by Carmen Green
“No problem.”
Even as Rachel said the words, Tia couldn’t help but think she’d just made a big mistake. But she’d have a roof over her head. Then things would be straightened out. They had to be.
“How did you get to the hospital?” Rachel asked, interrupting Tia’s musings.
“A-a man came along and ... and he made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Over there.”
Rachel stopped the car and hurried to get out.
“I can manage from here, Rach. Thanks. I’ll need a key to your place.”
Her often-opinionated friend walked to the rear passenger door. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll be home every night by the time you get off.”
Tia’s eyebrows creased, but she didn’t speak. Just a couple days. She tried to roll out of the tiny Miata. “Rachel, I’ll get the crutches.”
Rachel held them back, staring at her. “You can’t drag them and you out of the car, so quit. You act like the cops are hunting you down.” Rachel looked at Dante’s car and whistled. “Girl, you really did snap.”
Tia glanced but didn’t focus. Daylight showcased the work of a truly angry woman. She was over him now. She hobbled to her car, her hands shaking. Calling in sick looked appealing.
“Tia, I think you need to talk to somebody.”
“Rach, not you, too. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Spice and sandlewood blended together, stirring distant memories.
“Good morning, Tia,” the familiar male voice said, one that had played chase with her in her dreams. “We had a date last night. You got away before I could ask you out again.”
Tia’s stomach sank to the bottom of her sore foot. “Go away. You’re not my type,” she told the officer.
“Tia!” Rachel screeched. “You’re never rude.”
“I am when I’m getting arrested.”
Rachel started gurgling as the plainclothes officer pulled out handcuffs. “I guess that’s my opening,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent.... And this time, you won’t get away.”
Chapter Five
The black eyes of the American eagle emblazoned on the symbol of justice stared down at Byron, as if holding him in contempt. He’d never seen the inside of the hearing room before and didn’t know how officers who’d had complaints lodged against them numerous times could stand it.
Even at six-three, 220 pounds, and thirty-one years of age, he was totally intimidated.
The official surroundings stopped time and crystallized his purpose for being there. He’d been insubordinate. That much was true. With provocation. But would his explanation ever be heard? His career was on the line. Everything he’d achieved in the past five years was in jeopardy.
He and his union representative, Mabrey Jackson, sat on one side of the room, and Captain Hanks on the other, and in the ensuing silence, Byron tried to pinpoint, not for the first time, where he’d gone wrong.
He concentrated hard, not wanting to let the side of himself that rejected everything he didn’t believe in take over.
Had things started going wrong when he’d met Tia Amberson two weeks ago?
No, long before that. A year to be exact.
The day, month, and time returned.
His life had been irrevocably changed when he’d collided with LaPrincess Quinellis.
She’d run, literally headfirst, into his cruiser, bloodied and broken by the fists of the man she’d vowed to love forever. She’d been a mess physically. Battered beyond that of even a worst enemy.
He’d thought it fate that she’d rammed his cruiser with her body and he’d gotten to her before her husband. He’d saved her that night and had taken great pleasure in getting two hits in before strapping the cuffs on her husband.
That night he’d surpassed professional detachment and had allowed himself to feel. He’d sat at the hospital with the skittish woman long after his shift was over and had lectured her on the responsibility she had to save her life.
Between getting her broken nose taped and her lacerations sutured, she’d said the right words and promised to love herself more than she loved Gerald.
Byron had left that night, his purpose in life suddenly defined with crystal clarity. His job was to protect and serve.
That night he’d slept well.
Two days later he’d gotten the call at the beginning of his shift. Gerald Quinellis had killed LaPrincess the night before, while Byron dreamed the night away.
As far as Byron was concerned, LaPrincess had played him, strummed his sympathetic emotions, and had died, anyway.
Tia Amberson wouldn’t be any different. He’d saved her, and she was probably at that very moment in the arms of the man who’d dogged her.
He looked at the eagle’s eyes. He wouldn’t be a fool again.
Mabrey leaned toward him. “No outbursts. Don’t speak directly to the captain. Let me answer the questions, unless you’re otherwise asked. If you get fired”—Mabrey shrugged—“you won’t get back in.”
Byron considered his other occupational possibilities. Maybe he could go back to the potato chip company as a delivery driver. Not really what he had in mind.
“Captain Hanks was wrong,” Byron said.
“That unrepentant attitude will ensure unemployment.”
The three-member panel walked in, and everyone stood until the panel was seated.
“Officer Rivers,” Colonel Tulane said, “you’ve been charged with insubordination to your superior officer. Do you understand this charge?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are there questions from the panel?”
Dr. Valencia Cole moved first. “Officer Rivers, please explain the details of the incident.”
“On the night of February fourteenth, I attempted to arrest a suspect for vandalism. In the process of the arrest, the suspect became injured.” He cleared his throat. “I thought the suspect was making an aggressive move against me, and I defended myself.”
“You gave her a black eye?” Colonel Berger gave him an astounded look.
Byron pressed ahead. “The suspect was taken to Grady Hospital. During the course of treatment, I was called into a consultation with her doctor. While we were meeting, the suspect fled.”
