Don't Call Me Hero (7 page)

“Well I guess I’d better figure it out, now that I don’t have that excuse anymore.”

“I love to cook, but I never have a reason to make food for anyone. Why don’t you come over tomorrow night for dinner?”

“That’s awfully kind, Grace,” I said, fully intending to decline the offer.

“It’s just Minnesota nice,” she dismissed. “Plus, I feel kind of guilty for printing that story without giving you a heads up.”

I frowned. “Yeah. That’s another thing about small town life I’ll have to get used to. People already think they know me.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I shrugged.

“Let me know when you figure it out, eh?” she laughed pleasantly.

My eyes continued to roam rather than settling on the pretty face of the newspaper reporter. It was a learned habit from deployment, always scanning, investigating, and on the lookout for something suspicious or out of place. If it weren’t for that habit I might have missed a familiar flash of dark hair and painted red lipstick across the produce section.

“Shit.”

Grace’s features clouded with concern. “What’s wrong?”

The woman from the club, the same woman who had picked up coffee at Stan’s diner and who had showed up at my apartment the previous night, stood in the center of the produce section. My first instinct was to duck behind Grace or her grocery cart. But I had no reason to hide; this wasn’t a war zone, and I had nothing to be embarrassed about. I wasn’t the one who’d shown up unannounced on someone’s doorstep for sex.

“Nothing. Just remembering something.”

She stuck out in the small-town grocery store where everyone else wore jeans and T-shirts with no one to impress. Her makeup was flawlessly applied with not a hair on her head out of place. Dark bangs swooped low over her forehead just above twin caramel-colored eyes framed in dark eyeliner and mascara. Her grey pants looked crisp and wrinkle-free, a dark blue top peeked out from the open collar of a short trench coat, and a neat string of pearls gleamed under the fluorescent lighting.

I watched her carefully inspect a pile of red delicious apples. She picked up each one individually, looking for bruises and other signs of imperfections. The rejected apples were returned to the pile, while those deemed good enough were bagged and placed in her cart. I wondered if given the chance to be under her scrutinizing eye again on which pile I’d end up.

“What’s her story?”

Grace’s head whipped around to follow the trajectory of my gaze. I hoped I wasn’t being too obvious, especially in front of the town’s newspaper reporter, but there was really no way to get the answers I wanted if I didn’t ask the questions.

“Who? Julia?”

My lips curled up in a smile. So she
had
told me her real name.

“Yeah. Julia.” I really liked how the name felt on my tongue. I recalled really liking the way Julia herself had felt on my tongue, too.

Grace seemed to shudder as she stood. “She scares me.”

I wasn’t expecting that response. “Her? Why?”

“She just … has this aura about her. I mean, she’s Julia frickin’ Desjardin. She’s the daughter of the richest family in town—the Mayor’s daughter, in fact. Plus, she’s smart as a whip being city attorney and all.”

“City attorney?”

“Hence why she always looks like she just fell off the pages of a Banana Republic catalogue. But that’s just Julia,” Grace said with a shrug. “She’s always been like that.”

“So she grew up here?” I couldn’t help licking my lips as I regarded the woman who continued to fill her grocery cart with fruits and vegetables, apparently unaware of the double set of eyes on her.

“Yeah. She went away for college, of course, but she came back maybe five or six years ago. Her dad used to be the district attorney, but when he became mayor, everyone moved up the ladder. The city attorney job opened up, and her family dragged her kicking and screaming from the Twin Cities to take the job. Or so the story goes.”

“Is she married?” I was embarrassed the moment the words came out. I was sure Grace would be able to see through me.

“The Ice Queen?” Grace’s face took on a comical look. “No man would be brave enough to even ask her on a date, let alone ask to marry her,” she chuckled. “She, my friend, is untouchable.”

My fingertips still burned with the memory of Julia’s skin. Untouchable? Perhaps not.

CHAPTER FIVE

I met up with David Addams the next day at the start of second shift. It felt strange to me being a plainclothes police officer while David patrolled in his dark brown uniform, but I’d get used to it eventually.

My first impression of David had been unfair. He’d seemed like a misogynistic playboy, but the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. He talked about Embarrass with true passion rather than the annoyance and resentment of someone who’d been unable to escape his hometown. He’d seen the world, and in the end, he’d chosen to come back to the only place he’d ever considered to be home. If pressed I would have probably called St. Cloud home. It was the town where I’d grown up and where my parents still lived, but I couldn’t imagine ever moving back there for good. Maybe that meant I was still looking for home.

We patrolled up and down the city streets and just beyond the city border for the majority of the night. David treated me to dinner at Stan’s, and we swapped a few innocent war stories about our time in Afghanistan. Like the day before, the evening had been uneventful with no calls to either the non-emergency number or the in-car radio.

The squad car idled in front of one of the biggest houses I’d seen in town. The two-story home was constructed of red brick with light blue wooden shutters that framed the large windows. The house was significantly longer than it was tall, and the landscaping looked professionally maintained.

