Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1) (3 page)

I am on my toes and jump back and dance to the left. He circles and gives a head fake in my direction like he’s going to charge. I jump again and he smiles. He’s way too cool about this; he’s done it before. His next move is a step left and then right. I lean the wrong way and he slashes at my face with a wide sweep of the knife. My head jerks back and he misses, but I swear I felt the air on my cheek. His feints and parries make reaching for my gun next to impossible. For the first time, I wonder if I should’ve waited for Don.

Simply evading the knife isn’t working. If the punk can go on the offensive, so can I. I stutter to my left and he mirrors it. I quickly spin right this time and let loose a round-house kick that I bet is beautiful to behold. Not as fine as a Jackie Chan move, but well executed.

But the punk ducks under my kick and I miss his head. I catch some shoulder and he stumbles. I pounce with a combination jab to his ribs and jaw. I thought I had him nailed, but this dude knows how to slip a punch. He staggers back, instantly recovers, and kicks at me. I rotate sideways so his shoe scuffs my hip with no damage. He takes a step back but lunges straight at me, steel in hand leading the way. This punk is fast. And sneaky. I move to block his knife thrust. He anticipates that perfectly and throws a tight left hook that clips the edge of my chin. Way too close. I try to hook his foot and trip him. He jumps and spins, slashing at me again. I catch his wrist and use his momentum to half-turn him. I finally connect with all my weight behind a punch to his kidneys. It doesn’t put him down, but from the sound he makes, I know I hurt him. Suddenly he throws an elbow that catches me square in the side of the head. My ears ring. But I hold on to his arm and jam a knuckle into his upper back, digging for the suprascapular nerve, which should put him on the ground and slow his arm movement.

He’s a fighter. He almost catches me with a back head snap and when I flinch he is free again, but not without me getting a nice kick to his right quad just above the knee. A little lower and he’d be down for the count. A foot and a half higher and he’d sing soprano in the choir. We face each other. Both of us are in fighting position and looking for an opening to attack. He is limping, but I’ve learned not to trust appearances with him—he’s sly and resourceful. I dart in and get a combination to his torso but miss the solar plexus. I am back out as his knife slashes through air. Slower than before. I’ve got him. I’m crouched and ready to spin in either direction. Our eyes meet and lock.

His eyes dilate. He drops the knife and raises his arms.

Don walks past me calmly, his gun aimed at the center of the punk’s chest.

“Keep your hands where I can see them, kick the knife to the side, and get down on your knees.” There’s a nanosecond of hesitation and Don shouts, “Now!”

“Make it easy for us and I’ll make it easy for you,” I add as I push him flat on his face, maybe with a little extra nudge, and cuff his hands behind him. I see blood splatters on the shiny metal.

Don keeps the gun trained on the punk as he hits a speed button on his cell phone to tell the uniforms where we are.

“We got him,” he says to me as he snaps his flip phone shut. “We?” I ask him, but not loud enough or with enough conviction to start a fight.

Then he says, “You need to listen to your partner and stand down next time.”

“One of us needs to catch bad guys,” I storm back. “And by the way, it’s only a flesh wound, so I’m fine. Thanks for asking how I’m doing.”

We glare at each other until his phone chirps again.

Don’s a great partner and I won’t stay mad. Neither will he. I don’t think he will. I like that he is a big time family guy. He’s got an almost stay-at-home wife and a girl and a
boy
—bless my poor dad’s jealous heart, he just had me and my two sisters. Talk about a committed guy, Don doesn’t smoke, drink, cuss—at least not much, which is saying a lot in our line of work. And great for me as a partner, he doesn’t flirt and would never think about fooling around on his wife. I’m not trying to be presumptuous, but let’s be honest: when you’re a female in a male-dominated work environment, inappropriate things get hinted at. And sometimes not hinted, just said outright. What is it with some guys always testing the waters? Sometimes the married ones are the worst.

