To Love a Cop

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Yep, why didn’t he go for broke and take off his shirt while he was at it? he asked himself in amusement. Of course, given that this was the first week of May and it was all of about sixty degrees out there, she’d probably laugh at him instead of gazing in awe. Goose bumps weren’t all that sexy.

  Bouncing with excitement, Jake reappeared. “He’s on his way! He only lives a couple blocks away and he’s riding his bike.”

  “Then let’s go on out.” Ethan patted his stomach. “Now I wish I hadn’t had that second helping of cobbler.”

  “You can still dunk, though? Right?”

  Laura laughed, giving her son a quick hug in passing. “He’s just trying to scare you. I think he can still get himself off the ground.” She gave him an impish look. “Unless he’s getting too old for that kind of thing. Maybe his knees are going, like his dad’s.”

  “Now you have to come out there and let me dazzle you, too,” he murmured as he passed her.

  For a moment, he saw a kind of vulnerability and naked honesty in her eyes that stunned him. “I think you already have,” she admitted before waving them on, her cheeks pink.

  Following her kid out, Ethan felt like his feet were barely touching the porch steps or paved driveway. One blush and quiet admission, and he knew he could fly, no problem.

  * * *

  THIS HAD BEEN the best Sunday Laura could remember having in years. She ought to feel guilty for even thinking that, given that church attendance hadn’t been part of their day, but she couldn’t.

  Truthfully, their church attendance had already become sporadic. Growing up, her parents had mostly taken her and her sister only on special occasions like Easter. Laura had turned her back on the Catholic Church the day after Matt’s funeral. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame the Vennetti family’s priest for their sins, but no way was she continuing to attend the same services as his family. Her promise to raise any children within the Catholic Church had been given to Matt, not the rest of the Vennettis anyway. He had abandoned her. Petty as it was, she had to find a way to lash out at him in return, and this was one way.

  Instead, she and Jake had started attending the same Congregational church her sister’s family did. Only, the minister lacked charisma, and Laura’s faith had been damaged by first Marco’s death and then Matt’s, with the result that she felt as if she was only going through the motions Today, Ethan’s willingness to do something that mattered for Jake had seemed a lot more important than she and Jake dutifully sitting through a sermon that probably would have bored both of them anyway.

  So, okay, she did feel a little guilty at that thought, but not enough to puncture the bubble of happiness that had buoyed her all day.

  He wasn’t married! He couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do than hang around with her and Jake! He’d thanked her for believing he’d been right to refuse to quit the job he loved to save a marriage on the rocks. He’d come down solidly on her side when she tried to take a share of the responsibility for Matt’s carelessness with his gun.

  He loved her cooking, too.

  But most of all, he smiled at her. He touched her, and his eyes heated pretty much whenever she felt herself melting down inside. She couldn’t be mistaken, Laura thought. He was attracted to her.

  In the important ways, he wasn’t like Matt.

  She hadn’t felt anything like this sense of hope and possibility in so long, she’d hardly recognized it when it first bloomed.

  After demonstrating admirable patience and entertaining the boys for an hour or more, Ethan had finally jogged up to the house to say goodbye to her. He didn’t touch her; they could both hear the ball still slapping the pavement in front of the house, a catcall from one of the boys. She quite desperately wanted him to kiss her, even though she knew he wouldn’t. She just hoped she remembered how it was done if the chance ever came her way.

  Once he was gone, Laura stood unmoving for several minutes, breathing and remembering the way his gaze lowered to her lips before returning ruefully to her face. If she’d been a teenager, she’d have let out a squeal.

  That evening, she tapped on Jake’s door to say good-night. A year ago, he’d rarely closed it and privacy wasn’t really a concept to him. Now...well, she didn’t know if his new desire to have time to himself had to do with his worrisome fascination with guns, or whether she was seeing the onset of puberty.

  “Come in,” he called, and she did.

  He was already in bed, but had his iPod in his hand.

