Maybe Swearing Will Help

by Vale, Lani Lynn

And I would stick to that.

  I would.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 7

  Humans are deuterostomes. Which means that when they develop in the womb, their anus forms before any other opening. Also meaning at one point, you were nothing but an asshole.

  -Fun fact

  Ford

  “Why am I here?” Ashe asked curiously, flipping through one of the file folders that she had on some deaths that she was obsessed about.

  “I don’t know,” I murmured, leaning back in Ashe’s office chair and kicking my feet up onto the desk beside her thighs.

  She spared a moment to glare at them before returning to her file.

  “What are you reading?” I asked curiously.

  She glanced up at me then back down at her paper.

  “Well,” she said. “If all goes according to what experts predict, this will be the time of the year that the killer will strike.”

  I felt a shiver roll down my spine.

  This ‘project’ as she called it was something that she’d been looking into since she started her way into being a criminal psychologist.

  I’d heard, as well as everyone that was willing to listen, about this killer in Haughton, Louisiana, who was killing young teenage girls.

  One of the serial killer’s victims had been a friend of hers. Somebody that could’ve just as easily been her.

  I decided that it was likely what had motivated her to get into the martial arts. To become able to protect herself.

  In the years since her friend had passed, three more had been killed in the exact same way.

  And with each subsequent murder, she became just a little bit more obsessed.

  “Why this month?” I asked curiously.

  “They always disappear in the winter and usually around the holidays,” she answered, flipping to the next page. “When I brought this to my teacher as my final class research project, she became extremely interested in it. She was able to pull some background out of the FBI database due to her clearance. I should’ve asked Silas to help me. He would have.”

  I agreed.

  Silas would do anything for any of his club’s kids, grandkids or club members.

  Anything.

  “Anyway,” she said. “She pulled the entire file for me. This is what I’m holding right now. I have access to more through secure channels, but for right now, I printed off the pages that talk about the killer himself. About his mannerisms, and the things they suspect him to be.”

  “What do you mean ‘suspect him to be?’” I questioned.

  “They expect him to be a white male, thirty to fifty years old. Average height. Likely socially awkward…” she read the report to me, and would’ve continued had the chief not walked in halfway through her commentary.

  Luke waited until she was done reading off her defining factors about the serial killer before he interrupted.

  “Sounds like Patman,” Luke joked.

  “Or Jerry,” I replied just as jokingly.

  Ashe grinned and closed her folder.

  “I hope you know I gave up a day of naps for this, Uncle Luke,” Ashe said as she waited for Luke to come further into the room.

  Luke pinched his lips and shut Ashe’s office door.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he joked, eyes taking everything in.

  Ashe looked at her sparsely decorated office.

  “I don’t want people to think that you’ve given me preferential treatment,” Ashe admitted. “I’m still debating on taking the office at all.”

  Luke snorted and took a seat in the rickety chair that I was too scared to try.

  The metal creaked but ultimately held him up just fine.

  “This is the detective’s hallway,” Luke said. “Everyone in the detective department has an office. Files are needed, and we can’t just have those floating around for anyone to get them.”

  Luke did have a point.

  “Luke,” she started again. “People are already looking at me funny. ‘Who’s this girl walking in here going straight to detective when she hasn’t even gotten out of training yet?’”

  Her mimicked words sounded more like someone that had said those exact words rather than ones she’d made up on the spot.

  Luke leaned back in the chair and it groaned.

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about, anyway,” he said. “For the next three weeks, you’re going to be riding along with a senior officer. He’ll teach you the ropes. Make sure that you don’t fuck up. Make sure that you’re capable of handling yourself. And, also, he’ll be the one to clear you. Once he’s cleared you, you can officially start work.”

  “Okay,” Ashe drawled out the word. “Who would be the one training me?”

  I immediately thought of the officer that I rode along with for weeks on end and winced.

  “Ford.” Luke gestured toward me. “I want you to ride with Ford.”

  “I’m sorry, but you want me to what with Ford?” she asked in surprise.

  “I want you to ride along with Ford,” Luke repeated, his arms crossed tightly over his chest as he bounced his gaze between Ashe and me. “I usually have a seasoned officer doing the trainee process, but he’s been out on sick leave for a month due to a fall. He won’t be back for six weeks, and I know that you’re about to start school again. It’s either do it with Ford for the rest of the break, or you can wait until the trainer gets back off of sick leave. Which could put you right in the middle of your classes.”

  I sighed and looked over at Ashe.

  Did I want to spend every waking moment with her from now until the end of her break?

  I looked at her as if I was about to say no, which had her back stiffening.

  “I have no problem if Ford doesn’t,” Ashe replied sweetly.

  Luke’s eyes moved from me to Ashe.

  I shrugged. “No skin off my nose. She works the same shifts as I do?”

  Luke nodded.

  Ashe’s taunting eyes turned to me.

  “Ready for the night shift, Soot?” I teased.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Of course.”

