by Brent Pilkey
The sally port door rumbled up on its tracks and once it was high enough, the officers walked a shambling Lloyd into the garage. Navigating the four metal steps up to the door leading to the booking hall was an act of controlled stoogery. The steps were barely wide enough for two people abreast, let alone three, and Jenny and Jack had to take Lloyd up sideways. Jack found himself practically lifting their soused prisoner up to the landing and was thankful it was a short hoist; for someone on a liquid diet, Lloyd was damn heavy.
“Listen up, Lloyd.” Jenny pointed to a sign posted by the door. “‘Sections of this building including this area,’” she read loud enough to be picked up by the camera, “‘are monitored by remote audiovisual recording devices. This equipment is now in operation and you are under observation.’”
“Fu’ ’ou.”
“That’s right, Lloyd. Smile, you’re on camera.” Jenny pushed open the metal door with her foot and they ushered Lloyd into the booking hall.
Calling the booking hall a hall was rather grandiose, like calling a taxi a limo, but it was a well-trafficked room, as all prisoners coming in and going out of the station had to cross its worn concrete floor. There were two more doors: one for the prisoners headed to the CIB and one that lead directly to the cells. Lloyd would be taking the shorter of the two trips.
There was a small bench bolted to the cinderblock wall and Jack and Jenny carefully guided Lloyd’s ass to its wooden slats. Seated, Lloyd tilted forward; with his hands behind him, he had nothing to brace against his knees. Jack and Jenny each put a hand on a shoulder, halting Lloyd in mid-topple. They cautiously removed their hands, ready to grab for Lloyd should he start to fall, but he stayed where he was, his dirty, sweaty torso canted forward, head hanging like a dead pendulum. A thin, silvery line of drool appeared from behind the curtain of Lloyd’s greasy hair, reaching for the floor.
“Officers, can you tell me why this man is in your custody and present at my police station?” Greene was standing by the booker’s desk, pen poised over memo book, a distasteful look on his face. Whether the frown was for Lloyd or his handlers, Jack couldn’t tell.
“This male has been arrested for being intoxicated in a public place,” Jenny justified, then quickly added, “at the time of arrest, the male was examined by the CIT nurse who determined he was not drunk enough to warrant being taken to the hospital.” Jenny had obviously paraded drunks before the Staff before and knew to pre-empt an objection.
Greene stalked from behind the counter. He mostly stalked, rarely walked, and never strolled. Jack figured it was from being a small man in a big man’s world. Greene wasn’t exactly short, more average in size and build, but must have resembled a dwarf when sized up alongside his colleagues, since he was hired in an era when six foot was considered short for a cop.
“Son,” he said, moving to stand in front of Lloyd. “Are you feeling ill?”
“Staff, I wouldn’t —” Jack began, but Greene glared him to silence.
“Do you want to go to a hospital?”
Lloyd mumbled a low “Fu’ ’ou.”
“What was that?” The Staff leaned over to better hear Lloyd and that’s when Lloyd, who had been power-chugging rubbing alcohol and grape Gatorade since noon, puked all over Greene’s legs.
“We should give Lloyd a bloody medal.” Lloyd had been lodged in cell thirteen, the drunk cell and his home away from wherever, more than an hour ago, but Jack was still grinning. He was half listening to the dispatcher as she gave out an unwanted-guest call to another car when Jenny shushed him.
“Jack, can you pull up the call she just gave to ’09?”
“Sure thing.” Jack tapped out the commands on the car’s computer. “Heidi Dubaine,” he read, “is calling in to have her boyfriend removed.”
“What’s the boyfriend’s name? I thought I heard the dispatcher say Dean Myers.”
“Hang on.” Jack scrolled down the text of the call. “Yeah, Dean Myers. You know him?”
Jenny nodded as she swung the scout car in a U-turn on Shuter Street, bumping the wheels over the south curb. Crown Vics were notorious for their wide turning radius.
“Remember the twit I told you about? The one I brought in with the fat lip?”
“Yeah. And Greene tried to persuade him to lay a complaint. This the same guy?”
