“You’re asking the wrong person, because I don’t get it, either,” she said, stooping down next to him. The kids swarmed over to join them around the fallen ladder. Cutting across their exclamations, she informed Jason, “This is my father’s and he takes excellent care of his equipment.” Watching him run his fingers over the twisted holes—all that was left where the rivets anchoring the struts to the legs of the stepladder should have been—filled her with sick confusion and she said again, “I just don’t get it.”
WATCHING THE activity down the block from his car, Bruno Arturo admitted that dicking with the rivets had been a lame impulse. Well, tough. When he’d come across the ladder while scoping out the site late last night he’d still been pissed off from that short news feature he’d seen on KING-5. Here he’d tried to cut the kid a break. He should have known better than to go soft over some little girl.
Information on the Capelli kid had been surprisingly hard to come by. He’d made the mistake of assuming that the street kids knew what he had not—that she was a girl not a boy, so it took him longer than usual to even discover she went by the name of CaP on the street. Then when he finally did have a name for his inquiries, nobody seemed to know her well. It wasn’t until one kid said that CaP had let slip once that he was from Philly that Bruno’s luck began to change. That’s when he’d contacted a numbers runner he knew there and got the story on the girl’s father.
But he still didn’t know where she lived, which astounded the shit outta him, because that was usually the easy part of running someone to ground. But the girl was wily, taking circuitous routes home, cutting through yards and racing down one-way streets the wrong way until she seemed to disappear into thin air. His record for sticking with her before she vanished was four and a half blocks. She also wasn’t among the Capellis listed in the phone books, which, given what had happened to her old man, he figured was her mother’s handiwork. Losing someone to murder had a way of making a person cautious.
He’d come to the conclusion his boss was right: the girl wasn’t a threat. Seeing exactly what stepping up had gotten her old man had no doubt taught her to keep her yap shut. So for the first time in what seemed like weeks he’d taken a deep breath and relaxed.
Only to turn around and catch that news clip on the tube.
He’d blown sky-high to discover that while he’d been preparing to cut the kid a break and just walk away from this the way Schultz wanted, she was working with a cop. A fucking Robbery cop.
Still, sabotaging that ladder had been a dumb-shit response. Hell, there was no predicting who’d climb the thing. Not to mention that, at most, the strut failures would maybe crack the skull of whomever did—but more likely merely inflict a couple of bruises.
At least he’d thought far enough ahead to wrap a chamois around the tungsten blade he’d used to loosen the rivets and avoid leaving shiny silver scratch marks all over the ladder. He didn’t aim to have a cop crawling up his ass.
Which brought him full circle to messing with the fucking ladder in the first place. He still didn’t know how he was going to handle the kid when he did catch her. But he knew he didn’t want any previous “accidents” scratching at the back of the cop’s mind.
On the other hand, this might have shaken the kid up. And an off-balance mark was easier prey.
Of course, until he could separate her from the detective that meant bugger all. So he might as well remove himself from the neighborhood before someone noticed him.
He fired up the engine.
Then he blinked, realizing he’d been staring at the action down the street without actually paying attention for a few moments now. Capelli and the blonde were no longer in the group around the busted ladder. Looking around, he saw the girl crossing the street right in front of him, if down a ways. As he watched, she stopped in the middle lane and turned to say something over her shoulder.
And. Holy. Shit. He sat forward in his seat.
No one was out on the street at the moment.
The cop’s back was turned.
And the opportunity he’d been presented was just too fucking good to pass up.
He floored the gas.
JASE WAS SQUATTING next to Danny G., going over the busted cross braces one last time, when he heard a car suddenly accelerate out on the street. He was twisting around to see who the hell was driving so fast when Henry shoved to his feet and sprinted away, exclaiming, “Jesus, are you guys okay? Cory, Ms. C.? You okay?”
