by Diane Kelly
“The instructor had us drive on I-30 Thursday,” she told me as we took seats at the kitchen table. “We nearly got hit by a pickup. It was so scary! People drive crazy around here!”
I reached for the bowl of macaroni. “You don’t know the half of it. I wrote a woman a ticket this week for backing down an entrance ramp she’d entered by accident. People had to swerve around her. It was a wonder she didn’t kill someone.” I spooned a helping onto my plate and passed the bowl to Daniel. “How’s summer school going?”
“Good. I’m on target for As in both of my classes this semester.”
“That’s great.” My eyes moved to Connor, whose college aims tended less toward maintaining a good GPA and more toward having a good time. “What about you?”
His eyes darted to our parents before returning to me. “Don’t ask,” he muttered under his breath.
His response caused my mother’s Irish temper to flare and she cast Connor a pointed look. “You don’t get your act together soon, Dad and I will cut you off.”
My brother mumbled something under his breath, but she chose to ignore it. Irish tempers tend to flame out as easily and as quickly as they flare up.
One of my mother’s indistinguishable orange tabby cats leaped up onto the table as Joey reached for a sandwich. He grabbed the cat and set him back on the floor. “Did Mom tell you I got a new job?” he asked me.
Despite the fact that he could have easily given me the information directly, it came as no surprise that my brother would run things through our mom. Like many mothers, she served as the family’s central communications center.
When I turned to her for the details, she made a circling motion with her hand, letting me know the information would be forthcoming once she had a chance to finish chewing. A few seconds later she swallowed the bite of food in her mouth and said, “He’s going to sack groceries at Central Market.” The tabby who’d attempted to summit the table a moment before jumped into her lap, where she treated him to a piece of her tuna sandwich.
I turned back to Joey. “Sacking groceries, huh? You giving up your lawn-mowing business, then?”
“Heck, no,” he replied. “You know how much people pay me so that they can stay inside in the air-conditioning?”
A pretty penny, apparently. No wonder the kid always seemed to be flush with cash.
“I could mow your lawn, too,” he offered. “I’ll give you a family discount. Twenty bucks.”
I was tempted to remind him of all the things I’d done for him over the years without a single cent in payment. I’d changed his diapers, driven him to his friends’ houses for sleepovers, helped him clean up untold numbers of spills and messes he’d created. He could mow my lawn gratis until the day I died and he’d still owe me. But no sense pointing this out. There’s no arguing with teenagers. They’re irrational creatures.
“Thanks,” I told him, “but no thanks. Seth takes care of my yard work.”
“How much do you pay him?”
“He does it for free,” I said. “Out of the goodness of his heart.”
A smirk played around Joey’s lips. “Yeah, right. That’s why he does it.” He elbowed Connor and the two of them shared a laugh.
I narrowed my eyes at them. “You know I’m trained to kill with my bare hands, right?” Actually, I wasn’t. But these two punks didn’t need to know that.
Joey raised his hands in surrender. “Okay! Okay!”
Luckily for me, Gabby changed the subject. “When are you going to take me to the Roller Derby, Megan?”
Gabby had enjoyed roller-skating as a girl, and I’d promised her I’d take her to see Frankie play derby sometime. It was always fun to watch the Fort Worth Whoop Ass clobber some lesser team.
I took a sip of my iced tea. “I’ll check the schedule and get back with you. I’m sure there’s a bout or two coming up soon.”
We continued to make small talk until everyone had eaten their fill and began to leave the table. I offered to drop Connor at the bus station for his return trip to college in San Marcos. Given that Daniel attended the University of Texas branch only a half hour away in Arlington, he planned to stick around a while longer.
Hugs were exchanged as we headed to the door. The cats had come around to see us off, too, and I gave each of them a scratch under the chin. “Behave,” I admonished them with a wagging finger. One of them swiped at my hand. Brat.
Out the door we went. It was nice not to have to wrestle with the darn thing anymore. After years of the door hanging askew, Seth had recently fixed it. Not only was he hunky and handsome, he was handy, too. Definitely a keeper.
