by Aiden Bates
"Internal Affairs officers aren't popular cops, Detective." Amos took a sip of his coffee. "I've been threatened. I've been attacked. I had a guy from the bomb squad try to blow up my car because I was investigating claims of sexual harassment against him. If we pursue this, it's going to get very ugly for you."
Ryley cleared her throat. "This corruption… I have no reason to think that it's ended just because Harbaugh's dead. Sierzant's power and reach has only grown, and he couldn't have done that without some collusion."
Ozzy groaned. "No. He couldn't have." He hung his head. "I'm not going to lie. I'm nervous. Not for myself—I've faced down worse—but for my omega. He's going to have a baby in maybe six weeks. I'm worried about him." Then he picked his head up. "I'm worried about his safety, but the best way to keep him safe is to put this scumbag away. Put them all away, really."
"I told you he was smart." Devlin winked. "Now. Let's come up with a plan of attack. If we can cut the head off of the snake before your handsome photographer brings his bundle of joy into the world, that would be super."
Amos grimaced. "Man, I hate this. I get that it has to be done. I do. I just—I get that sometimes a cop or two steps out of line and needs to be reminded of what he's supposed to be here for. Sometimes the stresses of the job get to him. We don't see anyone on a good day, you know? Even when we show up to help them, it's not like they're in a state to be appreciative of that. You're not able to sit there and think, Oh, I'd better be nice to this guy when your arm's off, right? And that's fine. That's part of the job. But dirty cops—that's something I hate even thinking about, you know?"
"I hear you." Ryley gave a heavy sigh. "Everyone has their price, though, right? If you know what their breaking point is, and you have the means to reach it, it isn't that hard. And Sierzant is good at that. We see it in his dealings with civilians in organized crime all the time. They think they'd never do x, or y, and he makes them an offer or he puts the pressure on just the right way and bam. Next thing you know they're just as dirty as everyone else. I met a priest who became a fence of stolen goods because Sierzant promised to keep his church open." She shrugged, hands spread wide. "Who knows what it would take to make someone break like that?"
"You know, I try not to judge." Ozzy shuddered. "You know that Sierzant put his own kids out on the street?" He snapped his fingers. "We can try to talk to Balsalmo again. I don't know if it would work. He's got a thing about snitching, and he's more terrified of Sierzant than of anyone else alive. Maybe now that he's already snitched once he'll be more willing to open up."
"It's worth a shot." Ryley nodded, hazel eyes alight with respect. "I'll get my people to work looking for proof about the transfers in from state, and see how far the contagion spread. I want to know if it kept going once that initial crew retired or if it's still a problem."
"Like an apprenticeship." Amos made a face, like he'd just bitten into something unpleasant. "I'll work on it on my end. We'll meet up here in another week and see what we've come up with."
"Sounds good." Devlin shook hands with his counterparts, and everyone was dismissed. The other Cold Case detectives fell on the donuts like starving men, and Ozzy got to work.
It took until Thursday before Ozzy could get in to see Balsalmo, time that he spent fretting worse than he had since the eve of his first deployment. He'd been in danger before. He sought danger, chased it in the hopes of getting that high that he craved so badly. This was different. This was that moment of fear, the terror of standing on the cliff just before the jump, without the safety harness or the hang glider or the parachute.
The difference, of course, was Pete. Ozzy wouldn't pay the consequences if this went bad. If Sierzant or his team decided to try to bring Ozzy to heel, they wouldn't go after Ozzy. They'd go after the "soft" target of Pete or Marissa. He'd meant every word he'd said, about taking down Sierzant, but that didn't mean that things couldn't go sideways in a heartbeat.
Ozzy had no idea how to process these feelings. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, either.
He went to the prison on Thursday and met up with MacDonald. Together, they went to visit Balsalmo. The teenaged murderer looked a little better than he had the last time that Ozzy had seen him, although his pallor still made him look waxen. "Well well well, if it isn't the finest piece of fuzz that the state has to offer." Balsalmo's swagger was back, and so was his sneer. "What can you possibly have to ask little old me?"
Ozzy rolled his eyes. "We've got some questions for you about Sierzant's operation."
Balsalmo chuckled. "Buddy, even if I were of a mind to talk to you about the inner workings of his operation—which I am not—I couldn't. He doesn't confide in guys like me, okay? He gives orders, and I take them. Because I know my job."
Ozzy snorted. "I'm not looking for trade secrets here. We already know that he had cops on the payroll."
"Yeah, so?"
"What did he do with them?" Ozzy spread his hands out wide. "Come on, man. Answering that won't get you into any kind of trouble."
MacDonald acknowledged this with a nod of his head. "It's true. It's got nothing to do with you."
"Maybe not in court. That's like hardcore snitching." Balsalmo's face twisted. "He uses cops for all kinds of things, okay? Uses them for research. Uses them to get info about his rivals, who might be planning something. Uses them to move stuff around the city, because no one's going to pull over a goddamn cruiser and search it, right?" He chuckled, a dark note coming into his voice. "Sometimes they'll do jobs for him, too."
Ozzy's mouth went dry. "Like… like a hit?"
