AFTER A SHOWER, JESS PULLED on the sweats and T-shirt, then settled in to check all the phone calls she’d let go to voice mail. Faith Wiggs had called exactly ten times, then given up, and Jess hoped forever. The media calls had not slowed, even after her impromptu press conference.
Jess sat cross-legged on the futon, trying to figure out how to call the farm to get a message to Ray about his wife. Jess’s cell phone records would be investigated, and subpoenaed if they pressed charges. It didn’t feel safe to call the church, either. They had so much at stake. And she couldn’t use Chris’s phone to disguise herself. He’d be investigated, as well, if they thought he was helping her. She had to make sure she didn’t implicate him in any way.
Jess stared at the phone in her hand, the small oblong of hard plastic, running her thumb in small circles over the face, then flipped it open. She dialed the only number she didn’t need speed dial for.
“Hello?” Nina sounded distracted, but happy. She hadn’t looked at her caller ID, Jess guessed, and she was probably getting Teo ready for bed.
“Hi, honey. Am I interrupting?”
“Oh, hi. Actually, yeah, I’m reading Teo a story right now.”
Nina never offered to call her back when she couldn’t talk, which was most of the time.
“Okay. Your grandma said you two were coming down, so I just—”
“Well, maybe,” Nina said. “I still haven’t decided for sure.”
“Oh, okay. Um, I’ll let you go then, but . . . Well, could you just put Teo on for a second?” Jess felt emotion rising, heard the nasal quality in her voice.
“Are you okay?” her daughter asked, and Jess knew she would always remember the concern in Nina’s voice at that moment. She closed her eyes, breathed in, out, fingers along the top of her collarbone. She could feel her heart thud into the heel of her hand.
“No, actually. I’ve been suspended, Neen. I didn’t take a kid to foster care because she had a perfectly capable parent, but it’s become a big deal around here. It’s on the news.”
“What? Mom!”
“I know. I know I always say that you have to play by the rules, that laws may not always make sense but they’re for the greater good, blah blah blah.” She paused. “I couldn’t do it this time. I snapped.”
“It’s on the news?”
Jess could hear fumbling, Teo being shushed. She guessed Nina was walking through her apartment to the TV in the living room.
“What channel are you on?”
“I don’t know. All of them.” Jess sighed. If it was on in Phoenix, it was on in Tacoma. “Don’t watch. It’s just so stupid.”
“Of course I’m going to watch. Where are you? Are you at home?”
“No, our house is staked out with reporters. It’s just insane. I’m staying with a friend.”
“Damn it, I can’t find any news on,” Nina said. “But, Mom, if someone like you snapped, well. I don’t know. You must have had a pretty good reason.”
Jess paused in surprise, then said, “Well, thank you. But I think it might be a good idea to postpone your trip down here, with all that’s going on. As much as I want to see you both . . .”
“No, we’re going to come,” Nina said.
Again, Jess was surprised, but happily so. And they could stay with Clara, she realized. Once Nina had something in mind, that was it. This time, it was in Jess’s favor, and she knew a miracle when she saw one. She didn’t argue.
AS the SUN WORKED ITS way up the blinds the next morning, Jess woke to the sound of metallic banging. She turned her head toward the noise to see Larry lying in his crate, watching her, whacking his tail against the side of the enclosure. The crate door was wide-open; apparently he just really loved lying in the thing.
“Good morning,” she whispered, and his tail thumped faster. She patted the futon beside her. “Come here.”
His ears perked.
“Come on, Larry,” she whispered. “I haven’t had anyone to spoon with in ages.”
He pulled himself gingerly from the crate, tail still wagging, making a small whining sound.
“Shh,”
Jess said. “You’ll wake your dad. Come here.”
He walked over and sniffed the futon, sniffed the hand Jess extended, then licked it. She scratched behind his ears and patted the bed again. “This is my final offer.”
Larry lumbered his large body onto the futon beside Jess, grinning down at her with his tongue hanging directly over her head.
“No drooling, buddy,” she said. “Lie down, okay?”
