BLUE BLOOD RUNS COLD (A Michael Ross Novel Book 1) (8 page)

              “Did the chief say anything about anyone who might have had a vendetta against Bailey?”

              “Yeah, I did ask that. The chief said anyone and everyone hates cops these days. You see a cop in Ferguson or Baltimore or New York shooting a guy in the back, kicking a woman in the face, beating up an old lady, maybe it's easy to think that all cops are bad. They don't count on guys like us, ground-pounders going out there every day trying to do our best. I mean, what's the world coming to anymore when the people who are supposed to inspire trust instead inspire suspicion and fear?”

              Billy held up a hand. Then he continued, “Okay, okay, I know. You don't have to tell me. I know that look on your face. Stop beating around the bush. All right, just the facts. The facts are these. Officer Bailey kept a list of names in a notebook. There's no title to it, just a long list of names. The chief says it was found this morning when Bailey's locker was being cleaned out. You want to take a guess whose name was on it?”

              Michael didn't have to guess. He said, “Shannon Moore.”

              “Bingo. What happened between Bailey and Moore was a revenge thing for Bailey. What caused him to have a grudge, I don't know. Only it seems that one existed, and that's why he assaulted her yesterday.”

              “So there may have been a history of personal animosity between those two, right? And maybe yesterday was the culmination of something that had been building up for a while.”

              “That’s what I was thinking, too. But we can't prove any of it, not with a notebook alone. All we've got is a supposition.”

              He then remembered why his partner had gone out to the police station in the first place. He said, “Did the chief tell you anything about why Bailey was out there so late at night?”

              “Nada, he's in the dark as much as anyone. Bailey wasn't on the duty roster until next Monday. He had no reason to be on campus, much less in uniform with all his gear.”

              “So what we're saying is, a cop on campus took it into his head to get some extra overtime duty without being paid for it. For what purpose, only he knew. Do they have a sign-out log for each piece of equipment? Sign out your gun, your flashlight, your spray can, your belt, that sort of thing?”

              Billy sighed. “I asked that, too. First thing that came into my head. No, they don't have a sign-out system. They've never had a problem with theft, or property going missing. Never.”

              Michael laid back in his seat, thinking. He said, “You know, when I first got into the force—this was a few months after leaving the service—my instructor gave a welcoming speech to the class. He said some of us are born to be officers, some of us look at it as just as job. A handful of us are criminals. Even after all these years, after seeing everything I've seen, I couldn't quite believe that some officers are just felons in training.”

              “Oh? And Bailey has changed your mind? Because he was out there doing god knows what in the middle of the night on a Friday?”

              “I don't know, maybe. It's more like, the lines are lot more blurry than they used to be. There's a lot more gray, and a lot less black and white. The truth is twenty-five-sided die whose numbers keep changing. Roll it once, and who knows what will turn up?”

              Michael took a gulp of Gatorade. He said, “Well, what we have to do now is talk to Shannon. Guess we'd better mosey.”

              “In the hospital, treating her as our primary suspect? You think that's gonna fly?”

              “She might not be our primary suspect. I don't know yet. I checked up on her while you were at the police station. Apparently, she's a member of this student group called To Write Love on Her Arms. Recovery from violence and abuse, that sort of thing. The executive board was listed on the university website. Would you believe who was also on that board?”

              Billy put down his fork, upon which he had speared three pickle slices. He said, “I don't know, who?”

              “Zachary Tyler, the kid who brought a gun to campus three years ago. He's the treasurer of the group.”

              “No
bueno
, man. For real? So what, you think Tyler provided the gun and Moore took the shot?”

              “Either that, or Tyler did it himself. You know what I'm going to ask when we get to the hospital, don't you?”

              “I know what I would ask. But man, sometimes you're still a mystery to me. I've known you all this while, and still I don't get you. You have more money than god, but you live in that glorified shack of yours. You're ahead of your time with all the technology you have, but you drive that old car. When I try to figure you out, I just go around in circles.”

              Michael grinned. He said, “I just believe in using everything for as long as it can be used. But I guess, since you don't know what my questions will be, I'll leave that for later.”

              “And have me going in blind, not knowing what the game plan is? Come on man, fill me in.”

              After Michael ate the last of his creamed spinach, he told his partner everything he wanted to ask, and everything he wanted to find out.

1

              At first, it had been the switch, a length of plant taken from she knew not where. Then, as she grew older, it had been the belt. As a child, she had never truly understood why her father beat her with a switch, why he came home some nights reeking of alcohol and furious at the world. She blamed him, then she blamed herself. She blamed her mother for being quiet as a mouse on those nights, never standing up to him. He had never beaten his wife, never in the eighteen years she had suffered in that spotless, antiseptic house. All she knew was that she was the only one who got beaten, the only one who had her pants taken off while an erection grew inside his pants.

              She began cutting at age nine. One day, she found a used-up kitchen knife in the trash, replaced with something new. It had been the knife her mother had used to cut cantaloupe. That was also the way of it in her father's house: nothing was ever valued, nothing ever lasted. As soon as something new came around, into the trash with everything old. That her father made enough money to buy new things on a regular basis had never been a comfort for her, or for him. The excessive amount of money he made working for the state government had only been a curse. It gave him more opportunities to throw his weight around the house, which made everyone miserable.

