Critical Pursuit (10 page)

“HEY, YOU SURE
are ready to go! Excited about night two with O’Reilly?” A cheerful Maggie slapped Brinna on the back as she passed her in the locker room.

“Man, did you take a happy pill today or what?” Brinna closed the locker and stepped to the end of the row to check her image in the mirror while she fastened her gun belt.

“Are you a grump today or what?” Maggie’s laughter reverberated in the room, and Brinna heard her jerk her locker open. “My parents bought me lunch at my favorite place. We had a good time catching up.”

“Oh, I forgot they were coming to visit this week.”

“They flew in from the Bay Area this morning. They’ll do some sightseeing this afternoon, and my mom will probably stock my fridge and cook me a bunch of food.” She stepped around the corner pulling on her uniform pants.

Maggie and Brinna had dressing quickly down to a science. Both of them came to work wearing white T-shirts,
regulation for under the uniform shirt. That way, dressing was quick
 
—slip off shorts or jeans, slip on vest, shirt, and pants, and you’re almost ready.

Brinna yawned and shook her head. “I can’t relate to the relationship you have with your mom and dad. My mom and I don’t seem to have common ground like you and your mom do. Sometimes, if we’re together too long, we argue.”

“My parents are great,” Maggie gushed. “Maybe you’re too hard on yours. Your mom seems nice enough. And even though you think he doesn’t, I bet your dad cares a lot more than you know.”

Brinna considered this. “You’re right. I love my mom, but my dad is another matter. I sometimes don’t understand how they’ve stayed together all these years. I couldn’t be married to a guy who drinks like my dad does. It’s probably my mom’s religion that keeps her with him.”

Maggie pulled her vest on and faced Brinna as she connected the Velcro straps. “I heard O’Reilly used to be quite the religious fanatic as well.”

“Not anymore. According to Ben, Jack gave up on the God stuff. Fine with me. No fairy tales in our black-and-white.” She surprised herself with her own vehemence as she spit the words out.

Maggie whistled. “In spite of your parents, you turned out okay. Don’t be so bitter.”

“Do I sound bitter?”

Maggie made a face and pushed Brinna from the mirror so she could check out her reflection.

“Seriously, I don’t think I’m bitter,” Brinna protested.
“I just wouldn’t want my parents spending a week in my house. That would be torture.”

“They won’t be around forever, Brin. If I were you, I’d make peace.” She finished pinning her hair up. “Forgive the past; build a better future.”

“Thanks, Dr. Laura. Let’s get to squad.”

* * *

The night started out slow. Jack hadn’t changed much since the night before, except that it was obvious he hadn’t gotten much sleep. A perceptible tension blanketed the car. Brinna didn’t know what to expect from him, and that made her nervous.

She decided to ignore him until she needed a partner and took advantage of the quiet radio to drive up to North Long Beach and Heather Bailey’s house. Though Sergeant Rodriguez had warned her to stay away from any missing cases for the time being, it had been too long since she’d checked in with Mr. and Mrs. Bailey.

At the Del Amo Boulevard exit a huge billboard stood with Heather’s picture on it and the words
Have you seen this girl?
The billboard listed phone numbers and websites to contact with information.

“What’s up here?” Jack asked.

“I want to check with Heather Bailey’s mom, see how she’s holding up.”

“Heather Bailey?”

Brinna cast a glance his way.

Jack rubbed tired eyes.

“Yeah, didn’t you see that billboard we just passed?”

“Nope. I’m struggling here. I hardly slept. Give me a break.”

Brinna bit back a mean remark.
Settle down; cut him some slack.
“Working nights takes a little getting used to. By next week you won’t have a problem.”

Jack grunted and leaned back in his seat.

“Anyway, Heather went missing over a month ago. I try to keep in touch with the family. There’s still an ongoing search, but leads have dried up.”

“Little brats are always going missing. She run away with her boyfriend?” Jack yawned.

“What, do you want a slap? Heather is eight years old.” Brinna stared, slack-jawed, amazed at her partner’s insensitivity as she jerked to a stop in front of Heather’s house. Shaking her head, she threw the door open before irritation won out and she did slap him.

She heard him mutter, “Sorry,” as she slammed the door.

As she knocked on the front door, she willed the anger at Jack’s cluelessness to ease. The family didn’t need any more drama. Heather’s mom answered after the second knock.
She’s aged,
Brinna thought.
Her hair is grayer or she’s stopped coloring it, and the bags under her eyes seem permanent now.

“Hi, Mrs. Bailey. I hope I didn’t interrupt dinner.”

The woman managed a ghost of a smile. “No, no. You didn’t interrupt anything. Come in.”

“Thanks.” Brinna followed her into the living room. A pile of flyers lay out on the coffee table, and in the corner next to the fireplace stood a large poster with Heather’s face
and eight-year-old, gap-toothed smile watching over the room.

“I came by to see how you were holding up and if Chuck has given you anything new.” Brinna took a seat on the edge of the couch Mrs. Bailey pointed to.

Heather’s mom sat across from Brinna on a worn love seat. “It seems like the tips, even the tips from the kooks, have stopped coming.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. To Brinna it appeared as though the weight of grief draped the woman like a Kevlar blanket, heavy and impenetrable.

