Critical Pursuit

by Janice Cantore

  I was snatched and then rescued. Home was all I wanted. Tonight I was shot at and I shot back. And all I want right now is my own bed.

  What shade of gray is Bell after?

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say.” She held the doctor’s gaze, unable to read him.

  “Just what I asked. How do you feel?” He smiled. “It’s not a trick question.”

  “I feel lucky.” She shrugged. “It could just as easily have been me under that blue tarp.” She crossed her arms, conscious that her hands were shaking. Bell had already told her that was a normal reaction to the adrenaline roller coaster she’d been on that night.

  He nodded. “You’ll probably replay the incident over and over in your mind.” He waved a hand at the others still milling around the scene—the chief, the handling homicide detective, members of the DA’s shooting team. They’d all participated in a walk-through of the incident, where Brinna explained the events while they were fresh in her mind.

  “No one here thought anything seemed wrong with the shooting. Remember that when the flashbacks come.”

  “I’ll do that.” She relaxed, tension in her shoulders easing. Bell wasn’t going to try to dig for something that wasn’t there. She moved him to an okay list in her mind.

  “Come see me if you feel the need. Other than that, I think you’re fine to return to duty after your mandatory three days off.” He shook her hand and walked off to confer with the chief. After a few minutes they both climbed into an unmarked car and drove away.

  “I take it that went well.” Ben Carney, the homicide investigator, broke her chain of thought.

  “Yeah.” Brinna exhaled. “He says I’m fine, normal.” She arched an eyebrow. “Got him fooled, huh?” She liked Ben. They’d worked together briefly when she’d finished her probationary period, the first year in patrol after academy graduation, and she’d always thought of him as a solid cop.

  Ben smiled. “Everything is clean so far, so I have to agree with him. Only thing that will make it cleaner,” he added, “is finding the slug the guy fired at you. We’re still searching.”

  “I hope it didn’t end up embedded in a car driving by.” Brinna followed his gaze down the street.

  “This was your first shooting, wasn’t it?” Ben asked.

  Brinna nodded.

  “You did what you had to,” Ben said.

  “He didn’t give me any choice.” Brinna sighed. “I’m just glad instinct kicked in. Sorry he’s dead. Glad I’m not.”

  “Me too. You can take off now, get some sleep. Try not to worry about any of this.”

  “Thanks, Ben.” She shook his hand and practically ran to the Explorer. Clark, the reporter, was long gone. After he threw up in the street when he witnessed the scene, an assisting unit had driven him home.

  Once inside the car, she hugged Hero, then pulled out her cell phone. Though she knew the shooting was justified and she’d done the only thing she could do, she craved a solid debriefing by Milo. He always knew what to say about any situation, better than any psychologist. But the phone was answered by the click of voice mail. Brinna slapped her forehead even as Milo’s recorded voice told her to leave a message. She’d forgotten about the Mexican fishing trip.

  She snapped the phone shut and put the Explorer in gear just as the coroner’s van pulled up. Brinna watched as an investigator she’d worked with often climbed out and headed toward the tarp-covered body. There’d been no ID on the man, so among other things it would be the coroner’s responsibility to determine his identity. That would be the easy part. They’d probably never be able to determine why the mutt went on a shooting rampage.

  Brinna shook her head and pulled away from the scene, yawning. She directed the Explorer to the station. When she arrived, the clock on the dash told her it was 9:30 in the morning, seven hours past end of watch or EOW.

  She headed for the locker room to drop some stuff off and pick up a fresh uniform. Inside, she saw Maggie dozing on a cot. A well-placed smack to a metal locker with her baton brought Brinna the desired result. Maggie jerked up, the disorientation of an abrupt awakening all over her face.

  “Hey, sleepyhead, don’t you want to go home?” Brinna spoke in a singsong voice.

  Her friend’s expression cleared and she stood, yawned, and stretched. “You just ruined the best dream. But since I was waiting for you, I’ll let that pass. I never made it to the shooting scene. How’re you doing?”

