“The shots fired on Johnson and Fletcher didn’t feel like a hoax to me—”
“Gentlemen, the letter. May I?” Dr. Morgan held out his hand. Belatedly Mike dug out a folded copy of the letter from his breast pocket and handed it over. The doctor needed only a minute.
“Ah, here’s your problem. She was inside the house when the bullet caught her. That complicates matters. A large-caliber bullet could certainly pass through Sheetrock or a window while retaining enough force to be deadly, but we don’t know if that was the bullet’s true trajectory.”
Mike and Koontz got it. They muttered the one word together as a single curse. “Ricochet.”
“Precisely. If the bullet came from a long distance away, or ricocheted off other objects first, there’s a good chance it dispersed the majority of its force before impacting the subject’s cheek. Now we’re talking the possibility of a minor injury. The bullet penetrates the cheek, then lodges beneath the tongue. Any ER doc could irrigate the wound and stitch her back up.”
“But we’re talking a major hole in someone’s cheek,” Koontz tried.
Dr. Morgan shook his head. “It’s no longer medically relevant, gentlemen. Cheeks are little more than skin and muscle. A doctor would stitch it back up and it would heal. Certainly, there would be damage. The patient would lose muscle tone in that side of her face, she would be unable to smile with that half of her mouth. But in terms of vital functions like chewing, swallowing…” He shrugged again. “For her sake, I’m sorry to say that follow-up surgery would no longer be considered a medical necessity.”
Mike sighed heavily. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and yet he could. “So there’s a good chance she never had any reconstruction done. She went to the ER, received one helluva stitching job, and that was that.”
“It’s definitely possible. You need more information, gentlemen. There’s just not enough here. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Dr. Morgan handed them the letter, gathered up his file, and led them to the door.
Two minutes later, they were sitting back in their car, Koontz at the wheel. Eight-thirty in the morning. The sun was shining. The day was cold and bright. And their best lead had just been shot to hell.
“Time for plan B,” Mike said.
“We don’t have a plan B.”
“Sure we do. Dr. Mayes’s suggestion. Let’s talk to the gangbangers.”
Koontz rubbed his hands around the steering wheel. “I think we should review the information we already have,” he said, “before we get too far ahead.”
“We don’t have information, Koontz. We have paper.”
“You never know. Sometimes you get little nuggets here and there, and you just don’t recognize them as leads at the time. You have to sift through again to see them.”
“Yeah, sure. It happens.” Mike waited a moment. He saw from the tight set of Koontz’s jaw that Sandy had been right. Koontz didn’t want to do the interviews in the east side and this was how it was going to go down.
“Why don’t we split up?” Koontz muttered shortly. “I can mull over the paperwork. You hit the streets.”
“I can do the interviews,” Mike said.
“Cool.” Koontz turned on the car and shifted it into gear. He pulled them out onto the road and headed for the department. Mike didn’t say anything more, though for the first time in eight years with Rusty, he was disappointed. His partner had copped out on him, especially after Mike had sworn to Sandra that he wouldn’t.
And then Mike started thinking. How many interviews of African-Americans had Rusty been present for? Mike could picture his partner in interrogation rooms. He could picture him leading cuffed suspects into the holding cell. But the preliminary interviews, working the streets…
Mike was no longer comfortable with where his thoughts were taking him.
Presently Koontz said, “Did I ever tell you about my uncle?”
“An uncle? No, I don’t remember that.”
“Oh. Well, I had an uncle. He took me in after my parents died. A permanent bachelor kind of guy. Lived in a one-bedroom house with laundry piled from floor to ceiling. Couldn’t cook to save his life. Good guy, though. Never complained about suddenly being saddled with his baby sister’s kid. Took me to a lot of Bruins games, got me through high school. Did his job.”
Mike nodded.
“So anyway,” Koontz said, “one night, ten years ago, Frank makes a late-night pretzel run to the local minimart. Bruins are on TV, it’s intermission, you know how that is. He’s got something like seven bucks on him. It’s not enough.”