* * *
The following week, I was back on the day shift. Thank God. Some cops dealt just fine with working in the dark. They must be part vampire or something. As for me, the night shift wreaked havoc on my biorhythms. Even in the brutally hot Texas summers, I much preferred working by daylight.
Monday was a typical day. Motor vehicle violations. Teens trying to sneak into the movie theater without paying for tickets. A hit-and-run on Colonial Parkway involving an S-class Mercedes sedan, a golf cart, and a motorized scooter. Okay, so maybe that last call wasn’t typical. According to the driver of the Mercedes, who was the only one left on the scene when I arrived, a kid on a scooter pulled onto the road right in front of him. When the driver hit his brakes, he was broadsided by a trio of adolescent boys in a golf cart who’d been racing the scooter. Fortunately uninjured, the kids had backed up, made a quick U-turn, and zipped away before the driver of the Mercedes could gather his wits and follow them. No doubt the kids had hidden the cart in a garage and were in the process of making up a story for their parents to explain the damage. The shelves fell over on it!
“Did you get a good look at any of the boys?” I asked.
“Not really,” the man said. “The only thing I can tell you is that the driver had blond hair and braces on his teeth. I saw them when he was screaming in surprise outside my car window. He had bright blue rubber bands. One of them broke when he was screaming and stuck on my window.” He gestured to a small broken rubber band on the glass. “As far as what they were wearing or anything else?” He shrugged to complete the sentence. In other words, not a clue.
“I’ll cruise the neighborhood,” I told the man. “Maybe I’ll spot the kids or the cart. In the meantime, see if your homeowner’s association will put out an e-mail alert. Somebody’s likely to know who the kids are. If you get a response, I’d be happy to go talk to them and their parents and see if we can’t set things straight.”
After snapping a photo of the rubber band on the window, I used tweezers to remove it and dropped it into an evidence bag. I took the man’s information and typed up a report on my computer. The administrative duties done, I cruised slowly up and down the streets of the neighborhood. I saw nothing. No boys. No scooter. No golf cart with a damaged front end. The kids had probably scattered and were hunkered down in their bedrooms, fingers crossed their parents wouldn’t find out they’d snuck out a golf cart without permission and proceeded to crash it into a car priced at over a hundred grand.
As I cruised by the fire station, I swung into the lot. Might as well see how things were going for Frankie on her first day.
Inside the station, I found Seth snoozing in one of the bunk beds, Blast in his bed on the floor. While Blast slipped out of the sleeping quarters to follow me and Brigit down the hall, I didn’t wake Seth. The guy needed his sleep and, given that I was on duty, I didn’t plan to stay long anyway.
The two dogs and I discovered Frankie pushing a bucket and mopping out the shower area. I leaned against the doorjamb. “Enjoying your first day, Cinderella?”
She cast a glance my way. “Not at all! Can you get me out of this? Isn’t there a law against hazing?”
“There is.” I stepped forward to shoo the dogs away from the mop bucket. “But it’s intended for athletic teams and fraternities, not government employees.”
“Darn.”
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“If it’s any consolation,” I told her, “it looks like you’re doing a fine job. This tile is really gleaming.”
She leaned on the mop handle and admired her handiwork with a smile. “It does, doesn’t it?”
I left her with an encouraging pat on the back, returned Blast to his bed with a whispered order to “stay,” and set back out on patrol.
Around four-thirty, I received a call from the owner of the Mercedes. My suggestion to contact the homeowner’s association had proven to be a good one. Three people had contacted the man with the name of the kid they suspected had been driving the golf cart. He’d been identified not only by his blue rubber bands, but also a chronic lack of supervision. Looked like he was teenager non grata around his neighborhood.
“I went by his house earlier,” the man said. “I could hear a television on inside, but nobody would come to the door.”
“I’d like to say that surprises me.” But it didn’t. Avoidance was a common technique used by lawbreakers. They seemed to think that if they ignored their troubles long enough, they’d go away. That’s not how things work.
“From what I hear,” the man added, “the kid’s an out-of-control brat.”
Wouldn’t be the first time I dealt with one of those. Kids could be a real pain in the butt sometimes, especially when their parents didn’t hold them accountable. “Got his name and address?”
