Under a Raging Moon (14 page)

“Good call,” he told Katie.

“Nice job,” she said. “Especially on the bullshitting. You need any help with property or anything?”

Kopriva shook his head. “No. Thanks for coming along.”

Katie nodded curtly, then turned and left. Kopriva watched her go.
Something was seriously wrong with her tonight.

He started the car and headed for jail. Belzer leaned fo
r
ward. “How’d you find me, anyway?”

“Martin, you’ve got a ton of warrants. And it’s your mother’s house. You think we wouldn’t check there?”

Belzer didn’t answer right away. After Kopriva pulled onto an arterial, Belzer asked, “Did you call me and pretend to be from the Post Office?”

“What?”

“Not five minutes before you came by, some guy from the Post Office called. Was that you?”

“No.” Kopriva slowed for a red light. “What’d he want?”

“Just to get a forwarding address.” Belzer watched him in the rear-view mirror. “I think it was you.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“Martin, using the Postal Service in any way to commit fraud against anyone is a federal offense. Great as your idea sounds, it would be ille
g
al.” He met Belzer’s eyes in the mirror. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that we came to your Mom’s house to see if you were there? Where would you check for someone with a wa
r
rant?”

“I suppose so. It just seems like one hell of a coincidence.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Yeah. But not to me.”

The traffic light turned green. Kopriva nudged the accelerator, then shrugged at Belzer. “Life is full of surprises.”

2314 hours

The Qwik-Stop didn’t get much business after 9:00 P.M. That suited Curly Pierson just fine. The lull in cu
s
tomer traffic allowed him to raid the magazine rack and read comics for free. He especially liked the war comics. They reminded him of his eleven months in the Marine Corps. The camaraderie and the bravery of the soldiers made his chest swell.

Of course, real life was sometimes different than the comics, as he’d discovered. He often wished he hadn’t had those problems that got him booted out, but he did okay now. He worked three days a week at the Qwik-Stop and during the summer, he did some yard work for his mother. On the wee
k
ends, he played paint-ball.

If the Corps had known how good he was at paint-ball, they would have begged him to stay. The thought occurred to him without any bitterness. Maybe he could invite a recruiter next weekend to watch or something. He was the best on his team, even if he did play a little bit too emotionally intense. The doctor guy his mom took him to see said that he would probably be able to control it someday, especially if he kept up with the medication. He didn’t like the pills, though. They made him tired.

Work bored him. Especially nights like this one. He’d read all the good comics, which of course were the DC ones, and the new ones wouldn’t be in until the next day. He considered reading some of the Marvel comics if it got too slow, but what was the point of that? All those guys like Spiderman spent too much time worrying and wondering about stuff, even when they were fighting bad guys. Guys like Superman knew what was what. Don’t think, just take care of business. They were real heroes. Spiderman was a geek.

Curly stood behind the counter and fingered the .25 auto under the counter. It sat on the small shelf direc
t
ly beneath the register. His boss had told him never to use it, but why did he keep it there, then? It wasn’t like he didn’t know how to handle a gun. He won two paintball matches just last weekend and both times he’d been the last man alive on his team.

He sighed and glanced at the comic book rack. He mulled over the po
s
sibility of giving Spiderman a try. Then his gaze drifted toward the candy rack. He was considering having a Snic
k
ers bar when a flash of movement near the door caught his eye.

Curly saw it for trouble before the guy even hit the door. He recognized the black hair down to the shou
l
ders from the newspaper drawing. The scar seemed to leap right off the man’s intense face as he burst through the glass doors. The intensity reminded Curly, briefly, of his drill instructor at boot camp.

“The fucking money in a bag! Now!” The man even sounded like a drill sergeant. He leveled the small black revolver at Curly’s face.

Scared, Curly slid the register drawer open. At the same moment, a thought occurred to him. A wonderful thought. A way to gain recognition. Maybe even get himself back into the Corps. To be a hero.

