by Diane Kelly
A soft snort escaped me when I read the first three letters of his Isuzu Amigo’s license plate listed at the bottom of the page. “DUH.” Yeah, that pretty much summed up what he’d done. What kind of idiot would risk his recently reacquired freedom by cutting off his ankle monitor? When Hurley was captured, he’d definitely be heading back to the klink, maybe for life.
I passed the printout to the officer on my left and ran a quick search on my phone. Ah. No wonder the make and model of his vehicle didn’t sound familiar. According to the information online, Isuzu had left the U.S. auto market in 2009 after years of financial woes. My search for images told me that the Amigo was a small SUV that came with either a hard or soft top. With the soft top down, the front seat remained covered by a short metal roof while the cargo bay and backseat were exposed to the air. The vehicle looked like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a pickup truck or a convertible and ended up as some kind of odd, genetically engineered hybrid.
I slid my phone back into my pocket and returned my attention to the captain.
“Hurley was spotted at a gas station in San Antonio around noon yesterday,” he said.
Given his ordinary features and the multitude of brawny, barbecue-beef-fed men in Texas, Hurley didn’t immediately catch anyone’s attention. But while the clerk hadn’t identified the man at his register as Hurley, he had taken notice of the telltale green Isuzu Amigo as it drove away from the pump. The attendant phoned police and reported that the escapee had turned toward the I-35 access ramps, which meant that Hurley could be anywhere from the southern border town of Laredo, Texas, to as far north as Duluth, Minnesota, assuming he’d stayed on the interstate. If he’d ventured onto other roads, or hopped onto a bus, train, or plane, he could be virtually anywhere by now.
Captain Leone began to wrap things up. “Hurley’s older sister lives in W1. We think he might be headed our way.”
Escapees often relied on family or friends to provide them with cash, food, and a place to crash. With his sister right here in town, it was possible, perhaps even likely, that Hurley was aiming for Fort Worth. Hell, for all we knew he could be here already.
“If Ralph Hurley dares to set foot in our division,” the captain said, “I want him apprehended right away. Got it?”
Murmurs of assent followed. Get the bad guy. We got it.
Captain Leone ran his firm gaze across his troops for a final time before pointing at the door. “Go out there and make the world a safer place.”
Our meeting/pep rally concluded, we shuffled in a big blue blob out the door, down the hallway, and outside, where we dispersed in the parking lot.
Summer vectored off with a smile and a parting wave. “Have a good one!”
“You, too.”
While my coworkers headed to their standard patrol cars, Brigit and I headed to our specially equipped K-9 cruiser, which featured a metal mesh enclosure and carpeted platform where the backseat would normally be. Of course I’d made the space even more comfortable for my partner by adding an extra-large cushion and a half-dozen chew toys to keep her entertained.
Derek unrolled the window of his squad car as he drove past. “Get to work, bitches!” With an obnoxious laugh, he gunned his engine and burned rubber as he pulled out of the station. Squeee!
What a jerk.
Taking a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching, I scurried over to Derek’s personal vehicle, a shiny black pickup truck, to exact a small measure of revenge. I whipped my lipstick from the pouch on my belt and drew a smiley face on the rubber truck nuts that hung from his trailer hitch. Whoever came up with the idea for those things had to be a disgusting perv. Also a genius. Given the popularity of the novelty with macho truck owners, he was probably a gazillionaire, like those bearded boys from Duck Dynasty.
Brigit and I returned to our cruiser.
“Another day, another dog biscuit,” I told my partner as she climbed into her enclosure. I joined her in the squad car, situated my police-issue laptop in its mount, and set out in the opposite direction Derek had gone. With any luck, our paths wouldn’t cross again today.
SIX
FROM STREET TO STAR
Brigit
As her partner drove their cruiser around their beat, Brigit eyed the various toys scattered about her carpeted enclosure. A squeaky squirrel. A tennis ball. A knotted rope. A Frisbee. So many toys to choose from. And to think Brigit had once been a shelter dog, with nothing but her fleas to call her own.
