by Marie Force
“That means a lot.”
Danita’s two-story townhouse had pots of flowers on the porch and other blooms lining the sidewalk. “You can tell a lot about people by how they take care of their homes,” Sam said to Freddie as they approached the gate to the white picket fence that surrounded the small front yard.
“True.”
“Danita, she takes care of her place. She puts in the time to make it pretty and welcoming. If she takes that kind of time with her home, imagine the effort she’s put into her children.”
“I don’t think I’m going to have kids.”
Sam stopped short and spun around to face him. “What? Since when are you not having kids?”
“For a while now, actually. Elin and I have talked about it. She mostly agrees with me.”
“About what?”
“That we don’t want to bring kids into this crazy world. What happened to Jamal… If that ever happened to a kid of mine…” He shook his head. “All my life I’ve heard it said that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. That would be way more than I could handle. It would ruin me.”
This was not the time or the place—in front of a grieving family’s home—to have this conversation, but they were having it anyway. “You’re letting the job color your thinking. To us, this shit happens far too often, and it does happen too often. Way too often. But we see the worst of it. We don’t see the millions of other people who go through their lives without ever having something like what happened to Jamal happen to them. Millions, Freddie. The odds of your child being randomly gunned down on a street are astronomical. He’s more likely to win the lottery than be killed the way Jamal was.”
“It’s not just Jamal. It’s so much more than that.”
“Believe it or not, I get it. I really do. I worried incessantly about Scotty and something happening to him before he had Secret Service protection. I still worry about it, even with the army that surrounds him. I think about all the things that could happen, but you know what?”
Freddie tilted his head. “What?”
“The pure, sweet joy he brings to our lives is so much greater than the sum of our fears. He’s the best thing to ever happen to either of us, and I wouldn’t trade the love I feel for him for all the peace of mind in the world. I would hate for you to miss out on the unbelievable experience of being a parent because you’re afraid of what might happen. But even more than that, I’d hate for you to let fear run your life. You’d miss out on one of life’s greatest joys, Freddie. Don’t deny yourself that because of the awful shit we see on this job. Please don’t.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You make good points, as always.”
“Normally I’d have something to say to that, such as, of course I do, but this is too important for jokes. Promise me you won’t rule it out entirely before you’re even married.”
“I promise I’ll talk to Elin some more about what you said.”
“Fair enough.” Sam glanced at the white house with the black shutters. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Hey, Sam?”
She turned to face him again. “Yeah?”
“Thanks. For what you said and everything. I know it’s a tough topic for you.”
“It was tougher before I had Scotty,” she said, again trying to forget about the possibility she might be pregnant. “He’s made a lot of things that were wrong right again.”
“He’s a great kid.”
“Yes, he is, and you’d have great kids too. You’d be a wonderful father.”
“You really think so?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, Freddie, I really think so and so does everyone else who knows you. My dad told me once that the worst thing I could do is bring the job home with me. Don’t do that. You’ll always regret it if you make decisions for your own life based on the shit we see out here.”
“Point taken.” He flipped the latch on the gate and gestured for her to go first.
CHAPTER NINE
THEY WENT UP the stairs to the porch, and Sam rang the doorbell.
Misty came to the door, looking like she hadn’t slept. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. “Hi.”
“Hi, Misty. We were wondering if we might have a word with you, your mother and your sister?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess.”
“Is this a good time?”
She shrugged. “As good as any.” Stepping aside, she ushered them into the house.
It went against everything Sam believed in to turn her back on anyone while on the job, but she bent her rules out of deference to the girl’s obvious grief.
“They’re in the back.” Misty gestured for them to lead the way down a narrow hallway that led to a bright, sunny kitchen with yellow walls. The cheerful atmosphere was in stark contrast to the pervasive grief that clung to the people gathered around the table and standing against the counter. At quick glance, Sam counted ten people, including Danita and Tamara.
“Mama, Lieutenant Holland is here to see you,” Misty said.
Danita, who’d had her head in her hands, looked up at them, her face ravaged. She’d aged ten years overnight. “Have you found the person who shot my baby?”
“I’m afraid not,” Sam said. “But we’re working on it. I wondered if I might have a private word with you and your daughters.”
“Um, okay.” Danita glanced at the others and tipped her head, asking them to leave the room.
More than one of them took a good long look at Sam as they filed out. She recalled Nick’s goldfish analogy, which was a fitting way to describe how people looked at her these days. They felt like they knew her—and him. But in truth, they only knew what the media reported, which wasn’t much.
Sam took a seat at the table while Freddie remained standing.
“What do you want to know?” Danita took a tissue from a box on the table and blew her nose.
“Yesterday I asked if there was anything going on in any of your lives that could’ve led to Jamal being shot. Now that you’ve had some time to think about it, perhaps you may have something more to tell us.”
A flash of anger crossed Danita’s face. “We have nothing to tell you.”