  “Good day?” she asked.

  His smile was the most uncomplicated, the happiest, she’d seen in a long time. “Yeah, it was really cool. Ethan said you paid for the backboard, and, well, thanks. It’s great.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” She bent to kiss the top of his head. “I hope you thanked him for getting it and putting it up, too.” A sense of fairness made her add, “It was his idea, you know.”

  He grinned at her. “Yeah, I kind of thought it was.”

  “Come on,” she teased. “I do nice things for you.”

  “I know. You’re pretty cool. For a mom.”

  Laura laughed and smoothed his hair back from his forehead even as he ducked. “Sweet dreams.”

  “I want to be just like Ethan,” he said, as she crossed the room.

  Feeling a hint of apprehension, she turned back. “Not an NBA star?”

  “Well...I’m not going to be tall enough, am I?”

  She hated to squelch any dreams, but realistically... “Probably not. Odds are, you’ll end up taller than your father, because my father was over six feet and I’m reasonably tall for a woman. But nobody in the family can give you Ethan’s height.”

  “He says he’s six four, and he sounded like that was barely tall enough for a pro.” He shrugged. “I want to be a cop, like he is.”

  “Like your dad.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She managed another smile, said good-night again and closed his bedroom door behind her, the way he’d had it.

  I will not worry, she decided. There were plenty of years for him to change his mind about what he wanted to do with his life. And...would it be so terrible if he followed in Ethan’s footsteps?

  She made a small, strangled sound. In Matt’s footsteps, not Ethan’s. That was what she’d meant. Matt had loved his son. It would have made him proud to know Jake was thinking he wanted to be like his dad.

  But Ethan was the one here now, the one stirring unexpected changes in their lives. Mostly for the good, but also some that scared her.

  Turning out the hall light and going into her own bedroom, she reminded herself of how worried she’d been about Jake before Ethan brought him home that day from the gun show. No, the changes had all been positive, compared to what she’d feared then. She’d been right to put off finding a therapist.

  This was the best day she or Jake had had since she couldn’t remember when.

  * * *

  ETHAN CHECKED OUT his phone when it rang, but didn’t recognize the number.

  He’d intended to take Monday off, but had several ongoing investigations that were like an itch he needed to scratch. As a result, he had just pulled up in front of the home of a man whose assault might or might not have been racially motivated.

  Honesty compelled him to admit, if only to himself, that if Laura and Jake had had today off, too, he wouldn’t be working.

  Maybe it was just as well they didn’t. After all, he was seeing them tomorrow.

  With an effort, he pulled himself back to a work mind-set and answered the phone. “Detective Winter.”

  “Detective,” a woman’s voice said. “This is Cheryl Brown. I’m a neighbor of the Fischmans. You knocked on our door Saturday.”

  “Yes, I spoke to you and your husband.” He couldn’t picture either of them offhand, but recalled the name. “Have you remembered something?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s actually my daughter who said something.” She sounded apologetic. “The th
ing is, she’s only five, so you may not think it’s worth talking to her.”

  “I’ve sometimes found children to be excellent witnesses. Do you have reason to believe she saw something?”

  “Becky has been scared to go to bed the past two nights. She kept asking if our house would burn down. I’ve been reassuring her, but this morning at the breakfast table she said, ‘What if those two men come back?’ I asked her if she’d seen two men at the Fischmans, and she said yes.”

  “Then I’d definitely like to talk to her,” he said, already glancing over his shoulder and pulling away from the curb. “If it’s okay, I can be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, her relief obvious.

  He made it in closer to ten minutes. Beaumont-Wilshire was a family oriented, prosperous neighborhood bordering Concordia where Laura and Jake lived. As he’d told Laura, the swastika incidents were clustered in a semicircle of neighborhoods in the northeast quadrant of the city.