Once I had the information, I headed straight to the house. It was a grand home, a soaring two-story contemporary model with rows of narrow plate-glass windows, a tile roof, and a three-car garage with an additional smaller door designed for a golf cart. As I pulled up, I realized Brigit was panting heavily. Time for a water break.
I parked in the shade of a Bradford pear tree, retrieved a cold bottle of water from the small cooler on the passenger seat floorboard, and opened the door to my partner’s enclosure to pour some into her bowl. She stood in the space and greedily lapped it up. Slup-slup-slup. I added a little more until she seemed satisfied. I poured the slimy dregs that remained in her bowl onto the grass and closed the door, leaving the windows down so she could get some air.
Feeling parched myself, I took a swig from the bottle and carried it to the door with me. On the porch was a large pot of purple petunias. Their dirt was dry, their leaves beginning to shrivel. Of course August was a month when people tended to neglect their outside plants and lawns. It was simply too dang hot to spend much time outside unless you were lounging in a swimming pool.
I poured a few ounces from the bottle onto the petunias. Given the godforsaken temperatures, I wasn’t sure whether the water would save them from an untimely death or merely prolong their agony, but I’d like to think it was the former.
I rang the bell. The sound reverberated through the house. After waiting thirty seconds or so, I tried again. DING-DONG-dong-dong-dong …
Still nothing.
Were the residents away from home? It was impossible to tell given that the garage doors were closed. Might as well give them the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. And I couldn’t much blame the kid for bolting. Young people tended to panic when things went wrong. Still, this wrong needed to be righted. I scrawled “Urgent—call me immediately” on one of my business cards and crammed it into the space between the door and the jamb. It was the best I could do for the time being.
* * *
Tuesday was a hot and unusually windy day, warm bursts kicking up sand and grit and small bits of debris that pinged when they impacted the side of the cruiser. When Brigit and I took a break in Forest Park, she quickly tired of playing Frisbee. I’d send the disc sailing in one direction, and just as she was ready to snatch it out of the air the wind would pick it up and send it off another way. I could sense her frustration. It was much more fun to catch the toy in the air. Any old dog could pick a Frisbee up from the ground. She eventually flopped down in the grass, panting, leaving me to retrieve the toy.
Though I’d been waiting for a call from the parents of the boy who’d crashed the golf cart into the Mercedes, my phone had remained silent. Evidently they’d ignored the message on my card. Blurgh.
I was rolling south down Hemphill when dispatch came on the radio. “We’ve got a report of a shoplifter at the gas station on the corner of Hemphill and West Allen.”
Had the Lollipop Bandit struck again? Only one way to find out. I grabbed my mic and squeezed the talk button. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.”
The store was a mere two blocks away. As I headed toward it, I passed both a medical office and a mental health clinic. I kept my eyes peeled for a medium-sized man in scrubs, but saw none outside the buildings.
The store’s manager, a trim, fortyish Latino man, was standing outside waiting for us when we arrived. I climbed out of the car and retrieved Brigit from her enclosure, snapping her leash onto her collar. I led her over to the man. “I hear you had a shoplifter?”
He nodded, but then shook his head, incredulous. “A man wearing green scrubs ran out with a handful of candy!”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Grape Tootsie Pops?”
His mouth gaped. “How did you know?”
“This wasn’t his first offense. He’s been hitting gas stations and convenience stores in the area for weeks.”
The man scoffed. “He’s obviously got a job. Why steal candy? It’s cheap.”
“Some people get a thrill out of taking things that aren’t theirs,” I told him. “They like to see what they can get away with. Any chance you saw which way he went?”
The man pointed at a parking lot across the side street. “He ran into that lot. That’s all I know.”
I looked in the direction he’d pointed. The parking lot was full of cars, many of them pickups and SUVs and minivans with high profiles. It was no wonder he’d lost sight of the thief.
I raised my hand to indicate Brigit’s leash. “I’ll see if my partner can trail him.”
