by R. H. Herron
Jojo shook her head and held the phone firmly. “I want to do it.”
“No way. Over my dead body.” Mom looked as if she wanted to unsay the words.
Jojo yanked Mom’s phone out of her hands. “I’ll be right back,” she hissed.
She left the car door ajar so that it didn’t slam.
A mother pushing a stroller passed by on the sidewalk. Jojo pretended to look at the phone, keeping the duct tape roll behind her.
Then, as soon as the coast was clear, she squatted next to the driver’s-side wheel well. She reached up, smelling oil and metal. Two quick straps of tape. One more for good measure.
Then she ran back. She tasted bile in her throat. She leaned inside Mom’s car. “Let’s go. Kevin, I’ll ride with you.”
Mom said, “I want you with me, Jojo. We’ll go home and rest.”
Kevin was out of the car, heading for his own.
“He needs me, though.”
Mom blinked. Then she reached across the empty seat and patted Jojo’s cheek. There was a beat of silence. “Okay. Have him follow me home, okay?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly all Jojo wanted was to ride with her mother, to go home, to have hot cocoa, and to go to bed for three days. But she couldn’t. “See you there.”
FIFTY-ONE
WITHIN MINUTES OF getting home, Laurie watched Jojo and Kevin settle onto the living room couch together. Jojo got out the iPad and, instead of switching on the big TV, they sat side by side, hips and legs touching. Jojo kept her phone plugged in and in her hand, the screen constantly on. On the iPad they watched YouTube videos and spoke in low voices.
Their quiet talk was nice, a balm to the frayed edges of Laurie’s mind. Maybe they’d actually sleep, even though it was barely nine in the morning. She hoped so. Suddenly there was nothing she wanted more than a couple of hours of rest.
And Omid. She wanted him. . . .
No, she couldn’t want him. How could she be this angry at him—a volcano of rage slung inside her chest, charring her liver and lungs—when she missed him like she missed sleep?
And at the same time, she was just as furious at herself.
At the beginning of all this, she’d wanted to kill Kevin. She’d wanted to hurt him until he stopped breathing. She’d been completely convinced of his guilt, and she would have done anything to bring him to justice. An innocent man.
How many of them were like this?
Were all cops and dispatchers and ID techs and records clerks just brainwashed? Laurie didn’t think so—she’d gotten into the industry in order to help.
They all had.
Hadn’t they? The men on the list—they’d started the same way, too, right? With dreams and goals and the sincere wish to make the world a better, safer place? No matter what, they still made up less than ten percent of the force. . . .
She hung her bag on the hook in the kitchen and poured a glass of water. As she drank, she noticed her hand was shaking.
Her cell, before Jojo had taped it to Dixon’s car, had been getting texts from Pamela and Andy on an almost hourly basis while she’d been in the jail cell. She’d only had time to send one back to them while she was driving to meet Kevin and Jojo: We’re doing everything we can. Will call you soon.
She was doing everything she could. And it wasn’t good enough.
Harper was somewhere, and every hour they wasted not finding her was making it less likely she’d get out alive. The department and the people inside it didn’t matter at all, not when it came to finding Harper.
The department could go straight to hell.
We need to find her. Poor Harper—how would she recover from this? Laurie couldn’t imagine how Jojo would start to heal, let alone a girl who’d been trapped for days after being used like a cat toy by a department full of predators.
But they all needed rest, too, though. The three of them were running on fumes.
Back in the living room, she said, “Jojo, can I have your phone?”
Jojo finished laughing at whatever they were watching on the iPad and then said, “No.”
“Jojo.”
Her daughter met her eyes, and for a fraction of a second Laurie saw the woman that she would be in ten years, thirty, fifty.
Jojo shook her head firmly. “We’re both going to nap down here. We’ve already set an alarm, and every hour one of us’ll look at the app. We’ll get you if he moves.”
“I can do that.” That was her job. It wasn’t her daughter’s.
“Mama, you need to rest even more than we do. We didn’t go to jail last night. Go lie down.” Jojo flashed her a quick but sweet smile. “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
Laurie swallowed the ball of emotion tangled in her throat. She’s right. My daughter is right. She blew them each a stern kiss. “Sleep. I command you. It’s going to be okay.” The words were automatic.
Upstairs, Laurie pulled closed the blinds and then used the old landline phone to call Omid. She dialed the hospital room when he didn’t answer his cell.
“I’m doing better,” Omid said. “They say they’ll let me out in a couple of days.”
Laurie lay on the bed, his pillow tucked behind her head, her shoes still on. “Yeah? Because when I talked to the doctor, he said more like a week. How’s your pain level?” What if he had slept with Harper? Would she ever know? Would she ever trust him again?
He made a dissatisfied sound, but it was his giving-up tone. He was even more tired than she’d thought. “It’s fine. How’s our girl?”
“She’s doing okay.” Downstairs, on the couch with a man who was a bailed-out suspect in her rape, a killing, and a kidnapping. Omid would have a third and probably final heart attack if she told him. “She’s going to rest soon—we’ve been awake all night.” She didn’t tell him why. “You should rest, too.”