“Put the money in the fucking bag, you little geek!” The man screamed, out of control. Curly figured that as a good thing. The ones that didn’t keep their heads always lost at paint-ball.

Curly put all the bills into a paper bag and slid the register closed. Using the bag to cover his movement, he reached under the register and grasped the .25 auto.

“Free—” he started to say, bringing the gun up. He felt a sharp pain in his cheek and heard a muffled roar. Everything slowed down. He tried to squeeze the trigger but couldn’t. He saw a flash of light and felt a pi
n
prick in his abdomen. The floor rushed up and caught him, leaving him sprawled on his back. He watched the man jump over the counter and take the bag from his hand.

He blinked.

The man was gone.

He blinked again, staring at the alarm button. He willed it to depress itself. The button sat motionless, a stoic accusation.

You blew it,
it said.
You blew it in the Corps and you are no hero, Curly.

He tried to blink again, but found he could not open his eyes after he had closed them.

SEVEN

Monday, August 22nd

1609 hours

A gang meant family, plain and simple. It provided what kids either didn’t have in their own families or just didn’t want from them. Until people realized that, they would never unde
r
stand the power of the gangs. It was about being a part of something. Being
accepted
.

Gerald Anthony Trellis knew all about that. He did everything he could to be black. He talked like the gangsters, dressed like them, walked like them. He listened to rap. Most of all, he cursed his white skin, an accident of birth. He knew what some of the racist white boys in River City called him—wigger. White nigger. They meant it as an insult, but he accepted the word with a measure of pride, even though it was the only thing that kept him from being fully accepted.

In a way, he should be thankful that he was from River City. Demographics forced the Compton Crips who’d relocated up here to allow whites into their gang activity. And Trellis, who called himself T-Dog, was the number one recruit of Morris the Cat.

Morris lay on T-Dog’s couch with earphones on, listening to one of T-Dog’s many rap CDs. T-Dog gave Morris pretty much anything he wanted. CDs, booze, a place to crash. Wha
t
ever the gangster wanted. Morris had the juice here in the RC, and so he held T-Dog’s ticket to full acceptance. Plus, The Cat liked him. Only last week he had mentioned sponsoring T-dog on a trip down to Compton to get beat in.

Man, to get beat in by a Compton Crip set!
T-Dog felt a rush of pride. His whole life, everyone told him what a loser he was. His father, on the rare occasion when he was around, just beat on him. His mother had all these stupid rules she expected him to follow. She didn’t understand that no one ever got anywhere playing by the rules. A man got somewhere by making his own rules.

School wasn’t for him, either. Why should he sit politely in class and listen to some adult talk about something stupid when he made more money working with Morris than they did? How many 17-year-olds could afford a brand new car?

No, the Crips gave him power and he liked it. Soon, Morris would make sure he got beat in, making him a full member and giving him even more power.

The thing was, though, Morris had been pretty distracted and pissed off lately. He hadn’t mentioned the beat-in for over a week. He spent all his time bitching about everything, especially that white cop who busted him. T-Dog had never seen Morris so enraged. After he picked him up from jail that night, Morris screamed for almost an hour. Most of what he said hadn’t made much sense. Or at least, T-dog didn’t understand it. He’d been upset over something concerning what the other guys in the car were going to say about the way that cop treated him.

T-dog didn’t see what the problem was. Hell, getting busted by five-oh and keeping your mouth shut was another way to earn your stripes. But T-Dog knew he wasn’t as smart as Morris. The guy was in charge not only because of his juice but also because of his brains. He tried to listen to everything Morris said, so that he could learn from him.

The one thing that he’d learned about the most was juice. Street credibility. It was way more important than money or bitches or cars. If a man had juice, he had the world. So, with that in mind, T-Dog started to form
u
late a small plan. He thought it was one that would satisfy Morris’ rage and give them both some juice. Maybe even enough to get him beat in.

After all, where could he get the ultimate juice?

1654 hours

Eyes droopy and his breathing shallow, James Mace sat in the small chair in the corner of the apartment bedroom. On the floor beside him he’d discarded the small needle that had delivered all three of them to this land of floating stillness. A bent and burnt spoon lay on the nightstand next to a wet, deflated cotton ball.

