by Parker, Kara
“You called us, ma’am,” Olivia said, taking a step back to allow the woman to exit the trailer and step out onto the sandy yard. “Can I have your name?” Olivia asked, pulling out a pad of paper.
“Hillary Sweetie,” she answered.
“Nice name,” Lance mumbled under his breath as Olivia caught him giving Hillary a quick once over, his eyes resting on her ass and chest before he quickly looked away.
“And that’s your legal name?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah,” Hillary said with a sigh, “I get that all the time.”
“You called because of a fight with your boyfriend. Want to tell us what’s going on?” Olivia asked, putting her notebook away and facing the tired looking woman.
“He just needs to learn that I don’t belong to him!” Hillary said, her voice went up an octave and she began to wave her hands around in anger. “He don’t provide for me. This is my trailer, and I’m the one who does all the work and buys the food and cigs and cable and all he does is work on his stupid bike!” the last phrase was shouted back at the trailer. “You know, I come home with my stuff and all of the sudden he’s all mad because I didn’t bring him any, but I ain’t his mother. He needs to buy his own shit.”
“Stuff?” Lance asked, letting the word hover in the air between them.
“Yeah...” Hillary’s face had blanched when she realized how far she had let her mouth take her. Her eyes darted between Olivia and Lance, as she tried to figure a way out of the grave she had just dug for herself.
“Ms. Sweetie, please tell me that you didn’t have two cops come out here because you and your boyfriend are fighting over drugs,” Lance said with a sigh.
“No, no, no, no,” Hillary stuttered. “By stuff, I mean food. Yeah, I went to McDonalds and didn’t get him anything and the next thing you know, he’s throwing a fit and throwing my stuff!”
“Did he physically hit you?” Olivia asked.
“Hell no, he knows better than that. I’ll kick his ass from her to Tuscaloosa if he tried that with me.”
“Do you want to press charges against him?” Lance asked.
“I mean, I guess not. I don’t want him ending up in jail, you know? It was just a fight; nothing that no one needs to get a charge for,” Hillary said, running her hands through her brittle hair. “So I guess ya’ll can go.”
“We will leave,” Olivia said, “but don’t make us come back here unless you got a charge you want to file. We’re cops, not marriage counselors. Kick him out if you don’t want him here, or learn to live with it. But don’t bother us with your nonsense again.” Hillary took a step back as if she had been slapped. But Olivia didn’t care, she was tired of this; she was tired of ticketing litterers and breaking up domestic disputes.
Hillary’s last words kept echoing through Olivia’s brain. “I guess ya’ll can go.” They had been dismissed like a waiter or sales clerk. Still though, she knew that answering the call had been the right thing to do. At the academy, they explained to her that even though charges aren’t filed in domestic disputes when the cops showed up, it normally ends the fight. Plus, Hillary looked like she could handle herself. At least she wasn’t one of those poor battered women who made excuses for their terrible abusive boyfriends and husbands. You can’t save everyone; they had taught her that at the academy, as well.
“Well, that was fun,” Lance said, as they pulled back out onto the road.
“You see that bike?” Olivia asked. “Think he’s with the Reapers?” she asked. There hadn’t been any telltale marks on the bike, but it had been significantly nicer than anything else on the property.
“He looks rough, even for the Reapers. He might do some work for them, but it’s doubtful he’s a full member. No biker chick would be dumb enough to call the cops on her biker boyfriend,” Lance answered.
“You ever deal with the Reapers?” she asked him.
“No, and I thank the good Lord everyday for that. Don’t you even think about interfering with the Reapers; they’re beyond anything you’re ready for. They’ll slice your body into a million little pieces and spread those pieces across the desert; no one will ever know what happened to you.”
“That doesn’t sound like a real thing,” Olivia countered.
“It is; I promise you,” Lance said. “Look, the biker guys police their own. Every couple of years the feds will send someone to go undercover and get some big charges. It’ll be a big deal, front page news, lots of arrests, and then the Reapers will go underground for a few years and then pop back up and the whole thing starts all over again. They’re like cockroaches; it’s impossible to get them all. Those bikers are tough, and they look out for their own. Plus, they keep a good handle on the neighborhood—in their own way.”
“You can’t let bikers police a neighborhood. That’s crazy.”
“You want to try and stop them, be my guest, but you’ll need a new partner. They don’t pay me enough to get involved with that.”
They ticketed three litterers and two drivers for running a stop sign. They sat in their squad car, and Lance did the crossword puzzle from the local paper. At the end of their shift, they returned to the station to fill out the paperwork. It was always Olivia’s least favorite part of the day. It wasn’t the paperwork she hated; she understood why it was important and why they needed to do it. It was the information itself that she couldn’t stand. Litterers, people running stop signs, and a fight between a girlfriend and her boyfriend—it depressed her to read about how she had spent her day.
This wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted her life to mean something; she wanted to leave an impact, and so far her impact was one of annoyance. She annoyed people—and not even the right people. She wasn’t annoying mafia bosses or murderers; it was just the lazy and impatient she annoyed, and she could only hope that her actions changed their behavior in a good way.
With a sigh, she looked down at the paperwork for Hillary and her still unnamed boyfriend and wondered what she was doing with her life. She just needed to be patient. There was crime out there, and as a cop, Olivia knew that sooner or later it would find her, no matter how hard her partner worked to make their lives as boring as possible.
On the other side of the room, a group of detectives were standing around a map of the city, consulting it and murmuring between themselves. There was action happening in this town; there were bad guys going to jail. That was some comfort. Olivia just wished she was the one putting them there.
CHAPTER FOUR
God’s Reapers had several guys working inside the local police; it wasn’t hard to get a list of the names of the officers who regularly patrolled around Seventeenth and Marigold streets. In fact, there were only four officers whose regular routes would find them in this neighborhood. One set of partners were already considers “friends of the Reapers”; they were paid a small sum to look other the way when strange trucks came through the streets late at night.
The other two looked like a Laurel and Hardy pair. One was a fat, middle-aged looking man named Lance Townsend who was well known for his fondness for giving out tickets and avoiding anything serious. Lance had a miserable looking wife who worked at the local library. The other half of the pairing was something else. Olivia Waters, in her ID badge she looked like a little kid, but something in her eyes showed her age. She was tall, five foot seven, and thin. She had a narrow face, and her dark hair was cut into a short pixie cut. David had to admit, something about her looked tough, the expression of the photo he was holding seemed to invite trouble. “Go ahead, start something. I can take care of myself,” it said.
She had just come out of the academy, but was young and eager. Of the forty calls dispatch had sent to her area in the last month, she had been the first to respond on thirty-two of them. But when he had checked the logs, all David had found were domestic disputes and robberies where the thief was long gone. The girl, Olivia, hadn’t done any real police work yet, and she might never if they kept her paired with Lance.
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br /> But Olivia had no boyfriend that he could find. No husband, no siblings, she was a transplant from Ohio, where most of her family still lived. Ohio was far from God’s Reapers reach, but not too far if it came to that. David held her picture in his hand and wondered how he was going to get to this girl. What would it take to keep her off of his back and away from his warehouse?
That day, in an old Honda the club had, David went looking for cops. He found them quickly enough. It was an early Thursday morning. The heat of the day had not yet set in, and the night’s cool still lingered. There were people out and about, running their errands, hurrying past Lance and Olivia who had their windows down in the squad car. David parked a block away. Wearing a hat and a simple black t-shirt and jeans, he stepped out of his car and onto the sidewalk.
It was morning rush hour at its finest. Cars sat at stoplights, as men in suits and women in dresses rushed to and fro holding coffees in one hand and cell phones in the other. But David took his time as he approached the car. He noted the license plate and the dings and scratches along the back bumper. He wouldn’t have minded getting under the hood of a police car, even David had to admit that when it came to vehicles, the cops knew what they were doing.
As he came upon the car, he glanced over to the side as he passed. He could see Lance Townsend in the driver’s seat, spreading cream cheese over a bagel, his eyes completely focused on the food in front of him. Lance was not someone David thought he would need to worry about. Olivia he couldn’t yet see as he walked past, he only got a glimpse of her elbow and her hand as she reached down to grab her coffee from the cup holder.
He had been thinking about her—about her elfin-shaped face and pixie cut, about the tough expression she wore in her ID picture. He had tried searching for her on social media, but she only had a Facebook account that she kept locked tight. An entire night of sleuthing and he had only managed to see a few other pictures of her. But they were all official pictures: Olivia at graduation in full uniform, her first day on the job, and one where she was lined up with the rest of the new boots, the details of her face barely visible in the grainy picture.
He walked past the cop car and over to a coffee shop where he would have a good view of the two officers. David ordered a coffee and sat at a table outside, opening a newspaper as cover. But still, he couldn’t see much. The sun was glaring off the window, and Olivia had lowered the visor, hiding her face. So as David sipped his coffee, he was forced to stare at Lance as he ate his bagel. He could tell that the two of them were in the mix of a heated debate; he could see Olivia gesturing with her hands and Lance shrugging and rolling his eyes in response. He wondered what they were arguing about.
About ten minutes later, they must have gotten a call, and David watched the car pull out into the street. Seconds later, one of his boys, revved up his bike and followed them at a discrete distance. God’s Reapers knew how to tail. Once the car arrived at its destination, Joey would keep driving and text the address to David. It was classic front and follow, and it almost always worked.
“Jewelry store at Tenth and Reed” came the text. David stood slowly and made his way to his car, driving the distance and parking quickly. He took off his hat and changed into a white shirt before sauntering down the street and into the jewelry store.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is now a bad time?” David asked doing his best impersonation of someone totally surprised to open a door and see two police officers standing there.