"Sure. Not often, though. More often, though, it'll be like… say he's got a ho who's trying to get away. Or say there's a girl who's out on her own, not working for nobody. He'll send a cop out to go get her. She gets a choice. She can work for Joe, or she can take a dirt nap. The cop will pick her up; the cop will get her things. If she chooses option B, the cop will usually do something about the body, too. Cops will protect Joe's girls, too. I mean, he's got his fingers in a lot of pies. He can't be going out to take care of all the girls, so he has the pigs do it. They get paid well, and the girls give 'em a cut on the side too. I know I did." He glared at the Plexiglas window.
"Can you give us any names?" Ozzy swallowed hard. "Did you know any names?"
"Oh sure. There was a guy named Bannon. Worcester cop. Had a big scar on his left hand, was really free with both hands if you know what I mean. There was another one, Bishop. I think he was a statie. He was a real bastard. All the girls were afraid of him." Balsalmo massaged his temples. "Look. I'm sure he used them for other things too. All of these guys, they were greedy. They wanted money before they wanted sex or anything else, you know?"
"Okay. That's a good place to start. Thanks for your cooperation." He blinked. "I'm sorry they did that to you. Cops are supposed to be better than that."
Balsalmo waved a hand, rattling his shackles. "A cop's just a man, no different from any other. He's got to get his, just like I've got to get mine."
Ozzy and MacDonald left the interview room. As soon as they were outside prison walls, MacDonald turned to Ozzy. "Tell me you're doing something about that. Tell me that the kid isn't ruined just so more cops can just do whatever to whoever."
Ozzy hung his head. "I can't talk about it. It's a big operation, okay? Multiple agencies. But you don't think that I dragged you all the way up to Billerica for the pleasure of Balsalmo's company, did you?"
"Well, no. As a matter of fact I didn't." MacDonald sighed. "I guess with everything I hear in the news, and now what I just heard from him, and stuff I've seen from other clients, I'm discouraged."
"Me too." Ozzy ran his hands through his hair. "I'm not going to lie. What he just told us turns my stomach. But look, one thing that he did say, that I agree with, is that cops are just people. There are going to be bad cops out there. There hasn't always been a great commitment to dealing with them in the past, but right here and right now, that's going to change.
Folks like he was describing—they make it worse for all of us, you know? We want to help people, do the right thing, and then those guys are out there being worse than the people we put away." He took a deep breath. "We're going to do all we can."
"Good." MacDonald clapped him on the arm. "Give me a call if you need anything."
"You too, my friend." Ozzy headed back to Framingham, so he could put everything he'd just heard down into a report.
Chapter Nine
Pete had passed the point where sex was permitted.
This wasn't exactly a surprise, although it was a serious disappointment to him. He'd gotten big enough that most positions were uncomfortable for him, although he was willing to put up with it for Ozzy's sake. The thing was that he'd started experiencing contractions as a result of orgasm. The first time that happened Ozzy had rushed him to the hospital, where the doctor had assured him that this was comparatively normal but that it meant that "marital activities" needed to cease until after the delivery.
Ozzy had just nodded, his eyes as round as saucers, and promised the doctor that they would be as celibate as two monks until Marissa put in her appearance. The doctor harrumphed at them. "Better make it two monks living on opposite coasts, alone," he muttered. "I lived in a monastery once."
Pete made a conscious choice not to think about that and put his clothes on. Ozzy drove him home, face frozen into an expression that told Pete that he'd made the same choice.
The past couple of weeks had been both blissful and challenging. He had stopped taking jobs that required travel or much physical exertion, which meant that he rarely left the house. Victorians had called this time, the time just before and just after the birth of a baby, confinement, and it seemed to Pete like a perfectly good word. Nothing was confining him to the house but fatigue, pain, and the necessity of preparing for Marissa's arrival, but he was confined nevertheless.
He napped, a lot. When he wasn't napping, he was putting things away in Marissa's room. She would be the best-outfitted baby in the world for the first six months of her life at least, and Pete wasn't about to lie to himself and claim that the stacks of little pink onesies and little dresses and diaper covers weren't too adorable for words. His mother seemed to have hit a breaking point and accepted the girl, too, because a new package with a new outfit appeared in Pete's mailbox every day.
Pete wasn't sure that Marissa needed pantsuits just yet, but it wasn't his money.
Ozzy was fabulous through the whole thing. He helped Pete with the heavy lifting, and with the not so heavy lifting. He came by every day to make sure that Pete didn't need anything, hadn't fallen down, and hadn't gotten sick or hurt. Some of it was the paranoia. Pete knew that Ozzy was still worried about that Sierzant guy being out there. He was worried about Sierzant possibly coming for Pete, and that was part of what had him stopping by.
He also knew that Ozzy was stopping in because he loved him.
Ozzy stopped by over the last weekend in April, and Pete knew that he'd be there for the whole weekend. They curled up under one blanket on the couch and flipped channels for a while on Friday night while Ozzy unwound from his long day, and Pete carded his fingers through Ozzy's hair. Maybe they couldn't be sexual for now, but they could be intimate. "This is nice," he murmured.