Mace blinked slowly, forcing his eyes to open again. He knew his face bore an impassive mien, but he imagined himself with an idiot’s grin.

Things were getting worse. There was a time when his grin would be real, not imaginary. He couldn’t even enjoy his fix anymore. It was like taking aspirin now, taking away his itches, aches and nausea. His skin and clothing were disgustingly dirty, but he didn’t care. It kept the drug inside longer. Besides, cleanliness was overrated.

He looked over at the bed. Leslie and Andrea, both nude, lay motio
n
less, their limbs wrapped around each other. He wished that he had more than a passing drive for sex. He hadn’t slept with either of them for weeks. He didn’t care that they were occasionally doing each other in his absence. Both of them were worthless, anyway. On the last two store jobs, he had to call another whore, Carla, to drive. Crack-head Carla. She worked cheap and quickly realized that driving a car was more profitable and less dangerous than hooking.

He’d banged Carla twice last week, more to subjugate her than for any real need for sex. A woman was more easily controlled once you’d screwed her. Made ’em loyal. At least Carla had shown a little more enthus
i
asm than Leslie or Andrea had in a long while.

Being the man was hard,
Mace groused from the depths of his floating world. He had to be responsible for everything. Even in the midst of what should have been his euphoria, he was thinking of his next fix and how he would get the money for it. Maybe he could relax during that high.

His thoughts drifted to the last robbery. God
damn
that had been sweet. That goofy little clerk tried to pull a gun on him, and he fucking wasted the little geek. Blew a hole right in his cheek and pumped another one into his gut. That had been the greatest thrill Mace had experienced since Pan
a
ma. The power rush was incredible. It made him feel alive. Hell, he needed the heroin just to come down from that high.

His eyes drooped closed and he took a deep breath. When he opened them, he saw the women were awake. Leslie gently stroked Andrea along the curve of her hip. Mace felt no stirring in his loins at the sight. He thought instead of his next fix. More than that, he thought about how he would get the money.

And how good it was going to feel to take out the enemy.

1712 hours

Stefan Kopriva awoke feeling he had forgotten something. Everything seemed normal, but he knew there was something out of sync.

Then he saw Katie MacLeod lying next to him, felt her soft breath on his shoulder.

Kopriva almost jumped in surprise as the events of the previous night came rushing back to him. He willed himself to lie still while he recalled everything that had happened. It reminded him of being drunk and forgetting everything in the morning. Only he hadn’t been drinking.

After he finished booking Belzer and putting the drugs on property, a homicide had been called in at the Qwik-Stop. Inside, a twenty-some-year-old clerk had been shot, probably by Scarface.

Both he and Katie guarded the crime scene for the remainder of the night. Katie’s demeanor hadn’t changed from earlier in the shift. After the scene was secured, they’d gone to breakfast for their seven and she finally told him the problem. Her fiancée had broken up with her after seven months of engagement and a year and a half years together. With no explanation.

Stef, you are a jerk
, he told himself.

He and MacLeod went through the Academy together. For whatever reason, that gave them a bond that made talking easier. After the shift secured, they went out for coffee and talked some more. Katie seemed to relax a little more once they were out of uniform. When she became upset, Kopriva offered to take her home. She’d wanted to talk some more. Kopriva lived not too far from the coffee shop, so they’d gone there for tea and to conti
n
ue talking.

Katie broke down and cried before Kopriva had even gotten the hot water for tea on the stove. Through her tears, he gathered that she thought she’d loved her fiancée, but now wasn’t so sure. It hurt to be dumped but there might there also be a sense of relief.

Kopriva understood some of what she felt. His luck with women bordered on abysmal. He hated one-night stands, but had been involved in little else for the past year. He didn’t know what hurt like hers felt like, but he knew about loneliness.

Around nine in the morning, tired, cried out and grateful, Katie had leaned into him for a comforting hug, which he’d happily given.

