by Kelly, Diane
He ran a hand through his silver hair and locked his steely eyes on me, shooting me the same look one would give an aluminum siding salesman who’d appeared uninvited on the doorstep. “Get your ass in here, Officer Luz.”
Not exactly a polite invitation, but I was in no position to take offense. I stepped into his office, closing the door gently behind me. The latch caught with a resounding click, as if sealing my fate.
He gestured to one of the wing chairs covered in genuine fake leather courtesy of the city’s taxpayers. The stretched-out fabric on the seat evidenced decades of butts’ having perched on the chair. My ass was obviously not the first that would be chewed out here.
Before I could even settle in he snapped, “Good God a’mighty, Luz! What the hell were you thinking?”
No working up to the subject. No pussyfooting around. Then again, the chief was a busy man with no time for niceties.
“I guess I w-wasn’t thinking, s-sir,” I said, disappointed to hear the stutter in my voice. I was a cop, dammit. I needed to sound professional, tough, competent. Instead, my voice sounded feeble and fumbling, the way it had back in school when a teacher called on me in class.
No.
I’m not going to let myself down.
I can do this.
“I’m sorry. I lost my t-temper.” Carefully choosing my words and using as few as possible, I explained to the chief that Mackey and I had arrested a woman for driving under the influence. “We found a bag of what appeared to be crystal meth in her car.”
I’d cuffed the woman, turned her to face the cruiser, and patted her down. Mackey had suggested I perform a body cavity search, further proposing I lick my finger first, not only to make insertion easier but also “to make things more fun” for the woman. The perverse comment had been bad enough, but when he offered to lick my finger clean afterward it was the last straw. I had put up with his disgusting, sexist bullshit all day, including him positioning his erect baton between his legs and rubbing it up and down while making moaning sounds.
Grrr. An uncontrollable rage had seized me. An instant later Derek lay twitching on the asphalt, his hands cupped over his crotch, his eyes rolling back in his head, and drool oozing from his mouth. Then came the urination, as disclosed earlier.
Repeating the exchange was embarrassing. But I had to tell the chief the filthy things Mackey had said. I had to defend myself.
When I finished, the chief shook his head. “Mackey’s a prick. You’ll get no argument here.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be offended by the chief’s vulgar language or to be glad he was treating me like one of the guys. I didn’t want him to treat me differently because I was female. I wanted the same respect—or disrespect—he gave the male officers.
The chief sat back in his chair and exhaled loudly. “Ironically, the fact that Mackey’s a prick is what makes him valuable to this department.”
Mackey not only had a reputation for being a sexist pig, but he was also known for his extreme, bordering-on-insane bravery. He’d recently rescued a woman dragged into her apartment by an abusive boyfriend who’d already taken several shots at officers with a sawed-off shotgun. While the other cops shielded themselves behind their cruisers and waited for the SWAT team to arrive, Mackey had snuck up the side staircase, kicked in the door, and stormed the place. Of course Mackey claimed afterward that he’d never have risked his life if the woman didn’t have such a “ginormous rack” and “smoking-hot ass.”
The chief put his feet up on his desk and his hands behind his head. A good sign. He’d be in a more formal posture if he was going to fire me, right?
His chair squeaked as he rocked back. “You shouldn’t have Tasered Mackey. Especially in the balls.” He cringed involuntarily, as if the mere thought caused him pain. “But he had it coming.”
Frankly, when considering what the Big Dick deserved, electrified gonads was a drop in the bucket.
Chief Garelik wagged a hairy-knuckled finger at me. “You’re lucky Mackey brought this to me rather than Internal Affairs. I’m going to keep this incident off your record and let you slide this time.”
Thank God.
“But only this time,” he added. “You’ll be booted off the force and face criminal prosecution if you pull a stupid stunt like that again. You hear me?”
I swallowed hard, forcing down the lump that had formed in my throat the instant the word “stupid” registered with my ears. I was not stupid. Impatient, sure. Short-tempered, hell yeah. Maybe even impulsive.
But not stupid.
My jaw clenched so tight my teeth threatened to crack. “Understood, sir.”
The chief retrieved a paper pouch of chewing tobacco from his breast pocket, pinched a bit from the package, and slid it into his mouth between his cheek and gum. He returned the pouch to his pocket and picked up a Diet Coke can, putting it to his lips and expelling tobacco juice into it. Puh-ting. I tried not to show my revulsion.
“I’m assigning you a new partner.” The chief’s eyes gave off a wicked gleam, like the glint from a freshly polished revolver. “She’s a real bitch. You two will get along great.”
I ignored the implication that I, too, was a bitch. Unlike stupid, though, being called a bitch didn’t really bother me.
“A female officer?” Teaming with a woman could be fun. Mackey had kept the cruiser’s radio tuned to a sports channel all day. With a female partner, we could listen to NPR or a book on tape, maybe a good detective novel. A female partner would smell better, too. Mackey was a big guy, producing sweat by the gallon in the Texas heat. By the end of each shift, our cruiser became a BO gas chamber. Of course the jerk never seemed to be bothered by his own stench.