Heart pounding in his chest not only at the words but at the shaken tremble in the boy’s voice, Jase surged to his feet, his gaze sweeping the area. Poppy was sprawled facedown on the sidewalk with Cory draped half on top of her, and even as he spotted them Henry came to a halt so abrupt that it jerked the boy up onto his toes before he caught his balance and dropped to a squat alongside them.
Neither of the downed women so much as twitched a finger and Jase’s heart seemed to come to a crashing halt. For one second. Two.
Then he jerked back into cop mode.
“What was that guy, drunk?” Henry demanded, shooting a glance at him over his bony shoulder. “Did you see that, dude? It was almost like he was aimin’ for Ms. C. If Cory hadn’t shoved her outta the way, they’da both been creamed.”
Jase was already striding over to assess the damage for himself when Danny pushed past him. Although it took two seconds max to catch up, the teen had all but muscled Henry aside and was helping Cory to her feet.
“Easy,” Jase cautioned. “You want to make sure nothing’s broken before you go hauling her around.”
“Not,” Cory wheezed. “Harda…breathe…though.”
“Just draw it in slow and easy,” he advised. “I know it feels like it won’t come back, but if you can let that fear go, you’ll find it easier to inhale.” He squatted down next to Poppy. “How about you?”
“Gimme a minute.”
He did until she flapped a limp hand in his direction, then he and Henry helped her to her feet. He brushed her off, gave her his second hands-on inspection of the day, then felt a knot in his gut unclench when he found her sporting nothing more than mild abrasions. He looked back at Cory. “You sure you’re all right?”
She nodded shakily and he returned his attention to Poppy. “Can you tell me what happened?”
She stared at him with wide brown eyes showing too much white around the irises. “A dark car,” she said shakily. “A big—no, God, huge car.” She swallowed audibly, staring up at him. “Holy shitskis, Jason, the thing was barreling right at me! And I froze.”
She shook her head. “One of my kids was in the street about to get run down and I froze.” She turned to Cory. “God, I am so sorry. If you hadn’t tackled me, we both would have been run down.”
“No, it wasn’t your fault!” Cory hugged herself as she stared at Poppy with anguished eyes.
Jase didn’t give a shit whose fault it was. He knew it wasn’t rational, but anger was starting to take over his usual professional detachment. “What were the two of you doing in the street to begin with?” he snapped.
“I saw Cory leaving and I wanted to talk to her for a minute. She seemed so down today, I wanted to make sure she was all right.”
Cory made a choked sound.
“So you thought you’d have a heart-to-heart in the middle of a damn arterial?” He was taken aback by his combative tone. Jesus, man. Take a deep breath here. Where the hell is your objectivity? Poppy’s eyes narrowed and for the first time since he’d scooped her up off the ground, she looked like her usual take-no-crap-off-anyone self. “No, Detective. As I’m sure you’d be the first to point out, I wasn’t thinking, period. I caught up with her and before we could get out of the street that big honkin’ car was barreling right at us.”
“About that.” He pulled his ever-present notebook out of his hip pocket. “What kind of car was it?”
“I told you—a freaking huge dark one!”
That was helpful. “Dark as in black? Charco
al? Navy maybe?”
“Yes.”
He gave her a look and she snapped, “I don’t know, okay? It was big and it was dark, that’s all I saw. You experience a ton of screaming metal bearing down at you at fifty miles an hour and then we’ll talk about powers of observation.”
He sighed and turned to Cory. “Can you do a little better?”
She shook her head.
“It was black,” Henry said. “I don’t know squat about models, but it was a new-looking SUV. I think maybe one a them high-end ones.”
“Like an Escalade?” Danny demanded.
Henry shrugged. “Beats the hell outta me.”
“Don’t swear,” Poppy said, but it was clearly automatic.
“How come?” Henry asked. “You did.”
She blinked at him. “I did?”
