The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “Great stuff,” he said. “I knew you could do it. I remembered the job you did on the interview with the mother in the Coffee Cup killings.” He tapped the printout. “You’ve got three typos. Fix those, then send it over to Ruth.”

  He came around the desk then, pointing at the three words he had ringed in red on the hard copy. He gave me a fatherly pat. “Then go get drunk. If you don’t want to drink alone, I’ll buy.”

  It was a very generous offer, considering that the only time Jake ever hobnobbed with reporters was at the Christmas party, but I just smiled at him and started correcting my typos.

  Actually, I didn’t feel like getting drunk. I was still so pumped up with adrenaline that alcohol was not what I needed. I didn’t want to go home either. When I looked at the clock, I was amazed to see it wasn’t yet eleven.

  I went over the straight news story Chuck had written. Although Chuck looks like a junior executive, complete with suspenders, slickly styled hair, and spiffy little mustache, he’s our beginner, a part-timer who’s still a student in the Grantham State University Department of Mass Communications. He works weekends, and it’s up to Ruth Borah, J.B. Penn the nightside violence reporter, and me to teach him how real-life police reporting works.

  Chuck accepted my changes after our usual discussion. These undergrads think they know everything. One of these days Chuck will leave his “E. Charles Ewing” byline behind, and he’ll turn into a really good reporter.

  After that I hung around the office. By then all the reporters but Chuck and the kid who writes the obits were gone. Chuck stays until one-thirty, when the last edition rolls.

  It was stupid for me to stay, but I didn’t want to leave. I phoned my roommates and assured them I was all right. My only living relative, my nutty Aunt Billie, had also called, so I used my credit card to call my hometown across the state and reassure the old bat. She never liked me when I was growing up, but since my grandmother died, she’s assumed the burden of being my family. It’s a burden for me, too, but I like my cousin, even if she is Billie’s daughter.

  Then the obit kid played back the video of the press conference for me.

  There I was—wrestling the baby with the dirty nose again. Since the police department monitor was in black and white, the whole thing had an unreal look to it. But when I watched the video and relived that moment when I turned my head and looked down the gun barrel, my heart jumped back into my mouth. I had to go for my own box of Kleenex after seeing that.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock, and I was trying to think of one more reason not to go home when the elevator opened, and two uniformed cops got off. Mike Svenson and Coy-the-Cop were behind them.

  I walked over to meet them. “What are you all doing here?” I said. “Coy generally makes me come to the PD. I don’t think he’s ever seen our office before.”

  “Actually,” Coy said, “it’s a pretty serious situation, or we wouldn’t have come.”

  All four of them looked grim, though Mike Svenson was holding his mouth oddly.

  “What’s the deal?” I looked from cop to cop. Now I realized that the other two guys were members of the TAC team which had been working at the Grantham PD Headquarters for the hostage crisis. They’d stayed out of the way of the negotiators, but they’d been in the bunch that rushed in and collared Bo.

  As I stared, the guy on the left pulled out his Miranda card. “We represent the Grantham Police Department, and you stand accused of refusing to associate with police officers. We are here to place you under arrest.” Then he lifted the card and began to Mirandize me. “You have the right . . .” he began.

  “Huh?” I said.

  The other cop pulled out his cuffs. “If you’ll just put your hands behind your back, ma’am . . .”

  “What?”

  The other cop continued to read. “You have the right to remain sober. Should you give up the right to remain sober . . .”

  “Sober?”

  The TAC cop scowled and went on, “Should you give up the right to remain sober, nothing you say will be taken down and used against you in a court of law.”

  I began to laugh, and Coy and Mike joined in. The TAC cops grinned.

  “Come on, Nell,” Mike said. “We all know you make a point of not socializing with cops, but this is a special occasion. We’re hauling you down to the Fifth Precinct for a drink—even if we have to take you in handcuffs.”