  Turns out, she wasn’t ready for the night shift at all.

  Chapter 8

  Are your eyebrows real or fake?

  -things not to ask a woman

  Ford

  “What’s going on, ma’am?” I asked the woman.

  She quickly dashed tears off of her cheeks and sniffled once.

  “I have this Ring doorbell.” She pointed to the doorbell behind her.

  “Okay.” I was getting agitated. I was having to pry every fucking ounce of information out of her, and she was treating me like I was the bad guy here instead of the one responding to the call.

  “I have a cat shelter,” Ashe said suddenly. “I can call and check to see if the cat has shown…”

  The woman waved Ashe’s worry away.

  “No,” she said. “Someone took Oswald.”

  My brows rose.

  “Oswald’s your cat’s name?” Ashe asked, infusing worry and regret into her tone.

  “Yes,” the woman sniffed. “He was taken right off my porch!”

  The woman looked around then, eyes going wide, as she bounced her eyes around the neighborhood, waiting for someone to shoot her where she stood for talking to the cops.

  And the bad thing was that it could’ve possibly happened.

  People ‘got dead’ when they talked to cops in this neighborhood. Even if it was over a cat.

  “Can I call you and explain?” the woman suddenly explained, her hands fisting in front of her. “They’re gonna see.”

  By ‘they’re’ she meant her neighbors.

  Ashe quickly fished out her card.

  “Here,” she said. “You can call me.”

  I looked at the card she handed out that had her telephone number on it and her information.

  Once we were
back in the car, we weren’t in it for more than two minutes before the woman called back.

  “So it’s like this…” the woman started.

  I snorted, causing Ashe to flick me on the forearm with her fingers.

  “I was at work and got the notification that someone was at my door,” she said. “Since I was expecting a package, I decided to look at it just to make sure that the UPS guy hid it good. Except, when I looked at the camera feed, I saw that it wasn’t a UPS guy but a man in his twenties. He was picking up Oswald and walking away with him. I tried to talk to him through the doorbell app, but the guy just kept right on walking.”

  “What did the guy look like?” Ashe asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

  “I can send you the feed,” she said. “But I didn’t get a good look at the guy. I was kind of distracted at work.”

  With promises to call if she had any more information, Ashe hung up the call that she had on speakerphone, then turned to me.

  “What do you think about that?” she asked curiously.

  Before I could answer, something hit the windshield, causing her to flinch.

  I’d, of course, seen the man on the side of the road.

  I’d also seen his arm swing as if he was about to throw something.

  Though I hadn’t expected that ‘something’ to be a dead animal.

  “Was that a… was that a dead armadillo they just threw at the cruiser?” she asked, staring at the disgusting stain as if it was a severed hand instead of a smudge.

  I turned on the windshield spray and watched as the stain smeared across the whole entire window instead of just on her side.

  Gross.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “One of the guys had a dead cat and a raccoon thrown at them last week.”

  She looked over at me with surprise. “I notice that you didn’t say the raccoon was dead.”

  I grinned. “I didn’t.”

  “So it was alive?” she gasped.

  “Yep,” he said. “It’d been hit by a car but was struggling to live. Was kind of sad, actually.”

  Ashe turned her head and faced forward.

  “Eleventh Street is disgusting,” she muttered darkly.

  “No arguments from me,” I said. “What do you think about the cats?”

  According to the woman who had reluctantly spoken with us after Ashe’s testimonial, there’d been a rash of cats going missing all over the South Side.

  At least ten that she knew of.

  Meaning that someone was out there stealing cats like they steal dogs for dog fighting rings.

  Only, cats weren’t going to get them anywhere that I could think of.

  “I think…” She paused, her head tilting as she got a look at someone on the side of the road mowing their lawn. “Was that Patman?”

  I looked in my rearview mirror. “Yeah. Patman.”

  “He lives on Eleventh Street?” she asked in surprise.

  Eleventh Street was the city’s worst part of town. If you lived on Eleventh Street, you likely were a badass because you had to go through some shit to stay there.

  “Why do you think he’s such an asshole?” I teased. “Eleventh Street has changed him.”

  The rest of shift went about as smooth as one could possibly get for a night shift.

  Obviously, there were plenty of speeding tickets that I’d handed out. Plenty of warnings as well.

  “That woman should’ve gotten a ticket,” Ashe said. “She totally played you.”

  I looked at her as I sucked down half of my sweet tea in one gulp.

  Why the fuck were the cups so fuckin’ small?

  “Why’s that?” I asked curiously.

  “She used her bountiful breasts to entice you,” Ashe said. “It was more than obvious.”

  It was.

  The young woman had done exactly that.

  “She knew exactly what she was doing, too.” Ashe rolled her eyes as she took a bite of the lettuce wrap she’d gotten.

  I picked up my fork and dug into my salad.

  The place that we’d come to was more of a healthy food chain. It wasn’t my favorite place in the world to go, but they did have good salads. And my body probably needed more leafy greens in its life.

