice to live somewhere without a phone. She needed one—she received calls from the women’s house at all hours of the night from staff members and women who couldn’t control their children or who were feeling suicidal or angry, or who wanted to complain about other women in the shelter, or worst, and common enough, had a husband who had discovered the address of the shelter and had threatened to come harm them or steal the children. Occasionally men showed up at the shelter—drunk, pissed off, explosively angry—and yelled the house down; it was not for nothing that the building had a police call alarm.
    He watched Janice inspect each bite of fruit as she ate. He admired her; she had pulled off some pretty spectacular stunts in helping wives hide from battering, angry husbands. He was certain she wouldn’t disconnect herself from the shelter, and thus, she
did
have a phone, was reachable somehow. He knew, too, that there was no way for him to work through the shelter, to call up casually and ask for his wife’s number. The shelter staff had always been quite pleasant with him—indeed, he knew most of them by name—but he was certain that by now Janice had told all of them of her situation—if only as an act of solidarity—and they would steadfastly refuse to reveal her whereabouts. This, after all, was what they were trained to do, and he was no longer an ally; in their terms he had crossed over to the other side. The easy methods of locating Janice wouldn’t work.
    “You won’t tell me or you can’t tell me?” he finally said, squeezing the words out in anger.
    “Both. Stop cross-examining me. Let go of this now, Peter. If we can talk, I’ll stay. If you badger me, I’m leaving. It’s really pretty sad that you have to sit there trying to figure out where I’m staying. Like we’re playing a game. I can see it all happening on your face.”
    “I don’t see this as a game—”
    “You
approach
it like it’s a game, something to be
solved
.”
    He didn’t respond, for suddenly he worried he had lost his notes for the trial that morning; he had spent an hour early that morning preparing the case.
    “Your briefcase is by your leg.” Janice smiled at him, and at the way she knew him. “What’s happening?” she asked, changing the subject.
    “You don’t want to know. A lot of sad cases.”
    “For once I want to know,” Janice said, leaning closer and smiling. Her blue eyes shined at him with cost-free affection. He’d take it, a chance to let out a little tension.
    “Okay… Last week I got a third-degree plea all worked out. A guy got in a fight with another guy outside a bar, two witnesses saw him hit the deceased with a section of a broken door that was in the street. We had it all arranged. Then three days after he pled, he changed his mind. You can do that, up to sentencing. So we’ll redo that in the spring. Now I got a case where a guy got jealous and killed his old girlfriend. He wouldn’t leave her alone, went after her. Very sad. The victim’s family is destroyed. We have a legitimate confession. Usually in a murder case with a