Her Thin Blue Lifeline: Indigo Knights Book I

by A. J. Downey

  “What do you mean? Did she pass?”

  “I can’t give you that information, sir. I can’t even confirm or deny if a Ms. Franco is a patient here?” I scowled at the phone and Jaime started laughing across from me.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.

  “HIPAA dictates –“

  “Woah, now I’m gonna stop you right there. HIPAA dictates that you’re allowed to disclose patient information without said patient’s consent to an officer of the law, such as myself, under extenuating circumstances, sweetheart. One of those circumstances is when I need to know, like I do now, what her status is in order to catch the bad guy that did what she’s in the hospital for in the first place.”

  “I’ll have to check with my supervisor…”

  “Yes! Do that, put your supervisor on the line so I can see if my witness is alive and you can stop wasting my time.” I was getting irritated.

  “You don’t have to take that tone with me!”

  “Either you put your supervisor on the phone yesterday or I’m coming down there and putting you in cuffs for impeding an active investigation.”

  Silence for several heartbeats after an indignant sound that sounded a whole lot like obstruction. Jaime leaned back in his desk chair and raised his eyebrows at me while Nurse Jr.’s voice became muffled. An older more mature woman’s voice came on the line, one I recognized.

  “Merlyn, is that you?” I asked.

  “Detective!” She cried, delighted.

  “Yeah, I need to know about the status of a patient, can you help me out?”

  “Of course, honey, what’s the name?”

  “Christina Marie Franco, gunshot wounds to the back.”

  I heard Merlyn’s long nails click against a keyboard, before she made some investigative noises with her breath. Finally, she came back on the line and said strong, “Oh, Honey, she’s still in surgery and will be for a while yet. That poor baby is in real bad shape.”

  “I know, I was there,” I said and leaned back heavily in my own chair. “Any telling when she might be out?”

  “Mm-mm, baby. No tellin’.”

  “Okay, I’ll stay here and finish up what I’m doin’ then. Can you call me if there’s any change? Better yet, have Nurse Jr. do it.”

  Merlyn laughed, a deep belly laugh over the phone and said, “Nurse Jr., I like that. Sure thing, baby. What number are you good at?”

  I gave her my cell and added as an afterthought, “Tell Nurse Jr. she better not ever try to impede an investigation again or I’ll have her up on charges.”

  “Mm, Tony. You ain’t letting that detective squad change you, now are you?”

  I scrubbed my face with my hands, “No, mama, I ain’t,” I told her, but Merlyn, she knew. She reached out over the line with that sense of hers, the one that made her such a good nurse.

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  I picked up the phone off the cradle and sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose and turned away from Jaime, not like it would make a damn bit of difference.

  “I know the vic, Merlyn. It’s a little different this time.”

  “Oh, baby! I’m so sorry. If anything changes, I’ll call you myself.”

  “Thanks, mama.”

  “You bet, I never will forget what you did for my Ernesto.”

  “Mama, we’re even on that in spades,” I told her with a chuckle.

  “Now I know I ain’t heard that right!” She declared. “We will never be even, you saved that boy’s life.”

  “Just did my job.”

  “Mm-hm,” she didn’t sound like she believed me.

  I laughed and said, “I’ve gotta go.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  We hung up and I turned back around and Jaime eyed me seriously. “Rut-roh,” I said, mockingly, aping the old Scooby-Doo commercials.

  “You know the vic, Youngblood?”

  “It ain’t like that,” I said. “Back when I first made detective, we went on a couple of dates but the careers, they just didn’t jive. Never even made it past first base.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Right.”

  I gave him a flat look and he cocked his head to the side, “Fine, I’ll drop it for now but I don’t like what happened to those girls any more than you do. I want to find this animal and get him off the street before he gets any other bright ideas.”

  “What makes you think it was a ‘he?’” I asked, and I was being a smartass.

  “Yeah, like I need to rattle off crime statistics to you, do your fuckin’ paperwork, jackass.”