I whistled under my breath. “That is one big ass house.”

“It’s the Mayor’s house,” David supplied. “Biggest house in town for the biggest man in town.”

I stared out the window at the house, all lit up. “Does his daughter live with him?”

“Julia?” David sounded surprised that I knew the Mayor had a daughter, let alone knew her name. “No. She lives out in the country. It’s just the Mayor and his wife in there.”

“What do you think about the Desjardins?” I asked.

“They’re rich. That’s enough to know I’ll never have anything in common with them. Julia and I went to the same school growing up, but we didn’t have the same circle of friends. We still don’t.”

I had more questions about Julia Desjardin, but I couldn’t ask them without sounding suspicious.

“Central to E-Two,” a voice across the police radio squawked.

David picked up the in-car handset. “Go ahead, Central.”

“E-Two, I’ve got a 10-16 at 182 North Spruce Street. Neighbors called in reporting yelling coming from inside the house.”

“E-Two is en route, Central.”

“E-Two,” the dispatcher responded, “I see you en route at 17:42.” 

I shuffled through my brain to remember the police ten-codes for this particular town. Chief Hart had sent me the Embarrass Police Department manual a few weeks before I’d arrived. Each city had their own police ten-codes and it was important to know each department’s specific codes. What was “Officer down” to one department could be “I’m taking a lunch break” to another.

“Domestic disturbance?”

David whipped the car around in an empty parking lot. “Yup. That’ll probably be the majority of your calls on third shift. That and bartenders over-serving people.”

“Or cutting them off,” I noted.

It took only a few minutes to reach our destination. It was amazing to witness the size discrepancy between the Mayor’s mansion and the trailer home we pulled up to. Even in a small town like Embarrass you had your Haves and your Have Nots.

David called in our arrival. “Central, E-Two and E-Three have arrived on scene.”

The voice on the radio immediately responded. “E-Two and E-Three, I have you on scene at 17:46.”

“Do you know who lives here?” I asked as I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the vehicle.

“John and Tricia Wagner and their son, Dennis.”

The trailer home was parked in a gravel lot. The surrounding grass was sparse and mostly weeds. Cigarette butts littered the front yard.  The three steps that led to the front door looked like they were under construction, so I hopped directly onto the front porch.

David came up behind me. “Hear anything?”

I shook my head. “Police,” I called out. I knocked on the front door.

David reached for the doorknob and turned the handle. The door was unlocked.

“What are you doing?” I hissed when he opened the front door.

“Neighbors said they heard yelling,” he said with a shrug. “There’s my probable cause.”

He stepped through the threshold, and I reluctantly followed.

The front door opened into a carpeted living room. The room was small and cramped, and it smelled like stale cigarettes.

I heard the screams coming from the back of the house. The exact words were muffled, but it sounded like a man yelling that someone was eating him. I took a step forward in the direction of the voice, but David put his arm in front of me.

“It’s only your second day on the job.”

I unfastened the leather strap that secured my gun in its holster. “Might as well start earning my keep then.”

The yelling grew louder as we cautiously stalked down the narrow corridor. I gave a cursory glance into each room we passed—two bedrooms and the laundry room—to make sure they were empty.

David and I stood on either side of a closed door from where the loud noises originated. The yelling had largely subsided and had been replaced by a rhythmic smacking sound.

David and I made eye contact and he nodded once. I reached for the door handle, twisted hard, and pushed. The door swung free, unencumbered.

“Christ,” David muttered under his breath.

A man stood alone in the bathroom, stripped down to cotton boxers. I quickly discovered what was causing the smacking noise. His palms were pressed flat against the bathroom wall, and he was hitting his head against the white subway tile. His blood was splattered on the walls and floor. He’d torn the sink clear from the wall, and water sprayed all over the bathroom, combining with blood to make a swirly pink mess on the floor.

The man turned toward us and howled. The animalistic sound made me flinch just enough that I wasn’t prepared when he charged David. The man had no weapon—only his body—but he threw his arms around David’s torso and tackled my partner to the ground.

I launched myself into the fray and, together, David and I managed to wrestle the man to the ground and subdue him. I pulled my handcuffs out of their holder and cuffed him to restrain his arms behind his back.

David flipped the man over. “You gonna behave now, Dennis?”

The man—Dennis—nodded, momentarily mute.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that David knew his attacker, but I’d never arrested someone I was on a first-name basis with.

David and I pulled Dennis to a seated position and propped him up against a wall. He squiggled in weak protest but appeared to have lost most of his fight.

“Gross.” I tugged at the front of my wet shirt and separated it from my skin. My clothes were soaked with a mixture of water and blood from wrestling on the bathroom floor.

I took a moment to breathe out and survey the rest of the damage. Blood flowed freely from Dennis’s forehead and dripped down his face, but without taking a closer look I couldn’t be sure of the extent of his injury. Head wounds were notorious for looking worse than they actually were, so I wasn’t going to panic that he would bleed out while we stood here.