  Ashe was fairly healthy most of the time. Which sucked because I’d be riding with her for the next couple of weeks, and she wouldn’t allow me to eat badly every single day like I usually did.

  “I’m more thinking that she was scared as hell, and she wasn’t going that fast,” I admitted my reasoning.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “She was scared. But I also literally witnessed her unbuttoning three of her buttons as you walked up to the car. And I’m pretty sure she had a dildo in her purse.”

  I grinned before taking a forkful of shredded lettuce into my mouth.

  “Caught that, did you?” I asked. “I was going to quiz you on it later.”

  “Really? Why?” she wondered, setting her lettuce wrap down for her cup.

  “I was going to ask you if you’d seen anything in her purse,” I admitted. “But not because it was a dildo or anything. Mainly because I want you to be paying attention to every little detail. Whether it be a dildo in a purse, or a gun.”

  She nodded in understanding, picking her wrap up again.

  I finished my salad in about eight more bites, then looked at the menu board as I contemplated getting another one.

  “That wasn’t enough food,” I groaned.

  “It was enough,” she said. “Let it settle before you get anything else. You’ll be surprised.”

  I sucked down my sweet tea and went for more, thankful that at least their tea was good.

  If I had to eat healthy, I at least needed something decent to drink.

  While I was up there, I happened to look over my shoulder to see a man watching her from across the room.

  I’d seen him as we’d chosen our seats, but he’d moved since we’d arrived, going even farther into the shadows.

  When I walked back to my seat, I said, “You know the guy in the corner?”

  I had to give her credit. She didn’t whip her head around and stare like other women would have.

  She casually glanced up and used the mirror in the front of the store to see.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I don’t know many faces here. But it’s likely that I’ve met him. Everybody knows all the newcomers, but the newcomers don’t know everybody.”

  That was the truth.

  I’d moved here over a year ago, and everyone greeted me by name anywhere I went.

  I didn’t know any of them, though.

  Which made me feel bad.

  But Kilgore wasn’t as small of a town as it used to be.

  “True enough,” I agreed. “He was sitting in the corner over there by the front door when we came in. Now he’s in the shadows.”

  Ashe shrugged and kept her eye on him.

  Two rather rambunctious teens rolled into the place twenty minutes later, causing both of us to tense.

  Me because I had a feeling I’d seen the teenagers before, and the last time I’d seen them hadn’t been for something good.

  Ashe tensed because they had a fuckin’ kitten with them, and they were tossing it back and forth, laughing at the animal’s terror.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t upset about the animal, but I saw past the animal to the douchebags behind the animal. Douchebag one had a gun under his belt. Douchebag two had one under his armpit.

  Both were well under the age of eighteen and shouldn’t have a gun at all.

  “I need more tea,” I murmured, getting up with my empty glass.

  She nodded, handing me her glass.

  Which I promptly shook my head no at.

  “Not this time,” I said softly. “Need a hand free.”

  She immediately understood and lowered her glass—which was half full anyway.

  It wasn’t like
she was in immediate danger of running out or anything.

  She nervously sipped on her drink, her eyes on the two men.

  But before I could even get up there, the man that we had been observing hanging in the back of the room came up and snatched the kitten mid-air, tucking him closely under his arm.

  Now that the man was no longer in the shadows and not actively trying to stay unnoticed, I could see that he had Down syndrome. He also wasn’t dressed the nicest in the world.

  “Don’t harm a cat,” the man ordered the two teens.

  The two teens converged on the much smaller man, getting up into his face.

  “That’s my cat. I found it outside,” Douchebag one said.

  “Give it back,” Douchebag two said.

  Now Ashe was standing as well, moving forward slowly to the front of the restaurant.

  I stepped up just in time to hear the man’s reply.

  “No. It’s my cat. I left it outside so I could get something to eat,” the man replied.

  “Well, you shouldn’t have left it. Finders keepers,” Douchebag two said.

  That was when he reared back and sucker-punched the man.

  The man dropped like a bowling pin, falling straight to his back.

  The woman behind the counter gasped in surprise and reached for the phone.

  I reached for my mic as I hauled Douchebag two around and pinned him to the drink machine.

  “Hey, let him go!” Douchebag one ordered.

  Except Ashe was there, ordering him to turn around.

  “Turn around and put your hands on your head,” Ashe ordered. “And don’t even think about…”

  Ashe grunted out in pain as the douchebag tried to sucker punch her, too.

  He missed hitting her face by mere inches as she moved out of the way just in time.

  She didn’t waste her hits after that.

  The kid was on the ground, his arm in an armbar, even before he could draw in his next breath.

  She had him cuffed and on the floor, her entire body holding him still, while trying to get the unconscious man to look at her.

  He wasn’t responding, which was what had me moving my kid to the back of my cruiser.

  All the while, the kitten was mewling pitifully, tucked up against the bleeding man’s face.

  When the kid was finally in the back of the cruiser, I came back inside for the other one, who was still struggling.