Tamara and Misty looked down at their hands on the table, immediately rousing Sam’s suspicions. “Ladies, do you have anything you’d like to say? And I’ll remind you that withholding information from a homicide investigation is a crime.”
“I’d like you to leave my home now,” Danita said, glaring at Sam.
Following a hunch, Sam remained seated, her gaze firmly fixed on the two young women. After a minute or two of charged silence, Tamara began to cry.
“Just tell her,” Misty said.
“What’re you talking about?” Danita snapped at her daughter.
Misty looked at her sister.
“I-I’m so sorry, Mama,” Tamara said between sobs. “It’s all my fault that Jamal is dead.”
“What’ve you done?” Danita asked in a whisper.
Tamara cried so hard she couldn’t speak.
Danita looked to Misty. “Start talking. Right now.”
Misty swallowed hard. “She’s been seeing Trace—”
Danita slammed her hand on the table, startling everyone. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Tamara wailed, sobs racking her petite body. “I’m so sorry, Mama. I never thought—”
Danita stood and looked down at her daughters with fire in her eyes. “I was very clear with you that he was off-limits, Tamara. And you,” she said to Misty, “you knew this and didn’t tell me?”
Sam cleared her throat. “Um, could someone please tell me who Trace is?”
“Trace Simmons is a gangbanger who grew up with my daughters. They were expressly forbidden to have anything to do with him.”
; Sam glanced at Freddie and saw his eyes widen with shock. He too remembered Trace was an associate of Darius Gardner, the gangbanger who’d shot at them the week of Sam’s wedding. They’d been trying to talk to Gardner about a possible lead in Sam’s father’s case.
“I love him, Mama!”
Danita scoffed. “Like hell you love him. He’s a violent, drug-dealing piece of shit, and you can do better!”
Tamara clutched her chest, and Sam realized she was hyperventilating. She jumped up. “Get me a bag or something for her to breathe into.”
With shaking hands, Misty got up, opened a drawer and withdrew a brown lunch bag that Sam placed over Tamara’s face.
“Take some deep breaths,” Sam said, rubbing the girl’s back. “You have to calm down.”
Tamara did as Sam directed, blowing into the bag repeatedly until she began to breathe more regularly again.
Sam pulled some tissues from a box on the table and handed them to Tamara, who wiped her face and blew her nose.
“Can we get her some water?”
Misty saw to the request while Danita continued to glare at Tamara, her fury palpable.
“If you love him,” Danita said disdainfully, “why would he want to kill your brother?”
Sam had the same question and appreciated Danita asking it.
Tamara took a drink from the glass Misty gave her. “I…I told him… I said my mama didn’t want me to see him, and if she found out, I’d be in a lot of trouble. He… He said things, rude things about you…” Another sob choked her. “I told him he couldn’t talk about you that way, and he slapped me. He said no one tells him what to do. After that… I wouldn’t talk to him or take his calls. He told me I was going to be sorry for ignoring him. No one ignores him.”
“You stupid, stupid little girl,” Danita hissed. “Why do you think I told you to stay away from him? Any man who would hit you, disparage your mother and make threats doesn’t deserve five minutes of your time.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it before! I told you this would happen!”
Sam glanced at Freddie, using her eyes to ask him to remove Danita from the room.
“Mrs. Jackson,” he said, “let’s get some air.”
Fortunately, she allowed Freddie to lead her from the room after shooting another disgusted glance at her daughters.
Both girls seemed to relax ever so slightly after she was gone.
“Let’s talk about Trace,” Sam said.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Sam and Freddie left the Jackson home with a new thread to pull.
“Get me the Gang Unit captain on the line. What’s his name again?”
“Harrison.”
Sam snapped her fingers. “That’s it! I couldn’t remember his name to save my life.”
“Just ask me, your seeing-eye partner. I have all the answers.”
“Yeah, yeah. Intense in there, huh?”
“I feel sorry for Danita,” Freddie said. “She’s done everything right with her kids, but when they become legal adults it’s harder to control their every move.”
“I feel sorry for Tamara. She grew up with Trace. Knew him before the gang got its hooks in him. She’s still looking for the boy she knew in the man he is now and hasn’t figured out that boy is long gone.”
“Brings it all back, that day with Gardner, his threats to Faith Miller, the rape charge that didn’t stick.”
“Until we nailed his ass to the wall,” Sam said, smirking.
“That we did. What do you want me to say to Harrison?”
“Ask him to have his team pick up Simmons for us and get him to HQ. Also, check to see if he or any of his known associates drives a black sedan.”
“On it.”
While Freddie made his call, she contacted Captain Malone to update him on the info they’d gotten from Tamara Jackson and to request a warrant to search Simmons’s place.
“I’ll get the warrant moving now. Good work, Lieutenant. This guy could be the key to the whole thing.”
“Let’s hope so. What’re you hearing on the search for the car?”
