“How’s my mom?”
“She’s good. She misses you.”
Maureen heard the scrape of a fork across a plate. Faint voices in the background. Ah, the diner. She knew Waters had cut a slice of waffle with his fork and then swirled the slice in a pool of melted strawberry ice cream. They’d shared this meal often in the days before she’d left New York.
“She sleeps right through my nightly wanderings,” Waters said. “It’s a blessing for both of us.”
“Mom knows you’re eating waffles and ice cream at the Dove? This is allowed?”
“She pretends she doesn’t, but she knows. And I pretend I’m getting away with it. I’m terrible with leaving evidence behind. She also knows there’s worse things a man could be out doing than eating waffles and ice cream at the local diner. Long as I keep it to once or twice a month, the waffles, I mean, and don’t talk much to the waitresses, she lets it slide.”
Maureen tapped her fingers above her heart. “Just don’t overdo it, for the sake of the ticker.”
“I won’t,” Waters said. “I promise. How’s work?”
She touched her cheek. “I had my first throw-down yesterday. Took a punch in the face.”
“That’s a big step.” Maureen could see the smile lighting up his sad, droopy face in the bright diner. “You win?”
“What? Of course I fucking won.”
Waters laughed at her. “Of course you did. That’s my girl.”
“Only needed one shot,” Maureen said. “A right to the jaw.” The hairs on her forearms stood up. You shoulda seen me, she wanted to say, feeling like a little girl just off the diving board and treading water in the deep end, foolish as it was. You shoulda been there. You shoulda seen. “Well, I only needed one shot after I took out his knee.”
“What was the call?”
“Domestic,” Maureen said. “He came through the front door at me, got a punch in.”
“Weapon?”
“Nope.”
“Lucky for you,” Waters said.
“So I’ve been told. You sound like Preacher.” Was she whining? She worried she was whining. There was no point to it; Waters always took Preacher’s side, anyway.
“How’s it going with him?”
“Same. He’s got me writing tickets, writing reports till my fingers cramp. Forget bullet wounds. I have a better chance of getting carpal tunnel and paper cuts.”
“I know you hate writing tickets,” Waters said, “but you can make good collars with traffic stops. They’re a valuable tool. Learn how to use them.”
“Nat, he’s killing me.”
“I told you that you’d meet guys like Preacher. You gotta live with it. And you can learn from him. Guys like Preacher, they survive because they know the system and the politics. They know the people who are good to know. Keep him on your side. Do that, and you’ll get to know those people, too.”
“I don’t want any part of that boys’ club, or their politics,” Maureen said. “That’s not what I’m here for.”
“You can’t go from ‘A’ ball to the major leagues in five weeks. That’s a good thing.”
“Nat, I’m already thirty. I’d like to make Homicide before I’m fifty, for chrissakes. Writing tickets and babysitting road blocks at basketball games won’t get me there.”
“A smart cop uses every advantage,” Waters said. “Like the treasure trove of information buried within her much more experienced training officer, for example. You got the badge on your own. You earned it one hundred percent. Top of the class. You’re in the club now, take advantage of the privileges. You’ve earned them. I promise you, every other cop, including your future competition for Homicide, they’re doing it right now.”
“Everybody’s doing it,” Maureen said. “That’s your justification? Are you serious? I can’t waste any more time than I already have.”
Waters laughed. “You haven’t put any time in yet, Maureen. No time spent on the street with your eyes and ears open is wasted. Learn. You’re a smart, capable, tough young woman. Once you pay your dues, you’ll get fast-tracked up the pay grades. But you gotta put your time in. There’s no shortcut around that.”
“I don’t care about rank,” Maureen said, “and I don’t care about pay grade. What I care about is the work, and I want to be Homicide.”
“Then make sure your trip sheets are letter-perfect,” Waters said.
“Paperwork. Christ, you’re worse than Preacher.”
“What good is a homicide cop,” Waters said, “who can’t get it right in court? And if it didn’t happen in your paperwork, it didn’t happen on the street. Them’s the rules all over.”