              The first cut was on her forearm. Rivulets of blood dripped into the toilet, making red wavy lines that she stared at for a long time. Then, she cut her other arm in the same place with precisely the same pressure, watching more blood drip slowly into the toilet. Then, she felt a wave of shame crash upon her—shame that she would try to injure herself when her father did his best at a job he hated just so she could eat and have clothing to wear. She put Neosporin cream and bandages on the wounds, then shrugged her long-sleeve shirt over her head. That she wore long sleeves for the next two weeks suited her father just fine, for he made a point of grabbing her arms with such fierceness that afterward, she found finger-shaped bruises on her arms. She didn't mind the bruises; she found them comforting. She traced the tips of her fingernails across the outline of the bruises while she lay in bed at night. Abuse was the only attention her father gave her; she both valued it and despised it.

              She tried not to cut herself after her tenth birthday. She had always been careful not to cut too deep, and to always wait before the last batch healed before she started another. There were times, in the interlude between cuttings, when she felt a strong urge to go to the bathroom, flip open the toilet lid and put the knife against her arm. Some nights, she sat in bed crying, so strong was the desire to wound herself. When finally the time came, she felt a blessed relief as of the release of tension when she was finally able to let her tainted blood flow out of her.

              At age twelve, she read how, in the Middle Ages, doctors used leeches to extract blood from a patient's body. The belief had been that bad blood was the cause of any distemper. She wondered if those people hadn't been on to something; when she cut, she felt better. The knife that her parents had thrown away served her well. Over time, she understood that she would have to buy her own bandages, without her parents' knowledge. Some days, when she left the house without permission, her father took out the belt. Other days, he ignored her, too wrapped up in shouting at the computer at the latest error message box that popped up.

              She felt both horror and shock when she realized that her breasts were growing in. Her chest had always been flat, always the same without changing. Then, something new appeared. The brown circles on her chest grew wider while two round, curvy mounds of flesh protruded outward. Even though she knew that women had breasts—for she had once seen her mother's by accident—she never expected that she would grow any. She had always felt envious of women with large chests. She often spent time with the advertisements that came with the Sunday newspaper, looking at the women wearing nothing but braziers and underwear. Those women smiled with a confidence that she could only pretend to have. Having breasts, to her, meant fully being a woman.

              As much as she had longed for a full chest, when one came, she found herself disgusted beyond reason. She threw a pillow across the room—for that was all that she could throw which wouldn't draw unwanted attention. She stared at it for a moment and, her fury not sated, she knelt before it and swung her fists downwards upon it. Being given, as if by pure chance, the penultimate symbol of womanhood was something she did not deserve. She was a small girl with small hands, thin bony legs, and the ghosts of scars all over her arms. If there was a God, she decided that he was a trickster to give her something that she had really wanted. She never got anything she wanted before, not even for Christmas when the single present she received every year was a bottle of shampoo purchased at the dollar store. She collected those bottles until she had a row of them on the desk in her room, the only manifestation of kindness that she knew.

              The next cutting session came before her left arm had fully healed. She took off her shirt and brought the knife up against her right breast. Her hand shook while she tried not to think about cutting off all of her breast entirely. She didn't want that; just a touch would do, just another rivulet and another bandage. That was all that she wanted.

              When the knife bit into her flesh, she cried out. She had bumped her chest against a door frame before, and it had hurt then. She hadn't thought that any part of her body could be more sensitive than any other part. She dropped the knife on the floor. It clattered against the clean white tiles. Blood dribbled out of her chest in slow but steady stream. She gathered up some toilet paper and pressed it against the wound, hoping that no one had heard.

              Someone had. He came tromping across the hallway with his usual heavy steps. He knocked on the door and said in a rough voice, “Girl, you better not be fooling around in there!”

              She pulled the toilet paper away from her breast. Soon blood appeared again. Tears welled up in her eyes when she thought of what her father might do to her. He had always been vindictive and spiteful, even when he was in a good mood. He put a meaty fist against the door and knocked. He snarled. “I heard something. I know I did. Now what did I tell you about answering me when I talk to you? Eh? You don't want to make me angry.”

              A rueful smile crossed over her face when she thought that he was always angry, even when he was happy. He delighted in the misery of others. He always saw events in his life in the most negative way possible. He had everything he had ever wanted: a home, a stable job, two cars, more than enough food to eat, an expensive television that let him watch Netflix whenever he chose, and complete, unquestioned command of his household. He was a king on his own property, yet he acted like a prisoner of circumstance.

              She knew that there was nothing for it. The blood just wouldn't stop. With her shirt off, her bare chest showing, and a bloody wad of toilet paper against the underside of her breast, she opened the door. Her father stood there in mute disbelief for a moment. Of all the emotions she had expected, shock had not been among them. He said, “Damn girl, get yourself together.”

              Then, he walked away.