“I love you.”
No, no, no. They didn’t say that to each other. That was for emergencies. Laurie’s heart slammed in her chest. Going to war. Apocalypse. The very last moment. “I know,” was all she could manage. “Me too.”
FIFTY-TWO
JOJO HAD NEVER fallen asleep with anyone who wasn’t her mom and dad or Harper, but being tangled with Kevin on the couch was nice. She could see what people got out of the whole thing. His body was big and warm, a long pillow with no give. As she’d drawn a blanket over them, he’d turned so that he was spooning her. Jojo held her breath—it was so intimate, this cradling. Her whole body was tense, and she didn’t know how to arrange her limbs. But Kevin was good at it, and he slung an arm around her waist, pulling her against him. It felt safe. Good. Kevin rested the phone on the edge of the couch and kept one hand on it. “One hour,” he mumbled into her ear.
Or less. The phone was plugged in, and Jojo planned to look at the tracking more often if she could. How could she rest when Harper was out there? Hurting? Maybe dying?
But sleep dragged her down, and the first four times the alarm went off, they both jumped. All four times Jojo’s phone hadn’t moved, still sitting in front of Darren Dixon’s house.
The fifth time, at almost 2:00 P.M., the phone was moving.
“Mom!” Jojo kicked her way out from under the blanket, ignoring the ooof that came from Kevin behind her. She raced through the living room and took the stairs two at a time. “Mom!”
When she reached her parents’ bedroom, her mother was already standing. Okay, she was swaying, one hand out for balance, her face rumpled with sleep. “He’s moving?”
“He’s moving.”
Kevin stomped up the stairs, too, and peered over Jojo’s shoulder.
Mom grabbed the phone out of her hands. “Where?”
“Hey!”
But her mother held tight. She sat on the edge of the bed.
Jojo climbed up behind her and motioned for Kevin to do the same.
“Hop up,” Mom said. “We can all watch.”
The image was small on the map, just a blue dot. It moved slowly down the freeway, though it was probably going the speed limit or more.
“Yes,” said Mom.
Jojo felt a chill shoot up her arms. They would get him—and then what? “Do you have a plan?” Desperately, she needed her mother to say yes again.
Instead Mom just shook her head and said, “Shhh.” As if she needed silence to watch a screen.
Kevin said, “He’s going to San Bernal.”
Mom nodded, and they watched the blue dot take the freeway exit that led to the Bernal Bridge. “Fuck.”
Jojo’s stomach clenched. “Why?”
“Why what?” Mom didn’t look at her, just kept her eyes on the phone.
“Why ‘fuck’?”
Mom just glanced at her, her gaze tight, as if Jojo had done something wrong.
But Jojo figured it out. “The police department. He’s going to report you?”
“Probably. Although, jurisdiction-wise he should know enough to report it in the city it happened in—” Mom took a breath. “Or he’s . . .”
Going to meet up with other cops. To talk about it. Together.
Mom finally continued, “Yeah, probably to report me.”
“Will you lose your job?” It seemed like a funny thing to worry about right now, but Jojo still needed to ask.
“I might.”
That wasn’t the right answer. Mom was supposed to say, It’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll fix this.
“Will Dad?” Jojo hated that her voice squeaked.
“I don’t know.”
The dot on the screen took all the turns that led to the PD.
Jojo didn’t realize she was stone-rigid until her mother said, “Hey. Breathe.” Jojo panted, and, next to her, Kevin did the same. They all had morning breath even though it was afternoon, and while it should have been disgusting, Jojo realized that she almost liked it. They smelled like a den of animals.
She could be feral if she needed to be.
The dot reached the department.
It stopped at the corner, where the light was.
And then it kept moving.
“Holy shit,” said Mom.
“Where’s he going?” Jojo scooted closer to Mom, moving onto her knees. She leaned her body against her mother, and Mom leaned back. “I mean, I know we don’t know. Where do you think he’s going?”
Kevin’s voice rumbled. “He’s going to the Old Coast. My house.”
But the dot kept moving, traveling down Smythe and taking a right on Fifteenth. Left on Rose. Right on Seventeenth.
At the corner of Hind and Seventeenth, the blue dot disappeared.
“Wait.” Jojo reached out her hand, but her mother jerked the phone closer to her chest.
“Where did it go?” Mom refreshed the screen. Nothing. She looked at Jojo. “Where did it go?”
“Let me have it.” Jojo didn’t think her mother had done anything wrong, but who knew?
“Fine.”
Jojo closed the app.
Reopened it.
Nothing.
“Your phone died.”
“No.” Mom’s face was pale.
“He’s moving too much—it’s not like he could have found it while he was driving. And if it had just dropped off the car, it would still be transmitting. I think it just died.”
“Fuck.”
Jojo watched, horrified, as tears rose in Mom’s eyes. “Oh, no.” She lightly punched her mother on the shoulder. “Don’t cry. If you go, I’ll go.”
Mom bit her bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I should have charged it longer, but I was in the jail without it and just plugged it in while I was driving to his house. . . . Oh, my God, we’ve lost him.”
