To Love a Cop

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “You think he wants to be friends again?”

  Jake bent his head. He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “I can understand that,” Ethan said sympathetically. Like most adults, he’d learned to accept flaws in people and still call them friends, but at best forgetting a betrayal was hard, and sometimes there was no going back. If Erin had done a one-eighty after they separated and wanted to try again...he would have said no. Still, he felt obligated now to say, “You know, if you guys were good friends, he may have been hurt that you’d never told him what happened. If you had, he might have been able to help deflect the talk from the start.”

  Laura looked at him with a glow of gratitude and warmth that made him feel better than he probably deserved, considering he’d been wishing they could ditch her kid. Jake’s expression was more dubious.

  “But people would have known if I told anyone.”

  “That may be true,” Ethan agreed, “but they know now anyway, don’t they?”

  His forehead crinkled. “Yeah, but—”

  Ethan held up a hand. “You can’t go back. I’m just saying, if it had been the other way around, wouldn’t you have had your feelings hurt?”

  Jake pondered that. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He turned those intense dark eyes on Ethan. “So you think I should, like, give him a chance?”

  “Think about it. That’s all.” Ethan wiped his fingers. “How was your day?” he asked Laura.

  “Oh, fine.” She laughed. “I know you two will be riveted if I tell you about a new super high-end brand of mattresses I’ve decided to start carrying. And what an amazing month of sales we’ve had. Record breaking,” she said with satisfaction.

  “Congratulations.” He leaned back, smiling. “Feels good, I bet.”

  “Yes, it does. The family professes themselves to be delighted.”

  “Do you know what’s made the difference? The economy is rebounding, but not to that extent.”

  “It is partly economic,” she admitted. “When things are tight, people tend not to redecorate. On the other hand, people with lower incomes cut back first and most extremely. Wealthy people may not have as much disposable income, but they still have some.” She made a face. “I’m almost embarrassed to say that I’ve been skewing the store increasingly toward people who can afford the best. There are a lot of furniture stores in the Portland area that are aimed at middle-income shoppers. I’m trying to distinguish us from those stores.”

  “And it’s working.”

  “Yep.” She grinned at him. “Putting the furniture I sell increasingly out of my own reach, of course.”

  “Do you mind?” he asked seriously.

  “No. I have no ambition to be rich. We’re doing okay the way we are, right, Jake?”

  “Yeah!” His eyes narrowed. “Except, if you were richer, I could have a dirt bike, and we could go to Hawaii at Christmas like Aidan’s parents do every year.” He looked at Ethan. “His dad is some kind of software genius. They take the whole family, for two weeks. Like, grandparents and cousins and everybody.”

  “That does sound good,” Ethan admitted.

  Laura patted her son’s hand. “You poor, deprived child.”

  Laughing with them, Ethan thought, I could take them. He had a flash, picturing the three of them on the beach, maybe setting out to take surfing lessons, or going out in a glass-bottomed boat. Windsurfing was such a high, he felt sure he’d like riding waves, too.

  And Laura, of course, was wearing that bikini, the one that wasn’t much more than a few strings failing to contain those lush curves...

  “Hadn’t we better get going?” she said suddenly. “You two will be late if we’re not careful.”

  Good thing she’d interrupted what had been a high-risk fantasy. Because he’d been seeing the three of them as a family.

  “You’re right.” Ethan signaled for the waitress, shaking his head when Laura offered to pay or at least split the bill. “You’ve fed me a couple of meals. If I’m lucky, you’ll feed me more.”

  He liked the shyness in her expression as she said, “Of course I will.” She wouldn’t look like that if she saw him as nothing more than a mentor for her son, would she? Damn, he hoped not.

  When they reached Ethan’s vehicle in the parking lot, Jake said suddenly, “I should sit in front, right? ’Cuz we’re just dropping Mom off?”

  Laura raised her eyebrows. “What if I want to come and watch?”

