Dark Prison: A Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller

by Lori Ryan

  She smiled. “Well, I’ll have to stop by then and see Faith another time.”

  Another tick in the man’s jaw. “I’ll need to ask you not to put undue stress on Faith. We’ve just discovered she’s carrying again and I don’t want her to have to take on any additional strain.”

  Eve frowned then realized what he meant. Carrying as in carrying a baby. The woman had to be in her fifties. Bless her for having the energy for another child.

  Eve didn’t reply. She wasn’t making any promises one way or the other.

  She waited until she and Glenn were outside before speaking. “You know that can’t happen again, right?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Glenn, I mean it. This can’t happen. You need to let me do my job. You need to let me build a case and get in there with a warrant.” She looked at the church, not able to see much of the compound that lay behind the tall fence at the back of the public church building.

  “Do you have anything yet?” He asked and she didn’t like the fact he’d given her no assurances he wouldn’t show up here again.

  “I have some files from other cases that might be related.”

  That got his attention. “I never found any related cases.”

  “They aren’t from our city. There are missing girls from surrounding counties and cities, but close enough they had some interaction with the church. Can you come take a look at them for me? I’d like your opinion. Maybe you’ll spot something we haven’t.”

  He pointed at her. “I see what you’re doing, Eve Scanlon.”

  She grinned and he shook his head. He knew damned well she was keeping him busy, but they also both knew he could be valuable if she could get him focused on the other missing girls’ files.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Alright. I’ll follow you back to the station.”

  “Where is Antoine?” She asked, before she thought the better of it. “Is he in school?” She was fishing for information on the boy. She’d wanted to know if he was Kemal’s son from the minute she set eyes on him. The resemblance between the two couldn’t be denied.

  Glenn shook his head. “No, his mother lives in Denver so I need to get him registered for school here. I don’t think she’ll be back anytime soon. Needs to get cleaned up.”

  “She’s using?” Eve felt bad for the kid. That couldn’t be easy.

  Glenn nodded. “One parent in prison and the other using drugs. If she loves him, she’ll let him stay with me and Kemal.”

  Eve’s mind ran over what he’d just said. One parent in prison. “He’s Kemal’s nephew?” She asked, putting the pieces together. He was Kemal’s brother’s son. Isaac was in prison for selling drugs. She didn’t know details but knew it had killed Glenn to see one of his boys go to prison.

  And yeah, she should have guessed it was Isaac’s son. She’d known he had a kid. Of course, she had no idea he was in the area.

  Glenn was looking at her with an intensity she didn’t like.

  “You thought he was Kemal’s boy.”

  She shrugged. “Antoine looks a lot like Kemal. It wasn’t hard to make that assumption.”

  Glenn’s nod was slow and his eyes all too knowing.

  Eve wasn’t about to admit to her former partner that she had a stupid schoolgirl crush on his son. A son who was not at all happy about her role in his dad’s life. Who would rather she just disappear instead of dragging his father back into the stress of the case he was obsessed about for the last two decades. Nope. Not happening.

  She wrenched open her car door, the motion pushing Glenn back, but she didn’t care. She was nipping this conversation in the bud before it took off.

  “I’ll meet you back at the station. You can start going through those files. We need a break on this case, Glenn.”

  She needed a break from her thoughts, too. And from the stupid emotions churning through her. She needed a break from it all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  She didn’t get much of a break. Kemal showed up in her office a few hours later.

  He didn’t even wait for the officer who’d escorted him to leave before speaking. “I can’t find my dad. He’s not answering his phone and he wasn’t at home when I brought Antoine home from school.”

  Eve blinked. “He’s here. He’s fine.”

  Kemal looked around like he expected his dad to be in her office somewhere. “What is he doing here? I had to dump Antoine off on a neighbor while I looked for Glenn. What the hell is he doing here?”

  “He’s fine. He’s just looking over some cases for me.”

  “He’s not a cop anymore, Eve. He’s an old man with a bad heart. You can’t just pull him in to work your cases whenever you want.”

  Eve simply raised a brow and watched as Kemal simmered.

  He turned to her and crossed his arms and she hated that her eyes caught for a split second on the muscles in his arms as they flexed. She had to get this under control.

  “Eve, he’s not supposed to be under stress.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “You told me he’s been in a bad depression for weeks.” She stood and crossed to the door. “Come with me.”

  She didn’t wait to see if he was following her. She walked to the far end of the bullpen, winding through the cubicles that housed her detectives’ desks. She knew her detectives’ eyes were all on her and Kemal. They weren’t used to seeing civilians pop by her office whenever they wanted to. They’d seen Kemal in here with her more than once now and she could feel the attention that was bringing.

  When she reached the small room at the back where she had set up the files on the missing girls, she turned to Kemal.

  She gestured through the glass in the room where Kemal’s father sat, deep into a file he had spread out in front of him.

  “What do you see?”

  Kemal looked through the glass but didn’t answer. His brows pinched together and she had a feeling he was wrestling with something.

  She answered for him when he didn’t. “I see a man who got out of bed today and showered and shaved for the first time in weeks. He looks like the old Glenn I used to know. He’s engaged. He’s not home mourning the loss of his world, his wife. He’s living, Kemal, and that has to mean something.”

