“Hm. That seems a tad inappropriate, coming from one of our finest in vice,” a voice rumbled behind Trey. Spinning around, Trey grabbed at his head, which had blossomed into a blaze of pain the moment he moved.
“Ow.”
Captain Merle, the owner of the rumbling voice, laughed. Trey wasn’t positive, but it seemed like that might be a first for the guy.
“Take it easy, son. You’ve got quite the lump there.” He peered at the bandage wrapped around Trey’s head, then refocused on the vice cop’s eyes. “You did good today.”
“Yeah… I dunno. Darc was the one who figured all the stuff out.” Trey was many things, but he was not someone that would take credit for another man’s collar.
“Really?” The captain’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s not what he says.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he credits you for figuring out the clue that led you to that reporter. Said something about the probability being less than one percent. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Trey grinned at him. “I know what you mean. I don’t understand half of what comes out of his mouth.”
The captain chuckled, then sobered. “Seriously, Keane, he’s never said a positive word about any of his other partners.” He held up a finger to forestall Trey’s next statement. “Any of them. You want the spot, it’s yours.”
“You’re giving me a choice?” Trey asked, his tone wry.
“I don’t want to. But yeah, it’s your call. I want you on board because you want to be.”
“I’m not so sure Darc feels the same way. I mean, he seemed totally willing to sacrifice me for the killer.”
Captain Merle sighed. “That’s just Darc. Would’ve done the same thing if it’d been his mother.” He broke off for a moment, looking over at the bald detective, who was in a heated conversation with the medical examiner. “You need to know, he’ll never be like other partners. Ever.”
“Yeah. I got that,” Trey replied. “Let me sleep on it?”
“Sure thing. Just make sure and wake up,” the captain said, pointing at Trey’s head injury. He moved away, his gait heavy and slow.
Trey watched him go until a body in front of him blocked his view.
It was Darc.
“Hey, dude.”
Darc nodded at him.
“So.” Trey had to know. “Seriously, no qualms about risking my life back there?”
Darc stared at Trey’s left eyebrow. “I knew I wouldn’t miss.”
“Yep. Sounds about right.” Trey groaned and lay back on the stretcher. Darc stayed motionless for a moment, then turned to go. Trey reached out a hand to stop him. “Hey, hold on a sec.”
Darc turned back around, his face expressionless. Trey looked into that face, wondering if he’d ever get used to seeing so little emotion from the man that he’d be trusting with his life, day in and day out.
“I made you something.” Trey held up a paper towel he’d begged off the paramedics. “I wrote down some stuff for you. Let’s call them Trey’s Rules. First one, we’ve already gone over… pretend to be interested. But I wanted to read the second one to you, make sure you actually got it.”
Darc folded his arms and held Trey’s gaze, his face impassive. Good enough for Trey. He cleared his throat and continued.
“Okay, second rule: Never, ever, ever shoot a perp when he or she is holding a gun to your partner’s head.”
At that, something crazy happened. Darc’s lips quirked upward. It wasn’t much more than a twitch, but Trey would have sworn on his life that he hadn’t imagined it.
“Anyway, I wrote down twenty of them.” Darc took the scrap of paper from Trey’s hands, his face more thoughtful than Trey had ever seen it before. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Darc was experiencing some kind of emotion. “I don’t want you to think that’s the end of them. I have a feeling there will be more where those came from. Lots more.”
Darc nodded, then turned on his heel to head back to the crime scene. Trey watched him go, studying the back of his head, the motion of his torso as his arms swung freely at his side.
He was getting to know his new partner.
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CHILD’S PLAY – A prequel short story to Amber Alert
CHAPTER 1
Star jasmine, dew and gasoline. If there was an odor that embodied Southern California in the pre-dawn hours, that was the one that it had to be.
Early mornings. There was a push-pull to them that drew Cameron Holdon. Sitting out on the stairs of the apartment complex she managed, she breathed in the lack of perpetual voices. Their lack was a tight place in her chest that was both welcome and a bit panicky. Even being just this far from her girls made her feel like an irresponsible mother.
This was an hour Cam never would have seen back in her youth, and not much more even up to about seven years ago. She was a night owl by natural preference, but years of being a mom to her triplets had successfully trained her to be an early riser in a way having Ryan never had.
It was the day after tomorrow. The anniversary.
Her mind veered away from a closer examination of that thought. Better to look out on the landscape before her as it brightened in tiny increments.
Soon enough she would be called back inside. Soon enough the world would intrude. The world of carpools, second grade, dance class, soccer practice and Brownie troops.
Right now, she could be at peace with the city.
San Diego contained the best of what So Cal had to offer—ethnic restaurants, pleasant weather and beaches—without some of the nastier things found a couple of hours to the north in Los Angeles. Earthquakes, fire season and rampant crime. She almost pitied those who had to live their lives up in Hollyweird. Traffic? Sure, there was traffic here and then some. But the rest of it was almost perfect.
Great reasons to stay, and there were even moments that she could convince herself that there was no other compelling force keeping her rooted. Nothing or no one that made leaving an impossibility.