Koontz turned toward Mike. He said matter-of-factly. “Some eighteen-year-old punk blows him away with a close-range shotgun blast to the chest. Kid’s high as a kite on PCP, and furious my uncle doesn’t have more money. So he lights him up like the Fourth of July in the middle of the minimart. Then he does the cashier. Then he throws down his empty shotgun and digs into the Hostess display. When the cops arrive three minutes later, here’s this skinny black kid, sitting between two dead bodies, licking cream filling off his fingers. Kid got outta jail two years ago. They gave him a light sentence ’cause they said he was too drugged to know what he was doing. Kid was a victim. Kid had a hard life. We white guys can’t possibly know what it’s like to grow up black. Kid’s probably shooting up on a street corner right now. My uncle…well, my uncle is still dead.”
“That’s rough,” Mike said. “You ever look the kid up?”
“No man, I know better.”
“That’s good, Rusty. It’s good to know your limits.”
“I thought about it, though.”
“You didn’t do it. That’s what matters.”
Koontz nodded. They drove in silence the rest of the way to the station. As they pulled in, Mike turned to his partner one last time. “You do the paperwork. I’ll hit the streets.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Koontz. Sorry about your uncle.”
And Koontz said, “I knew you’d understand.”
When Mike approached Sandra about accompanying him downtown to do the interviews, she was elated. After last night’s kiss, she’d gone home and promised herself she’d forget all about him. Instead, she’d dreamed of him over and over again. That had ticked her off and started a fresh wave of resolutions. Which had lasted until she fell asleep again and her ex-husband invaded her dreams.
Frankly, Mike Rawlins was still in her blood. And some part of her—no, a big part of her—was starting to wonder if there might not be some way of making things work out. Funny how one conversation over Chinese food could elicit so much hope. He hadn’t meant to shut her out, she’d found herself thinking at five o’clock. It was merely the side effect of the job. She was a cop now, too; she could understand that. They had fewer differences now, she told herself at five-thirty; more things in common. And still such a spark…
By seven, she’d decided she was thinking too much under the influence of hormones. At nine, he walked into her office, tall, dark and handsome, and she was positive hormones knew best. Then he told her he wanted her to join him interviewing kids on the east side and her fate was sealed. He had listened to her last night. He respected her enough to include her in his job.
The two of them working together to protect the city. It sounded wonderfully romantic and strong.
Then Sandra was promptly terrified. She didn’t know anything about how to talk to kids, let alone inner-city kids. Let alone angry, disillusioned, inner-city kids. She’d struggled enough writing the letter and, having heard nothing back from Vee, she didn’t know if she’d even done that right.
At noon, Sandy called Dr. Mayes. He laughed sympathetically at her fears and gave her some advice for approaching teenagers. Dress the way she normally dressed, talk the way she normally talked. She was who she was, and kids had an inherent distrust of fakery. Yes, they would be hostile toward her in the beginning. That’s what patience was about. Oh, and good luck.
When Mike arrived at her office at two in the afternoon, Sandra was nervous but as ready as she was going to get. She’d selected a simple dove-gray pantsuit with an open jacket and a man’s white dress shirt unbuttoned to below her collarbone. She’d read somewhere that exposing your throat made you appear more approachable. She wasn’t sure if this applied only to vampires, but at least Mike’s gaze lit up.
“Very nice,” he said.
“You don’t think it’s overdone?”
“I honestly have no idea. Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t that one of my old shirts?”
“You’d left it at the dry cleaners. I decided to put it to good use.”
Mike blinked his eyes several times. “My shirt covering your breasts. Honey, that’s just plain erotic.”
“Ah, but will it help you win the pool?”
“To hell with the pool. My interests have gone way beyond money.”
“Too bad,” she murmured as she sauntered out the door. “I would’ve let you buy me another Mai Tai.”
Mike’s face held a reluctant grin as he caught up to her in the corridor. He was still grinning when he held open the car door for her. She could tell he had turned some corner in his mind, too. There was a spark between them, the tension and sizzle she remembered from their dating days. It was combined with a fresh, hesitant vulnerability. They weren’t completely certain of what they were doing, but they were going to do it anyway. At least until it blew up in their faces.
As they headed downtown, however, they both turned to business.
