“What about the sister?” Mike pressed. “A young girl with a bullet hole in her cheek? That’s gotta be uncommon, even for around here.”
Mrs. Kennedy conceded that point with a nod. “Any idea how old she is? Younger? Older?”
Mike shook his head.
“I can’t think of any girl in junior high who fits that description,” Mrs. Kennedy said after a moment. “But you could try the high school. It’s much bigger and someone with a scar should stand out.”
“Yeah, we’ll do that,” Koontz assured her. “But what about the letter? We don’t got a lot of time here, so we’d love to learn the kid’s name sooner versus later. Sure the writing doesn’t ring any bells?”
“No, I’m afraid not.” She handed the note back to Mike apologetically. “I just have too many students….”
“You keep it,” Mike told her. “It’s just a copy and some night when you’re going through assignments, who knows. Maybe some phrase will catch your eye, or maybe you’ll hear talk of something in the school halls. You never know.”
“You think this kid, this Vee, is serious?”
Mike shrugged. “You have more experience with these kids than we do. You tell us.”
Mrs. Kennedy hesitated for a moment, then she simply looked sad. “This part here, ‘I gotta get through these halls and they be long and hard.’ I’ve seen that. A child goes into gym class, then emerges beaten within an inch of his life. No one says anything, but you know he was just initiated into a gang. Suddenly the boy won’t talk to his best friend anymore. He moves his seat to the back of the class. He hangs out with only the upperclassmen. It’s as if he grew up overnight. And now, every time I walk by his desk, I get the stare. The flat, hard stare. I hate that look more than anything. The angry expressions, the hurt gaze, those are real emotions of a real child. But that stare, that cold, flat stare…those are the eyes of a person who no longer feels he has choices. They’ve just been made for him and now he’s simply going through the motions.
“These kids do such unbelievable things to one another. It hurts me more that we let them.”
“Well, we’re not going to let this one do anything,” Koontz assured her. “We’re going to lock this one up and throw away the key.”
Mrs. Kennedy looked up at him curiously. “And what do you think that will accomplish?”
“It’ll get him off the street, that’s what!”
“Detective, you have read this letter, but you are not listening. This child isn’t angry because he was born that way. He is angry because we
made
him that way. And we’re
still
making them that way. Half of my class could be Vee. And half of next year’s class and half of the class after that. I’ve been here five years, Detective, and the only thing I know for certain is that we are failing these children. You want to make a difference, work on that.”
Koontz took a step back, affronted by the attack. Mike immediately placed a hand on his partner’s arm, subtly turning him to the door. Koontz hated being lectured and hated even more to feel like the bad guy.
“One last question,” Mike said quickly, curiously.
“Suppose this kid is angry enough to do what he writes. What do you recommend that we do? We can’t keep him running around loose, and I for one would prefer not to be in a shoot-out with a child.”
Mrs. Kennedy frowned. She looked down at the letter again. “The fact that he wrote a letter is encouraging,” she mused out loud. “Shows a desire to communicate, to talk about what he’s going through. It’s a shame that his brother is dead. A lot of these children look up to their older siblings. Then again, it sounds as if he cares about his mother. Maybe if you can find her, she can speak to him. I hate to think of a thirteen-year-old as a lost cause, particularly one who wrote such a moving letter.”
Koontz bristled again. “
Moving letter?
The kid threatened cops! Lady, maybe you should send a little bit of that compassion our way. We’re the ones with our lives on the line.”
Mrs. Kennedy returned his look levelly. “I do care about you, Detective. But you chose your path in life. This boy didn’t, and that’s the difference.”
“Freaking liberals,” Koontz said. “Freaking, feminist, Nazi liberals.” They weren’t even back in the car yet, and he’d worked himself into a frenzy. “Kids aren’t born angry. Kids are made angry. I’ll tell you what we have to show for that line of thinking—the crime wave of the eighties and nineties. All these murderers walking free because they were abused, or orphaned, or looked at the wrong way. Poor little them,
forced
by society to do bad things. So let’s turn them back out on the street because those pathetic, tormented souls can’t possibly be what’s causing all the violence in the news. I mean, heaven forbid!”
