Katie smiled at the inside joke.
“He’s out of control and that shit is illegal!” the man shouted. “I’m calling the ACLU and I’m suing, you fucking beaner cop!”
“Have a nice trip to the Heart,” Gomez said to Katie and returned to his car.
Katie turned to Sully and Battaglia. “Would you guys be willing to wait for a responsible party to respond to lock up the warehouse?”
“Like we have any choice,” Battaglia said.
Katie shrugged and got into her patrol car.
0102 hours
Amy Dugger sobbed quietly into her pillow. A cup of cocoa rested on the table next to her futon, cold and untouched. Grandpa Fred put it there after their “game,” telling her it was a reward for how well she played.
She tried to push the thoughts and memories from her head, but the sharp stinging and the burning sensations brought the images of Grandpa Fred back every time.
“Mommy’s safe,” she whispered into the pillow in between sobs. “She’s safe.”
The stairs creaked. A shot of fear blasted through her. She stopped crying and strained her ears.
No more creaks.
He wasn’t coming back.
Not yet.
Amy let out another long, warbling cry into her pillow and fought back the horror show in her mind.
0213 hours
“Man, you got to be kidding me!”
Connor O’Sullivan looked askance at the van’s driver. “No,” he said. “I really do need your license, registration and proof of insurance, sir.”
The man was black and in his late twenties. O’Sullivan noticed specks of white on his face and in his hair. After a moment, he realized that it was paint. A quick glance at the man’s shirt with streaks and spots of paint confirmed it.
“You’re a painter?” he asked.
The driver gave him a hard look. “What, you’re surprised a black man has a job?”
“No,” Sully said. He looked through the vehicle and caught Battaglia’s eye at the passenger door. “Just asking.”
The driver reached into his wallet and withdrew his license, then pulled the registration and insurance card from the visor. He handed them to Sully.
“You guys oughta have those memorized by now,” he said in irritation.
Sully took the documents. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The driver snorted. “This is only the fifth time you cops have stopped me in the last two days.”
Sully looked at the man’s driver’s license. “Ben?”
“Yeah,” the driver said. “Benjamin Franklin DuBois. It ain’t like there’s fifteen of us here in River City. Just me, the one you guys keep stopping for no reason.”
Sully felt a tickle of anger in the pit of his stomach at the insinuation. He tried to ignore it.
“Can you step out of the vehicle, Mr. DuBois?” he asked. “We’ll talk back at my car.”
DuBois rolled his eyes. “The last cop yelled at me for getting out of the car.”
“I won’t yell. I promise.”
DuBois shot him an angry look, then grasped the handled and exited the van. Sully walked with him back to the nose of the patrol car. He handed the paperwork to Battaglia, who returned to the passenger seat to check the man’s name. Sully turned off his portable radio so that DuBois wouldn’t overhear the check. The patrol car’s overhead flashers clicked loudly as they flashed red. The color splashed across DuBois’s paint-flecked clothing. The engine hummed and spilled out heat as the two men stood in silence for a few moments.
DuBois thrust his hands in his pockets and scowled.
“Sir?” Sully said.
“What?”
“I have to ask you to keep your hands out of your pockets.”
“Why?”
“Officer safety, sir.”
DuBois rolled his eyes. “You all are some paranoid people. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“I believe you,” Sully said. “But if I don’t stay safe with everyone, then I’ll get lax and the one time someone does try to hurt me, I won’t be prepared. You can understand that, right?”
DuBois pursed his lips, thinking. After a moment, he sighed and removed his hands from his pockets. “Whatever,” he said. “Just finish your business so I can get on my way.”
“Have you really been stopped four times in the last two days?” Sully asked.
DuBois shook his head and held up his hand. “Five.”
“Counting this time?”
He looked at Sully and his eyes narrowed. “You some kind of smart ass?”
“No. Do you know the reason for the other stops?”
DuBois snorted. “You want the reason they said they stopped me or the real reason?”
“Whichever. Both.”
DuBois pointed to his van and the broken tail light. The red lens was cracked and most of it was missing. White light shone to the rear. “Defective equipment,” he pronounced.
Sully shrugged. It was a valid stop, and a frequent one made by patrol officers.
“’Course the real reason is Dee Double-U Bee,” DuBois said.
“Huh?”
“DWB,” DuBois repeated. “Driving While Black.”
The tickle in the pit of Sully’s stomach returned, but he held his tongue. “Anyone tell you something about a little girl that’s missing?”
DuBois looked at him with suspicious interest. “What little girl?”
Battaglia stepped out of the passenger side of the car and walked around to the front of the car. “Status zero,” he told Sully, meaning that DuBois had no warrants. “And Dispatch says this is the third time he’s been stopped.”
“It’s the fifth time,” DuBois corrected Battaglia.
Battaglia shrugged. “Dispatch only went back to midnight yesterday.”
DuBois turned his attention back to Sully. “What are you talking about with this little girl?”
“You watch the news, Mr. DuBois?”
“Man, I hardly have time to eat and sleep. I don’t even own a TV right now. All I do is work.”
“A little girl was kidnapped a couple of days ago,” Sully said.
“No kidding? She okay?”
“She’s still missing.”
“What’s that have to do with me getting stopped?”
“The men who took her were driving a blue or brown van,” Sully told him matter-of-factly. “The driver of the van was black.”
DuBois was nodding his head as they spoke. He stopped at the word “black” and looked from Sully to Battaglia.
“You guys think I-“
“No,” Sully said. “But we have to check out everyone.”
“Everyone’s who’s black,” DuBois countered.
“What good would it do for us to stop people who didn’t match the suspect description, Mr. DuBois?” Sully asked.
DuBois didn’t answer right away. Then he lowered his eyes and muttered, “I see your point. But I don’t know…it just feels wrong.”
“I know how you feel,” Battaglia said, nodding his head ruefully.
DuBois looked up at him. “How the hell do you know how I feel?”
Battaglia gave him a surprised look and spread his arm, palms up. “C’mon. I’m Italian.”
DuBois burst out in laughter and Sully chuckled along. Battaglia stood looking at both of them with a contrived expression of confusion.
“You guys making fun of the plights of Italians in America?”
DuBois laughed even louder. “I’m with you, brother.” He held out hand and Battaglia took it. Sully tried and failed to follow the quick, shifting handshake as it flowed through different grips and ended with a fist-to-fist tap.
“You can put some red tape over that taillight,” Battaglia told him. “It’ll work until you get the chance to go to the parts shop to fix it.”
“All right.”
“One more thing, Mr. DuBois,” Sully said.
“What’s that?”
“You mind if I take a look in your van real quick?”
0647 hours
Katie MacLeod rubbed her sleepy eyes. It had been a long shift. Almost as long as the previous shift she’d spent at the Dugger home.
She’d spent most of her shift tonight in the Emergency Room at Sacred Heart Hospital, babysitting the burglar that the K-9 Cert bit inside the tire warehouse. He turned out to be a real gem, ragging on her non-stop all the way up to the ER. He continued his tirade from his hospital bed while she sat working on her report outside the door.