“These are my stats, the real ones,” Hammer said as she left. “See to it he gets them when he’s feeling open-minded.”

School kids were getting the grand tour through the marble lobby when the chief’s rapidly clicking heels carried her out. She glanced at her Breitling watch without really noting the time. Tonight was her twenty-sixth anniversary of being married to Seth. They were supposed to have a quiet evening at the Beef & Bottle, the rare steak hangout that he loved and she tolerated. It was on South Boulevard, and it had been her experience whenever she had dined there that she generally represented her gender alone as she picked at her meat.

She began, as always, with baby frog legs sautéed in wine and garlic, and a Caesar salad. The din grew louder around them in this darkly paneled room, where city fathers and planners had met for decades, on their way to heart attacks. Seth, her husband, loved food better than life and was fully engaged with shrimp cocktail, hearts of lettuce with famous blue cheese dressing, bread, butter, and a porterhouse for two that he typically did not share. Once upon a time, Seth had been an enlightened and handsome assistant to the Little Rock city manager, and he had run into Sergeant Judy Hammer on the capitol grounds.

There had never been any question about who was the engine driving the train in this relationship, and this was part of the attraction. Seth liked her power. She liked his liking it. They were married and began a family that quickly became his responsibility as the wife soared and was called out at night, and they moved. That Hammer was her name and not his made sense for those who knew them and gave the matter a thought. He was soft, with a weak chin that called to mind the watery-eyed knights and bishops of portrait galleries.

“We should pick up some of this cheese spread for the house,” Seth said, laying it on thick in candlelight.

“Seth, I worry about what you’re doing to yourself,” Hammer said, reaching for her pinot noir.

“I guess it’s port wine, but it doesn’t look like it,” he went on. “It might have horseradish in it. Maybe cayenne pepper.”

His hobby was studying law and the stock market. His most significant setback in life was that he had inherited money from his family and was not obligated to work, was gentle, and tended to be mild, nonviolent, and tired much of the time. At this stage in life, he was so much like a spineless, spiteful woman that his wife wondered how it was possible she should have ended up in a lesbian relationship with a man. Lord, when Seth slipped into one of his snits, as he was in this very minute, she understood domestic violence and felt there were cases when it was justified.

“Seth, it’s our anniversary,” she reminded him in a low voice. “You haven’t talked to me all evening. You’ve eaten everything in this goddamn restaurant, and won’t look at me. You want to give me a clue as to what’s wrong, for once? So I don’t have to guess or read your mind or go to a psychic?”