“Now, we want to hear it from you. Why don’t you start with why you were there at one in the morning?” Lavick asked.
Ahrens was silent.
Cameron sat up and told them about Nate’s sleepless nights, about the Potrero House being somewhere that she used to go, that she often drove Nate around that area, as it was close to home and traffic was quiet. She also told them that she’d been all over town last night. She recounted how she’d been trying to find a quiet block where no one would see her feed Nate. She fought not to blush or drop her head when she said the words “breast-feeding” or to notice as Lavick shifted a little in his seat.
She recounted what she’d seen before she recognized the shooter. Could she say his name without a crack in her voice? She cleared her throat. “Diego Ramirez.”
Ahrens frowned. “Diego Ramirez. The Special Ops Officer who was killed last year?”
“He’s not dead, Captain,” Cameron said. “I saw him. I spoke to him. He’s alive.” She didn’t mention how she had him on the ground, had his weapons, then let him go.
The sergeant spun around to a cabinet and opened a drawer, thumbing through a number of files before drawing one out. He laid it on his desk and flipped it open. “Ramirez was killed on the border. I have the autopsy report dated August 22nd. They matched his dental records.”
“I thought he was dead, too, Sergeant, but it was—”
Lavick looked up. “Diego Ramirez?”
She nodded. “And I have proof.”
“What kind of proof?” Ahrens asked.
“I took his backup weapon off him.”
Ahrens straightened in her chair until she was some six or eight inches taller. “You had contact with the shooter?”
“Not contact, exactly,” she replied carefully.
“What exactly?” her sergeant asked.
“I had my weapon drawn. I told him to drop the gun. He did.” She stopped talking. And then the baby cried and she ran for him.
“What then?”
“I was trying to call for backup and…”
“Where was the baby?” Ahrens asked.
“In the car.”
Ahrens glanced at Lavick. The two seemed to agree on something.
Cameron sat on her palms to keep from fidgeting. “I should have given it to the inspector last night.”
“And why didn’t you?” Ahrens asked from her perch.
Cameron didn’t answer at first. She’d been protecting him, but she didn’t want to say that out loud. “I’m not sure,” she offered. “He was one of ours.”
“Where is the gun now?”
“In my car. I can go get it—”
Ahrens stood. “Get an evidence bag,” she said, then turned to Lavick. “Have Ambley take it to the lab and babysit it. I want to confirm that Ramirez is alive for myself.”
“If he is,” Lavick said, “we have to assume he’s not working for us.”
“Right.” Without looking at Cameron, she added, “Touch base with me as soon as you know something.” She said nothing else as she stepped out of the office. Cameron had a strong desire to cry. Stupid. Of course they wanted to know why she wasn’t able to capture him. Then, there was the question about Nate. Lavick opened a drawer and handed Cameron a large Ziploc bag.
Just as Cameron stood up, Ballestrini stopped in the doorway. Tim Ballestrini had a short, thick neck that someone had once likened to Italian sausage. He was also the team ham. The other guys called him Ballerina because of his fondness for show tunes and because he was anything but. Heavy-footed and clumsy, Ballestrini was permanently part of the intelligence team because he had a tendency to be too loud. The one time he’d gone on a reconnaissance mission, the perp had flown the coop.
“Cameron Cruz,” Ballestrini said, bobbing his head from left to right like he did when he was being goofy. “What a sight. You coming back?”
Cameron nodded. “Hey, Ballestrini.”
“Wow, you look tired, Cruz. You got the postpartum depression?”
“Ballestrini, give it a rest,” the sergeant warned.
Tim raised his hand at the sergeant. “I’m being serious here, Sergeant. Betty had it both times—crying all the time, couldn’t keep it together.” He put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “It’s real common. They got good meds for that stuff. You should talk to your doctor. Don’t be ashamed or nothing.”
“Can you excuse us, please,” Lavick said, and Ballestrini headed out the door, whistling.
Lavick closed the door behind him. Cameron remained standing. “Ballestrini makes a point. Seeing a shooting is always tough. You want to talk to someone downtown?”
He was referring to a police psychologist. “I’ve been through it before. I’ll be fine.” It wasn’t the death that struck her. It was the shooter. She wouldn’t share the thoughts in her head with anyone, certainly not a stranger. Even she didn’t want to be in her brain right now.