Jenny nodded again and Jack reached for the microphone. “5106, we’ll take that unwanted guest on Whiteside.”
“10-4, 5106. ’09, you can disregard.”
Whiteside Place was a little loop of a street in south Regent Park, home to a single high-rise. How the only building on a street that amounted to little more than a pimple on the south side of Dundas could be numbered 605, Jack never knew.
Regent Park was a sprawling housing complex packed with squat apartment buildings, high-rises and townhouses, laneways and parking lots, good people and assholes. It was an infamous blotch on downtown Toronto. When Jack told people he worked in 51 Division, he typically drew blank looks. If he said the Regent Park area, people usually nodded and offered their condolences.
“Didn’t you pinch this guy for assaulting his kid?” Jack asked as they passed into the lobby. No need to buzz for entry; locks in Regent Park didn’t stay functional for long. “He should have conditions not to be here.”
Jenny shook her head as she punched the elevator button. “I grabbed him over in Moss Park. This must be a different girlfriend.”
The ride to the eleventh floor was done in jerky silence as the elevator hitched and groaned its way up. Gotta start taking the stairs more often, Jack told himself as the doors wheezed open with the floor of the lift a few inches shy of the hallway. They stepped up into the hall. The eleventh floor in 605 Whiteside Place was like the halls in any Regent Park building: dingy, dirty and malodorous. If the halls had been the veins and arteries in a human, the poor sap would have died ages ago from rotten circulation.
The apartment was at the end of the hall — Of course it is, it’s always at the end of the hall — with a dozing male sitting outside the door, his legs stretched out on the scummy floor. He snorted awake and turned bleary eyes on the approaching officers.
“I ain’t leaving till that bitch gives me my shit,” he said from his seat on the floor. He crossed his arms and glared defiantly at them.
“We’ll see,” Jenny said. She stood by Myers’s outstretched legs. “Well?” she asked, giving him her own glare.
Myers studied her for a moment then, with a sneering smirk, slowly withdrew his legs, stopping with his feet in front of Jenny’s boots. His smirk deepened, a stain upon his already ugly mug. His bottom lip still bore the cut Jenny had given him, partly healed. It looked like some rancid liquid was dribbling from Myers’s mouth. Jack was coming to dislike Dean Myers rather quickly. He didn’t know if Myers recognized Jenny but he was pretty sure the unfavourable impression Myers had made on her was still foremost in her mind.
Then she proved it was. She hooked her foot around Myers’s ankle and swept his legs ahead of her, spinning Myers on his ass and dumping him fully on the floor.
“Excuse me,” she said sweetly and stepped past him.
Myers made to get up, anger darkening his face, but Jack stopped him with a simple “Don’t.”
Myers paused, propped up on one foot and hand, obviously thinking; the strained effort was clear on his face. Finally, rational thought prevailed and he settled back onto his butt, instructing Jack, “Tell that bitch I want my shit.”
“Who says common sense is dead?” Jack asked rhetorically as Jenny rapped on the door.
A young woman, old before her time, with frizzy strawberry blond hair and a baby cradled on a hip, opened the door. She jabbed a finger at Myers, spitting, “I want that piece of shit out of my house.”
“I ain’t in your house, bitch!” Myers declared from where he sat.
Jack threw
Myers a cautionary finger, growling, “Enough!” at the same time Jenny snapped, “Quit it!” at the woman.
Miraculously, both parties quieted and Jenny turned to Myers. “You,” she ordered, “stay put. You,” she said to the woman, “inside.”
The baby started to cry and the woman bounced him on a bony hip as she backed up to let Jenny and Jack into the apartment. The units in the Whiteside building were two-floored and this one had three tiny bedrooms crammed into the first floor. An incredibly steep, narrow staircase ran up from beside the door to the second floor.
“Can we talk upstairs?” the woman — girl really; Jack doubted she was old enough to be called a woman — asked over the baby’s wailing. “I can put Rocky in his playpen.”
“Rocky?” Jack whispered to Jenny as mom and son began the long climb up the stairs.
