Brice leaned out to get a better look. She’d gotten good at covering the bruises with makeup, but despite the thick pancake and concealer, he could see her left eye was swollen and bruised. And her lip was cut.
“Damnit, Colleen. Why do you put up with this shit? Say the word, and I’ll take care of him. Jimmy and me, we’ll hurt him bad. And he’ll never see us coming.”
She shook her head. She’d fixed her hair so that it fell over the bruised eye. Maybe if you didn’t know to look, you might not even notice. “That’s sweet. But stupid. You’ll just get yourselves into trouble. That’s the last thing I want.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said.
He got out of the cruiser, walked around and got in the front seat of the Camaro.
She put her arms around his neck and began kissing him. The next thing he knew, she reached down and unzipped his fly.
“Here?” he said, looking around anxiously. “You’ll get us both arrested for public indecency.”
“I don’t care,” she said, fondling him.
He pushed her hand away. “Cut it out. We’ve got guys patrolling this park all the time, looking out for pervs. I could lose my job.”
“In the meantime, I’m losing my mind, I’m so hot for you,” she whispered, taking his hand and putting it beneath her skirt. “Come on. Just a quickie. Nobody has to see.”
Before he could stop her, she’d pulled her top off over her head. Another minute later, she was straddling him.
When they were done, they were both drenched with perspiration and out of breath.
“Jesus,” Brice said, tucking his damp uniform shirt into his pants. “How am I gonna explain this to my sergeant?”
Colleen giggled as she searched the floor of the Camaro for the panties that had gone missing in the heat of the moment.
“Tell him you got hot and sweaty chasing pervs at the nature trail,” she said, waving the scrap of pink lace under his nose.
“Put those on,” he said, batting the panties away. “You act like this is some kind of game.”
“It is a game, as far as I’m concerned,” she said with a shrug. “Come on. Are you telling me you don’t get off on this stuff?”
“It won’t be fun if I get fired for conduct unbecoming an officer, and it sure as hell won’t be fun for you if your husband figures out what’s going on between us.”
She got out of the Camaro and using the car door as a shield, stepped into the panties, smoothing her skirt and top before getting back in the driver’s seat. Then she pulled down the sun visor and combed her hair back into place and reapplied her lipstick.
“I’m serious, Brice,” she said, turning in the seat so that she was facing him again. “If it weren’t for times like this, being with you, I think I might go crazy.”
“Then leave him,” Brice said. “Get a divorce. You’re young. You’ve got a good job. Why do you need that asshole?”
“A good job? My take-home pay is exactly $92.74 a week. You know any divorce lawyers who work for that kind of money? And what if I did leave him? Where would I go? Move in with my mom? Listen to her bitching about what a raw deal she got after my dad left? Thanks but no thanks.”
Colleen looked off in the distance, at the playground, with the seesaw and the swings and sliding board. “Anyway, you don’t know Allen. He’d never just let me leave. He’d find me. And he’d hurt me even worse.”
With his thumb he gently touched the corner of her swollen lip. “I could help you. Let me help you. I want to.”
A single tear slid down her cheek. “What? You’re going to leave Sherri? For me?”
His face flushed. “Come on. That’s not fair. You know how I feel about you.”
She leaned in and kissed him. “You’re right. I do know how you feel. And I know I can’t ask you to leave your wife. I met her, you know.”
He drew back, startled. “Sherri? You talked to her? When was this?”
“Don’t look at me like that. It was perfectly innocent. I went into that real estate office she works at. Out at the beach. I asked about renting a house this summer. I’m not surprised you fell for her, Brice. She’s really cute.”
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “You met Sherri? Why would you do something like that? What if she figured it out?” He slapped the dashboard. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”
“Why not?” She shrugged. “I didn’t tell her my real name. I just, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to check out the competition. Is that so wrong? I mean, you met Allen.”
“I should have arrested Allen,” he said bitterly. “I should have locked his ass up, and then I should have gone home to my wife that night.”
“Even if you had arrested him, his dad’s lawyer would have gotten him out in a skinny minute.”
“So what are you going to do?” Brice asked.
She smoothed the front of his shirt with the flat of her hand. “I … I’ve been working on a plan. It’ll sound nuts to you, I know, but it’s the only way.”
“Tell me,” he said.
“I’m going to disappear,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I mean it. One day soon, I’ll go to work, and I just won’t come home.”
“Where’ll you go?” he asked. “What’ll you do for money?”
“I’m thinking maybe Atlanta. A big city, where I can get a job. As for the money? That’s the part you might not want to know about. You being a cop and all.”
“What? You’re gonna rob a bank?”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m going to take what’s mine. All of it. Allen and I have been saving up for a house for five years. Since even before we got married. He’s such a cheapskate, he keeps me on an allowance, makes me take my lunch to work, sew my own clothes. He’s got this little black notebook, and I have to account for every dime I spend. From my own paycheck!”
He shook his head. “If you’ve got that much money in the bank, why don’t you just use it to get a divorce?”
“You don’t get it,” Colleen said, her voice shrill. “Allen’s dad is friends with every lawyer and every judge in this town. A judge is going to say that money is his, not mine.”
