The Ridealong

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Dad nods me around to the passenger side of his car. It's a Charger with a big white "42" on the roof, just behind the LED lights. I made the mistake of looking at those things once when Dad flared 'em. Thought I would go blind. He laughed. Funny, funny.

  I get in the car. Dad doesn’t. I see he's talking to Knight and Zevahk.

  "Thanks," says Knight. Serious, which is rare. Cops don't like to be serious with each other. It's always joking, unless they're ordering each other around like soldiers on a battlefield. But Knight... not a joke in sight. Zevahk looks the same.

  "Don't mention it," says Dad.

  "I mean it," says Knight.

  "Yeah," adds Zevahk. "You stood up for us. You got our back, and we got yours whenever –"

  "I said don't mention it!" Dad snarls the words. I nearly jump out of my seat. He sounds like he's about to take a swing at Knight or Zevahk or maybe both of them.

  Zevahk's eyes flash. Now I wonder if the stubby cop is going to take a poke a Dad. Knight's big hand goes up to his partner's shoulder. He stops him. "Easy, guys. We're all on the same team."

  He claps Dad, a hearty smack on the shoulder (his right one – and I think it's on purpose that Knight avoids the shoulder where Dad got shot). Grins so big the top of his head is likely to fall off. "All on the same team. Right, Latham?"

  "Yeah," says Dad. His voice is weird.

  Zevahk looks like he wants to say something. But Knight steers him away. Dad watches them until they've pulled out of the garage. Their car is a Vic, lucky number "13" on the roof and sides. It leaves the structure, and Dad gets in the car.

  "What was that about?"

  He shakes his head. "Buckle up, Melly Belly."

  I can tell that's all the answer I'll get. Looks like I'm not the only one who took some extra baggage away that day. Maybe my being here is as good for him as it is for me.

  Makes me feel good to think that. Like he needs me around. I wonder if he worries that someday I'll leave him like Mom did.

  "What's R&R?" I ask

  He turns the key. The Charger hums to life.

  Cop cars are by far the fastest things I've ever been in. They feel almost angry, like they're pissed at the fact that they have to travel around the speed limit. It's only when they're opened up – when Dad has his lights on, siren blaring, the thing going one hundred-plus down Front Street – that they sound happy. Roaring not in anger but like they're laughing.

  That makes me think of the guy who called that morning. Crank call?

  "Buckle up," says Dad.

  I do. "What's R&R?" I ask.

  "What?" Dad seems surprised by the question. Like he forgot I was at the briefing, or maybe didn't think I might be paying attention.

  "Sarge said there was lots of R&R moving around. I assume he didn't just mean people were taking excessive vacation time."

  "Figure that out all on your own, did you, Miss Smarty Two Shoes?"

  "With my very own braininess."

  He snorts. "It stands for Red Rocks. It's a new kind of drug that's moving through the area."

  "What kind of –"

  "More than that, you don't need to know."

  I think about wheedling more info from. Dad's got a look on his face that's saying, "Are you going to be like this all day? Because school's still an option." Still, I push a little more. "What does it do?"

  He says, "Tell you what. We'll take turns. You can ask me one question at a time, interrupting my invaluable quiet time and learning things that are all kinds of inappropriate for a kid your age. And I'll ask you one question at a time about Liam and what's going on with you two." He pauses to let that sink in. "Or we could just let both matters drop, enjoy companionable silence, and thank God that we can't read each other's minds."

  I give him a thumbs up, along with a grin so wide and winningly insincere it would make a congressperson blush.

  "Thought so."

  He opens his window and enters a number on a keypad. A gate opens. We leave the garage.

  My ridealong has begun.

  PART TWO:

  TAKEN FOR A RIDE

  June 30

  PD Property Receipt – Evidence

  Case # IA15-6-3086

  Rec'd: 6/29

  Investigating Unit: IA/Homicide

  Journal

  Day Five

  THINGS GET DIFFERENT, and strange, and scary. Maybe that's what growing up is.

