RCC03 - Beneath a Weeping Sky (36 page)

Katie lowered herself into the wheelchair. Part of her felt humiliated at using it, but another part of her was grateful for the ride. She settled in without a word.

The nurse put a small blanket on her lap. “We don’t have any jackets,” she explained. “It’s rainy out.”

“Figures,” Katie mumbled, pulling the blanket toward her middle.

The nurse wheeled her out of the room. Thomas Chisolm stood in the hallway, wearing jeans and a windbreaker. Katie raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Tom?”

Chisolm shrugged. “I asked Dispatch to let me know when you were getting discharged. I figured you’d need a lift home.”

Katie didn’t know what to say. Eventually, she settled with a mumbled, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Chisolm said. He motioned to the wheelchair. “May I?”

“No,” the nurse said. “I have to wheel her to the door. Hospital policy.”

“Okay.” Chisolm fell into stride beside them as the nurse walked quickly to the elevator. They waited in silence for the elevator to arrive, then jockeyed their way inside.

“Where are you parked?” the nurse asked.

“Outside the E.R.,” Chisolm told her.

Her disapproval was plain on her face as she punched the appropriate floor. “That’s reserved for on-duty personnel.”

“I’m never off duty,” Chisolm told her lightly. He caught Katie’s eye and gave her a wink.

The nurse didn’t reply. Once they exited the elevator, she rolled Katie toward the Emergency Room entrance at something that seemed just shy of the speed of sound. Katie realized after a few moments that she was actually gripping the armrests of the wheelchair tightly.

“Hi, cop,” came a deep voice to her right.

Katie turned to see a heavy-set bearded man sitting in one of the alcoves. His placid features were immediately familiar to her. After a second, she recognized him. It was Dan, the Forty-eight who liked Emerson. Or thought he tasted like some kind of condiment. She wondered if he was still in the hospital from the call she had with him last week or if this was a completely new trip.

Before she could answer, Dan’s flat expression turned to a scowl of concern. “Oh,” he said. “Cop got hurt.”

In the next instant, the Dale Earnhardt of the nursing profession had her out of Dan’s sight.

Katie sighed to herself.

Cop got hurt? Yeah, you could say that.

Just as quickly, the threesome reached the entrance. “Okay,” said the nurse. “Here we are.”

Katie stood slowly. Chisolm reached out to help her, but she shook him off with a quick head motion. Once she was on her feet, she opened the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders like a cloak.

“Okay, I’m ready,” she said.

She and Chisolm walked out the sliding glass doors of the E.R. toward the nearby row of cars. Chisolm pointed at the blue Ford truck in the second slot underneath the awning. “That’s me.”

Katie nodded and shuffled toward the truck. She was glad that she didn’t have to walk in the rain. It was a cold, spitting mist that she imagined would sink the chill straight to the bone. At the passenger side, Chisolm unlocked the door and opened it for her. This time, she let him help her ease up into the passenger seat. Then he closed the door and went around to the driver’s side.

As the two of them snapped their seatbelts into place, Chisolm broke the silence. “What was up with Nurse Ratched in there?”

Katie grinned, then winced. “Don’t make me laugh, Tom. It hurts to smile.”

“Sorry.” He started the truck and put it in gear. “So where am I headed?”

Katie recited her address, knowing that Chisolm would have no difficulty finding it. That was the way it was with cops in general, her included. They didn’t want directions, just an address. Every one of them knew River City inside and out anyway.

“Sergeant Shen said to give him a call sometime in the next couple of nights to let him know how long you’ll be out,” Chisolm told her, pulling out onto Eighth Avenue.

“Okay.”

Chisolm drove in silence for several minutes. The stop and go motion of the truck made Katie feel tired again. She started thinking about her bed and how good it was going to feel to slip between the covers and sleep for another year or so.

As they pulled onto the Monroe Street Bridge, Chisolm cleared his throat. “Uh, Katie?”

