by R. H. Herron
Mom looked down at her hands. In the sunlight that streamed through the glass, Jojo could see a streak of blood on her mother’s wrist. Her own? Or his?
“Yeah.”
“Mom?” Jojo hated the fear that lay below the word.
“He might know something about Harper.”
“But he didn’t tell you anything!”
Mom shrugged. “You’re right.”
“I can’t believe—”
From the backseat Kevin said, “She was using what she had.”
Jojo twisted to glare at him. “You’re defending her?”
“Damn right.”
“What is going on?” This wasn’t how it worked. “Cops don’t do that, Mom.”
Kevin barked a laugh. “Sorry? What do you think you’ve been working to end? Why have you been marching, again?”
Mom’s voice was small. “I’m not a cop.”
Kevin pulled on the back of Jojo’s seat. “If she’d wanted to kill that asshole, I’d have dug the hole to dump him in.”
When Jojo tried the door again, the handle just moved ineffectively. “But Dixon doesn’t have her. He fuc—He slept with her, yeah. But he’s just a drunk. And he’s going to report you, and you’ll lose your job. You just beat up a pathetic drunk . . .” She trailed off—that hadn’t been the mother she knew. Her mother got her father to carry spiders outside in cups. She cried at commercials sometimes. Mom said she quit being a cop to be a dispatcher because she was a mother. Being a mother is more important than being a cop. I have to stay safe to keep you safe, Joshi. I don’t trust myself on the streets. “Shit.”
Mom looked sideways at her, still not meeting her eyes. “What?”
“You didn’t trust yourself on the streets.”
Silently, Mom shook her head.
“What did you do?”
“Now’s not the time.”
“Mom, what did you do?”
FORTY-NINE
FOR SOME REASON Laurie had always thought Jojo would never have to know. It wasn’t like it was the biggest deal, after all. No one died. Laurie had overreacted one day. That was all.
It happened to everyone.
It shouldn’t have happened to her, though.
“I was working with your dad one day, and I kind of lost it on a suspect. That’s all.”
Jojo’s voice was icy as she repeated, “What did you do?”
Laurie could feel the two pairs of eyes focused on her, Jojo from the side, Kevin from the back. “I tased a guy.”
Omid had just been shot.
It was a cold January night. Both on dogwatch, Omid and she had pulled up next to each other facing opposite directions so they could talk window to open window. They were in the old library parking lot, back where the second streetlight had gone out. Omid had been trying to talk her into his car. “Just for a minute. You know you want what I got in here.” He’d been so damn sexy, and the corny line actually made her want what he was offering. They’d fucked in the patrol cars a couple of times—both of them liked it, but both of them knew it was a matter of time before they got caught. If they were seen by a citizen, that would be embarrassing. But if they got caught by one of their own or turned in by that citizen, they’d face discipline.
She’d laughed. “Get out and kiss me instead.” If she were lucky, he’d reach down inside her car, and maybe she could get off to his hand while he kept a lookout. . . .
They were parked so close that his car door bumped hers when he got out.
He’d stood above her, that smile that meant sexy trouble for her dancing across his mouth. “Kiss you where?”
Then there was a pop.
A firework—that’s what she’d stupidly thought it was at first.
But Omid was already running toward the back of the library. Without thinking she was out and running behind him, her gun in one hand, her radio in the other. “Shots fired, in rear of Greene Library. Suspect on foot.”
The man with the gun was fast, but Omid was faster. He tackled him and came up roaring, his arm pouring blood. It took a few seconds to realize that Omid had actually been hit by the bullet—he’d been shot.
Together they cuffed the guy. Pete Zimmer, white male, fifty-two, on a combination of meth and heroin. He was convinced that shooting a cop would get him some kind of bonus points for a role-playing game he was stuck playing inside his mind.
The dude was crazy. Someone to be pitied, someone to be hospitalized.
