Safeword (18 page)

“Then move him and Ben to a secure location and leave a decoy in place. I for one would volunteer.”

“The answer is no, Hayes. I’d much rather scare this guy off then put one of my best detective teams at risk. We’ll get him another way.”

“Risking yet more lives when he goes after another cop who doesn’t know to watch his back,” Myah argued, really gearing up. “We have
nothing else
to go on, Sarge. I don’t want another murder on my conscience. And Gavin and Ben wouldn’t really be exposed to any danger.”

“Excuse me. I’m sitting right here,” I said, glaring at her.

“And I want you to continue sitting beside me for these little powwows, Gavin,” she shot back. “If this guy’s trying to communicate with us, let him do it. Every time he gets close is another opportunity to get his ass behind bars, before another one of us ends up handcuffed and brutalized.”

Kittridge stayed quiet for several long moments, considering the angles. “Let me put it to brass. DeGrassi, another night in a hotel while I work this out going to be a hardship?”

I gritted my teeth. “No, sergeant.”

“Okay, then. Get. I have some phone calls to make,” he said, waving us out his door.

The second we cleared the threshold, I got a claw on Myah’s elbow and shoved her through the nearest available door, which happened to be the men’s room.

“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” I hissed, reigning in my temper enough to release her arm so I didn’t leave bruises. “My house was broken into, the one place where I am supposed to be safe
.
It’s bad enough I have memories there to overcome, and you want to offer it up for
more?
”

“You won’t even be there, Gavin,” she protested.

“No, but
you
want to be, dashing in to save the fucking day like Annie goddamned Oakley. You think I want
you
on the hook for bait either? I’m only just getting over being responsible for what happened to Ben and me in that house. I do
not
want your death on my conscience.”

“Gavin, I’m not—”

“What, going to get hurt?” I dropped my voice to a near whisper. “Didn’t I say the same thing to you?”

She swallowed and nodded, looking away.

“We’ll get Dennan some other way.” This time, when I put my hands on her upper arms, I was gentle. “You’re family now. Who else is going to worry about you if we don’t? You can’t take this risk for me. Cole would have my head. And I really don’t want a different partner.”

“Gavin,” she said, voice wobbly. “That bastard is out there,” she pointed vehemently to the world beyond the Second Precinct bathroom. “He has a key to any house in the city, and he’s suddenly interested in you. You have no idea how much that makes me want to pack you on a plane to anywhere else and save you from going through this again. You’re—” she took a deep breath. “You’re all I’ve got.”

And just like that, I understood. She was protecting her own. “Then there’s no way I’m letting you be a decoy for me. If Kittridge wants to put another pair of officers on it, that’s their risk to take.” She nodded, hesitated, and then stepped closer and wrapped her arms around me for a quick, if fierce, hug.

“Even if you don’t want her, DeGrassi, you should save her for the rest of us,” Louderback said mockingly from the doorway as he barged into the bathroom.

“I’m not a piece of meat, Louderback,” Myah snapped. “But if you insist on treating me like one, I can reciprocate.” Like a whip, her hand shot out to viciously squeeze Louderback’s balls. His face went white, his mouth forming an O of surprise and pain. Myah leaned close, voice venomous. “I am a human being, and if you respect me any less than you do your other boys in blue, I will rip off your nuts and tie them around my neck like an Olympic fucking medal.”

Louderback gave a hurried nod, his jowls rippling.

“What was that? You don’t have a brain to rattle, so you have to use words.” She squeezed again, and Louderback sucked in a gasp.

“Whatever you say, Hayes.”

Stepping away from him, Myah straightened her jacket over her holster and squared her shoulders, glaring at him for a few more seconds before flouncing out of the bathroom. I leaned casually against the sink, arms crossed in front of me, smirking.

“What do you want, pans—DeGrassi?” he snapped, but wouldn’t make eye contact.

“Not a thing from you.”

A shout from the front of the building filtered back to the hallway, and I banged the door open and ran to see what was going on.

“Is it true?” a woman yelled in front of Lawanda’s desk, held back from the general bullpen by the glass door requiring card key access to open. “Is that son of a bitch who killed my baby dead?”

