I whispered my way up to Roland, kneeling on one knee, shotgun in hand, looking out across Venice Avenue and the shuttered doors of the Gold Club and some construction supplies and the footbridges that went over one of the canals. I raised up the collapsable baton and brought it down hard against the base of his neck.
Three hours later I was home, tired, thirsty. The light was on in the bedroom and I walked in, and my sweetie-pie was sitting there, face expectant, looking up at me. "Well?"
I pulled a few strands of hair away from my face. "Gee, I missed you too, honey. Did it go all right? How are you feeling? What happened?"
His face flushed. "Sorry, Erica." He moved about on the bed some. "I missed you. Didn't sleep a wink. Did it go all right? How are you feeling? What happened?"
I dropped my heavy purse on the floor. "It went just fine."
"So. Where have you been?"
I gave him the dear-why-didn't-you-empty-the-trash-like-you-said look. "Where do you think?"
He tossed the cell phone over to me. "Talk to me, then."
So an hour earlier I was in an interrogation room of the Cooper Police Department, facing an unhappy Captain Miller and a blank-faced detective named Stephens. The interrogation room was stuffy and I was twisting and retwisting a paper napkin in my hands, which I used sometimes to dab at my eyes.
Captain Miller looked to me and then Detective Stephens, a young hard-faced man with close-cropped black hair going to gray. "Any more questions?" he asked the detective.
The detective stared right at me, as if he was trying to look through me and beyond. He had a cheap pen that he fluttered through his fingers like a magician.
"No," the detective said slowly. "No questions… Just want to make sure we have it straight, what happened. Do you mind?"
"No," I said. "Of course not."
He looked down at his legal pad, read from his notes. "So when you got to the scene, you said Officer Piper told you to stay in the cruiser, correct?"
"Yes."
"And after he left-what happened then?"
"What I told you. I saw him go up the alleyway to a Dumpster. I saw him crouching… and then… I got scared."
Detective Stephens said, "And what happened when you said you were scared?"
"I… I scrunched down in the front seat. I didn't want anybody to see me. And then…"
I wiped my eyes again with the paper napkin. "It was so quick. A man ran by, carrying something in his hands. He… he hit Officer Piper on the back of his head, and then ran around the corner. I panicked. I got on the floor of the cruiser."
"You didn't get out to see what was going on? You must have heard the gunshots." Detective Stephens asked.
Snot was running down my nose. "I was so scared… I scrunched down further and waited for the other policemen…"
"Mmm," Detective Stephens said. "But then you had the presence of mind to grab the radio and call for help."
"Yes," I said, my voice soft. "I… I knew I had to do something, and I pulled the microphone off the radio and called it in. Officer down."
Both Miller and Stephens were quiet, and I said, "What… what happened, at the Gold Club?"
Stephens looked to Miller. "It's still under investigation. Looks like a burglary. The two guys are dead and the loot's gone… must be one or two others out there somewhere. Sorry I can't tell you any more at the moment. Later today… if you wish to check in again, we can probably tell you more."
I nodded, wiped at my eyes. "And… Officer Piper. How's he doing?"
"He's at Cooper General Hospital," Miller said.
"Will he be okay?"
Miller smiled for the first time. "That guy's got a thick head. He'll be just fine."
So about twelve hours after I got home from my ride-along, my sweetie, Peter, was in the passenger's side of our Toyota Camry, bags packed, the disposable cell phone having been disposed of, and I was heading over to the driver's side when a black Ford F-150 pickup truck came into the short driveway, blocking us. The door opened up and Roland Piper gingerly stepped out, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black denim shirt.
I opened the door and said to my sweetie, "I'll be just a minute."
"You going to be all right?"
"Trust me." I smiled. "I'll be just fine."
I went over to the truck and said, "Officer Piper."
"Erica."
"How are you feeling?"
He turned so I could see a bulky bandage around the base of his head, and then turned back. "Not bad. Out for a week, and docs said I should be ready to go back on duty then."
"Good."
We stood there for a moment, waiting. Then he made the first move, for which I was thankful.
"I'm just a cop with seniority but no command," he said, "but you didn't question me or insult me last night about being just a cop. So don't start insulting me now. All right?"
I folded my arms. "Fine. I won't start by insulting you now."
He leaned against the fender of his pickup truck. "After I was attacked and taken to the hospital, I got to thinking. And questioning. And I decided to do some quick digging. You're not much of a writer, Erica. Three articles in the space of eight years."
"Good writing takes time," I said.
"I'm sure," Roland said. "And your husband… he's a ghost. Not much of a payroll record, not much of anything. And the two of you-no criminal record at all. Which means the two of you are either simple and dumb or complicated and very smart. And since you've had a rental agreement on this apartment for just a month, I'm not thinking simple and dumb."
I said nothing, waited. He cocked his head and said, "It was no coincidence you were with me last night. You wanted to be on that ride-along because you knew something was going to happen at the Gold Club. Not a bad setup. Me being knocked out, leaving the scene deserted. Available for whatever. So you'd think… not a bad deal."
"A deal," I said.
"So," he said. "Here's my deal. A cut of whatever was taken there and I go away, and you go away, and nothing more is said."
I kept silent and he said, "Erica, no insults now. It's a good deal. I won't even ask you how those two guys got shot up."
I still kept silent, and then he added, "If I got all of that in just a few hours, imagine what the detectives can do in a few days."
I nodded. "How much?"
"I'll trust your judgment. Just know you should be fair, or I'll be insulted, and-"
I jangled the keys in my hand, went to the trunk of the Camry, and Roland moved around and said politely, "Just so there's no misunderstanding. Just want to see your hands. Professional courtesy, wouldn't you say?"
"Absolutely," I said.
I snapped open the trunk, went into a side pocket of a knapsack, unzipped it, and pulled out a plain-brown-paper-wrapped package. Tossed it to Roland, who caught it easily.
"Quick question?" I asked.
"Sure."
"What tipped it for you?"
He hefted the package in his hand. "You said you were doing a profile on me, you asked me all these questions, and after I get whacked on the back of the head-according to the detectives, most likely by one of the gang serving as a lookout-you didn't come to see me at the hospital. That would make your story even better, if you were planning on writing a story. But you weren't."
I closed the trunk of the Camry. "So what are you planning now?"
He smiled. "Early retirement."
"To do what?"
He went back to his truck. "You seem to like stories. So here's two stories for your consideration. Story one: a grumpy, embittered cop, working long hours, little pay, no advancement, sees his chance to score and leave for sunnier places."
"And the second story?"
"A cop with a wife in home health care with a long-term degenerative nerve disease, who needs lots of money, and who realized long ago that if he just stays as a cop and works lots of overtime, he can barely make it… and then sees his chance to score and be settled for a long time."