Megan sure did spoil her. She’d even bought Brigit a comfy cushion to lie on in the cruiser. Brigit’s last partner had been a nice enough guy, but Megan was more generous and much easier to manipulate. All Brigit had to do was whimper softly and bat her big brown eyes and Megan would buy the dog whatever she wanted. What a pushover.
Still, Brigit knew she was lucky to have been paired with such a softie. She returned the favor by being an attentive watchdog at their house, chasing off pesky skunks and possums, and alerting Megan to the arrival of the mailman.
Brigit picked up a nylon bone, settled down on her belly, and set to work. It wasn’t enough to have a sharp mind, a K-9 officer needed sharp teeth. The better to eat you with, my dear.
SEVEN
PLAYING HIS TUNE
Tom
The postman might always ring twice, but no way would he return to the same house he’d visited the night before. Too risky. That stupid sneeze had nearly got him caught. Damn moths. He’d stop by the hardware store later and buy one of those bug zappers. That would teach them.
Fortunately, there were plenty more women to choose from.
As he drove through the neighborhood, the sounds of a piano met his ears, the notes filtering out an open window, a soft breeze carrying them to his ears. He had no idea if the song was Beethoven, Bach, or Rachmaninoff, but he knew the woman playing it could get his rocks off. She’d caught his eye before, standing in her doorway, greeting or saying good-bye to one of her students.
Oh, the things she could teach me …
He could only imagine what it might be like if she tickled his ivories. He’d bet the two of them could make beautiful music together.
Tonight, I’ll be the maestro.
EIGHT
HIGH SCHOOL
Megan
It was a slow morning. I’d been assigned to work traffic detail on Berry Street, one of the department’s most boring and hated tasks. I sat down a side street with my radar gun pointed out the window, clocking drivers on their way to work.
People seemed to be behaving today, leaving me time to ponder life’s important questions, such as why do Japanese car manufacturers name their models after American cities? The Toyota Tacoma, for instance. There was one sitting at the red light ahead, waiting for it to turn green. Another example would be the Hyundai Santa Fe. Though of course the city of Tacoma was named after a Native American tribe and Santa Fe was a Spanish word, like Amigo. What a culture clash, huh? Now if the Kia Soul were instead spelled “Seoul,” that would make sense. But who was I to second-guess the choices made by car manufacturers? I’d never taken a course in advertising or marketing.
I issued a grand total of three traffic citations that morning, ticketing only the worst lawbreakers and letting the lesser offenders go with a written warning and a boring lecture on the dangers of bad driving. Death. Dismemberment. Property damage. Blah-blah-blah.
“Drive safe, sir,” I said as I stepped away from the man who’d earned ticket number three. “And have a nice day.”
“A little late for that, isn’t it?” he snapped.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, buddy.
When my stomach growled around one P.M., I gave up traffic duty and headed to Paschal High School. Captain Leone had asked us to keep an eye on the students, and the parking lot would make a convenient place to watch the goings-on while eating the lunch I’d packed. The presence of a police cruiser would also make any would-be prankster think twice about pul
ling a fast one today.
I pulled into the lot, found an empty spot at the end of the teachers’ section, and parked, rolling down the windows to enjoy the spring air. Though it would be unbearably hot a month from now, today the weather was partly cloudy, the temperature comfortable.
I turned to look at my partner through the metal mesh that separated us. “Ready for lunch, Brig?”
Her ears pricked and her head cocked at the word “lunch.” When I opened the back door to let her out, she hopped down immediately. No need to ask her twice.
I led her around the car and opened the passenger door so she could sit up front with me. Returning to my seat, I poured a cup of the diet kibble into a bowl for her. She turned up her nose at it again and flopped down on the seat, releasing a breathy sigh.
“At least try it,” I coaxed. “This stuff cost fifty dollars a bag.” A hefty price for something that wasn’t even organic. I shook the bowl. “C’mon, girl. Just a bite or two?”
Alas, my pleas fell on deaf, furry ears.
“That’s all you’re getting,” I told her, setting the bowl on the console. “Doctor’s orders.”
She turned her head away, canine body language for I’m not listening.