“If it’s okay, Sergeant, I’d like to start back next week. Full duty. I’ll start with equipment. I’m out of shape, but I’ll work back up.”
“Next week it is. You can take Ballestrini. He can yap your ear off about postpartum depression.”
She walked through the station while her fellow officers hurried past her. A few greeted her quickly, but most were focused—head down. The job was priority. That’s how it should be. Cameron jogged out to the car, feeling the burn in her quads and hamstrings from the morning’s run. She was coming back to work. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait.
She used her fob to unlock the car. With the rear hatch open, she turned the Ziploc bag inside out to use it like a glove. She scanned the back of the car, moving aside canvas grocery bags and a pair of running shoes. She had put the gun in the back corner and locked the car. Hadn’t she locked it? She pulled things aside and searched again. No gun. Someone had taken it.
Diego. “Damn him.”
Chapter 7
She stayed in the gym until the guys were gone and was slow to repack her gear. When she made her way to the locker room, it was empty. In the old days, one of the guys would surely have come by the gym to invite her out. But, these were new days. She had a baby now. She’d seen one of their own shoot a cop. Then, she’d lost the evidence. Lavick told her the lost evidence would be noted in her permanent file. It all made for a miserable first week back.
Worse, there was absolute silence on Diego. She had to believe he would show up somewhere but when? And where? Lavick and Ahrens spent large parts of the days up at Bryant, dealing with who knows what. She’d gotten no word on Diego. What did she expect? She’d failed to capture him, lost the gun. Without it, there was no proving to Ahrens and Lavick that she’d seen Diego. Her arms and back ached from lugging equipment around. With no active cases, Lau ran training drills. Kessler and Ballestrini led the team through strategy sessions. For all his goofiness, Ballestrini was a strong strategist. He was clever and had a head for planning. The team was uptight and antsy. Cameron had to remind herself that it happened when they didn’t get any action.
The locker room lights were on, the fan running. A sink faucet dripped. The floor was littered with forgotten items—a stray sock, the cap to a deodorant, an SF Giants towel, two candy bar wrappers, a red poker chip, and an SFPD baseball cap from the squad’s softball team. She picked up the garbage and threw it in the trash with the sock, folded the towel and laid the hat on top. With some finagling, the faucet stopped dripping. She shut off the fan. She wasn’t ready to go home.
Nate was waiting for her. Rosa had the day off, so they were together. She should have wanted to go home. Nothing about this place felt right anymore. She scanned the row of lockers. Diego’s had been the one on the end. The lock was gone. She lifted the lever and pulled it open. There was nothing inside. She leaned in and smelled, but his smell was gone. What did she expect after a year?
It was silent when she left. Special Ops was housed in San Francisco’s Hunters Point, a few miles from the main police station.
When the team was gone, the place could feel eerily quiet. She drove home slowly, knowing Rosa would be full of questions. She came in the back door and heard the TV on in the den. It was after eight, so Nate was probably sleeping. She felt guilty for missing him.
She needed to snap out of this, focus on what mattered. Her family, her job. Why was that so hard? In the kitchen, she poured a glass of milk. Where were the cookies? Her sister had a habit of loading up on sweets at the grocery store, then hiding them at home. Rosa tended to like the fancy sweets—Häagen Dazs and Godiva. Cameron preferred Oreos, Chips Ahoy!, and the vanilla wafers, which were surely full of high fructose and saturated fat. She opened the cabinet under the sink, pushing her way through the childproof lock Rosa had insisted on installing before Nate was born, and ducked under, in search of sweets.
“What are you doing?”
Cameron jumped and knocked her head into the underside of the counter. She sank onto the floor, holding her head.
Rosa was in the doorway. “You missed Ricky.”
Cameron moaned. “Dinner.”
“It’s fine. I made us some enchiladas. But, be careful. Evelyn talks to Mama at least twice a week, so she’s going to know you bailed on him.”
“Shit.” Ricky was Cameron’s first mentor at the SFPD and his wife, Evelyn, was one of Mama Cruz’s oldest friends from Bleakwood, Texas. Cameron knew that Evelyn had met Cameron’s birth parents, but she hadn’t known them well. Oddly, she and Evelyn had never talked about it.