“Shift reports aren’t homicide case files.”
“No one’s gonna let you near the second,” Waters said, “unless you prove you can do the first. Like it or not, your department’s a shambles. Unfortunate, but to your advantage. The fact that you’re honest and can write in complete sentences makes you invaluable. Buy some ADA in a tie a drink, he’ll tell you the same things.”
Maureen’s phone buzzed in her hand. “Hang on a second, Nat.” She checked the screen. Work. In the middle of the night. That was weird. “Nat, let me call you back. There’s another call.” Without waiting for an answer, Maureen switched over. “Coughlin.”
“Sergeant Willis, Sixth District. Officer Coughlin?”
She got out of bed and turned on the light in the ceiling fan. “Yes, sir, Sergeant?”
“Did you question a Norman Wright this afternoon? Black male, about forty-five years of age. In Central City.”
“Yes, sir.” She could see Willis at the night desk, her trip sheet from that afternoon in his hand. She thought of Waters and smiled. She was pretty sure she’d done everything right.
“About what?” the sergeant asked.
That was on the sheet, too, Maureen thought. A test, then. Wake her up in the middle of the night, see if she had her shit together.
“Suspected car burglary, sir. Nothing came of it. Minor neighborhood thing. If my report or my description of the incident needs adjusting, I’d be happy to take care of that.”
Should she offer to come in now, hours before her next shift, or would that be too much? If Sergeant Willis had any feelings about her situation, he betrayed none.
“Officer Coughlin, your presence is requested at a crime scene in Central City. Intersection of Washington and Dryades.” A pause. “Sound familiar?”
“Yes, sir.” Very near where she’d confronted Wright.
“Report to Detective Sergeant Christine Atkinson. She’s the rank on scene. You can go in plainclothes.”
“Thank you, sir,” Maureen said. “I’ll be there in less than ten. Anything else I need to know?” Willis obviously did not enjoying playing messenger to a rookie, but Maureen couldn’t bite her tongue. A detective, a female detective, was asking for her. Forget Preacher, now that was a useful connection. Her adrenaline was pumping hard. She was wide awake and fearless. “I haven’t met her yet, is the detective sergeant property crimes or persons?”
“She works out of headquarters.”
Maureen drew a blank. Then her heart dropped out of her chest. Headquarters. She’d messed up on something bigger than paperwork. What had she missed? Should she have arrested Wright? Was it Arthur Jackson? Had he returned to the apartments looking for payback? Or had she done more damage to him than she’d thought? She thought of Waters, of what had always been his greatest fear as a cop. “Internal affairs?”
An exasperated sigh from Willis. “Good Christ. And what the hell would the Public Integrity Bureau want with you? You’re still in diapers. The detective sergeant is with Homicide. They operate out of HQ. PIB has a separate address. Wasn’t that on the test? Unless you really loved data entry, get a move on, rookie.”
Maureen snapped closed her phone, breathed a sigh of relief. She dropped to the floor and did a dozen push-ups to clear her head.
7
Maureen had to park her Honda
a couple of blocks from where she’d spotted Wright that afternoon. The crime scene wasn’t hard to find. The bright blue cruiser lights flashed over the cottages and shotguns lining this stretch of Washington, jeweling their front windows with blasts of sapphire. Within the clouds of blue, Maureen could see the white klieg lights and flashlight beams of the officers on the scene. Red flares burned in the street, a ruby trail of bread crumbs, or blood drops, leading to the cluster of lights. None of the neighborhood onlookers she passed said a word to her.
As she got closer to the corner, walking up the middle of Washington Avenue toward the flares, Maureen saw a small crowd gathered against the storefront of the locked-up grocery where she’d gotten her coffee yesterday. The crowd was mostly older men in ratty bucket hats and stained fedoras, forty-ounce bottles in their hands or at their feet. They wore their slacks loose and their plaid shirts buttoned high despite the heat. Their eyes shone like rain puddles in the orangey glow of the storefront’s overhead lights as they watched Maureen approach.