"Mmm." Ozzy all but purred as he leaned into Pete's touch. "I wish we could do this every night."
It was the opening that Pete needed. "We could, you know."
Ozzy's eyes fluttered open. "Seriously?" He sat up. "I mean, would you want that? I know I told you that I wanted to stick around. And I do. But do you really want me underfoot while you're raising your daughter and everything? Especially when she's new?"
Pete's insides churned. He was taking a big risk saying anything, especially given how delicate everything was right now. "I'm worried that I'll be emotionally weird, because of hormones," he said after a moment. "That happens to some people, and I'm afraid that it will damage our relationship. But Ozzy, I call you Alpha. I'm naming my daughter after you. If you're willing, then yes. I want you here. I love having you here, and I'd love to have you here when I have my body back and can better keep up with you."
Ozzy's response was to gather Pete up in a big hug and plant a massive kiss on his lips. "We can start this weekend," he promised. "We'll start by making room in here for your stuff."
"Awesome," Ozzy said, with a sunny smile. "This is fabulous."
They went to bed early, so as to get an early start.
Part of Pete felt badly about the house. This wasn't them moving in together; Ozzy was very much moving into Pete's space, which had been decorated according to Pete's taste. There was nothing about it that testified to Ozzy's presence here at all. Ozzy assured him that he understood, though. They hadn't decided to just get together and start up a household; they were coming together as adults, with established households of their own. As time went on, the house where they lived would take on characteristics that would be suitable for them both.
"We might want to move into a bigger place eventually anyway, depending on how you feel about giving birth," Ozzy pointed out, dropping a kiss onto Pete's bulging belly. "I mean, if you wanted to have more kids, someday, I'd be game." He blushed. "I'm going to love Marissa—I already love Marissa—but I also want to watch you grow, you know?"
"I don't know. I think I've already grown plenty since I've known you." Pete rubbed at his belly. "But we'll see how I do during birth. I won't lie. I do like the idea of growing someone together." He liked that idea a lot, a little too much, and he peeled away from his alpha so that he could go and work on the bedroom.
They spent all of Saturday working on the bedroom and the kitchen, until Pete couldn't stand up anymore and had to go lie down. The next day, Ozzy drove the twenty minutes back to Hudson and started packing up his things.
He didn't bring everything over at once. He brought his clothes and the kitchen things he liked best over in that first run. Then he went back for the sports equipment he treasured. Two trips was enough before they were both ready for dinner; they were both exhausted, and settled for a pizza. Then they spent a little time unpacking before Pete fell into the bed—their bed, now—to go to sleep.
It felt great to have Ozzy come home the next day, come home to him. He hadn't gotten out of bed much, but he roused himself to heat up some of the stew he'd made weeks ago. He couldn't wait until he was feeling better, so they could really settle in and build up a rhythm. He wanted to cook fresh food for his alpha, and get to know all of the things that he would like and dislike.
Ozzy told him about the investigation, or at least about part of the investigation. Pete knew that his alpha wasn't telling him everything, and he didn't expect him to. Sierzant was still out there, and what Pete didn't know couldn't hurt either one of them. "Would you believe that the guy put his own kid out on the street?" Ozzy asked him. "Not just that robber, either. It turns out that a lot of his kids were out on the street. Under his control. He didn't see them as being any different than any of the other kids that he controlled, and that's just… I mean, how do you react to that?"
Pete shifted his position, trying and failing to get comfortable. "No idea. I've seen some terrible things, you know? Terrible parenting, just terrible people in general. I can't guess at what goes through some people's heads or why they have children in the first place, but there has to be some way that this is relevant to the case. Some way that it's going to help you to break the case wide open."
Ozzy went quiet for a moment. "I think you're right. Hell, I know you're right. I know we're going to nail this son of a bitch to the wall. I just want to do it sooner rather than later. I want to have it done before Marissa gets here, you know? I want to have it done so she doesn't have this hanging over her."
Pete rubbed at his belly. He did it so often these days that it felt like a reflex action, something over which he had no control at all. "I don't know if you've got that kind of time," he said after a moment. "She's goin
g to be here soon."
"I thought you weren't due until the first of June." Ozzy laid his hand out flat on top of Pete's belly. It felt warm and good, like something pleasurable.
"I'm not. You do get that those due dates are rough estimates, right? I mean, I know the exact date when she was conceived, but that doesn't mean she'll pop out exactly forty weeks later. She'll come out when she's ready."
Marissa had moved inside of him, and his whole body was uncomfortable now no matter what he did. He didn't think it would be long now before everything came to a head. It seemed kind of early yet; his due date wasn't until June first, and today was only the first of May. As long as Marissa was healthy he'd take it; he'd had quite enough of this discomfort, thank you.
When he went to his doctor's appointment on Tuesday, Dr. Baxter agreed with him. "I wouldn't start any long books," he warned with a little smile. "And I'd pack a bag if I were you. I can feel that your daughter has dropped. You could go at any time, although I'd be happiest if you could put it off for at least another couple of weeks. I'm going to recommend that you stay in bed as much as you can. It might not put things off for all that long, but if it can put things off at least until we cross that thirty-seven week mark, I'll be satisfied.