Don has a finger stuck in his free ear and is growling directions to someone. He glances over where I lean against a big green trash dumpster, a blood-soaked sleeve. Is that guilt in his eyes? I hope so. I hear sirens heading our way. No time to fight with the partner. I roll back my sleeve to see how deep the cut is.

3

IT’S 7:00 ON a Saturday morning. There are no cars in line at the JavaStar drive-through, but I refuse to pay almost five bucks for a cup of steamed java and not get at least a little ambience to go with my caffeine. I have to be at the soccer fields in thirty minutes, so at most, I’ve got ten minutes to sit in an orange vinyl chair, savor the image of coffee beans overflowing from burlap sacks on terra cotta wallpaper, watch sleepy people in sweatshirts read their papers, and listen to a soundtrack with number-one hits by the Beatles, sung by people like Bono, Carrie Underwood, Mick Jagger, Sheryl Crow, and John Mayer. John Mayer doing “Revolution”? I like his music but it’s not the right song for a crooner. Someone in Seattle has very weird taste in music.

“What can I get for you this morning?” a guy with a tongue stud and a green apron asks me with a little too much enthusiasm for a Saturday morning. He should know I haven’t had my coffee yet.

“Quad-shot, one Splenda, grande soy latte,” I answer carefully and clearly. If you don’t say things in the right order, for the next five minutes you’ll be explaining that, no, it’s only one Splenda, not four, and yes, four shots of espresso, not one.

He writes my order on the cup and asks if he can get my name. There is no one behind me in line nor currently awaiting an order. I am about to ask him how hard it’s really going to be to identify me and make sure I get the right drink when it’s finished, but I’m working on my attitude, so I answer nicely, “Kristen.”

He asks if Kristen is spelled with a
K
or a
C,
and it’s all I can do not to threaten him bodily harm if he doesn’t have someone start grinding beans and pushing buttons on the spaceship console they use to make coffee. Taking a breath, I answer, “K.”

Then he tries to entice me with a pastry.

“No, thank you,” I answer with all the matching polite earnestness I can muster. Can he tell I’m faking it?

It’s been a tiring week. We arrested Jared Incaviglia, the punk, but Don ruined a $300 pair of shoes, which the department is not going to reimburse him for, and he was in a foul mood all day Friday. I looked it up online and told him that Allen Edmonds will refurbish his shoes for free if he’ll pay for the shipping each direction. That useful information didn’t help his mood a bit.

“Those bad boys were brand-new,” he told me. “I don’t want refurbished.”

“Can you tell a difference?” I asked him.

“Yes, I can.”

Okay.
A wrinkle on the front of a dress shirt is traumatic for Don, so I’m not convinced any of the rest of us will be able to notice a small scuff on one of his shoes hidden by freshly applied shiny black polish.

I ended up doing all the paperwork for the arrest, which is only slightly more appealing than jumping into a tank of sharks with a bloody nose, but Don did brighten up in time to smile widely and vigorously shake hands with the deputy commissioner of the CPD, who wanted to personally congratulate us for our fine work. Commander Czaka thanked me too, but my handshake was a lot shorter and less enthusiastic. Did that have anything to do with our recent heated email exchanges? Being the ace detective I am, I suspect yes. I think he gave me a dirty look with the handshake. I think I returned the favor.
Dumb.

I’ll give Don credit. He carefully pointed out that I was first on scene and that I was the one who got the tip in the first place. He pointed out my bandaged left wrist, which was embarrassing. Doc doesn’t think it will leave much of a scar. What’s “much of ”? I still accused Don of being a glory hog afterward. His mind was still on his shoes—and he was worried the dry cleaner wouldn’t be able to get the nacho cheese sauce off a silk tie he really likes—so he hasn’t taken the bait and fought with me. Sissy.

Then, twenty minutes before end of shift, my boss, Captain Karl Zaworski, head of detectives for the Second Precinct, called me into his office. He let me know that Jared, the punk, felt his civil rights were violated by the “excessive force” of my grinding his face into the ground.

Excessive force? Jared better hope I don’t get to spend time alone with him in an interview room.

