Hold Still (18 page)

THIRTY-THREE

November 3rd

Inez pulled her cruiser into
the Sunoco parking lot at Germantown Avenue and Washington Lane, next to another police unit. Window to window, she could see Officer Melody Brock’s blonde ponytail as the other woman bent over some paperwork. She looked up at Inez and smiled. “Hey, Graham. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Inez said. She motioned over her shoulder toward Germantown Avenue. “See anyone who looks like a groper?”

Brock laughed. “Coupla dudes that looked like bona fide perverts but no groper. Unless you count the homeless guy playing with his own junk all the way down the street.”

Inez laughed. “That’s Skinny Joe. Only thing he puts a hurtin’ on are his own balls.”

They both chuckled. “The Groper did hit here twice in the last week,” Brock said.

Inez scratched her forehead. “Maybe the third time’s a charm.”

The two women sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Absently, Inez listened to the squawking radio, hearing the words but registering only static.

“When’s Mark coming home?” Brock asked.

Inez shrugged. She reached inside her collar and fingered her thin gold wedding band, which she kept on a chain around her neck while on duty. “Don’t know. They keep extending his deployment. We’re hoping for a Christmas miracle, though. Maybe he can get a furlough.”

“This his second tour?”

“Sure is,” Inez said. She looked away from Brock, swallowing hard over the lump in her throat. She didn’t like to think about it too much—to dwell on it—her husband a world away in a hostile foreign country, not even readily accessible by phone or e-mail. The physical and emotional distance between them, which grew just a little bit wider each day. Or the fact that at any moment of any day, men in stately dress blues could show up wherever she happened to be and completely shatter her world. And Raquel. She couldn’t bear to think of having to tell their four-year-old that Daddy wasn’t coming home.

Brock reached through the windows and poked Inez’s shoulder. “Sorry, Graham. Shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Inez cleared her throat and managed a weak smile. “It’s okay. Bringing it up doesn’t change it.”

“Hey, look at that,” Brock said, pointing to the corner diagonal from where they were parked. Inez shifted in her seat to crane her neck. “What?”

Brock tapped Inez’s side mirror and Inez looked. Across from them, exiting a pawnshop, was Kyle Finch.

“Think he pawned his cruiser?” Brock snickered.

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

Brock sighed. “It’s a damn shame.”

“What’s that?”

“That such a prick got those good looks.”

“I know. It’s a total waste.”

“All the girls have a thing for him,” Brock added. “Well, the ones who don’t know any better.” She studied him a beat longer. He looked around and slipped his hands inside his coat pocket. He pulled out a cell phone and punched some numbers, his gaze intent on the screen. “I guess if he didn’t speak, he’d be doable.”

Inez snorted.

“Janelle seems to think he doesn’t like women,” Brock went on.

“No shit. You think he’s gay?”

Brock shrugged. “That would explain all the macho overcompensating. Gay or not, he’s a fucking tool. Did you know he’s got money? He doesn’t even need to work.”

Inez’s lips twisted in disgust. “Are you kidding me?”

Brock shook her head, ponytail swaying. “No. Janelle told me. They went on a few dates before she realized his dick didn’t work. Apparently, his dad is loaded, and his mom died when he was a teenager and left him a shitload of money.”

“Let me guess, he joined the police force to help people.”

Both women laughed. Inez checked her phone. Her shift had just started. Seven more hours to go. She sighed.

A guy passed Finch on the pavement, walking hurriedly. Although his back was to them and his maroon hoodie was pulled over his head, he had the skinny, hunched-shoulder look of a kid. His posture was stooped as though he were ducking under something. He stopped abruptly as Finch called out to him. From where they sat, Inez couldn’t hear what Finch had said, but the kid stopped. One of Finch’s hands rested on the butt of his gun. He grabbed the kid’s shoulder and turned him into the wall of the pawnshop. The kid put his arms up as Finch kicked his feet apart and started patting him down.

“What’s he got?” Inez said.