He circled twice, nearly fell off the edge on his final rotation, then settled next to her, his head on her hip. Jess stroked him until she grew sleepy again, and he shifted and pawed his way over the blanket so that he was lying against her.
“Good boy,” she said, hand on his side. His ribs rose and fell, and he was warm and soft. Her thoughts jumbled into snatches of imagery: downed trees and sticker bushes, white sneakers with hearts, dark alleyways, church choirs. And then the comfort of nothing.
Her next conscious thought was a panicky “I’m late.” She reached over the dog for her watch on the coffee table, opening her eyes to a bright morning. Behind her, in the kitchen, someone coughed. Larry jumped off the futon and trotted away.
Jess pulled the blanket over her head.
“Good morning,” Chris said.
“Mm-hmm.” The blanket trapped her voice. She lowered it. “How long have you been up?” She looked at the watch in her hand. Nine thirty.
“Just long enough to feel seriously inferior to my dog. He always gets the ladies.”
“Funny,” Jess said, arranging the T-shirt and sweat pants into a presentable position beneath the blankets before she crawled out. “You better have coffee or I’m not sleeping here ever again.”
“Nice outfit,” he said, turning to pull a mug from the cupboard. His own sat on the counter. He was already dressed in long cargo shorts and another police-issue T-shirt.
“Thanks. It’s the police department’s. Someone seems to have a thing for contraband casual wear.” She crossed her arms over her chest, walked barefoot into the kitchen. “Actually, I do want to thank you, for, well, everything. I don’t know wha—”
“Hey,” he said, handing her the filled mug. “It’s not everyone who gets to have a local hero living under the same roof. Sleeping with their dog.”
“It was Larry’s idea,” she said, face turning warm as she took a sip. “And I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a hero. I’ve disgraced the department.”
Chris leaned back against the counter, studying her. She wished he’d stop. She knew how she looked in the morning. Why did men always look like themselves when they first woke up?
“You know,” he said, “I bet they’ll find a way to spin it so that it sounds like it was actually their idea, just to get in on some of the good juju. The department hasn’t had much in the way of positive PR in a long time.”
Jess didn’t buy it. Reality was sinking in, and she felt numb at the thought that she could no longer go to her job or her house, or drive her car. If she could go back in time, two mornings ago . . . She sighed. Would she still muscle her way in on the search for Lindy?
Of course she would.
“You’re the hottest thing going in this town at the moment,” Chris said. “Have you actually watched the coverage?”
She shrugged. “I made myself watch the beginning of the five o’clock news yesterday. I saw the people standing on the steps.” Saying this, she felt shy. “It was nice.”
He did that thing again where he leaned his head sideways, smiled that smile. It was starting to piss her off. She didn’t want to have to worry that she had bed hair or sleep wrinkles or crud in her eyes; she didn’t want to contemplate whether he liked her
that
way. She had no appeal, anyway, to a guy this good-looking, this young, who kept extra toothbrushes for overnight guests, who couldn’t fathom what it meant to be a parent. Anyway, Jess preferred the easy comfort of Larry to snuggle up to.
“What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Not telling,” he said. “You’ll see. I want to take you somewhere, okay? Humor me.”
She rolled her eyes, but drained her coffee cup and went to get ready for the day.
ONCE IN THE SMALL PICKUP, Larry again lodged between them, Chris drove north.
“We’re going to the station house,” Jess guessed.
“Yup.” Chris flipped on his turn signal at the interstate entrance.
“Okay, yeah, there are supporters there. I get it. I saw it on TV. I know you’re probably trying to make me feel better, but it’s not actually going to be a pleasant experience for me. I’ve been suspended, remember? My future with the department is . . .” What was it? “Bleak,” she decided.
“Ah, come on, it’ll be fun,” he said. “Here.” He removed the OSU Beavers cap he’d tugged on as they left his apartment, tossed it to her. “Put that on so you won’t be recognized.”
Jess fingered the black-and-orange cap, studied the buck-toothed—and apparently rabid—rodent adorning it. “I can’t. No way I can wear a Beavers cap.”
“Why? Did you go to U of O? Tell me you’re not a Duck.”