But as they shoved him into Laurie’s patrol car, something snapped inside her. While they waited for the sirens to get closer, while Omid applied pressure to the wound that was only a superficial graze, instead of slamming the car door shut, she left it open.
With great care she unholstered her Taser. Time slowed to a crawl, and everything became clear. Go slow to go fast. They’d learned it in the academy—the slower and more relaxed you became, the more accurate your aim.
She turned it on. She spent a moment thinking about what she was about to do while she took a deep, cleansing breath.
Then she pulled the trigger.
The barbs dove into Pete Zimmer. The device itself was hard to hold—it bucked in her hand as time sped up again. His body went rigid, his head slamming back into the vinyl seat. His legs splayed, looking crooked and wrong. His face clenched, and his eyes rolled back so all she saw in the dim overhead light was the whites. His teeth clacked.
“Jesus! Laurie!” Omid scrambled to let himself out of the front seat. He was out and around to her side almost instantly, reaching for the Taser.
Laurie just said, “He shot you.”
Her vision went dark, rage rising in her chest. The Taser had only one set of electrode wires and one gas cartridge, making it good for just one shot at a distance. But it still had ordinary stun-gun electrodes. Before Omid could grab it out of her hand, she leaned forward and pressed the gun to the man’s arm. The car shook as his limbs slammed into the front seats, the windows, the floor.
Omid knocked the device out of her hand. He ripped off the barbs from the first shot. He gave her a look that acted as a mirror—she saw herself then, standing with legs braced, firing pain into a man who would have fewer working brain cells than he’d started with when she was done with him.
Omid was the one who handled it. He came at us when we put him in the car. Superhuman strength, all jacked up. I couldn’t help her—my arm, see? She had no choice. No, she only hit him once. Not sure why his heart is showing that rhythm. Freak thing, I guess. Or maybe the drugs.
The suspect could have died. His heart flipped around in his chest more than it should have, according to the EKG the medics ran. That was due to the two hits, of course. The two hits Omid lied about, the second hit that Laurie never confessed to.
Now, in the car with her daughter, she simply said, “I didn’t need to tase him. Not even once. I did it twice.”
“So you took yourself off the force. Like, some big atonement thing, is that right?”
Why was Jojo’s voice so contemptuous? It had been atonement. “I also got pregnant with you.” It could have happened that very night. She’d always suspected it had. She and Omid had gone to her place after he’d been released from the hospital with six stitches, and she’d been so panicked that she’d dragged him to the floor in the front hallway, ripping open his pants and riding him until she came. Then she’d cried like she never had before while he said words she couldn’t understand into her hair.
“I loved being a cop, Jojo. It’s all I’d ever wanted.”
“You were a bad cop.”
Her daughter’s words were knives dipped in acid.
And they were absolutely true. “I wish I hadn’t done that, honey. Not then, I mean now. Today. Though I wish I hadn’t done either of those—”
Jojo interrupted her. “Well, fucking sh
ake it off.”
Shocked, Laurie stared at her daughter.
Jojo pulled up her legs so that her feet were on the seat under her butt, something Laurie usually told her to knock off. “You did it. Whatever. Deal with it later. What do we do next? It’s not him, is it?”
Laurie took a breath. “I don’t know.”
“He’s too drunk. He looks like he’s always like that. He’s too stupid to have her.”
Kevin said, “But . . . what if he knows who has her?”
It was confirmation of what Laurie was thinking. “Yeah. It almost sounded like that.”
“Why?” demanded Jojo. “Why do you think that?”
Dixon had been just a touch too glib, the tears starting too quickly when he said he’d lost Harper, that he loved her, that she’d stopped calling him. It hadn’t sounded real. “He said she wasn’t in contact, that he’d lost her, but he knew she was okay. The two things together don’t make sense. And even after . . . after I hit him”—she made herself say it out loud—“he still didn’t answer me about whether he knew where she was or not.”
“So he’s lying.” Jojo sounded furious.