Myah, who was in the forefront of a group of detectives, all of them ready to go for their weapons, stepped forward, her hands out where the agitated woman could see.

“Miss, we need you to stop shouting, okay? We’ll answer any questions you might have, but you have to keep yourself calm.”

“My baby’s dead, and you want me to be calm?” the woman shrieked. She was a disheveled mess, as probably any parent would be after the death of a child, but it was more than that. Her coat had holes in the armpits, seen as she flailed her arms about. Her pants bore stains, and the hair peeking from beneath a knit cap was matted. “Who can I talk to to make sure that bastard got what he deserved?”

“Miss,” Myah kept trying, edging closer. The rest of the officers were on alert but all too willing to defer to my partner’s lead. The woman, eyeing her warily, jerked her head to the right a couple times, a birdlike gesture that made me wonder if she was on something. She had a wild look, but not exactly the glassy-eyed lack of focus of an addict. “I can get your information and make sure whoever hurt your child is punished, but I need you to calm down so I can get the story in a way I understand. Okay?”

“Only punishment I want is that man’s death,” the woman snarled, but she did take several deep breaths. Myah inched farther in the woman’s direction, lowering her hands completely and folding them in front of her.

“What man, miss? Do you know his name? Has an investigation been opened concerning your child’s death?”

“He’s one of you,” the woman spat viciously, getting herself worked up again. She paced in a circle, bending her head back and shouting to the ceiling. “His death is the only justice!”

Circling around a pair of officers flanking Myah, I joined my partner at Lawanda’s desk, which separated the front where the woman paced from the rest of the station. “Do you know his name, miss?” I asked, taking a cue from Hayes, remembering a conversation we once had about whether or not “ma’am” was offensive to women. I’d said it was respectful; Myah said it was another word for “old.”

The closer I got, the more detail I could make out. She wore a baggy sweater beneath her dirt-smeared coat, and her hair, tucked under a knit cap, was a scraggly brown. The hem of her sweater had a hole, through which I could see a flannel shirt underneath. Her pants were loose and faded; yoga pants, maybe. She had several pairs of socks on, making her feet look fat as they stretched a pair of cheap sneakers that looked held together with the shoelaces alone.

Homeless, probably. And literally wearing everything she owned. Obviously agitated, and suffering a grievous loss in an already hopeless situation.

“Miss, if you can relax, I’ll let you back to one of the conference rooms, get you a warm cup of coffee and something to eat, and we can talk about your child and what should be done.” It was a risk, letting her behind the barrier, but in a building full of cops, she wouldn’t get far if she tried anything. Obviously, she needed someone’s help.

The offer to warm up and get a free meal got her attention, and she visibly made the effort to calm herself, muttering under her breath as she paced in a circle. I caught some of her jabber, along the lines of doing it for her girl and being good for a little while. After a moment, she turned back to the watching officers and squared her shoulders and jaw.

“I think I’m ready now.”

Myah nodded to those backing her up and they got the hint, moving warily back to their desks while keeping an eye on the proceedings. Lawanda, still standing behind her giant barrier of a desk, hit the button to buzz the door open, and I held out a hand to usher the woman through.

“Can I get your name, miss?” I asked, trying to show no reaction to the rather pungent smell wafting from her clothes. I didn’t touch her, merely pointed her in the direction of the hallway leading to one of the interrogation rooms. Myah fell in behind me, coiled and waiting to jump if necessary.

“Jeanie,” the woman answered. “My name’s Jeanie. And my girl’s name was Ali. She was eight.” Without anger to bolster her, the more heart rending emotions of a parent forced to face the death of a child showed through her craggy features, the worry lines in her forehead and around her mouth, the ragged lip she continued to bite in an effort to stifle tears. A few slipped down her weathered cheeks anyway, and she sniffed and wiped them away with the worn edge of her coat sleeve.

“In here, Jeanie,” I said kindly, holding a door open to a crackerjack box of a room. I was grateful that, in my yearlong absence, they’d dispatched the one-way glass and had installed a video recording setup in every interrogation room, all of which went straight to a server. The one-way glass had been intimidating, and the last thing I needed in this situation was one more reason for Jeanie to feel off balance.