  Liam doesn't seem to understand. I was planning on going to prom with him. Even had a dress picked out. But now, things are so different. I know a lot of that is just that I suddenly get how soon we all die, how fragile life is.

  Why go dancing when tomorrow we're going to lay down and never get up again?

  I know Dad wonders why I've stopped talking to Liam. And Liam keeps calling, calling, calling, calling calling calling calling.

  Damn. I miss him. But I also don't. Life is weird, you know? Funny. Not funny like a joke, but funny like there's no such thing as a joke. But you have to laugh because if you don't laugh you'll scream and if you scream then the end comes that much sooner.

  I better stop. I think I'm writing myself into a depression. I'll go outside and throw seeds at the dumb squirrel that keeps coming to our house. Maybe Dad will throw seeds, too. That would be nice.

  1

  "WHAT'S THE FIRST THING a good cop does?" Dad asks.

  I grin at him. "Gets coffee."

  "Damn straight."

  We pull into an Exxon with a food mart about a mile down the road. "You gonna come in?" he says.

  "Damn straight."

  "Watch it, Mel."

  "You said it."

  "I'm old and my soul is already doomed. You don't get to talk that way."

  He smiles to let me know he only sort of means it. We go in. I break right to where the candy bars are. Dad goes to the coffee. He takes it black, and usually waits until its cold enough to gag a normal human before he actually drinks it.

  "Officer Latham!"

  "Hey, Jan."

  "Haven't seen you in forever. I was starting to think you found another coffee place."

  "Never."

  My dad ambles over to the lady at the counter, putting the cap on his coffee. She's short enough she barely sees over the register, but I can make out the smile on her face. Older, so it's not the "please jump me" face some women make when they see the badge. Which is good, because the few times I've seen someone look at my dad that way, it made me wish I could crawl into myself and implode.

  Dad puts the coffee down. Jan rings it up. "This all?" she says.

  "Nope. Everything good around here, Jan?" And here's the real reason Dad stops for coffee: he believes in relationships. Stops in to buy a coffee, chat with the store clerks, says hi to the street vendors. Dad knows what's going on in his areas, and the people know he's there for them. He's not just a "dick with a stick," which is the less-than-polite term I've heard him use for a few of the cops that believe policing is an elaborate excuse to drive fast and shoot stuff.

  "All's well. Better with you back in action."

  I slide a candy bar next to Dad's coffee. Jan winks at me. I smile at her. She seems nice. Seems to like Dad being around. I can't blame her.

  "I like these, too," she says, pointing at the candy.

  "My favorite," I say.

  "I would've pegged you for..." she squints at me. "Jerky. Peppered." I laugh. I really like this gal for some reason. She's one of those souls that makes you feel like you've known her forever in about six seconds. Another minute in the store and I'll probably be asking her to go to the movies.

  Dad pays for the candy and coffee.

  "No Red Bull or Overshock or Zapyourheart or whatever it is you usually drink?" he says as we go to the door.

  "Nah, I just end up wanting to pee for the whole shift," I say.

  "So? That'll make a man out of you."

  I reach for the door and try to think of a good retort. Before I can come up with one, the door opens.
For a split-second I get creeped out: the door's motion was so in sync with me reaching for it that it's as though it was refusing to be touched by me. Like I'm not good enough to touch it.

  (Not good enough to have anything, are you Mel, not Mom not Liam and you almost lost Dad –)

  It's a ridiculous thought, but it's almost crushingly real in that instant. The feeling that I don't belong here, that I barely belong anywhere.

  Then the door completes its short arc and of course it had nothing to do with me: just another person coming in as I went out. Two people passing through the same tiny slice of the world the way people do.

  I look at the guy who opened the door, and now I don’t feel like I don't belong... now I think I've gone nuts. Because I'm seeing double.

  The guy holding the door open wears blue jeans, dark brown work boots. A red and black checked flannel shirt, a raggedy red goatee/wish-I-could-grow-a-beard. A trucker's cap with "I brake for boobs" written in curlicues that tamps down greasy strings of black hair.

