Katie turned to see a heavy-set bearded man sitting in one of the alcoves. His placid features were immediately familiar to her. After a second, she recognized him. It was Dan, the Forty-eight who liked Emerson. Or thought he tasted like some kind of condiment. She wondered if he was still in the hospital from the call she had with him last week or if this was a completely new trip.
Before she could answer, Dan’s flat expression turned to a scowl of concern. “Oh,” he said. “Cop got hurt.”
In the next instant, the Dale Earnhardt of the nursing profession had her out of Dan’s sight.
Katie sighed to herself.
Cop got hurt? Yeah, you could say that.
Just as quickly, the threesome reached the entrance. “Okay,” said the nurse. “Here we are.”
Katie stood slowly. Chisolm reached out to help her, but she shook him off with a quick head motion. Once she was on her feet, she opened the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders like a cloak.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said.
She and Chisolm walked out the sliding glass doors of the E.R. toward the nearby row of cars. Chisolm pointed at the blue Ford truck in the second slot underneath the awning. “That’s me.”
Katie nodded and shuffled toward the truck. She was glad that she didn’t have to walk in the rain. It was a cold, spitting mist that she imagined would sink the chill straight to the bone. At the passenger side, Chisolm unlocked the door and opened it for her. This time, she let him help her ease up into the passenger seat. Then he closed the door and went around to the driver’s side.
As the two of them snapped their seatbelts into place, Chisolm broke the silence. “What was up with Nurse Ratched in there?”
Katie grinned, then winced. “Don’t make me laugh, Tom. It hurts to smile.”
“Sorry.” He started the truck and put it in gear. “So where am I headed?”
Katie recited her address, knowing that Chisolm would have no difficulty finding it. That was the way it was with cops in general, her included. They didn’t want directions, just an address. Every one of them knew River City inside and out anyway.
“Sergeant Shen said to give him a call sometime in the next couple of nights to let him know how long you’ll be out,” Chisolm told her, pulling out onto Eighth Avenue.
“Okay.”
Chisolm drove in silence for several minutes. The stop and go motion of the truck made Katie feel tired again. She started thinking about her bed and how good it was going to feel to slip between the covers and sleep for another year or so.
As they pulled onto the Monroe Street Bridge, Chisolm cleared his throat. “Uh, Katie?”
“Yeah?” She stared off to the right toward the falls near the Post Street Bridge. Images of her experience there the previous year flashed through her mind’s eye. It was almost as if she could see herself on the bridge, her pistol pointed at the insane man who stood dangling his own infant son over the edge of the railing. She looked away.
“I’m…sorry,” Chisolm said.
“Huh?”
“I said I’m sorry. I let you down.”
Katie turned his direction. The muscles in his jaw were bunched. He stared straight ahead at the road in front of them.
“Tom, you didn’t — ”
“Yes, I did,” Chisolm interrupted, his voice intense. “I was supposed be your cover and I let you down.”
Katie didn’t want to argue. She just didn’t have the energy. Instead, she adjusted the blanket around her shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” Chisolm said. “I should have been there.”
Katie thought about telling him that he was always there when it counted, but she sensed that he wasn’t going to hear her words. So she simply sighed and murmured, “You were there. And I’m fine. I’m just tired and I want to go home.”
Chisolm didn’t reply. He just kept driving.
FIFTEEN
Wednesday, April 24th
Day Shift
1109 hours
After calling sick into work, something he had done only twice since taking the job, he gathered up a notebook and a pen. Then he headed to the library.
The newspaper article had been perfect. Not only did the reporter detail the task force’s unsuccessful attempts to trap him and thereby neuter the cops, but there’d been an additional benefit. The bitch he nearly killed was identified in the article as Officer Katie MacLeod (said to be “resting comfortably” at the hospital, he noted with disappointment). That revelation made him so happy that he almost considered a second phone call just to thank the reporter for supplying the information. But that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. It wasn’t worth it.
There were other risks, though — ones he was willing to take. But that would take some careful planning.
At the library, he headed to the newspaper archives in the basement. He had some research to do.
2218 hours
Officer Matt Westboard cruised down Madison Street toward downtown. He was returning from Sacred Heart Hospital, where he’d dropped off another Forty-eight. Unlike the one he’d helped Katie with the previous week, this person’s mental problem was more dangerous. She’d been threatening to kill herself with pills. Once she voiced that threat to Westboard, he had little choice but to transport her to the Mental Health ward for an evaluation.
Gratefully, such calls generated only a brief report. He was already down a burglary report in addition to this mental health hold and his shift was barely more than an hour old. He wondered if it were going to be that sort of night — the kind where he got buried under an avalanche of paper.
Westboard passed Second Avenue and continued north. He was getting into an area of downtown that bustled with drugs and other criminal activity, most of it culminating on a stretch of First Avenue known as The Block. Every time he drove through this section of downtown on his way back north, he seemed to get side-tracked with something. It never failed. As if to offer proof in the matter, he spotted a woman mid-way up the street. She leaned into a car window at the curbside, cocking her hip provocatively to the side. Her huge mane of blond hair bounced as she bobbed her head in agreement with whatever the driver was saying.
Westboard recognized her as a prostitute immediately. He slowed down and watched.
With an almost prey-sense, she looked up and saw his patrol car. She glanced back at the driver and said something. The driver looked over at Westboard’s approaching vehicle. Without hesitation, he pulled from the curb and drove away. The woman did the same thing, walking quickly in the opposite direction.
Westboard debated briefly as to whether to stop the hooker or the john. Truth be told, his sympathies lay more with the prostitute, but he knew that it was better to attack supply than demand.
He pulled alongside her, angling his car toward the curb and coming to a stop just ahead of her path. Then he activated his overhead flashers.
The woman didn’t try to run. She threw up her hands in mild frustration, then crossed them and waited.
Westboard advised radio of his location, then exited the patrol car. “How’s it going?” he asked pleasantly.
“Fine until you showed up,” the hooker shot back.
Westboard nodded knowingly as he approached. “Isn’t that how it always is? The cops show up and spoil the fun.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, unsure how to take him. “Usually,” she answered.
Westboard stopped next to her. She looked around twenty-five years old to him. At this range, he could see the acne scars that she was trying to hide with heavy makeup. The woman was thin with very little curve in the hip. Westboard made her for a heroin user. She wasn’t twitchy enough for a crack whore.
“Do you have any I.D.?” he asked.
She sighed, then reached into her small purse and withdrew a driver’s license.