When Cameron came out to San Francisco, Mama Cruz sent her to Evelyn and Ricky. Cameron stayed with them for five weeks while she interviewed for positions at the police department. Back then, Ricky was the captain of the Special Ops team, which had included both the Special Ops team and the Sharpshooters.
With Ricky’s help, Cameron was hired on as a patrol officer. Recognizing her shooting ability, Ricky also helped her make Specials Ops in under three years, a record for the department. Cameron was no charity case. Her talent held up to the toughest critics, which was good, because Ricky had put himself on the line for her.
Now that he was retired, Cameron no longer saw him at the station, but they had dinner about twice a month, which gave Cameron the chance to talk freely about work. In addition, Cameron and Rosa usually spent Easter and Thanksgiving with Evelyn and Ricky. Cameron and Rosa got some motherly attention, and Mama Cruz got word back that her girls were eating well and not working too hard. A win, win. And now, she’d blown him off. “Was he pissed?”
“I am sure he understood, since you’re just back and all.” Rosa moved around the table, her perfectly coordinated outfit as pressed as if she’d just put it on. Rosa always dressed in colors—all blue, all red, orange, chartreuse, colors Cameron couldn’t name. Each outfit had a patterned top or bottom mixed with a solid, perfectly paired. From living with her, Cameron knew that she kept them lined up in her closet, each ensemble together, shoes included. It was another skill Cameron lacked. Cameron wore jeans and sweatshirts, her boyish figure flat and straight. Rosa’s was curvy, and she accentuated it with narrow skirts and fitted tops.
“I thought you’d be home at six.”
Cameron shrugged.
“You guys get called out?”
“No.”
Rosa stooped to pull out the slower cooker.
“I’m not really hungry,” Cameron said, trying to cut off Rosa’s mothering instincts to feed her. Ever since the pregnancy, Rosa’s solution to everything was food.
Instead, Rosa removed the lid and retrieved a bag of unopened Oreos between her fingertips. “I thought you were looking for these.”
“Oh, thank you.” Cameron tore the bag open and rocked back on her chair to open the refrigerator and get more milk. She ate three without pausing for air. When she looked up, Rosa was staring, brow furrowed. “You seemed better until this last week. Maybe going back to work was a bad idea.”
Cameron couldn’t meet her gaze. Instead, she focused on twisting the top of an Oreo off without losing any of the filling.
“Does it make you think about him more?”
Cameron put the chocolate in her mouth. At first, she thought Rosa was referring to the shooting, but she hadn’t told Rosa about seeing Diego. Why feed her theory that Latin men were all the same? But, that wasn’t really why. If Rosa knew, it would mean hours of talking, trying to figure out why he would pretend to be dead. It was hard enough without that. She twisted the top off another Oreo and ate the chocolate, then pressed the two together to make a double stuff.
At the door, Rosa waited for an answer.
“Tell me about the day,” Cameron said.
Rosa sighed and conceded. “For starters, Nate smiled at me in the park. He loves his Tía Rosa.”
“That’s wonderful,” Cameron said, trying to sound upbeat. She didn’t want Rosa to know how upset she was. She didn’t want to get into everything that had happened. She was just so tired. “Of course he does.”
“Well, he may be the only man who does.” She sighed. “I went out with Jim from the bank again last night.”
Cameron studied her sister, half smiling at the way she always described her men: Bill from the hospital, Dan from the pharmacy, and Jim from the bank. “Bad?”
“Horrible. Why are Anglo men so arrogant?”
Cameron waited for her to add to that. When she didn’t, Cameron said, “If Anglo men are bad, why don’t you date Latin men?”
Rosa looked horrified. “Oh, God, no. They expect women to be their slaves.”
“I think you’re taking the stereotypes a bit far.”
“I’m not dating Latin men.” The familiar refrain came out in a tone that didn’t hide her disgust at the suggestion.
“They can’t be that bad. What about Papa and Miguel?” She thought about their other brother, Juan. He could be a jerk. “So maybe Juan is a bit arrogant, but not Miguel, not Papa.” Diego came to mind—the way he’d been before, and the way he was now. Maybe Rosa was right. Certainly Cameron could no longer trust her own judgment on the subject.
