by Frank Zafiro
Some ran away.
Katie took in a deep breath and let it out. Sweat dampened her entire body beneath the blanket, but she felt stronger.
Because even though she sometimes hid, she didn’t ever run.
As if on cue, the telephone at Katie’s bedside rang shrilly. She jumped at the sound, then realized she’d forgotten to turn off the ringer. She reached for the telephone, unsure until the phone was at her ear, if she would answer it or simply turn off the noise.
“Hello?”
Maybe it had been a desire for human company that drove her to answer the phone. Something to extract her from her memories. If that were true, she instantly regretted it when the voice at the other end of the connection came through.
“Kay-die?”
The slurred version of her name caused her to flash to her mother, but the voice was distinctly male.
“Is thad yew, Kay-die?”
Stef.
“It’s me,” she answered, her voice tight. “What do you want?”
“Oh, Kay-die,” he said, his voice dissolving into several teary grunts and huffs. “Oh.” He took another breath, then said, “Hola, chica.”
Katie felt strangely cold. The natural response from the time they dated — hola, chico — never even threatened to come out. It was as if the pity and the anger that she had intermittently felt for Kopriva had called a truce. With the two emotions leaving the battlefield, all that remained was a strange emptiness.
“What do you want, Stef?”
“I jes’ wanna talk with you. I wanna — ”
“Stef, we have nothing to talk about,” she told him.
“Nu-nu-nothing?” he stammered back in a surprised tone.
“Nothing,” she repeated.
“How can you say that to me?” he asked her, pain evident in his voice.
Pity may have quit the field, but at that question, her anger reentered the fray. “How could you say the things you said to me? How could you be so selfish?”
“I–I-”
“You act like everything that happened last year only happened to you.” Her mind’s eye flashed to a picture of Amy Dugger that she had seen in the Dugger’s kitchen while she’d been assigned to wait with the family. Her jaw clenched. “Well, it didn’t. Those things happened to the rest of us, too.”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” Kopriva answered back, his slur seeming to dissipate with those particular words. “I did.”
“We all have our own ghosts, Stef. But you decided not to face yours. You decided to check out instead.” Katie shook her head. Now pity had heard the call of battle and reappeared on the field. “I can’t have you in my life. Not if you won’t face up to your demons. I can’t get dragged down into that.”
“Whaddayou know?” Kopriva snarled. “Little Miss Perfect Princess. You don’t know shit!”
An ironic laugh forced its way out of Katie’s mouth before she could stop it. “Oh, Stef. Like you know. You don’t know anything about me. Not really.”
“I tell you what I know. I know that you don’t care about-”
“Don’t call me anymore,” Katie interrupted, her voice hard. “If you do, I’ll get a no-contact order.”
Kopriva stopped talking. Stung silence radiated through the telephone receiver toward her.
“Goodbye, Stef,” she said, and hung up.
She turned off the ringer and curled up into a ball under the blankets. She let the ghosts and demons wash over her until weariness finally pulled her into a sleep so deep that even those specters could not follow.
EIGHT
Thursday, April 18th
0917 hours
Day Shift
Tower stood in the doorway of the crime analysis unit with a package of Hostess donuts in his hands. He waited until Renee looked up from her desk and spotted him there. Her expression remained momentarily angry. He raised the box of donuts and affected a contrite expression.
Renee’s features softened slightly. She waved him into the office.
Tower grinned.
“Don’t smile at me, John,” she said. “The donuts get you in the door, but not off my shit list.”
Tower’s grin widened.
“I mean it, John.”
“I know.”
“You can’t just talk to me like I’m some idiot or something.”
“I know.” He held out the donuts. “Peace?”
Renee stared at him, as if gauging his sincerity. After a moment, she accepted the box from him. Then she held out her empty coffee mug. The words on the side read, Given enough coffee, I could rule the world.
“Coffee’s over there,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tower said lightly, snapping a salute.
Renee raised a single eyebrow. “You might want to lay off the smart alec shtick for a little while. I still haven’t decided if I forgive you.”
Tower held up his empty hand in an open palm, mea culpa gesture and moved across the room. He filled her cup with the rich brew, along with a Styrofoam cup for himself.
“You could’ve brought flowers,” Renee said.
“Oh, yeah. That wouldn’t start rumors.”
“What’d I say about the smart alec thing?”
Tower brought her the cup of coffee he’d poured. “That was sarcasm. It’s different.”
“It’s close enough.”
Tower shrugged. “Probably. Anyway, you can’t eat flowers. You can eat donuts.”
Renee didn’t answer. She eyed the box, then cracked the lid. “One won’t hurt.”
Tower suppressed a laugh. If Renee wanted to eat twenty donuts, she probably could do so without gaining an ounce. She remained slender, despite spending her days behind a desk in a small office filled with snack food. It didn’t bother Tower, but he was pretty sure every woman in the department hated her for exactly that reason.
Renee bit into the donut and chewed slowly. Then she sipped her coffee. “You should’ve gone to the bakery,” she said. “You got these at a convenience store, didn’t you?”