“How much money is there?” Brice asked.
“A little over seven thousand dollars.” Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “I’ll have enough to make a new start in a new town.”
“What happens if Allen comes after you? Calls the cops and reports that you and his money went missing? Won’t he try and track you down?”
“That’s where you come in. I need your help.”
He exhaled slowly. “What? What do you need?”
She kissed him impulsively. “See? That’s why I adore you.”
“Nothing illegal, right? I’m a cop, remember?”
“It’s nothing, really. Just a fake ID.”
He ran his hands through his close-cropped hair. “Just?”
“It can’t be that big a deal,” she said hurriedly. “All the girls had fake IDs in high school. You know, so we could get into the bars.”
“I had a fake ID when I got back from Vietnam, but I don’t even think I’d know where to get one now.”
She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get to work. When can we meet again?”
“Maybe next week? I’ll call you at your office.”
“Bring the ID then, okay? I don’t know how much more I can take.”
After she was gone, he sat in his cruiser for a long time, wondering how he’d gotten himself in so deep, so fast. As he sat, a blue heron emerged from the swampy woods, picking its way delicately through the underbrush. The radio in his unit crackled again, and he started the cruiser and drove away.
29
A huge cardboard file box greeted Drue when she arrived at work on Monday. A yellow sticky note from her father bore the words she dreaded most. “SEE ME.” Was she being sent to the woodshed as a result of the previous evening’s snarky phone call?
Drue trudged to
ward Wendy’s office, where she found a merry gathering consisting of Brice, Wendy and Jimmy Zee.
She took a half-step backward to beat a retreat, but it was too late.
“Come on in,” Brice said, waving her forward.
“You left a file box on my desk?” she said.
“Actually, I left it,” Wendy said. She was seated in the wing chair across from Brice, dressed in head-to-toe pastel-print Lily Pulitzer. “We’ve got a big med mal case heating up and I need you to go through the client’s receipts for the past six years and get everything reconciled. The girls in records are super busy, so while you’re off the Justice Line…”
“I’m off the Justice Line? Since when?”
“Since I determined generating leads isn’t really your strong suit,” Wendy said, looking to her husband for backup.
Brice fidgeted with a chain of paper clips on his desktop but said nothing.
“This is bullshit,” Drue said angrily. “Why don’t you just stick me in the corner of the office and give me a big dunce cap to wear?”
“See what I’m dealing with?” Wendy said, one eyebrow raised.
Zee coughed discreetly. “Ya know, if the kid’s got some spare time, I could really use her for this slip-and-fall I’m working on.”
Drue shot him a grateful look. Today, like every time she’d glimpsed him, he was dressed all in black—baggy black jeans, black polo shirt with the CCK logo and black motorcycle boots, a pair of mirrored Ray-Bans dangling from a cord around his neck.
Wendy rolled her eyes. “The 7-Eleven case? I thought that was dead. The store has our client and her boyfriend, on video, trying to shoplift a fifth of malt liquor. When the clerk chased him, he dropped the bottle, it smashed and she slipped on that. So her injury arose out of her own criminal act, right?” She glanced at her husband for confirmation.
“Wait a minute,” Drue interjected. “That was my case. And it wasn’t malt liquor, it was Smirnoff Ice. I talked to that woman two weeks ago, but when I asked her if either she or the boyfriend were arrested, she hung up on me!”
“I guess she called back and spoke to somebody else,” Wendy said. She looked over at Brice. “Whose lead was that?”
“Hmm. I think it was Jonah’s,” Brice said.
“Not that it matters,” Wendy said. “I really think—”
“Actually,” Brice said, “I kicked it over to Zee. He got a copy of the video from the store which shows that it’s the boyfriend doing the theft. The guy’s got a long record, but our prospective client is clean. And it now appears she’s suffered a traumatic brain injury, not just the broken tailbone she was initially treated for.”
“Looking at the police reports, I found a potential witness,” Zee said. “It’s the old lady who called nine-one-one after our client fell.”
He looked over at Drue. “What do you say to a ride-along?”
“This is a waste of time,” Wendy objected. “We don’t need to invest any more firm resources—”
“Sweetie?” Brice said. “Let’s let Zee take one more run at it.” He looked over at Drue. “Keep your eyes and ears open and you might learn something today.”
* * *
A gleaming black Ford F-250 pickup was parked at the curb in front of the law office. Drue hiked herself up and into the passenger seat, and before she’d buckled up, Zee was speeding down the street.
He steered the truck with one hand and reached for a package of Nicorette gum from the seat beside him, tossing the wrapper onto the floor of the truck. He chewed like he drove, rapid-fire.
“Where are we headed?” Drue asked.
“We’re gonna go talk to Mrs. Delores Estes.”
“She’s the witness?”
“Yup,” Jimmy Zee said.
He glanced over at her, then returned his eyes to the road. “Wendy’s giving you a pretty raw deal, huh?”
“Dad won’t let her fire me, so she’s trying to force me into quitting,” Drue said. “I’m damned if I’ll give her the satisfaction.”
He switched the gum to the other side of his mouth. “You ever done work like this before?”