Once the phrase “excessive force” is added to your personnel files, the CO has the option to immediately suspend you with or without pay pending further review, which Zaworski didn’t do. But my work on the case just got a whole lot tougher. Some defense attorney is going to have a heyday with this to try and tie a jury up in knots. After a terse meeting with the captain, I logged back onto my computer and went back over the paperwork, making sure I dotted every
i
and crossed every
t
twice.

Internal Affairs will be called in to investigate me, Zaworski informed me, and as every cop in America will tell you, IA is not your best friend under such circumstances. Meetings with them are rarely pleasant. Of course, I’d be in a bad mood if I spent all day trying to fire cops, too. Okay, I’m not being fair. There are bad cops who need to get the boot.

The timing for this kind of scrutiny is never good, but based on a few conflicts I’ve had—namely with Commander Czaka—this couldn’t come at a worse time.

“Kirsten,” my barista announces loudly enough for the crowd across the street at Dunkin’ Donuts to hear. I am five feet away from him and he is looking right at me. Is there the start of a smug smile on his face? Since he got my name wrong, Kirsten instead of Kristen, I hope he at least said it with a
K
.

I ask for a java jacket to keep my fingers from burning off, which for the price, should have been slipped on the paper cup without my asking. Java jackets are now in the same category as having a clean new towel each day of an extended stay in a hotel. You can have it but not without feeling a little guilty for destroying the planet. I’m not feeling guilty today. I consider sitting a minute in the funky chair they might have bought from the Jetsons’ garage sale, but look at my watch and head for the door instead.

I wonder again why I am not sleeping in. That would, of course, be because I’m the coach of my niece’s soccer team. Her name is Kendra. All the girls’ names in my family start with the letter
K.
My sisters are Klarissa and Kaylen. I guess we’re just special that way. A guy friend from my high school days called us the Special K girls. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment since he would usually add that Special K girls deserve special education.

Kendra is seven. My older sister, Kaylen, thought it’d be great for Kendra if Aunt Kristen was her coach. I played competitive soccer after all, and neither she nor Jimmy ever played the sport. To satisfy his own competitive impulses, Jimmy said he played on the chess team and was a regular at the science fair. Tell me he was joking.

I wanted to ask Kaylen if seven-year-olds need someone with my playing experience as coach, or if having a parent, preferably one with infinite patience and a low-stress job, wouldn’t be better. I congratulated myself on keeping those thoughts unspoken; Kaylen would have just spent an hour explaining to me—in that annoyingly sweet and patient way she has—that being a full-time mom has its own stressors.

“How much time is required to coach?” I asked.

“The girls are only allowed one practice a week and then Saturday games,” she answered, while trying not to smile triumphantly.

• • •

Our team name is the Snowflakes—Coach Kristen wasn’t consulted—and our uniforms are naturally, uh, yellow. Wasn’t there an old song that warned us about yellow snow?

The zinger was when Kaylen asked if it would be too much for me to pick up Kendra for pre-game warm-ups when we were scheduled for early games. That way she could sleep in a few extra minutes.

“We’ll be there before the game starts,” she said. “We’ll never miss.”
Of course not.
And since their house is only a few miles out of the way, it really wouldn’t be any extra work for me. Did someone tape a sign on my forehead that spells s-u-c-k-e-r?

I said yes, of course. Kaylen and Jimmy are the nicest people in the world. He’s a pastor. They’re really busy and need a little help with their two kids. Mom told Klarissa and me that Jimmy and Kaylen are working on number three. Should I ask how much work is really involved?

Since I spend my days chasing thugs like Jared in back alleys, I need to be with a group of Snowflakes, I guess. Despite my expert training—and being the only coach of seven-year-olds who insists that the team show up thirty minutes early for warm-ups and drills—we’ve lost all our games so far. But it’s a new day. The girls don’t seem to mind the losses as much as the parents. Or me. I wonder if I would get reported to the commissioner for doing some extra practice sessions the next couple of weeks.