“Slow going. We’re going one by one to rule out every black sedan in the city. Did you know that black is a rather popular car color?”
“I’d heard that rumor. Keep me posted if anything pops.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
As Sam ended her call, Freddie finished up with Harrison.
“What’d he say?” she asked.
“He blew out a low whistle when I mentioned Simmons’s name. He knows the guy well. Was more than happy to arrange for pickup and transport to HQ. And he’s hoping we’ve got something on him that’ll put him in jail for, and I quote, ‘the rest of this lifetime and the next.’”
“Good to know we have his full support.”
“We definitely do. I relayed what Tamara told us, and he said it fits Simmons’s usual MO when he thinks he’s been disrespected. He said he’s not sure about the black sedan, but he’ll have his people check on that.”
“I like the feel of this thread,” Sam said as she drove toward HQ, again thankful for the lack of traffic. “I like it a lot.”
“You know how I hate to be a buzzkiller…”
Sam rolled her eyes at him. “You love to kill my buzz. What’s it going to be this time?”
“It’s just that I can’t help but wonder if Trace wanted to get even with Tamara for disrespecting him, I can see him taking out Jamal. But why would he take out three other people? He’s already fully initiated, so it can’t be about that.”
“Maybe he was trying to make Jamal’s killing appear random?”
“That’s possible, but it seems like overkill. No pun intended.”
Sam had to agree with him, even if she didn’t want to. “You are indeed a buzzkiller, Detective Cruz.”
“At least I’m consistent.”
“That’s one of my lines, and it’s fully copyrighted. You’re not allowed to use it without prior written permission.”
“Did you make up your own rules to every game you played as a kid?”
She shot him a disdainful look. “What do you think?”
“That you’re lucky you survived childhood?”
Sam snorted out a laugh. “My sisters often wanted to kill me.” Her phone rang and she took the call from Nick. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” he said, sounding gruff and sleepy, as if he’d just woken up. She wished she was with him and not chasing down a killer. “You left without saying goodbye.”
“I did say goodbye. I even kissed you.”
“It doesn’t count if I’m not awake to enjoy it.”
“I’ll make it up to you later.”
Freddie put his hands over his ears, making Sam laugh. “Not in front of the children,” he said.
“What’s funny?”
“Freddie trying to hide from my side of this conversation. Maybe I should be specific about how I’m going to make it up to you.”
As Nick said, “Yes, please,” Freddie said, “Don’t you dare.”
Sam lost it laughing, thankful to them for the levity they provided at times when she needed it most. “Any sign of the boy child yet?”
“Nope,” Nick said. “He’s taking full advantage of his last day of vacation. I was thinking I would try to find something fun to do today. Maybe catch a Feds game if we can make it happen.”
“He’d love that. Wish I could join you.”
“Really?” he asked dryly.
“Well, not for the game so much as the company. Have you heard anything else about…the situation?”
“Nothing new. I’ll let you know if I do.”
“Please don’t. Henceforth, I’m operating on a need-to-know basis. If I don’t need to know or if you d
on’t need to tell me, don’t. I plan to keep my head as deeply planted in the sand as I possibly can for as long as I possibly can.”
“Good plan, babe. I’ll see you when you get home.”
“It’ll probably be late.”
“No worries. We’ll still let you in.”
Sam smiled at the witty reply. He was so cute and funny and sweet, and she loved him with a desperation that would’ve unnerved her before he showed her that it was okay to love so deeply. “Love you.”
“Love you too. Be careful out there.”
“I always am.”
“You two are so funny,” Freddie said after she ended the call.
“We are not.”
“You are, and it’s great that you can laugh and be normal with everything that’s happening.”
“We don’t know how to be any other way but normal.”
“That’s going to get you through whatever comes your way. You’ll be able to handle it because you have each other.”
“You’re very philosophical today, young Freddie.”
“You have no idea how much your friends admire both of you or how proud we are to be your friends. Elin and I were talking about it on the way home from the beach. She said how cool it was that we were hanging out with the vice president and his wife, and they’re just Sam and Nick, our friends.”
“That’s very nice of her—and you—to say. We try to keep it real. I can’t imagine either of us getting caught up in the nonsense that goes along with his job.”
“A lot of people would be caught up, and it’d change who they are.”
“I like who I am, and I particularly like who Nick is.”
He cracked up. “It’s admirable that you’re remaining true to yourselves and who you are underneath it all when everyone in the country—hell most of the world—knows who you are.”
Sam cringed. “Don’t remind me of that.”
“Sorry, but remember the upside. You’ll never have to work undercover again.”
“There is that, especially in light of the way my last undercover assignment ended.” She would never forget the shootout at the crack house that’d ended Quentin Johnson’s life.
“Do I need to remind you again that the blame for Quentin’s death belongs squarely with his drug-dealing scumbag father and not with you?”