“You don’t really think people are born bad,” Mike said, looking around again at the gathering gloom of the parking lot, holding his gun closer to his side.
“I don’t think it matters. Who cares what makes people violent. Truth is, we still don’t know how to fix them. The courts send them to the hospital, the hospital turns them loose, and we get to pick them up again. Court sends them to rehab, rehab turns them loose, and we get to pick them up again. Seems to me there’s a theme.”
“So we lock them up and throw away the key?”
“Read the news,” Koontz said seriously, also giving the parking lot a last once-over before crawling into the car.
“I know you think I’m illiterate, but I follow the papers, my man. And all of them are talking about how violent crime is finally going down for the first time in years. You wanna know why? Because we’ve gotten tougher about sentencing and we’ve expanded the prisons. All the articles agree—rehab sounds nice, but prison works.”
“Even for thirteen-year-olds?”
“People don’t change, Mike. What the hell do you think went so wrong with you and Sandy?”
“Koontz,” Mike said seriously, “I could kill you for that.”
“Yeah, but you won’t. Because you know me, man, and you know I’m simply saying the truth. People like to pretend there are no barriers in life. Blacks can marry whites, rich can marry poor, a backwater kid can become president of the United States. Hell, no. We are born into our worlds. We understand our world. We cross into someone else’s world, we get burned. There is no such thing as a classless society. Just look at Alexandria.”
“You are a sick, cynical bastard, Koontz.”
“Yep, and you never try to change me, which goes back to my first point. Guys let each other be, the way nature intended. It’s women, forever trying to ‘fix things,’ who mess things up.”
“Maybe guys just settle, while women are trying to make life better.”
“Was life better with Sandy?”
“Not your business, Koontz.”
Rusty smiled. “I think that’s answer enough.”
They didn’t get back to the station until after six and that was late enough to call it a day. Mike was still sore with Koontz and not much into talking anyway. Sometimes his partner’s view of the world—and Mike’s marriage—made him angry. Particularly when it contained a kernel of truth.
They determined they’d try the high school first thing in the morning. Koontz grumbled that the whole thing was probably a hoax anyway, but Mike didn’t think his heart was in it.
Mike offered to stay late to write up their report. From where he was standing, he could see down the hall, where the light was still burning in Sandra’s office. Long first day for the new chief of police. He wondered if she was rubbing the back of her neck yet. He wondered if seeing him for the first time in four years had been as hard for her as it had been for him. She’d been cool during their meeting, but then Sandra would appear cool having dinner with the Devil outside the Pearly Gates. It was part of her charm.
Of course, it also made it doubly fun to melt her into hot and bothered. Damn, he missed that.
Did she ever think of those times? Did she have any happy memories of their marriage? He realized he didn’t know, and that left him feeling a little sad.
“Meet here at seven tomorrow?” Koontz wanted to know.
“Sure. Drive home safe.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get misty—”
Koontz didn’t get a chance to finish. Shouting erupted down the hall. Mike could only pick out the words
shots, shots,
before Weasel came tearing into the office space, his eyes wild.
“Oh, my God!” Weasel yelled. “Someone’s opened fire in the east side. Officers down, officers down!”
“Vee,” Koontz spit out, “I knew it!”
Then they were all running down the halls, and Mike was hoping desperately that his partner was wrong. Don’t let it be Vee. Alexandria wasn’t ready for such a crisis. And neither, he feared, was Sandy.
Chapter 4
I
n the locker room, patrol officers and narcotic detectives suited up and locked down. Weasel was still yelling details from the main radio. Shots exchanged. Patrol 32 down. Emergency vehicles en route. Backup vehicles en route.
Move, move, move.
Officers under fire was everyone’s business in Alexandria.
Farther down the hall, Mike could hear a phone ringing violently, then a short burst of female cursing. Sandra, he thought, and unconsciously moved faster.
“Shotgun?” barked Rusty.
“Got it.”
“Vest?”
“Still on. Yours?”
“Ditto. Come on. Move your butt, Rawlins, or we’ll miss the party.”