A uniform she recognized from the weight room, a heavyset guy younger than her by five years maybe, walked out of the emergency lights and met her. He lifted the crime-scene tape so she could step under it.
Over her shoulder, he eyed the crowd by the store. “You’re Coughlin. The new girl. Nice work on that fuckup Arthur Jackson.”
“That’s me.” She didn’t know the officer’s name, couldn’t read his name tag in the dark. The new girl? Had he really just called her that? She let it go. She put out her hand.
“Officer Maureen Coughlin. Pleased to meet you.”
The uniform didn’t shake her hand. He didn’t state his name. “You can hang your badge on your belt.” He grinned. “You know, wearing your ID at a crime scene, just a thought.”
Maureen took out her badge, pleased that she’d be able to wear it. “Thanks for the tip.”
“That way, those of us working tonight don’t have to waste our time stopping you every ten feet.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Atkinson is over there by the ambulance across the street. The Amazon blonde.”
“Thanks again for all your help,” Maureen said. Prick.
She spotted the detective sergeant standing by the back of the coroner’s van, her hands in her pockets. Heading Atkinson’s way, Maureen walked around the circle of red flares marking where the first cops on the scene had found the body. She counted three of the small numbered cones that marked where bullet casings had been recovered. The screen used to conceal the body from the public was gone, which meant the body was off the street and in the van. Inside the flare circle would be the chalk outline of the corpse. Maureen wondered about the first time she’d chalk up a body. Not something a normal person should look forward to, she thought.
Atkinson was a blonde, Maureen saw, and a light one, at that. Looked natural, too. Couldn’t have helped her any on the way up, Maureen thought. Unreal how many men bought into that bullshit about blondes. The detective sergeant didn’t extend her hand as Maureen approached. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“So you’re Coughlin. I thought you’d be bigger.”
Atkinson wore a brick-dust-red man’s dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up over well-muscled, freckled forearms. A thin gold bracelet shone on her right wrist; no rings. She had huge hands. Her shirttails hung over ancient faded jeans. The jeans ended at a pair of battered cowboy boots. Maureen hadn’t been in the South quite long enough, but the boots looked like alligator skin. Reptile, for sure. Even without her boots and the inches they added, Atkinson probably made six feet, easy. She wore no makeup. No earrings. She wore her gold shield on a chain around her neck.
“Yes. Sorry,” Maureen said, as if it were her fault she stood shorter than Atkinson, who was by far the most intimidating cop Maureen had ever met. She resisted the urge to move her T-shirt hem away from her badge, to let it be better seen. She worried she was staring at Atkinson’s shield.
“I mean, I thought you’d be bigger,” Atkinson said, “for someone who put a woman-beater in an ambulance.”
“Wow. You heard about that.”
“I asked about you and was told. There’s a difference. Now that I know about you, tell me about Norman Wright.”
“Well, I saw him working on the hood of this old Plymouth. Green. Dirty. I don’t see it now, but it was parked right around here at the time. I came over from across the street”—she turned and pointed to the grocery—“he had his back to me so I identified myself. Then I—”
“I said tell me about Norman Wright,” Atkinson said. “Not about you. If I need to know more about you, I’ll ask. Tell me about Norman Wright.”
Maureen took a deep breath, reconsidering Atkinson’s demands. She opened her mouth to start a physical description of Wright, but then the gears caught in her mind. That’s not what Atkinson wants, either. “He’s a drug addict. Heroin. A petty thief. That’s his record, anyway. Theft and possession. Never got popped holding any weight. No kind of dealer. He seems … lost. Alone.”
“Family?”
“He talked some about a cousin this afternoon, said it was the cousin’s car, but I didn’t buy it. I don’t think he’s homeless. He gave an address when we arrested him last week. I never checked up on it.”
Maureen paused, thinking she should give Atkinson a chance to speak, to ask more questions. The detective said nothing. She had a stillness to her Maureen found unnerving.
“He shaves regularly,” Maureen continued, the detail arriving by surprise, “even if he doesn’t bathe much. I think maybe he shares a place around here, maybe with a couple other junkies. But then again I never did see him with anyone else around the neighborhood.”