  I laughed a little, glad he wasn’t making a big thing about me knowing Chrissy, at least not yet. The investigation was still young, and if he didn’t think I could remain objective, or hack it, he wouldn’t hesitate to call me on my bullshit.

  We spent the better part of the next four hours dotting all of our I’s and crossing all our T’s and making it so our reports would hold up in court later and the like. Finally, Jaime leaned back in his seat and let out a satisfied ‘Ah!’

  “What?” I demanded, fingers still flying across the keys.

  “Quittin’ time, Youngblood.” I looked up at the clock, sure as shit, our time in the cubicle farm was up. I saved what I was doing and switched off the monitor before I got up, stretching.

  “They’re still serving over at Ten-Thirteen,” he said and I chuckled but shook my head.

  “Not tonight, man.”

  “No?”

  “Naw, I’m going to head over to the hospital. I want to be there when she gets out of surgery, see if I can get anything to go on, because right now, we don’t have squat.”

  “You sure that’s the only reason you’re going?”

  I made a mock-disgusted noise, “Yes, dad.”

  He put up his hands in surrender and said, “I can think of a hell of a lot more comfortable places to sleep than a hospital chair, but that’s all you.”

  “Night, partner,” I called to his lumbering back as he moved toward the squad room’s exit.

  “Night, Youngblood!” he called back.

  I took my happy ass to the locker room to change and gear up. I didn’t do combination locks, I used a burly ass padlock on my locker and I never not once locked my damn keys inside. I pulled the ring out of my hip pocket and stuck the key in the lock giving it a twist and popping it free. I opened up the sheet metal door to reveal my jacket and cut, motorcycle boots, and chaps.

  I pulled my helmet off the top shelf and set it aside and pulled out the rest of my gear. I swapped shoes and instantly felt better about life, that familiar giddy energy that never got old starting up as I pulled on the chaps and snapped, buckled, and zipped everything into place. I stared down at my colors and sighed at the name flash on the front, ‘Youngblood’ picked out in indigo thread against a dirty white patch backing.

  I belonged to the Indigo Knights, a cop MC that’d been around going on fifty years, although it wasn’t just specifically for cops anymore. We met and did charity shit out of The Cormorant Bar & Grill on Muller Street down in Old Town. It was what Jaime had called the Ten-Thirteen, which was a double play on words. One-zero-one-three was The Cormorant’s address, but it was also 10-13 which was the radio code for ‘officer in need of assistance.’

  The Cormorant provided assistance to officers in a lot of ways, especially those of us who belonged to the Indigo Knights. It gave us a place to relax and unwind around guys like us. Not just cops, but other first responders, too. Some of the boys in fire hung there, as well as prosecutors and corrections. We even had some of the medics that we worked with on the regular come through. The Ten-Thirteen wasn’t officially a ‘cops only’ bar. Civilians found their way in from time to time. The food and booze was pretty top-notch, the place run by a retired cop and his best friend, a retired fire guy.

  Nobody knew their way around a bottle like a cop, unfortunately, the same was true for Skids, one half owne
r of the Ten-Thirteen. It was ironic as fuck having an alcoholic and dry dude as a bartender.

  Reflash was his best friend; all the recipes that’d come from the firehouse made the Ten-Thirteen’s kitchen what it was and had earned them both some pretty high accolades in a couple of fancy fuckin’ food magazines. It was great for business, but every time one of the articles came out, the place filled up with yuppies, which made it a little uncomfortable for us blue collar boys for a bit until it blew over.

  I’d found my way into the Indigo Knights by way of one of the fire guys some years back. Flashover had been a good friend, we’d practically grown up together – three houses down from each other. After I’d finished up with being a rookie, he’d ended up passing muster and had joined up with Indigo City’s Fire Department. I’d always been ahead of him academically, and so there’d always been a gap between us measured by our successes and gains, but it’d never interfered with our friendship.