“Hang on.” Rushing out of the locker room with a Remington 12-gauge shotgun in his hand, Mike made an unexpected left-hand turn—toward Sandy’s office.
Rusty saw the motion and drew up short. “No,” he said forcibly.
“Can’t let the chief enter a violent area alone,” Mike countered reasonably.
“Like hell. If she wants to prove she’s tough, let her. Dammit, Mike. I’m your
partner.
”
There was a lot of emphasis on the last word, and it made them both tense. The conversation of this afternoon had been leading up to this. Hell, Mike and Sandra’s marriage had been all about this. Rusty wanted to come first. Rusty believed the brotherhood of cops should
always
come first. And Sandy, crazy her, had thought that a wife should be more important than a partner.
Mike didn’t have an answer back then, and he didn’t have one now. How was someone supposed to choose between their right hand and their left? Four years ago, he’d simply waited patiently—futilely, it turned out—for one of them to stop pushing the issue. Now, he realized, it was even more complicated. Sandra was no longer his right hand, but had become, like Rusty, his left.
“She’s the chief,” he repeated softly. “We have an obligation—”
Koontz didn’t want to hear it. He turned away in disgust. “Do what you got to do, Rawlins. I’ll see you downtown, where the
real
cops are waiting.”
He stalked toward the garage. Mike watched Weasel go running up behind him, looking scared as he always did, but made anxious enough by the shooting to bum a ride. Mike would have to pay for that later, too: Rusty hated Weasel.
Rusty, however, could take care of himself, and Mike wasn’t so sure about Sandra. Knowing her, she’d want to personally attend the scene. An Aikens never backed down from a fight.
Mike headed toward her office, where he discovered Sandra trying to put on her coat and hang up the phone at the same time. Her features were ashen, her lips pressed thin. She glanced at him once, then seemed to draw in on herself even more tightly. She suddenly hurtled the un-cooperative phone to the floor.
“Incompetent…damn…incompetent…”
Mike retrieved the receiver. He replaced it gently on the base. “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly. “Whatever just happened over there, it’s not your fault.”
“I am the chief of police! I sent men into the east side.”
“Which you had to do. Believe it or not, we’d all rather be shot at than labeled scared. Besides, you assigned your two best men to the case. We just…” Mike shrugged miserably. “Sorry,
ma chère.
We couldn’t find Vee in the system, so we’re having to do it the old-fashioned way. That takes time.”
“I should’ve come up with a game plan until then,” Sandra said relentlessly. “Dammit, I’d
read
the letter—”
“So did the rest of us.”
“Yes, but you took it seriously, and Koontz was right,
I
didn’t. I didn’t really believe he’d open fire. I didn’t honestly think a thirteen-year-old…dammit.” Then more vehemently.
“Dammit!”
Mike took her coat from her and helped her put it on. Her hands were shaking. She gathered up her clipboard briskly, however, and with a last composing nod—almost to herself—she headed for the door.
“Well, are you just going to stand there all day,” she said, “or are you coming with me to the scene?”
“I’m driving you to the scene.”
“I don’t need a driver—”
“Sandy. Shut up.”
Mike turned off the light behind them. He noticed that the nameplate had once again been replaced, this time by a picture. It was even more graphic than the names. Sandy didn’t look at it. She had her chin up, her shoulders square, and she was heading like hell on wheels for her car.
You never could keep her down, Mike thought. And just like always, he felt admiration tighten his chest. But then he felt something else. Something softer, sadder, lurking beneath respect and making him shift uncomfortably.
For a moment, he found himself wishing she wouldn’t always be so strong. He wished that his fierce, independent ex-wife would allow him to hold her instead. But Sandra had never needed much. And he had discovered the hard way that the worse things got, the better she became at pushing him away.
Mike followed her to the car.
“Helluva first day,” he remarked finally, and wasn’t surprised when Sandy said nothing at all.
It took fifteen minutes to get from the central station to the shooting scene, and Sandy needed every second to pull herself together. The sick feeling in her stomach had started with the first news of shots being fired. It had grown with the information that officers were down. It had turned positively leaden when she considered that investigating Vee’s case had most certainly brought Mike and Koontz into the east side.