by Toni Blake
Bending over the dog, he pressed a palm to his furry little chest until he got a heartbeat. Thank God. "He's not dead," he said. "We need to get him to a vet."
"But... I thought you aren't supposed to move people when they're injured."
Poor sweet 'tite fille. "He's not a person," he said gently. "And we can't leave him in the street. I'll be careful," he promised, sliding his arms beneath the dog.
Once on his feet, he told Shondra to get his keys from his front pocket and open the passenger door of the truck, nearby. Just then, a cruiser came rolling slowly past, out on patrol. "Hey!" he yelled. "Need some help over here!"
The driver's-side window descended until Jake could see the face inside—a young guy he didn't know. "What's the problem?"
He motioned to the dog in his arms. "Know an all-night vet?"
"Uh, only place I know of is over in Métairie."
Merde. Jake knew the place, too—he'd just hoped there was someplace closer. "Thanks," he said, carrying Scruff to the truck. He laid the dog across the seat, then Shondra and he got in from the other side.
She cried the whole trip, releasing low sniffles and broken, heavy breaths. She stroked the dog's side as they traveled and every so often checked to make sure he was still alive, announcing it each time. Jake drove like a man possessed, but at the same time, tried to take it easy so he wouldn't jostle the dog.
Ten minutes after loading the dog in the vehicle, Jake carried him into the animal hospital. "Dog's name?" a lady asked from behind the counter.
"Scruff," Shondra said.
"Owner?"
"Shondra Walters."
"And who will be paying the bill tonight, Shondra?" Jake stepped up. "Me."
The woman glanced back and forth between them. "And you're ... her father?" "I'm a friend."
The woman nodded, but Jake thought she still looked uncertain.
A few minutes later, Scruff was carried back to the vet. He and Shondra sat side by side in the brightly ht waiting room, where photos of playful puppies and kittens adorned the walls.
"Think he'll be okay?" she asked, glancing up.
He had no idea, of course, but nodded. "He's a tenacious little mutt—he isn't goin' anywhere."
She pursed her lips and he could see her trying to look strong. Funny, he'd never seen Shondra look scared— until now.
"Were you on your way home from work when you saw us?" she asked. "Or on your way home from Stephanie?"
"Work." And Stephanie. "Why?"
"Just... I thought if you had a late date planned with her after work or somethin', you should call her."
God, that stung. He would have loved to have a late date with Stephanie. He just gave his head a short shake. "No, no date."
"What's wrong?"
"What makes you think somethin's wrong?"
She shrugged. "You're just actin' ... like you used to, at first. Like you're pissed at somebody. You and Stephanie have a fight or somethin' ?"
He kept his gaze trained on a beagle puppy on the opposite wall. "We broke up."
To his shock, Shondra gasped. "Why?"
He peered down at her, deciding he should try to relax her. "Not that big of a deal, 'tite fille. We just... couldn't work some things out."
"What things?" she asked, sounding calmer.
Jake swallowed. "She wanted more than I could give her."
She blinked, looking bewildered. "Like money?"
"No." He shook his head. "Like... a more serious relationship than I was into. That's all."
"Why weren't you into it? You didn't feel the same way?"
"Not that exactly." If anyone else asked him such nosy questions, he'd tell them to go to hell. Not Shondra, though. He couldn't help wanting to teach her about life, what to expect, how to survive. It was just hard sometimes knowing how much to say.
"Well, then, what exactly?"
"Remember I told you about my wife, who died?"
She nodded.
"Thing is, it just doesn't feel right to have a serious relationship with somebody else. Makes me feel guilty."
She blinked and he sat there waiting for her to think he was a noble guy, but her expression said something else. "I don't mean to get all up in your business, but if you ask me, that's pretty damn stupid."
He flinched, widening his eyes on her. "How do you figure, O wise one?"
She tilted her head, clearly considering her answer, then looked down at the black sandals Stephanie had picked out for her. "Well, if I was your wife, and / died"— she-lifted her gaze back to him—"I'd want you to hook up with somebody else and be happy. It'd be real selfish to expect you to stay all faithful to me, since I couldn't be with you no more. Know what I mean?"
