Damaged Goods (Don't Call Me Hero Book 2) (7 page)

“That sounds really nice. My first rookie, and I’m already rethinking my decision,” Angie groaned.

“It can’t be that bad,” Brent objected.

“Boot was in such a hurry to write his first citation he forgot to put the car in park,” Angie remarked. “He’s leaping out of the driver’s seat and I’m still rolling down the street.”

“You’re kidding,” Rich chuckled.

“I wish I were,” Angie said with a shake of her head. “You’ve never seen me move so fast, pulling on that emergency break.”

“I hope you gave the kid a break,” I said, taking a long pull from my beer bottle. “Everyone had a first day—even you, Ang.”

“Yeah, but my rookie mistake was too much sugar in my FTO’s coffee,” she said, “not nearly crashing the patrol car.”

“Where’s Adan today?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard?” Brent spoke for the group.

“It was my first day back, dude,” I reminded him.

“Oh, right. Ad-man’s got a new girlfriend,” he told me. “Won’t shut up about her.”

“Adan doesn’t talk about anything,
ever
,” I remarked. “She must be something special.”

“Everyone’s getting all wifed up,” Angie complained.

“Not me,” Brent grinned.

“There’s probably a reason for that, Viking,” Angie retorted. “By the way, what the
fuck
did you do to your face? I hardly recognized you without that caterpillar crawling across your lip.”

Brent grinned good-naturedly and Rich guffawed. I smiled behind my beer bottle. It was good to be back, but it was even better to be back and laughing with my friends.

+ + +

When I returned to my apartment later that evening, I discovered Julia sitting at my dining room table, reading glasses perched at the end of her nose and a semi-permanent frown on her face. Before her was my mountain of unsorted mail. She barely looked up with the sound of my entrance.

“No uniform?” she observed.

“I usually change clothes at the precinct.” I answered the question, but my voice was distracted, puzzled. I had no idea how she’d gotten into my apartment. She didn’t have a key, and I was damn sure I’d locked up on my way out that morning. “Besides, nobody’s ass looks good in polyester pants.”

“I bet yours comes close,” she replied.

I dropped my duffel bag in the front foyer. “How did you get in?”

“Your landlord is a very accommodating man, but you should probably have a talk with him about letting strangers into your apartment.”

“I’ll get right on that, thanks,” I deadpanned. “You know it’s a federal offense to go through someone else’s mail, right?”

Still, her eyes remained on the opened envelopes spread out on the table before her. “I’m well aware of federal law, Miss Miller,” came her reply. “But you should have known I wouldn’t be able to sleep thinking about this pile of unanswered mail.”

“Find anything good?” I took a few steps into the apartment. “Did I finally win all that money from Publishers Clearing House?”

“Sadly, no.” She finally looked up and removed the reading glasses that hung around her neck on a delicate chain. “Were you aware of all these medical bills?”

“Bills?” I licked my lips. “Are you sure they’re not like receipts or paid invoices? The government was supposed to take care of all of that.”

Julia flipped her hair out of her eyes and slipped her glasses back on. “Your in-patient hospital bills for your back, yes. But these are all for services rendered here in Minneapolis.”

Her words made me frown. “But I haven’t been to the doctor since I got out of the VA hospital. I’m as healthy as a horse. Did some asshole steal my identity?” I grabbed one of the sheets of tri-folded paper, but I couldn’t make sense of all the codes and numbers. It might as well have been written in a foreign language.

“Do you know a Doctor Archibald Landsen?” Julia shuffled through a few of the letters. “All of these bills seem to be from him.”

“Dr. Landsen? Shit.” I set the piece of paper down. “He’s my shrink.”

“I thought you were going to the police department’s therapist?”

“I am. He is. But he’s just a private practitioner the city uses. We don’t have a guy that’s just for us cops.”

“I still don’t understand this.” Julia shook her head and frowned. “Why would they send you the bills?” She continued to flip through the great stack of papers in front of her. “Did anyone mention anything to you about having to submit these to the insurance company yourself?”

“No.” I paused and began to second-guess my answer. “At least I don’t think so.”

I stared at the bills with their block letter warnings of Final Notice and Late Charges with growing unease. Now that the notices had been released from their envelopes, there was no ignoring them, no way to shove that genie back into its bottle. I could feel those familiar emotions of being overwhelmed come bubbling to the surface.

“For fuck’s sake,” I cursed. “I can’t afford this shit.”

“Language, Cassidy.”

“How do you expect me to react?” I responded shrilly. I grabbed the closest piece of paper and erratically waved it like a flag of surrender. “I don’t have this kind of money.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” Julia said with practiced patience. “And don’t worry about the money. In no rational scenario would you be responsible to pay these bills yourself. We’re just lucky we caught it in time.”

“
You
caught it,” I corrected her. Her words, as well-meaning as they were, did nothing to stop my rising panic. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. Who am I supposed to call to get this straightened out?”

“Why don’t you let me do some digging?” she proposed. “I’ve had to deal with insurance companies before because of my mother.”

“No, this is my mess, not yours.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Cassidy. I’m the one who opened your mail. Let me help.”

Despite how overwhelmed I felt, a small smile tugged at my lips. “Are you gonna go all pitbull on them?”

“Perhaps. But only if they deserve it.”

“Do you know how crazy hot you are in those glasses?”

Julia laughed, light and musical. “You mean my old lady readers?”

“Yeah. They’re sexy. When do I get a second date?” I asked.

