Finnegan's Week Read Online Free PDF Page B

master-at-arms rate, and because she preferred to wear her blond curly hair loose, short and uncoiffed, avoiding eyeliner, skin toners, and excessive lipstick. Bobbie figured that was their problem.
    The funny thing was, Bobbie Ann Doggett didn’t mind feeling like a cop. She’d never dated a cop but had always wanted to, and like the rest of her generation she’d grown up watching television cop shows. The first time Bobbie got to introduce herself as “Detective Doggett,” it was awesome .
    Bobbie worked with two other investigators, both civilians, both men. She was the only military investigator in that nontraditional job. Like a city police detective, she wore civilian clothes, and unless something unusual occurred, she worked 7:30 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., Monday through Friday.
    Her civilian colleagues were okay guys, but they were civilians, and much older. They didn’t bring the same enthusiasm that a young military investigator brought to the job, and no wonder—they made about $1,000 less a month than their counterparts at nearby San Diego Police Department. In fact, when they factored in Bobbie’s pay and her military fringe benefits, she cost the navy twenty-five thousand a year more than her civilian colleagues did.
    Civilian investigators tended to stay on the job a long time except for one who’d recently resigned to take a position with a police department in northern California. He was the one who took a look at Bobbie Ann Doggett and said in a stage whisper to a senior chief petty officer: “Bad Dog, my ass. Five foot three in platforms. It’s what the navy’s come to: runts ’n cunts!”
    On the evening he’d said goodbye, Bobbie promised him she’d only sniffle, and try not to grieve hysterically when she saw his taillights disappear. The pissant!
    Bobbie sometimes toyed with the fantasy of retiring from the navy after twenty years and then joining the San Diego P.D. She’d be only thirty-eight years old, still young enough to do police work. But that was almost eleven years away. Right now, Bobbie was doing a job she loved, and she wanted to do it for the full three-year tour and maybe even get an extension. Sea duty she did not love.
    When Fin Finnegan was busy learning that tomorrow is another day, Bobbie Ann Doggett had already settled back into the office routine. The investigators and all other security personnel worked out of one-story wood-frame buildings just inside the main gate, buildings that had served as the base hospital in the 1920’s, as evidenced by the extra-wide doorways.
    Both of her colleagues said they were glad to see Bobbie back, but that it was mildly depressing to have someone so happy and cheerful around the office again. They asked her if Kenosha had changed much. And did the kids still go to school with animal traps in their book bags. And did they have credit cards by now or did they still trade in pelts. The female civilians gave her a welcoming hug with no wisecracks.
    Bobbie especially liked the oldest investigator, Reggie Cole, who claimed he’d been at North Island since aids were admiral’s helpers, but the guy smoked more than Kuwait in the war. During the lunch hour, Bobbie told Reggie she was going to mosey over to the post office to buy some stamps, but really, she wanted to get some fresh air. Even though he’d taken to smoking outside at the insistence of everyone, Reggie reeked like an ashtray. It was in his hair and in his pores.
    She had to hike up her skirt to mount the bike, and three sailors in civvies made the usual sounds of adolescent angst that teenagers make when they see the exposed thigh of an older woman. Bobbie looked at them and considered that in little more than two years she’d be thirty . Those sailors were children.
    Bobbie decided to ride along the quay and sniff the ocean breeze blowing in from the sea on that warm October day. She thought that San Diego had