She was blushing a little, but he pretended not to see it. And her reasoning made sense, yet.. . "Thing is, it's a lot more complicated than I can explain." / caused her death.
Shondra didn't need to know that sort of horrible truth— that you can love someone and still be responsible for letting them die.
She only shrugged. "I'm just sayin' ... I don't think your wife would want you to be alone. You've seemed a lot happier than when I first met you, and I figured it was Stephanie makin' you that way. I liked you that way."
As the office's inner door opened and the vet came through, Jake and Shondra both stood up. "How is he?" she asked with anxious eyes.
The doctor—a clean-cut guy about Jake's age—smiled warmly, and already Jake knew the mutt was gonna make it. "Scruff's a tough little guy and he's going to be okay," the doc said.
"See, what'd I tell ya?" Jake added with a light smile.
She smiled back and he felt a little like a hero again.
"He's got a concussion and a bump on the head, but both of those will go away and he'll be good as new in no time."
"For real?" Shondra asked, her gaze gone wide.
"Absolutely," the vet said. "You'll want to take it easy getting him home, and he might move a little slow for the next day or so, but after that, he'll be just fine."
Shondra gave a little jump for joy, grabbing onto Jake's arm. "Did you hear that? He's gonna be fine, Jake! Good as new!"
Jake put his arm around her shoulder, happy and relieved on her behalf. Then he caught the eye of the receptionist—the woman was watching them, and looking at him like he was a child molester. Pissed off, he pulled his arm away.
A moment later, when he handed the woman a credit card, she said, "Does that girl's parents know where she is?"
He took a deep breath. "For your information, she's a runaway."
"And you're... ?"
He really disliked this woman's nasty, unspoken accusations. He answered through slightly clenched teeth. "Like an uncle to her."
As they drove home, Jake said to Shondra, "You know, it's a shame Scruff doesn't have a nice yard to run around and play in."
She simply rolled her eyes at him. "Bump the psychology, dude. You're bad at it."
He couldn't help laughing. This was the Shondra he'd come to know and love.
"And besides, we already got a dog at home. Mama wouldn't let me bring Scruff home, even if I went home, which I'm not."
"Thing is," he said, getting serious again, "if anybody found out you're stayin' with me, I'd be in a lot of trouble, and you'd be goin' to child services—and God knows what would happen to Scruff."
This all seemed to catch her attention. "Who's gonna find out, though?"
He eased up the freeway ramp that would take them back to the French Quarter. "That woman at the animal clinic thought somethin' funny was goin' on between us and she didn't like it."
"So? She's nobody."
"She has my name—it was on my credit card. If she wanted to, she could call child services. I'm not that hard to track down."
"You don't think she'd do somethin' like that?"
"I don't know, 'the fille, but my point is—if it's not her, it might be somebody else, and I don't think you, me, or Scruff want that kind of troubl
e."
She pulled in her breath and sat up a little straighter. "Then maybe Scruff and me should bounce, head back out on the street."
"Peter, Paul, and Mary," he muttered, "no goddamn way are you goin' back out on the street."
"Well, where else can I go? And don't say home."
"Don't worry—I don't want you goin' home, either. But I'm bettin' there's somebody else in your life who'd be a more ... appropriate person for you to live with."
She stayed quiet, looked pensive.
"I could do some diggin' if I wanted to," he said quietly, eyes on the road.
"Diggin'?"
"I know your last name now, Shondra Walters. And I used to be a cop, so I still have connections."
"Holy shit—you used to be a cop?"
"Yeah. And I could probably get a friend to search some databases and find out where you came from. But I don't wanna do that." He sighed. "AU I want for you is someplace safe, someplace where you'll have a good shot at a decent fife. Isn't there somebody who might be able to help us out on that?"
Next to him, Shondra let out a long, acceptant sigh of her own, staring at the dashboard. Finally, she whispered, "My Grandma Maisy, maybe."