“Fled?” Colonel Berger questioned. “Fifteen stitches in the foot. Is that correct?”
This wasn’t going well, and Mabrey had yet to say a word.
“Yes, sir,” Byron answered.
“How was that possible? I’m assuming she was on crutches.”
“Correct.”
“A full investigation was performed and it looked as if the suspect fled, unaided.”
Captain Hanks scoffed. “That would never happen to an officer who followed the procedure for the apprehension of a suspect. Officer Rivers is not ready to return to patrol. Furthermore—”
Dr. Cole banged her pen sharply on the table. “Please give Officer Rivers a chance to complete his statement, Captain. Thank you.” She pressed on, clear as to who was in charge.
“The suspect was apprehended the following day without incident,” Byron concluded.
Dr. Cole’s neatly arched black brows lifted and stood out in stark contrast to her milky complexion. Her gray gaze rested on him. “Would you like to add anything else?”
Byron entertained the notion of telling his boss where he could go, but that was how he’d gotten here in the first place.
“The next day I was reprimanded during roll call, as were other officers.”
“That wasn’t a reprimand.” Hanks pushed up straight in his chair, getting louder. “I demanded an explanation. I have no tolerance for renegades.”
“Captain.” Colonel Tulane’s stern tone forced the room into a stiff silence. “I’ve heard enough to render a decision.”
Byron and the still silent Mabrey stood.
“Officer Rivers, you are required to attend sixty hours of anger management classes and are suspended for three days for failure to follow the proper arres
t procedures. The other charges are dropped.”
“Yes, sir! Sir?”
Colonel Berger looked up. No one dared speak after a decision had been rendered. “Yes, Officer?”
“I’m scheduled to testify at 1600 hundred hours on the case associated with this incident.”
“It’s 1630 now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were you the only officer to respond on that case?”
“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Berger regarded him. “The suspension will begin immediately following that hearing, and I don’t care if there’s a riot outside the capitol. You are not to respond. Clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Pick up the information regarding the class at Dr. Cole’s office. You are dismissed.”
“Thank you, sirs. Ma’am.”
“This is an atrocity,” Hanks bellowed. “That officer was insubordinate, and he should be terminated.”
“Captain Hanks.” The colonel’s voice felt like a cool steel pipe to a warm hand. “In light of your reaction to Officer Rivers and the rest of your squad, we have some real concerns about your abuse of power. Call your representative. You are officially under investigation.”
Byron heard Hanks yell, “What?” then start sputtering. Good. Maybe he’d shut up for a minute.
One glance at his watch and Byron moved just short of a trot. He had three buildings and four floors to cross in order to testify in Tia Amberson’s case.
He started to jog.
After what he’d been through, she wasn’t going to get off easy. Not by a long shot.
Chapter Six
“Why can’t we go inside?”
Outside of courtroom A, Tia stood with her second cousin and attorney, Leroy Muller. Thrice divorced because of his wandering eye, he ignored Tia in favor of the butt of a healthy, bright-skinned woman.
Tia squeezed his wrist, fingernails first.
“Ouch!” His confused gaze flew to her. “What’d you do that for?”
“I’m about to have my day in court. Can you please focus? What’s the holdup?”
“They’re not ready.”
Inadequate, but an answer. She hoped she didn’t regret throwing her business to a relative. “What’s going to happen?”
“When you go before the judge, he’ll read the charges. The ADA will state the recommendation we worked out, you’ll waive your right to a trial, you’re sentenced, then we leave.”
So why am I paying you? she wondered but tried to squelch that evil spirit. Lately, everything got under her skin. A by-product of being cheated on, she supposed.
Leroy’s eyes flew to a woman with forty-plus breasts and a thirty-something waist. Tia forgave him. Everybody looked.
“Damn, did you see that?” he asked, as if another woman’s boobs would make her brain turn to mush. His lack of tact lit the fuse in her stomach.
She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “Has the reason I’m here escaped you?”
“Man! You sure have changed.” Leroy voiced his contempt with a frown. “You used to be nice. What happened?”
Trich. Crabs. Arrest. Bail. Hospital bill. Court. Possible compensation to Dante. Leroy had dropped that bombshell on her yesterday afternoon.
She was already out of a fortune, and her temporary lapse of sanity had changed what would have been a simple breakup into her not being able to get into the condo. But worse, she couldn’t force Dante out.
The sheer irony was that she was paying the mortgage to save her credit and was homeless at the same time.
February was no longer her favorite month of the year.
Tia huffed and tried to swallow her impatience with a deep breath. She wanted to unleash the full scope of her anger, then drown her sorrows in a bottle of something brown that smelled like her grandfather’s bedroom.
But the wind whistling through her checkbook would only allow for a half-drunk drowning. That left her with too many un-drunk nerve endings.
She huffed again and enunciated her words. “Will I ... have to ... pay Dante?”
Leroy looked unsure. “I don’t know.”
“Thank you,” she said, although, again, it was not what she wanted to hear.
