Her Husband’s Partner

by Jeanie London

  Was it Mike’s? More likely Brian’s. And hopefully not from anyone he was hanging out with. She couldn’t even imagine what her sister-in-law would say. Or worse yet, her brother-in-law, a strict Italian dad in every way. Riley made a mental note to ask Brian about it.

  “Why don’t we listen to Radio Disney?”

  Camille’s approval drowned out Jake’s complaints, and Riley flipped over to the AM radio station.

  “Thanks for compromising, Jake.” Grudging though that compliance was. “Mommy’s got to work, and I need to collect my thoughts before I get there.”

  Only her second week back and already she was scrambling to keep up. Thank God they’d come home before school started to settle in. Not that she felt settled yet. Not even close.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror again at those sweet faces that meant more to her than anything in the world. They were all rolling with the punches. Trying to, anyway. She needed to take her own advice and work on her spirit of adventure.

  Mike’s folks didn’t live far away, and their house happened to be located in the very direction she needed to go today—the Taconic Parkway. She caught the light at the end of her road and made it to her in-laws’ place in less than five minutes. Now if she could just get in and out quickly, she might actually get to Hazard Creek in time to get the story.

  “We’re here, guys.” Riley brought the van to a stop but left the engine idling, hoping to save time. “I know you’ll both be good for Grandma and Grandpa.”

  “Can we call you?” Jake popped open the seat belt and leaned into the front seat to retrieve his CD. He made a last-ditch grab, but Riley stopped him.

  “Play your other CDs for Grandma Rosie.” Grandma Rosie couldn’t watch the kids again if she died of a heart attack from listening to someone’s idea of music. “You can call me if you need me, sweet pea, but I won’t be long. We’ll be home in time for dinner.”

  “Pizza?” Camille asked hopefully.

  “Tacos.” Healthy ones with beans and lettuce. Riley kept that part to herself.

  Camille gave a good-natured shrug and hopped out of the minivan. Riley followed with Jake in her wake just as the front door opened and Rosie appeared.

  “Hugs, please. I want hugs from my beautiful family.” She extended her arms and wouldn’t let the kids pass until they’d been greeted in proper Rosie fashion.

  Riley’s mother-in-law was a woman who knew what it was to love and to lose what she loved. That experience was etched in the lines on her face, in her warm hugs and in the hope that seemed to glow from the inside out. She was determined to wring every moment of joy from every day, to savor every second as if it was a gift. She’d been that way ever since Riley had met her. She was still that way today. It was a quality Riley had always liked, but one she’d grown truly to admire since Mike’s death.

  “Give me kisses before you go, guys. I’m not coming in.” Riley knelt and gave each kid a big squeezy hug. “Love you bunches. Give Grandpa Joe a kiss for me.”

  “Grandpa Joe is in the kitchen.” Rosie stepped out onto the portico to let the kids pass into the house. “Why don’t you go find him then we’ll decide what we want to do for fun.”

  The kids didn’t need to be asked twice and disappeared without a backward glance.

  “Big assignment?” Rosie asked.

  “A scoop that the DEA and HCPD are going in on a crack cookhouse.”

  Rosie scowled. “I thought you weren’t covering this sort of stuff anymore.”

  “Max’s making a spot for me on staff, Rosie. I can’t turn down hard news.”

  “I can’t believe he wants you covering that sort of stuff.”

  Max Downey was an Angelica family friend whose family owned the Mid-Hudson Herald.

  “I appreciate your concern, Rosie, but I need this job.”

  Rosie narrowed her gaze but didn’t say another word. They both knew jobs weren’t so easy to come by in this economy. And as both Rosie and Joe had helped Riley manage Mike’s death benefits, they knew better than anyone that Riley’s days as a stay-at-home mom in Florida had been numbered.

  She gave Rosie a hug. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help. Please thank Joe for me.”

  “I will. But it’s our pleasure. You know that.”

