“Hold on,” Rachel said. “I asked the clerk for a better description of the suspect. I just gave it to the dispatcher to broadcast. I haven’t gotten around to asking him anything else.” She held the phone receiver to her chest and yelled at the clerk. “Did the suspect touch anything while he was in the store?”
“Yeah,” the clerk said, his expression as lackluster as before. “He touched that phone. Before he robbed me, he made a phone call. I thought something was about to go down. That’s why I wrote down his license plate number.”
Her eyes expanded. “This phone?” she said, pointing to the receiver in her hand.
“There ain’t no other phone in here,” the clerk said, shrugging.
Oh, God, she thought. This was a bad dream. What was she going to tell the sergeant? She couldn’t tell him she had more than likely obliterated the most valuable evidence in the case—the suspect’s fingerprints at the scene of the crime. As she stared at the flashing lights on her unit through the glass, the piercing sound of the siren made her head throb. She felt her eyes dampen with tears.
When Grant Cummings squealed into the parking lot and stepped out of his unit, Rachel felt as if she had just seen Jesus.
“I’ll call you right back,” she told the sergeant. “Cummings just arrived. We might have something going on. I can’t talk right now.” Not giving him a chance to respond, she hung up the phone.
“Did you get statements from the kids out front?” Grant said, stepping up next to Rachel with a relaxed, confident look on his face.
“No,” she said, seizing his arm. “You have to help me. Grant. I locked my keys in my car, along with my portable radio. I used this phone to call the station, and now the clerk tells me the suspect used this phone. What am I going to do? When the lab analyzes the fingerprints, they may find my prints on top of the suspect’s. Miller will have me fired for incompetence.”
Grant Cummings’s chest swelled. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this.” Grabbing the phone out of her hands, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the receiver clean, turning his back so the clerk couldn’t see what he was doing.
Rachel lunged at him, trying to grab the phone out of his hands. “No,” she shouted. “What are you doing? The lab might still be able to lift a few of the suspect’s prints.”
He pushed her aside with one hand, then went on wiping the receiver.
“I didn’t ask you to wipe the phone down,” she said. “You’ve just destroyed evidence in a felony.”
“No more print problems,” he said, smiling at her. “The robbery detail will just assume the perp wore gloves or the clerk was mistaken when he said he used the phone. You’re in the clear, Rach.” He placed one hand across his waist and bowed. “Grant comes through again. Just call me your knight in shining armor.”
Rachel turned around in a small circle. “If Miller finds out what we did, he’ll fire me for sure,” she cried.
“No one will find out,” he said, catching her by the shoulders. “Calm down. This isn’t a homicide. It’s no big deal, okay? Things happen. When you work the street, sometimes you have to cover your ass.”
“How are we going to get into my car?” she asked, her arms locked around her chest now. “If we don’t do something quick, the engine’s going to overheat.”
Following Grant out of the market, Rachel watched as he opened the back door to his own unit, flipped open his briefcase and pulled out a small leather case that resembled the ones used to carry manicure tools. Inside was a set of lock picks. Inserting one into the locking mechanism of the Caprice, he jiggled it, then moved on to the next pick. Within five minutes, he had the door unlocked. He reached inside and flipped the toggle switch, killing the lights and siren.
The color began to return to her face. With a hand pressed to her chest, she said, “You don’t know what this means to me. Grant. You probably think I’m an idiot. I didn’t get enough sleep this week. I swear, nothing like this will ever happen again.”
“Listen,” he said, “we all have off days now and then. No one got hurt.” He positioned himself behind her and massaged her shoulders, his strong fingers digging into the taut muscles between her shoulder blades. “You need to unwind, try not to take things so seriously. Now that I gave you a hand, you have to promise you’ll come to the watch party. How can you be a member of the team when you never come to our parties?”
“I-I really can’t,” Rachel stammered. Even though his hands felt good, she didn’t feel right having Grant touch her. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw the clerk watching them through the glass. “I feel awful about what happened,” she said, turning around to face him. “The DA will need the suspect’s fingerprints to make the case, and because of my stupidity, you just erased them.”