  Kemal sucked in a deep breath and then seemed to hold it as he watched his dad through the glass. He rubbed his neck as he let the breath out in a slow whoosh. “He’s been so lost.”

  Eve heard the ache in Kemal’s voice and part of her wanted to reach out to him. She was well aware they were in a room with her detectives, though. She could feel eyes on them. Not to mention, she had no idea how Kemal would react if she did. She was far from his favorite person.

  As Eve watched, Kemal seemed to harden his shell again, as though he was bringing up some kind of armor.

  “You can’t let him out in the field, Eve. He can’t handle that. He needs to remember he’s not a cop anymore.”

  Eve nodded. People who weren’t on the job didn’t realize that you never left it. It was a part of you. Being a cop was something that was in the blood, not something you turned on and off with retirement. But she didn’t plan to let Glenn out in the field.

  Kemal turned to leave, ordering her to tell his dad to turn his cell phone on as he did. The man had to have the last word on everything.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Two days later, Eve was getting ready to leave for lunch when her phone rang. She ignored the flip-flopping in her stomach when she saw it was Kemal. She also reminded her stomach she didn’t do that sort of thing.

  “Everything okay with Glenn?” She asked by way of answering. It wasn’t like Kemal was in the habit of calling her on a regular basis.

  “He’s fine. At home, I think. At least, he was the last time I saw him. He and Antoine were planning to marathon the Lego movies.”

  Eve grinned. It took only the mention of the movie for her to have the everything is awesome song in her head.

  “I was actually calling abo
ut something else.” Kemal’s words drew her back to the conversation. “I’m teaching an after-school workshop for a group of high school students. It’s a new program the community college is running where they come weekly for a month and we have a guest speaker for each week.”

  “Okay,” Eve said, not remotely sure where he was going with the story.

  “Tonight was supposed to be a talk about race and understanding cross cultural viewpoints.”

  “Okay.” She was sounding like a broken record.

  Kemal laughed at her. “I had a minister from a local church and a volunteer from the community center coming to lead the discussion, but the minister came down with food poisoning yesterday after the church potluck.”

  Eve flinched. She’d had food poisoning once a few years ago and didn’t wish that on anyone.

  “I just got a call from the other guy and he was in a car accident. He’s not hurt badly but he’s got a broken ankle and has some pretty severe bruising from the seat belt.”

  Eve went back to her standby. “Okay.”

  “Sooooo,” he said and she had a feeling this was headed somewhere she wasn’t going to like. “How do you feel about coming and tag teaming a discussion on race and cross-cultural viewpoints with me, Captain?”

  “Oh.” Well, at least she’d graduated from okay. Or maybe it was a step back. Oh was shorter than okay.

  Somehow, though, she found herself sitting at the front of a college lecture room that evening as Kemal guided the students through what was bound to be a hard, uncomfortable talk.

  “But our experience with cops is totally different,” one teen was saying. He had deep black skin with hazel eyes and precisely cropped hair. “You know you can go to a cop for help. I see one and I have to check myself, make sure I’m not doing anything that can be taken wrong, that might get me stopped.”

  “But if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t have to worry, right?” a boy in a Dark Falls High football jersey said.

  The anger that lit the eyes of several of his classmates was instant.

  “Sure,” said the girl sitting next to him, “and all those people who got shot and killed by cops did something wrong. Asked for it.” She glanced at Eve as she spoke, a challenge in her gaze.

  Eve was completely out of her element. She didn’t know how to have this conversation. Yes, she’d had a similar one with Kemal, but this was harder. She felt like she might say the wrong thing with these students.

  “I didn’t say that,” the football jersey kid said, raising his hands. “I’m just saying, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, do you have to worry that you’ll get jacked up if a cop just walks by you?”

  “Yeah,” said about five of the African-American students at once.

  To his credit, the kid in the football jersey seemed to be listening. He looked like he was processing what they were saying and struggling to see it through the eyes of the other students.

  Kemal seemed to sense the kid’s openness and pushed. “Jeff, can you tell us about some of your memories of police officers as a kid?”

  The football jersey guy —Jeff— lifted a shoulder. “Sure. I mean, you see them at parades and stuff when you’re little. Or like, if we were out and saw a cop, my mom would remind me that I can always look for someone in a uniform if I get lost.”

  A girl with auburn hair spoke next. “Yeah, we get the talk about going to a uniform for help. Other kids get the talk about always following all the directions if a cop stops them, about keeping their hands in sight and say yes, sir and stuff even if they don’t think the cop had any right to stop them. My friend said her mom even told her she has to tell the cop if she’s going to open her glove compartment or lean over to get her registration and stuff.”

  “Dude, that’s messed up,” said football jersey.

  Kemal nodded and turned a girl in the front row. “Tisha, can you tell us what some of your experiences with the police were as a child?”

  She pursed her lips and her eyes went a little wide. “It wasn’t like that. I would see my neighbors get arrested. I watched one time while the cops threw one of my cousins on the ground when all he was trying to do was ask them why they was messing with his dad. His dad didn’t do anything wrong, but they were harassing him, asking him for ID and shit.”