Then the kid turned so they could see his face. Brock said, “Isn’t that—”

“Henry Richards,” Inez filled in, already half out of her squad car. She ran—hand on the butt of her pistol. “Finch,” she yelled. “Cuff him.”

She was halfway across Germantown Avenue. Finch and Richards looked up at her at the same time. Finch stared at her dumbly, but Richards paled, and in one swift movement he spun on his heel and elbowed Finch hard across the jaw. Finch stumbled backward, reaching for his face and swearing. “Shit, Graham, what do you think I was about to do?”

He stuck a foot out, tripping Richards, but the kid was quick. He saved himself a concrete face-plant by bracing against the pavement with both hands. Then, like a runner in the starting position of a race, he took off in a dead sprint. Luckily, Brock had pulled out onto Germantown Avenue. She slid the cruiser in between two parked cars, angling it onto the pavement to block Richards. But he was already over the top of her hood, his sneakers making staccato
pow-pow
sounds as he ran across.

“Goddammit, Finch,” Inez grumbled as she moved past him. She slid over Brock’s hood on her rear end and hit the pavement running.

“Richards!” she hollered as he bolted ahead of her. He raced down Germantown Avenue, his maroon hoodie flapping at his sides. He pushed two elderly pedestrians out of his way. They grabbed on to each other, teetering, before they found their balance again and stood frozen in place as Inez ran past them. A group of teenage boys sitting and smoking on the steps of a walled-in cemetery hooted and laughed as Richards darted past them with Inez hot on his trail.

Richards glanced over his shoulder at her and increased his speed. Inez was gaining on him. She looked to her left and saw that Brock was cutting in and out of traffic, trying to head him off. She finally got in front of him, pulling up on the pavement again. The car shuddered when she braked abruptly, the frame still traveling forty miles per hour but the wheels stopped. Brock emerged at a sprint.

Richards froze for a split second, being pursued from the front and back. He glanced at the street on his left, clogged with traffic. To his right was an empty lot overgrown with thick oak trees and knee-high weeds. The trees had lost most of their leaves, but the gnarled branches seemed to reach inward toward the center of the open space as if they were trying to reach one another across a small chasm. A tall chain-link fence stretched across the front of the lot, where its weedy floor met the sidewalk. Before Inez could even open her mouth, the kid was climbing the fence like damn Spider-Man. He dropped to the ground on the other side as if he weighed nothing and headed straight for the trees.

“Shit,” Inez huffed.

Brock was talking into the radio on her shoulder as Inez flew up and over the fence after Richards, the metal making a light tinkling sound. She used her momentum to carry her up and over, but still, climbing the fence with her Kevlar vest on was like trying to maneuver with a bunch of cast-iron frying pans strapped to her torso. She dropped to the other side with a much less graceful thud and, unlike Richards, landed on her ass, grunting irritably.

She scrambled back up and sprinted in the direction he’d gone. Over the sound of her own rapid breath, she tried to listen to the crash of his body through the dry brush ahead. She saw flashes of his hoodie as she ran after him, but by the time she emerged from the trees onto a lot of burned-out container trucks, she had lost him. She checked each blackened shell, but there was no sign of him.

She kept moving, hopping a much smaller fence into someone’s backyard. The sound of snarling registered only a split second before someone tackled her to the ground full force. For a moment, the wind was knocked out of her. Her body flailed, struggling against the man on top of her until she realized it was Finch.

“Graham, get up. You have to run,” he breathed into her ear. Dazed, she sucked in a noisy breath. She tried to concentrate on his words, but she could barely hear him over the frenzied growling of the large pit bull tearing into Finch’s pant legs. The dog seemed to be everywhere at once, barking, snarling, nipping, pawing, and spraying foul-smelling saliva all over them. For a second, she wondered if she had stumbled into a yard filled with pit bulls, but a quick glance from the cover of Finch’s body confirmed that it was only one. Inez heard fabric tear, followed by Finch grunting. She tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs seized up. Fear and adrenaline warred within her, making her limbs stiff and her brain foggy.

