The sergeant makes no introductions, merely points Brett in the woman’s direction. She’s already gathering her possessions and heading toward the podium. Her eyes are the color of roasted chestnuts. The long black hair framing her narrow face has been teased into gentle waves. He glances at her left hand – no ring. Her complexion is dark, making Brett wonder if she has Hispanic blood and whether that will be an issue during the shift. Many of the perpetrators he encounters over the next eight hours will be Hispanic.
“Follow me,” he says. “It’s a bit of a hike.”
He leads her along the corridor, down a narrow staircase, outside the central station, across a gravel parking lot, into the garage, and up to the third level, where his ride, 1 Adam 25 E, is parked. The car is where he left it the day before, which probably means no one used it since then. The department is short staffed, so he’s not surprised.
“Hoskins,” he says by way of introduction when they reach the car.
Panting slightly from the stairs and the fast pace he set, she sticks out a hand. “Meredith Knight.”
Her skin is smooth and soft, and he maintains his grip on her hand about two seconds too long. After he releases her, he pulls out a well-worn ignition key, opens the door, and clears the lock on her side. The car is seven years old and has more than a hundred thousand miles on it. He listens for the roof speaker to crackle when he starts the engine. “Some officers like to check all the lights, the siren and stuff. I know everything pretty much works. At least it doesn’t change day to day, especially since the car’s not driven around the clock. Means I don’t have to change the seat, the mirrors, the radio station.”
She starts taking notes immediately, which is a little strange. Reminds him of a high school keener, writing down everything the teacher says.
“How come I never get a ride-along?” Phelps says in a singsong voice on his way to his car. Brett shrugs and grins.
The radio is set loud enough to hear the music without having it drown out the dispatcher or other radio chatter. He boots up the computer, which runs an obsolete operating system; loads the com software; and logs on with dispatch. The crowded quarters, the front seat jammed with computer equipment and other paraphernalia, makes it feel as if they’re unusually close. Her perfume, mild and floral, reaches his nostrils. “Reporter?”
“Writer,” she answers. “I’m doing research for a novel.”
That’s a new one. “Interesting.” With two jobs and an ex-wife, Brett has no time for novels. Of the three, the ex-wife is the most demanding. Still, he relaxes a little knowing that his activities over the next eight hours likely won’t end up in tomorrow’s newspaper or in a report on the mayor’s desk.
“They pretty much just give you paperwork to read over and then say come ride, right?” He knows the routine, but he’s looking for a way to break the ice.
“If I get shot, beaten, or otherwise maimed, it’s my own damned fault,” she says. “At least that’s what the forms I signed say.”
“I’ll do my best to keep that from happening. I’ve never lost a ride-along yet.” He likes her spunkiness, so he answers in detail her questions about the minutia of his routine. He shows her how to use the outdated computer with attached microphone that is his lifeline to central dispatch. “If I’m getting my ass whooped, don’t worry about calling 1 Adam 25 E. Just pick this mike up and say, ‘Hoskins needs help.’” He points at a second microphone. “That one is for yelling at people on the PA. This is the one for saving my ass.”
“Got it.”
The computer pings every time a dispatch message comes through. If he ignores them long enough, a robotic female voice chides him. “Three new messages waiting.” He picks some of the easier call slips to handle first to clear the backlog. Reports of suspicious people that rarely pan out or complaints about illegally parked vehicles that he will ticket and ultimately have towed if they stay there long enough.
Unsure of what she’s looking for, he describes the neighborhoods on his beat and tells anecdotes about interesting calls he’s taken in the past. Without mentioning his divorce or admitting that all he can currently afford is a dingy apartment in a rough neighborhood, he points out houses he’s looked into buying, though they’re all beyond his means. She compliments his ability to drive, operate the computer, and talk with her all at the same time. When she isn’t writing in her steno pad, she’s recording him on a digital voice recorder, a device smaller than a cell phone that beeps and chirps from time to time.
When he returns without getting a response at an apartment where a silent 911 was reported, he tells her, “The front door was locked. No noise coming from inside. Nothing more I can do – you just can’t go around kicking people’s doors in.” He types “C UNF” into the computer and clicks “send.” “That’s ‘clear/unfounded.’ We get a lot of those around here. It’s a Hispanic neighborhood, and part of Mexico has a 911 area code. Sometimes they forget to dial the ‘001’ first, so they hang up.” He waits to see how she will react, but she’s too busy taking notes.
As work goes, it’s drudgery, but Brett puts the best face on it. He feels compelled to both entertain and impress. He gets most of the ride-alongs because of his reputation for being easygoing, but he wants to be more than that for Meredith. If I play my cards right, maybe I’ll get to show her my billy club at the end of the shift, he thinks with a barely suppressed grin.
She expresses interest in the mundane. The operation of the computer and what all the codes and responses mean. How he selects which call slip to answer. He allows a hint of pride to creep into his voice when telling her how he reads between the lines, discerning when a call should be assigned a higher priority than it seems to merit at first glance.
He elicits a laugh when he says, “Please don’t steal the police car,” before he goes to ticket a Hispanic teenager who ran a stop sign. The driver’s-license number triggers a warrant flag, so he confiscates the ignition key and returns to the cruiser to await confirmation from TCIC/NCIC.
“Seven minutes is the timer on a stop,” he says, typing a code into the computer. “I’m telling the dispatcher to restart the clock. Otherwise she’ll start sending messages or calling me over the radio to make sure I’m okay.” He twists in his seat to watch the occupants of the other car and make eye contact with Meredith at the same time. He has to be prepared in case the driver decides to run away. “Saturday usually starts out quiet like this and then picks up when the sun goes down. What’s your book about?”
She shrugs. “I don’t like discussing story ideas until they’re finished.”
“Have you published anything?”
“Some short stories. This is my first novel.”
He wants to ask more, but he knows so little about writing and books in general that he’s afraid to look stupid. Awkward silence fills the air between them, interrupted only by the garbled chatter on the radio, including frequent updates on the Astros game. Though it’s early October, it’s warm sitting in the car without the AC running.
When he notices her checking her watch after fifteen minutes, he decides to cut the driver loose with just the ticket rather than waiting for dispatch to respond. Priority-one queries, where the information determines whether or not someone will be arrested, are supposed to take less than ten minutes, but sometimes a request gets lost between the dispatcher and the person who keys it in. Thirty seconds after the other car drives off, the report comes back positive for two delinquent traffic tickets, so he flashes the lights, blasts the siren for a few seconds, and pulls the car over again, this time placing the driver under arrest. He turns the keys over to the passenger after ascertaining that he has no outstanding warrants.