“Your brother once told me I was good for you. I made you make decisions in this century.” I laugh slightly as I think about my indecisiveness. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I pushed you and didn’t have the patience…”
“You did. You still do. You were the best thing for me, Frankie, but I can’t have you be that anymore. I can’t wake up knowing that I’m nothing without you. I have a kid to think about. I have someone else depending on me and I need to know that I’m enough without anyone else. I have to be able to hold him up when he’s down. I can’t expect… I can’t need you to do that for me.”
Once the words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve hit her hard. I never had a way of phrasing things without having to rephrase. It’s just my foot in mouth disease. I look at her, see tears in her eyes and I know saying it again wouldn’t matter. She stands and steps in front of me, her right hand settles on my cheek.
“That’s the thing Jasmine. You never needed me. I always needed you.”
She kisses my forehead and walks out of the room. I’m left, stunned by her words. How does one absorb that?
“The cops are here, so I’ll catch you later,” Hadley’s words piece my silence. “Victor already left with a very hot young officer. He was rather happy he needed a detail all of the sudden. Frankie split with some officer chick. Might want to watch that. Anyway, the others already split, so I figured it would be nice to give you a heads up. My guy, Officer James Dunkin, he said the captain wants a list of production dates, locations and crap. I’ll get the producers to send it to you. Lord knows they’ll love the free press this detail comes with. You need me; you know where to reach me.” Before I can say anything she’s out the door as quickly as she came in.
Entering the living room, I see a mid-thirties uniformed officer standing by the door, his thumbs tucked neatly in his belt. “You don’t have to stand at attention all the time. You could relax a bit.” He looks at me nervously, before he approaches his hand outstretched.
“Detective Steele,” I shake his hand with the simple greeting. “Sgt. Will Everts at your service ma’am,” he properly replies. He lets go of my hand and immediately his thumbs return to his belt.
I head in to the kitchen, Will a few steps behind me. “Ma’am is my mother. I might act like her on some… well, most of my occasions, but please just call me Jasmine or some nickname. While I appreciate you being here to protect my associates, you really don’t need to be so nervous around me.” He looks at me oddly and I point to his thumbs. “You put your thumbs in your belt, sometimes it’s a sign of nerves.”
Will’s chiseled shoulders bounce up in down as he laughs, “no Jazz, I used to put my hands on my belt where I had my grenades. It was more nerves there than here. Now, it’s just muscle memory.” Now it’s my turn to look confused. “Marines, three tours. Home for good now.”
I nod in response,
“So I got the big bad marine. I must have irritated someone.”
“No, the captain just figured no one else would be able to keep up with you or wrangle you in if need be.” I pour the two of us some coffee and place the mug on the table.
“You want milk or sugar?” Will sips his coffee.
“No, this is fine, thank you.”
After I lighten the dark fluid, I take my seat across from him.
“So, what do you think of this case thus far?”
“I think someone is in for a good ass kicking when we find them.” I laugh slightly at his honest reply. Leave it to a military man to say it like it is. Before I can give him a witty answer, my cell phone buzzes on the table.
“Steele,” I state flatly into the phone.
“Ms. Steele?” An unknown female’s voice echoes through the phone. “My name is Jane Michaels and I’m a nurse here at University Hospital.” I grab my coffee and take a sip of the now lukewarm fluid.
“How can I help you Ms. Michaels?” I can hear her flipping through some papers as another voice booms in the background over the intercom.
“I’m calling about Chase Steele. You are listed as his next of kin…”
“Is he okay?” The coffee burns back up my throat as it feels like forever for an answer.
“He’s appears to be okay, but we need your authorization to get x-rays on his arm and other treatment if necessary.”
I put the mug in the sink and grab my coat.
“You do those x-rays but call me on my cell if anything else is necessary before I get there.”
I hang up the phone and look at Will.
“Chase is in the hospital.” Will grabs his keys.
“No offense detective, but I’ve driven at high speeds through mine fields. City traffic has nothing on that. Besides, you driving was never an option. Wrangler, remember.” Will walks out of the house with me hot on his tail.
“Always the funny man, huh?” He just shrugs his arms and we hop in the car. Thankfully, true to his word, we sliced through traffic easier than cheesecake and in minutes I’m standing in the emergency room waiting for assistance.
I tap on the plastic divider and wait for the nurse to look up at me. She slides the glass over, but barely looks up at me.
“I’m sorry to bother you but…”
“Have you checked in yet?” She cuts me off.
“No, I’m looking…”
“Next window.” She slides the divider closed before I can get another word in. I stand there waiting for her to look up again. When she does, she points her obnoxiously long French manicured nails to the woman seated at the next window. I pull my badge out and slam it against the plastic. She looks up again, undeterred and points again. If I could arrest people for being ill-mannered I would have to build an island to house them all.
Will taps on the window next to me with a big grin on his face. The woman behind it promptly opens it.
“Hi, we’re looking for Chase Steele. He was brought in here earlier and the doctor is waiting for us.”
The woman smiles, pushes a button under her desk and I can hear the buzzing sound. Will opens the door and we walk in.