              Somehow—and she did not understand how—his disregard was a worse punishment than any physical attack he could inflict on her. She let the toilet paper fall to the floor in front of the door, then sat on the cold tiles while blood continued to flow. After a time, it stopped. By then, a small puddle the size of her hand had gathered on the floor. She sat there, trying to cry, heaving dry sobs, hating herself and her life.

              Her mother found her there a half hour later. The woman didn't say a word. She merely forced a shirt over her daughter’s chest, then led her away to her bedroom. Shannon Moore sat at the edge of her bed, the image of her father's mute horror burned into her mind. She knew it for the rejection that it was. Her father had rejected her in her deepest pain. There was nothing that he need have said, for his facial expression had conveyed everything to her.

              In time, her chest wound healed. She swore off cutting herself, for now whenever she took her knife to the bathroom to find release, she instead saw her father's disgusted face. She couldn't bring herself to cut anymore, even if she wanted. Instead, she came to the dinner table every night, silent as she had ever been. Her father wanted her to talk more, yet when she did talk, he insulted her and called her stupid. Then, while in one of his long diatribes, he called her fat. Shannon immediately pinched her belly and knew it to be true. Though the pediatrician had said she could stand to put on a few more pounds, she knew that he had spoken true. He said she was stupid, and she knew that she was. He said that she was fat, and she knew that she was.

              Her thin, bony index finger went into her mouth after supper. The white porcelain toilet, whom she thought of as her only friend, flushed as it always did when she threw up her supper. She threw up twice more before nothing but watery bile came out. Then, queasy and light-headed, she wiped the toilet bowl clean and washed her hands. She staggered into her room, the homework she had to do forgotten. She no longer cared whether there was a math problem that needed solving, or a chapter in a book that needed reading. She wanted to lay in bed and close her eyes. She wanted to forget about the world and everything in it. She knew that she had first been a cutter, and now she was anorexic. She could no longer cry over her own uselessness, for crying never helped. The momentary relief she felt never changed her situation. It never made her father less angry, or caused her mother to speak her mind. It just made her feel weak. Crying only confirmed what she already knew: she was a stupid, powerless, ignorant, foolish, fat girl. When she lay in bed listening to the sounds of the house settling around her, she thought that it would have been better if she had never been born.

              Time passed as she continued eating and throwing up, as her father had to call a plumber to fix the plumbing, which had been worn away from Shannon's stomach acids. She continued living, for what she did not know, going through the motions of each day, trying her best to find anything to keep her mind off herself. She drowned her world in music and books. Once she started reading Nancy Drew stories, she found that she couldn't stop. There was something about Carolyn Keene's protagonist that Shannon liked. Here was a girl who had enough confidence to take the world head-on with more cleverness than Shannon had believed possible.

              She began taking books everywhere with her—to the grocery store, to school, to the gas station, to the bathroom, to the dinner table, everywhere. Reading, she found, served as both entertainment and an excuse to keep people from talking to her. She didn't have to think quite so much when she read. She didn't have to look at the small white marks on her arms, visible only to her, or about the urge to rush to the toilet where she would disgorge as much as she could. She wanted to be alone, for she was not any good to anyone. Solitude, she had found, provided the perfect respite from her life.

              That was, until she met a young man with wavy blond hair and green eyes like sparkling emeralds. He hid his eyes behind thick, awkward glasses. She found him in the library while she browsed for small blue books containing the plays of Shakespeare. The text in those books had been very small to the point where she had to avoid reading them in places with strong sunlight lest she get spots before her eyes. She had been particularly fond of both parts of Henry IV, a story about a young man ready to inherit his father's throne and the rascals with whom he kept company.

              While she had picked up Henry V, the next play in the story, the man beside her picked out Coriolanus, a story she had disliked from the start. It was a story about violence and gore. People had their arms cut off. When she had read it, she thought that Shakespeare had written it just to see how much he could get away with. Though she didn't like the story, when it was in that graceful, gentle hand, she found that she could not say or think a bad word against it. The stranger beside her, so handsome, so bright-eyed, transformed that which she liked least into that which she liked best.

              He had smelled strongly of pine needles and grass. He had been outside for a long time, she reasoned. When he looked up at her, she felt her entire body stop, mesmerized by his gaze. She knew that, to him, it was nothing more than a casual encounter. He saw nothing special in her, for how could he? Nevertheless, she forced herself not to blush, suspecting that her cheeks flared up anyway.

              She took a step forward and said, “Hi.”

              He said, “Hi there. Do you read Shakespeare, too? I've never seen you in here before. Think I would have remembered a face like yours.”

              As soon as he said that, she knew that she had been wrong. She had it all backwards. Isolation wasn't the best way to make herself feel better. If that were so, she would have felt nothing when she met him. There had to be something that other people could provide that she could not provide for herself. She said, “I'm Shannon. Who are you?”

              When he gave her his name, she decided that she would treasure it for the rest of her life. She did not imagine that five years later, she would have trouble even remembering his face, or that he would not be the only person to take interest in her. Neither did she imagine that she would one day find herself in a hospital bed with a dislocated shoulder while her mother looked as though the world had come to an end.