Holding Out for a Hero

by Pamela Tracy

  “Just to see your ugly face,” Riley returned before asking, “You’ve met Oscar, right?”

  “Once,” Jimmy said, “but then, I’m competing with Bianca’s cooking. I can’t say I blame him.”

  “I’ll have a hamburger, medium, and fries, thanks,” Oscar ordered. “Not something Bianca cooks often.”

  “Gotcha,” Jimmy said.

  The two men settled at a booth against the back wall. Riley took the position from which he could see the door. Oscar, not liking it much, sat across from him with his back to the door.

  “Thought you’d like to know I just got word that a fingerprint found in the Livingston home belongs to Larry Wagner.”

  “Good,” Oscar said. “Then Shelley’s not the only proof. We’re getting closer.”

  “I agree.”

  Outside, a white car sped by. Riley sat up, no doubt annoyed that somebody would speed in his town. Oscar squinted, not liking that it was white, and that Wagner preferred white.

  “You liking Sarasota Falls?” Riley asked.

  “I like it just fine.” Unbidden came the thought of Shelley. Oscar pushed it away. “I’ve always been close to my aunt. She needed family now.”

  “And that’s really why you moved here?”

  “Yes. You probably know that she lost some money, thanks to Larry Wagner, along with most people in town.” Always stick as close to the truth as possible. Oscar continued, “My family worried about Aunt Bianca, and I had the time.”

  The bell over the Station’s door sounded and a customer came in. Oscar didn’t recognize her and Riley kept talking.

  “Yes, I took Bianca’s report. She was angry, mostly at herself. I’ve always thought she was pretty self-sufficient. You being here really hasn’t changed anything for her.”

  “Self-sufficient she is,” Oscar agreed, aware that Riley was fishing. “But there are a few other reasons for my being here.”

  “Like?”

  “I’d been serving my country for quite a few years. Taking a civilian job could have been therapeutic.”

  Could have been were the key words. From Oscar’s first day in town, he’d been working for Townley, watching over Shelley. It hadn’t been dull. He wished he were watching her now.

  “I’m glad you offered me the job,” Oscar said. “I’m finding that I enjoy being a small-town cop.” It was true, but Shelley Brubaker had a lot to do with the feeling. He couldn’t push the thought away this time.

  “You’re not cut out for a small town.” Riley didn’t mince words. “How did you wind up working for me? You’re not a typical transfer.”

  “It was convenient. I needed something to do.”

  “I’m not sure I buy that. Want to tell me why and who you really work for?”

  Oscar hadn’t been prepared for the question.

  “I can’t,” he said simply.

  Behind them, Jimmy Walker bellowed to another customer that her salad was ready.

  “What?” she asked, the woman’s voice sounding Southern.

  “It’s off-hours,” Jimmy called out to the lady. “The waitress won’t be back until eleven.”

  The woman, on the short side, pretty with straight brown hair, stood and retrieved her salad from the pass-through. As she headed back to the table, Oscar got a good look at her face.

  “You know her?” he asked Riley, turning to see that she’d chosen a table nearby.

  “Got into town late last night. She’s staying at the Claradan motel and drives a ten-year-old minivan.”

  “So, you do know her?”

  “No, I happened to run into her last evening. Her name’s Maureen Peterson and she paid for only one night.”

  Oscar resisted the urge to turn around and study her. He just sensed she’d be looking right at him.

  “Jimmy, our food about ready?” Riley yelled.

  “Few more minutes.”

  “I figure a few more minutes gives you plenty of time to tell me who you’re working for besides me,” Riley said.

  Oscar’d understood the meaning of Don’t blow your cover since he’d been an adolescent playing war games in the front yard with his brothers.

  “Why are you asking me now?”

  “Because you identified the tracking device on her car and got it right. Then there was that piece of jewelry, which you brought forward and also got right. And, oh, yeah, two FBI guys showed up at the station this morning and asked a few questions about Larry Wagner. I get the idea they were wanting to ask you the questions instead of me. Want to tell me why?”

  “I am FBI,” Oscar admitted.

  “Order!” shouted Jimmy Walker.

  Riley didn’t move, just sat looking irritated. Oscar assumed he was on server duty. The waiting plates sat in the window.

  The waitress hadn’t been there the last time Oscar ate at the Station Diner, either. Sometimes he wondered if she really existed. Oscar took the plates, nodding at the brown-haired woman who’d finished her salad and now was looking through photos from a folder. Oscar set the plates on the table and snatched a ketchup bottle from a nearby booth.

  Jimmy tilted his head back and let out a long breath. “Must be something important, for them to blow your cover like that.”

  After a few bites, Oscar said, “I had ties to the community, already knew Shelley from when we were kids, and I did a few years in military intelligence. I was the best man for the job.”

  “Not a cop.”

  “I was military police, too. I know how to do my job.”

  “Then do your job. I don’t care that you’re FBI. I do care about this situation and that we get Larry Wagner behind bars and see if we can’t return some of the money that was stolen. Yes, pipe dream, I know.” Riley leaned forward. “I’m surprised at how close you are to Shelley and her situation. I’ve known that girl since she was a baby. Your personal feelings will get in the way, you’ll let your guard down, and you’ll get hurt or worse. You have the makings of a fine officer, and I don’t want you to die under my watch.”

