At daybreak, he went upstairs for a quick, two?hour nap, showered and shaved, and put on a pair of jeans, a T?shirt, and a Windbreaker. He came back down to the station to find a sour?faced Billy waiting for him at Charlotte’s desk.
“I am definitely switching to nights next week,” Billy said. “I haven’t had to draw my gun once yet, and she’s got to three times.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that trick with the Mentos,” Charlotte said. “It wasn’t something we were taught at the academy. Where did you learn it?”
“ America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Wade said.
“I can’t picture you watching that show,” she said.
“My daughter did,” Wade said. “In fact, this is my day with her. So here’s what’s going to happen while I’m gone.”
Wade told Charlotte to transport the two robbers to the lockup downtown and to take the patrol car home with her. He showed Billy where the patching and painting materials were and told him to stick around the station and work on the walls.
“What does that have to do with being a cop?” Billy asked.
“It’s about showing your pride for your profession, among other things. It’s why firefighters keep their trucks as shiny as jewels.”
“But I don’t know how to paint,” Billy said.
“It can’t look any worse than it does now,” Wade said. “The important thing is, I don’t want you going anywhere while I’m gone.”
“I went on patrol before, remember?”
“That was before the drive?by,” Wade said. “I don’t want you out there alone right now.”
“What if an emergency call comes in?”
“It’ll be a trap,” Wade said. “Nobody calls the police down here. Not yet, anyway.”
Wade told Billy to call him if anything came up and then headed out in his rented Explorer for the suburbs of New King City.
As he drove across the Chewelah River on the King’s Crossing Bridge, passing the familiar landmarks of what was once his daily commute, he felt as if he were awakening from a bad dream. The closer he got to Clayton, the suburb where he’d lived, the farther away and less real Darwin Gardens became.
By the time he pulled into the driveway of his house, he could almost believe none of it had ever happened-the corruption of the MCU, the trial, his divorce-and that it had just been one miserably long drive home.
He got out of his car and stood in the driveway for a moment, looking down the street of tract homes. Everything seemed cleaner and more colorful, as if the sun somehow shined brighter here. The air was tinged with the fragrance of flowers and freshly mowed grass instead of exhaust fumes, puke, and dried pools of urine. The asphalt was black and smooth instead of gray and riddled with potholes. There were no bars on the windows, no graffiti on the walls, no used condoms and syringes in the gutters.
Paradise.
Being back in New King City again, he could understand the temptation to haul away any transients who showed up here, to do whatever was necessary to prevent this place from becoming the one he’d just left. It would be a crime to let this become Darwin Gardens, especially while his family still lived here.
But intellectually, he knew that the rot that crept into the once prosperous south side, eventually turning it into Darwin Gardens, wasn’t carried like a plague by the wandering homeless. It was far more complicated and insidious than that.
The future of these suburbs, the safety, beauty, and cleanliness that made them so desirable, had more to do with the continued economic survival of the New King City tech companies than anything else. All it would take was a few of those employers shutting down and outsourcing their business to India or China, putting thousands of the heavily mortgaged owners of these tract homes out of work, and New King City could quickly become Old King City.
He turned toward the house and saw Alison standing on the front walk, studying him.
“You’re looking at the street like you’ve never seen it before,” she said.
“Maybe I haven’t,” he said. “At least not the way that I do now.”
Alison looked beautiful, and he felt a sudden, and painful, longing to hold her. And with that longing, he felt guilty for having been with another woman. The guilt made no sense, of course, since they were divorced. But ending the marriage wasn’t his idea. He’d gone along with it because it was what she wanted. If she changed her mind now, he’d come back to her with no hard feelings, as if the divorce had never happened.
She tipped her head toward the Explorer. “What happened to your car?”
“It’s in the shop, having some body work done. I had a little accident.”
“Are you OK?”
“Just fine,” he said.
“You don’t look it.”
I suppose I should look terrific after losing my family, my home, and my career and starting over as a beat cop in the worst corner of King City. That’s what he thought, but it wasn’t what he said.
“I’m not getting enough sleep lately.”
“Brooke tells me you’re back on the force,” she said.
He nodded. “It’s not the same job, but it’s the same pay, rank, and benefits.”
“That’s good,” Alison said, putting her hands on her hips, letting Wade know that trouble was coming his way, “but I would have appreciated hearing about the job from you rather than my daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t plan it that way. Things were hectic and Brooke caught me off guard.”
“You haven’t learned a thing,” she said. “So I guess you gave up on the idea of going into private security.”
“That was your idea, Ally, not mine.”
“The department must have offered you something great to keep you from the private sector. What did they do, make you the head of the MCU?”
“They put me in charge of a community substation in Darwin Gardens.”
She stared at him in shock. “That’s a hellhole.”
“Pretty much,” he said.
“Don’t you see what they’re doing? It’s retribution, Tom. They are trying to humiliate you or, more likely, get you killed for what you did.”
“That’s not how I see it,” he said.
“I’ll remember that at your funeral,” she said. “Next month.”
“The job gives me a salary that allows me to support my family, pay the mortgage on this house, and still have a little bit left over to take care of myself. It also comes with a health plan that will cover Brooke’s orthodontia, among other things. I can’t do that working campus security at a college.”
“But that’s not why you took the demotion.”
“Lateral move,” he said.
“Whatever.” She kept staring at him.
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
She shook her head with disappointment. “We’re divorced, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped caring about you, Tom. I’d make whatever sacrifices I had to-I’d sell this house without a second thought-if it would keep you from taking a job that’s suicide to pay our bills. But there’s nothing I can do to save you from your own twisted sense of honor.”
That’s when Brooke came out of the house, marching up purposefully behind her mother. She was tall and thin like her mother, with a runner’s slim, muscular legs and long hair tied in a ponytail that fell almost to her waist.
There was an adorable band of freckles across her nose and cheeks that gave her a huggable cuteness that was dramatically undercut by the mature intensity of her brown eyes, narrowed now in a stony gaze. Wade could see himself and his father in that gaze, and he was pretty sure that Alison could too.
“I hope you two aren’t fighting again,” Brooke said.
“We’re not,” Alison said. “I was just telling your father that I’m concerned about him.”
“I am too,” Brooke said. “You look terrible, Dad.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said. “But you know what would really help?”
“Two Advils and some concealer?”
“A big hug and a kiss,” Wade said and crouched down so she could run into his open arms. She groaned at the request because he was treating her like a child, but she gave him what he wanted, hugging him tight and kissing him on the cheek.