  The Browns’ home, a brick two-story, was around the corner from the Fischmans’. He’d rung their doorbell because you never knew, but with low expectations. The only way they would have seen anything was if they’d happened to be looking out an upstairs window at the back of their house at the right time—in the middle of the night. Turned out the master bedroom looked out at the street. Neither Mr. or Mrs. Brown had even awakened until they heard the sirens.

  They had two kids, he recalled, bounding up their porch steps. A toddler boy, and the little girl. The girl had seemed so unlikely he hadn’t asked to interview her.

  Cheryl Brown answered the door so quickly, he guessed she’d been hovering by the front windows. She was a tall, attractive blonde whose lean muscles suggested she might be a runner.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, stepping aside to let him enter. “Becky is watching TV in the family room.”

  He followed her to the back of the house, where what he guessed had originally been a library had been converted to a comfortable room with a large-screen TV and lots of toys. The toddler stood in a playpen, a thumb in his mouth while his free hand gripped the top rail. His gaze was riveted on the TV where ponies with rainbow manes and tails pranced and...sang?

  “Hey, sweetie,” Mrs. Brown said gently. “The man I told you about is here to talk to you. I can stop your movie and then you can finish watching it when we’re done, okay?”

  The girl, a small version of her mother, looked unblinkingly at Ethan. “Okay,” she said finally, sliding off the sofa to her feet. A sparkly pink shirt topped purple leggings bagging at the knees and those kid shoes with flashing lights.

  Mom grabbed the remote and the screen went dark. The toddler squawked in protest, but she scooped him out of the pen and carried him on her hip as she led the way into the kitchen.

  Ethan declined the offer of a cup of coffee, but waited patiently as she poured a glass of juice for her daughter and mixed some with water in a sippy cup for the little boy. Then they all sat down at the table.

  He smiled at the girl and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you the last time I was here. I bet your bedroom window looks out at the backyard, doesn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.” She gave a decisive nod. “Only, I got two windows.”

  “She has the corner bedroom,” her mother murmured.

  He hid his smile. “Then I definitely wish I’d talked to you and not just your mom and dad.” Seeing her satisfaction, he asked if the fire truck sirens had woken her up, but she shook her head.

  “I heard... I don’t know. Something. And when I looked up, there was this funny light. It was on my ceiling.”

  “Kind of orange?”

  “Uh-huh. So I got up and looked out the window. And...and there was a fire! A big fire.”

  He kept the pace of questioning easy, and circled around several times to see if he could shake her story, but she remained firm: she’d seen two men there on the side of the house by the fire. Except maybe they weren’t really men. Possibly older boys or teenagers, she agreed.

  Her forehead crinkled. “’Cuz one of them had something funny on his head. Like Ashley’s boyfriend,” she told her mom.

  Mrs. Brown cringed slightly. “Ashley is a neighbor girl,” she said to Ethan. “She started babysitting for us when she was thirteen, but now she’s sixteen and into sort of a Goth look. Her boyfriend has a Mohawk.”

  Ethan pulled out his notebook and sketched a head with a Mohawk. Yes, this very bright little girl agreed, that was what she’d seen. Could he have been Ashley’s boyfriend? Uh-uh. She was sure of that. His hair was the same color as hers. Both these boys had brown hair. Or black or something, but not blond.

  That same boy had worn especially baggy pants. She regarded those contemptuously. When she saw them run away, he’d had to pull his pants up so he didn’t trip, an observation that amused Ethan to no end until she added that he’d had something in his other hand. They determined it was sort of square, and when he gestured to indicate a size, she nodded firmly. Gas can.

  They concluded that the second boy’s appearance had been more standard issue, since she couldn’t think of anything distinguishing about it except that he’d worn a T-shirt with short sleeves. She saw the pale flash of his arms. And he’d been carrying something, too.

  “Like Daddy’s flashlight,” she said, but doubtfully. “’Cept it wasn’t on.”

  He was betting that what she’d seen was a can of paint, the one that had been used to spray the swastika on the side of the house. He kept hoping one of these times a paint or gas can would be left behind, but so far they hadn’t gotten that lucky.