“Yeah?” She stared off to the right toward the falls near the Post Street Bridge. Images of her experience there the previous year flashed through her mind’s eye. It was almost as if she could see herself on the bridge, her pistol pointed at the insane man who stood dangling his own infant son over the edge of the railing. She looked away.

“I’m...sorry,” Chisolm said.

“Huh?”

“I said I’m sorry. I let you down.”

Katie turned his direction. The muscles in his jaw were bunched. He stared straight ahead at the road in front of them.

“Tom, you didn’t –”

“Yes, I did,” Chisolm interrupted, his voice intense. “I was supposed be your cover and I let you down.”

Katie didn’t want to argue. She just didn’t have the energy. Instead, she adjusted the blanket around her shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” Chisolm said. “I should have been there.”

Katie thought about telling him that he was always there when it counted, but she sensed that he wasn’t going to hear her words. So she simply sighed and murmured, “You were there. And I’m fine. I’m just tired and I want to go home.”

Chisolm didn’t reply. He just kept driving.

FIFTEEN

Wednesday, April 24th

Day Shift

1109 hours

After calling sick into work, something he had done only twice since taking the job, he gathered up a notebook and a pen. Then he headed to the library.

The newspaper article had been perfect. Not only did the reporter detail the task force’s unsuccessful attempts to trap him and thereby neuter the cops, but there’d been an additional benefit. The bitch he nearly killed was identified in the article as Officer Katie MacLeod (said to be “resting comfortably” at the hospital, he noted with disappointment). That revelation made him so happy that he almost considered a second phone call just to thank the reporter for supplying the information. But that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. It wasn’t worth it.

There were other risks, though – ones he
was
willing to take. But that would take some careful planning.

At the library, he headed to the newspaper archives in the basement. He had some research to do.

2218 hours

Officer Matt Westboard cruised down Madison Street toward downtown. He was returning from Sacred Heart Hospital, where he’d dropped off another Forty-eight. Unlike the one he’d helped Katie with the previous week, this person’s mental problem was more dangerous. She’d been threatening to kill herself with pills. Once she voiced that threat to Westboard, he had little choice but to transport her to the Mental Health ward for an evaluation.

Gratefully, such calls generated only a brief report. He was already down a burglary report in addition to this mental health hold and his shift was barely more than an hour old. He wondered if it were going to be that sort of night – the kind where he got buried under an avalanche of paper.

Westboard passed Second Avenue and continued north. He was getting into an area of downtown that bustled with drugs and other criminal activity, most of it culminating on a stretch of First Avenue known as The Block. Every time he drove through this section of downtown on his way back north, he seemed to get side-tracked with something. It never failed. As if to offer proof in the matter, he spotted a woman mid-way up the street. She leaned into a car window at the curbside, cocking her hip provocatively to the side. Her huge mane of blond hair bounced as she bobbed her head in agreement with whatever the driver was saying.

Westboard recognized her as a prostitute immediately. He slowed down and watched.

With an almost prey-sense, she looked up and saw his patrol car. She glanced back at the driver and said something. The driver looked over at Westboard’s approaching vehicle. Without hesitation, he pulled from the curb and drove away. The woman did the same thing, walking quickly in the opposite direction.

Westboard debated briefly as to whether to stop the hooker or the john. Truth be told, his sympathies lay more with the prostitute, but he knew that it was better to attack supply than demand.

He pulled alongside her, angling his car toward the curb and coming to a stop just ahead of her path. Then he activated his overhead flashers.

The woman didn’t try to run. She threw up her hands in mild frustration, then crossed them and waited.

Westboard advised radio of his location, then exited the patrol car. “How’s it going?” he asked pleasantly.

“Fine until you showed up,” the hooker shot back.

Westboard nodded knowingly as he approached. “Isn’t that how it always is? The cops show up and spoil the fun.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, unsure how to take him. “Usually,” she answered.

Westboard stopped next to her. She looked around twenty-five years old to him. At this range, he could see the acne scars that she was trying to hide with heavy makeup. The woman was thin with very little curve in the hip. Westboard made her for a heroin user. She wasn’t twitchy enough for a crack whore.

“Do you have any I.D.?” he asked.