  “There weren’t any parents there last time,” her son lied. Actually, two dads and a mom had hung around. Ethan had approved; if he’d been putting his own kid in a class like that, he, too, would have wanted to be sure the instructor was competent.

  She hugged Jake. “I was teasing. No, I don’t want to come. And yes, I’ll sit in back so you don’t have to change seats when we get to the house.”

  “Cool,” the kid said with obvious relief.

  The flicker of passing emotion on Laura’s face gave Ethan his answer: yes, her feelings were hurt. She wouldn’t appreciate him calling her son on it, though, and he knew that kids excelled, however unintentionally, at hurting their parents. Jake was a little young yet to have hit the “I’m embarrassed to be seen with my mom” stage, but Ethan guessed that wasn’t exactly what was going on here anyway. No, this had to do with guns, and Jake’s acute awareness of how his mother felt about them and why.

  What made me think I could step in and make any difference? Ethan asked himself. What if teaching the boy to handle a gun was the absolute wrong thing to do?

  Then it’s on me.

  It was definitely too late to pull back, though. What’s more, the way she smiled at him when he did let her out in front of her house gave him an odd sensation of pressure in his chest. It felt good in one way, uncomfortable in another.

  “I’ll bring him back safe and sound,” he promised, looking over his shoulder as she climbed out.

  Ready to close the door, she met his eyes for a fleeting moment, letting him see how scared she still was. He doubted she’d intended that.

  “Have fun,” she said to her son, then slammed the door and hurried up to the porch.

  Ethan waited until she disappeared inside before starting away from the curb.

  “You don’t think she wanted to come, do you?” Jake asked suddenly, his face screwed up in consternation.

  “No,” Ethan said truthfully, “I don’t think she did.” He hesitated. “Does she usually like to watch when you’re in an activity?”

  “Well, she has to drive me. Like, to baseball practice. You know. So, um, I guess she usually does stay. And she always comes to games.” He sounded worried now, as he should.

  “No matter how much she enjoyed watching you at bat or playing basketball, I’m going to guess there’ve been a lot of times she wished she didn’t have to stay,” Ethan suggested. “But it’s just been you and her. This gun thing makes her nervous anyway, and having me just take you away...” He shrugged. “It has to unsettle her a little.” And maybe he should have been careful about making assumptions, too.

  “I don’t usually mind Mom being there. But this—” Jake took a deep breath. “You saw her. She hates guns! She’d be uptight, and I’d feel her watching and, I don’t know, stewing.”

  Yeah, that’s what she’d do, all right. He’d have felt her disapproval, too. Ethan felt one corner of his mouth tip up, even though nothing about this was remotely funny. “You’re right,” he conceded, and tapped his knuckles on the boy’s thigh. “And she knows it, too, which is why she made the decision not to come. So let’s not worry about it, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jake agreed with obvious relief.

  Ethan shook his head. That was a kid for you—concern about Mom’s feelings didn’t come often, and was easily dismissed.

  Unfortunately, Ethan wouldn’t be able to forget the fear and sadness he’d seen in her eyes anywhere near as easily.

  Realizing that he was walking through an emotional m
inefield should make him want to escape it as quick as he could. A woman who feared and detested guns and didn’t seem to much like cops? And who, oh, yeah, had a kid haunted by the death he’d caused?

  Why aren’t I running? Ethan asked himself.

  Parking beside the range, he was glad for Jake’s silence.

  I’m not running because I want her.

  He could find another woman to want. He managed to find casual sexual partners without a lot of trouble.

  I like her. I admire her.

  Getting out, locking the doors once Jake was out, too, Ethan walked around the back of the Yukon.

  They need me.

  That knowledge wasn’t new. Neither was his awareness that he empathized with Jake Vennetti in part because he, too, was haunted by a death he’d caused. Which made him the right person to help Jake...and the absolute wrong man for the boy’s mother.

  * * *

  HEAD DOWN, JAKE walked down the hall toward his classroom, not making eye contact with anyone. He moved slowly, sort of dragging his feet, braced the whole time to hear his name or a whispered, “Murderer.”