  Brinna worked the lock on her locker and jerked it open. “I’m fine, just tired.”

  She yawned as Maggie had. Though she was physically exhausted, her mind still whirled with impressions of the chase and the shooting. The afterimages played as if she’d watched the incident unfold but hadn’t participated.

  “I fired from reflex. I guess all that stuff they say when we’re training at the range is true.”

  “About reverting to what you’ve learned during stress shooting?” Maggie asked. “Muscle memory and all that?”

  “Yeah. I reacted.” Brinna shrugged. “Hate to say I got lucky, but that’s what it felt like. What was the guy’s problem? I heard he shot two at your scene.”

  Maggie nodded. “Neither of my victims was cooperative about identifying their assailant. It was witnesses who saw the shooter split in the Monte Carlo. The victims’ injuries are minor. One got hit in the arm, the other in the foot. Some kind of gang beef. They probably want their own retaliation. Homicide will have their work cut out for them sorting it all out.”

  “Ben Carney is the lead on my end. He’ll probably end up with both cases.” Brinna stretched, her gun belt feeling as though it weighed a hundred pounds. She closed the locker and hung her clean uniform on the lock.

  “Good; he’ll be thorough.” Maggie stepped to the mirror, groaned, and waved both hands at the mirror as if to make the image go away.

  Brinna chuckled. “He helped me relax a lot before the walk-through, and things went okay.”

  “I saw the chief and Doc Bell when they came back to the station.” Maggie rubbed bloodshot eyes. “They didn’t seem upset about anything. I’m sure the shooting is clean.”

  Brinna nodded and tapped the locker with a knuckle. “You know the drill. I’ve got three days off. Since last night was Monday, I don’t have to be at work for six whole days.” She held up one open hand and an index finger on the other. Her normal schedule had her working four ten-hour days with a three-day weekend. But the shooting meant that the mandatory three days off would extend her weekend.

  Maggie groaned. “Show-off. I’m jealous.”

  Brinna grabbed her uniform, and then she and Maggie headed for the door.

  “Not only is six days off awesome,” Brinna gloated, “but I got the interview with Dr. Bell out of the way. I don’t have to visit his office unless I want to.”

  “Excellent. No one wants to visit him during normal business hours.” Maggie rolled her eyes.

  Brinna nodded as they walked out of the locker room. Most cops were like Milo when it came to psychologists. “Stay out of my head,” he would say.

  “By the way, since you keep up with all the department gossip, where is Ben’s partner?” Brinna asked. “He was by himself at the scene.”

  “Jack O’Reilly?” Maggie snorted. “I hear he’s a certified nutcase now. Went around the bend when his wife died, hasn’t come back. I’m sorry he suffered such a loss, but speaking of the psychologist, I’m surprised he hasn’t relieved the guy of duty.”

  “But I thought I saw O’Reilly walking to the station from the parking structure as I pulled in. He’s a tall redheaded guy, right?”

  “That’s him. He’s still in homicide physically. I think he’s working Ken Opie’s job, reviewing cold cases, until Opie gets back from knee surgery. Mentally, I think he’s—” Maggie made a circle around her ear with an index finger—“about five fries short of a Happy Meal.”

  They’d reached Brinna’s Explorer. “So what are you going to do with all your time off?
” Maggie asked. “If it were me, I’d be on the beach the whole time.”

  “Right now I feel like I need to unwind with a short kayak trip,” Brinna said as she opened the door to her SUV. Hero stood to greet her with a wagging tail and a K-9 yawn.

  “I knew you didn’t know how to relax.”

  “Kayaking is relaxing. Besides, I have to burn off the residual adrenaline. Then I’ll sleep.”

  “Okay, just take care. If you need to talk, call me.”

  “Will do. See you later.”

  Brinna climbed into the driver’s seat. She turned and checked on Hero in the back, who lay curled up on his mat.

  “Well, we’ve got six days off. What do you want to do?” Getting only a tail thump in response, Brinna started the SUV and turned right out of the station lot. The two news vans parked in front of the station didn’t escape her notice.