  “I’m fine,” Oscar started to protest.

  His mother used to say that after his father left.

  “Die under my watch...” Townley had said much the same thing that long-ago day in Afghanistan. Oscar knew firsthand how it felt to lose those you worked with, those closest to you, brothers in everything but blood. His appetite waned. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “No, you don’t,” Riley said. “You’re supposed to watch Shelley, not help her carry groceries, drive her and her kid back and forth to the doctor or help with getting the kid to and from preschool, and—”

  “You told me the day I was hired that in a small town I was required to do all that,” Oscar reminded him. “You called it community policing.”

  “Yes,” Riley said evenly, “but when it’s a person under surveillance, a lawyer’s gonna turn around those good deeds and call them harassment at best, entrapment at worst.”

  “Shelley wouldn’t do that.”

  “I guarantee you, Shelley’s number one goal in life right now is survival, namely keeping herself, her unborn baby and Ryan safe. If she starts relying on you and you betray her, she’ll turn on you faster than you can blink. When you’re a cop, the job comes first.”

  “You’re thinking about your ex-wife, aren’t you?” Oscar hated to bring it up, but he was seeing a side of Riley he’d not seen before, the crack in the mortar. It had been the downfall of many a soldier. Sarasota Falls didn’t need their chief to be divided because of a past he’d had no control over and couldn’t fix.

  Riley jabbed at his chicken-fried steak with his fork. Oscar could only imagine what the man wished he was stabbing. After a few bites, Riley sputtered, “What made you think that?”

  “Putting the job first,�
�� Oscar said simply. “It doesn’t always pay, does it?”

  Riley took a drink of water before heaving a long sigh. “A good cop is never off the clock. I am driven. Maybe a bit much. But I had a partner die. It’s not something you get over.”

  “No, it’s not,” Oscar agreed.

  Riley wasn’t listening. “One day, a little over five months after my partner’s death, a vase of flowers was delivered to the station. My wife had sent them as an anniversary present. I barely acknowledged them. And I certainly hadn’t thought to get her anything. Lucas tried to tell me that I needed to do something with my wife, stay home more, but I didn’t listen.”

  Oscar was patient.

  “Before then, I thought Lucas half a cop. He isn’t driven, and after he leaves work, he’s annoyed when I have to call him back. Working graveyard is driving him nuts. He doesn’t want to be gone in the evening. That’s when he sits and watches television with his wife.”

  This was the heart of a chief of police, one who knew his town and knew his officers.

  “He doesn’t want his wife to go to bed every night without him there.”

  Oscar felt a heat start at the base of his neck. If he had a woman like Shelley at home, as his wife, he wouldn’t want to be gone all the time.

  “Lucas came into my office one Wednesday and said, ‘Chief Riley, you need to stay home this weekend. Do something with your wife.’ I thought he was being funny.”

  “I take it,” Oscar said, “that you didn’t stay home with the wife.”

  “No. There’d been some drug activity in the next town over. The police there contacted me, saying they wanted me to see the operation and talk to one of the men arrested because he claimed to have been here. Cathy and I were supposed to go to dinner and a movie, but I canceled. I put her last. Work came first, and she got what was left over.”

  “And as a police officer, there’s not much left over,” Oscar observed.

  Both men continued eating, Riley with gusto and Oscar more slowly. Riley was halfway through his chicken-fried steak when Oscar casually remarked, “So, you didn’t listen to Lucas, and your wife left you.”

  Riley stared at his plate and then put his fork down. “It didn’t happen right away. Maybe a week after. I figured out that I’d worked twelve days straight. We were short because one of the guys had major surgery. Funny to think now, but I was happy to work all those hours. I was saving the world.”

  “Oscar, you’re a lot like your dad. A leader. You could save the world if you wanted to.” Oscar could hear his mother’s words. Did he still want to? He knew people who’d made the military their life. He’d never considered whether they were happy or not, whether they were making the right choices or not. He’d just thought they were doing what they had to do.

  “I came home late on a Friday night, about eleven. I went in the bedroom to see if she was okay, and her things were gone.”

  When Oscar’s dad left, he hadn’t taken anything, not even his clothes. Oscar’s mother had later given them to the Goodwill. “He’s not coming back,” she’d told Oscar.

  She’d kept his dad’s tools, though, saying she’d need them for repairs and such. Oscar could still see her standing on the roof one July when their air conditioner had stopped working. “The fan’s stuck,” she shouted down to her two oldest boys.

  She’d wanted Oscar to help her, but he’d climbed three rungs on the ladder and froze. Heights bothered him, then and now.

  For a minute, both Oscar and Riley sat deep in thought. Finally Riley continued. “My wife had signed up to be a teacher overseas. I found the advertisement in the kitchen, right on the counter. She hadn’t hidden her actions. If I’d been around, paid attention, I’d have seen what she was doing. But I was so involved in work that my home was just a place to sleep. My wife was just a person who kept the home clean and had food in the fridge.”