“You saw him often?”
“I guess I did.” Maureen found she couldn’t recall a shift when she hadn’t seen him shambling down the street or loitering outside a store. When the hell had she noticed he shaved on a steady basis? But he did. Regular as Preacher and more regular than she shaved her legs.
“So you busted him last week,” Atkinson said. “Simple burglary, simple possession for a foil of dope. More charges on a very long list of priors.”
“That’s right. I did.” She felt guilty, for the first time, for the severity of the bust. Preacher had encouraged her to pile on the charges, talking about recidivism and court pay and getting out of the heat. “I wrote him for everything I had on him.”
“And today?”
“I let him walk.”
“What changed? Why let him walk today?”
Maureen’s mouth went dry. She looked down at her feet, which stood in the middle of a murder scene. No fucking way. Her luck couldn’t be this bad. It wasn’t possible that the drug-addled bum she’d let walk that afternoon had gone and killed someone that night. She’d seen Wright’s record. Petty violations. Monkey business. Nothing violent. Nothing even felonious. And now this shit.
Preacher had told her, he had practically begged her to leave it alone. But, no, she knew better. She had to do the right fucking thing. It took everything Maureen had not to break down and beg for mercy. Stick to the detective’s questions, she thought. For once in your life, do as you’re fucking told.
“After what happened with Jackson,” Maureen said, “my training officer and I talked about discretion. We talked about getting a reputation. That maybe it’s not always best to be so gung-ho.” As she spoke, she kept her eyes on the night sky over Atkinson’s shoulder. “I thought giving Wright a break might pay off down the road. It defused the situation, and looked good in front of the neighborhood.” She splayed her hand over her collarbone. “I don’t want to send everyone off in an ambulance.”
“You were being watched?”
“Aren’t we always?” Maureen said. “There were these kids hanging around. Three of them.”
That fact caught Atkinson’s interest. “Three kids. How old?”
“Twelve or so. Middle school age.”
“Where do they fit into this?”
“They were taunting Wright for breaking into the car. Some guy named Bobby Scales owns it. The kids, well, one of them, said Scales would be pretty pissed at Wright for messing with the car.”
“What can you tell me about Scales?”
“Not a thing,” Maureen said. “I didn’t ask.”
“Explain.”
“The way the kids talked about him,” Maureen said, “they assumed I knew who he was, so I played along. They talked like he’s well known around the neighborhood. I didn’t want to look ignorant.”
“Did you take the names of these kids?”
“No, Sergeant, I didn’t. I shooed them away. They weren’t involved. They were just wising off.”
“You’re familiar, I assume,” Atkinson said, “with the concept of a lookout?”
“But they didn’t say anything when I walked up. They let me come right up on him without a word.”
“As far as you heard.”
“With due respect, Detective,” Maureen said, “you should’ve seen the way he banged his head on the hood of the car. He had no idea I was coming.”
“Okay, what’s that tell you?”
“That they weren’t working for Wright,” Maureen said, the lightbulb going off. Why had she argued the lookout point? Way to put your boot in your mouth, rookie. “They were working for this Bobby Scales?”
“Did you see a cell phone on these kids?”
“No,” Maureen said. “But two of them took off running as soon as they could, without looking too obvious. They could’ve called from out of sight. Easy.”
“So what we need to be asking,” Atkinson said, “is why that car needed watching over. Wright knew something was in there, and he wanted it.”
“That would explain,” Maureen said, “repeatedly breaking into the same car.”
How had she not thought of that? Maureen wondered. The possibility that something more valuable than a car battery or spark plugs had been hidden under that hood: a drug stash, a gun, something. A broken dishwasher, a broken-down car, was there that big a difference? The thought had never occurred to her. It probably never would have without this conversation. She’d swallowed the big name and been distracted from the car. She let the thought of a big fish get her so hot and bothered that she lost her focus. Slow. Fucking. Learner. That’s what she was.
The Devil in Her Way Page 6