“Can you believe it?” she continued after a minute. “It will be six weeks on Saturday. My baby has been away from me for six whole weeks.”

“I haven’t given up.” Brinna clenched her fists. “Whenever I have a clue or a lead to follow, I’m there.”

“I know, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. It seems like everyone else
 
—my husband included
 
—wants to give up. He says we should have a memorial service and get on with our lives.” A scowl crossed her face, and haunted eyes held Brinna’s. “How do I get on without my baby?”

“I don’t agree with him, but I think the two of you need one another right now. This could tear you apart, and I don’t want to see that happen. I know what happened to my family.”

“But you came back after a week,” the woman said wistfully. “How lucky your mother was.”

“Still, things were never the same.”
Dad couldn’t cope and turned his back on the rest of us,
Brinna thought. “Don’t turn on your husband now. When we do find Heather, she’ll need you both together as a unit.”

The woman’s eyes brightened. “You do believe we’ll find her? Alive?”

“I won’t lie to you. I can’t guarantee we’ll find her alive. But we will find her, and you’ll know one way or another. I won’t give up until we do.”

JACK FELT LIKE ROADKILL.
Like some little rodent flat on the street getting flatter every minute because it keeps getting run over.

He’d watched Brinna walk up to the Baileys’ house and wondered why he had no compassion for a missing eight-year-old girl. He didn’t think cops should get so personally involved, yet he knew that what Caruso did was something Vicki would have approved of. His partner’s obsession snapped him out of his smothering self-pity for a moment.

But her obsession also reminded him of something else. For some reason it reminded him of a lot of Christians he used to hang around with. He struggled to shape his thoughts. Like Caruso trying to save every kid was impossible, so was trying to please a God who didn’t exist.
Caruso and the rest of them are all really running on a treadmill, exerting a lot of energy and getting nowhere.

The bitterness in his heart caused a nasty taste to boil up into his mouth. He swallowed and his thoughts returned to
the misery he felt. The hope that working patrol would make it easier to sleep had been shredded like paper in an industrial crosscut shredder. His conversation with DA Rivers hadn’t helped his mood either.

He and Vicki got the maximum sentence while the pig who sentenced them might get the minimum. The urge to break something surged through him, and he gripped the end of his baton until his knuckles turned white.

Vicki will never know what it feels like to be a mother, to celebrate another anniversary, to see another Christmas. And that pig gets it all.

He leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. Vicki was there. Ever present in his mind, Vicki popped into his dreams as he dozed off. There she still lived and the last year evaporated like a bad dream. He reached out to touch his wife, to hold her and banish the bad, lonely year forever. But she stayed just out of his grasp, and he felt as though he were walking through knee-deep peanut butter.

The slam of Brinna’s door jolted him back to the nightmare of consciousness.

“Hope you’re ready to get to work,” she snapped.

Jack bit back a curse. Why did reality have to continue to intrude on his dream? His heart ached as his mind struggled to keep the image of Vicki from fading away.

* * *

Brinna left the Bailey house with a heavy heart. She’d promised Mrs. Bailey she’d find Heather but knew that odds of her being found alive were not in the little girl’s favor. But Brinna
would not give up. She decided to call Milo in the morning and mull over the situation with him.

Her thoughts drifted to her parents, and she wondered what would have happened to them if she hadn’t come home. Would things have been different between them? Would the grief have torn them apart? They still would have had her brother, Brian. Would they have been strong for him? Sighing, she decided she didn’t know.

She’d paused at the black-and-white. Jack was sleeping, his head lolling to the side, and irritation had replaced the heaviness she’d felt walking out of the Bailey house.

Brows furrowed, she made all the noise she could getting in the car, slamming the door when she sat down and taking great pleasure in the fact that he jumped awake.

“Think you can stay awake for the rest of the shift?” she said as she started the car.

All she got was a grunt in response.

Brinna settled into a patrol routine she would have used if Hero were still with her. She cruised by the addresses she knew by heart
 
—the sex offenders who lived in the area around Heather’s house. If she saw any of the registrants she recognized, she’d stop and talk to them. The quiet radio allowed her to check out most of North Long Beach. In fact, it was closing in on midnight before the radio clicked to life with traffic from Maggie and Rick in 3-Charles-5. She and Rick were tailing a rolling stolen.

Brinna grabbed the mike before Jack reacted. “4-Frank-8. Show us assisting Charlie-5.” Adrenaline surged. Rolling stolens, or 10-8-51 victors
 
—the radio code for them
 
—were
just about the biggest rush in patrol. They were unpredictable. Would the car thief stop or would he run? Brinna ramped up for a pursuit.

“Wake up, O’Reilly. Maggie’s got a victor heading our way. They’re at the boulevard and San Antonio, northbound.”

“I’m awake and I heard,” Jack snarled, sitting up in his seat.

Brinna stopped at Del Amo and Long Beach Boulevard, listened to the radio, and waited for the 10-8-51, described as a black, late-model Honda, to roll by.