  “What did you do?”

  “It took only about five minutes of going through the mail to figure out what time her plane left. I’d missed it by five hours. She was gone. I called her cell phone, but she’d disconnected it. Come to find out, she’d purchased another phone and had another number for months.”

  “I’m sor—”

  “Officers, do you have a minute?” The brown-haired woman stood at the edge of their table. She held a manila folder.

  “Certainly,” Riley said. Any trace of the sorrow his ex-wife had caused disappeared, and Oscar saw the actions of a man who was married to the law.

  Did Oscar really want that?

  She opened the folder and drew out a page. Setting it on the table, she asked, “Have you seen this boy?”

  She spread more photographs on the table: a little boy in a child’s swing, a little boy with a messy face eating something orange, a little boy by the woman’s side going through the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland.

  Oscar thought about Shelley’s ringtone that Ryan loved.

  The little boy was Ryan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DESPITE HER CAR being fixed, Shelley had half expected Oscar to be outside waiting when it was time to go pick up Ryan. But he wasn’t out there in his squad car with a smile on his face, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  For once, she didn’t check the gas gauge when she started her car. Thanks to the money she was making as Bianca’s baker, she’d filled the tank and had a little cash left over in case of an emergency. She put her foot on the pedal, adjusted how she was sitting when a sharp pain hit her side, and started to drive, catching sight of Robert waving goodbye to her from the front porch. What a difference a few weeks could make. She’d gone from lonely to loved. She pushed away the notion that it couldn’t last.

  She turned the car’s radio to rock and roll and sang as the blocks rolled by. The parking lot was full, and Shelley had to opt for a space a good distance from the preschool. Walking was good for her, the doctor said, but lately she’d not been enjoying it. Today, at least, she didn’t feel so clunky, and the pain in her lower back had moved to her side. The pain she’d experienced earlier returned but went away quickly.

  She joined the throng of mothers, a few dads, too, as they headed toward rooms for pickup. She liked Ryan’s teachers. They’d gone to school with her, and even when her ex-husband had been the major headline in Sarasota Falls, they acted like nothing was wrong. They hadn’t embraced her, no, but they’d not pushed her away, either.

  They’d fallen under the category of friends who were now wary.

  Today they were definitely wary.

  “Ryan’s in the director’s office,” one of the teachers said, helping a small girl zip up a backpack. “You’re supposed to go there.”

  “Why? What happened? Is Ryan hurt? Did he do something?”

  “Ryan’s fine,” the teacher rushed to assure her. “He’s not hurt, and he didn’t do anything. Quite honestly, we don’t know anything. He was called to the office about fifteen minutes ago. We were told to send you there when you arrived.”

  Dread put a choke hold on Shelley’s heart. “Ryan is in the director’s office,” she whispered over and over to herself as she hurried in that direction. “Larry hasn’t taken him.”

  The director’s door was closed, and while Shelley wanted to yank it open, she knocked.

  “Come in” was the immediate response.

  Ryan stood in front of a fish tank. “Look, Mom, pink fish.” There were some greens and reds, too.

  “They’re beautiful,” Shelley said, falling to her knees next to him, engulfing him in a hug that he squirmed out of.

  “I still want dog,” Ryan announced.

  “Count how many fish are in the tank,” Shelley suggested and then asked the director, “What’s going on?”

  “Someone is on the way to escort you and Rya
n to the police station. I don’t know why.” The director spoke kindly, but her eyes were worried.

  Shelley wanted to scream. If the cops were going to play this game, there had better be a good reason. “What exactly did they say on the phone?”

  “Chief Riley said someone would be by to escort you. I was to request that you stay. That’s all.”

  “Why can’t I drive myself?”

  The director stood and came around her desk. She drew Shelley into a hug and said, “I don’t know, but with all you’ve been going through, it has got to be about the Livingston girl or your ex-husband.”

  Shelley stepped away from the hug. She didn’t want it now; it wasn’t reassuring. She wanted Oscar, but he hadn’t said anything new about Candace other than that Cody was going to sell the house and move. “That doesn’t explain why I can’t drive myself.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” the director agreed. “But the police have procedures to follow, and that’s probably what they’re doing.”

  “It’s exactly what we’re doing,” Oscar said from the doorway.

  Shelley turned, her first impulse to run to him. A hug from him would have made a difference, but one look at his face and she knew that nothing was right. Everything was wrong. Standing in front of her wasn’t the Oscar who had rubbed her back yesterday, who had kissed her as they walked up the stairs to her apartment. This wasn’t the man who’d tossed Ryan in the air and caught him again as the boy giggled with laughter.

  Oscar said, “Riley asked me to accompany you to the station. There’s a matter we need to look into.”

  “What matter?”

  “I’m not at liberty to share.”

  The words were like a bucket of cold water for Shelley. Not so for Ryan, who left the fish and ran over to Oscar. The stoic cop stance faded for a moment as he bent and picked the boy up, and Ryan immediately nestled in.

  Shelley noted the look on the director’s face. It wasn’t hard to add two and two together.