Kevin, silent till now, scooted forward and took the phone from Jojo’s hand. “Nothing we can do about it. But what can we figure out from where he was going?”
Mom rubbed her face, hard. “Okay. Okay, yeah.”
Their three heads converged again. Mom studied the streets with new interest, zooming in and out while Kevin held the phone.
Jojo tried not to let the panic in her breastbone boil up and over.
“Okay,” said Mom again. “He was a cop in this town for eighteen years. He knows the city as well as anyone. If he were going to the east end, he would have come off the Forsyth Street exit, not over the bridge. That means he wasn’t going farther than Grand. And he avoided Bornemouth, which would have been faster for almost everything in that area, so that means he’s close to where he means to go.”
Kevin pointed at the screen, at the tangle of streets in the middle. “What’s there?”
“Some older houses, a few Victorians, and a crap-ton of densely populated apartment buildings.”
Jojo leaned closer. “Any other cops live there?”
“I don’t think so. No, definitely not.”
Jojo shook her head as she imagined the area. She’d flyered for the police Tip-a-Cop night in that area. “Too many doors. Even if we found his car, we wouldn’t be able to knock at every single one. And it would take hours to drive all those tiny streets looking for his car.”
“Even if we found the right door, he wouldn’t answer it,” said Mom. She pressed her palms together. “This is reminding me of something, though.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something about this street here—off of Hind—this feels familiar to me.”
How did that help? Mom knew every street in San Bernal like the back of her hand, first from being on the street, then for dispatching for so many years. Everything probably felt familiar to her. “We’ll never find him.”
“No, there’s something.” Mom stood, bouncing the bed as she did so. “I’ve got to go to dispatch. I’ll need to take your phone, but have Kevin text me if you need anything.”
“But you said they don’t trust you there—”
“I’ll figure it out. My brain is trying to tell me something, and I’m too tired to work it out without CAD.”
“What’s CAD?” said Kevin.
“The computer system in dispatch,” said Jojo. She stood. “I want to go with you.”
“You stay here. This won’t be a pleasure visit.”
Like anything was right now. They were in hell, and Mom wanted to split up. “Mama. Please let me come with you.”
But her mother was moving too fast. She tore off her shirt like she didn’t even care that Kevin was sitting right there. Jojo’s face flushed. At least Mom was wearing a bra, albeit an old gray one. She put on another shirt and darted into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
“You need to eat.” The words came out of Jojo’s mouth automatically—the words her mother had said to her a hundred-million times over the years.
Mom noticed it, too. Her hairbrush stopped moving, and she looked out the open bathroom door. “You’re right. I do. Can you do me a favor and get me one of those protein bars in the pantry?”
As if he’d been waiting for something—anything—to do, Kevin jumped up. “I’ll get that for you. Be right back.”
“Thanks.”
Mom came out and pulled off her jeans then, and her underwear. She slid into a fresh pair and pulled on new jeans.
Jojo said, “Thank God you didn’t do that while he was in here.”
Mom smiled thinly. “I realized by your faces when I took my shirt off that taking off my pants might be a bit too much. Sorry that was embarrassing.”
It wasn’t true—it would have been any other day. But today Jojo wasn’t embarrassed. Still, it was light talk—it felt like what she would say on a normal weekday. “Yeah, I would have died.”
In midstep her mother paused.
A quick freeze.
“Sorry,” Jojo mumbled. “You know what I mean.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Mom nodded sharply. “Okay, then. We have a deal.”
FIFTY-THREE
LAURIE STORMED THROUGH the back door of the police department, almost hopeful that the hallway would be full of guys at shift change. But the first floor was deserted—they must have been in lineup. No one to hurl her rage against.
In dispatch, Shonda and Charity looked startled to see her.
“Holy shit.”
“How are you?”
“How’s Jojo?”
“How’s Omid?”
Their voices traded off, and Laurie ignored the questions. “Who’s supe?”
“Rita. She’s on a break.” That meant she was upstairs in the lunchroom watching a soap on the DVR. Good.
Laurie sat at an open terminal. “I’ve got to dig through some records, okay?”
Shonda’s voice was tentative, a rare thing for her. “Aren’t you . . . aren’t you on admin leave?”
That would be news to her, but it was probably true. “Am I? If I am, I haven’t been told about it yet, nor have I signed anything. So I think that means I’m only on family medical leave, officially.”
Shonda stood. “Maybe I should go get Rita. Just in case.”
Laurie kept her hands moving over the keyboard. “Do what you need to do.” Shonda owed her twelve hours, and Laurie hadn’t been pushing to get it paid back, even though it had been more than a year. When she returned to work, she’d make Shonda work the time in the middle of her days off.
As Shonda left the room, Laurie started digging. Because she’d been trained to act as supervisor when needed, her log-ins still worked to get her into the back end of CAD. From here she could pull up almost anything from any of the mobile data computers in any of the cop cars. Dixon’s MDC would show exactly where he’d been, at all times. And if he’d gone out at any particular location, it would have logged that, too. Even though he’d been off the force for two years now, the records came up as quickly as any other request.