Jigsaw – Chapter Nine

Tim woke up thinking about Max. There was a crescent moon lending a sliver of light to the room through the drawn curtains and he lay still letting his eyes adjust, getting the layout of her furniture. He knew she was there without looking, her breath dusting his shoulder in the slow rhythm of sleep.

He turned his head and studied the lines of her, her arm up under the pillow, on her side turned toward him. He would only have to shift the tiniest bit to connect with her, so he did. She was warm. He recalled a promise he'd made to himself, pretty sure it was him, to avoid getting involved with anyone for a while. The last hook-up-turned-dating-thing had evolved into a relentless effort on that woman's part to remold him into her idea of a man. The result was an ugly deformation that revealed the worst in him and he was an asshole to her, but she had earned it, and she screamed names at him that he definitely deserved and it was a while before he felt like himself again.

And now this…this thing with Jo, this was probably not the best idea, but how was he supposed to walk away when she was sitting on his lap.

Dating a neighbor was practically like dating a co-worker.

His body betrayed him, Tim Gutterson's very own personal civil war – he was getting hard looking at her, thinking about her touches last night, even while he tried to convince himself to collect his shit and get the hell out. He slipped a hand across the space underneath the sheets, dragged his fingers lightly up her belly and down her thigh to the back of her knee and he pulled her over closer and she woke up and mumbled something and wiggled to help him, draping her leg over his, her hand moving down from the pillow, along his face and on down his chest to his stomach, her nose bumping his, lips finding lips, and the battle was lost.

Next Door Neighbor Blues was up again on the rotation on the iTunes playlist downstairs, catches from it weaving their way distantly through the ceiling and into the bedroom, just barely there.

The sun still wasn't up when he woke the second time, more relaxed than he'd been in months. He was thinking about Max again and decided to do something about it. Max, like Tim, didn't sleep that well. Maybe he'd answer a call.

Tim sorted arms and legs from the pile until he'd freed himself, slid gently off the bed and gathered up his clothes in a bundle and walked softly down the stairs. He dressed in the kitchen and found his phone and dialed his friend.

No answer. He wasn't really expecting one. Today was Friday; tomorrow he'd head down to Atlanta and give Max lessons on cell phone usage.

Flicking on the kitchen light he rummaged around the cupboards finding the supplies he needed to start a pot of coffee. He still didn't have a key to Jo's place and he didn't feel right leaving her alone at four in the morning, asleep with the door unlocked. He slipped next door and grabbed his laptop, his WiFi working just fine through the walls at this distance, skimmed the news and read through a forum on rifle ammo sitting at her kitchen table until the sun came up.


The clock showed six when he finally shut his laptop and left, pulled Jo's door shut quietly and went to his house for a shower and clean clothes. Eager to start the day and finish the administrative pile-up from the past week, Rachel texted at seven, came by early to give him a lift to work and Tim didn't keep her waiting.

"Leslie just called," she said, tucking her phone back in her jacket. "She wanted to warn me that Art actually got out of bed early this morning, walked around the room a bit."

"Warn you? I don't think we have anything to worry about – four bodies and two service vehicles in the shop. That's nothing."

"That's more than the last year, and they're talking about writing-off the Suburban. You don't do things by halves, do you?"

"I liked that car – it was a comfortable ride."

They stopped for breakfast, bagged it to go. Rachel was distracted and Tim let her be – he was relaxed. The elevator ride was quiet.

"You look better this morning," she said, let him be the gentlemen, hold the door for her into the office.

"I had some sleep…in a bed." He walked past her to his desk.

"Vasquez called last night."

Tim stopped and turned. "Didn't take long for him to get you on speed dial."

"He wants to go after Boyd Crowder."

"Again?"

"I'm going to ask Raylan to stay and help with it."

"Interesting choice of words – 'help' – sure you don't mean run with it, like off the reservation?"

She shrugged one shoulder coyly but replied straight at it. "Are you okay working with him still? You two have had your differences."

"The enemy of my enemy and all that…" He waved it off. "I'm good."

"He said basically the same thing to me once. Said he didn't trust your mouth but you tended to keep it closed when you had a gun in your hand and he liked you best when you had a gun in your hand."

"I like Raylan best when he has his hat in his hand. Doesn't happen often enough. I think he's got the best of it. I have my gun in my hand a lot."

"I miss Art," said Rachel, a wistful sigh. She took her coffee off the tray, her breakfast from the bag and walked into the Chief's office, pulled a chair up to the door side of the desk and started sifting through the pile in the inbox.

They were all playing catch-up now, everything pushed to the side for the pressing matter of catching the man who held the gun and pulled the trigger and put Art in the hospital. Now that Darryl was dead the back-slide of work couldn't be ignored. Tim booted up his computer to start sifting through three days of neglected email, flipped through the phone message slips sitting in a pile on his desk while he waited. One from Atlanta homicide caught his eye and he set it aside to call back at a decent hour and the rest he ordered by importance. The Marshals Service had a hierarchy for fugitives and there were tasks that needed doing as part of the routine of the job.

First order of business was a cold-bore test for his SOG qualification that he had to do before month end – not a problem but it had to be done. He doubted they'd kick him off his sniper duties if he was a day or two late since he was one of the few in the area or on the SOG teams with night shooting experience or reliable accuracy beyond 500 meters, but the lawyers would be on someone's ass if they found out he hadn't logged it and had it witnessed and signed. So a trip up to the State Police training academy in Frankfort before lunch was now on his schedule – a good kind of mindless today, that trip, went well with the stiffness and the aches from yesterday.