“So?” he said, tossing his hands in the air. “There’s a million scumbags out there. If one gets off, what’s the big deal? What makes you think we won’t nail this guy, anyway? He’ll ditch that car he stole, and we’ll probably find his prints all over it.”
Rachel sighed. Right or wrong, it was done.
“Meet me in back of the station at the end of the watch tomorrow night,” Grant told her.
“Is Carol coming to the party?” she asked. Maybe the party would be fun if Grant’s girlfriend were also there.
“No,” Grant said. “She’s leaving to visit her parents in Sacramento as soon as she gets off work tomorrow.”
“You mean I’ll be the only female at the party?” Rachel said. “I don’t feel comfortable about this. Grant. Another time, okay?”
“Hey,” he said, glowering at her, “do you think destroying evidence makes me feel comfortable? You don’t want me to tell Sergeant Miller what happened out here, do you?”
Rachel shook her head.
Grant’s face spread in a wide grin. “Then I guess you’ll be coming to the party, right?”
“I guess so,” Rachel said. After Grant sped off, she returned to the market to wait for the robbery detail.
An hour passed. Rachel was standing in the back of the market with Detective Tony Mancini, who was assigned to the department’s homicide and robbery division. “Dust the phone for prints,” he shouted to the criminologist. “The clerk says the perp made a phone call.”
Mancini was a large, gruff man with ruddy skin and small watery eyes. His hair was wavy and thick, and he wore it several inches past his collar. He was wearing a tank top under his jacket, and his dense chest hair poked out from the edges of the shirt. When he wasn’t on duty, he roared around town on a Harley-Davidson.
“This creep’s responsible for six holdups,” Mancini said, puffing on a skinny black cigar.
“How can you be certain it’s the same man?” Rachel asked, waving the cigar smoke away.
“Same gun, same teardrop tattoo,” Mancini said. “One of these days the clerk is going to resist, and our bandit is going to blow his head off.” He flicked his ashes on the floor, a cynical grin on his face. “Robbers are idiots. They always make a mistake and get caught. What we need is a nasty little murder. Oak Grove is too quiet.”
The detective had transferred to Oak Grove from the Los Angeles Police Department a year back, and from what Rachel had heard, he was already itching to return. “We have a pretty good description of the car,” she said. “Don’t you think we should be able to catch him?”
Mancini arched a bushy eyebrow. “He uses different wheels for every heist.”
Rachel considered confessing her error. Even though she felt bad, though, she knew a confession would not put the suspect’s prints back on the phone. Now that Mancini was on the scene, there was no reason for her to stay. “Keep me posted,” she told the detective, heading to her unit in the parking lot.
By the time Rachel cleared the robbery call, it was after four in the morning. Jimmy Townsend called her over the radio and asked her to meet him at the Texaco station located on the border of their adjoining beats. When she arrived at the station, she saw
Townsend’s police car, but the officer was not inside. A few minutes later, she saw him exiting the men’s room. “Did Atwater call you with the Brentwood verdict?” he asked, stepping up beside her.
“No,” Rachel said. “I took the phone off the hook so I could sleep. I thought they had more witnesses to call, and the trial would run through tomorrow. What happened?”
“The bastard walked on the weapons charge,” Townsend said, his voice crackling with tension. “Because of your testimony, all they were able to convict him on were two misdemeanor counts of drunk driving.”
“That’s too bad,” Rachel said. A lone car pulled away from the pump. She looked over her shoulder at the attendant in the glass booth. Since they were parked near the rear of the station, it was dark, and the way Jimmy was looking at her made her feel uncomfortable.
“What else did you tell Atwater?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Rachel was reaching for the door to her unit when Townsend suddenly lunged at her and shoved her against the side of the car.
“Atwater thinks I planted the gun on Brentwood,” he snarled, his breath hot and foul. “What are you trying to do to me, woman? Do you want me to lose my shield?”