“Let’s hope it’s a nickname,” she mouthed back.
Jack waved Jenny up the stairs before pointing at himself then twirling his finger to encompass the area around him. She nodded and left him to check the bedrooms. The rooms were tiny, cramped, with just a mattress in each one. A quick check of the closets and Jack headed up the stairs.
The stairs opened up into the living room and the girl was just straightening up from a playpen that had seen better days. Holes in the mesh walls had been mended with duct tape and the original white was a dingy ivory, matching the floor of the hall outside. Rocky was curled up with a stuffed Elmo, his cries snuffling off as he and his red-furred pal drifted off to sleep.
The girl put her hands on the small of her back and stretched, sighing in relief as her spine cracked audibly. Her oversized grey T-shirt proclaimed she was the WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDMOTHER.
I really hope that’s her mother’s shirt she’s wearing.
“You’re Heidi, right?” Jenny asked. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“What’s he doing?” Heidi asked, watching as Jack crossed the room to peek in the kitchen.
“Just checking to make sure we’re alone, that’s all,” Jenny reassured her. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Heidi sank onto a worn black leather couch that appeared older than Rocky’s playpen. All the furniture was tatty and aged, except for the big-ass large-screen TV, of course.
Wish I could afford one of those, Jack thought as he positioned himself by the top of the stairs, keeping an eye on the door in case Myers thought about joining them uninvited.
Heidi ran her fingers through her frizzed hair then let them fall into her lap with a dramatic sigh.
“You look tired, Heidi,” Jenny commented.
She nodded listlessly. “Yeah, I’m just tired of all of Dean’s bullshit.” She sighed again and turned a tear-rimmed eye Rocky’s way. “I’m tired of him hitting us all the time.”
Jenny looked knowingly at Jack and he dipped his head in agreement. Looks like things just got worse for their friend Myers.
Jenny was usually able to maintain a professional distance from the victims and the assholes she arrested. Hell, if she took every report or arrest personally, she would’ve burned out the first month on the road and spent the rest of her career riding a desk, safely tucked away from all the guns. But there was something about Myers that just got under her skin and refused to leave.
She and Paul Townsend had arrested the little dick yesterday for hitting his common-law wife and their two-year-old daughter. Now here he was, hitting another woman and her child.
“Is Dean Rocky’s father?” Please let it be no. Please let him have some other guy’s genes.
“He is,” Heidi sniffed.
That’s one strike against the little guy. Hope mom doesn’t turn out to be strike two. Aloud, she asked, “When was the last time he hit you?”
Jenny stood near the other end of the couch so she wouldn’t be looming over Heidi. Not sitting wasn’t a matter of officer safety but personal hygiene. There was a simple rule in 51: never touch a crackhead or homeless person without wearing gloves and never sit on furniture unless you’re positive there’s nothing crawling around on it. No offence to Heidi’s housekeeping abilities but Jenny had been in some Regent Park apartments where, instead of running when the lights came on, the cockroaches simply stayed put and stared at the trespassing humans.
“This afternoon. After he got out of jail.” Heidi wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold, even though it was hot in the apartment; Jenny was sweating under her uniform.
“Do you know why he was arrested?”
Heidi shook her head as dark tears started to drag her mascara down her cheeks. “He said some asshole cop grabbed him for something he didn’t do.”
Jenny was tempted to tell Heidi she was talking to the asshole cop but decided against it; no telling whose side Heidi would end up taking. Instead, she said, “He was arrested for hitting a woman and her daughter.” Jenny squatted down before Heidi. “He hit his wife and his own daughter.”
It took a moment for Jenny’s words to sink in, then the puzzlement clouding Heidi’s face shifted to anger. “That asshole! He said he left them.” She jumped to her feet but Jenny eased her back down to the couch.
“Where did he hit you today?”
“Here!” Heidi yelled, yanking up the sleeve of her T-shirt. “This is what that asshole did to me.” A red bruise, already darkening to purple, was wrapped around her upper arm as if someone had drawn the perfect imprint of a hand on her pale skin.
