Breaking Normal (Dream Weaver #3) (15 page)

             
We sat down at the dining room table and ate breakfast. Before they left for town, I delved into Jesse’s mind to shore up the frayed ends of some his memories. There was no way I’d ever be able to recover all of his memories and restore his lifetime to him. And I’d probably have to corral a few strays now and then. But, we had our Prince Charming back, as whole as I could make him.

             
I checked my cell for messages. Two texts from Nick, checking up on me, and telling me he would be on watch while I got some rest after yesterday’s memory surgery, and a voicemail from Adrian.
Great! Here we go.

             
I cursed under my breath and played the message.

             
“Emari! I do not want my daughter involved with those—men. And I resent you and Sabre barging into my home to make use of her abilities. Your father was willing to risk his life, your mother’s and yours. But I am not. I will not have my family subjected to the violence that follows them everywhere they turn. So, from now on, if you need Emma for anything, you’ll have to clear it through me.”
Click!

             
“Okay, wow.” But, I guess I couldn’t blame him . We had been very demanding and used Emma’s abilities a lot the last couple of weeks without conferring with him first. And just being around Nick and Sabre put a target on anyone’s back. The abduction of Jesse and Ivy confirmed that. But it sure seemed to me like there was something more going on with Adrian than just his dislike for the guys.

             
To give myself some time to cool off before returning his call, I opened my laptop to check emails that hadn’t been checked in over a month. Several messages from my online high school tutor made me groan. Somehow, a high school diploma seemed so irrelevant now. But Mom and Dad would want me to graduate, and I couldn’t disappoint them, even posthumously. There were exams and finals due from weeks before that I’d neglected in all the Caphar chaos. If I wanted to walk graduation with Ivy, I had until the end of the month to complete all the credits. It was a daunting task. And the urge to use my new powers for good was a constant drone in the background. Surely the memories of every answer on the tests were implanted in someone’s brain.

             
I picked up my cell to call Adrian and apologize, but found myself calling Molly instead.

             
“Hey girl!” she cheered. “What’s up?”

             
“Well, I was wanting to ask you about doing a ride-along.”

             
“Yeah, sure. We can do that. There’s a buttload of paperwork but we can make it happen.”

Chapter 20
              Barton Hollow

              Molly was right. It took a ton of paperwork and training before I got the okay to do a ride-along with her. Without it, I’d have to ride in the back, like a criminal. And the odor of vomit, urine and things I couldn’t name was more than I could stomach. Thank goodness for the barrier between the back and front seats.

             
Spokane just recently went back to ‘black and whites’ and the cars reminded me of Mayberry RFD. Only newer and cooler. The front was equipped with a state-of-the-art laptop computer, a car camera, radar and serious fire power locked into the dash. Molly gave me the guided tour and strict instructions on what my role was in the event of a call. They couldn’t have the civilians used as target practice.

             
Molly squeezed the button on her shoulder radio. “This is unit 363. I’m 10-8 with a ride-along.”

             
“Copy 363. Be advised: Unit 382 requires back up on a 10-18. Proceed code 2.” The dispatcher rattled off the address.

             
“Copy, unit 363 responding.” Molly was in full-on cop mode now. “A 10-18 is a civilian detaining a suspect.” She flipped on the lights and siren. “Code 2, lights and siren.” She mashed on the gas pedal and the force pressed me to the back of my seat. “When we arrive…”

             
“I know. Sit and stay. I’m only an observer.” I’d have given her the boy scout salute, but my hand was too busy hanging onto the ‘oh-shit’ handle above the door.

             
The car lurched to a stop at a little convenience store on North Monroe. An officer stood in the traditional cop pose I was sure they taught at the academy. Molly silenced the siren but left the lights flashing. She exited the car, and donned her aviator glasses: regulation issue. I watched as the other cop filled her in and she nodded agreement, and spoke with the store owner, who still clutched the arm of a very frightened girl.

             
I watched the young woman’s face. She was younger than she looked, only sixteen, but already had the worry lines of someone much older etched her face. The fear that radiated from her eyes gave my heart a twinge. I may not be allowed to leave the car—physically—but I could reach out to this girl with my mind.

              A baby screams in a dim, grungy apartment that smells of soiled diapers, and spoiled, moldy food.