  Eventually, he thanked Becky Brown and, at the front door, told Mrs. Brown she had a very smart daughter. He gave her another card and asked that she call if Becky thought of anything else. The little boy, still sucking his thumb as he clung to his mother, studied him gravely until the door closed between them.

  Striding to his Yukon, he reflected with satisfaction on what he’d learned. It wasn’t much, but it confirmed some of his suspicions. The only other witness, and that to one of the early incidents, had been sure she’d seen a whole gang of hoodlums. He’d increasingly discounted the likelihood of more than two or three perpetrators. Young men in a crowd would have egged each other on. They couldn’t have stayed so quiet, the reason for the frustrating lack of witnesses.

  And five-year-old Becky said she didn’t hear a car.

  So either they’d parked a block or so away...or they lived close enough they’d hoofed it. The incidents had all taken place within about a mile-and-a-half radius. He thought these boys were either young enough not to own a car, or, if they did have access to one, had to be cautious driving away from home in it in the middle of the night without a parent hearing.

  His mouth tipped up at one corner. Hey, maybe they were walkers. Either way, he thought there was a real good chance they lived within that radius, which would place them...in the Alameda neighborhood, maybe Irvington or the south end of Concordia.

  He would definitely be intensifying his warnings.

  And now...back to talk to the severely injured young Iraqi immigrant who had been cornered and beaten by a bunch of idiots sure anyone who looked Muslim had to be a terrorist. By God, Ethan looked forward to arresting them. All victims he interviewed were traumatized, but this one had clearly believed he’d made it safely to the promised land, where violence would be nothing but a fading memory. Putting the pieces of that dream back together might take years, or it might not be possible at all.

  His mood darkening as he remembered his first interview with the young, bewildered guy, Ethan wished this was Tuesday, so that he could look forward to seeing Laura. He rarely talked about the job with anyone except fellow officers. His father, occasionally. That was it. Erin hadn’t wanted to hear about the grim parts of his job, and increasingly he’d had to wall off what he’d done all day and the emotional toll it took.

  So it was strange now to feel this urge to t
alk about the things that disturbed him with another person. A woman.

  * * *

  FEELING LOWER THAN an earthworm, Laura lifted her son’s mattress to see if he’d added to his stash. This had been such a good week, she almost skipped her search. He’d come home ebullient from the Tuesday night class, and had then been excited about Ethan coming over to hang the backboard. Since Sunday morning, his every spare moment had been spent with a basketball out on their driveway. She was almost starting to find the irregular thumps as the ball struck the backboard soothing.

  But here she was stripping their beds to change the sheets, and she couldn’t resist taking a quick peek. And...oh, damn. On top was a magazine with a cover she didn’t recognize. She tugged it out. Guns & Ammo Handgun, this month’s issue, with a huge picture of a hideous black pistol. Fear filled her as she stared at that cover, more obscene than a pair of inflated naked breasts on a men’s magazine.

  Where had Jake gotten it? She gave him an allowance, of course, but was he spending the entire amount on magazines like this? She wasn’t even sure where he’d found it to buy. Or... Oh, God, was he shoplifting, too? Now that she thought about it, he had disappeared for a while the last time she took him to the store with her. He could have either slipped away to purchase the magazine, or to tuck it inside his jacket after making sure no clerk was looking his way.

  Horrible thought.

  Confront him? Or keep hoping his interest would wane?

  His attitude did seem to be better, she reminded herself. And she hated to admit she had been spying on him. So...it made sense to let it go for now, right? To let him continue with the gun safety class, resume his friendships, maybe gain new interests? Ethan was doing him so much good.

  She made a face, thinking, I’m such a coward. But it was all true, so... She began putting the bottom sheet on.

  Jake came thundering down the hall. “Mom, what are you...?” Breathless, he swung himself to a stop in the doorway. “Oh. I can make my bed. You’re always saying I should.”