Let the Devil Out by Bill Loehfelm

smirking at their private jokes that no one else on the squad understood. But they weren’t schoolboys, she thought, the warmth in her hands dying as she squeezed the mug tighter in search of more. And they weren’t cops anymore. And it wasn’t always jokes that they whispered back and forth and hid from the rest of the squad. Sometimes the secret commentary had been flat-out criminal. Her ankle ached.
    As she shifted her weight in the rocking chair to relieve the pressure on it, the wood creaked beneath her and she remembered that this new chair was a replacement for the first one, a gift from her mother that had been shot to pieces by automatic-weapons fire. Quinn and Ruiz had been connected to the people who’d shot at her. Quinn and Ruiz had been criminals in cops’ clothing, Maureen thought, and they had almost gotten her killed.
    She picked up her cigarette, took a long drag, and picked up her phone. Time to call her mother in New York, she thought, blowing out a plume of smoke. Time to let Amber Coughlin know that her daughter had kept her job.
    Amber’s feelings would be mixed, Maureen knew, as they always were concerning her daughter’s choices. Part of Amber would be glad for Maureen; she knew how much Maureen’s new career and new city meant to her. And even if Amber didn’t understand Maureen’s love for what she did and where she did it, Amber believed that her daughter’s love for both of those things was real. But Maureen knew that another part of her mother had rejoiced at the thought of her daughter flaming out in New Orleans, because failure in Louisiana kept alive the possibility of Maureen’s return to New York.
    Amber answered on the third ring. “What’s wrong?”
    â€œReally, Ma? I can’t call to check in?”
    â€œSure you can,” Amber said, “but you never do. Whenever you call in the afternoon, it’s because you have bad news. When you want to check in, you call in the evening.”
    This is what happens, Maureen thought, when your mother falls in love with a detective. Weird, she thought, she never considered what had happened with Nat Waters and her mother “falling in love.” Had she ever even used those words? Her mother and Waters certainly never had. But here they were coming up on a year together, and they were happy, what else could it be? What else could she name it but love? And Maureen liked thinking about the relationship that way. She had never known her mother happy. Part of her ached at being so far away while it happened. But in her own way, Maureen realized, she was in love, too.
    â€œYour old mother’s smarter than you think,” Amber said. “So out with it.”
    Not that love and happiness had changed Amber much when it came to her daughter.
    â€œShows what you know,” Maureen said. “I’m calling with good news. Great news, in fact. I got my badge back today. My next shift is tomorrow night.”
    Maureen heard the instant’s hesitation before Amber’s answer as she adjusted her response from what she really felt to what her daughter wanted to hear. “I’m happy for you. I know this is what you wanted. And I’m glad they didn’t use what those crooked bastards did against you. I have to say, I wasn’t optimistic.”
    â€œI was,” Maureen said.
    â€œI know, though I don’t know why. You always see the world the way you think it should be. It’s why you’re always getting disappointed.”
    Maureen set her coffee down. She lit another cigarette with the embers of the first. Whoever invented e-mail, she thought, had conversations like this one with his mother. “Ma, did you miss the part where I said I got what I wanted? That things worked out for me.”
    â€œYou need to quit smoking,” Amber said. “How can they let you smoke at that job? Don’t you have to chase people, be in