             
“Mama, I don’t have any more money. I gave you the last of it yesterday to give to your…to Alejandro.”

             
The slap that follows is not unexpected and she is practically numb to it, it happens so often. “Don’t sass me, you little whore. It ain’t my fault your babe’s goin’ hungry. I told you to stay away from that boy, but you just didn’t wanna listen. And now look! One more brat to feed.”

             
“Mama, if I didn’t give you so much money for—rent, I could afford the baby’s formula. If I could just…” This time she does flinch away before the hand makes contact.

             
“You need to shut that kid up! I’m sick of hearing him. That’s all he ever does—wah, wah, wah. It’s about to drive me batty.”

             
“He needs formula, Mama. I don’t have money for formula because I paid for your day’s habit. How am I supposed to feed him now?”

             
The tattered mother steps up into her daughter’s face. “I don’t give a damn how you do it—drown the damn thing for all I care. And I don’t care how you get formula—steal it if you have to, just shut that damn kid up!”

              Oh god! Were there really people like that? Did I live that sheltered of a life that I didn’t know things like this were happening in the city I loved? Probably more than I wanted to admit. I had to do something to help this girl. She was standing there in the store keeper’s clutches, trying through tears to explain why she had four cans of powdered baby formula in her oversized bag.

             
“Give the kid a break,” I told the old man. He shook his head as the thought entered his mind. So I nudged his memory of time when he and his family had not been so fortunate.

             
The other policeman took the girl’s arm from the owner’s grasp and reached for his handcuffs with a sigh.

             
“No. No. Perhaps I change my mind,” said the old man in a distinctive Middle Eastern accent, and took back possession of the girl. “I don’t press charges. This time.” He looked pointedly at the girl, but his eyes softened with affection. “My family has struggled once also. We help this young one.”

             
“Thank you, sir, but….” Molly began.

             
“No. No. It is my decision.”

             
The two cops glanced at each other. It wasn’t often situations evolved like this. Molly fished around in her breast pocket and withdrew a business card. I smiled, remembering the one she’d handed me just a few months ago.

             
“This is the address and number to Northwest Neighborhood Center. They have a Mothers and Babies Program that will help you get formula for your little one. Only formula and baby food,” she said and pinned the girl with a knowing stare. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where her wages went. “Are you clean?”

             
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t use. I lost my brother to drugs. I won’t touch the stuff. Won’t ever drink either. That took my daddy.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and then she truly looked like a lost sixteen year old girl.

             
The store keeper’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. “You come back inside with me. My Mina will take you to this place.”

             
“So, no charges?” the cop asked.

             
“No. There will be no charges today.” With that the old man escorted the sobbing girl back into his store. The cops exchanged cocked eyebrows, and, after a few parting pleasantries, returned to their respective vehicles.

             
Molly released a long breath as she leaned back in her seat. “Well, I have to say that doesn’t happen every day. Could you hear what was going on?”

             
“Yeah, I heard. That poor girl. Are there a lot of people like her in Spokane?”

             
Molly frowned. “Yeah, unfortunately. With meth so prevalent in this city and the increasing gang presence, there are more and more kids like her every year. And all we can do is try to lead them to the programs that can help them.”

             
“Looks like she’s taking you up on the offer,” I nodded toward the store where the girl and woman in a beautiful emerald Indian dress and pants exited the front doors.

             
“A win for the good guys,” Molly joked.

             
“Definitely a win for the good guys.”

             
Molly turned to her shoulder radio. “Unit 363 is 10-8.”

             
“Copy 363,” buzzed over the radio.

             
“So what now?” I asked as she signaled and entered northbound traffic.

             
“Just patrol and keep an eye out for anything that needs our attention. And wait for the next call.”

             
Molly rattled on about some of the more interesting history of the Spokane Police Department. They had a bit of a tainted past, and even present, for the number of ‘officer-involved’ shootings. They caught a lot of flack from the press.

             
“Without getting too technical,” she explained, “a suspect may be facing an officer in a threatening manner, like wielding a knife or gun. If the officer feels the threat is real, he may decide to shoot. In the meantime, the suspect has decided to try and run for it, but the cop’s muscles are responding to the message from the brain to shoot an imminent threat. In those tiny fractions of seconds for the message to relay, the body is carrying out its last command.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “Does that make sense? There’s a more technical explanation. Sheriff Willie from County explains it much better.”

