Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  “I waited until I heard his car pull out and then I called Stella. She’d said she knew how to help. That was last night, but I knew if I wasn’t there when he got back, he’d look for us, so I told Stella, I said we’d wait until he left for rehearsal, and she said that …”

  The woman shook her head, as if she didn’t want to remember what Stella had exactly said.

  “…anyway, he left. And she got us, and we came here.”

  Rehearsal. Eagle’s brain tripped over that word. It was an odd one. Not left for work. Left for rehearsal.

  “I…I could stay, but Raquel…he’s never…she cried all night, and he was so mad, and finally I got her quiet, and he slept, and I thought…” The woman shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here, and Stella says we can be safe. If he doesn’t find us.”

  “I won’t say anything.” Eagle knew that was what the woman wanted to hear, as if her husband Knew All and Saw All. Some women were like that. They’d been under their husband’s thumb for so long, they figured he could read their minds.

  “Will we be safe?” The woman asked.

  Eagle nodded. “We’ll make sure of it.” If I have to shoot the son-of-a-bitch myself.

  God, what a last few days. She hated this.

  “Will you make sure Raquel’s okay? I hated waiting, but it seemed wise.”

  If it got you out of the house, Eagle almost said, but didn’t. She couldn’t comment on any of it. She had to make sure that baby had no other injuries.

  “Come with me,” Eagle said. “She’ll trust me more if you’re in there too.”

  The woman raised her gaze to Eagle’s. “I don’t—”

  “She’ll need you,” Eagle said. “I’ve done this before. It’s better for the baby.”

  And it made certain that the woman wouldn’t have a change of heart, search out the phone, and call the rat-bastard to apologize.

  The woman put her hand on the table, started to get up, and stopped. “I’ll just wait.”

  She had a lot more injuries than the ones on her face. Eagle pretended not to notice, not yet anyway.

  “Let me help you up,” she said.

  “No, I can do it,” the woman said, then pulled herself up, going so pale that for a moment, Eagle thought the woman was going to faint.

  Eagle put a hand near her back, so that she could catch the woman if she did fall.

  The woman gave her half a smile, or maybe a full smile. It was impossible to tell with those bruises.

  “I’m okay,” she said in such a cheerful voice that had Eagle not been watching her, Eagle would have thought she was just fine.

  The lie had gotten the woman this far. God knew how many times she had used it to move herself forward.

  Eagle grabbed her bag but made sure it was in the hand on the other side of the woman.

  Together, they walked out of the kitchen and to the little baby in that locker room.

  And the whole way, Eagle hoped that little Raquel had suffered none of the injuries her mother had.

  Because if the baby was badly injured, Eagle would have to get her to a nearby emergency room. And she didn’t want to do that.

  She didn’t want the husband to have any chance of finding them ever again.

  27

  Val

  Eleven p.m., and I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the bed, the willow tree rustling outside my window, my heart jumping with each rustle. I toyed with closing the window, but it was still warm inside my apartment, even though it had cooled to the lower sixties outside.

  I had fans in two windows—one in the living room and one in the kitchen—but I couldn’t face having a fan in the bedroom window. The white noise hid all other sounds, and I had learned that I needed to hear each rustle, each cough outdoors, each creak of the old building.

  Another legacy from him, one I’d be happy to get rid of.

  Although, if I were honest with myself, it wasn’t just the rustling that was keeping me awake. It was the conversation with Lucy. I kept replaying it in my head.

  I got up and grabbed my robe off the chair beside the bed. I slipped on my robe as I walked into the living room, where the hum of the fan was reassuring rather than irritating. The living room was ten degrees cooler than the bedroom.

  I propped open the double doors so that the bedroom would cool off, and went into the kitchen, flipping on the light once I was inside.

  The kitchen sparkled. I had cleaned it after I ate dinner, scrubbing the scratched countertops to within an inch of their lives. The kitchen still smelled faintly of bleach.

  My own demons were some of the reason for the excessive cleanliness, but some of the reason was the condition of Lucy’s apartment. The filth bothered me and reminded me how easy it was for a single, somewhat depressed person who lived alone to spiral into such a mess that she couldn’t recover from it.

  I didn’t want my new home to reflect my inner turmoil, so perhaps I went overboard. Perhaps I had cleaned too deeply. My hands were red and raw, and no amount of lotion I had put on them seemed to fix that.

  I pulled out the loaf of bread that I’d bought the day before and cut a slice. Then I put it in the toaster and located the peanut butter while I waited. I poured myself a glass of water and leaned against the counter.

  I couldn’t seem to shake the thought that no one could do anything about Darla. Her roommate hadn’t contacted the police. Her father couldn’t confirm that she was missing—at least, not in a way that the police would believe.

  Besides, so many kids ran off these days. It was all over the news. And the kids were so disrespectful to the police that the police didn’t seem to care.

  Or maybe they didn’t care.

