by James Hunt
“Can I ask why, sir?” Jim asked.
“Your caseload is piling up,” Kierney said. “And we have plenty of good officers waiting for a shot at earning their detective’s shield. Your former partner’s vacancy needs to be filled.”
Jim struggled to sit still. “I was under the impression Detective Martin’s slot would remain open until she decided to return.” Jim swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “Is she not coming back?”
“Detective Martin remains on her sabbatical, but we can’t wait around for her,” Kierney said, and then he looked to Mullocks. “The lieutenant will brief you on the details, but I wanted to make sure you heard this from me.”
Jim was shocked at how quiet the lieutenant was being, and he quickly stood. “Sir, I’ve had no trouble working the cases solo. There has been no drop in my case closure rate, and—”
“This isn’t up for discussion,” Kierney said angrily. “This is department policy, and I will not have my precinct fall into disarray.” He stepped closer to Jim, his body language tense. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, Detective. If I get even the faintest whiff that you’re falling back into old habits, I will personally take your badge and your gun. Do I make myself clear?”
Despite Jim’s career in law and order, he’d always had a rebellious nature. He assumed it stemmed from all of those years in the foster system, fighting back against those who had harmed him. But he suppressed those urges now. The captain might have been a blowhard, but a bluffer he was not.
“Yes, sir,” Jim answered.
“Good.” Captain Kierney leaned back and then straightened out the front of his dress blues. He turned to the lieutenant. “I’ll be waiting for your follow-up at the end of the day.”
Mullocks nodded but remained silent.
Once the captain was gone, Jim shut the door and kept his back to the lieutenant for a moment before he faced her. “Did Kerry say something to you?” Jim asked.
The lieutenant was a small woman, short, petite, pretty with piercing green eyes. But she had one of the most intimidating glares Jim had ever seen.
“The decision has been made,” Mullocks answered.
“Did she, lieutenant?” Jim asked.
Mullocks rocked forward in her chair, softening a bit. “No. I haven’t talked to her since she filed her paperwork the last day she worked.”
“I don’t need another partner,” Jim said.
“It’s not about what you need,” Mullocks said. “It’s about the administration making sure their asses are covered.”
“Didn’t you fight this?” Jim asked, petulant.
Mullocks tilted her head to the side. “Jim, it’s done. The more you fight it, the more you’re proving their point.”
“And what point is that?” Jim asked.
The lieutenant stepped around her desk and walked over to Jim. “Despite your progress over the past year, you have a checkered history with the department.” She held up her hand before he could protest. “I know you’re good at your job. The brass knows it, too. But before you came here, this was your last shot at remaining a detective. You’ve come a long way, but…” She trailed off, and despite having a reputation of being a bit of a hardass, Jim saw a softness in her eyes when she looked at him. “I’ve seen lone cops go down rabbit holes they can’t escape. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
Jim studied the lieutenant and then frowned when he realized what she had done. “You made the request for me to have a partner.”
“I did,” Mullocks said.
It was rare for Jim to feel betrayal, but that was only because he allowed very few people into his life. Mullocks had been one of those individuals.
“Why?” Jim asked.
“Because it’s dangerous out there for us,” Mullocks said. “I know it’s always been dangerous, but the general public’s feelings toward us are at a very low point in the department’s history.”
“I’m aware of the current climate,” Jim said. “But is that it? Or do you agree with what Captain Kierney said as well?” Jim knew he was on the verge of crossing a line, but he couldn’t help himself.
“You’ve been slipping, Jim,” Mullocks said. “A little bit more, every day.”
Jim scoffed. “You’re kidding.”
Mullocks raised her right hand and extended a finger for every instance she rattled off. “You’ve cited extenuating circumstances in three of your last five cases to enter a domicile, and those three cases are falling apart in court.”
“I brought the kids back, didn’t I?” Jim asked.
“Yeah, and their abductors are getting off the hook!” Mullocks answered. “That’s the kind of thinking that landed you here in the first place, Jim. Do you really want to burn through the rest of what little goodwill you have with the department? Because that’s what you’re doing. You need someone out there helping you.”
“You mean to keep an eye on me,” Jim said.
“Yeah, well, I’d do it myself, but you’re not the center of my universe,” Mullocks said angrily, putting her foot down. “You will report to my office tomorrow at the start of your shift to meet your new partner. Is that clear?”
Jim clenched his jaw. The lieutenant had been nothing but helpful to Jim, and he knew she had cut him more slack than she should have. He should have been thanking her for everything she had done, and because of that, Jim acknowledged that he was slipping. It was time to accept that.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jim answered.
“Good.” Mullocks returned to her desk, where she collapsed into her chair with a sigh.
Jim blushed with embarrassment. He knew the lieutenant only had his best interests at heart. She had been the only one to believe in him when the rest of the department had turned its back on him.
“I know you’re worried about me,” Jim said. “And maybe you’re right. But so long as I remained solo on the job, I thought…”
“You thought Kerry would come back,” Mullocks said. “She just needs time, Jim.”
“Do you think she’ll come back?” Jim asked.