Carefully, Stef
. Her breath now plumed lightly against his shoulder. He shifted his position in bed and tried to get comfor
t
able. It didn’t work.

How did it really happen?

He hadn’t intended for anything to happen. Had he? He remembered that he kissed the top of her head and told her everything would be all right. He remembered how warm she felt against him and how good her hair smelled. Katie looked up and smiled a tired, friendly smile.

Thanks, Stef.

That’s what she had said.

And then she kissed him softly on the cheek. She started to withdraw her face, then paused. Kopriva r
e
membered that the silence then had been a loud one. Then she kissed his cheek again, softer and closer to his lips.

He kissed her on the mouth and they melted into each ot
h
er.

Now it was after five in the afternoon and she was lying next to him. The smell of her body that filled his nostrils seemed like an accusation. He’d taken advantage of her, hadn’t he?

Kopriva shut the alarm off so that it wouldn’t wake her. He slipped out of bed and walked down the hall to the bathroom. As he stepped into the shower, his mind whirred with a confused jumble of images. He could see her crying at the coffee shop, her face streaked with tears. Then he saw her athletic body beneath him, her back arching as they made love.

Kopriva forced the image from his mind.

This was a mistake. He’d taken advantage of a woman while she was hurt and rejected.

But there’d always been something between them, hadn’t there? He and Katie always had chemistry, even back at the Academy. Since then, they’d been assigned to separate sectors on patrol. Both worked the north side all year and units were often called on to cross into each other’s patrol se
c
tors. Kopriva enjoyed her friendship but had never considered anything beyond that. She was always dating someone, then got engaged. But maybe this just provided the opportunity for it to come out.

Kopriva shook his head. She’d been vulnerable. Tired. Cried out. He’d taken advantage. No question.

He slapped his hand angrily against the tile in the shower. Honor might have been an out-dated concept for some, but Kopriva adhered to it. It was his lifeboat in a sea of madness sometimes.

Had he just violated it?

Fifteen minutes later, Kopriva shut off the shower. No, he rationalized. He had not violated honor. What had happened
wasn’t
a mistake.

I’ve always cared about her. There’s always been som
e
thing there.

Maybe only the timing had been the mistake. And there was nothing he could do to change that now. But overall, he saw this new development with her as a good thing, but one they should probably keep from their co-workers.

Kopriva toweled off and slipped on a pair of boxer shorts. He decided that he would make her breakfast. During breakfast, he would tell her how he felt. He’d let her know that he hoped this was the beginning of something nice.

He walked into the kitchen and removed a frying pan from the cupboard. He began warming it on the stove. In the fridge, he had enough eggs for an omelet. He removed the eggs along with a little cheese and some green onions. As the pan heated up, he walked to the bedroom to wake her in case she wanted to shower before she ate.

The bed lay empty with rumpled covers. Her clothes were gone.

2100 hours

Lieutenant Robert Saylor didn’t have to order the graveyard patrol shift to pay attention. As soon as he stepped behind the lectern of the roll-call room, conversation quickly tapered off.

He put aside a couple of stolen vehicle reports for later, then reviewed the homicide at the Qwik-Stop from the night before. “And that’s the big news, folks,” Saylor said. “The guy day shift nabbed was a copy-cat.”

“No kidding,” James Kahn muttered.

“Yeah,” Saylor said. “No kidding. Well, that also comes from the detectives at Major Crimes, who inte
r
viewed day shift’s guy. He is
not
Sca
r
face. The M.O. he used was similar but not exact. The funny thing is, it was
exactly
the M.O. the paper published.”

That brought a few chuckles from the assembled troops.

“Imagine that,” Chisolm said to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” said Saylor. “Major Crimes also reviewed the security cameras in the QwikStop. Detective Browning confirmed that it was almost certainly the Scarface Robber. So if Scarface killed the clerk from last night, then he is obviously getting more dangerous. Be careful. Think about how you want to pursue him, whether on foot or in a vehicle.