“Right this way,” the nurse with common courtesy answers and we follow her down a hallway full of people. Some more injured than others, some just chilling and waiting to get some help. Either way, it’s an uncomfortable walk. I hate hospitals, they reek of death.
“Aunt Jazzie!” Hearing Chase’s voice I pop my head up and see him sitting on gurney.
“How you doing little man?” He lifts up his right arm and I can see his wrist is swollen and bruised. “I tried to beat the monkey bars, but I lost.”
The two officers start laughing slightly but one look from me and they stop dead in their tracks.
“I’m getting a cast in black, because it’s cool.”
The intern walks in with the items needed for his cast. I watch in silence as the two officers joke around with Chase.
“You okay?” I simply nod at Will, not trusting my voice.
“You know when I went on my last deployment; my wife was taking care of my son, Justin. She’d send me photos all the time, telling me he was such an active kid. I wanted to wrap him up in bubble wrap and protect him from the world, you know? That’s what we want to do as parents, but we can’t. No matter how he came into this world, you’re his parent and that fear you’re feeling is real. I won’t lie and say it gets easier, but he will heal.”
“What if I can’t protect him from this guy? What if we don’t find him in time and I lose Chase.”
Will looks at me for the first time in the hospital.
“You find him first. There isn’t another option.”
I chuckle a little.
“You’re philosophical aren’t you?” He smiles at Chase looking over his new cast. “The desert does that to you.” He pauses for a second before he continues, “I think we should take him home. You need to be near him tonight. We’ll go to Hadley’s film shoot tomorrow.”
I nod in agreement. He knows I’m in charge but he’s also
my wrangler.
Chapter Five
The sounds of the police siren radiate away from our unmarked car. Some cars in front of us pull over while others seem to ignore the blaring sound as if they are somewhat more important. Sure, using the siren might not be necessary at this point, but when you have the ability and a murderer on the loose, why not use it? The random stoppage of cars doesn’t hinder Will’s ability to swerve through them all. The twenty minute ride would have been faster, “if we’d been on my chopper,” Will threw at me.
“Because making my coffee slowly ride up my throat wasn’t good enough for you this morning?” The zigzag driving of his did nothing for my stomach. Will just shrugs his shoulders, “blame military training.” Such a simple answer, but I’m sure it has much deeper meaning flying above my head in the stratosphere. With one final spin of the wheel, Will pulls the car onto the curb perfectly parking it without hitting the street lamp.
“You realize there’s a spot right there?” I ask as I open the door hoping not to hit the brick building next to us. Once again he shrugs at me, “Yeah, but I need to protect my ride.” He barely gets that out of his mouth before he laughs at himself. “I always wanted to park like this just once. It’s an industrial park so no one will care.”
“Oh, hell to the no! You can’t park there!” We both turn to see a skinny looking kid with a head set propped around his neck. “You need to move this monstrosity right away.”
I pull out my badge and try to walk past him, but he raises up his hand and shows me a clip board.
“Your plates aren’t on the list so you don’t park. I don’t care if you’re a cop or the president. Not on the list, you don’t park.”
“Please let Hadley Moreno know that Jasmine Steele is here to see her.” The clipboard stays in my face as he laughs at me. “Right, because everyone knows her. Like I said, not on the list, not parking. So, before I call the… umm police, please move your vehicle.” Before I can argue with this assistant to an assistant who thinks he’s more powerful than he is, Will grabs the walkie-talkie from the kid’s waist.
“What’s Hadley Moreno’s twenty?”
The line crackles for a few seconds before we hear a muffled, “Who’s on this line?” Will smiles and clicks the button.
“Tell Ms. Moreno that Detective Steele is parked and coming on set to see her. Over and out.” He lowers the volume on the walkie-talkie and hands it back to the kid. He frantically plugs his head set back in and listens carefully to the rambling on the other end.
The assistant’s shoulders slump and his eyes close tightly once in a while. I wish I knew who was giving him the tongue lashing, but all in all I couldn’t care less. Finally the kid looks at us, “Please follow me.” He opens a locked gate and ushers us in. Massive trailers line the area and I find myself in a bit of shock.
“I thought you said this was a no-to-barely-there budget film? Looking around this place it looks more Hollywood than anything.”
“That what she said, but I’ve never visited her before.”
The assistant stops and turns around, looking almost annoyed at our ignorance.
“Ms. Moreno gets a specific size paycheck and a specific trailer. Someone of her caliber is given what she wants, then you have all the other people who take cuts here and there. Special effects, blood by the gallons – it all adds up. Just so you know, budgets are relative. No one on set discusses the money unless you want to get fired, but if it’s lower than a major studio film we consider it a low-to-no-budget.”
“So, what is the budget for this film?”
“Independent studio head has a wealthy parent so it’s about five million.”
Will and I stop in our tracks.
“For a simple slasher film?” The assistant just shakes his head and ignores me.
“Commoners,” the assistant mutters as he walks away from me. Will pulls out his cell phone and dials Officer James as I try to hold back my laughter.