I unscrewed the top of my thermos, grabbed my fork, and dug into my pasta salad. Brigit turned her head back, watching intently as each bite went into my mouth, drool collecting on her jowls.
“This is my lunch,” I told her, pointing at her bowl with my fork. “That’s yours.”
She continued to watch me, smacking her lips in anticipation. I did my best to ignore her, turning to look out my window and watch the upperclassmen, who were permitted to leave the campus for lunch. A few cast a glance at my cruiser as they came and went, but as far as I could tell none seemed to harbor any nefarious intentions. Good. I didn’t want to be a party pooper, but I couldn’t allow any pranks to go down on my watch.
As I neared the bottom of the thermos, Brigit emitted a soft whimper.
“No,” I told her, willing myself to stay strong.
She whimpered again, this time a little louder and longer.
I frowned at her, though inside I felt myself beginning to waver. “What part of “no” do you not understand?”
She blinked her big brown eyes and my willpower crumbled. Ugh. I really needed to grow a backbone.
“All right, you crybaby. I guess a few noodles won’t hurt.”
I tossed the last three pieces of rotini pasta on top of the food in Brigit’s bowl. No sense letting my poor partner starve to death. She promptly wolfed them down, but managed to avoid eating any of the diet food.
I packed up our food and turned to my partner. “Need a potty break?”
She stood and wagged her tail.
I let her out of the squad car, attached her leash, and led her over to a small grassy strip that separated the teachers’ parking lot from the student lot. She crouched down for a quick tinkle. When she stood again, she lifted her nose to the air, her nostrils twitching as she scented.
“What do you smell, girl?” All I could detect was the faint scent of sloppy joes and Tater Tots from the school cafeteria.
She tugged on her leash and I followed. Probably a squirrel had been out here earlier.
She stopped at a Volkswagen Golf in the teachers’ lot and spent a few seconds sniffing intently around the edge of the door. Snuffle-snuffle. When she sat down next to the car, it took my brain a moment to realize she wasn’t just sitting, she was issuing her passive alert.
She smells drugs in the car. Brigit had the best nose on the force, rarely giving a false alert. Someone would soon be getting busted. A teacher, no less! I might not be able to smell the drugs, but I could tell this situation reeked of scandal. Busting an educator who dared to bring drugs onto a school campus would surely earn me some brownie points with Captain Leone and Chief Garelik.
I made a mental note of the license plate number and returned to my cruiser, where I ran a quick search on my laptop. Time to find out who was putting the “high” in high school. Per the data on the DMV link, the VW belonged to a Joshua Schorndorf. A quick check of the criminal database indicated he had no record.
Yet.
Drug possession was bad enough, but bringing drugs onto a school campus upped the charges significantly. Joshua Schorndorf was about to find himself in some very deep doo-doo.
I pushed the button on my shoulder-mounted radio to call for backup. “Assistance needed at Paschal High.” Not only would I need another officer to keep an eye on Schorndorf while I searched his vehicle, but a regular cruiser would be needed to transport him to the station. With Brigit’s space in the back, my K-9 cruiser had no place to put a suspect.
I crossed my fingers that Summer would be available, or maybe Officer Spalding or Hinojosa. No such luck. Instead, Derek’s voice came across the airwaves. “Mackey on my way.”
Crud. He was the last officer I wanted to see. Unfortunately, I had no choice in the matter.
“Let’s go, girl.” Brigit and I walked briskly to the front doors and made our way to the office. A blond student aide sat on a stool at the counter, her hand in her hair as she stared down at a textbook and a piece of lined paper covered in equations. Precal, if memory served me. While the girl erased an incorrect answer from the paper, a middle-aged staff member looked up from her desk behind the counter. “Can I help you, Officer?”
“I need to speak with Joshua Schorndorf.”
“Is he a student?”
“I don’t believe so. His car is parked in the teacher’s lot out front.”
“He’s not on the regular staff,” the woman said, standing. “I don’t recognize the name. He’s probably a substitute. Let me check the sign-in sheet.” She stepped over to the counter and opened a three-ring binder, taking a look at the top page inside and putting a finger on a signature. “There he is. He’s subbing for one of our PE teachers.” She gestured to the blond girl, who was chewing on her pencil eraser as she stared at the incomprehensible mix of numbers and letters on the page. “Kaitlyn can show you to the gym.”