“I’ll be back with that coffee, DeGrassi,” Myah said once Jeanie was seated at the table.

“Okay, Jeanie,” I said, settling into a chair on the opposite side of the table from her. “Tell me what happened to Ali.”

“We was all settled for the night in this store that had been closed, like a small clothes store or something. The lock on the back door was busted out and it hadn’t been fixed yet. No new business had moved in and it was all empty inside. It wasn’t a bed, but it got us out of the cold, you know?”

“How long ago was this?”

She shrugged, and I knew it was sometimes difficult for people on the streets to keep the days straight. “A few weeks, has to be.”

“Okay, so the warm empty store.”

“We wasn’t going to mess nothing up. I told Ali she’d still have to go outside if she had to do her business, you know? I just wanted somewhere to keep my girl warm. It was real cold, with the snow, and we wasn’t going to mess nothing up.”

The last snowfall had been in January, just after Stevenson’s case had begun. About six weeks, give or take.

“Can’t blame you for wanting to sleep inside then. I bet the shelters were full, too.”

“Oh yes, we started early that morning, going to all the shelters and churches, trying to get a spot before the weather started. Didn’t have no luck, though. This place was like a miracle.”

Myah returned then with a steaming cup of coffee and a candy bar from the vending machine, which Jeanie devoured in three bites. “I ordered us breakfast, and one of the guys is going to run down to the diner and get it. Jeanie, I didn’t know what you like, so I got a lot of stuff for you to pick from.”

“I ain’t picky,” Jeanie said, gratefully sipping the coffee, her grubby, chocolate-smeared fingers wrapped protectively around the cup, like we would suddenly decide to take it away.

“So you’re sleeping in this empty store,” I prompted.

“Yeah, and I guess someone saw us go in from the houses behind the alley or something, because we wasn’t there more than an hour when the cops came banging in, hollering for us to get out. There were four of us, me and Ali, and these two young guys. The two guys got out as fast as they could, like they was nervous about getting asked questions. Ali and me, we was slower. Not much, but enough for that dickhead cop to get pissed off. He started slapping his big cop flashlight into his hand, making like he was going to hurt us if we didn’t get out. Ali started crying, you know? She was scared, and tired, and we hadn’t eaten that day, so we was both cranky. I told her we’d go somewhere else, but we might have to walk.”

“What time of night was this?” Myah asked.

“Not too late. We hunkered down early to get out of the storm. It was, like, eight maybe. So we were making to go, and this asshole cop grabbed Ali by the arm to try to shove us out faster. Ali cried out, and I got so mad. So mad, and I didn’t mean to get so mad, but I did.”

“What did you do next?”

“I shouted in the cop’s face that I would find his boss and tell him how he treats children, how he would throw human beings out into the snow to protect an empty building when we just wanted to be dry, you know?”

I nodded sympathetically. While I understood an officer had to do what was required by the rightful owner of the property and the laws against squatting, I knew of plenty of cops who would have looked the other way on a night like that. Or driven someone in need to an emergency shelter and made it possible for one more cot to be scrounged up.

“Well, this cop didn’t like me shouting at him none, so he wrestled me to the ground and yanked my arms back like he was gonna arrest me. If it hadn’t been for Ali, I’d have been okay with that. Even a jail cell is warm and has a bed. Dickhead cop was already threatening to call Family Services on me and have her put in a home. She’da just run away again, like she done last time. I promised him I had a place to go, that I had a friend who could take us in for ‘mergencies, but that she hadn’t been home when I checked earlier. It wasn’t true, but I couldn’t have him call Family Services.

“He let me up then, warning me he better not see my face again, or he wouldn’t listen to none of my lies and would take Ali from me. I told her to shush her crying, we was going. We couldn’t find nowhere inside again that night, even after three more hours of walking, so I got us to a park and tried to find somewheres the wind wasn’t so bad. But it was so cold, and I got no blankets, only socks. Socks make all the difference, most times. Cold feet, cold rest of ya. But that night... socks wasn’t no help.”

I tried not to react, but internally, I was furious. Any decent patrolman would have driven them somewhere, made sure they had a warm place in bad weather, instead of shoving them out to fend for themselves.