"Grandma Maisy—she's somebody you love, somebody who loves you?"
She nodded. "My daddy's mother. She don't like my mama's boyfriend none. But... I don't think I can tell her what happened with him."
"I could do it if you want."
She turned to look at him. "Straight up? You'd do that for me?"
"Yeah, I'd do that for you. I'd do a lot for you." "Guess you already have."
"Tell you what," he said. "We'll talk about this more tomorrow, figure out the best way to fill Grandma Maisy in. How's that sound?"
Across from him, she looked sad, and he understood for the first time that maybe his 'tite fille had a little crush on him. It turned his heart on end—although his heart didn't need any more exercise tonight than it had already had.
The phone woke Jake the next morning, sending him jogging to the kitchen, past Shondra's sleeping form on the couch. "Yeah?" he said, picking it up still half asleep.
"It's me." Tony. "Are you sitting down?"
Whoa, this sounded serious. He plopped into a chair. "I am now."
He listened to Tony take a deep breath. "The guy with Stephanie's sister, Nicholson? He's the kingpin, Jake. Of the whole damn operation. He's the guy who ordered the hit on you."
The hit that killed Becky instead. Jake couldn't breathe, bent over to rest his head in his hand.
"Those girls Raven mentioned? Tracked 'em down and they still deal for him, have been for years, and they IDed him as Typhoeus. Our hunches were right—serious drugs are being moved through Sophia's and the CBD, by the escorts. These girls and a couple of higher-ups they turned us on to are all willing to turn, so that and a few well-placed wiretaps and we'll have enough to put him away."
Nicholson was Typhoeus. The man responsible for his wife's death.
To think he'd just talked to the bastard last night.
"You there, man? You hearing this?"
"Yeah, I'm hearin' it—just... a little overwhelmed."
"I know," Tony said. "I probably should have come over and told you. I just didn't want to wait. I know it's hard to hear, but it means Becky's killer's going to jail, man. And not just on drug trafficking. Before we're through, he'll face murder charges, too. If nothing else, Jake, we're going to get some justice out of this."
"Jesus" was all he could mutter. Finally getting his head back about him a little, he said, "We found Tina Grant, just last night. She'd been livin' with that asshole until yesterday."
"You're kidding."
"He was at Sophia's and I asked him about her. I was face-to-face with him, Tony." As shock slowly transformed into rage, he spoke through clenched teeth. "Face-to-face."
"Listen, man," Tony said, and Jake could already hear the calming tones—they'd learned about those in the academy, how to talk to people who were on edge to settle them down. "You don't want to do anything crazy where this guy's concerned—if for no other reason, you'll mess up our case. And after all this time, I know you don't want to do that. I know you want to see Becky's killer get put away for a good long time. You're hearing me on this, right?"
Jake took a deep breath. "Right." He wanted to rip Nicholson limb from bloody limb—but more than that, he wanted to watch him rot in a prison cell. "You think this is what the feds were really lookin' for when they came down on the brothels a few years back?" he wondered aloud.
'Truth is ..." Tony began, then stopped.
There was some truth Tony had never told him? "What?"
"The feds put a buzz in our ear a while back. I didn't get the idea about drugs on the third floor all by myself, and I had more than just a hunch. The FBI thought that's how it was going down—just couldn't nail it and suddenly had bigger fish to fry after nine eleven. They pulled us in on it a couple of years ago—not long after Becky died—but you were in too bad a way to tell you about it."
Jake shook his head. "Why? I know I was bad off, but why not tell me?"
Tony hesitated. "It's like this. Danny didn't offer you the job at Sophia's just out of the goodness of his heart. I asked him to, Jake."
"Why the hell would you do that?"
"You were closing down, shutting everything and everybody out. But I wanted you there, at Sophia's— wanted you in on this when it eventually came down. Because you're a cop to the bone, whether or not you're carrying a badge, and I needed your eyes and ears. And because I knew you'd need to be in on it when we found out who was behind Becky's death."