  It didn’t happen. The classroom door was opening, and he had to go in, but no heads lifted. Mrs. Lopez smiled at him and he hunched his shoulders and sat down really quick. Usually he hated that she assigned seats, but now at least he didn’t have to wonder if someone would say, “You can’t sit here,” or yank the desk away when he tried to sit down. Assigned seats were non-negotiable. That was Mrs. Lopez’s word. She said they needed to learn to get along with people of all kinds, so she reshuffled them on the first of every month.

  He kept his head down, though, and didn’t look at Joel Snider, who was next to him, or Lisa Miller, who faced him. Because the bell hadn’t rung yet, everyone was talking, guys yelling across the room, girls brushing their hair and whispering to each other.

  He took out his binder and shoved his bag inside the desk. It really sucked not having friends, and what Ethan said sort of made sense, but the burning sensation in Jake’s chest and belly didn’t ease. He didn’t want to say, “Oh, hey, it’s all right, we can be friends again.”

  What he really wanted was for something to happen that made him so fabulously cool, everyone begged to be his friend, and he could shut down the guys who’d dropped him because bigmouthed Nick and Gianna called him a murderer. He pictured himself kind of noticing Ron and Justin waiting eagerly for a friendly word from him, and him just dismissing them.

  Only, right now nobody was begging to be his friend. Things had gotten better this week. Even though he still felt like everyone was staring when he walked down the hall or went out to recess, he knew they weren’t. No one had said anything really lousy to him in a while. When the teacher assigned him to work with other kids, they didn’t go bug-eyed. It was kind of, almost, back to normal, except he was still alone at lunch and recess.

  Maybe nobody was talking about him, but they weren’t talking to him, either. He felt almost as though he was invisible. A ghost, like in The Sixth Sense.

  And Ron had sounded jealous, which Jake really liked. He and the other guys who saw Jake playing ball with Ethan were probably talking about it.

  Jake wished suddenly, intensely, that Ethan would want to hang out with him a lot. Like, practically every day, and guys from school would see.

  That would be the best, he thought, and didn’t even hear the bell ring or Mrs. Lopez start talking.

  * * *

  A HEADLINE IN the local section of the Friday edition of The Oregonian caught Laura’s eye immediately: Arson Fire with Signature Swastika.

  “Oh, no,” she murmured, continuing to read even though she hadn’t so much as poured her morning coffee.

  This fire hadn’t been spotted as quickly as the previous one and had therefore done more damage. Family members had escaped, but a five-year-old boy had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation. A new puppy had been shut in the laundry room and was killed. The perpetrator or perpetrators had spray painted a bloodred swastika across the back of the house. A spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau acknowledged this was the fifth in a series of hate crimes that appeared to be targeting home owners with Jewish names. Ethan expressed concern about the apparent escalation in rage. He was quoted asking for help from the public.

  Jake’s voice made her start.

  “Why are you just standing there?”

  “Oh.” She set the paper down on the table. “There was another of those fires last night.”

  “The ones Ethan’s investigating?”

  “Yes.” She set out bowls, cereal and milk. “We’d better hustle this morning.”

  Jake read the article while he ate, as she skimmed the front section, mostly taking in headlines. War, more war, suicide bombers, a scandal involving a state congressman, an alarming report on climate change. All per usual.

  Jake slurped the last of the milk and cereal in his bowl. “You suppose he was up all night?”

  “Probably.” She wished they were good enough friends that she could call him later and hear his voice. Maybe say, I read what happened and was thinking about you.

  “It’s kind of cool knowing him,” her son said.

  “Because of his job, you mean?” Laura was careful to keep her tone casual.

  He sneaked a look at her. “Well...yeah.” He dutifully carried his bowl to the sink, rinsed it out and put it and the spoon in the dishwasher. “Did Dad ever talk about being a detective?”