  And the guy behind him is just as classy. Exactly as classy, down to the exact scraggles of his wannabe beard, the straggling strays of his hair. The only way to tell them apart is that the one in front has an unlit cigarette in his mouth, the other has one that glows red at the tip.

  No. That's not right... I see the red flannel shirts have pins on them. The kind you might see at a gas station or auto body shop. The one in the front's says "BOB," and the one who is more actively working on his cancer has a pin that says, "RAY."

  I gawk. Then realize I'm staring and do my best to stop. It's impossible. Mostly because "BOB" is staring right back, and something about his stare gives me the creeps.

  I'm a cop's kid. I know that the worst thing to do when creeped out by a creepy creep is to look like a victim. So I open my mouth to say something. Either "Thanks for holding the door" or "What are you looking at?" or "Some weather, huh?" The words don't matter, just the attitude behind them.

  Only problem: no words are coming out of my mouth.

  Bob's eyes seem to dance, like he can see the strange incapacity that's gripped me. His smile widens. "Well, hello there," he says.

  Ray, behind him, starts to smile as well. "Fancy meeting you here," he says with a smile.

  I'm still trying to catch my breath. Absolute waves of weirdness roll off these guys. Forget letting them date your daughter, you wouldn't trust them to watch your pet rock. How I know that doesn't matter – I know it, and the knowledge has me completely mute.

  This isn't like me. Once a guy followed me home after a ballgame at the middle school I went to. I thought he was weird, I got a bad vibe. I told him to stop following me. When he didn't react the way I wanted – which would have been to turn around and quietly move away – I didn't freak out or panic. I very intentionally started screaming "FIRE!" at the top of my lungs, then kicked him in the junk as hard as I could.

  Turned out it was a guy who lived on the street – we were only a few houses away from where he lived – and he was just walking home. He was also deaf, so he didn't have a chance to figure out the best way to respond to my (to him) unheard demand before he ended up puddled on the sidewalk, hands in a tight cup around his man-dangles.

  But now, simply standing in a public gas station and with my-father-the-cop for backup... confronted with Bob and Ray, I've got nothing.

  Dad comes to my rescue. Which makes me feel both ashamed and grateful. I love my dad, I love that I can count on him. He's always been my hero. But I know I'm going to replay this moment for a long time, kicking myself for not being able to talk my way out of a non-confrontation with two extras from Cannibal Hillbillies 7: The Hickening.

  "No cigarettes within twenty feet of the entrance, pal," says Dad.

  Ray smiles. He inhales, taking one last suck on his cancer stick, then he drops it on the sidewalk and stubs it out with his boot.

  "Litter laws are enforced in this state, too," says Dad.

  Bob and Ray both wear the exact same grins. Grins that grow wider as Ray bends down to pick up the still-smoldering stub of his cigarette. He looks around for a trashcan, doesn't see one, so shoves it in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, right below "RAY."

  Bob waggles his eyebrows, and his eyes never leave me even though he speaks to Dad. "Feeling conscientious today, are we, officer?"

  As weird as the moment was, the two guys who look like each other, the grins, the ratty beards, the looks that make me feel vaguely dirty... now it's weirder. Guys like this shouldn't use words like "conscientious." They should say things like "yup" and "git-er-done."

  "I'm always conscientious, Bob," says Dad. "Best you remember that."

  "Of course, officer," says Ray. Bob already has one of the double doors open, so he now pulls open the second one. He bows, beckoning us through with a wave elegant enough to belong in the court of a king. "Please accept our heartfelt apologies. There will be no more lawbreaking of any kind tonight, and I trust this is the last you will see of us."

  "Indeed," says Bob, and he bows as well.

  The word "weird" does not begin to cover this moment.

  Dad looks like he wants to bust them. Like he's trying to figure out a way to frisk them or look in their vehicles. Police can do that with surprisingly little concrete reason – "probable cause" is a wide net that helps them find a lot of things that want to stay hidden. But I can see my dad writing up the report in his head. "Found two joints after determined the perpetrators were acting extremely polite and had an unusually well-developed vocabulary."