“No, I just refuse to put something on my head that says ‘beaver.’ Call me quaint.”
“Hey,” he said, “my mom was a Beaver mom, and a proud one. She had the bumper sticker and everything. Don’t go saying anything creepy.”
“But this picture is ridiculous. Since when is a beaver fierce? They build dams and stuff. They’re nature’s engineers, not warriors.”
He looked at her, shook his head. “Man, you think too much.”
She looked out the window, tall trees zipping by, interspersed with office buildings and hotels. “No kidding,” she said, drumming her fingers on the armrest.
They pulled off at the North Point Boulevard exit and headed west. As they neared the station, Chris slowed down. “Oh, wow,” he said.
Hundreds of people filled the lawns and sidewalks, the steps: men and women, children and teenagers, grandparents. Babies in strollers and backpacks and slings. Dogs on leashes. There was a festive air to the crowd, signs and banners.
“It’s a street fair,” Jess said, heart pounding. “It’s the neighborhood block party.”
“Right,” Chris said, slowing to a crawl. “Better put that hat on.”
Jess twisted her hair and pulled it through the cap’s back opening, snugging the bill low on her forehead. Where yesterday there had been three news satellite trucks, there were now six or seven, dwarfing the old building.“Great,” she muttered, slinking lower in her seat. Some of the signs even had her photo on them, that damn police ID photo. Where was her mother when she needed her?
Chris whistled softly between his teeth. “This is amazing.”
“It’s freaking me out.”
“In a good way, though, right?”
Jess closed her eyes and nodded. What would happen if she got out of the car, ran into the crowd? She shuddered, imagining enthusiastic trampling. It should have been dying down by now; she’d hoped that people would forget Ray and Lindy existed as soon as the next big story broke.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not so sure the department will feel warm and fuzzy about this. I think it just might inflame everyone, including the media.”
Today she felt further removed from the Columbia Police Department than she ever had; the force had always been her surrogate family, but now it had deserted her. The public display in front of her was both frightening and moving, seeing this many people assert that her actions were correct and honorable.
Being a cop had always seemed the way to achieve those things, but too often she’d had to choose the least bad alternative when trying to help others. Leave the kid with the negligent but loving mother or drag him away from all he knew to be raised by competent strangers? Or sometimes incompetent or downright evil strangers? Let the battering spouse off with a warning, or arrest him, knowing the violent reprisals he would visit upon his wife when he got out? Ignore the kids smoking pot in the park and hope it was a phase they’d grow out of, or bust them and cause untold repercussions in their families, their educations, their social lives? She’d always tried to find a balance, but—unlike now—within the law.
They’d driven the length of the entire block. Chris stopped at the intersection and looked at her. “I didn’t think it would make you feel bad,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “No, it’s good. Really. I’m just . . . I don’t know. Overwhelmed.”
“What would feel better? What can I do for you?” he asked.
Jess wasn’t sure if anyone had ever asked her that before. She had to think for a moment. “I want to go home,” she said. “But I can’t.”
“Let’s go check it out,” he said, turning south then east to head back to the highway.
JUST AS the DAY BEFORE, Jess saw satellite trucks on her block as soon as they turned into the development, towers spiking up through her neighbor’s monkey-puzzle trees and her own half-dead cedar.
“Forget it,” Jess said, tears springing to her eyes. “Damn it.”
“Hang on,” Chris said. “What if I sneak in and get some things for you?”
“They’ll see you.” Jess sniffed, embarrassed at her emotion.
“Do I have to keep reminding you that I am a trained law enforcement professional? I’m Batman, remember?” He flashed his tattooed knuckles at her. “I have stealth on my side. I’ll go through the back.”
Jess turned in her seat to study his profile. He was serious, and Michael had pulled it off the day before. “Well, then circle around this loop and make the next right,” she said, directing him to where Michael had parked.
Once there, Jess handed him the house key and gave him directions from the greenbelt to the back of her house. “It’s the only one without a screen door,” she said. “Well, it’s there, but it’s leaning up against the house.” It had always been too far down her to-do list to ever get fixed.