“Graham, get up!” Finch rolled off her, onto his rear, keeping his legs between him and the dog, kicking at the dog’s head, his boots moving like pistons. As he pulled his nightstick from his belt, Inez stumbled to her feet. The dog tried to leap over Finch, straight at her. Instinctively, she threw her arms up. Finch swung his nightstick, making solid contact with the dog’s head, eliciting a strangled yelp.

Momentarily stunned, the dog listed to its left and bit the air. As it moved back toward Finch, Inez unsnapped her holster. She froze when she saw a shape move in her periphery. Then she heard an unfamiliar male voice. “Champ, down!”

The man was tall and thin, clothed in a Phillies shirt and gray sweatpants. She noticed he was barefoot as he sprinted toward them and quickly took hold of the dog’s collar. “Shit, man. I’m sorry. Champ, down!”

The man yanked the dog away from them, dragging it toward the back door of the house. Champ wasn’t inclined to listen to his owner. White foam dripped from his bared teeth as he pulled away from his owner, still intent on attacking. Finch stood and backed away from man and dog. Inez could still hear the dog barking, even after it had been stuffed inside the house. The owner returned to them, his hands out in a gesture of apology. “I’m so sorry. He don’t normally act like that, but you guys are in our yard. He knows to protect the house, you know?”

Inez was still trying to catch her breath. “We shouldn’t have been in your yard,” she conceded.

“We were in pursuit of someone,” Finch put in.

“Did he bite you?” the man asked.

Finch reached down and pulled his pant legs up. There were several scrapes, a few deep puncture wounds beginning to ooze blood, and a lot of saliva. His pants were shredded.

The dog owner looked like he might cry. “Oh man, that’s bad. I’m really sorry. I—”

Finch managed a smile. “It’s okay. A couple of stitches and I’ll be fine. Right now we’re looking for someone.” He glanced at Inez and she nodded. Heart still thundering in her chest, she stood by while Finch questioned the man, but he hadn’t seen Richards. Hoofing it past the side of the house, they emerged onto Baynton Street.

Inez paused to straighten her uniform and smooth her hair back. All she could smell was dog saliva.

Finch glanced at her. “You okay?”

She pointed at her chest. “Me? Yeah, I’m fine. You’re the one who got bit. You need to go to the hospital, Finch.”

He waved her off. “I’ll be fine.” Looking up and down the street, his ears glowed red. “Where the fuck did Richards go?”

“I don’t know,” Inez replied. “We lost him.”

He reached both hands to the top of his head, clenching tufts of his hair in his fists and tugging. “Fuck!”

“Hey,” Inez said.

“I fucking lost him,” Finch dropped his hands to his sides. A muscle in his jaw ticked as he met her eyes.

“Finch,” she said. “Don’t worry about that right now. I’m serious, you need to go to the hospital and get those bites looked at—at least get them cleaned out.”

He nodded but walked off, peeking into alleyways as he went. Inez trotted after him, clamping a hand onto his shoulder. “Hey,” she said, stopping him in his tracks. She looked him in the eye and swallowed. “Thanks for that, back there. I mean it.”

The beep of a horn startled them both. They turned to see Brock pulling down the street and ran up to the car. “You got him?” Inez asked.

Brock shook her head, grimacing. “No.”

Inez pressed the heels of her palms against her eye sockets. Finch walked away from the car, pulling at his hair again. Almost in unison, they said, “Son of a bitch.”

THIRTY-FOUR

November 4th

“So, Finch got bested by
a twenty-year-old male prostitute?” Jocelyn asked Inez. She held Olivia’s hand as the girl wobbled in a pair of high heels across the Please Touch Museum’s play shoe store.

“Mommy, Mommy, look at these,” Raquel cried, pulling out a pair of boots from the myriad of cubbies lining the small room. They were fluorescent green and rubber. Jocelyn’s eyes hurt just looking at them. Inez even squinted as she helped slide them onto her daughter’s tiny feet. Raquel clomped after Olivia, who had abandoned the heels in favor of a pair of big red clown shoes. High-pitched giggles erupted from the two girls as they chased each other around the mock store.