  “I’ll go quietly, officer,” I said. “If you’re all so hard up for feminine companionship that you’ll settle for a woman who put on her makeup in the back of a photographer’s van and who didn’t wash her hair when she got out of bed”—I glanced at my watch—“fifteen hours ago, I’ll come.”

  “It’s okay,” the TAC cop on the right said. “My girl and I will give you a ride home.”

  So I broke my longtime rule and went out drinking with cops. I knew it was going to be a strange experience and the strangeness began in the Gazette elevator.

  The Gazette’s night elevator was added to the front of the building mainly as a concession to the handicapped access law, or at least that’s the theory around the office. It’s just about big enough to hold one wheelchair. Three large-scale cops, one average-scale woman reporter, and one thin cop spokesman filled it up. To add to the muddle, you get in that elevator from the front and you get off it at the back. It has a front door and a back door, and you can walk straight through it. This confuses people.

  It seemed to confuse Mike Svenson. Coy and I got on the elevator and faced the back, ready to exit that way. But Mike and the two TAC cops were facing the front. This left me standing with my nose almost against Mike’s chest. As the elevator began to move, I had an unexpected sensation. Coy was talking, but I didn’t understand a word he said. All I was aware of was a high volume of testosterone radiating from Mike Svenson.

  Mike seemed to be broadcasting sex appeal, and my receiver was picking it up.

  I was amazed. Talk about unexpected. Was I imagining it? I sneaked a glance at Mike’s face, and I decided I was. He looked completely unconcerned. He was talking to one of the TAC cops. I was definitely imagining the whole thing.

  Then he looked down at me. Direct eye contact.

  Maybe I wasn’t imagining it.

  The elevator stopped, the door behind Mike opened, and we all got off. The odd sensation had been so disquieting that I nearly made a dash for my car, ready to head home and give the Fifth Precinct a miss.

  But Mike touched my arm, very gently, and pointed at a car with a city seal on the side. “We’re in Coy’s car,” he said.

  The public relations director for the Grantham PD only rated a two-door, near-compact vehicle. Coy-the-Cop was opening the door on the passenger’s side. I hesitated, but I climbed into the middle of the backseat, assigned seating for the shortest person in any group. A TAC cop and Mike got into the backseat with me. The second TAC cop climbed in front, and Coy drove.

  The Fifth Precinct is a “club,” which is the term we denizens of the southern plains use to mean a restaurant that serves liquor. Our part of the country rarely calls drinking establishments “bars” or “cocktail lounges”—too many Baptists. But people still have favorite hangouts, places they can be sure to run into friends and fellow workers.

  Grantham PD uses the terminology of the Chicago police, not New York’s, so its police force has “divisions,” not precincts. And, since the city is only about 350,000 in population, it has only three divisions. Some years earlier an opportunistic club owner had given one of the favorite cop hangouts a name associated with the police, but one which was not in use in Grantham. The Fifth Precinct. I guess it’s the equivalent of a golf club’s Nineteenth Hole.

  The Fifth, as it’s usually known, is a block from police headquarters. Not all cops go there, of course. All around town there are coffee shops and drive-ins and fast food joints that draw c
ops. But the Fifth is known as the main watering hole for the headquarters crowd. Not the chief, of course. Jameson, like our managing editor, keeps his distance from the troops.

  I spent the ride assuring myself that the sex appeal emanating from Mike Svenson was simply part of my overwrought imagination. Certainly Mike acted normal. He didn’t pinch my fanny or nibble my ear. He was just there, looming up in my libido. If anything, he was a bit quiet. Coy and the TAC guys talked enough to make up for his silence.

  The Fifth was really jumping when we walked in. Country-and-western music was playing loudly, and the rest of the party was way ahead of us in consumption of booze.

  As soon as we got inside, I stopped to get my eyes accustomed to the dark. That was when the second interesting incident occurred. Because when I stopped, Mike Svenson didn’t. He walked into my back and stood touching me for a moment, his chest against my shoulder blades, his thighs against my fanny.