  We’d lost Flashover a little over a year and a half ago to a warehouse fire down at the docks. It hadn’t been my case, but it’d been ruled an accidental homicide. The owner of the warehouse had gotten in deep with the Cipriani crime family and had lit the place up for the insurance money. Indigo City had lost three good firefighters in that blaze, a fourth had been severely burned and forced into retirement. I’d felt Flashover’s loss keenly just about every day since, but he’d given me one hell of a thing by convincing me to join up with the Knights.

  I picked up my jacket and cut and swung them on. When it came to wearing our colors that had been a huge fight between the department and the union. For once, the union had actually done us a solid and had won us the right to wear our colors in and out of work. The higher ups had demanded a certain, and I’m quoting here, ‘high level of standard’ from its officers and had wanted to ban our ability to wear certain things to and from work. The union had argued on our behalf that unless the department wanted to pay us from the time we got dressed in the morning to the time we took our clothes off at home on our working days then they’d best let it go. The union had pushed it to the max and finally the department had relented, but it’d been an ugly win.

  Now any of us who rode with the club had to mind our p’s and q’s to a fuckin’ t. It was a whole goddamn alphabet soup of good behavior. It’s one of the reasons Jaime was on my ass about the Franco thing. I traded out my guns, leaving my service weapon in the designated holster for it built into every locker, retrieving my personal one. I tucked it into the hard holster riding on my belt, up under my jacket and cut. It was the same make and model, Glock 19. Dependable, reliable, and a straight shooter.

  I shut my locker door with a metallic clang and retrieved my keys and the lock. I made sure everything was tight, adjusted my firearm one more time, scooped up my brain bucket and headed for the elevator to the garage.

  “Oh Captain, my Captain,” I greeted the man in charge. He was a beanpole of a man, balding pate shiny in the overhead lights, nose straight and sharp, brown eyes nondescript.

  “You outta here?” he asked, stirring his coffee.

  “Headed to the hospital, see if our surviving vic can give us anything to go on.”

  “She out of surgery?” he asked, taking a swallow of his coffee and grunting.

  “Not yet, but I was there, looked bad. If she comes out of it, might only get a brief chance, gotta do my due diligence on this one because this? This was beyond the fuckin’ pale.”

  “I read the report, doesn’t look like you have shit to go on.”

  “Yeah, if she dies, this one might not get solved unless CSU pulls a Hail Mary out of the air.”

  The elevator dinged and the doors worked their way open.

  “Not a thing from any of the neighbors?”

  “Zip.”

  “Well, the investigation is still young.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself, boss.”

  The doors to the elevator tried to close on me and I stuck my helmet in the way. The doors halted, jarring violently and shuddering before opening back up.

  “Shit, this fuckin’ thing,” my boss griped. “I’m going up, looks like you’re its favorite.” Sure enough, the elevator was going down, even though the boss is the one who’d called it. I got on and realized it was because someone had punched the wrong button. Lucky me.

  “See you tomorrow, Cap.”

  “Tomorrow, McCormick.” He raised his paper cup in salute and I gave him a chin lift as the doors slid shut. I hit the button for the garage and after one more stop on the next floor down I was underway to the garage.

  The ride over to Trinity Gen was a meditative one. There was no telling when she would be out of surgery, but I knew enough about her to know that she didn’t have a whole lot of people; at least she didn’t three years ago. I also knew the blonde, Samantha Lynn must be her bestie who she’d always called Sami or Sami-Lynn. So, with that being said, I figured it’d be good for her to have at least one person she sort of knew versus nobody that she didn’t when she came to. I felt bad I couldn’t guarantee that I would be there when she finally woke up but I could do my best. I’d just have to see how it went.

  Chapter 2

  Chrissy

  The bar atmosphere was nice, too bad I wasn’t really here to soak it in. I was supposed to be on a date, but that had gone to hell with yet more mandatory overtime from the firm I was working for. I stepped into the Cormorant and scanned the room for Tony. I was pretty sure this was going to be our last date but I couldn’t exactly blame either of us for it. We had something in common, he and I, and that was that we were both very career driven people.