“The sister lead may be a dead end,” Mike said flatly as he negotiated heavy traffic. “We spoke to a plastic surgeon who says her wound may not have been serious enough to warrant surgery. Any results from the letter?”
She shook her head. “No reply has magically appeared on the
Post
’s doorstep. It is early, though. The last two letters were left late at night.”
“Maybe tonight then.”
“Hopefully. Other than that, all I have to show for my efforts is a new nameplate.”
He looked at her quizzically and she filled in, “‘Dear Abby.’ Hey, at least now they’re showing a sense of humor.”
Mike, however, didn’t smile. For the first time, she noted the crow’s-feet creasing the corners of his eyes and the tight carriage of his shoulders. He was worried, she realized, and a moment later, that simple observation rattled her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen easy Mike Rawlins worried before.
“The case is in bad shape,” he said after a moment.
“I know.”
“Koontz is reviewing our notes to see if there’s anything we’ve missed, but at this point I’d say we’re on day three of an investigation into a very dangerous boy and we’ve got
nothing.
”
She nodded.
“Soon we may need another shooting just to have a break in the case, and that’s not a great feeling for a detective. When you’re waiting for the perp to strike again because you need the additional information.”
“Is there anything more I can do? More resources you need, other outside experts?”
He hesitated. She got the definite impression there was something weighing seriously on his mind now, something that troubled him, but he wasn’t sure about sharing.
“Maybe some additional manpower,” he said after a moment. “A few more bodies searching the streets would be nice.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He nodded but didn’t look relieved. “This could be dangerous, Sandy. If I say get down, don’t argue with me, get down. If I yell at you to hide in the car, no heroics,
ma chère.
Hide in the car.”
“I promise to duck, hide, and retreat as necessary. This is your show, Mike, I’ll do as you say.”
“That’s my girl.”
A moment later, they passed into the east side.
Old textile mills came into view, brick facades crumbling and walls sagging on their foundations. When they had arrived two nights ago it had been dark so Sandra hadn’t noticed much. Now she observed the steady change sweeping over the landscape as they descended into low-income housing. Corner grocery stores gave way to pawnshops, delis to bail bond offices. She saw more and more signs advertising lottery tickets and check-cashing services, hope and resources for people who didn’t have much of either.
The buildings grew grayer, streaked with old graffiti paint and not even important enough to be tagged again by newer street artists. More windows were boarded up. More streetlights blown out. More kids roaming the street, though most of them should have been in school.
Sandra could feel the environment press against her. By the time Mike pulled up to an old park with a cracked asphalt basketball court and two broken swings, her expression was sober.
It was easy to write a letter telling a thirteen-year-old child he had choices, she thought. It was harder to stand in a decrepit park on a worn city block and believe. My God, those were discarded hypodermic needles littering that gutter. And that was definitely a used condom hanging from that tree. How did you grow up surrounded by this and still have hope for your future? How could you preserve peace of mind?
A small cluster of teenagers were eyeing them warily from a park bench. Sandra took a deep breath, then followed Mike out of the car. Professional detachment. That’s what she needed.
It was a chilly spring afternoon. The four kids sported heavy coats, two of the young men wearing what appeared to be black down vests with black knit hats. At a glance, Sandra would have guessed that their ages ranged from fourteen to eighteen, plus one toddler who was sitting on a young girl’s lap. The mother appeared to be sixteen and her baby was just at the age where he could stand precariously on her knees. Both the young girl and her child wore matching gold necklaces. Maybe a gift from the dad.
“Afternoon,” Mike said to an audience of sullen stares.
“I’m Detective Mike Rawlins. This is Sandra Aikens, Chief of Police.”
An older boy got to his feet. The self-appointed leader of the group, he climbed down from the table until he stood in front of Mike. He wore a pair of baggy jeans that threatened to slip from his skinny frame. High-top tennis shoes seemed to catch his pants more than protect his feet. His white T-shirt held a red Nike swoosh beneath his down vest. He wasn’t particularly large, an adolescent at that stage where his bones were growing faster than his weight could keep up. What he lacked in size, however, he made up for in attitude.