  A stab of discomfort made her realize how often she’d put Jake off when he asked questions like that. He’d been right when he accused her of not liking to talk about Matt’s job. Or maybe Matt at all. Now, because of Ethan, she was having to reevaluate the impact her reluctance had had on Jake.

  “Actually, he did,” she made herself say as she took cold cuts, cheese and mayonnaise out of the refrigerator.

  “It’s pizza day,” Jake reminded her. That was the one day of the week when he liked to buy the cafeteria lunch.

  “Right. I forgot. But I’m still going to make myself a lunch.” She did most days; their budget was too tight to allow for a lot of eating out. “Your dad liked patrol. He said that’s where the action was, but he figured eventually he’d move to the detective division.” He’d also talked about applying to the Tactical Operations Division SWAT team, but she wasn’t about to tell Jake that. Matt hadn’t taken her terror at the idea seriously.

  “It’s not any more dangerous than what I already do,” he’d said blithely, which was scarcely reassuring.

  She sent Matt off to grab his pack, counted out lunch money from her purse for him and gave a private shudder as she wondered if Ethan had ever aspired to be on the SWAT team or—maybe even more frightening—the Gang Enforcement Team. Or undercover with Vice or Drug Enforcement.

  What am I worrying about? she thought drearily. It wasn’t as though Matt had been killed on the job.

  Ethan remained in the back of her mind all day. As, she privately admitted, he was too often most days.

  That didn’t mean she was interested in getting involved with him. He was good for Jake. Full stop.

  But when her phone rang that evening, after Jake had already gone to bed, her pulse bounced at the sight of Ethan’s number. Chagrined, she thought, Not interested? Remember?

  Somehow, the reminder failed to slow her accelerated heartbeat.

  “Hi,” she said. “I read about you in the paper this morning. Is that little boy all right?” She carried the phone to the living room in hopes Jake couldn’t hear her. Choosing her favorite chair, she kicked off her shoes and curled her feet under her.

  “Yes, but it was a close thing.” Ethan sounded grim. “They have three kids. Each parent thought the other one had him. Dad tore back into the house, grabbed the boy and had to break the window because it was the only way out by that time.”

  “Thank God he got to him in time.”

  “Amen.”

  “They were Jewish, too?”

  “Fis
chman. This isn’t for public consumption, Laura, but this guy—or gang, we’re not sure yet—is going in alphabetical order.”

  “But...why?”

  “There’s the question.” He made a rough sound. “I really shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “I won’t tell. I promise.” She frowned. “The last two victims both had names that started with F, too. Do they all?”

  “No, we started with Eckstein and Eichler.”

  “Eichler sounds German to me. I wouldn’t have assumed it was Jewish.”

  “Yeah, whoever this is has done some research.”

  The restraint in his voice had her eyes widening. “Or knows these people?”

  “That’s a possibility, too. Again, not one for—”

  “—public consumption. I get it. But...do these families know each other?”

  “So far, only two do. They attend the same synagogue.” He talked then, his voice already hoarse, telling her that some of the targeted people weren’t practicing Jews, and that the geographic cluster suggested other possibilities.

  She speculated on that. “That whoever is doing this is staying close to home.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t you have any witnesses?”

  A moment of silence suggested he might be regretting having said as much as he had, but then he replied, “A couple of people running away. Probably young guys. One with a leather jacket and possibly a shaved head.”

  Skinhead.

  “But you’ve sounded as if you’re only looking for one guy.”

  “Chances are, even if there’s a gang, one member is the driving force. He’s the one with a big-time grudge.”

  “Oh. That makes sense.”

  “Damn, I hoped we’d get them this time,” he said with sudden force. “I’ve been warning people, speaking to Neighborhood Watch groups, hoping we’d get lucky.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, aware of the silent house and the intimacy of this conversation. Had he called just because he wanted to talk to her? “You sound tired,” she said tentatively.

  “Yeah, I’m beat. I’m about to hit the sack. I needed to let you know I can’t make it tomorrow. Would Sunday work instead?”