  Riley gave her another squeeze. “Oh, and before I forget, Camille has nail polish in her bag. She’s planning a manicure.”

  Rosie nodded knowingly. “Thank you, dear. I’m on it.”

  Riley checked off that worry from her mental list. Rosie wouldn’t want Kiss Me Pink all over her tile or, heaven forbid, the furniture.

  Then Riley took off, grateful she didn’t have to angst about the kids being in good hands. Driving toward the Taconic Parkway, she tried not to speed, though her impulse was to put the pedal to the metal. She did not want to explain to her boss, family friend or not, that she’d arrived on the tail end of the action because she’d been pulled over by a state trooper, leaving the Mid-Hudson Herald to parrot the reports of the other local news services.

  No, Max had gotten the scoop about the bust, which meant if Riley did her job—and he was counting on her to do that—they’d break the news online first. One part of her was pleased he had so much faith in her work. The other part had to question whether his faith was well-placed. Once, she’d been on top of her game, but she’d been off her beat for a while now. No one knew that better than Max Downey, managing editor of the paper.

  She’d interned under Max during the summer between her junior and senior years at Vassar. That internship had been the opportunity of a lifetime, and she’d jumped all over it. He’d hired her straight out of college, and she’d worked her way up the rungs at the paper, establishing her reputation and finding an unexpected and very dear friend in Max.

  That was why he’d rolled with her during pregnancy and motherhood, allowing her to scale back her assignments to accommodate her family. That was why he was taking her back after a two-year leave in a down economy when the Internet was making print media scramble to stay relevant.

  Riley had to earn her place on the paper again, and that meant getting to Hazard Creek and covering this breaking news. Fortunately luck was with her, and in less than twenty minutes from the time she’d taken Max’s call, she was following GPS directions through the streets of an older residential community on the outskirts of the township.

  Max’s source had come through big because Riley spotted several cruisers from Hazard Creek’s PD and a truck that must belong to the DEA. She was surprised the sheriff’s department wasn’t here, too. A cluster of spectators—most likely folks evacuated from the surrounding homes—stood beyond the perimeter beneath the watchful gaze of the HCPD that had parked a cruiser to block access to the neighborhood.

  Riley circled the minivan around before getting caught up in the roadblock. After glancing at the GPS, she cut down a side street that brought her around to the other end of Alban Lane, where she hoped to get a better view of the house.

  She’d no sooner brought the minivan to a stop against the curb when she heard shouts. Crackling radios. The screech of tires over the road. Grabbing her gear, she slid from the minivan and cut across someone’s front yard to get close to the officer manning this side of the street.

  To get closer to the action.

  After flashing her press pass, she nodded when the officer told her to keep behind the caution tape. She slid down to the very end where the tape hung from a wooden blockade that had been set up to cut off access to the sidewalk. Aiming the digital camcorder at the house where DEA agents and police officers garbed in Kevlar swarmed the yard, she started to record, already deciding to pull stills from the footage for her story.

  If she could catch anything on video, Herald Online would run it. That would make Max happy. Especially since she saw no other media personnel. Heck, she’d barely made it.

  But as she watched the agents swarm the house, Riley knew something was wrong. Those in the doorway
disappeared inside, but those on the lawn seemed to freeze, as if someone had pressed the pause button on a video.

  Anxiety crawled uncomfortably at the base of her neck, but she had no time to question the sense of premonition, no time to make sense of what she was seeing in the view screen of the camcorder before the sound of locked brakes shrieked, and the grind of tires screamed over the street, way too close.

  Snapping her gaze to the direction of the sound, she froze, unable to register the sight before her. All she could see was the face of a teen, a boy who could be no older than Brian, his expression pure determination as he clung to the steering wheel of a car…

  And headed toward her.

  Riley could only react, twisting around to get out of the way, lurching into motion so fast that her knees almost buckled beneath her. She staggered for an instant but managed to make it onto the curb just as she heard the wooden barricade shatter behind her. She heard shouting, too, but couldn’t make out who or what. All she heard was the solid thunk of a groaning axle as the car jumped the curb.