Inez sighed. Her smooth brown forehead wrinkled. “Yeah, a lousy elbow and the kid got away from him. But he saved me from a pit bull. I guess he’s not a total fu—” She glanced around her. Two other children had wandered in, mothers trailing behind them. They too began trying on shoes, the mothers oohing and ahhing over each pair, talking to their children in that overly loud, fake Mommy voice that Jocelyn had noticed most mothers used on their young children—like they were deaf or mildly retarded.

Inez lowered her voice so as not to be overheard by the moms with the faux Mommy voices. “He’s not as much of a fuckup as I thought. I mean, I would have been screwed if he wasn’t there. That dog was vicious and mad as hell.”

Jocelyn folded her arms across her chest. She blew out a breath. “I appreciate him taking a dog bite for you, but he’s a pansy. You know how many times I’ve been elbowed trying to arrest someone? Or kicked or choked or spit on? One time, when I was on patrol, I had to arrest a guy who had shit himself and thought it was a good idea to try finger-painting a bus stop with it.”

Inez snickered. One of the faux Mommies shot Jocelyn a look that was somewhere between worry and horror.

“I probably spooked the kid when I ran up. I didn’t think Finch was going to lose him, but it all happened pretty fast. I mean I don’t think Finch expected Richards to resist.”

“But you should always be on your guard in case any suspect you’re arresting resists,” Jocelyn argued. “I mean, what you’re saying is he can take on a pit bull, but he can’t take down a twenty-year-old kid?”

Inez walked up behind Raquel and pointed at the fluorescent green boots. “Put those back if you’re finished.”

Raquel scurried over to the wall and stuffed the boots into a cubbyhole, one of the soles left dangling. She rooted through a few other cubbies until she found a pair of blue sequined platforms. She ran over to Olivia, who was clomping around in a pair of black man shoes. When she saw the platforms, she immediately discarded the boxy man shoes, but Raquel was already teetering on them.

“Can I try?” Olivia asked.

“Let Olivia try,” Inez instructed after Raquel ignored Olivia for several seconds. Inez turned to Jocelyn. “All right, so he could have handled the arrest better, but Finch did go after him. That damn kid disappeared like a puff of smoke.”

Jocelyn shook her head. “Friendly Fire is incompetent.”

She wondered if Finch had tried as hard as he could to catch and keep Richards in custody. If maybe his incompetence was just a little bit intentional. With the way things had been between them, especially in the last few weeks, he might jump on the opportunity to screw her in some small way—half-assing it and letting Richards get away with a puny elbow. Any other officer would have handled Richards. Now she had to live with the fact that the guy was still out there and after her for reasons she couldn’t even imagine. As it was, the guy had twice gotten close enough to Jocelyn’s daughter to pose a threat.

“Your face is turning red, Rush,” Inez pointed out. “You need to relax.”

There was the anger again, like a wild animal caught in a sack, flailing every which way, trying to burst loose. Jocelyn closed her eyes and took a deep breath. In through her nose and out through her mouth. Maybe those anger management classes were good for something after all.

She opened her eyes and looked at her friend. “I’m glad he saved you from the pit bull, but thanks to him, Richards is still out there. Taking on one pit bull doesn’t make up for his general laziness. Shit. I should have shot that son of a bitch that night at Einstein when I had the chance.”

A sudden still silence drew their attention to their left where the other two mothers stood staring at them. One woman was frozen bent halfway over with a shoe dangling from her hand, her son’s outstretched foot arcing up toward her.

The silence stretched on. One of the women swallowed and licked her dry lips. She opened her mouth to speak, but Inez held up a hand. “If you knew this guy, you’d feel the same way,” she said matter-of-factly.

The half-stooped woman flushed, and the other mother paled. They hurried their children out of the room like it was on fire, bumping against each other to get out the doorway at once. Jocelyn laughed so hard, her sides hurt.