“Yeah. But we don’t know about which part.”
“So he could have her.” Kevin wrapped his hands around the headrest of Jojo’s seat so tight that his knuckles clicked.
In the deepest part of her gut, Laurie didn’t think Dixon had Harper. But he knew something.
“The picture in his house, Mom. That’s her.”
“Maybe. We don’t know that.”
“I know that.”
“He has to go to jail.” Kevin rubbed his palms against the thighs of his jeans. He rocked back and forth. “That motherfucker has to go to prison for whatever the fuck he did, or for whatever the fuck he knows.”
Jojo said, “He has to go there forever. They’ll get him. We’ll find Harper, and he’ll get what’s coming to him, along with whoever else is involved.”
They were so young.
“What now?” Jojo asked. She fiddled with the glove box, clicking it open and slamming it shut. Open, then shut again.
“Stop it.” The words were snapped and automatic. Jojo rolled her eyes but didn’t add anything else. “What now is we have to find Harper.”
Jojo nodded. “So we follow him.”
Laurie curled her fingers into her palms. “We can’t just sit out here and wait for him to go to whoever has Harper. First, he’s not going to sober up enough to even walk straight for hours. Second, he’ll know we’re following. He used to be a decent cop. He’ll be able to shake us.”
Kevin leaned forward. “How do you guys follow suspects at your work? Like, how do you attach those GPS things to their cars?”
Laurie laughed, but the sound hurt her throat. “We don’t. Using something like that would be illegal. The feds could probably get away with it, but not us. And we’d need a warrant, anyway.”
“Wait,” Jojo said. Then somehow she was up and moving between the two front seats, wriggling her body into the backseat.
“What are you doing?”
Jojo practically sat in Kevin’s lap and pulled the knob that sent half of the backseat flying forward. She clawed around in what was exposed of the trunk. “You’ve always got so much shit in here—last time I went in here for snack bars, I saw duct tape. You still have it?”
Laurie never cleaned her trunk. “If you saw it there, it’s probably still there, but what—”
Jojo slammed the seat back up and held a ring of duct tape aloft, her face triumphant. “We’ll tape my phone to his car.”
FIFTY
IT WAS A great idea. Jojo couldn’t understand why Mom didn’t seem to think so. Yeah, it meant that Jojo wouldn’t have her phone for a while, but since she didn’t plan on leaving her mother’s side until she was about forty years old, what was the big deal?
“I don’t know, I just don’t like it.” Mom kept fiddling with the car key in a clicky way that was making Jojo crazy. “How do we know which car is his, anyhow? There’s no car in the driveway.”
Jojo pointed. “The black Range Rover.”
“How do you know?”
“The 11-99 sticker.” It profited a foundation for highway patrol officers and their families when they were hurt or killed—11-99 was the radio code for “officer down.” Dad always said having one on your car was a good way to get out of a ticket, too. “And his plate.” 5211OS. Fifty-two was the start of all officers’ badges in San Bernal. “Is that Dixon’s old badge? 5211 On Scene?”
“Damn it. Yes.” Mom jerked her head toward Jojo. “Did you see that before you and Kevin went in the house?”
Jojo shook her head. She hadn’t. She should have, but where Kevin and she had parked, the sticker hadn’t been visible.
Kevin’s voice rumbled from the backseat. “It’s a good idea.”
“See? Kevin agrees.”
“Yeah . . .” His voice trailed away. Poor Kevin. For as big as he was, he seemed to be crumbling, buckling like old concrete. That was understandable. He’d been in the same room with the man who might know something about how Zachary had died. The fact that he wasn’t ripping Dixon’s house down board by board was something he should be proud of.
Mom said, “What if they send something to your phone?”
“If I tape it to the undercarriage, he’ll never hear it. I’ll silence it, anyway.”
Mom shook her head impatiently. “No, I mean what if whoever has her sends us more clues?”