Usually he'd get Art to come with him to a local range, sign off that Tim could hit the center of a target with his rifle clean and cold out of the case. It wasn't hard – he knew his weapon, knew his trade, knew how to compensate that first shot though it wasn't really an issue at the short distances required of him as a Marshal. It was a relaxed and controlled atmosphere, no stress at the range so he never missed. They would make an outing of it. Tim would watch Art fire off a few three-shot groupings and he'd give his boss tips on his form and then they'd have a coffee on the way back, talk about the job, the military, firearms, hunting. Going up to Frankfort alone wasn't nearly as much fun.

After Frankfort, he figured he should find Jo over lunch, tell her, as nice as it was, he couldn't do this.

He got up with his coffee and walked into Art's office to let Rachel know his plans, at least the part about the trip to Frankfort, stepped around the chairs and leaned against the desk facing her.

"You know, it'd be easier to get to the keyboard if you were in the chair on the other side."

"You know, you'd never lean on the desk like that if Art was here."

"He doesn't sit on this side. Walking around and leaning on that side, that would be weird, all up in his personal space, kind of like flirting."

"Are you flirting with me then?"

"No. I'm telling you my plans since you're in charge. Besides, I don't think I'm subtle enough for flirting." He thought about it, shook his head. "Nope. I wouldn't know how."

"Take lessons from Raylan before he goes. He's got that flirty smile down to an art."

"Speaking of Art, I think even he'd be better at flirting than me. I had a girl once tell me not to smile. She said it just came across as threatening."

"Oh, I've seen a genuine smile from you – not at all threatening. You look about six when you do it."

"Great flirting potential there."

"If she was a daycare worker."

He grinned.

"See?" she said, pointed at him with her pen, "Six years old."

"Why don't you move around to the chair? Art might not even come back to this office. You know that, right? Not this close to retiring."

Rachel looked across the desk to the Chief's chair, frowned. "Not yet." Her voice was barely there.

"All right. Anything you need me to do before I go?"

She stared at the piles of paper. "I'll let you know."

He walked out feeling a twinge of melancholy. It's never the same after the first time someone you know gets hurt. It can't be.

The homicide detective in Atlanta wasn't available so Tim left a message and replied to a few emails before retrieving his rifle from the locker and heading to the parking lot. He was in the hall when he remembered the Suburban was out of commission, went back to see the administrator and sign out a different car.

The one-way streets around the court house in Lexington made it convenient for him to pass by a particular coffee shop on the way out, the one that kept biggie-sized cups on hand for caffeine-addicted customers like him, decent strong coffee to pour on demand. He set it into the cup holder in the car and took another turn and drifted slowly past the Starry Night Café. Jo was out front working. He noticed the construction boots for the first time, grinned at the figure she cut in her overalls and sweatshirt, hiding all the soft places he'd explored last night. He slowed down then pulled in at the curb across the road, sat and watched her climb down her ladder and step back to the edge of the sidewalk to get a view of the whole mural. It was taking shape now, the circles of yellow and orange, irregular, their unevenness and imperfections making them more beautiful, set off by the darker hues of the background, the midnight blues and blacks, some mauve and brown, a single spire jutting up, dark. She wiped the back of her arm over her face to clear her hair back from her eyes then dropped both hands to her hips and tilted her head, thinking.

She had his phone number. It was on his card; he gave it to her this past weekend. She hadn't called to find out when she'd see him again. He was surprised she hadn't called. He realized he wanted to touch her. It was that simple.

She turned when she heard the car door shut, waved and grinned and loped over across the road, stopped short, a few feet between them.

"You came to break it off, didn't you?"

He nodded an affirmative then took a step toward her, a tug. "Yeah." He looked across the road to the mural, avoided eye contact.

"Well, you can if you want to. You didn't leave anything at my house so that makes it easy." She turned away.

"Hey, Jo…"

"I've run clean out of songs with that lyric, Mr. Marshal." She twisted to look at him, an easy smile. "That was nice last night, by the way. Thanks."

"Are you gonna be here? I mean, later. I'm working but…"

She strolled back, hands in her pockets, covered the last of the distance between them, right up against him and jammed her nose into his shoulder, into his neck, tilted her head and kissed his chin, then up another inch and bit his ear. He slid his hands around to her back, inside the overalls and under her shirt and kissed her on the mouth, hard.

Shit, he thought, this isn't working. He settled her back at arm's length before his body could convince him to blow off the morning and take her home. "Van Gogh," he said, clearing his throat, nodding at her mural. "Van Gogh, right?"

"Yep."

Her amused look wasn't lost on him.

"Fuck off," he said. "I'm not an art student."

"But you are a guy. Yes, van Gogh. He lost an ear, you know."

"His girlfriend bite it off?"

"You said girlfriend. That's a word with lots of baggage. You want to be careful throwing that around." She grinned, made it look easy like she always did. "Some say he cut off his own ear – got some crazy going on. Some say he was being a gentleman and lost it in a fencing dual with Gauguin over some prostitute."

"Huh."

"That's one possible reaction to a dramatic story." She was making fun of him again. "What do you want, Tim?"

"Can I buy you lunch?"

"Why don't you pick up something and we'll sit on your bench? I don't want to have to clean up. Takes too much time."

"Sure, okay."

She nodded, watching him. "I don't need you, but you fit in my world just now if you want it."

He didn't know how to respond to that, studied his boots. "What time?"

"For lunch? Doesn't matter. Whenever you're free. I've got another tiling job starting Monday so I'm going to get as much as I can done on this today and tomorrow and Sunday."

"I should be back in a couple hours."

"Where're you going?"

"Gotta do a rifle qualification up in Frankfort."

"A what?"

"I'll explain at lunch if you really want to know."

She reached over and poked him gently with a finger, managed to hit a bruise. "I wanna know."

"Ow."


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