“Mommy, what’s so funny?” Olivia asked. Jocelyn looked down to see her daughter standing before her in the blue sequined platforms, her hands on her tiny hips.

Jocelyn reached out and stroked her hair. “Nothing, baby. Nothing.”

“So,” Inez said as Olivia flitted off to try on a pair of lace-up work boots in the corner of the room. “Are we going to talk about SVU or what?”

Jocelyn felt the heat return to her face once again, but this time it wasn’t anger. Not even close. She could still feel Caleb’s mouth on her as if she’d just come from making out with him in her car. “Let’s just say that there is a certain lieutenant there who left a very, very good impression.”

Inez wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and grinned, a wicked tilt to her mouth. “Scandalous good or lunch date good? Don’t tell me. I can tell by your face. It was scandalous good.”

“A little bit,” Jocelyn acknowledged.

Inez swatted her in the arm and whooped. She grabbed Raquel’s arm and twirled her around. Olivia clomped over to where they were in a pair of fireman’s boots. “Mommy,” she said, “what’s sandluss?”

Jesus.
These kids had sonic hearing. Inez hid a giggle behind her hand and continued to twirl Raquel around in the sequined platforms. Jocelyn knelt in front of Olivia. “It means something very bad.”

Olivia quirked a brow. “But how can something be sandluss and still good?”

Jocelyn sighed. “I’ll explain it to you when you get older. Right now, Mommy has to leave. I have some errands to run, and then I have to go to work.”

Olivia’s face seemed to droop, her mouth turning down in a crescent frown. “Awwww, but I want you to stay.”

Jocelyn felt a little stab in her heart. “I know. I want to stay too, but we’re all out of soup, and I have to work. But you’re going to see the rest of the museum with Inez and Raquel, and then Inez will take you back to her house. Martina is going to watch you girls tonight while Mommy and Inez work. I’ll come get you later. I put blankie and Lulu in your bag. It’s in Inez’s car.”

Olivia’s eyebrows drew together. She looked at Inez. “Can we eat ice cream?”

“Of course,” Inez said.

“No,” Jocelyn said at the same time.

Jocelyn glared at her friend. Inez folded her arms across her chest. She gave Olivia a quick wink and then pretended to stare Jocelyn down. “We eat ice cream at my house,” she proclaimed. “House rules.”

Jocelyn raised an eyebrow in mock skepticism. By now, both girls were watching the women, giggling silently. “House rules, huh?”

Inez stepped toward her, into her personal space, challenging her. “That’s right.”

Jocelyn tried not to laugh. She gave Inez her best cop stare. They let the stare-down go on for several seconds as both girls watched intently, trying not to make a sound. Then in her most serious tone, Jocelyn said, “But what about the ice-cream monster?”

“I arrested him last week,” Inez responded matter-of-factly, as if she were talking about a real suspect.

“Mommy, you arrested the ice-cream monster?” Raquel said excitedly.

Jocelyn shook her head and widened both eyes. She glanced sideways at the kids. “He got out on bail this morning.”

She could see the corners of Inez’s mouth twitching as she tried not to laugh. Olivia tugged on Jocelyn’s hand. “What’s he do, Mommy? What’s the ice-cream monster do?”

Abruptly, Jocelyn turned and dropped into a squat in front of Olivia and Raquel, her voice a roar. “He tickles little girls who eat ice cream!” she hollered.

Both girls squealed as she grabbed them and tickled their bellies and under their arms. Raquel escaped easily. Jocelyn scooped Olivia up and kissed her all over her face. When Olivia’s laughter subsided, Jocelyn set her back down. “Okay, love. You can eat ice cream at Inez’s house.”

Olivia’s eyes grew wide. “But what about the ice-cream monster?”

Inez put a hand on top of Olivia’s head. “Guess I’ll have to arrest him again.”

Jocelyn laughed. As she made her way into the hallway and toward the stairs to the first-floor exit, she heard Raquel and Olivia’s little voices: “Can we watch? Can we watch you arrest him?”