  Then he moved, and I discovered I had been holding my breath. The episode had only lasted a few seconds, but somehow it hadn’t felt like an accidental touch in a crowded bar. I glanced over my shoulder, but Mike wasn’t looking at me.

  Then a path cleared, and I saw a couple of women waving from the back of the room. Coy passed me, pointing toward them and saying, “They’ve saved us a table.”

  I started back, weaving through the crowd. It was gratifying when people stopped me—Guy Unitas, slightly tight, gave my cheek a slobbery kiss with his fishy mouth—but I kept moving. And I was aware that Mike Svenson was close to me.

  “Go on back,” he said in my ear. “They’ve got a booth. What do you want to drink?”

  “I don’t need anything,” I yelled back. “I’m still flying on excitement.”

  “Maybe you need something to bring you down.”

  “A beer, then. But I’m not sure I’m ready to come down.”

  Mike went over to the bar, going up to the spot that’s usually reserved for the waitress. “Two Coronas, with lime,” he yelled.

  In spite of the crowd, he got quick service. It was easy to see he was the star of the evening. I took my beer, and he guided me through the crowd, to the very backmost booth in the place, a circular booth. The two TAC guys had already slid in beside the two women, and Coy-the-Cop was sitting down on the left side.

  Mike and I slid in on the side opposite Coy. The booth was crowded. I saw that one of the women was a dispatcher, Mary Jane Dorsey. She was snuggled up to one of the TAC guys. I knew her, of course. I knew all the dispatchers. Mary Jane whacked me on the arm. “Way to go, Nell!” Then she introduced me to the other woman—or she tried. I never could understand her name. She was on the force herself and was apparently the wife of the other TAC cop. But I didn’t know his name.

  I turned back to Mike. “This is going to mean more medals for you,” I said.

  First he shrugged and looked into his beer. “I’m too egotistical to get much of a boost out of medals,” he said. “I”m so stuck on myself that my own opinion is the only one that counts.” Then he grinned, and he looked directly into my eyes.

  There was no mistaking this. It was no accidental closeness in an elevator, no unintentional jostle in a crowd. It was deliberate eye contact at close range.

  I looked back. No blinking. And, somewhere just above and behind my pelvis, an involuntary muscle squeezed so tight I couldn’t breathe. The noisy crowd seemed simply to fade away.

  I knew I wanted to get Mike Svenson in bed as quick as I could.

  Chapter 4

  The rush of lust caught me completely by surprise. I don’t often blush—unlike many fair people, I don’t find that a problem—but I could feel my face getting hot and my lips getting swollen.

  Just then, one of the state cops came over, and Mike stood up to talk to him. I turned around and pretended to listen to the conversation in the booth. But my mind was racing. My reaction to Mike Svenson had me completely amazed.

  Actually, I reassured myself, it wasn’t as if Mike were a stranger. At least I knew him. I wasn’t getting the hots for some guy I picked up in a skating rink. If Mike had been a doctor or a banker or a teacher or a lawyer—well, maybe not a lawyer—or a bricklayer or a catfish farmer, I suppose I would have simply thought Mother Nature was telling me to take a good look at this guy.

  But Mike was a cop. And if I didn’t drink with cops or hang around with cops or even let Coy-the-Cop touch my elbow—what was I doing fantasizing about going to bed with a cop?

  It wasn’t even as if Mike was the best-looking cop on the force. His beat-up nose was one of the first things I’d noticed about him. And I sure didn’t like his hookups.

  Among Grantham police, “hookups” means political connections. The term comes, I’m told by old-timers, from an early day mayor named Hooks who was notorious for his patronage system. Mayor Hooks has been dead for seventy-five years, but his name lives on in local slang.

  And Mike Svenson had “hookups” dating clear back to his childhood status as the chief’s son. He would probably never have been hired without those hookups, and the department gossips had it that Guy Unitas and the board of the Amalgamated Police Brotherhood had taken a close look at his selection as chief negotiator for the department.