She sighed, then reached into her small purse and withdrew a driver’s license.

Westboard thanked her, looking down at the card. Her name was Toni Redding and she was younger than he’d thought by about five years. The photograph on the driver’s license was only about two years old, but the woman who smiled out of it might as well have been an entirely different person than the one standing before him. The young woman in the photograph had a full face and a vibrant smile. Her eyes shined with life and hope. When he glanced up at today’s Toni, her eyes were flat and dead. Only her hair, long, blond and flowing, seemed to come from her previous life.

She seemed to read that he was comparing the picture with her current state. “That was a while ago,” she explained.

Westboard nodded. He removed his portable radio, switched over to the data channel and gave the operator Toni’s name and birthdate. “What’d that guy want?” he asked.

Toni eyed him carefully. Then she said, “Directions to the freeway.”

Westboard smiled. “Well, he left heading the wrong way.”

Toni shrugged. “So I’m bad with directions. Is that against the law?”

“Not the last time I checked. If that’s what you were doing.”

“It was.”

Westboard nodded again. “Okay. You live here in town, Toni?”

“What do you care where I live?”

“Just passing the time while I wait for your name to come back.”

She gave him another suspicious look, then shrugged. “I’ve got a place in Browne’s Addition.”

“Not far, then.”

“No. It’s like ten blocks.”

Westboard immediately thought that if Sully or Battaglia were here, one of them would pop off with something about how convenient that made it for her to walk to work. The quip was humorous, but he figured it would be unnecessarily cruel to cut on Toni. He’d already interrupted her trick. No need to ridicule her, too.

“How long have you lived there?” he asked instead.

“A few months. Why? You a real estate agent?”

Westboard raised his hands in mock surrender. “Easy,” he said. “I’m just talking with you.”

“I don’t like talking to cops.”

“Most people don’t. But it hurts less as you go along.”

She gave him a curious look, but he noticed that her jaw wasn’t set as rigidly as when he’d first approached her.

“Baker-124?”
his radio crackled.

“Go ahead,” he told the dispatcher.

“Redding is clear with prostitution entries and a suspended driver’s license.”

“Copy, thanks.” Westboard handed the driver’s license back to Toni. “Here you go. I’m supposed to seize that when it’s suspended, but you go ahead and keep it.”

Confused gratitude crept into Toni’s eyes. Westboard didn’t tell her that his ulterior motive was making sure she had good picture identification for the next cop that stopped her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No big deal,” he told her. “Listen, you don’t have any warrants and I’m not going to arrest you for soliciting tonight. But you need to scat out of the area for the rest of the night. If I see you down here later on tonight, I’ll have to take you in.”

Toni scowled, though not as harshly as before. “The charge wouldn’t stick, you know.”

“I do,” he said, “but you’d still spend the night in jail instead of in your apartment.”

She sighed in resignation. “Okay. You win. I’m out of here.”

“Be careful,” Westboard said.

She turned to go, then paused. She cast a sideways glance at Westboard over her shoulder. “Hey, is that cop all right? The woman cop that got beat up a few nights ago?”

“Yeah,” Westboard said. “She’s fine. Why?”

Toni shrugged. “I just wondered.” She turned to leave, then paused again. “I hope you guys catch that asshole.”

“We will.”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

“I agree.”

“There’s lots of men who are assholes, if you really stop to think about it,” Toni said.

“True enough,” Westboard agreed. “You come across a fair number that type?”

She gave him a measured look before asking, “Do you really care?”

“Of course.”

Toni turned back to face him. “I run into them every night. Some nights are worse than others.”

“Maybe you should get away from this life,” Westboard said quietly.

Toni looked away, absently rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “Maybe I will. Or maybe you should mind your own business.”

Westboard shrugged in mild agreement. An awkward silence fell between them for several seconds. Westboard expected her to turn and leave, either in an indignant huff or the practiced casualness that he’d come to associate with prostitutes. When she remained standing near him, looking everywhere but his direction, he finally broke the silence, asking her, “Toni, is there something you want to tell me?”