“I didn’t say you planted the gun,” Rachel said, cowering in fear. “I swear, Jimmy. I just told him I didn’t see you remove it from Brentwood’s pocket.”
“You’re in cahoots with Atwater,” Townsend shouted, his fleshy jowls shaking like an angry dog. “That’s why the asshole sent you flowers, so you’d rat me out.”
“You’re wrong,” Rachel insisted. “The flowers had nothing to do with you, Jimmy.”
Townsend stared at her, his anger slowly dissipating. “I didn’t mean to shove you,” he said, his voice dropping to a more reasonable level. “I just don’t like DA’s calling my house and suggesting I’ve done something illegal. Things are tough right now. I don’t need any more stress in my life.”
“And I do?” Rachel gave him a sour look, then climbed into her car and sped off.
c h a p t e r
FIVE
“Tracy,” Rachel called to her daughter, “get your brother up while I make a pot of coffee.”
It was Friday night and Rachel was in the kitchen of her home in Oak Grove. Even though the house was small, the kitchen was fairly spacious, with enough room for a good-sized table and four chairs. The cigarette bums on the white formica counter left over from earlier tenants didn’t bother her, but the linoleum floor was buckled and Rachel hoped she could replace it one day. The kitchen was one of her favorite rooms, so she had tried to make it cheerful, putting up fluffy new curtains and painting the walls emerald green. The front of the refrigerator was covered with animal-shaped magnets, and dozens of receipts and snapshots were held in place on the outer door. Rachel kept a bowl of fresh fruit in the center of the butcher-block table.
The clock read a few minutes past eight, and Rachel was preparing to go to work. “Make sure Joe goes to the bathroom,” she told Tracy. “I don’t want him wetting his sleeping bag again.”
Slumping against the counter, Rachel stared blankly out the kitchen window into the darkness. She had already forgotten what it was she was about to do. She was tired, bone tired. Every muscle in her body ached. How many hours had she slept in the past week? She couldn’t remember, but she knew it wasn’t enough to keep her mind alert. Appearing in court on Thursday had taken its toll, and then the confrontation with Townsend and the mess she had made of the robbery scene had caused her to lose even more sleep.
Regardless of what Townsend thought, it was more than Rachel’s testimony that had caused the weapons charge to sink on the Brentwood case. She had called Mike Atwater when she got off work that morning, and the attorney had filled her in on what had happened during the remainder of the trial. Brentwood’s attorney had contacted every gun dealer in Ventura County and could locate no records of his client ever purchasing a firearm. The defense had also hired a firearms expert, who testified that the .22 pistol had been modified on the street. It was well known that some officers carried throwaway guns, weapons they plucked off criminals and failed to turn in at the end of their watch. In most instances, a throwaway piece was kept inside an officer’s boot, or strapped to his ankle with masking tape. Because of the officers’ need to conceal them, these guns were generally .22’s, like the one Townsend claimed he had removed from Brentwood’s pocket.
“Joe’s already up,” Tracy said, walking over to her mother. Seeing Rachel in her bathrobe, she said, “Aren’t you going to run tonight?”
“Too tired,” Rachel mumbled. Her nightly runs had become a ritual since her husband’s death. When she ran, she could organize her thoughts, rid herself of some of the stress she was under. The extra job and the day’s sleep she had sacrificed to go to court on Thursday had drained her energy. Tonight she could barely walk, let alone run. She pulled out a rubber pitcher from under the sink and set about watering her plants. She touched the brownish leaves of a large fern, plucking them gently and tossing them in the trash can.
“Why don’t you let me water the plants?” Tracy said. Dressed in a sweatshirt and a pair of loose-fitting jeans, the girl wore her hair layered on top, with long, uneven strands that dangled onto her forehead and cheeks. In the ravages of puberty, she had chopped off her waist-length hair when blemishes began to appear on her forehead, creating a trendy hairstyle she had designed herself to hide her skin problems. Even though Rachel thought the style was cute, the jagged strands were always in her daughter’s eyes, and she wondered how she could see to do her schoolwork.