The bathroom was demolished. The porcelain sink lay in fractured pieces, and the vanity mirror had been shattered. Large shards of mirrored glass were scattered on the ground. We’d been fortunate that none of us had rolled over the broken glass during our scuffle with Dennis.

David reached for the radio attached near his shoulder. He pressed down on the handset to call in the arrest, but lifted his thumb to first address me: “Watch out. He’s a kicker.”

“A what?”

I groaned when the man’s foot connected between my legs. Even though I lacked the more sensitive genitalia of a male officer, it still stung and brought tears to my eyes.

“A kicker,” David repeated. I would have smacked the shit-eating grin off of his face if I wasn’t occupied with subduing my assailant.

I zip-tied Dennis’s ankles together to keep him from lashing out again. I stood up and made sure I pushed off his body a little rougher than necessary. “How did you know that was going to happen?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve had to arrest him.” David wiped at his forehead. “I’m guessing he’s back on animal tranquilizers.”

“You’re shittin’ me. PCP?”

“It’s a small, remote town. People get creative about their drugs.”

“Dennis?” A woman’s voice echoed down the hallway. I remembered we’d left the front door open.

“I got this.” David stepped between the woman and the door to block her view of the destroyed bathroom and the bloodied man inside. “Mrs. Wagner, we received a call from a neighbor about a domestic disturbance. When Detective Miller and I investigated, we found your son in the bathroom, hurting himself. We’ve got him cuffed for his own protection.”

“Oh, Dennis,” the woman sighed. “What have you done now?”

“Ma’am, when we arrived on scene the bathroom sink had been torn from the wall,” I spoke up. “Do you happen to know where your shut-off valves are?”

She eyeballed me for a moment before nodding. “It’s in the laundry room. I’ll go turn off the water.”

“Was that his mom?” I asked when the woman left us.

“Yup. Her name’s Tricia.”

“What do we do with him now?” I asked, nodding in Dennis’s direction. His head wound had stopped bleeding, but his face and bare chest were covered in dried blood. He looked like he’d come straight from a Satanic ritual.

“Let’s hose him down in the shower so he doesn’t get blood all over the back of the squad car, and then we can throw him in the drunk tank to sleep this off.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Do I need to be here for the hosing off part?”

David chuckled. “Let’s ask him.” He towered over Dennis who was still sitting on the bathroom floor with his hands and legs bound. “Hey, Dennis. You gonna behave long enough so I can wash that blood off you? Or is Detective Miller here going to have to help?”

The man looked back and forth between David and me, blinking his blank eyes. With PCP rushing through his veins, I wondered how many heads he thought we had.

“I’ll take care of Dennis if you’ll go talk to Mrs. Wagner,” David decided. “I’ll need the water turned on again so I can at least rinse him off.”

“Sure thing.”

I went in search of Dennis’s mother and found her sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. She tapped ash into a glass tray that badly needed to be emptied.

“Mrs. Wagner?” I said, culling her attention. 

She looked up at me with large blue eyes. “I don’t know you. Do I?”

“No, ma’am. I’m Detective Cassidy Miller. I’m new.”

In a town the size of Embarrass, everyone knew each other. I was an outsider. Police often witnessed people at their most vulnerable moments. It wouldn’t be easy to get the townspeople to accept me as one of their own.

“Miller.” She thought on my name before recognition lit up her eyes. “You’re that girl from the newspaper.”

I tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to forgive Grace. “Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s Tricia. No one’s ever called me ma’am before.”

“Sergeant Addams and I need to take your son to the jail to detox, ma’—” I cut myself off. After being in the Marines for so long, it had taken a while to drop the habit of sandwiching my sentences with formal titles. “But we’d like to rinse the blood off him first. And he’ll probably appreciate a fresh set of clothes when he sobers up.”

“Blood,” she echoed.

“He, uh, he was hitting his head against the bathroom wall.”

She sighed and her entire body sagged in the chair. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with that boy.”

I took the opportunity to sit down in a vacant chair at the small kitchen table. I hadn’t turned to abusing drugs and alcohol after returning to the States, but I knew a lot of guys who had.

“Maybe it’s time for a little tough love,” I gently offered. “If you keep bailing him out of trouble, he doesn’t have incentive to grow up.” It wasn’t my place to be offering parenting advice, but I’d seen my share of Dennises when I’d been in the service. They’d finished high school and had no plan for afterwards.

“What would he do? Where would he even go?”

“How old is your son?”

“Thirty-five.”

I nearly choked on her answer. With his face covered in blood I hadn’t been able to decipher an age, but I hadn’t expected that.

“Maybe it’s time to cut the strings and let him struggle on his own for a little while.”

She didn’t reply to that, but her body language showed extreme fatigue. Coming home from work to find the police in her house had to be exhausting. She lit another cigarette and took a long, cathartic drag.