“Kahn’s an asshole,” Tower muttered.
“Which kind of asshole?” Sully asked.
“Shut up with that,” Battaglia told him. He turned to Tower. “He ain’t an asshole. He’s our platoon mate.”
“Maybe so,” Tower said, sipping his fresh coffee, “but he’s an asshole.”
“Really? And why’s that?”
“He’d fuck a catcher’s mitt, for starters,” Tower told him. “On top of that, he treats women like shit.”
Amen, Katie voiced silently.
Battaglia thought about it for a minute. Then he said, “I’ll give you the catcher’s mitt thing. But he’s no different than Gio on day shift. Who are we to tell him not to love ‘em and leave ‘em?”
“We’re nobody,” Tower said. “I didn’t say he should change. I just said he’s an asshole for being that way. He’s an asshole because he tells women lies to get them into bed and then he dumps them.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. He did it to a friend of Stephanie’s.”
“Well, maybe your wife’s friend was a bitch,” Battaglia suggested.
“Stephanie is my girlfriend, not my wife,” Tower corrected, “and her friend is a sweet kid who got caught up in the badge and promises Kahn made. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m just saying that your asshole platoon mate might just be saying this waitress is a slut because she wouldn’t go out with him.”
“Maybe he knows because he banged her,” Battaglia countered.
“Then he’s got no class,” Tower said.
Battaglia sighed. “Well, I can’t argue that one.” He looked around the table at Sully and Katie. “Thanks for standing up for our platoon mate, guys.”
Katie shrugged. “Face it, Batts. Kahn is an asshole.”
Sully nodded in agreement. “She’s right. I’d drive ninety miles an hour on winter roads and fight a dozen pissed off bad guys to save his neck, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s an asshole.” He thought about it for a moment, then added, “West Coast.”
Katie looked askance at him, but he shook his head at her.
Whatever, she thought to herself. Those two had so many inside jokes between them that it was like their own little language or something.
“If that’s settled, let’s debrief tonight’s events,” Tower said, his voice dropping into a slightly more official tone. “Aside from the incident under the bridge, what’s your input?”
No one answered right away. When Katie looked up, she realized everyone was looking at her. She reached for water glass and took a drink.
“Do you feel safe, MacLeod?” Tower asked her.
A surge of anger spiked in her chest at his question. “As safe as any police operation,” she said coolly. “Listen, guys. I’m sorry about the bridge thing. I guess I was a little jumpy, but I’m fine now.” She looked around at each of them. “Really.”
Sully and Battaglia nodded. She could tell they believed her. That was expected. They’d worked with her for over a year now. They knew how she handled herself on the job.
Tower didn’t respond to her statement. He merely watched her, his eyes appraising her constantly while he sipped his coffee. It made Katie nervous and angry at the same time.
“There is something I’d change, though,” she said, moving the conversation away from her feelings and to something more concrete.
“What?” Tower asked.
“This,” she said, setting the brick-shaped transmitter and all its wires on the table in front of him.
“You don’t want to be wired?”
“Not with this. It’s awkward and probably visible, even through my clothes. Plus, if our guy spots it on me, he won’t take the bait.”
Tower sipped his coffee, then shrugged. “Sorry, MacLeod. We’re not the FBI. We don’t have the latest and greatest equipment. We’re River City PD, which means-”
“Which means we’ve got crap,” Battaglia finished.
Tower didn’t argue. “We’ve got what we got.”
“Can you give it to the tech guy and see if he can rig it to look like a walkman?” Katie asked. “Then I can wear jogging clothes and it’ll look like I’m listening to music.”
“What about your gun and other gear?”
“I have a fanny pack that’ll work.”
Tower nodded. “Okay, I’ll drop it off this morning and see what they can do. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Katie said. “Can I get some new back up other than these two clowns?”
Tower chuckled. “Nice.”
Battaglia and Sully exchanged a glance.
Katie used the moment of silence, which she knew was the calm before the storm, to sip her water and lean back in her chair. She knew that the exaggerated Irish and Italian accents would come out next, that the insults would fly, that the waitress would be back to flirt with Sully some more and that when it was all finished, she would be ready to go home and sleep.
Things were once again as they were supposed to be.
0756 hours
Heather Torin rose from a night of broken sleep and drifted into the kitchen. She rummaged around for a coffee filter in the cupboard. Suppressing a yawn, she slipped the filter into the coffee-maker, dumped in some coffee and poured water. Then she hit the start button. The ritual had become such second nature that she sometimes barely remembered being awake for it.
She opened her front door. Outside, heavy droplets of rain cascaded downward, thumping loudly on the plastic-covered newspaper. She retrieved the paper, shook off the excess water and went back inside. The cool, wet air served to wake her up. As she unwrapped the River City Herald and threw away the plastic wrapping around it, the smell of brewing coffee brought her some familiar comfort.
Routine was how she’d battled her depression in the past two months. The security she had known her entire life living in a city that was once voted as an “All-American City” had been shattered on that wet day early in March. Since then, she’d kept to her routine, clinging to it with urgency. She rose from bed. She drank her coffee and read the paper. She ate breakfast. She went to work, ate lunch, came home. In the evening, she watched mindless drivel on television — situational comedies, for the most part — and kept her brain from having to revisit those frightening moments in Clemons Park.
It seemed to work.
Most of the time.
Most of the time, she was so busy focused on the task or activity at hand, her mind didn’t have the opportunity to wander. That focus, coupled with her familiar routine, kept the rising panic in her chest at bay, even though she sometimes still jumped at sounds in her office. Even though she still viewed every man who walked past her with fear and suspicion. Despite all of that, she kept it under control.
Most of the time.
But not at night.
It was her dreams that had her at a disadvantage. She couldn’t push them aside with routine or busying about some task. She was vulnerable to whatever dreams may come, and those that came seemed bent on some sort of emotional revenge for having been suppressed during her waking hours. In vivid detail, she heard the sound of her own pounding feet through the wooded area. She felt him knock her to the ground. She smelled the damp earth. She saw her own vision blur with tears.
Only, in her dreams, these terrible dreams, he didn’t stop. He didn’t run away. In her dreams, he finished his cruel assault on her. He tore at her clothing. He struck her. He screamed at her-
I’ll lay the whammo on you, bitch!
— until she stopped fighting him and covered her ears. And then it became worse. Then came the sex. In her dreams, it was a cold, cutting hardness. In her dreams, she cried out, but no one came to help her.
Now, in the light of the morning, she poured a cup of coffee and tried to shake free of those dreams. She settled into the chair at her kitchen table and opened the newspaper.
The headline blared at her from above the fold.