Jase snapped his fingers to redirect her attention to what was important. “Have you made yourself an enemy that you haven’t bothered to mention?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“Then what the hell is going on here? Because you’ve had three close calls in as many weeks. Now, maybe you’re just having a real bad run of luck. But me, I don’t believe in luck, good or bad. And I’m not big on coincidence. So if you think I’m going to stop digging before I get to the bottom of this, you can think again.” He braced himself for her argument.
Instead, shoving her hair off her forehead, she gave him a weary nod. Her teeth started chattering as if the temperature had suddenly dropped thirty degrees.
“Works for me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
To paraphrase ol’ Charlie D: It was the best of days, it was the worst of days.
“YOU’RE BLEEDING.”
Cory gave Henry a blank look.
He pointed to her elbow. “Bleeding.”
Lifting her arm, she cocked her elbow in. Sure enough, a viscous line of blood crept down her arm from an oozing scrape. And, seeing it, what had been blissfully numb began to sting. “Crap,” she breathed.
Would this day never end?
“Let me see.” Poppy came over at once, concern etched on her drawn features.
Cory stepped back. God, she couldn’t stand this. Ms. C. had been nothing but nice to her, and it was all her fault that her teacher/mentor/whatever had almost been run down.
Queasiness roiled in a great greasy wave in her stomach. She was probably responsible for those other “accidents,” too. And Jesus, Jesus, she didn’t know what to do. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I’ll slap a Band-Aid on it when I get home.”
“Let’s at least get it cleaned up. I’m sure Mr. Harvey would let us use his restroom. He probably has a first-aid kit, too.”
“I’ll take her,” Danny G. said, stepping between them. He smiled at Ms. C. without the ever-present if slight distance he usually used like an invisible force field between himself and the rest of the world. “You look ready to drop. Why don’t you go on home and I’ll help Cory clean up and then drive her home, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“I do,” Detective de Sanges said, taking her arm as carefully as if she were constructed of that special-effects glass that shattered beneath the slightest pressure. “Danny’s right, you do look ready to drop. I’ll take you home.”
“But what about my car?” Then Poppy sagged, looking worn to the bone. “Never mind. I’ll have my dad pick it up.” She nodded at the cop. “Thank you, Jason, I’d really appreciate a lift. It’s been…a day.” But she rallied to look at Cory, Danny and Henry. “I can’t seem to get my brain to track, so I don’t remember offhand when we meet again. But check your schedules and I’ll see you then. And thanks for being so great today.”
With her drawn skin and tired posture, she looked very un-Ms. Calloway-like as the cop led her away.
Danny said, “C’mon,” in a brusque voice and Cory’s attention shifted to him as he guided her to the back entry of Mr. Harvey’s store without actually touching her.
She was pretty sure he was pissed—and she knew at whom.
Henry trailed them, verbally reliving the afternoon’s events, wringing every drop of drama from them as if the other two hadn’t been right there. Rather than be irritated by it, however, Cory actually felt grateful for his nonstop chatter. If it kept her from having to deal with Danny, she was all over it.
Arriving at the storeroom door, she watched Danny rap on it with his knuckles, then test the lock when there was no answer. The knob turned under his hand and he stuck his head in. “Mr. Harvey?”
Voices murmured out in the store, but no one answered and he called the man’s name louder.
“Who’s there?” The shop owner’s voice preceded him into the back room. “Ah, the Three Amigos. How’s the project going? What can I do you for?”
Danny explained what had happened and, in the wake of the man’s exclamations, asked if they could use the employee restroom to clean Cory up.
“You bet.” Mr. Harvey gazed at her elbow. “There’s some triple antibiotic ointment and a box of Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet over the sink. Should be a bottle of aspirin or ibuprofen in there, too, if you need it.”
“Thanks, Mr. H.,” she said. “I’ll try not to get blood on any of your stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. We have plenty of paper towels.”
