There would be no such problems with Naomi Teller. He got hard just imagining how she’d look naked. Thinking of those developing little breasts and her narrow hips was thrilling. At her age, she was built more like a boy. And her nipples would be pink, not brown like the ones on those little east-side bitches who’d mocked him. But he would not rush things sexually. He only wanted to kiss Naomi romantically, and tell her she was his girl, and hear her say that he was her guy and that she would never forget him.
Malcolm sat in his car and impulsively phoned her. It rang four times, and just before he clicked off, she said, “Hello?”
“It’s me,” he said, smiling.
“I know,” she said.
“I was wondering if you were thinking of me,” Malcolm said. “I was thinking of you.”
“In a way I was, Clark,” she said, and her tone was not happy.
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I’m too young to be seeing you. My parents would be very upset, so I think you shouldn’t call me anymore.”
The silence on the line lasted ten seconds before she heard him say, “Tell me the truth. Did your parents put you up to this?”
“They don’t even know about you, Clark. It’s the way I feel. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I know you’ll find a girl your age and -”
“You little bitch!” he cried, his face reddening and his voice quaking. “I thought you were different!”
Stunned, Naomi Teller said, “Clark! I’m hanging up now! Please don’t ever call me again!”
“You’re just like -” But she clicked off before he could finish. He was in a rage. He tossed the cell phone onto the seat beside him and opened the glove box, taking out the box cutter. He snapped out the cutting blade. This was the same fury he’d last felt when he’d beaten that bitch with his fists. He withdrew the blade into the grip, put the box cutter in the pocket of his jeans, and sped from the parking lot of Hamburger Hamlet, heading west.
The code 2 call on Ogden Drive was given to 6-X-76, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. It came out as “See the woman, prowler there now.” Backing up 6-X-76 were Mindy Ling and R.T. Dibney, who’d just cleared from code 7.
The responding car pulled up to the curb with lights out in case the prowler was still at the scene, but Dana and Nate saw the exterior house lights were on. A man and woman Dana’s age were standing on the front porch. As the backup unit parked behind their car, Dana and Nate got out and Nate said, “What happened?”
Martha Teller was small-boned and fair, like her daughter. Her husband was taller, prematurely bald, with rounded shoulders and the beginning of a paunch. He said, “I heard what sounded like footsteps on the front walkway. Then I heard someone yell, ‘You bitch!’ I looked out but I didn’t see anybody. Then a minute later, this came flying through an upstairs window.”
He held out his hand, and the cops saw a baseball-size rock similar to the decorative stones in the Tellers’ front flower garden.
“How long ago did it happen?”
“Less than five minutes ago,” Mrs. Teller said. “You got here fast.”
“Who lives here with you?” Dana asked.
“We have two daughters,” Mrs. Teller said.
Nate said, “Do they have any idea who it might’ve been?”
“Our ten-year-old daughter, Shelly, is on a sleepover with my parents,” Mrs. Teller said. “That’s her bedroom window. Naomi’s fourteen, and she said she hasn’t any idea who could’ve done such a thing.”
With that, Dana turned toward Mindy and R.T. Dibney, who were out of their car, and held up four fingers, indicating code 4, no further assistance needed.
Mindy nodded and said, “We’ll cruise the neighborhood, Dana.”
“I’d like to talk to Naomi privately, if you don’t mind,” Dana said to the Tellers, and the cops followed the couple into the house.
“She’s very upset,” Mrs. Teller said.
“I understand,” Dana said. “I have a daughter who’s eighteen. Believe me, I’m sensitive to teenage issues.”
Ogden Drive was a pleasant residential street with lots of trees on both sides. Shop 6-X-46 wasn’t cruising for more than three minutes when R.T. Dibney craned his neck sharply to the right, and Mindy uttered the line so often said by one partner to another when on patroclass="underline" “What’d you see?”
“Nothing,” R.T. Dibney said, turning forward again, but when Mindy looked over her shoulder, she observed a shapely woman in a T-shirt and shorts walking from her car to a lighted portico.
“For God’s sake!” Mindy said. “Can’t you at least get your inner creep under control when we’re actually looking for a suspect?”
“The kid’s long gone,” he said. “Just some brat pissed off at his girlfriend. Dana’ll get the girl to give up his name, and they’ll call his parents. It might make them reduce the little bastard’s weekly allowance from fifty bucks to forty.”
“What’s this?” Mindy said, seeing the silhouette of a car coming south in their direction with lights out. Then the headlights flashed on and she saw it was another police unit, searching slowly. Both cars stopped, facing opposite directions, and Mindy was looking at Sheila Montez.
“A rock thrower,” Mindy explained. “Busted out an upstairs window and GOA.” By which she meant gone on arrival.
“We didn’t see any peds roaming around,” Sheila said. “Maybe it was a neighbor kid.”
“I think I’ll just cruise for another few minutes,” Mindy said, to which R.T. Dibney grumbled something unintelligible.
“We may as well check around for a while too,” Sheila said to Aaron. “Even the alleys around here are nice. No mattresses or fish heads.”
“And people wave at you with all five fingers,” Aaron said.
There were several cars parked in front of residences on Ogden Drive during the early evening hours, and 6-X-66 drove past one of them. An old red Mustang was parked all the way north, almost at the corner of Sunset Boulevard. Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane were heading south and were parallel with a house two doors from the Teller home, when Sheila saw a silhouette move across a lawn, heading away from the Tellers’.
“I saw something!” she said, hitting the brakes.
“What is it?” Aaron said, head on a swivel.
Sheila pulled into a driveway, backed out, and turned north, saying, “On your side. Turn the spot on the yards. I think I saw somebody moving through the trees.”
Aaron turned on the spotlight as she slowed, and he said, “I see him! A rabbit!”
Sheila saw him too, a slender male figure darting into the darkness beside a property on the east side of the street.
“I’m bailing!” he said, and when Sheila stopped for an instant, he was out of the car, flashlight in one hand, baton in the other, running east through a residential property into the darkness.
Meanwhile, R.T. Dibney, in 6-X-46, was complaining to Mindy Ling, saying, “What’s the use of trying to look for prowlers anyways with these politically correct little mini-lights?”
Mindy didn’t answer. She was too busy counting the days left in this deployment period, after which she was definitely going to ask for a partner reassignment. She thought she might even take a few special days off in order to shorten what had come to seem like a jail sentence.