It was fall, and there was a bite to the air. Cam’s favorite time of year. If she turned her head just so, she could almost pretend she saw her own breath. That was the one downside of living here. No real winter, no snow, no white Christmases.
Meh. Small price to pay for the paradise that was San Diego.
She sighed and pushed herself upright, turning to face the apartment complex. Not nearly so paradisiacal when you viewed it from this angle. Being a single mom wasn’t easy here in one of the most expensive cities in the US.
As she trotted down the hall, she heard a fight break out in 12C. Again. Those two were either busy knocking boots or breaking dishes. Didn’t seem to be much in between for them. At least there weren’t any kids in the picture. Yet.
Cam neared the door to her own apartment and stood outside for a moment, gathering her internal forces. A tiny metal strip proclaimed Manager for anyone who cared to tilt their head sideways. One of the nails used to attach the strip to the door had fallen out, and no one had ever pushed to get it fixed.
The managing gig was a good one. The landlords of the property lived in Hawaii, almost never came stateside, and still thought that the manager of an apartment complex should get free housing and a small salary.
It was the only thing that kept Cam’s family afloat these days. There sure wasn’t much coming from her ex. Take a night security guard’s pay and subtract an alcohol addiction and what did you get? Not a whole hell of a lot.
She winced, regretting her own vitriol. Robert did what he could. But what he could do just didn’t amount to much these days. He had been a fine specimen of masculine virility and pride, back before…
In those days, it had been her that had worried night and day that her police officer husband would up and leave. She’d been a bit of a mess. Her college days of partying had turned into mommy’s morning cup of coffee laced with vodka.
/> No longer. Clean and sober for seven years. It was like she and her ex had traded places. Well, except for the whole penis thing. Yikes. Peeing standing up was not an equal trade off for being saddled with a dangling appendage that made you buckle over double when the wind blew too hard.
She pulled out her keys, the large ring jangling in the near silence. 12C had finally stopped screaming, which either meant they had passed out or they were on to the lovemaking phase. Cam had no intention of sticking around long enough to find out.
Pushing open the door, she was enveloped in the smell of her home. Part old-apartment-mildew, but that just set off the other, more pleasant aromas. The smell of the pumpkin bread she had made last night in one of her rare cooking fits that mingled with the spiced cookie candles she loved to burn after the kids were in bed. A slight whiff of the strawberry shampoo that everyone in the family used.
One nice thing about them all being girls. They didn’t have to worry about boy soaps or boy toys or boy TV shows. It was convenient to not have to manage fights over the remote control.
The lack of anything masculine in the apartment sometimes felt like a black hole. Some kind of cosmic vacuum that was slowly sucking the soul out of Cam. She didn’t need a man to survive. But it was undeniable that it had been nice to have one around.
Before…
A blinking red light called her attention over to the kitchen counter. The message light on the phone was showing a voicemail. Cam was ninety percent sure she’d checked last night, and she didn’t remember seeing the red light on her way out of the apartment.
Who the hell had called her at 5:30 in the morning?
Picking up the receiver, Cam dialed for the voicemail. The message came through, but wasn’t much. An intake of breath, a cleared throat, then a hang up.
Weird.
Maybe it was a wrong number. That’s what made the most sense. Someone from a different time zone, maybe? But when she checked the caller ID, it was a number from here in San Diego.
Well, if they wanted to talk to her, they’d call back. It wasn’t the first hang-up she’d received in the six years since she’d started the Empty Crib Organization with her best friend and partner, Harper Pembroke. It wouldn’t be the last.
When your child had been abducted, it didn’t take long before you wanted to reach out to someone who’s been through the same thing. That’s how she and Harper had met, after all.
A sound of padding feet caused Cam to spin around. It was Michaela. Mickey, the only towhead of her three. The only one of the gang who looked like her. The rest all favored their dad, dark haired and dark eyed. Especially Ryan…
“Hey, Mouse, what’re you doing up?” she crooned as she scooped up her little girl. The nickname was their private joke. Mickey Mouse. She was small still, but getting bigger by the day. It wouldn’t be too long before she couldn’t snuggle the girls at all. The thought gave her a pang.
“I heard the phone ring,” Mickey said, yawning and rubbing her hand through her rat’s nest hair. Had she gone to bed chewing gum again? Cam tried to smooth the hair down with little success.
“Sorry about that, sweetie. I was just out on the front stairs. Did you get scared?”
“Nope. I didn’t come down until I heard the door open and shut. You okay?” Mickey turned and gave her mother a solemn look. It was a question that never would have occurred to the other two girls. They were wrapped up in their worlds of girlfriends and dresses and dolls. But not Mickey.
Cam gave her a squeeze. “’Course I’m okay, Mouse,” she said. “I’ve got you for a daughter. How could I not be okay?”
Mickey shrugged and gave her a sad smile. “I just know it’s coming up.”
“What, sweetie?” Cam asked, but she knew. It wasn’t something she talked about with the girls much, but they’d seen pictures, of course, and somehow Mickey had picked up on it.
“The day Ryan was taken. When is it?”