Rosa sank into a chair across from Cameron. “I want something different from what we had.”
Cameron reached over and squeezed her sister’s hand. They’d had their share of rough times—times when their jealousy of what the other had put them at odds. Cameron would have done anything to look like Rosa, to be the outgoing Latina instead of the silent misfit. Rosa somehow imagined Caucasian women to be more elegant, more sophisticated.
Rosa patted Cameron’s hand, but Cameron could tell she wasn’t ready to be comforted. Rosa picked up an Oreo and then put it down again, crossing her arms. “You can’t understand, Cameron.”
Cameron swallowed her cookie along with the lump that always came when Rosa reminded her she wasn’t really one of the Cruz family. “Because I’m a gringa.”
“Why do you always make it sound like an insult?”
“Why do you always make it sound like it’s some sort of prize?” Cameron sighed. “I’m tired, Rosa.”
Rosa got up. “Me, too,” she said. “I’m going to go take a bath.” She started from the room and paused in the door. “Oh, you’re almost out of breast milk. I’ve been supplementing with formula.”
Since the night with Diego, her milk production had practically stopped. “I have, too. I’m not producing enough.” It felt like admitting to something shameful.
“It’s got to be impossible to pump at the station.”
She managed to do it a couple times a day, but her body seemed to have lost interest in it.
“Oh, and don’t be too mad when you see Nate’s toes,” Rosa added.
“His toes?”
Rosa grinned.
“Rosa, you did not paint his toes.”
“It’s a very masculine color,” Rosa said.
“Rosa Maria!”
“I had to try it out. I think you’ll like it. Tangerine Dream.”
Cameron took the last of her milk and headed down the hall.
>
Nate’s room was dark except for a small moon-shaped nightlight in one corner. Cameron pulled the rocking chair over to the crib, sat, and stared down at him. She couldn’t see his toes, but she had to smile at the image of his nails with polish on them. Rosa owned a little salon and loved giving makeovers. Cameron hadn’t considered Nate as a potential client. Only Rosa could paint such tiny toenails.
Cameron kissed her son, and went to get ready for bed. Before she shut off the lights, she sent Ricky a text message with a bullshit excuse for missing dinner and hoped she wasn’t as transparent to him as she was to Rosa.
Chapter 8
Gravel popped and crunched beneath the tires of the truck. Ivana Pestova had no idea where they were. Three weeks since she left Šluknov. A truck from Varnsdorf to Germany then two—or maybe three—more trucks before the boat. It became difficult to keep count. On each journey, she and the other girls were stuck somewhere dark and cramped, unable to see outside. In the first truck, Ivana sat with a girl named Barunka from Rumburk, a town near hers. The two had whispered excitedly for the first hours of the journey. Though their towns were only a dozen kilometers from the German border, neither girl had ever been into Germany. They hoped to have a chance to spend a few hours or maybe a day in one of the cities there.
Instead, after a short break somewhere near Hamburg, where they were fed thick spicy stew at a long table in a dark back room, the trucks were reloaded. Barunka was not there. Ivana tried to imagine that they would meet up again on the journey to America, but they never had. After that, there were different faces at every stop. A boat to New York and then trucks—one after the other until she’d lost count. Fewer and fewer of the girls spoke Czech until it felt like she was the only one. The languages she heard now were foreign. Unable to communicate, the girls offered each other small, awkward smiles.
Two girls were trying to communicate with drawings. Ivana guessed they were talking about home. She was determined not to think about home. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining the narrow road that she and Michal ran down each day to catch the bus to work in Varnsdorf. The feel of cold, wet cobblestone under the thin soles of her black, lace-up boots. The tightness where her toes had long ago reached the end of the shoe and now curled against the soft leather, straining against the stitching. For more than half the year, the cold burned her lungs as she inhaled and breath slipped from her lips in waves of thick, white smoke. March in Šluknov and Varnsdorf—in the entire region—was bitter. Worse, the poor part of town was always colder, and things were worse lately. There were cutbacks at the factory where her mother worked on the line making machines for drilling.
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 59