“I enjoy tending my plants,” Rachel said, pouring a few drops of water into each of the small pots lined up on the ledge above the sink.
Once her mother put the pitcher away, Tracy said, “Finish getting ready for work. Mom. I’ll make the coffee for you. As soon as it’s ready, I’ll bring it to you in the bathroom.” She elbowed her mother away from the sink, then began filling the coffee pot. “Take a cold shower, okay?” She stopped and scowled, glancing at her mother’s face. “You don’t even look human tonight. You look like something somebody dug up.”
“Thanks a lot,” Rachel said, giving her a lopsided grin. “You know what they call the officers like me who work graveyards and don’t rotate to other shifts?”
“Stupid,” Tracy said.
“Permanent ghouls.”
“Cute,” her daughter said without smiling. “You have to quit the job at State Farm.”
“I can’t afford to do that just yet,” Rachel told her. She pulled on the sash of her terrycloth robe. The State Farm job had been a godsend. If she could hang in for just a few more months, she would finally have all the medical bills paid off. She’d been dodging bill collectors for three years now.
“But it’s killing you. Mom,” Tracy cried, tossing the dishtowel onto the counter. “No one can work that many hours a week. What if you fall asleep at the wheel of your police car and get killed? What will Joe and I do?”
“Doctors work long hours and manage to survive,” Rachel argued, carrying a few plates from the kitchen table to the sink. “I don’t stay awake the entire time, anyway. After I make certain the building is secure, I generally catnap for the rest of the shift.”
“There’s no bed in that building,” Tracy continued. “You have to sleep on the floor. Didn’t you tell me they turn off the air conditioner at night, and it gets so hot inside that you can barely breathe?”
“It’s not that bad,” she lied, the memory of those long miserable nights far from pleasant. It wasn’t only the lack of sleep, or the spookiness of being in a fifteen-story building alone all night. There were simply too many empty hours to think, to mourn, to indulge in self-pity. “State Farm pays more per hour than the PD,” she said, “and I don’t have to do anything but sit there. Besides, it’s not forever. Once the bills are caught up, I’m going to quit.”
At five-four, Rachel was a few inches taller than her daughter. Tracy had her
mother’s straight, regal nose, the pouty mouth, the high cheekbones. Rachel’s face was oval, though. Tracy had a square jaw inherited from her father, along with his chestnut hair. Other than their appearance, mother and daughter had little in common. Rachel was an optimist, Tracy a pessimist. Rachel sometimes did things that were irrational, her decisions based on emotion rather than reason. Tracy’s emotions were carefully contained, her actions calculated rather than impulsive.
Since they had moved, the girl had taken on a toughness that sometimes caused her mother concern. The neighborhood they lived in wasn’t the best. Some of Tracy’s friends were street urchins with little or no parental supervision. They were already chasing boys, experimenting with drugs, wearing makeup, using foul language. Rachel knew her daughter was a prime candidate for rebellion. Even though she seldom showed it, the teenager harbored a great deal of bitterness. She was angry that her father had died and left them to survive on such meager resources. While her friends worried about what they were going to buy in the mall, which movie they were going to see, or which boy they wanted to flirt with, Tracy’s concerns centered on what she was going to cook for dinner, or how she could keep her three-year-old brother entertained long enough to finish her homework.
Pulling her daughter into her arms, Rachel stroked the long strands of hair back from her face. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said. “It’s not always going to be this way. I promise, honey. One of these days we’re going to look back at all this and laugh.” She inhaled the clean scent of the girl’s shampoo. “Is your homework done? Is your lunch packed for school tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Tracy said, her concern deepening. If her mother didn’t even know what day of the week it was, how could she do her job? She reached out and touched her hand, tracing the blue veins with her fingers. Her skin was so pale, it was almost translucent. “If you don’t hurry,” she said, “you’re going to be late.”
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