Full Disclosure by Dee Henderson Read Free Book Online Page B

Illinois. No brothers or sisters. Never engaged. Her parents and grandparents have now passed away. She’s been a cop since she was twenty-six. She started out in Chicago in robbery and fraud, moved to major crimes, then to homicide. She worked directly for Howard Benson for eight years. He’d toss Ann into a case or a task force ahead of him and let her sort out what was really there. He put a deep well of experience under her belt, and when he retired, cops started calling her directly. Urban, rural, state, federal—she fits in wherever she finds herself and makes a contribution without stepping on toes. They all like working with her. She was voted in as the MHI five years ago, and they have done that unanimously every year since. I haven’t met a homicide cop in the Midwest who doesn’t have something nice to say about her. She’s made for the job.
    â€œShe’s learned to leave the cop at the door and turn it off—the job and the weight of it—and be somewhere else for an hour or two. When she was in her twenties I didn’t think she’d be able to do it, in her early thirties it was getting bad, but she’s doing it now, managing the images that come home with her. They’re there, behind her eyes, but it’s not pain bleeding out of her the way it did for a season. As MHI she gets called when a case is stressing out and getting on top of another cop, so it’s the worst of the cases she’s living with now. Grace is there now, and sacrifice. She’s seen so much of it she’s willing to deal withmore of it just so someone else doesn’t have to. She’s coping, and she’s making a point to cope.”
    Dave’s somber mood lightened and he laughed. “She’s a truly awful cook. Ann doesn’t like to keep house, garden, putter, cook, remember vehicle repairs, or go shopping, so she has people she trusts do most of what she calls the stuff of living.
    â€œI buy her a new pair of tennis shoes for her birthday every year because she needs them. Ann walks—her hands in her jacket pockets and a pad of paper tucked in her back jeans pocket and no particular destination. She’s off somewhere with that dog of hers. She’s not one for crowds, or concerts, or fancy places, or collecting things. She wants a sunset and a dog, a cold drink and a book.”
    Paul had been listening intently. “It sounds like she knows what she wants in life.”
    â€œShe knows what she likes. She’s busy, and she stays busy. She’s an experienced pilot, she holds a computer-engineering degree, she built a fabulous rare coin business, she traded during the last bear market and remodeled her current place with cash, and every seven years or so she picks a new direction and something else appears in her life. She’s carrying around art books recently. Her version of relaxing is to be doing something that isn’t a murder case.”
    Paul understood perfectly that search for a diversion. It took an intense focus on other things when off the job to balance the weight of working homicide. “I can relate to that way of relaxing.”
    â€œAnn takes it to an art form. She’s a writer. She won’t tell you. Not many know. She’s published fifteen books now. She thinks about the book while she flies. She’ll have thought through her book on yellow legal pads of paper and hours of flying, and it’s there when she sits down to put it into story form. She’s written Kate and my story, Lisa and Quinn’s, turned them enough into fiction they don’t jump out to friends as ours, but the heart of them is ours. All fifteen are that way—fiction, butpeople Ann knows well, who have stories she’s heard and seen and understood. They are good, solid books and optimistic, which is quite a statement for a murder cop to make. The flying, the writing, the hobbies that turn into businesses, that’s how she