  “I know they’re here about the shooting,” she said as she glanced in the rearview mirror at their shrinking images. “Glad we won’t be around for the start of the circus.”

  At home Brinna shed her gun belt and jumpsuit in favor of shorts and a tank top. She fed Hero first, then made herself a tuna sandwich, taking a seat at her computer to check her e-mail while she munched.

  Above her computer screen hung a shelf loaded with Care Bears and Beanie Babies. She made a mental note to grab a couple to put in her car. She still hadn’t replaced the ones she’d given to Josh.

  While she waited for the computer to power up, she glanced over to her Wall of Slime. Tacked on the west wall of her office were information posters containing the faces and statistics of twenty high-risk sex offenders residing in the city of Long Beach.

  Overall, Long Beach was home to nearly eight hundred registered sex offenders. Brinna had chosen the worst of the lot to post in her office and “ride rail on,” as Maggie liked to say.

  Shifting her gaze to the east side of the room, Brinna perused the Innocent Wall. There, ten missing posters lined up in three rows, the most recent cases on the top, stared back at her. Heather Bailey’s smiling face was first—the same poster Brinna kept in her car. The eight-year-old had disappeared without a trace from her front yard a month ago.

  A ding from her computer indicating she had mail brought Brinna back to the screen. Four e-mails awaited her. The first message was from Chuck Weldon, the local FBI agent. She paused before she hit Open, anxiety tingling her fingertips at the thought of what news Chuck’s message might bring.

  The FBI generally took over any missing case labeled a stranger abduction. Chuck could be sending her bad news about Heather. Sighing, Brinna opened the message. The contents were a mild relief. No news on Heather. Chuck just sent an update on how the last lead panned out: nowhere.

  She remembered what a fight it had been to get the department to recognize her as a search-and-rescue specialist, a position that didn’t exist anywhere on the Long Beach Police Department. Finding a toddler named Alonso Parker had silenced a lot of opposition and opened a door she’d charged through.

  Hero didn’t need to be a normal patrol dog chasing criminals, she’d argued. He was scent-trained. He could find kids and he’d proved it.

  Chuck had provided the nudge the brass needed. He stepped in and agreed with her. After that, the sergeant in homicide sat down with Sergeant Rodriguez in the K-9 detail and okayed Brinna’s freelancing into missing children cases. There was no position in the LBPD budget for a full-time missing person patrol officer. But Hero’s grant and the FBI’s endorsement allowed Brinna to be the closest thing to it.

  She ran her hand over the plaque she kept to one side of her computer monitor, given by her patrol shift teammates: To the Kid Crusader, Our Search-and-Rescue Stud.

  She punched open the second message, from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The text contained an alert about a ten-year-old boy missing in Utah. Brinna checked her watch. The kid had gone missing about the same time she’d been facing off the lunatic in the Monte Carlo.

  Ignoring the next two messages, both from her mother, Brinna finished her sandwich and downed the remainder of her Diet Coke. She walked across the hall to her bedroom, where Hero slept curled up on her bed, and pulled a map of western states from her nightstand, tracing the route to Bryce Canyon, Utah, with her finger.

  Utah is way out of my hundred-mile radius for weekend searches, she thought, but very possible with my time off. And the desert is a horrible place for a kid to be lost.

  As often happened when thinking about children lost and alone, for a second Brinna was six again and back in the desert outside of Lancaster, leaning against the post she’d been tied to and crying.

  Shaking away the memory, she focused on the facts and went back to her desk. The first hours were the most important. She rubbed her forehead, her gaze running over the audience of stuffed animals. Milo’s words again echoed in her mind: “Never give up until we’ve got a body, dead or alive.”

  She thought about Heather and refused to admit that things didn’t look good for the little girl. She still considered the search active, but it had been a month and all leads had dried up.

  This kid in Utah had gone missing hours ago. It was fresh. They had a chance to find him. And a search will go miles toward getting my mind off the shooting.