My question brought an unexpected frown to her face. “The judge assigned the court date for my mother’s custody trial,” she revealed. “I don’t know if I’ll be very good company until that ordeal is over. There’s evidence to compile and affidavits to procure and my opening and closing statements to write and—”

I silenced her rant with a kiss. “It’s okay,” I assured her, “the date can wait. This hearing is way more important. Besides, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m sorry, Cassidy,” she continued to frown. “I know how I get. I become so focused on this one thing—this goal—and it consumes me.”

“Is that what happened when you met me in Embarrass?” I teased.

“Careful, dear,” she clucked. “Your head is already teetering on disproportionate. We can’t afford to let it swell up anymore.”

I clamped my hands around my skull. “You think I have a big head?” I self-consciously lamented.

She tapped me affectionately on the nose, making me go cross-eyed.

“So do you, like, want radio silence until the trial?” I asked.

“I hate the idea as much as you, dear, but I’ll be working late, ignoring my phone more than usual, and keeping unorthodox hours until this thing is resolved.”

“How long?”

“At least a week.”

Seven days sounded like forever. I really had it bad for this woman.

“That’s okay,” I reassured both her and myself. “It’ll give me time to plan something that’ll top our first date.”

“Topping mini golf?” she chuckled. “Lofty goals for one so young.”

“Oh, just you wait, lady,” I playfully threatened.

“Shouldn’t I be pulling my weight?” She worried her lower lip. “I don’t want to burden you with all of this.”

“Julia.
Burden
?” I said the word as though I’d never heard it before. “I want to do this. I want to treat you and make you feel special.”

“Well if that was your goal, you’ve already accomplished it, dear.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The day was hot and humid. It was one of those sticky, uncomfortable summer days in the Midwest that made me wish I didn’t have to wear a Kevlar vest. Like the previous day, Mendez had all of the windows rolled down in the patrol car instead of using the air conditioning. He said the refrigerated air messed with his sinuses, so I was subject to heatstroke so he could breathe a little easier out of his nose.

I gazed out the window as Mendez and I drove past Julia’s office on our way to our section of district four after morning roll call. Although her apartment was in St. Paul, the public defenders office where she worked was located in Minneapolis. A pang of regret settled in my bones as we rolled by. When I worked for Embarrass PD I could drop by her home or office whenever I wanted to—and I had. It would be a few months before I was no longer under the microscope of my FTO and could resume that habit again. I knew in the long run that it was better for both of us to have left that place—especially for Julia—but there’d been things about life in Embarrass that I’d taken for granted.

Day One. Julia and I had agreed to a modified radio silence until her mother’s trial. We could talk on the phone, but she had indicated that she needed time to herself to prepare for the custody hearing. I wanted to give her that space and not be a distraction, no matter how hard it was going to be on my end. I had survived twenty-eight years without ever knowing Julia Desjardin, I told myself. I could handle a few nights away from her.

The in-car radio squawked with a new, incoming call. “432,” the voice said. “What’s your 10-20?”

Mendez grabbed the in-car radio before I could react. “432 is on Lyndale and Sherman.”

“432, you’ve got a 10-79 at 1002 Hillsdale. Neighbors called it in. Said they heard loud voices coming from the people who live upstairs.”

“Domestic disturbance,” I murmured to myself.

“Dispatch, 432 is en route,” Mendez spoke into the handset before returning it to its holster. “Light ‘em up,” he told me.

I reached down to the panel of lights and sirens and flipped on our overheads. I was mildly surprised Mendez hadn’t just done it himself. Day Two with my new FTO wasn’t shaping out to be any better than the previous day. Mendez continued to be reticent to converse with me about anything non-job related, and for the second day in a row, he hadn’t offered to let me drive.

The first five days, or Phase I of the San Jose model, were supposed to be considered as a transitional time for the trainee. In other words, if I messed up in those five days it wouldn’t count against me. But something about Mendez’s dour demeanor told me that we were skipping past Phase I.

The radio call brought us to a brick duplex on a residential street. A young man and woman stood outside of the residence.

I stared out the passenger side window as we came to a stop in front of the address. “I’m guessing those are the neighbors who called it in,” I thought out loud.

Mendez put the vehicle into park. “There’s only one way to find out.”

My partner and I exited the squad car and strode side-by-side up the concrete walkway to the waiting couple. Despite the late morning hour, both the man and women wore striped, cotton pajama pants and flip-flops. The man’s dark hair stuck up in the back and the woman’s face was without makeup. They looked like they’d been yanked out of their beds.

“Are you the ones who called in the disturbance?” Mendez asked them.

“My girlfriend did,” the man spoke up. “I told her we should stay out of it, but once she gets an idea in her head, she’s like a dog with a bone.”

“I couldn’t handle it anymore,” the woman stated. “They’re always arguing or playing their music too loud. We’ve repeatedly asked them to keep it down, but they just ignore us. We both work second shift,” she explained, “so we need to sleep during the day.”

“In a non-emergency situation, you should call 411 instead of 911,” Mendez noted.

“Maybe it
is
an emergency,” the woman protested. “I don’t know why they’re yelling up there—they could be beating on each other for all I know.”

“You were right to call us, ma’am,” I said evenly. “It’s better to be cautious than turn a blind eye when your gut tells you there’s something wrong.”

The woman slapped her boyfriend on the arm. “See? The police don’t think I’m overacting.”

“You two can return to your home,” Mendez instructed. “We’ll take it from here.”

The duplex was divided between an upstairs and a downstairs apartment instead of splitting the space vertically down the middle. The residents shared an entrance at the front of the building. A narrow carpeted stairway led upstairs to the second unit.