  “But doesn’t that have more to do with the neighborhood you live in than what the color of your skin is?”

  There was grumbling from the students around him and Eve could feel a rising tension among the students.

  She felt like she wasn’t contributing at all to the conversation. Kemal must have felt the same because he came and sat on the edge of the table she was sitting behind.

  “Eve, you and I have had a few talks about some of these things and they’re never easy or comfortable, are they?”

  Eve smiled. “Not even remotely. They’re important, though.”

  Kemal was in full blown teaching mode, and it was fun to watch him.

  “That’s why we have to remember throughout the whole conversation that people’s feelings and views are all important. Listening is as important as talking. It’s how we can help people understand each other. I didn’t set this class up to make sure everyone shared my views. I did it to give you all the tools you need to listen to ideas that might be different from your own, to learn to engage in dialogue that might open you to new ideas and might help others to come around to your way of thinking.”

  “Nothing you say about police brutality is gonna get through to a cop,” said another one of the kids. This one wore a baseball cap and a sneer. He stared at Eve unapologetically.

  “Not true,” Kemal said. “Yes, there are some officers who don’t believe there’s really any problem. But there are others who can and do see both sides of the issue. Our talks have taught me some things, too.”

  “Like what?” The kid challenged.

  “For example, I didn’t know that police officers exhibit a higher incidence of suicidal thoughts than the general population. Ten percent higher.”

  Eve was familiar with the statistic and more.

  “Cry me a river,” someone said from the back of the room and Eve wanted to flinch but didn’t.

  “Eve, maybe you can tell the kids some of what you’ve gotten from our talks.”

  “I’ve started looking into the possibility of new programs for the city. Things like the No Broken Windows Policing you pointed me to. But some of what I got out of the talk came after the fact. Our discussion got me trying to think about how your experiences were different from mine.” Eve focused on Kemal, trying to pretend the kids didn’t exist for the moment. She was used to talking in front of the press but the kids made her nervous, like she might mess this up and do more harm than good being here.

  “When I was fifteen, I was at a friend’s house one afternoon. She had just moved to town and I didn’t know her family yet, but she lived in one of the big houses on the west side of town. It seemed like a mansion to me at the time. She had a pool in the back yard and we decided to sit by the pool to do our homework.”

  A couple of snickers came from the kids and Eve glanced at them and grinned. Yeah, they hadn’t gotten much actual work done.

  “I forgot one of my books inside and had to run back in to get it. I didn’t mean to walk in on a conversation but I did. I heard my friend’s mom talking to her brother. She was asking him what I was. I remember just freezing at those words.”

  She said, “But what is she? I mean she’s not white. Is she Latin or Spanish or something? Maybe Portuguese?”

  Eve paused as she struggled to remember the rush of emotions the woman’s words had caused. “Hearing that, I was hurt and confused. There was something in the tone that told me this girl’s mom wasn’t asking out of idle curiosity. She was asking because she didn’t think my skin was okay.”

  Eve looked down at the dark olive skin on her arm. She did have some Portuguese in her and also some Italian, but there was German and Fren
ch and some other things in there, too. She had never identified with any one part of her heritage strongly because no one culture had stood out more than the others.

  She knew the woman was referring to the olive tone of her skin, and to the deep brown eyes and her almost black hair. “It was like she was saying my appearance made me less than.” Eve looked at the group of kids. “So, when Kemal and I talked, I went home and remembered that day. I sat with that, remembered those feelings, and then tried to multiply it times a hundred. I remembered the way I’ve sometimes been treated as a woman, especially as a woman doing what some see as a man’s job. Then I tried to take those feelings and multiply it and imagine what it would be like to be black. I can’t experience someone else’s world, but I can try to put myself in their shoes and try to learn from that.”

  “But isn’t that the point?” A blonde girl in a cheer uniform said. “I mean, a lot of us face discrimination each day. I’ll never be paid what a man is paid for the same work, but, like, do I have to remind people about that every day? Sometimes it just seems like black people don’t want us to ever forget that they were slaves or something. Like we didn’t do that. None of us here had slaves, so why do we have to be reminded day in and day out.”

  “My family had slaves,” one boy said. “I’ve seen the will of my great, great uncle or maybe it was my great, great, great uncle. But whatever. He listed ‘a negro by the name of William’ in with furniture and horses when he left things to people. He included ‘a dead negro by the name of Lavinia and all her children,’ naming her dead body like it was a thing just so he could list her children like they were things. It was …” the kid just shook his head like he didn’t know what it was or how to describe it.

  The girl in the cheer uniform frowned and then said, “so you and your family owe them, then, but that doesn’t mean the whole world owes them anything.”

  Eve could see the anger in the room coming to a boil again. “I think some of what your classmates are saying is that this isn’t just about one thing. It’s not only about slavery, or only about relations between police officers and the black community or only about the difference in medical care they can expect because of the color of their skin. Maybe you feel like they talk about it every day and claim it every day, but to them it’s something they live with and experience every day. It’s not something they can walk away from.”