             
“Yeah. I think I get it.”

             
She rambled on some more, showed me some recent ‘tags’ and identified the taggers. Some of it looked more like art than gang banger scrawl. She drove by the Milk Bottle Café, where Nick and I stopped on our way home from training at Laser Quest, back in the Spring. I thought of the man, a wounded boy in a man’s body, that I’d seen start the fire that gutted the city landmark just a few years ago. I knew the case was cold in finding him and I wasn’t really sure I wanted to investigate his story any further, given the trauma he’d suffered as a child. But the thought of cold cases piqued my curiosity.

             
“Hey, you guys have a Cold Case Unit, don’t you?” The idea of solving some of Spokane’s unsolvable crimes bubbled through my thoughts, despite Nick’s warnings not to get involved and risk exposing the Caphar.

             
“Sure. Any case in particular you’re thinking of?” she asked as she turned south, back toward the Courthouse.

             
“None I can think of specifically. I just have a thing for the TV show. They only show reruns now, but it makes me curious about unsolved crimes in the city.”

             
“Well, I’ll take you to meet Conrad Bannister. He’s the sergeant in charge of the Cold Case Unit. You’ll love him. He’s a real joker.”

             
I expected to trudge down to a dingy basement office with metal shelves loaded with row upon row of brown cardboard boxes covered with dust. So when Molly pressed ‘two’ on the elevator keypad, I smiled and laughed inwardly. And when we walked into a six by six foot office space with southern facing windows and sunlight streaming over verdant hanging plants, I laughed out loud.

             
Molly turned and grinned. “Not what you were expecting?”

             
“Huh! Yeah-no.”

             
A tall man with grey at his temples and a bulging belly covered by his brown suit jacket stood to greet us.

             
“Sergeant Bannister, this is Miss Emari Sweet. She’s my ride-along for the day and wanted to know more about our Cold Case Unit.”

             
The sergeant shook my hand. He smiled when I didn’t just let him squeeze my fingers like a prissy girl, but placed my hand palm to palm with his. Daddy always told me to never give people the ‘limp fish’ handshake.

             
“Nice to meet you, Miss Sweet.”

             
“Thank you, Sergeant. Likewise. And you can just call me Emari.”

             
He smiled again, bigger this time, like I was his new best friend—or maybe he was contemplating what joke he could play on me. “What would you like to know?”

             
“Um, I’m not sure. Just the basics, I guess.” I didn’t really have a plan. I was just basking in the excitement of potential solutions to chilly crimes.

             
“All right, then. Well, Spokane currently has sixteen unsolved ‘cold cases’,” Sergeant Bannister said, using air quotes. “Three of those are missing persons, the rest are homicides. We have two detectives assigned full-time.”

             
“So, how long does it take for a case to be considered ‘cold’?” I asked.

             
“There’s not really a set time. If we’ve exhausted all possible leads it could become cold in as little as seventy-two hours. Some consider that a case doesn’t become cold until the detective who investigated it retires. So fifteen to twenty years after the fact.”

             
“Holy crow, that long?”

             
Bannister nodded.

             
“I’ll leave you two to it then. I’ve got some paperwork to do downstairs before shift change,” Molly said with a smile.

             
The detective and I said our goodbyes to the beat cop and plunged into the cases.

             
“Where’s the evidence kept? It doesn’t seem like there’d be enough room for sixteen cases worth of evidence in this room.” The urge to memoryprint some of that evidence tingled in my fingertips. If he asked how I came about the information I’d confess to being clairvoyant.

             
A wicked grin twisted Bannister’s mouth and he rubbed his hands together. “Down in the dungeons, my pretty,” he teased.

             
“I knew it! I knew there were dungeons in this castle,” I joked of the courthouse that closely resembled a medieval, sandstone castle complete with crenulations and grinning gargoyles.

             
The sergeant guided me to the elevators with a hand at the small of my back. A gentlemanly touch. I read him as we walked. He was a kind-hearted man, recently divorced after fifteen years of marriage—which he fully blamed on the job. He had two children, a boy and a girl, that he saw on weekends and adored beyond measure. ‘To serve and to protect’ meant more to him than a slogan. He was one of those men born to be a policeman.