“No,” Tower lied.
Renee turned the box and read the code from the label. “The Circle K, huh?”
“How’d you know that?”
Renee smiled humorlessly. “I know everything. It’s my job.”
Tower shrugged. “Can’t argue that. But a donut is a donut.”
Renee lowered the box. Her eyebrow arched again. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
She raised the half-eaten donut in the air. “This is barely a donut. Real donuts are things you buy at the bakery.” She raised her cup. “A real donut complements real coffee.” She lowered the cup. “You know, I’m only eating this because you’re trying to make up. Otherwise, I’d put them out for visitors.”
“I know.”
Renee took a bite and held the box out toward him.
Tower waved off her offer. “Can’t feed the stereotype.”
Renee swallowed. “But I can?”
“You’re not the police. You only work for the police.”
“The public doesn’t know the difference,” she said.
“True,” Tower agreed. “But the public is mostly ignorant.”
“I’ve developed a theory about that, by the way,” she said, breaking off another piece of donut and tossing it in her mouth.
“About what? Why the public is ignorant?”
“Uh-uh.” She chewed and swallowed and gave it another coffee chaser. “About cops and donuts. How the stereotype started.”
Tower raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
She gave him a slight smile and took the last bite of her donut, making him wait. When she’d finished chewing and tossing back another shot of coffee, she went on. “It’s simple, really. People forget that we haven’t always been this twenty-four hours, seven days a week society. The pace of life wasn’t always this fast. Take 7-11 stores for instance. Do you know where the name came from?”
Tower did, but he shook his h
ead no. He didn’t want to interrupt her.
“Those were the store’s business hours. Seven in the morning until eleven at night. What was so novel about that, you ask? Well, everyone else except bars and taverns were strictly nine to five. Maybe eight to six. It was a big deal to be able to run to the store for milk at ten-thirty at night when the Safeway was closed.”
She took another pull of coffee and waved her hand. “Of course, now there are tons of businesses open twenty-four hours a day. Not just convenience stores, but gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores. Everybody has twenty-four hour service.”
“Not banks,” Tower said.
“Not so. ATMs.” She shook her head. “No, John, we’ve seen a very radical shift in the last half-century. The era of convenience is firmly entrenched in our social structure.”
“So cops eat donuts because it’s convenient?”
She took another sip and rolled her eyes at him. “Are you purposefully being obtuse?”
“Yes. But it’s not much of a stretch for me.”
“I don’t doubt it. Do you want to hear my theory or not?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She leaned forward. “Back in the times before 7-11, when everyone closed down at a reasonable hour and went home, we still had cops out on the beat, right? Graveyard shift had to be unbearably long. By two or three in the morning, I’ll bet you that the officers out there thought they were the last people alive on earth. They’d welcome human contact. They’d be looking for it. So who was open at that time of night?”
“Bars?”
“Yeah, all right, until two in the morning. If it were a weekend. But how long would a bartender want to stay after a long night? Not long. He’d be wanting to tally up the receipts and get home to bed. By two-thirty, even the bars were dark back then. But who comes to work about three, three-thirty in the morning?”
Tower shrugged.
She smiled. “The baker. The baker comes to work early and starts baking. He throws on a pot of coffee for himself and for his friend, the local cop. The cop swings by, has some fresh coffee, some conversation and a donut. The sugar and caffeine give him a boost through to the end of his shift. The baker doesn’t have to worry about getting robbed when he opens his shop. Both parties benefit from the arrangement.”
“No doubt.”
Renee leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “And that, detective, is how I believe the cop and the donut stereotype came to be.”
Tower set down his Styrofoam cup on her desk and clapped. “Brilliant. And all these years, I just thought it was because donuts tasted good.”
“That’s why you’re a detective and not an analyst.”
Tower nodded, letting a more serious look seep into his face. “You’re right, actually. That’s why I’d like to talk to you about those questions you wrote last time I was here.”
She held up a finger. “You’re forgetting something.”
Tower sighed and hung his head. “The donuts aren’t enough?”
“Do you have any experience with women at all, Detective Tower?”
“Apparently not.”
“Apparently so,” Renee replied. “Because you know exactly what you need to do.”
Tower looked up and met her eyes. “Yes, I do.” He took a deep breath and said in a sincere tone, “I’m sorry, Renee.”
She paused, as if savoring his discomfort. Tower waited in silence until she finally gave him a quick nod. “Apology accepted.”
“Thank you. Let’s get busy, then.”
Renee poised her fingers over the keyboard. “Just speak the word, master.”
Tower smiled. “Actually, I was thinking more about those questions you wrote down.”
Renee reached into a file on her desk and removed the slip of paper. Without a word, she handed it to Tower. He glanced down at the neat feminine script.
Why does he rape?
Who does he hate?
Is he evolving?
Tower sighed. “I know I was frustrated before, so that was why I snapped at you. But, truly, I have no clue what the answers to any of these questions are.”
“It’s like I said, John. You have to use your imagination. Why would a man rape?”
