Read A Fine Specimen for Free Online

starting from Anderson Carter, who had noted that in
his groundbreaking study in the ’50s…
    Caitlin emerged blinking
into the bright light of a Southern California June afternoon.
    She needed to pay
attention here. Alex was very cool and very smooth. She’d just been herded out
of the police station without anything to show for it. He very definitely had
not said that she could spend time in the station for her research. All he’d
committed himself to was lunch.
    Man, he was good. A real
player.
    He put a large hand to
her elbow to turn her right and she instinctively followed his lead, behaving
humiliatingly like a little lamb in the presence of a wolf. This wasn’t good.
She knew better than this. She had to take back the initiative.
    Over lunch, he was
probably going to start listing the reasons why she’d be in the way, why she’d
impede important police work, why there was no question of her interrupting his
officers. He would be extremely persuasive and he had a very dominant
personality. There was a real risk here of coming away empty-handed.
    Pulling Ray out of a hat
like a rabbit would only work once. The Loot, as Kathy called him, was
perfectly capable of somehow twisting things around so that she spent time in
the Archives instead of the station house. Then, technically, he’d be off the
hook with Ray.
    “You don’t need to feed
me, Lieutenant,” Caitlin said. “I don’t want to take you away from your work.
All I need is a few moments of your time and your permission to talk with your
officers.”
    “I told you to call me
Alex.” He wasn’t even listening. “Here, let me carry that.” Before she could
even think of protesting, he’d shouldered her heavy book bag.
    Caitlin thought she
would have to scramble to keep up with him, but he adjusted the stride of his
long legs to hers and she was able to walk at a comfortable pace by his side.
    She tried not to watch
him as he walked along beside her, but it was hard to keep her eyes off him.
The man moved with a strong, easy grace, an alpha male animal in its prime,
head high, shoulders back, gaze direct. His jacket covered the shoulder holster
with its weapon, but he didn’t need it. He had the classic dominant male
posture. As he walked, he signaled he was master of all he surveyed.
    This was his street, his
turf, and here he was the king. Everyone on the street acknowledged him in
classic submissive or acceptance behavior. Passersby on the sidewalk dropped
their eyes to the ground. A news vendor across the street waved, a woman behind
the counter of a bakery shop smiled at him. A taxi cab driver gave a tiny hoot
of his horn as he drove by. Alex nodded to everyone.
    It was all very
pleasant, all very civilized.
    Caitlin had no doubt
that the street they were on had suddenly become the safest one in the Western
hemisphere. No crook in his right mind would attempt a mugging or a holdup in
the area with Lieutenant Alejandro Cruz walking around with his Glock 19, the
new weapon of choice of most police officers in the county—she’d checked—snugly
fitted into his shoulder holster. He probably had a backup weapon in an ankle
holster and his hands looked large and sinewy and strong enough to be
considered weapons themselves. He exuded mastery and danger as he walked
silently alongside her.
    Were cops natural
predators, Caitlin mused? Or did the job turn them into predators?
    There was a lot of
literature on the fact that cops and crooks were the obverse side of each
other, operating on different sides of the law, but similarly equipped by
nature to prevail. She could even see Alejandro Cruz as a crook. A super-crook,
the kind who could coolly steal a billion then fade into the night.
    It would be really
interesting to see him a bit farther afield, not so close to his home
territory, so to speak, and observe his body language.
    Law enforcement
communities are closely packed entities working toward the same goal, like a
wolf pack on the hunt. Most