It didn’t take long to disinfect her scrape and slap a Band-Aid on it. Cory knew Danny was still pissed at her, but despite that, despite her painful scrape, she couldn’t ignore the little thrill she felt at the warmth of his hand cupping her arm, at the gentleness he displayed tending her wound.
They used a couple of the paper towels to clean the sink when they’d finished up, then Danny offered Henry a ride home. But Mr. H. said if Henry was interested in making some money he had about an hour and a half’s worth of chores that needed to be done around the store. Since Henry was always strapped for coin, he jumped at the opportunity.
She and Danny left without him.
Danny didn’t say much when they first got in his car. He concentrated on his driving, looking in the rearview mirror often and taking sudden unannounced turns, doubling and tripling back on his route. Ten or so minutes later, he pulled to the curb in a neighborhood Cory had never been in before, parking beneath the shade of an ornamental cherry tree that was shedding its flowers in drifts of pink. Shutting down the engine, he turned to look at her.
“Let’s have it.”
She thought about playing dumb—for about two seconds. The hard glint in Danny’s eyes warned her against the idea.
She thought about saying she didn’t want to talk about it, but the truth was, she did. She was tired of keeping all this crap to herself. It was like drinking a slow-acting poison: it was tasteless and odorless and for a while she’d convinced herself it was nontoxic. But it was eating her alive.
She really thought about crying, but bucked up. That’s what her daddy used to say: “Buck up, baby. Things probably aren’t as bad as you think.”
In this case he’da been wrong, but she sniffed air deep into her lungs, blinked back her tears and sat a little straighter.
She told Danny everything.
“Holy shit,” he said when she finally paused for breath. “Holy, mo fo’n sh—” He swallowed. “Damn.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what to do.”
“You can tell de Sanges, for starters.”
Except that. She knew better than to do that. “No!”
“Cory—”
“No! How can you even suggest that?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
She just looked at him, feeling as if he were speaking Swahili. “I’ve told you what those gangbangers did to my father. He was doing ‘the right thing’ and they killed him for it!”
“So how’s keeping your mouth shut working for you, Cor? Because from where I sit, it’s not looking so great. You never so much as whispered what you saw the guy do—yet he just tried to run you down
! And apparently he doesn’t give a shit who he takes out with you.”
“I know!” she screamed at him. “You think I haven’t been thinking about that every fricking minute since it happened? You think I haven’t been torn in a bazillion little pieces knowing because of me Ms. C. nearly got taken out?”
“Then do something about it! Tell de Sanges and let him take care of it.”
All the fight went out of her. But the fear of talking to the cops, indoctrinated by hard experience, remained. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I just…can’t. The cops can’t protect me or my mom. Nobody can.”
“You’re wrong about that. Detective de S. isn’t exactly Officer Friendly, but that’s what I like about him. Because he doesn’t try to bullshit you. He doesn’t say trust me, I’m your friend—then turn around and saunter off into the sunset without giving a good goddamn the one time you might actually need his help. I get the impression he takes that protect-and-serve shit real serious. You know what he said the day you went apeshit on him?”
Heat surged under her skin at the reminder of her public anger and—worse—crying that day. She shook her head.
“He said you had a right to your grudge against the police—that they’d fucked up their obligation to protect your father.”
“He actually said fu—”
“Nah, but that’s what he meant. And when Henry wouldn’t let go of the fact you’d cried, de S. told us that he didn’t know much about girls, but that he did know they handled things differently than guys. And he looked right at Henry when he said he’d skin us alive if we gave you a bad time about it.” Danny looked her in the eyes. “Tell him what’s going on, Cory. The guy’s in the Robbery division. He’s the ideal person to get to the bottom of this.”
She knew he was probably right. Knew it deep down on a cellular level.
And yet…
“Give me a couple of days, okay? Please, Danny, just let me wrap my head around this, then I’ll find a way to tell him, I swear. I need a little time to come to terms with going against everything I’ve believed in since Daddy was killed.”
Bending the Rules Page 19