  He’d gotten all this attention because it’s considered weird for an officer with eight years on a big city police force to resign and start over as a rookie in a smaller city, even one his father once served as chief. But, eighteen months earlier, at the age of thirty, after eight years on the fast track at the Chicago Police Department, Mike had started over in Grantham.

  The law in our state—in all states, as far as I know—demands that every officer begin on the bottom rung in a new police department. I’ve been told that it’s some quirk of the public employees’ pension system, and that the variations in training requirements from state to state are also a factor. But for whatever reason, cops in nonsupervisory slots do not bounce from city to city, the way teachers or engineers or salesmen or newspaper reporters do, moving at the prospect of a better job. Cops can rise in rank only by staying in the same department.

  So eighteen months earlier, when the word went around the Grantham PD that Irish Svenson’s son wanted to join the force, there were hoots of disbelief. When Mike left Chicago to come back to his hometown, he lost pension benefits, he lost rank, he lost seniority. One day he was a sergeant of detectives in a city of several million. The next he was a rookie patrolman in a city of 350,000.

  Why? The Grantham PD buzzed like a sewing circle.

  The personnel office, speaking through Coy-the-Cop, assured me Mike Svenson’s application had been handled routinely.

  Sure, it had. I laughed derisively and demanded an interview with the chief, Wolf Jameson.

  Face-to-face with Jameson, I went for the jugular with my usual penetrating style of interviewing. “What’s the deal on Mike Svenson?”

  Jameson put on his good ol’ boy expression and rubbed his hair, as if he were feeling for wisps of hay. “Waal, young lady, it seems like a pretty good deal for our department. We get an experienced officer with high-falutin’ education and training—not to mention an outstanding record—for the same price we’d pay for a rookie. Can’t beat that.”

  “But does Mike Svenson really have an outstanding record?”

  “He’s jumped from grade to grade at the first moment he was eligible for promotion. He’s been decorated for heroism. He’s solved some important cases.”

  “But if he’s doing so well in Chicago, why does he want to leave? Is he in any trouble?”

  “His boss says not.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll bet his boss says he’s sorry to lose him.”

  “Yes, he does.” Jameson frowned. “Nell—I’m not saying ‘off the record’ because I know you won’t take information from me that way—I had the same questions you have when I heard Mike wanted to c
ome back. I didn’t get directly involved in the application process, but I did call several Chicago cops I’ve met at conventions and short courses over the years, guys I know well enough to ask for the real horse manure. They all said Mike has a great record and has never been involved in anything questionable up there.”

  He spread his hands and shook his head. “I’ve checked foreground and background, and there’s no indication Mike has any ulterior motive for leaving. I think he just wants to come home. His mother’s still here.”

  I laughed. “Don’t try to tell me Mike Svenson is coming back to Grantham to take care of his poor old mother. I saw the Widow Svenson at the APB dinner. She was beating guys off with a stick. She’s also one of the hottest real estate agents in town. Having a grown son around may cramp her style.”

  Jameson grinned. “Like you say, Wilda Svenson is one fine lady. And she can certain sure take care of herself without the help of a grown son. No, I think Mike’s just tired of the big city and wants to come back to God’s country.

  “And we’re lucky to get him. For one thing, he’s an experienced negotiator, and that’s a field where we’re a little short.”

  “But he’ll be a rookie, a patrolman, for at least a year.”

  Jameson waved at his intercom. “I’ll get Millie to give you a copy of our hostage situation policy. It says a negotiator is a ‘qualified person, not necessarily a member of the department.’ We’ve called in psychologists from Grantham Mental Health Center to handle negotiations before. We’ve called in people from Grantham State University. There’s no reason we couldn’t put Mike to work as a negotiator the day he goes on the force.”

  “What effect is his hiring going to have on department morale?”

  “That depends on Mike. If he throws his weight around, acts like a big city cop helping out a backwoods department—well, heckfire! We’ll let Chicago have him back.”