  Run, run, run.

  The random thought that she should have worn sneakers popped into her head, followed by the sounds of Camille and Jake’s sweet voices crying out in time with the pulsing throb of her heartbeat.

  “Mommy died. Mommy died like Daddy.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “THE CHIEF WANTS TO SEE YOU,” the desk sergeant said, and Scott only nodded as he and Kevin Rush exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

  His partner was a decent enough guy, a good cop with a feel for vice that not all cops had. It wasn’t entirely Kevin’s fault they’d spent the morning chasing their tails, but a more seasoned cop would have recognized that the prostitute they interviewed had been lying through her teeth. She’d claimed to have witnessed a direct purchase between a known street peddler and a suspected head of a drug supply ring.

  Her story had been fiction. She was a hooker with a vendetta, Scott had quickly decided, but Kevin believed there was something in her story, something worth their morning. It had taken him hours to admit he’d been duped. Literally. A more experienced cop would have known that shooting in the dark was all part of the game. Sometimes it made more sense to back up and admit a wrong turn rather than barrel ahead.

  Scott needed to rein in his irritation because the chief was guaranteed to notice. Then he’d start up with the twenty questions about how Scott was adjusting to his new partner.

  There was no way in hell he was going there again. Not when the past two years had been an exercise in humility, starting with the day the chief had paired Scott with an older vice cop who’d known what it was like to lose a partner.

  When that match had proven not to be made in heaven, the chief had tossed another partner Scott’s way. Kevin was a few years younger and had just earned his promotion to detective.

  The chief had been giving Scott a vote of confidence by assigning him someone fresh, someone to train into the kind of partner Scott wanted to work with. Turned out he wasn’t really in the mood to train. Just as he hadn’t been in the mood to change the way he did things to fit in with a hardheaded cop with an eye on retirement.

  Scott wanted to work, to immerse himself in his cases and do his bit to clean up the streets. That was what he did, what gave him a sense of purpose.

  Kevin had potential, no question, but he got distracted too easily by nonsense—tripping over his own ego for one. The wasted morning wasn’t such a big deal. Scott had spent his fair share of mornings going around in circles. Still, he hadn’t exactly come away empty-handed today. No, he had an attitude he couldn’t shake and a truth he didn’t want to admit.

  Kevin’s biggest offense was that he wasn’t Mike.

  But that was an old problem that would have to wait for another day. They arrived at the chief’s office, and right now Scott had to contend with the expectations of a boss who wanted him to accomplish the sort of miracles that he and Mike had in their heyday. Figuring out why he couldn’t settle in with a new partner when even Riley was managing to get on with life would require more time and energy than Scott had right now.

  Kevin didn’t say a word as he knocked and pushed open the door. In all fairness to the guy, he wasn’t the only one feeling the weight of the chief’s expectations.

  “What did you come up with?” Chief Levering glanced up expectantly from the report he held.

  Scott stood there silent, keeping his face carefully blank. He’d give Kevin the chance to spin this however he thought best.

  “Nothing,” Kevin said. “Dead end. She didn’t have anything except a grudge against our guy.”

  The chief glanced at the clock. “You went in at nine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  To Scott’s surprise the chief just nodded. “Kev, you can go. I need to talk with Scott.”

  Kevin narrowed his gaze, clearly concerned whether this dismissal boded ill for him, then headed out the door. Scott knew better than to ask the chief what was up. He waited.

  Chief Levering was generational law enforcement. He’d worked his way up the ranks from homicide, the son of a son of a son, and someone with a foot still on the streets while hanging on to the oh-shit handle with city bureaucrats.

  The chief inspired an insane amount of loyalty from his men, probably because he was insanely loyal himself. He was the kind of cop to take a bullet as quickly as chew out a cop for doing the same. The chief wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. His men respected that.

  He also didn’t miss a trick. “Kevin thought something was there and you didn’t.”