As if on cue, Jojo’s phone pinged in her hand.
Cordelia’s getting desperate. It was from the same number that had claimed to be CapB.
“What?” said Mom. “What is it?”
Jojo held it out and then tried to catch her breath. She pushed the button to call it back.
“What are you doing?”
Jojo remained silent as she held the phone to her ear. Kevin gave her an alarmed look, and Mom reached to grab it from her, so she switched ears, huddling close to the window.
Someone answered the phone. She could hear breathing, then a rustling.
Then, “Jojo? Is that you?” Harper’s voice was weak. Shaky.
“Harper! We’re looking for you—where are you? Harper—”
“Help me—” There was a click.
Jojo held out the phone and looked at it. “She’s gone.” Harper was alive. Her blood sang with relief, with hope—
“Fuck, Jojo.”
Mom was mad at her? “What? You think I shouldn’t have called? It’s my phone.” She’d call again if she wanted to. Then, suddenly, she knew she wouldn’t. Harper’s voice had been terrified. What if by calling she was scaring Harper more? What if she’d made it worse for her? Jojo swallowed back the salt in her throat. “Can you trace that call?”
Mom shook her head. “You know we can’t.”
“I read that you can triangulate the cell towers. That’s how they got that guy in Folsom—”
“It takes equipment and manpower and time. We could probably get something in a day or two, but—”
“Then start.”
Mom shook her head. “Jojo. They don’t trust me now. I didn’t tell you, but I got arrested. That’s where I was.”
Jojo’s anger disappeared, leaving only a pathetic buzz of panic. “I know, Mom. I heard it on the radio.”
“Oh, my God, of course you did.” Mom’s shoulders slumped.
They needed help. More help.
Jojo looked over her shoulder at Kevin, but his eyes were closed. He gave the impression that he couldn’t hear them at all. “You okay?” She touched his knee.
Slowly, he shook his head. His eyes stayed closed.
Mom would know what to say. Jojo looked at her, waiting. . . .
But Mom just put her head on the steering wheel.
<
br /> Daddy.
He’d know what to do. He’d take charge. He’d roll in, and he’d yell, and then he’d find Harper and swoop in, saving her, just like he’d saved Jojo. “Can we go ask Dad?” Even though he . . .
“Dad’s too sick, baby.”
“He’s not. He’s getting better.”
Mom’s voice was exhausted. “You know he’s not strong enough. And he’s . . .”
Jojo heard what her mother couldn’t say—he wasn’t the man they’d thought he was. He wasn’t going to come to the rescue. Not this time.
From behind her, Kevin finally spoke, his voice low and tight. “The police kill us on the streets. It’s like hunting season for them, and they don’t even know it. Probably every one of them who hasn’t shot one of us would swear they never would. Then they get there, they see some big black man, and most of them get so scared they pull the trigger, again and again.”
No one could argue with him.
It might not be Darren Dixon.
But it was probably some kind of cop.
“And then if they can’t get us on the streets, they come into our homes and murder us. Picking us off, one by one. They come into my house. They kill in my home. And I can’t do shit about it.”
Mom just kept her head on the wheel. It looked like she was praying, but Mom wasn’t religious. She finally muttered, “We’re not all that way, Kevin. At least . . .”
They had to act, not sit around and talk. Every minute Harper might be slipping further away from being found. Jojo set her phone on the dashboard. “Okay, then can we do my duct tape idea?” She didn’t want to look at the face of her phone anymore. She didn’t want to see any more texts.
Mom straightened. “Honey, the duct tape thing is a great idea, but not with your phone.”
“Why—”
“We’ll use mine. We’re connected in Location Services. You can follow me just as well as I can follow you. And we need whoever’s texting you to be able to contact you.”
“What if Dad needs you, though?”
She started to hand her phone to Jojo. “We tell him to text you instead. Wait, why am I giving this to you? I’ll do it. Give me that tape.” She tried to pull her phone back.