“Commoner? He does realize he is the lowest on the totem pole in the industry right? If the director needs to pee in something, that kid either finds a cup, gives up his soda or opens his pocket.” Will looks at me with a grotesque look on his face.
“James, what trailer are you in?” Will smiles at me, “yeah, thanks.”
Will enters the maze of trailers with me close on his tail. “You going to enlighten me with which trailer?”
“The one with the big star on it.”
“You’re kidding right?”
“That’s what he said. How long has Hadley been acting?”
“Since we were kids.”
“I’m surprised she’s doing low budget horror then. I’d assume she’d be in L.A. somewhere with a house on the hillside.”
“Didn’t work out that way. Besides, all of her childhood films, were dreamed up by me, acted out by Hadley and Victor. All of it was done with the sole purpose of entertaining our families. Nothing ever saw the light of day.”
“So, you did little stage productions for your families. That’s not really film.”
“Will, I might have been born in the seventies, but my family owned a cheap antiquated camcorder. It didn’t record any sound, so we would video tape it to the best of our ability, air it and do the dialogue while sitting behind our families. We were rather advanced for kids our age.”
Will laughs and nods his head. “That explains a lot.”
I open my mouth to argue, but the truth is – it does explain a lot. We were more advanced than the kids of our neighborhood. While everyone else was catching lightning bugs, we were filming silent movies. It was the thing to do and our parents encouraged us to do it. We had to focus on completing each project and our parents watched them all, no matter how bad. It’s still something we’re proud of to this day.
“That’s not a cheap hobby.”
“Yeah, it was. We had chores and we earned all our money. You have no idea how hard we work would cleaning the garage, washing the cars, anything to earn a quarter here and maybe if we were lucky a dollar there. We would earn the money for everything. Then one of our parents would take us to get the reel of whatever film we could use with the camera and we shot it. We ended up destroying a lot of it just to learn how to edit. The things we did cut together… it wasn’t that good.”
“You guys were ambitious.”
“Maybe. All I know is to this day I despise mowing the lawn. My dad always loved it to be mowed in this angular way so it looked like Yankee Stadium. Annoyed the crap out of me, not only because our lawn was small and mowing at an angle was a bitch, but because I’m a Mets fan. Go figure.”
“My kids are like that.”
“Like what.”
“Ambitious. They want to do everything and I try to help them out as much as I can, but money is always tight. Not to mention they want the latest of everything since their friends have the newest gadget.”
“Not easy today to get a kid to earn the money either.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Stop talking about the good old days and tell me how I look!”
We both stop and see Hadley in this full body suit. I swear leather and me do not get along, but put leather pants on Hadley and men everywhere stop and stare.
“You look ummm…”
I turn to see Will, red in the face, almost embarrassed to be looking in her direction. James, her protective detail walks out of the trailer, I could swear I saw some drool stains.
“Thanks, gentlemen. That’s just the reaction I was hoping to get.”
“If your top gets any tighter there Hadley, we’re gonna have a problem.” I laugh a bit to break up the tension.
“Well, I have been told my body could stop wars,” she smiles proudly. Get Hadley off a set and she might be a little outgoing but very reserved. Get her onto a film set and her confidence soars, you can just tell this is where she was born to be.
“You might stop them from killing each other over their God, but then they’d just kil
l each other over you.”
“That could be a problem, couldn’t it? I mean if all of them kill each other no one is paying attention to me.”
The two of us let out deep belly laughs as James and Will just stand by us confused. Will finally understands our sarcasm and elbows James in the side.
“James, maybe we should make sure the perimeter is clear.” James backs away slowly, keeping his eyes firmly on Hadley’s body. Will finally pulls him, forcing James’ body to shift and break contact.
“He’s cute.”
“He’s supposed to protect you, not ogle at you.”
“Ogling is good.”
“Hadley!”
“What? I’m young, single and in demand.”
“By all the S&M loving freaks of nature?”
“Why are you always so cynical?”
“Why are you always so shallow?”
“I’m not shallow.” Hadley looks at me, her eyes betraying her pain at my comment. Maybe she isn’t truly shallow, but sometimes her actions are misunderstood as being shallow.
“You think I like putting this shit on to look sexy when I feel like I want to scream in pain right now?”
“Had…”
“No, you guys always bitch at me for being the stupid one, always worried about my looks and never caring about anyone else’s feelings. Well, fuck all of you.”
“We don’t mean it.”
“Yes, you always mean it. This fucking leather chafes and never breathes. I sweat like a bitch in it but I can’t complain because if I do I lose my job. I work my ass off day in and day out just trying to keep up with these trampy size two wenches who aren’t afraid to rip off all their clothes and hang their birthday suit out for the world to see. I don’t fucking do that shit okay? Yet, you guys always make fun of me and call everything I do a cheap piece of shit B movie. Not everyone can make it at a higher level of acting, regardless of what I want to do. I am happy doing this, I can demand a bigger paycheck. I have people who respect me in the field. I sometimes get a bit part in a made-for-tv film because of all of these slasher flicks. None of you see what I see, so back off.”
“Yeah but…”
Steele Resolve (The Detective Jasmine Steele Series Book 1) Page 9