They didn’t wait long. The Honda crossed the intersection, and a second later so did Maggie’s black-and-white. Per procedure, Maggie wouldn’t try to make a stop without backup in position. Brinna turned left to follow and waited for Maggie to activate her light bar. The reds went on as the vehicle passed Fifty-Second Street. And the stolen car failed to yield.

“Hang on,” Brinna said as she listened to Rick tell dispatch that the victor wasn’t stopping and their speed increased. The pursuit was on.

JACK ALMOST HADN’T HEARD
the radio and the information on the rolling stolen. But when he tuned in, the info got his attention.

Fully awake as his partner put them assisting, Jack sat up, gratified by the distraction of a pursuit. Vehicle pursuits often ended in foot pursuits, and foot pursuits often ended in fights. Jack wanted a fight
 
—a good knock-down, drag-out one. He’d pound the crook and imagine he was pounding Bridges.

When they pulled in behind Maggie and the lights went on, every muscle in Jack’s body tensed, and he felt more alive than he had in a year.

Funny how anticipating a good beating just breathed life into me,
he thought. His left hand gripped the seat belt, ready to unclip it in a second. His right gripped the dashboard as he and Brinna flew through an intersection. The crook’s speed increased, and his partner crushed the accelerator to keep up.

The victor continued on Long Beach Boulevard, rapidly
approaching the city’s north boundaries. Sirens screamed in his ears, competing with the pounding of his heart. Jack heard Klein come on the air to approve the pursuit and say that he was en route to assist.

It wasn’t long before the crook crossed the boundary into Compton. After a couple of blocks he made a right turn off the main boulevard onto a side street, very nearly losing control and crashing.

“He’s trying to lose us. Too bad we don’t have a chopper tonight,” Brinna muttered, pumping the brakes and leaning toward Jack as she made the turn behind Maggie.

Jack gripped the door, bracing as Maggie’s lights veered left ahead of them. Old memories flooded back. Memories of chases and arrests intertwined with a realization that at one time he had loved this job.

His partner had assessed the situation correctly. The crook was trying to lose them, or better, was looking for a place to bail out of the car. Jack hoped for the latter.

The victor led them on a zigzag course through unfamiliar residential streets. Two Compton police units tried to enter the chase but a run through a dirt lot by the crook caused them both to spin out. Compton and Long Beach did not share radio frequencies, so Jack couldn’t ask if the Compton cops gave up completely. He kept his eyes forward.

After several near misses with other cars and stationary objects, the crook directed his stolen car back into Long Beach, this time south on Atlantic Avenue. By now just about every Long Beach cop who was able was in line with them, Jack thought. They sped down Atlantic, the victor flying
through every intersection. Lucky for all the cars involved, traffic was light to nonexistent.

“He’s heading for the Verandas,” Brinna announced.

Jack agreed. The Verandas, a federal housing project, happened to be home to lots of thieves and gangbangers.

Works for me,
Jack thought.

He watched as the stolen Honda made a wild, out-of-control left turn onto Fifty-Second Street, the housing project access. He might have made the next left into the complex if a private security car hadn’t entered the mix. Coming from the victor’s right, the security car must’ve caused the thief to hesitate. He oversteered, then overcorrected and missed the turn, slamming into a retaining wall.

Jack leaped out of the car as soon as Brinna came to a stop.

When Jack reached the smashed car, he saw the driver tangled behind the air bag and unable to run anywhere. No foot pursuit or fight tonight. Heart racing, he tightened his grip on the butt of his gun and cursed his bad luck. The urge to pull his baton and smash the car to bits nearly overwhelmed him.

Maggie, a few steps behind Jack, appeared at his shoulder.

“Man, you were quick. Good thing the dirtbag didn’t have a gun.” She stepped forward to assess the crook’s condition. He was moaning and not moving much. From what Jack could tell, the air bag had probably broken his nose.

About ten other cops, including Brinna and Sergeant Klein, swarmed the car. Jack took a deep breath and willed himself to relax, his adrenaline still pumping. He watched everything going on around him, feeling as detached as he had that first night at the domestic violence call.

After paramedics determined that the car thief was bookable, Maggie and her partner took him into custody. Brinna offered to stand by for a tow truck. With the chase over and the crook gone, everything de-escalated quickly. Klein and the other units returned to service.

He didn’t have anything to say to me tonight,
Jack thought when the sergeant pulled away. He was sitting in the patrol car again. His fatigue returned fourfold as the adrenaline high crashed. He considered the scene around him.

The commotion had awakened several Verandas residents. Some milled around on the sidewalk across from the wreck, watching the cops. He heard Brinna fishing for something in the trunk.

Jack stared at the Verandas residents, wondering how close he had come to beating that car thief within an inch of his life, wishing with every blow he was smashing Bridges. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and Jack shifted in his seat.

Is that really what I wanted?

He watched Brinna walk around the Honda with her clipboard, inventorying the damage. They had a half-hour wait for a tow truck. Brinna reminded Jack of how he used to be. She had a drive to do a good job, and she believed that by doing her job well, she was making a difference. He wondered if he’d ever feel that way again.

I’m a cop fantasizing about breaking every regulation concerning the use of force and a few laws besides. Will any bit of my life really be better after the sentencing?