I took Brigit inside to the candy aisle, stopped in front of the Tootsie Pop display, and issued the order for her to track. She put her nose to the floor. Snuffle-snuffle. Snuffle-snuffle. After snatching up an errant peanut someone had dropped on the floor, she set off toward the doors. We exited the store and I jogged along behind her as she headed toward the parking lot across the street.
With the trail relatively fresh, she moved quickly, darting up and down the rows and between cars. Clearly, the thief had done the same, making some evasive maneuvers to avoid detection. Eventually, we made our way out of the lot and across south Jennings, heading into another parking lot on the next block. The thief must have looked back and realized he wasn’t being followed, because he took a much more direct tack through this lot.
We approached John Peter Smith Hospital. JPS was a public facility, the place where officers took potential psychiatric cases for diagnosis and treatment, and home to the only Level 1 trauma center in Tarrant County. Not long ago, ER doctors here had saved the life of fellow FWPD officer Matt Pearce, who’d gotten into a gun battle in a wooded area with a father and his adult son. Pearce had taken five bullets, including one in the face. Another had nicked his heart. Add in a collapsed lung, shattered femur, punctured diaphragm, broken jaw, and damage to his liver and spleen, and he’d been given a mere four percent chance of survival. Luckily, he’d beaten the odds. He’d spent two weeks in a medically induced coma, awakening on his oldest daughter’s third birthday. He was still undergoing therapy nearly a year later, but the fact that he was alive and had fared as well as he had was nothing short of a miracle, as well as a testament to the great care provided at the hospital.
Three women in scrubs stood at the edge of the sidewalk, paper coffee cups in their hands as they chatted, apparently on break. A man in scrubs leaned back against the building, casually scrolling through screens on his cell phone. Could he be the Lollipop Bandit? He was average sized and thus fit what little description we had of the culprit. But the fact that he appeared rela
xed, was paying little attention to what was going on around him, and wasn’t trying to hide told me he wasn’t the guy we were after.
Brigit continued to snuffle along, leading me around the perimeter of the building between the outpatient entrance and the parking garage. As we crossed south Main Street, I glanced up at the sky bridge that connected the main hospital and the patient care center that housed the ER. People dressed in scrubs and others in regular clothes made their way between the two buildings, moving to and fro behind the glass like fish in an aquarium. To the east, a freight train clickety-clacked its way down the tracks that separated the medical center from a narrow neighborhood that bordered Interstate 35. Colorful graffiti decorated many of the boxcars, carrying the names of taggers from far and wide.
I turned my attention back to my partner. Brigit trotted up to a pair of automatic doors and, once again, I found her leading me into an ER waiting room.
A man at the reception desk looked up as we came in. “Is there a problem, Officer?”
I ordered Brigit to stop trailing the scent and led her over to the desk. Speaking quietly, I said, “We’re tracking a suspect. He’s wearing green scrubs.”
“That doesn’t narrow things down much.” He gestured to the green scrubs he, himself, was wearing. A young woman and older man behind him were similarly outfitted.
“He’s average sized. Would’ve come in these doors just a few minutes ago.”
The guy slowly shook his head. “I wish I could help you but to be perfectly honest I pay much more attention to the patients coming in than I do the staff. People wearing scrubs are in and out of here constantly. Doctors. Nurses. Orderlies. Techs. We’re a big facility. I don’t even know all the faces of the staff, let alone their names.”
Given that this was the second time I’d tracked the Lollipop Bandit, I felt less inclined to let things slide. “Where’s your security office?” I asked.
The man gave me an office number and directions. With Brigit trotting along, I exited the ER and circled around to the main entrance of the hospital. Unfortunately, the two of us came back out the main entrance fifteen minutes later, none the wiser. While security cameras mounted outside the ER picked up a man in scrubs, a cap, and a mask entering the building, he’d been smart enough to keep his head down. He also apparently knew where the security cameras were—and weren’t—located in the building. While we’d managed to track him visually for a minute or two in the public areas, we’d eventually lost him. It was possible he’d removed the cap and mask, but we couldn’t definitively identify anyone on the screens as the bandit. We had no idea what his face looked like or his hair color, and frankly, everyone looked similar in the loose-fitting scrubs. It was even difficult to distinguish the men from the women in some cases.