“Oh, no, of course not sir. Please come right in. There’s no trouble at all. Maggie will help you with everything you need,” an older gentleman said, gesturing to a red-haired woman who quickly slapped a smile on her face. Olivia and Lance were in a corner, their backs turned to David, and again her face was hidden from him.
“What can I help you with, sir?” Maggie asked.
“Oh, I’m just looking if that’s ok,” David said, flashing her a flirtatious smile. “So, why are the cops here? Were you robbed?” he whispered, glancing back at the officers.
“No, thankfully not, but we think someone might have tried to jimmy the locks last night. Boss needs a full report to give to the insurance company,” Maggie said.
David nodded and began to pretend to look at the diamond and gold baubles stored beneath the glass enclosures. He wanted to tell them that it was probably someone they knew, an ex-employee, definitely an amateur. There were only two kinds of people who robbed jewelry stores, experts and the desperate. Experts knew how to get in and get out quickly, and normally had buyers lined up. Desperate amateurs got caught. David would have never messed with a jewelry store—too many cameras, too much security, and too much risk.
“You should change all of your passwords on your security system and make sure the cameras are working. I would advise checking in on ex-employees or people who used to do business with you and might have fallen on bad times. It’s most likely an ex-employee or someone who knows the building; they were probably hoping all the codes were the same and they could just jimmy the lock, shut down security, and take what they wanted.” Her voice wasn’t what he expected; it was soothing and melodic and confident, and it didn’t hurt that she was right.
When she spoke, the sound of her voice compelled David to look up at her, and he finally got the view of her face he had been searching for. She was, in person, far more beautiful than her ID badge had led David to believe. She was tall and thin, but strong looking with both of her hands resting on her hips. Her hair had grown out—it was still a pixie cut, but she had grown bangs and the ends and it framed her angular face perfectly. Her eyes were dark with heavy lashes framing them. She was scanning the room, and when she looked at David, it took all of his energy to not immediately look away. Her eyes seemed to bore into him until they had seen everything they needed before moving on.
Lance stared at the watches in the case while Olivia filled out the report. She was thorough and smart, not only asking the required questions but thoughtful follow-up questions as well. She gave good advice to the store’s owner. The girl was no fool—that much was obvious. Lance left while Olivia was still talking to the owner. It didn’t take long for the heat to flare up in Marina’s Crest. As David walked out into the sunlight, he put his sunglasses on and debated on the proper course to take with Olivia Waters. She didn’t seem like the type of person who would take a bribe or be easy to intimidate. He needed to think; there had to be another way to deal with her. David just had to figure out what that was; his brothers were depending on him.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Certainly spent enough time in that jewelry store considering nothing happened,” Lance said, as he settled into the driver’s seat of the cruiser.
“Someone tried to break into their store last night. How is that nothing?” Olivia demanded.
“Tried to. Tried and failed. Locks are meant to keep people out; the locks worked. No harm no foul,” Lance grumbled. Olivia just shook her head at him. She was getting tired of dealing with Lance, of arguing with him. Her only hope was that the brass would see the work she was putting in and pair her with a better partner. Her nightmare was that the brass was sticking her with Lance permanently because he would never actually do anything if she weren’t there.
They drove up and down the streets of Marina’s crest, but it was the middle of a Thursday afternoon and not much was going on. There were a few people walking up and down the streets, shopping around, but no trouble was brewing.
“Let’s go up Marigold,” Olivia said. She was tired of watching the same stores fly past her window. She knew that Lance only had eyes for the clock. “You know, keeping busy helps the time pass faster.”
“Except we’re cops, so keeping busy involves actively putting ourselves in danger. I would rather the time pass slower.”
“Come on, one trip up Marigold. It is part of our route; we’re supposed to check on it. Besides, if people see cop cars regularly, then they know we’re in the neighborhood, and it encourages them to behave.�
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“It encourages them to post a look out. Evil deeds still occur; it’s just that they happen in places we can’t see.” Despite his argument, when the turn for Marigold came up, Lance sighed, turned on his blinker, and drove north, leaving the well-kept downtown streets behind them.
Middle of the day or not, there were still a lot of people on Marigold Street just hanging out. Kids who were probably technically still teenagers smoked on porches and watched the cop car intently as it passed, their necks craning to watch the car as long as they could. There was a palpable sense of unease in the air. Downtown nobody batted an eyelash when a cop passed, but here, everyone stood up and took notice. Few of the faces were friendly. Most people glared or shook their heads at the car, some flipped them the bird after they had passed. Olivia saw them, but knew it wasn’t worth the fight.
“Reapers,” Lance said under his breath, as they turned a corner and saw four guys on bikes stopped at in intersection, talking to each other. One of the bikers saw the car and revved his engine, the rest followed suit, and they quickly drove in the opposite direction. It was like that on Marigold Street. Cops were the enemy, and people walked the other way when an officer came to town. It made Olivia sad to see this; she wanted people to trust her and to know her, but she doubted she would make much headway.