On hearing her name, the girl looked up from her schoolwork. “Oh. Hi.”
She set her pencil down and slid off the stool. When she came around the counter, she spotted Brigit for the first time. “Oh, cool, a dog! Can I pet her?”
“She’d like that.” Brigit could be ferocious when need be, but when she wasn’t actively pursuing or guarding a suspect she was as friendly as they come.
The girl bent over and gave Brigit several strokes down the neck. Brigit wagged her tail in appreciation.
Kaitlyn stood and led me and my partner out of the office. “The gym’s this way,” she said, gesturing to our right.
Brigit and I followed her down a long hall, my partner’s toenails clicking on the tile as we passed lockers, restrooms, classrooms, and a science lab, before reaching the doors of the gym.
“This is it,” Kaitlyn said.
“Thanks.”
As Kaitlyn returned to the office, I pushed the door open and stepped into the gym. The smell of sweat, the squeak of sneakers on a freshly waxed floor, and the thwunk-thwunk-thwunk of basketballs hitting the court greeted me. A couple dozen boys milled about the space, practicing layups. On the bleachers across the room sat three more boys, suited up but not participating. A thirtyish man with shaggy, sandy hair lounged on the bleachers as well. He wore a pair of basic khakis and a button-down shirt, neither of which had seen an iron. No belt. Given that he was the only adult in the room, the man had to be Joshua Schorndorf. He stared down at the cell phone in his hand, engrossed in e-mail, Twitter, or YouTube, paying scant attention to the children he was being paid to supervise.
Brigit and I began to make our way around the busy court, both of us keeping an eye out for errant balls. The boys in this gym class weren’t exactly varsity material. Most of their balls ended up falling short and rolling out of bounds. I used my foot to stop one and gently kicked it back onto the co
urt.
“Hey, look!” one of the boys shouted. “A police dog!”
Schorndorf’s head popped up, his wide eyes scanning the room before locking on me and Brigit. His surprised cry echoed through the space. “SHIT!” Shit-shit. He leaped from the bleachers and bolted for the door.
I pointed to the chubby, freckle-faced kid closest to me. “You’re in charge!”
The kid’s face broke into a grin. It was probably the only time he’d been picked first in gym class.
My partner and I were out the door only six seconds after the sub, but he’d already gained a substantial lead and was headed for the exterior doors. A man in a suit—probably the principal—came around a corner ahead of Schorndorf, stopping in his tracks when he saw the three of us thundering up the hall toward him. Quickly cluing in to what was going on, he stretched out his arms to block the way.
To avoid capture by the suit, the substitute hooked a left down a hallway. Brigit and I hooked a left, too, turning just in time to see him duck down another hallway. Realizing the school could be a virtual maze, that the guy could put students in danger, and that my partner’s four legs could tear up these hallways much faster than my two, I reached down on the fly and unclipped Brigit’s leash, giving her the order to take Schorndorf down.
She took off like a furry bullet, gaining on him as he aimed for the double doors at the end of the hall. The double doors that lead to the cafeteria.
He slammed into the doors, throwing them back against the wall with a resounding bam! Following the bang of the door was the roar of hundreds of students engaged in conversation, which was followed by a split second of radio silence as the students stopped their discussions to watch a crazed substitute run into the cafeteria, pursued by a police dog. A second later, the cafeteria exploded into an even louder roar. One student shouted, “Go, dog! Go!” and the others joined in. “Go, dog! Go! Go, dog! Go!”
By the time I reached the doors they’d swung closed again. I yanked them open and ran into the cafeteria to see Schorndorf zipping up and down the aisles between the long tables, Brigit loping after him. The lunch ladies in their white uniforms and hairnets stepped out from behind their serving counters and gathered with gaping mouths, one of them wielding an enormous metal serving spoon like a weapon, another with oven mitts holding a huge steamer tray filled with creamed corn.