Just then, Shondra stretched and eased out from under the sheet on the couch, careful not to step on Scruff, who lay on the floor next to her on an old pillow Jake had pulled from a closet. She gave a sleepy-eyed, messy-haired wave good morning before scurrying off to the bathroom in one of Jake's old T-shirts he'd given her to sleep in.
"Jesus," Jake murmured, still trying to absorb it all, and part of him wanted to chew Tony out for manipulating him—but he couldn't. It all made sense. And Tony had done it because he'd cared.
They talked a little while longer, Tony making sure Jake wasn't going to go looking for Nicholson with a baseball bat, and discussing some more details of the case the NOPD would be building against the son of a bitch. It was so damn much to take in. They knew now. They knew who'd killed his wife.
He was just hanging up as Shondra exited the bathroom in a pair of shorts and a pullover. Scabs adorned each of her knees.
He pointed at them. "What happened?"
She shook her head as if the answer were a nuisance. "That's how Scruff got loose last night."
"What do you mean?"
"Some boy I know was botherin' me." She said it like it was nothing.
But Jake stood up. "Botherin' you? Botherin' you how?"
She looked almost ashamed to tell him and he prayed to God it wasn't anything like what had happened with her mom's boyfriend. "This boy called P.J., homeless kid, like I was. I seen him on the street a couple times lately and he's been givin' me shit ever since I got new clothes."
Jake blinked, not quite understanding. "Why?"
"Figured they meant I had some cash. Last night I went out to get some dog food, and P.J. saw me and hit me up for money. When I said no, he sorta... knocked me down, grabbed what change I had, and ducked off when Scruff got hit."
Jake couldn't believe he hadn't seen her skinned knees last night, but now he was noticing scratches on her arm, and a bruise on her right thigh, too. His blood began to boil. "This kid, P.J., what's he look like and where can I find him?"
She drew back slightly. "Why?" "Just answer the question."
"He's got a nappy Afro, all uneven, and wears a dirty old Saints T-shirt with a number seventeen on it. During the day, he sleeps in an empty building down close to the river." She told him where.
He stormed past her into the bedroom, where he traded in the
gym shorts he'd slept in for last night's jeans and T-shirt. "Don't leave this apartment 'til I get back," he commanded, trudging past her out the door.
He traveled to the abandoned building she'd described with tunnel vision. He didn't see morning traffic in the Quarter or people on the streets hosing down sidewalks or opening businesses. He saw nothing but a little girl's skinned knees. What the hell was wrong with people in this world that they thought they could just go around hurting other people? What gave them the right? It was gonna stop now—with him and this little jerk-off, P.J.
He pushed through a tall, half-shut door and found a handful of kids, varying ages, sleeping on old mattresses, car seats, blankets on the floor. The Saints jersey stretched out in a reclined bucket car seat drew his eyes. Damn, the kid was big—and too old to be hanging with the other young teenagers scattered about the place. It made him even angrier.
He yanked the kid up by the shirt, ready to scare the shit out of him. The kid's eyes popped open and as soon as he saw Jake, he drew back his fist and swung. Jake jerked to the right quick enough that it didn't hurt much, despite the coppery taste of blood in his mouth—but it was the last straw with this loser. In instinctive response, he delivered a hard left to P.J.'s jaw.
"Wha ... ?" the kid muttered, dazed from the blow.
"From now on, try pickin' on somebody your own size!" "Huh?"
"Last night you stole some money from a friend of mine. Attacked her, knocked her down, got her dog hit by a car. Ring any bells?"
The guy just made a face. "Yeah, but. .."
Jake slugged him again, this time in the gut. The jolt sent RJ. doubling over with a grunt and the rest of the homeless teens had come awake to simply watch in fear, as if they were afraid to move, lest Jake notice them. As soon as RJ. rose back up, Jake countered with a right to the eye. The kid fell with a plunk to the old wooden floor and Jake leaned down over him. "She's just a goddamn little girl! Just tryin' to get by, like you are! You had no right to hurt her, so I'm just makin' things even here."