  Scott shook his head.

  “You tell him?”

  “Yes.”

  The chief eyed him appraisingly with a look Scott knew all too well, and he expected the chief’s next words to start up an interrogation about how the two were gelling as partners.

  Interestingly the chief only nodded and said, “DEA went in on a crack operation in Hazard Creek.”

  Since Hazard Creek was a township southeast of Poughkeepsie and out of their jurisdiction, Scott knew there must be a point to this news. “Hadn’t heard anything over the radio.”

  “They just went in.”

  “How’d it go down?”

  The chief scowled. “Not like they hoped, I’m sure. Place was completely cleaned out. Neighbors said the renters scattered like roaches not an hour before the cops showed up.”

  “Who tipped them off?”

  “No clue, but the Narcotics Commission has had a team working on this bust for months.”

  The Narcotics Commission was big news in the Mid-Hudson Valley. The task force had been instituted by the governor a handful of years ago, a coalition of police agencies charged to stop drug trafficking into Dutchess County. The governor had appointed Jason Kenney, police chief of Hazard Creek, as the most recent commanding officer.

  It was a nice nod, no question, even though it was a lot more work on top of an already demanding job. But Jason Kenney thrived under a spotlight, so Scott was sure he’d grabbed the reins of the Narcotics Commission with both hands.

  Jason had once been on the force with Scott. He’d been a good cop, instrumental in cracking a few highly visible cases, which had shot him to the forefront of the local media. Jason liked seeing his face on the front pages of the Mid-Hudson Herald and Poughkeepsie Journal, so he’d accepted the position of police chief with the village of Hazard Creek.

  The department might have been smaller than the Poughkeepsie PD, but Jason also liked being a big fish in a little pond. Scott considered him somewhat of a fame whore, but Mike, who’d known the guy for years, had always taken a lighter view. Every time Jason opened his mouth in front of television cameras, Mike would just roll his eyes and say, “You know Jason.”

  Scott hadn’t known Jason, but knew enough to guess that their limited past history didn’t explain why he should care about a bust going south in Hazard Creek.

  “Why are you telling me this, Chief?”

&nbs
p; Beneath a heavy brow, the chief leveled a stoic gaze, and Scott braced himself. “Whatever went down didn’t filter through the drug operation. Some mules arrived for a pickup and found the place shut down by the law. They tried to run for it, and Riley got in their way.”

  Scott just stared. “She okay?”

  “From what I hear. DEA’s still got the scene locked down.”

  Scott was already to the door before the chief said, “Don’t kill yourself getting there.”

  Scott didn’t have to. He shoved the light on the dash of his unmarked cruiser, turned on the siren and made Hazard Creek before the HCPD had finished taking witness statements.

  He didn’t understand why Riley had been at the scene. He was going to kill Max, who should be assigning her city council stories or entertainment reviews. Not drug busts, which around here had everything to do with gangs.

  But there she was, sitting in the open doorway of the emergency vehicle, talking to Jason and another man, some fed wearing Kevlar and a vest with the stenciled bold letters: DEA.

  Scott shut off the siren, swerved the cruiser against a curb and jumped out, taking in the scene as he made his way to the emergency vehicle. Skid marks had left rubber on the asphalt. Deep tire gouges on a lawn where the runaway car had jumped the curb. Not one but two wooden barriers splintered over the street. Scott flashed his badge at the uniform who made a move in his direction.

  “Jason,” Scott said as he approached, eyeing the DEA agent.

  Jason performed the introductions, and Scott gave a barely civil nod to Agent Barry Mannis before kneeling in front of Riley. He took her hands and asked, “How are you?”

  She shook her head. “Okay. All good.”

  She didn’t look okay. Not okay was all over her face, from the tight set of her mouth to the way she avoided directly meeting his gaze. There were grass stains on her khaki slacks and a tear that revealed white bandages below. Bandages that matched the ones on her arm. Likely where she’d fallen.