The chief retrieved his handheld radio from his desktop and squeezed the talk button. “Send in Sergeant Brigit.”
So my new partner was a sergeant, exceeding me in rank. Typical, as rookies like me were generally paired with a more experienced officer. But Brigit? It sounded more like a first name than a last name.
A jangle sounded outside the door, likely Sergeant Brigit’s keys or handcuffs. The door opened and she walked in.
Whoooa.
The chief hadn’t been lying. My new partner was a real bitch. As in four paws and eight tits. Huge, too, with thick fur in black and tan. The jangling came from her tags, a city license and a rabies tag, hanging from a studded black leather collar that made the bitch look butch.
A cry of, “No!” spurted involuntarily from me. Remembering my manners and the fact that I was in the chief’s office, I turned back to him. “I mean, no, sir. I c-can’t partner with a dog.”
The chief cocked his head. “You allergic?”
“No, sir.”
“Then she’s yours. You’ll be responsible for caring for her after hours, too.”
No. No way. I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I had anything against dogs. Problem was, as I was the oldest of five children, any jobs my parents couldn’t handle had been outsourced—or should I say down-sourced?—to me. I’d been responsible for dressing, feeding, and generally riding herd over my brothers and sisters. The only thing my parents had never asked me to do was tutor my siblings.
Things had been no better when I went off to college. I’d gone potluck for roommates in the dorm and the computer had paired me with one irresponsible roommate after another, girls who partied every night, forgot to set their alarms, left their dirty panties and socks all over the floor. They counted on me to wake them for class, to maintain a stock of tampons and rolls of quarters for laundry.
When I’d moved back to Fort Worth after college graduation last May, I’d immediately signed up for the fall police academy and rented a tiny apartment in an older complex in East Fort Worth. It wasn’t much. Three hundred square feet with worn blue industrial carpet and a tiny rectangle of rippled linoleum in the kitchen nook. But, as management loved to remind disgruntled tenants, the place came with free cable television.
Most important, though, I’d been finally free of responsibility for anyone but myself. I didn’t even own a houseplant.
Someday I’d want a husband, kids, maybe even a cat or dog.
But not yet.
Not now.
The handler holding the dog’s leash ordered the animal to sit. The dog obeyed, turning her big brown eyes on me in what could only be described as a death glare. She seemed no more excited about being partnered with me than I was about being partnered with her. It was almost as if she’d understood what I’d said, that I didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of her.
But a dog wouldn’t be smart enough to understand that, would it?
I tried to think of another viable excuse. I glanced over at the dog. The beast had to weigh close to a hundred pounds. I turned back to the chief. “I drive a smart car, sir. She won’t fit inside.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Sure she will.”
He still wasn’t biting.
“My apartment management doesn’t allow pets. They’re forbidden by my lease.” Good thinking, Megan. He’s head of the city’s law enforcement. He can’t argue with the law.
“We called the property manager,” the chief shot back. “He said he’d make an exception for a police dog. Figured it might reduce crime at the complex.”
The place had suffered a rash of vehicle burglaries lately. Nonetheless, “I—”
Chief Garelik cut me off with a raised palm. “No more excuses, Officer Luz.” The chief spit another gooey blob of tobacco into his soda can. “You messed up good and I’ve gotta make some cutbacks. You either partner with Sergeant Fluffy-butt or you’re off the force.”
TWO
A BIG WHIFF OF ROOKIE
Fort Worth Police Sergeant Brigit
Megan had no way of knowing, of course, but Brigit didn’t set out to be a hero, either. She became a K-9 officer for three other reasons:
1. Her original owner was too irresponsible to take proper care of her. The dipshit left her in the backyard for days on end in freezing weather while he and his equally dipshitted friends went on a bender of Jack Daniel’s and Northern Lights, a species of cannabis that he cultivated himself under grow lights in the garage.
2. The frostbitten dog was forced to dig under the chain-link fence, working until her paws bled, to go in search of water before she died of dehydration. She mustered up one final tiny turd—her aforementioned dipshit owner had forgotten to feed her, too—and left it on the back step as a parting gift before taking off.
3. Animal Control picked her up five blocks over after an elderly woman reported a bear licking the frozen water in her birdbath. The officer freed the dog’s frozen tongue from the ice, gave her some water from the bottle in his truck, and brought her to the city shelter.
Brigit didn’t stand a chance of being adopted by a family in search of a pet. She was an adult dog by then, no longer one of those adorable puppies who drew an ooh or an aww or an ain’t you the cutest thing? A shepherd mix, she weighed in at a whopping ninety-seven pounds. Not much of a market for a dog that size. To make matters worse, her fur was long and thick, sure to shed all over the place and require regular brushing. Few people would take on such a high-maintenance pet.
The dog was doomed.
She wagged her tail vigorously when families came in looking for a pet to adopt, showed them how well-behaved she was, that she could sit, shake, even play dead. Occasionally someone would remark about how beautiful her coat was or how smart she seemed. But nobody wanted to take home a beast that would cost a fortune to feed.