Tower shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know.”
Renee chuckled and shook her head. “Sure you do. Every man knows.”
Tower cocked his head at her. “Are you saying every man is a rapist?” he asked. He’d heard about some kooky women’s libber saying something like that once upon a time, but he thought it was stupid. He’d seen plenty of rapists since being assigned to the Sexual Assault Unit. Most of them were scumbag pieces of-
“No,” Renee said, “of course not. But every man can imagine why a rape might occur.”
“Sex?”
“Give the man a prize.”
Tower shook his head. “But I thought rape was about power, not sex. That’s what all the advocates say. That’s what most of the training I’ve gone to says, too.” He shrugged. “I even heard one statistic where something like forty percent of rapists can’t even get an erection.”
Renee nodded. “I heard that one, too.”
“So?”
“So what?”
Tower cocked his head the other direction. “Are you trying to frustrate me on purpose?”
“It is fun,” Renee said. “And so easy.”
“I’m glad I amuse you.”
Renee smiled. “Back to the question at hand. Power or sex? Sex or violence?”
“Easy,” Tower said. “Power and violence.”
“I think you’re right,” Renee said. “I think all the advocates and the experts and so forth are right, too. It is about power and it is about violence. But sex is the vehicle for all that power mongering and violence.”
“So…?”
“So, in a very real way, it is also about sex. It sure as hell isn’t about badminton.”
Tower paused, thinking about her words. Then he said, “So he rapes for power, but it is still important to him that sex is the way he gets the power?”
“I think so. Not just with this guy, but with most of them.”
Tower shrugged. “Okay, could be. How does that help us?”
Renee returned the shrug. “I don’t know if it does help a whole lot. But it’s a start. Move on to the next question.”
Tower glanced back down at her list. “Who does he hate?” He looked up at Renee. “Do you mean groups of people? Like immigrants or women or something?”
Renee shook her head. “Not really. I mean something more specific. If he hates women in general, for example, it is usually because of a specific hate for a specific woman. Or women.”
“Someone who hurt him?”
“Yes.”
“Like a girlfriend.”
“Or a mother.”
Tower raised his eyebrows. “Oh…I see. Mommy issues.” He twirled his finger at his temple and stuck out his tongue sideways.
Renee wagged her finger at him. “You shouldn’t make fun, John. Our parents have a huge impact on who we become. Messed up parents usually create messed up kids.”
“Maybe he was an orphan. Maybe he hates his mother for giving him up for adoption.”
Renee peered closely at him.
Tower raised his palms up in a placating gesture. “Seriously.”
Renee considered. “I suppose it could be. But I wouldn’t think that a sense of abandonment would result in such a powerful reaction.”
Tower chuckled, shaking his head slowly.
“What?” Renee asked.
“Listen to us,” Tower said, “a couple of junior psychiatrists.”
Renee shrugged. “You don’t need a degree to figure out bad guys. This is a sick guy, John.”
“Duh.”
“I’d be willing to bet this all came from childhood.” Renee looked down at her notepad and traced the letters absently. “I can imagine some young kid with an absent or abusive father, or a domineering
mother. Or someone else and something else. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that through alternately neglecting and inflicting pain on this child, who only wanted love and protection, someone who was supposed to care for this little boy created a monster instead.”
Tower looked at her askance. “You’re…sympathizing with him?”
Renee nodded. “You bet. As a child, I sympathize with him from here to Cleveland.”
“He’s a violent rapist,” Tower reminded her.
“Yes, he is, John. As an adult.” Renee tapped the tip of her pen on the pad in front of her for emphasis. “As a child, I cry for this person.”
Tower shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
“You remember Amy Dugger, John?”
Tower’s eyes narrowed. “Of course. Why on earth would you bring up that little girl?”
“They found her dead body in a field,” Renee said.
“I know. I was there.”
“And forensics said she’d been sexually assaulted.”
Tower clenched his jaw. “Your point?”
“My point,” Renee said, “is that what that little girl went through was hellish, but it only lasted a few days. Imagine if it had gone on for years. And then imagine if she survived that beating and got away from her kidnappers. Does your heart go out to that little child, John?”
“Of course it does,” Tower snapped. “It did. It does.”
“I know,” Renee said quietly. “But now imagine what kind of adult that kid would probably grow into. With all that pain to deal with, she’d probably want to inflict a little of it back onto the world. She might have kids of her own someday. And because of what she’s learned as a child, and since they make such convenient targets, she might decide to hurt her own kids. Maybe even kill them. Now when you get called to the scene of that homicide, are you going to feel sorry for that adult? That child-murderer?”
“No,” Tower whispered.
“But you felt sorry for the little girl she used to be.”
Tower stood quietly, saying nothing.
“That’s how I feel about this guy, John,” Renee explained. “My heart bleeds for him as a child. As an adult, though, I hope he comes at you with a knife when you find him. That way you can blast the sick fuck right out of his asshole rapist shoes.”
Tower nodded slowly, slightly surprised at the vehemence in Renee’s words. “He is sick.”