“That… is not something that you need to worry about,” she answered, the response sticking in her throat. She looked at her little girl and saw the disappointment and concern written across her forehead in tiny little lines. No seven-year-old girl should have worry lines. Cam cleared her throat. “It’s the day after tomorrow.”
Mickey nodded. “I thought so. Do you want me to stay out here with you?”
Time to make a decision. She could wallow in the pain, share it with her daughter who was way too young to worry about things like that. The temptation to do so was strong.
Or she could be a grownup. Suck it up for the sake of her little ones. The choice wasn’t tough, once she really looked at it.
“Oh, I see what’s going on here,” Cam said with a smirk. “You’re just looking to stay up, aren’t you? Little stinker.” She gave Mickey a squeeze and a tickle, making her squirm and giggle. “Now go on back to bed. You’ve still got a couple of hours before you have to be up.”
Mickey sighed and nodded again, slipping out of Cam’s arms to the floor. After a quick glance at her mother’s face to make sure everything was truly all right, she trotted back down the hall to the master bedroom that she shared with her two sisters.
That was a concession that Cam had made right from the first. There was only one of her. There were three of them. They got the bigger of the rooms.
The door had just barely shut behind Mickey when the phone rang again. Cam swore and darted over to grab the receiver before the entire household woke up. Not that there was much of a chance of that. Jules and Meg slept the sleep of the dead. Or deaf. Not much short of a nuclear apocalypse could wake them. Made school mornings tough.
“Hello?” Cam said in a low voice, not wanting Mickey to get curious and come back out.
There was a pause on the other end of the line, during which Cam glanced at the caller ID. Same number as before.
“Can I help you?” Cam said, a tone of sharpness creeping in. “It’s very early in the morning.”
“I’m… I’m so sorry,” came a timid voice on the other end. A woman’s voice, high pitched and trembling. “Did I wake you?”
“No, I was up. My girls on the other hand…”
“This is a mistake. I apologize,” the voice said. Her embarrassment screamed through the connection. It was clear she was about to disconnect the line.
“Don’t hang up,” Cam urged, suppressing a sigh. Something told her this was well outside of this woman’s comfort zone. Which meant it was probably important. “What can I do for you?”
“Is this Cameron Holdon? From the Empty Crib Organization?”
And there it was. The only good excuse for an early morning call.
“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, I’m Cam.”
The voice on the other end of the line broke down and began sobbing.
* * *
Harper Pembroke sat in her car by the side of the road, waiting for Cam to get there. The house of the woman who had called her partner at the crack of dawn was up in Mira Mesa, about 20 minutes north of San Diego. What was her name? Elizabeth? No, that wasn’t it. Emma. Like that novel Harper was supposed to have read her senior year of high school. Stupid Jane Austen.
Emma Young. And her husband. Some weird name that started with a J. Like Jerome, but not. She shook her head. Names had always been a bit of a problem for her.
Kicking at a soda bottle that had slipped over into her car well, Harper had the thought, as she did almost every day of her life, that she should really get more organized. You know, go through her glove compartment, sift through the papers in the passenger side seat, clean out the fast food bags and wrappers that acted as her car floor mats. Maybe she was just repurposing. That was it. Using the paper bags as a shield for the carpeting in her car.
Yeah, right.
The last time she had seen the bottom of her car was probably back in 2008. Man, that had been a rough year. Sometimes Harper was convinced she could track the good times by the amount of trash in her car. The more trash there was, the
happier the times.
There was a honk, and Harper looked out of her window across the street. There was Cam’s beat up Chevy Venture. That thing had to be over ten years old, and it looked twice that. Not that Harper could talk all that much. Her POS Honda wasn’t much younger, and she’d run into the odd pole here and there. Gave her vehicle character, right?
Cam stepped out of the minivan, a Baby Alive doll falling out and nearly tripping her. Harper held in a snort out of solidarity. Cam might not realize it right at the moment, but Harper had her back. She wasn’t about to laugh at her best friend’s misfortunes. Oh, who was she kidding? Cam was pretty much her only friend.
Besides, Harper could stand to have a doll or two to trip over. She and her ex-monster-of-a-husband had only had the one child, so when Billy had gone missing and eventually turned up dead, that had been the end of the child-related paraphernalia around the house.
And when the killer had turned out to be her spouse, well, that had necessitated a whole ‘nother mess of changes. Hellfire and damnation if that wasn’t the understatement of the century.
There had been a time, back when she was desperately searching for her boy, that she’d thought to herself that she just wanted to know, one way or the other. Turned out, getting closure was a mixed bag. Whether that closure had done anything other than turn her into a cynical bitch was up for debate.
Harper’s eyes blurred a bit as she watched her friend throw the doll back in the car, lock up and cross the street. It was a good question, honestly, and one that Harper couldn’t answer. How would an outsider assess the differences between Cam and her?
Both had been through hell. Both had ended up losing their spouses, Cam’s to the bottle and Harper’s to the big house. But where Harper knew what had happened to her boy, Cam still had no idea.
They didn’t discuss it too much, but Harper knew that Cam was still searching for her lost boy. How could she not? If there were even a squirrel’s fart in a windstorm’s chance that she could see her Billy again, Harper would be all over that like caramel on an apple.
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