Jenny wondered what other injuries she’d find under Heidi’s shirt and jeans. She had no doubt the girl’s legs would give testimony to Myers’s cruelty. Why else would Heidi be wearing jeans in this heat? And did Rocky’s innocent skin bear any marks?
“Did Dean hit Rocky today?”
“Not today,” Heidi sobbed as her sudden anger melted to dismay.
“But he has in the past?” Jenny prompted.
Sniffling back tears, Heidi bobbed her head. She balled up a fistful of T-shirt and wiped her face, smearing mascara across her cheeks.
Jenny took the moment to look at Jack and smiled when he nodded, slow and deliberate. She saw that his hands were already clenched in white-knuckled fists. It seemed he shared her feelings about this. If Myers was smart, he wouldn’t give either of them a reason to express those feelings.
It didn’t seem possible, but this was only their first day working together. Jenny felt comfortable working with Jack and their styles of policing, whether dealing with victims or assholes, meshed beautifully. And she liked it that he was a solid presence in uniform. Not that she was the type of pw to pick a fight then expect her male escort to step in when things got messy. Jenny had seen that happen more than once and it always pissed her off. Enough guys on the job were already against policewomen; no need to give them fuel for their arguments.
Jenny could handle herself in a fight and had surprised many a bigger man with her ability to scrap, but it never hurt to know your escort could hold his, or her, own when it was time to go hands on. Jack wasn’t as big as Paul — then again, not many guys were — but the scar running through Jack’s right eyebrow, coupled with the scowl that seemed to be his permanent expression these days, gave him a Terminator-like intimidation factor. No, she didn’t mind working with Jack at all.
Now, if only I could find someone like him off the job.
The thought jumped into her head as she was looking at him and she shoved it aside. She had to admit, it wasn’t the first time she’d had a romantic thought about Jack, but he was married and, on the rocks or not, married men weren’t on her list. Period. And besides, they had a job to do right now and Heidi finally seemed to be getting herself under control.
“I’m just . . . I don’t know.” Heidi wiped at her cheeks again, widening the dark slick beneath her eyes. “We had a fight today,” she confessed, breathing out her frustration. “I mean, we fight a lot. But everyone does, rig
ht?” she beseeched Jenny.
“People fight, sure, but not like that.” Jenny pointed at the bruise on Heidi’s arm. “He doesn’t have the right to hit you or the baby.”
“But this wasn’t his fault,” Heidi explained. “I kind of messed up, you know? He called me from jail to tell me he was getting out. I was supposed to get him some beer and I forgot. That’s all. I just got mad when he kicked me. ’Cause I was holding Rocky, you know?”
Jenny went cold and could almost feel Jack stiffening up across the room. “He kicked you when you were holding the baby?” she asked, not wanting to believe she had heard correctly.
“Yeah. That’s when I got mad and called you guys. But it’s okay now. I think you guys scared him enough. He won’t do anything else now.” Heidi smiled at the officers, a strained, hopeful smile. With her frizzy reddish hair and smeared mascara, she looked like the world’s most pathetic clown.
“Heidi, we can’t leave,” Jenny began, but got no further.
Down the stairs, the apartment door banged open and Myers’s nasal voice yowled up at them. “Bitch! I want my shit!”
Damn it! I forgot to lock the door.
Fuck! I forgot to lock the door.
Jack turned to head down the stairs, to keep Myers on the first floor, but the little wife-beating coward was already coming up the steps. Jack eased back; if Myers decided to fight — and part of Jack really wanted him to — a steep staircase wouldn’t be the best location. Jenny moved from between the couch and coffee table to bar the way to Heidi.
Jack nodded inwardly, approving of how Jenny had positioned herself. He stayed by the stairs and had time to think, Bloody hell, we work well together, then Myers reached the second floor.
“What’s taking so fucking long, bitch? I can’t wait all fucking day.” Myers stepped into the living room and stopped, glancing from his girlfriend huddling on the couch to the two officers and back to Heidi. “Now fucking what?”
Jack clamped a hand above Myers’s right elbow. “You’re under arrest for domestic assault, that’s what.”