Mullocks considered her response before she answered, and then she shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. Your last case together was… difficult. And she had been dealing with stuff even before all of that.”
Jim knew Kerry had been dealing with a lot, but he had believed she shared the same belief as him, that the job was a part of them and it wasn’t something you could just walk away from. Because walking away from it was be cutting yourself in two.
“Call her,” Mullocks said.
“Yeah,” Jim said.
“I’m serious,” Mullocks replied. “She would be glad to hear from you.”
“You’re not the first to suggest that,” Jim said.
“Jen’s a smart woman,” Mullocks said. “You should listen to the smart women in your life more often, Jim. It’d make your life much easier.” She smirked, and Jim couldn’t help but mirror the expression. “Get back to work. You’re wasting our taxpayer’s dollars standing in here, sulking.”
Jim nodded. “Lieutenant.” He stepped out of Mullocks’ office and returned to his desk in the bullpen. He stared at Kerry’s empty chair and thought about their last case, which had been difficult, to say the least.
Jim and Kerry had brought down one of the biggest child trafficking rings in the country that entailed a series of secretive underground clubs catering to the wealthy and powerful. The case had put the city and the department in the national media. But interest had died down, the news cycle doing what it did best in kicking out old stories and ushering in new ones.
The desk phone rang, snapping Jim out of his daze, and he picked it up. “North.”
“Detective, it’s Hale,” the sergeant said. “I’ve got a guy here who wants to talk to you.”
Jim frowned. “Reporter?”
“No,” Hale answered. “Says he knew you in the foster system.”
The quick shot of adrenaline caused Jim’s heart to sk
ip a beat. He had known plenty of kids when he was in the system all those years ago. But he knew there was only one kid with whom he’d grown close, but Jim hadn’t seen him in over ten years.
“Send him back,” Jim said.
Jim hung up the phone and then fidgeted nervously at his desk. Unable to sit still, he stood and donned his jacket. He adjusted his tie and then looked up in time to see Nate Walker step into the bullpen.
A chill ran up Jim’s spine when he saw Nate as a flood of memories rushed back to him. Some of them were good, most of them were bad. For almost seven years, Jim and Nate were paired together, shuttled around to different foster homes. They had bonded through fear and pain. But of all the time they spent together, there was only one night that came to mind when Jim saw his friend, and Jim could still see the blood splattered on Nate’s face.
“Jimmy,” Nate said, rushing over, out of breath as if he had run miles to get there. “I need your help.”
Jim gestured to the chair next to his desk, a thousand questions racing through his head. “What are you doing here?”
Nate was fidgety, nervous, glancing around like a junky going through withdrawals. “I’m in trouble.”
Jim flinched. “What kind of trouble?”
“My son,” Nate answered. “He’s been taken.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “How long has he been missing?”
“I don’t know,” Nate said. “I left for work last night at ten, and I got back to our apartment around eight this morning. Must’ve been somewhere in that timeframe.”
Jim checked the time and saw that it was a little past ten o’clock now. That meant if Nate’s son had gone missing immediately after he left for work, then they were already past the twelve-hour mark on the case. Jim needed to gather as much information as quickly as possible.
“All right,” Jim said, trying to sound reassuring. “Just calm down. I need to get some information from you, and then we’ll send out an Amber Alert—”
“No!” Nate shouted, his voice rising above the chatter of the bullpen, which fell silent, briefly, from the disturbance.
“Okay,” Jim said. “Just calm down—”
“There can’t be any official report,” Nate said, his eyes pleading with desperation.
Jim grew uneasy. “Why?”
Nate bit his lip, hugging himself tightly. “He’s not… He’s not officially mine.”
“What do you mean he’s not officially yours?” Jim asked. “Do you not have custody?”
“No,” Nate answered.
Jim leaned back. “Christ, Nate.”
“He’s better off with me,” Nate said, growing more animated. “I wasn’t about to lose my son to some old hag!”
Jim didn’t have all of the context to the situation, but none of that mattered. Because some people in life were too important, and for Jim, Nate Walker was one of them. Nate had saved Jim’s life. He was his first partner before he wore the badge. And Jim wasn’t about to let his partner down.
“Will you help me?” Nate asked. “Jimmy, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Against Jim’s better judgment, he nodded, and he felt himself slip back into those old habits everyone had been so worried he would find.
4
Kerry sat in her car, parked in the lot outside of the federal penitentiary where her father was held. The building was big, bland, and filled with the most dangerous criminals in the country. It was here that the justice system buried their lifers behind impenetrable concrete and steel walls, letting them rot for the crimes they committed against their fellow man.
Kerry’s father, Roy Solomon, was one of those men. Kerry knew all of the intricate details of her father’s past indiscretions. She had hated him for what he had done not just to the city but to his own family. Kerry and her mother were dragged through the mud right along next to her father. His past had become her past, his sins her sins, and she had fought hard for a long time to separate herself from him.