  Yeah, right.

  Dad moves through the doorway. I follow him. We don't look back. A lesson I learned from Dad a long time ago: looking back implies you're worried. "You don't look back after slapping a mosquito, right?" he'd told me. "So don't look back when you walk away from a scumbag. Not unless there's a chance he'll hurt you. Then you don't walk away at all. You either put him down or you run, but you don't walk away."

  No one gets hurt here. We walk to Dad's cruiser, and behind us there's an electronic tone as Bob and Ray enter the store.

  We get in the car. Dad's looking at the mirrored windows of the food mart as though he's waiting for someone to start shooting.

  Nothing happens.

  Still looking, he says, "So were you worried about something, or were they just so totes cute-cute that you forgot how to talk?"

  He grins. Still doesn't look away from the front windows, but his grin is for me. My cheeks burn.

  Before I can issue a crushing retort, Dad's radio squawks. "Twenty fifty-five."

  He answers: "Twenty fifty-five, check."

  The dispatcher tells him of a possible drunk driver a mile away.

  We buckle up. Pull out of the Exxon.

  As we do I look back. And could swear I see Bob – or Ray – looking out at us.

  2

  HERE'S THE THING ABOUT ridealongs: they're mostly boring.

  A cop's life isn't full of gunfights and high-speed chases. Mostly it's getting drunks off property, keeping husbands and wives from each other's throats, and lots of traffic stops.

  Within a few miles I can feel myself fading. Maybe I should have gotten a Red Bull or something at the Exxon.

  Doesn't help that I haven't slept a wink since what happened to Dad.

  A cop died. A kid.

  An innocent bystander and one of the people who was supposed to protect and serve.

  And that's not the scariest part. The scariest part isn't even that my Dad was there, that he could have died, too.

  No, the scariest thing is that he hasn't told me everything. He's held back details, which he never did before. And if what he told me was bad enough to send me into a living nightmare... how much worse could the rest of it have been?

  "You can sleep if you want."

  Dad's voice jolts me out of a slide into that black pit that I've been living in. "What?"

  "Just sleep," he says. "No one'll get you here. Nightmares can't chase a moving cop car.
" He grins, a thin little smile that doesn't make it to the ends of his lips. No smile at all in his eyes. "I'll watch out for you," he adds. And for some reason I think he's saying this as much for himself as for me. Like he wants to believe it's possible to protect me. Like he wants this to be the one place – the last place – the world will ever get to us.

  It's a lie.

  But I'm tired. And before he finishes talking I'm already sliding into sleep. Lulled by the muted roar of the car, the whirr of tires passing over asphalt, the occasional low speech of the dispatcher on Dad's radio.

  I'm out. Dreaming dreams of blood, of death, of bodies in the road, a man screaming he's coming for the cops. I hear bits of reality, too. The car slowing, Dad's voice saying the typical cop-stop line: "You know what you did?"

  Then more driving. Driving forever.

  I wake up and evening is pushing dark fingers into the car. This is the longest I've slept, even though I feel little more rested than I did before. I've been busy in my dreams, and my body feels sore.

  "There you are," says Dad. "I missed you."

  "I take it there were no high adventure dispatches."

  He barks a quick laugh. Most of the laughs I've heard from him recently are like that. Not really happy laughs, but almost angry. Like he's laughing so he won't scream, so he won't start shrieking. The laugh scares me.

  He's about to speak when the radio chirps.

  "Twenty fifty-five."

  Dad picks up the radio. "Twenty fifty-five, check."

  "At 342 Canal, a 415, possible 417."

  Dad pauses a second. I know that means whatever happened is something bad. Not the kind of thing he wants to take his daughter along for. But not like he can ask someone else to cover because the passenger he shouldn't have is too young for it.

  Them's the breaks sometimes.

  "Twenty fifty-five, got it. 415, possible 417. En route."

  Soon we're driving a hundred on a street marked "35 MPH" and the car sounds like it's laughing and I wonder if I should have let Dad drop me at school this morning.