  Truman had taught me that. He had shown me, sometimes dramatically, just how human police officers were. Even though he had darker skin than I did, he was often as dismissive of blacks as the white police officers were. When I finally challenged him on it, he had whirled on me:

  People on the South Side don’t see my skin color, Val. They see my uniform, and react to that. And they react poorly.

  Even after he was promoted to detective, he never forgot that treatment. He would do the job as best he could—he was an honorable man—but he wouldn’t go the extra mile for someone who didn’t respect him or the police.

  He would hate Berkeley. He would have choice words for it.

  The toast popped up, and I spread peanut butter on it. I took a bite, then sipped some water, and frowned.

  Truman used to say the one thing most cops never did on a missing person’s case unless that case became important was to contact other precincts. Not just to check for a John Doe, but to see if there were some new hookers or junkies or homeless people around. And to see if there were any unsolved homicides that fell inside the range of the disappearance—and that range had to include the two weeks before the person ostensibly disappeared.

  I couldn’t get a warrant for Darla’s home even if I wanted one, not that I needed one. I had gotten a good look at Darla’s apartment. I certainly couldn’t talk to the bank in any official capacity to find out what she was spending her money on.

  But I could get information from the police. Especially right now.

  Thanks to Truman, I had learned that the people who worked late at night in a police precinct cared a lot less for standard protocol than the day staff. Sure, they had a desk sergeant and someone handling dispatch. But the detective squad was thin at night, and the beat patrol officers were on the prowl.

  Arrests and processing still happened, but civilians with requests were told to wait until the next day. People generally knew that and respected it.

  So calls into a precinct at this time of night were either from people in trouble or from other law enforcement officials.

  My heart rate increased. Impersonating a police officer was against the law in any state, but I didn’t have to impersonate a police officer. There were lots of other employees in a precinct who handled grunt work.

&
nbsp; I took a sip of water, got out the phone book, and looked up the general number for the Berkeley police. The phone listings showed me that Berkeley didn’t have precincts. From what I could tell, it had only one police station.

  I paused, wondering if what I was going to do would work. I had planned to call from one precinct to another. But with only one station, the ruse would be harder. Although there were several other police departments nearby. Oakland had one. Emeryville had another, and San Francisco probably did have precincts.

  I wished I had the Bay Area phonebook, like Pammy had. Instead, I had to let my fingers do the walking, like they said in the stupid Yellow Pages ad. I dialed O on the telephone and got the operator.

  “I need to reach the general number for a San Francisco police precinct,” I said. “I’m just not sure which one. Can you list them for me?”

  “According to the listings,” she said, “San Francisco does not have precincts. It has bureaus, divisions, and stations. Which would you like?”

  My breath caught in surprise. I knew that different regions had different police practices, but I didn’t expect a completely different structure.

  “Would you mind reading me the names of the bureaus?” I asked.

  She did. Bureaus seemed to be some sort of central clearing for information, for such a large police force. Field Operations were separate from Investigations.

  And none of that did me any good. I asked her for divisions, and she asked for more clarification. I was getting confused. She was getting confused, and she wanted me off the line.

  So finally, I asked for the numbers of the various stations. That was probably closer to what I wanted anyway.

  She gave them to me, and I dutifully wrote them down. She offered to give me the phone numbers of substations as well, but I felt bad enough taking so much of her time.

  If I felt I needed the substations, I would call back.

  I scanned through the numbers she had given me, trying to figure out which one to call.

  Finally I decided I’d pretend I was from SFPD when I called the Berkeley police. My finger rested on the name of one of the stations in an area I had heard of.

  Then I dialed the Berkeley PD general number. The man who answered sounded crisp and alert, which I had not expected at this time of night.

  I ignored the pleasantries and went straight for business. I decided not to identify a rank, which could get me in trouble later.

  “Carol Ann Houk calling from the Tenderloin Station,” I said, slurring Carol Ann just enough that the careless listener might think I said Carolyn or Caroline. “We just collared a man who says he has information about one of your unsolveds, and he wants to trade. Before we do anything, I need to verify that you have the unsolved or if he’s just blowing smoke.”

  “Call back in the morning,” the man said. “Our information office can help you.”

  “I don’t have until morning,” I said, making sure I sounded slightly annoyed. “I either have to process this bastard tonight or let him go.”

  “Hold him overnight, honey, and call us in the morning,” the man repeated, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me,” I said before he could hang up. I was mad now, as if I were a legitimate police officer who had just been on the receiving end of disrespectful comments from a colleague. “I’m not some secretary trying to get information for my boss. I’m working a case, and I might have information that will help you with one of yours, if this twerp is as knowledgeable as he thinks he is.”

  “Honey, everything can wait. You’ll learn that eventually,” the man said.

  “Clearly, you small town police do things differently than we do,” I said, “because no one here would presume to tell me how to do my job. If you don’t want to talk to me, let’s make both of our lives easier. Why don’t you just transfer me to someone else.”

  “Hang on,” the man said as calmly as if I hadn’t spoken at all. The phone clunked. He had put me on hold.