But while Kerry had taken steps to separate herself from her father, it had taken almost fifteen years on the police force before her fellow officers had finally trusted her. Because Roy Solomon wasn’t just a crooked cop, he was a cop killer. That had been the crime that had finally exposed Kerry’s father, unraveling his web of deceit and corruption that had spanned and terrorized the city for over a decade.
Once Kerry’s father’s actions were brought to light, she and her mother were treated as co-conspirators to all of Roy Soloman’s crimes. People couldn’t understand how the wife of a detective didn’t know exactly what he was doing. And Kerry was the apple people were convinced hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
And now, here she was, following in his footsteps, one more tainted cop in a system that citizens already held in little faith. Kerry had tried to convince herself that what she had done was necessary to solve the case, and a part of that was true.
The people Jim and Kerry had been chasing were the worst kind of pedophiles imaginable. And if she hadn’t made her deal with Cutters, then they would still be around. She supposed her own moral compass was a small price to pay to save the lives of innocent children.
Kerry entered the facility, passing a few of the correctional officers who knew her by name. A few of them cast her dirty looks, knowing whose daughter she was, but most had warmed up to her.
Because of Kerry’s status as a detective, she was normally given a private room to speak with her father. But since her leave of absence, she no longer had the badge to use to leverage a secluded space. She was hoping the correctional officers would cut her some slack, but none was given. She was thrust into the rest of the common area with everyone else.
Roy Soloman shuffled into the visiting area and found Kerry at one of the smaller tables. Time in prison had worn Roy Soloman down and had filed off those sharp edges. He was, by all accounts, a broken man. The Roy Soloman the papers had written stories about, and that cops spoke about like some mysterious legend, was only a shadow of the man he was today.
Kerry had always resented her father and the things he had done because his prison sentence had affected Kerry and her mother as much as it did him. They were forced out into the cold, her mother doing everything they could to help them make it. They were forsaken by everyone: friends, neighbors, what little family her mother had. But despite all of that, Kerry had begun to mend her shattered relationship with her father. And over the past year, they had made progress.
“I wasn’t expecting you today,” Roy said as he sat down.
Kerry glanced around suspiciously and leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “I need your help.”
Roy studied his daughter for a moment and then frowned. “What happened?”
“You remember that favor I asked from you?” Kerry asked. “The one that made me take my leave of absence after the case was finished?”
Roy nodded.
“Well, it’s come back around,” Kerry said.
“I told you it could be risky,” Roy said.
“I know,” Kerry said, still whispering.
“What’s the payment?” Roy asked. “And who's it for?”
Kerry hadn’t told her father about the deal she had made with Cutters. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Brian.
“Kerry?” Roy asked. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me who you’re dealing with.”
Kerry knew beating around the bush wasn’t going to make things easier, so she ripped off the Band-Aid quickly. “Benjamin Cutters.”
The name lingered in the air between them for a moment, floating there as if Roy hadn’t heard it. And then, he repeated the name back to her very slowly.
“Yes,” Kerry replied.
Roy bowed his head and muttered something under his breath that Kerry couldn’t hear.
“What?” Kerry asked.
“I said you’re fucking stupid!” Roy said, his whisper loud enough to garner some attention from the table nearby, but they quickly returned to their own conver
sation. “Do you know who he is?”
“I’ve dealt with him before,” Kerry answered, pretending she wasn’t concerned by her father’s tone. “I know he’s a criminal and deals with a lot of imports of drugs and other items.”
“Benjamin Cutters is the biggest smuggler on the West Coast,” Roy said. “Hell, maybe even in the country. Everyone knows that if you want something brought in beneath the radar, you call him.”
“And?” Kerry asked.
“And you don’t get to be in the kind of position Cutters is without having done some very bad things,” Roy answered. “He’s a dangerous man, Kerry.”
In all the interactions Kerry had with Cutters, she wasn’t sure if “dangerous” was the right word to describe him. But she wasn’t naïve.
“Look, I just need a way out,” Kerry said.
“A way out?” Roy asked. “There is no way out. You want to know where your way out is?” He pointed his finger at the table. “Prison or six feet under. Take your pick.”
“Well, those two options don’t work for me,” Kerry said.
Roy leaned back, amazed at his daughter’s stubbornness. “What does he want you to do?”
Kerry glanced around, making sure there was no more attention on them. “He wants me to give a tip to the VICE unit about a heroin shipment.”
“Is it a fake?” Roy asked.
“He said it wasn’t,” Kerry answered. “He says the detectives will find product.”
Roy drummed his fingers on the table and then leaned forward. “Do it.”
Kerry waited for more, but when that was the extent of her father’s advice, she asked, “And then what?”
“And then you wait for what else he wants from you,” Roy answered. “That’s usually how the arrangement works.”
Kerry grew irritated. “I came here for you to help me find a way out. I need something to use against Cutters.”
“You don’t think the police haven’t been trying to nail that guy for the past thirty years?” Roy asked. “Do you have any idea how many cops, and lawyers, and politicians have tried to do what you’re doing? And in all that time, across all of those different fields of justice and persuasion, no one has been able to do it. You know why? Because Benjamin Cutters has his finger in everything.”