“Never.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I won’t have to break you of any bad habits.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Depends on what it is,” he said.
“What makes you think this case is good? I mean, I thought Dad hated slip-and-falls.”
“He does, but this one has a few things going for it. One is the defendant. The owner of that 7-Eleven, who is a franchisee, has excellent liability insurance, which is mandated by corporate. The second is the victim, our client, turns out to have a substantial, provable injury. If we can show that her boyfriend was the thief, and our client was simply an unwitting bystander, that’s a win.”
She nodded. “That makes sense.”
* * *
Less than a mile away, Zee turned off Fourth Street into a shabby-looking apartment complex called Barcelona Bay. The buildings were two-story affairs, with eight units apiece, tan stucco with pseudo-Spanish-looking rusted wrought-iron balconies.
He cruised slowly, making two quick right turns, then pulled in front of Building 20, Unit 2012.
Zee cut the truck’s engine and reached past Drue, popping the catch on the glove box. His hand closed over a small black pistol. He leaned forward in the seat, lifting the back of his polo shirt and tucking the pistol into a holster in the small of his back.
Drue didn’t bother to hide her shock.
“A gun? Is that really necessary? To talk to a little old lady?”
He chewed his gum and reached back into the glove box, bringing out a small can of Mace. “Little old ladies who live in Section Eight housing have guns. And they have kids and grandkids and neighbors with guns. I don’t ever want to be outgunned. Ya know?”
He handed her the Mace. “That’s a present from your uncle Zee. Keep it where you can use it in a hurry if you need to. I’m gonna let you do this interview.”
“You are? How come?”
He shook his head. “Again with the questions. Sometimes, little girl, you gotta just trust me and go with the flow, okay? You’re gonna talk to her because in my experience, sometimes elderly black ladies don’t especially want to open up to white dudes, especially former cops, like me.”
She let the “little girl” reference pass. “How did you find Mrs. Estes?” Drue asked.
“Her name was on the police report. She’s the one who called the ambulance after our client fell.”
“Anything special I should ask her?”
“Ask her what she saw in the 7-Eleven that day. Get everything, down to the tiniest detail. Ask her if it looked like our client was just a law-abiding citizen, minding her own business, when she slipped and hit her head. Ask her why she called nine-one-one. Like that.”
“Anything else?” Drue asked.
“Be sympathetic. Win her over to our side. And don’t screw it up,” Zee said. He opened the truck door and as he got out, carefully pulled his shirt over the holstered gun.
The front door to apartment 8 was open. A television was on inside, and the smell of frying fish wafted into the humid mid-morning heat.
Zee rang the doorbell. Nothing. He pounded on the aluminum frame of the screen door. “Mrs. Estes? Mrs. Estes? Are you home?”
A woman’s voice called out from inside. “Who’s that?”
Zee nodded at Drue.
“Hi, Mrs. Estes,” she called. “Could we please talk to you for a few minutes?”
A heavyset woman walked slowly toward the door. She wore a short-sleeved flowered cotton housecoat, similar to the ones Drue’s grandmother once favored, with thick rolls of flesh extending to her hands. Her head was covered with a pink vinyl shower cap, and she wore backless gold bedroom slippers.
Delores Estes peered at the two strangers from behind thick-lensed glasses. She made no move to unfasten the screen door. “What do y’all want?”
Drue
cleared her throat. “Uh, well, my name is Drue Campbell, and this is my associate, Mr. Zee. We’re here about that accident we believe you witnessed at the 7-Eleven. When that woman slipped and hit her head?”
Mrs. Estes took a step backward. “How’d y’all get my name? Who told you where I stay?”
Drue glanced at Zee, who nodded approvingly.
“The woman who fell that day hired our law firm, Campbell, Coxe and Kramner, to represent her,” Drue said. “She was hurt pretty badly, you know. But thank goodness you called nine-one-one and spoke to the police. We got your name from the police report.”
“Huh.” Delores Estes shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Finally, she unlatched the door. “Come on in, then. I can’t be standing here talking to y’all while my fish gets burnt up.”
She waddled off in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Drue and Zee standing in the living room of the tiny, stifling apartment.
* * *
A moment later she was back, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Y’all can sit down over there,” she said, gesturing toward a green vinyl-covered sofa.
“I been thinking about that poor lady since all that happened that day,” she said. “I asked after her at the store, but Anna, that’s the lady who works there, she told me she don’t know nothing about it.”
“She has a serious head injury,” Drue said. “And a broken tailbone, among other things.”
Mrs. Estes dabbed at her perspiring face with the dish towel. “Yes, Jesus. That was really something. She hit her head so hard, I was afraid maybe she was killed or something. And my poor little grand-girl, it scared her so bad, we ain’t been back there since.”
“Was that the first time you’ve been to that particular 7-Eleven?” Drue asked.
“Oh no. We used to go there all the time, because that’s the closest store to me. Bitty, that’s my grand-girl, she stays here with me some days when her daddy is working, she’s always begging me to take her up there and buy her a treat. That day, I got my social check, so we went on up there like we usually do.”
“Can you tell me what happened that day? In the store?”
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