“I don’t know.”
“Then don’t.” Browning’s tone wasn’t sharp, but the rebuke hung there in the air between them.
Tower shrugged. “Just keeping score, coach.”
Browning didn’t reply. He pointed to Tower’s list.
Tower drew a line through Marty Heath, who had been convicted of holding a little girl in his apartment for four hours against her will while doing all sorts of sordid things to her. They’d visited him at the apartment he’d taken since his release from prison last November. It looked like it was suspiciously close to the nearby elementary school. When Tower had commented on it, Marty quoted him the exact distance. It was forty feet beyond the statutory limit. The smug smile on Marty’s face settled into Tower’s stomach and burned.
“Next up,” Tower told Browning, “is an oldie but a goodie. Francis Djurgarden.”
Browning rolled his eyes. “He’s still alive?”
“Apparently,” Tower said and rattled off the address. “I imagine it’s also about forty feet beyond the restricted zone that the law requires.”
“Francis is an old hand,” Browning noted. He started the car and headed toward the address Tower had given him. “He’ll find a way to be within ten feet of the legal limit. But I thought he was back in Shelton.”
“Last I heard, he was.” Tower shook his head. “If two falls don’t teach a guy a lesson, why do we even bother with any more? I mean, after that second fall, I think we ought to just go with the one-hundred-eight-six grain solution.”
Browning allowed himself a small smile. The forty caliber round they carried on the River City Police Department measured one-hundred-eighty-six grains.
“Why do we even bother after the first time with child molesters, anyway?” Tower continued. “It’s not like they’re curable or something. They never have been. Any of them who are honest will tell you that.”
“True.”
“Once they’re released, it’s not a matter of if they’ll re-offend, but when. And there’s no way we have the resources to watch over them well enough to stop them.”
“You’re not superman?” Browning teased lightly.
“I just work the cases that come in. I don’t even keep track of these guys. That’s their probation officer’s job. And those poor mopes have about a hundred cases a piece.” Tower snorted. “It’s ridiculous.”
Browning didn’t argue.
Tower noticed that and asked, “You don’t care about this stuff?”
“Course I do.”
“You don’t look too concerned.”
Browning glanced over at Tower, then back at the road. “How long you been on this job, John?”
“I came on in ’83.”
“So twelve years.”
“Yeah.”
“And how long have you been a detective?”
Tower shrugged. “About three years, I guess. What’s that have to do with it?”
Browning looked over at him again. “You’ve got some fire in your belly, John, and that’s great. But you have to control it or it will burn you up.”
“So just don’t care?”
“No, I didn’t say that. Just control the caring, that’s all.”
The two men rode the rest of the way in silence. Tower thought about Marty Heath and the sour feeling the molester’s smug grin gave him in the pit of his gut.
Browning changed the subject. “How’d Stephanie handle the overtime call?”
Tower frowned. “She wasn’t happy. How about Veronica?”
Browning shrugged. “She’s a cop’s wife,” he said and pulled to the curb a few houses away from Francis Djurgarden’s house.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Tower muttered. “Let’s go talk to sick bastard number eighteen.”
1011 hours
The jangling of the lock at the front door surprised Gio. He had been reading Cosmopolitan in the kitchen while Kathy Dugger watched television. He’d convinced her not to watch the news, but even the harmless sit-com was hard for her, he could tell. He supposed it was seeing the family on the show, with kids and parents together. But she sat there nonetheless, so Gio figured she was either going to tough it out or she wasn’t watching anything and was lost in her own thoughts.
Either way, he left her alone.
When the noise came from the front door, Gio started. He put down the magazine and strode out of the kitchen and to the entryway. He arrived just in time to see a man in his forties wearing a business suit step through the door.
Surprise registered on the man’s face for a brief second. Then he saw Gio’s uniform and his mouth tightened.
“Where’s my wife?” he demanded.
Gio pointed toward the living room.
The man stalked past him, brushing shoulders with Gio as he went by.
Gio stood in the small entryway for a few seconds. Then he returned to the kitchen to wait. He knew men like Mr. Dugger. They were in positions of power in their career and they disliked the fact that the police might somehow have power over any part of their life. To compensate, they always strove to assert their civilian authority over the police officer, because, as they were swift to remind the officer, “my taxes pay your salary.”
Knowing what he knew about men like Mr. Dugger, he also knew what was coming.
Jesus, Gio, he thought to himself. Give the guy a break. His daughter’s been kidnapped.
Gio took a deep breath and let it out.
Their voices were subdued from the living room, though his arrival brought fresh sobbing from Kathy Dugger. He spent all of ten minutes with his wife before he came to the kitchen to talk to Gio.
“I’m Peter Dugger,” he said, without offering his hand. “I’d like an update on the situation.”
Gio said, “I can only tell you what I know, sir. My assignment is to be here in case there is a ransom call in your daughter’s case.”
“You don’t receive updates from your commander?”
“Not really,” Gio admitted. “I update him, not the other way around.”
Peter Dugger grunted.
Gio waited, knowing he was going to end up calling for a lieutenant.
“Do you have any idea what the plan of action is that you people have put into effect?” Dugger’s voice was laced with condescension. “What are you doing to find my little girl?”
“I’m sure they’re doing everything they possibly can,” Gio said.
“But you don’t know.”
Gio shook his head. “Let me ask you this, sir. Would you want them to stop their efforts just to update me?”
Dugger cocked his head as if to sniff out the sarcasm in Gio’s voice. Gio waited, keeping his face neutral.
Finally, Dugger leaned forward and whispered harshly, “I’ll tell you what I would want them to do. If they haven’t found my daughter, I goddamn well would want them to keep her parents informed of what was going on. Have you seen my wife in there? Do you see how stressed out she is? Did you hear her sobbing in the other room? Or are you too busy drinking my coffee and reading my wife’s fucking Cosmopolitan magazine?”
Gio stared back at Dugger for a long moment. Then, he replied, “I thought she needed her space. That’s all.”
Peter Dugger responded with a small snort.
Gio reached for his portable radio. “Adam-257,” he said, “I need a supervisor to my location.”
“Copy. Is this in regards to a Signal 8?”
Signal 8 was the code for a telephone call. Gio realized that she was asking him if there had been a ransom call.
“Negative,” he said. “The male half here has returned and would like an update on the case.”
“Copy. I’ll notify L-143.”
Gio copied the transmission and looked back at Peter Dugger. “A lieutenant will be en route to update you,” he said.
Dugger nodded. “Fine. But he should’ve been here waiting for me. I don’t know what kind of outfit you guys are running-“
“He’s on his way now, sir,” Gio said, overriding Dugger’s voice. “If you’d like to wait with your wife, I’ll let you know as soon as he arrives.”
Dugger opened his mouth to argue, but decided not to for some reason.