  I bit back irritation. I had forgotten that nasty part of calling for information from anyone. Even though I could dress my voice up so that I could sound more educated than anyone in the room, I couldn’t lower my tone enough to pass for male—no matter how many times I’d wished for that ability in the past.

  The phone clunked again. “Carter,” a tired-sounding male voice said.

  I repeated my name and my story.

  “Jerk,” this Carter said softly.

  I did not sigh, but I felt like it. I snapped, “Excuse me. Maybe I didn’t—”

  “I didn’t mean you,” Carter said. “The guy who passed you off on me. He’s a junior officer and should have handled it, not that you care. But he’s going to get an earful from me later.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I certainly appreciate you taking the time.”

  “Yeah, well, sharing is how cases get solved. And solving cases is how we get promoted. At least here.” There was a bit of a smile in his voice.

  “Here too,” I said.

  “Well, then,” he said. “You got a name on this unsolved?”

  “No,” I said, “and that’s part of the problem. I got a description and a time period.”

  Here I went again, making up lies. I hoped it would get me somewhere.

  “Your perp can’t even give you a time?”

  “He can’t remember,” I said. “He’s coming down off of something, which is one reason I’m not entirely sure I believe him. However, his daddy has money, and judging from the file, Daddy will be here with a lawyer as soon as I let this kid near a phone.”

  “Gotcha,” Carter said drily. “What do you need?”

  “He claims he has information on a dead college girl,” I said. “Light brown hair, brown eyes, thin, about five-four, give or take.”

  “That’s a lot of info for someone who can’t remember anything,” Carter said.

  “He also guessed her bra size and told me she had a great ass. He clearly paid attention to how she looked.”

  Carter chuckled. I knew I had him then. He believed me because of what I was saying, and because I knew the lingo. His tone sobered. “How’d she die?”

  “That’s what this twerp doesn’t know,” I said. “He didn’t see it. Just heard about it. Can point us to the doer, which is what he’s trading. Information for rehabilitation in an actual medical facility, if you can believe that.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Carter said.

  “Nope,” I said. “That’s what he thinks will fly. I know that this particular night court judge won’t allow the clinic. He doesn’t believe in drug rehabilitation. But he might let the kid go with a reprimand. Money talks on tonight’s bench.”

  “Jesus, the problems you Big City folk have.” The amusement had returned to Carter’s voice. “Time period?”

  “End of June, maybe,” I said. “Maybe around the Fourth. If I were looking, I’d look at homicides for the last month. This kid smells like he’s been slumming for a while, and I’m not sure he knows what day it is right now.”

  “Gotcha,” Carter said. “You want me to call you back?”

  This was the dicey part. Technically, that was what I should be asking for. It was common courtesy.

  But there was no way to fake a phone number. So I had to make sure my voice didn’t betray my nerves.

  “You can’t have that many open unsolveds, can you?” I asked, making it sound like my request was no big deal.

  “Doing you a favor, Houk,” Carter said. He used my fake name, which startled me, and told me he was a good cop. He had taken down my name. “Let’s not go all My City Is Bigger Than Yours on me now.”

  “Didn’t mean to imply that,” I said in a tone that meant I hadn’t meant to get caught.

  “Sure you didn’t,” he said. “But you didn’t answer the question. You wanna give me a call-back number?”

  “I’d like it better if you could just thumb through the files real quick now.” I tr
ied to get that urgent-but-I-don’t-really-care sound to my voice I’d heard when I hung out at the precinct with Truman. “Like I said, I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “You owe me,” Carter said and set the phone down. I could hear a chair slide back, and then some low-key conversation. A man laughed, and another said something I couldn’t understand.

  I grabbed the toast, took another bite, then wished I hadn’t. Peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. I grabbed the water and swigged it, relieved that Carter hadn’t come back while I was eating.

  I put the toast down. I would finish it when this call was done.

  Then there was the squeak of a chair, the rustle of some paper, and the sound of a phone being picked up.

  “You there?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We got seven female open-unsolved. I’ve got three with names already, all of which are a lot older. I got two hit-and-runs, one of which is an old lady, but the other might be your vic, if it’s a hit and run that your guy mentioned.”

  My heart pounded. “When was this?”

  “Fourth of July, near the fireworks. Some drugged-out girl was mowed down. Long-time junkie from the look of her. Didn’t even see the car, although witnesses say the driver honked. Some thought she just jumped in front of it. Judging from the level of LSD in her system, that’s probably the case.”

  “I don’t think that’s her, but let’s hold it in reserve, shall we?” I said. I couldn’t imagine that the Darla Lucy described would have become a junkie in the space of a week or two. But I wasn’t going to rule anything out entirely. “What else do you have?”

  “Girl found near the bay, possible prostitute, judging by what was left of her clothes. Looks like she went overboard from a boat. Ugh. The fish made this one hard to identify.” Sounded like there were photos with that file, and not pretty ones either.

  “That’s six,” I said. “You got one more, you said.”

  “You’re going to love this one, San Francisco. Because it’s a jurisdictional nightmare, and if your collar is in the middle of it, it just got worse.” Carter was giving me an out.