When her father had called from Las Vegas, Nevada, this morning, with his sage advice of deny, deny, deny—he hadn’t trusted a cop since 1972—she should have guessed the day wouldn’t go well.
But her mother had tricked her and called from a blocked caller ID number, and Tia had stupidly picked up the phone.
“Hello” from Tia had triggered Millicent Amberson, with her five-generation Baptist roots, to start praying. Tia had hung on for the first four minutes, a comb jabbed into her hair, hot curlers smoking on the bathroom sink, and one eye on the clock.
But when her mother asked for forgiveness for trying to raise her child in the way that she should go and failing—“Look at Tia,” she’d actually said those words—Tia set down the phone; finished curling her hair; pulled on her stockings, skirt, and jacket; and packed her briefcase.
She picked up the receiver in time to share an amen, then, so as not to seem blasphemous, thought a prayer as she drove in to work with stale raisin toast, between her teeth.
Clearly, her misfortunes were in direct response to her lack of faithful participation.
“Your mom still going to that Holy Roller church?” Leroy asked, looking for middle ground.
Tia sighed. “She and Daddy moved to Vegas, but she’s still a card-carrying member.”
“It beats the opposite,” he said dryly. Five years ago Leroy’s mother, Aunt Julia, had packed up and moved to a colony of self-prescribed witches.
The ground leveled.
“Auntie Millicent still calls and leaves prayers on my answering machine,” he added. Guilt tinged Leroy’s eyes. “I don’t really mind, except she talks up my whole tape.”
The earth shifted, and a fissure opened beneath Tia’s feet. “She’s been known to do that to strangers, too.”
“Wow,” he said.
“Yep.”
Tia let the discomfort sift away with the sieve of distance. She focused on the growing crowd that had gathered outside the courtroom door. She had expected to see well-dressed, clean-cut, remorseful people who were ready to admit to their crime and accept their punishment.
But one group defied the typecasting because of the smiles on their faces. “Who are they?” she asked Leroy.
“All those people have cases to be heard.”
Leroy was referring to the fifty or so blacks and Mexicans, a few whites, and one Asian man.
“Now answer my question.” Tia glared him.
“They’re spectators,” he mumbled.
“What?” The hellfire chorus started rehearsing in her stomach. “Is this the new cheap entertainment?”
“There’re a few law school students.” They both saw one man with a backpack and dreadlocks.
In a quick motion, Tia had Leroy’s wrist, her nails poised above a vein.
“Okay.” Leroy did the foot-shifting, eye-wandering thing, then shrugged. “Friday court is the substitute Kings of Comedy.” He dared to crack a smile. “Sometimes, it’s just funny. I guess word got around.”
Luck wasn’t something Tia had ever counted on, but she occasionally felt she deserved it. Obviously, the T-shirt she won at fifteen was the extent of it. She massaged her aching forehead. “I can’t believe this. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You need to stop saying that. You were cold busted by a cop.”
“It’s nearly four. I thought the proceedings would be completed by now.”
“So you miss the five o’clock news.” That was another of her passions, and possibly the reason she and Dante were a couple no more. “What’s your rush?”
“I don’t belong here,” she said loudly. “You think you’re better than us” glares were cast her way.
Leroy made her face the wall. “Would you calm down? Everything’s under control.”
>
The officers stepped from the courtroom, and everyone gravitated into crooked rows.
Leroy swung them into line, mindful of her healing foot.
“They ought to be ashamed of themselves. People deserve privacy,” Tia mumbled, fighting anger.
“Shh.”
She ignored him. “They won’t get a show from me. You can take the death grip off me now.”
“Not until you promise to keep that trigger-happy temper under wraps.”
Leroy gave Tia’s purse to the officer while she was wanded and searched by another officer.
Humiliated, she stepped on the cold floor while they looked in her shoes.
Why didn’t the happy ladies have to take off their shoes?
Leroy must have caught the gist of her thoughts, because he quickly stepped out of his tie-ups, forcing the officer to glance in them.
Tia entered the courtroom. Twelve officers were posted along the walls and in front of the bench.
The spectators chattered away. Everyone else was silent.
What would the judge say to her?
Would he question her motives?
She hoped not, because she still didn’t understand why a relationship she’d been willing to commit her life to had ended in such a bizarre manner. She couldn’t understand why the man she’d thought herself in love with had done her so wrong. And she couldn’t understand why she was being punished and he wasn’t.
With the bench empty, the TV screens blank, officers immobile, and the seats filled, she thought of a hundred places she’d rather be.
Helpless anger prompted the hellfire choir in her stomach to hum.
Tia took a seat in the second row, next to Leroy. “Plead me guilty, and get me out of here.”
“Tia, these were extenuating circumstances, and the judge will see that. Do you see your arresting officer?”
A tingle ran up her legs to her chest. She didn’t want to look. Finding him would, in a sense, confirm her guilt, but she braved her fear and glanced around. Relief and a glimmer of hope moved in her chest. “No. Is that good?”
“Could be. The ADA could ask for a postponement but will probably drop the charges. The court’s calendar is overbooked.”