Brigit watched carefully through the steel mesh of her enclosure and quickly caught on to how things worked at the shelter. Volunteers would occasionally come to take the dogs for a walk outside. Those dogs would come back happy. But dogs didn’t return to their cages if they went with a man wearing a dingy lab coat. The man smelled of mint gum and cheap aftershave. But most of all he smelled of death. He smelled sad, too, as if he didn’t like having to do what he did, as if he wished people would stop letting their pets reproduce willy-nilly so that his services would no longer be needed.
Brigit spent her nights clawing desperately and futilely at the concrete floor, trying to dig a hole and escape.
One day, the same animal control officer who’d picked her up off the street bent down to look at Brigit through the steel mesh. “Sorry, girl,” he’d whispered, his eyes cloudy, his soft voice cracking. “I’m really, really sorry.”
Brigit could smell the man in the lab coat coming down the hall, could smell the mint gum, the cheap aftershave, the death.
He was coming for her.
She panicked, spinning, spinning, spinning in her cage. Woof! she cried. Woof-woof! Woof!
Before the man in the lab coat could reach her, up walked another man in a dark-blue uniform.
“I need a dog,” he told the animal control officer still kneeling in front of Brigit’s cage. “A smart dog. One with lots of energy that can be trained to serve as a K-nine officer.”
Brigit didn’t hesitate. Me! Take me! She jumped on the door of her cage, her long tail slapping the sides of the small enclosure as it whipped desperately back and forth. Please!
“Got just the dog for you,” the animal control officer said. “Right here.”
He pointed into Brigit’s cage and the man in the blue uniform bent down to take a look.
Brigit stopped barking and sat. She held out her paw to shake. She fell to the floor, rolled onto her back with all four paws in the air, playing dead. If there were an Academy Award for animal performers, she would’ve won, paws down.
She showed the man in the blue uniform every trick in the book, then turned her big brown eyes on him and gently licked his hand through a hole in the chain-link mesh.
The man showed his teeth, a bad sign on dogs but, as Brigit had observed, a good sign on humans. “I’ll take her.”
Thus, Brigit became an officer in the Fort Worth Police Department, her salary paid in dog biscuits and belly rubs.
The cop who’d picked Brigit out at the shelter had taken good care of her and she’d enjoyed working with him for the two years they’d been together, but he’d recently resigned from the police force to work for a private security firm. Half the risk for twice the pay. Who could blame him?
He’d told Brigit he’d miss her, given her a big pat on the head and a chuck on the chin when he’d turned her over to the chief. He couldn’t keep Brigit. She wasn’t his pet. K-9 officers were considered tools, pieces of equipment, no different from a gun or a baton or a Taser. Brigit belonged to the Fort Worth Police Department.
So here she was, being reassigned to a new partner, Officer Megan Luz. Brigit could tell Megan didn’t like the idea of being partnered with her. When Brigit walked through the door of the chief’s office, Officer Luz hadn’t shown her teeth. She’d also emitted short, loud sounds. Brigit knew those short, loud sounds meant Megan wasn’t happy.
Well, Brigit wasn’t too crazy about being partnered with Megan, either. Officer Luz smelled like a rookie. Too fresh, too clean. Her uniform lacked the stench of terror-induced sweat that no detergent could ever quite wash out. Luz hadn’t seen real danger yet, that was certain. It would take some training to get her up to speed.
Fortunately, Brigit was up to the task.
THREE
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED
The Rattler
He never set out to be a killer, exactly. Like a rattlesnake lying coiled up in the grass shaking its tail, he, too, simply wanted to issue a warning, to shake things up, to force people to change course. A bomb seemed the best approach to achieving his aims for several reasons:
1. Bombs are easy to make. Hell, you could find detailed instructions on the Internet.
2. Materials needed to make a bomb were cheap and readily available.
3. A bomb would not only get attention but also destroy evidence. He could execute his plan with little risk of being identified. On the other h
and, the low risk of capture almost took the fun out of it.…
FOUR
MY NEW ROOMIE
Megan
The handler who’d brought Brigit to the chief’s office gave me a brief training session, just enough to hold me over until I could begin the full K-9 course next week. He showed me how to make the dog sit, stay, heel, and lie down, as well as how to order her into her cage. The dog followed each of my orders perfectly. I still didn’t like the situation, but I had to give her that.
“Got it?” the handler asked, tentatively holding out the leash.
I just as reluctantly took the leash from him, fighting the urge to sigh. “Got it.”
Our tutoring now complete, the handler left. After a little more ass chewing, Chief Garelik dismissed us, too.
I fumed as I walked down the hall, the dog’s nails giving off a click-click-click as we went. The chief had not only saddled me with a partner who was sure to be a pain in the ass but also ordered me to take a six-week anger management course. At least the class was offered online. If I had to sit in a classroom with some overly cheery teacher telling me to turn my frown upside down I’d have to punch somebody.
As I stepped out of the headquarters building, the afternoon June heat enveloped me like an unwelcome hug from a creepy uncle. Brigit trotted ahead of me as we made our way out to the employee parking lot, pulling me along by her leash, virtually dislocating my wrist. I had thirty pounds on the furry beast, but with four on the floor she had better traction. The fact that I had a gym bag over one shoulder and her enormous crate in my hands didn’t help, either.