  Chewing on her lower lip, she thought about the drive—a long one, but doable.

  Brinna picked up the phone and dialed Sergeant Rodriguez’s number, crossing her fingers in the hope she was awake.

  With a sleep-slurred voice, Rodriguez okayed Brinna’s off-duty trip to Utah. With the shooting tentatively labeled clean, if any questions came up, they could be asked when she got back, the sergeant said.

  Brinna thanked Rodriguez, knowing her sergeant would fight for her if the need arose, and hung up. She looked up the number of the authorities in charge of the Utah boy’s search. It took a while to get connected to someone in charge, but when she did, he said that they’d welcome her help. The terrain was rough on the dogs, and they could use another one.

  Brinna rubbed her face with both hands, glad she had a mission to complete after all the drama of her shift. The drive, instead of a kayak paddle, would help her wind down. She had six days to devote to the Utah kid . . . if they didn’t find him before she got there. She looked at the clock and decided that since she was still amped up, it might be best to leave now and stop someplace on the road for a nap if she needed it. She and Hero could be in Bryce Canyon ready to join the search early tomorrow morning.

  “When we join the search, with any luck, we’ll be two for two and start a streak,” she said to Hero.

  6

  JACK CLOSED his open files and began to power down the computer for the day when Lieutenant Gary Hoffman walked into his cubicle.

  “Afternoon, Jack. How’s it going?”

  “It’s going, Gary. That’s about all I can say.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. Jack knew people weren’t sure what to say to him, but he never tried to make it easier for them.

  “I’ve got some news for you,” Hoffman said finally, after clearing his throat. “Not sure if you’ll think it’s good or bad.”

  Jack stood and held the lieutenant’s gaze but said nothing.

  “Opie’s coming back. He’ll be here on Monday.”

  Jack sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d only been filling in for Opie. He’d hoped the position would last until the sentencing. But if Opie was clear to come back to work, Hoffman’s visit told Jack that he could no longer hide behind a desk and avoid active police work.

  “So where are you going to put me?”

  Hoffman folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t have much choice. You aren’t considered light duty. And unless you tell me you don’t want to work homicide anymore, you’ll go back to full duty with your partner, Ben.”

  Jack felt his mouth go dry. Going back to work with Ben was a two-edged sword, both distasteful edges. Ben was a Christian who neve
r stopped preaching. Jack had been like that before he lost Vicki. His faith died in the car with his wife and daughter. Now Ben’s empty Christian platitudes choked him like thick flare smoke. And then there were the bodies.

  “No other option?” he asked, wetting his lips.

  Hoffman shrugged. “Patrol.”

  Jack blew out a breath. He’d been a patrol officer when he met Vicki. The move to homicide came shortly after they were married; it was the position he’d dreamed of since academy days. A year ago he would have flamed out and fought to keep his spot in homicide. Now Jack looked past Hoffman, out the window, and decided patrol might be the right place to hide for a couple of weeks.

  “Afternoon patrol?” he asked.

  Hoffman stammered with surprise. “Sure, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I want.” What I really want I can’t have, so this transfer will do for now. I can hide in patrol for two and a half weeks.

  “Okay, I’ll work on arranging it. You know you’ll have to work with another officer for the first two weeks? It’s a retraining policy.”

  “Whatever,” Jack said. “I don’t want to rock the boat.” I just want the sentencing to be over so I can quit pretending, he thought.

  Hoffman nodded and turned to leave but stopped at the door. “Jack, I’m not only your boss; I’m your friend. Can I give you some advice?”

  Jack shook his head. “I know what you’re going to say. Thanks anyway.” Hoffman was as deluded a Christian as Ben.

  Hoffman sighed. “You need to be back in church. You need the prayer and support of the church family to help you through this rough time.”

  Stepping to the door, Jack switched off the lights. “No, I don’t. I just don’t believe that fairy tale anymore,” he said over his shoulder as he headed for the elevator.