  It was too bad, really, because he was just so damn hot. Maybe just one inch taller than me at five foot ten, he had a set of shoulders to die for and a pair of arms to go with them. I’d sadly never gotten the chance to see under the clothes but if what I’d felt was any indication, maybe that was a good thing because if I had, I wouldn’t go through with this.

  “Rut-roh,” he said, and I smiled as I slid up onto the barstool beside him.

  “Uh-oh,” I echoed with a long-suffering sigh added for good measure.

  “Let me guess,” he said taking a sip of his drink, “back to the office in a flash?”

  “Sadly, yes…” I hung my head and he smiled, reaching out and tucking some stray tendrils out of my tired French twist behind my ear. The casual and familiar gesture set my heart to racing. It was one of the things I’d immediately liked about Tony, that he was so casual and comfortable with me right off the bat but it didn’t feel off or skeevy at all.

  “We’re three for three,” he said, a sparkle in his steely blue eyes.

  “I know…” I said, tone mournful, and while in all fairness all three of those weren’t my fault, I saw the writing on the wall. With weeks going between dates and something coming up for either him or me just about every time… God it killed me to say it but… “Maybe this just isn’t meant to be.” I sounded hopeless even to me.

  “I really hate to agree with you, gorgeous, but I think you and I have to face it; the timing just ain’t right for either of us.” He sighed heavily and signaled the bartender who drifted down this way.

  “You know what? Fuck it,” I said and ordered a glass of red for myself. Tony chuckled and sipped his whiskey.

  “To second chances,” he said when I took my glass in hand.

  “Thank you for understanding,” I murmured, clicking my glass against his and taking a sip. He savored a sip out of his own glass, eyes traveling over me.

  “I get it. We’re both all about the job, right now.”

  I smiled and took another drink of the deep red liquid in my glass, swirling it across my tongue before swallowing it down.

  “Yeah, well, let me add to that toast. ‘May the next time we meet, have us both on the same side of the aisle.’ I would hate to run up against you in court. You’re making quite a name for yourself for being such a new detective.”

  “Likewi
se, for you being such a new lawyer. We cops aren’t dumb, gorgeous. Anytime you walk up to the defense table and start your whispering bit, the boys say they can expect a curveball. Still, they also bitch nine times out of ten that even when they see it coming – they don’t see it coming, if you catch my drift.”

  I smiled to myself, the wine going to my head a bit, the blush being a bit deeper and the smile a little looser at the praise. I needed to grab something to take back to the office. I signaled the bartender and asked, “Can I get something to go?”

  “Sure thing, sweetheart. Here’s a menu.”

  I looked it over and made my selection. Tony raised his eyebrows at the bartender and said, “Put it all on my tab, would you Skids?”

  I smiled at the bartender, a man in his early fifties. He was a big bear of a man, gone soft around the middle, but in that way, that reminded me of a fitter version of Santa Claus. I was betting the steel grey and white beard had something to do with that, though. His hair, close cropped like his beard with just a bit of length gelled on top to keep him in line with the times. Dare I say? The man was a silver fox of sorts. He smiled over at us winked one blue eye at me saying, “You got it, Youngblood.”

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow, “Youngblood?” I asked.

  He looked a bit uncomfortable, but he answered me anyways, “Yeah, it’s what some of the older cops have been calling me since I made detective. Youngest in the department.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  Damn. I was really going to miss out on learning more about this man, but it just wasn’t plausible anymore. It wasn’t fair to him, or really even to me, the way the firm was working me like a dog. Still, if I wanted to defend my own cases as first chair, I needed to prove myself.

  “Gonna miss our little talks,” he said with a wink and I bit my lower lip and smiled.

  “Regrets?” I asked.

  “Fuck yeah,” he said laughing. “But I think I’d regret it more if we went there and I couldn’t anymore.”

  “Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all…” I quoted, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hopeful.