“I’ve never heard them speak disrespectfully,” Mrs. Erickson began.

“I hope you’ve never heard them speak about me at all.”

Mrs. Erickson smiled. “Well, now I can’t embarrass you by telling you about the positive things they’ve said. You’ve come a long way since we first met.”

“Since things are slow, what did you bring us today?”

Mrs. Erickson’s smile deepened; she lifted the lid of her basket. “Small cakes,” she said. “I thought the corporal might be tired of cookies.”

“You expected her at the desk?”

“Yes, dear—I know her partner has been on active solo duty.”

Sergeant Keele nodded, and accepted the small cake she was offered. “She told you that, did she?”

“Oh, no—it was my friends. The outside ghosts. The corporal isn’t allowed to discuss her partner’s work.”

The sergeant’s expression barely flickered—but if it was true that Keele had served on this desk when she was a lowly private, she expected to hear about Mrs. Erickson’s ghostly friends. No one who worked the desk expected her to talk about anything else—it was the theoretical reason she visited, after all.

Kaylin decided then and there to go through the reports generated by Mrs. Erickson’s other visits.

“You didn’t report that,” Sergeant Keele said. This caused a different kind of shock: it meant Keele was actually reading the reports Mrs. Erickson generated.

“Well, no. I know we’re not supposed to discuss those things. My friends do because they can’t really interact with other people and they want something to talk about. But I almost never share.”

“Almost?”

“Well, I’m speaking with you right now—and with the corporal.”

“The corporal and I will speak about this after she’s escorted you home today.”

“I hope she isn’t in trouble.” Mrs. Erickson looked, with worry, in Kaylin’s direction.

“Most of my job is this kind of trouble,” Kaylin said, smiling. “Why don’t you take a seat. Tell me what you came to report—you have to have something to tell Jamal.”

07

As it happened, Sergeant Keele asked to speak to Kaylin privately before she could escort Mrs. Erickson home. Mrs. Erickson looked worried.

“I won’t bust her down a rank, and she won’t lose her job,” Keele told the old woman. “But I do want her to check your stairs. Your house is old. If the stairs need some carpentry work, she can help arrange that.”

Silence.

The stairs were in perfectly good condition, as both Keele and Kaylin knew. So, apparently, did Mrs. Erickson.

“I’m just getting on in years, Bridget.”

“As am I,” the sergeant replied. “Corporal?”

Kaylin followed the sergeant into the interior office, but turned to offer Mrs. Erickson what she hoped was an encouraging smile. She said nothing because sergeants had ears and eyes in the backs of their heads.