Katie felt a tear well up and turned her head, wiping it away and composing herself. “I didn’t want to,” she muttered. She felt momentarily stupid for crying in front of Westboard. It was so…female. But it was better than talking to her boyfriend Kevin about it. At least Westboard understood the job. And he listened. Kevin didn’t do either one.
“No one wants to,” Westboard told her. “But you would have. Don’t feel bad. Everyone wonders a little bit. Everyone. I wondered that day with Elliot. Hulk wondered. I’m sure Tom Chisolm wondered right before he blasted apart that woman who was shooting at another officer.”
Katie turned back to face him, composed. She looked around the sandwich shop to see if anyone had noticed her moment of weakness.
“Don’t second-guess yourself, Katie,” Westboard told her. “You’re a good cop. You’ll always do what you have to do.”
Katie took a deep breath and let it out, wanting to believe him. Knowing she should. Only time would tell. “It’s just been a bad couple of days, is all.” She shrugged. “First the deal with the robber and then that meth freak Elliot.”
Westboard nodded, his eyes sympathetic. “When it rains, it pours.”
The unmistakable sound of an alarm tone came across both radios.
2312 hours
Lieutenant Alan Hart sat in his office, idly twirling his gold pen in his fingers. He’d worked late, ostensibly to catch up on FTO reports, but found himself lost in thought more often than not. After reading Payne’s first weekly report since the transfer to Officer Glen Bates, he was pleased to see that the recruit’s marks had increased over those Chisolm had given him. They weren’t stellar, but improved.
Chisolm. What a burnout. Hart hated the way the man was so condescending toward him. I’m a lieutenant. Chisolm only had one stripe on his sleeve, making him a Patrolman First Class, an automatic promotion and basically just a pay raise over a slick-sleeved patrolman. No authority or extra duties. What a loser. Chisolm hadn’t tested for promotion in fourteen years on the job. Yet he sauntered around, acting like the cat’s meow.
Hart snorted. Well, he put that cat’s meow in his place last week, hadn’t he? And when Payne made probation, Hart’s judgment over Chisolm’s would be vindicated.
Some men were just not born to lead other men.
He stared absently at the promotion list for Captain. He’d heard rumors that Captain Rainey would retire before Thanksgiving. That opened up a slot. He occupied the number two position on the list, directly behind Lieutenant Robert Saylor.
Saylor. Hart’s lip curled. Saylor liked Chisolm, which pretty much summed up Hart’s opinion of him. He had no respect for any officer who curried favor with his troops.
Still, list position was only worth sixty percent on the promotions. Twenty percent went to seniority, negligibly in Hart’s favor. The other twenty points were awarded by the patrol captain, based on performance reviews. He needed to find a way to impress the patrol captain. It was as simple as that.
But how? Reott was an old school, cigar-chomping leader who prized action above intellect. Hart knew he favored Saylor over him. So what could he do to reverse that trend?
With a barely perceptible sigh, Hart turned back to the FTO reports. He read absently about a brand new recruit named Willow. The radio, tuned to channel one, was turned down to the point of a whisper, but the high-pitched alarm tone came through clear. Hart turned up the radio.
“All units, hold-up alarm at 1643 E. Francis. Suspect is a single, white male, unknown clothing, long black hair, bearded, with a scar on left side of his face. Suspect displayed black handgun, then fled southbound on Pittsburg.”
Hart sighed in exasperation. That Scarface robber was making a mockery of River City PD. Already this week, the local paper ran a front-page story on the department’s seeming inability to nab Scarface. Shawna Matheson, the bubble headed blonde reporter on Channel Five, ended every broadcast from the scene of a convenience store with some kind of subtle barb at the cops.
“Units responding on Francis. Time delay is three minutes.”
Hart let out a mild curse, listening as the units drove into the area and set up a wide perimeter. A K-9 officer responded as well, but Hart knew it was useless. Too much of a delay.
Someone has to do something about this! He raged, then stopped suddenly.
Of course. Someone did.
He set aside Willow’s report and put a yellow notepad in front of him.
Someone should form a task force and work tirelessly until Scarface was brought down. Someone like him. Someone who would be the next captain on this department.
Lt. Hart wrote feverishly, drafting a plan to submit to the patrol captain in the morning.
2318 hours
Anthony Giovanni sat at the bar, sipping his light beer. Duke’s, essentially a cop bar, drew most of its business from off-duty or retired cops, their families and those who wanted to be around cops. This included some wannabes, usually coolly rebuffed. Others just hung out, never asking a cop to tell a story and frequently found themselves rewarded with a doozy. The clientele also included some badge bunnies, which was exactly what Gio was talking to at the moment.
She was a redhead, that soft strawberry hair rather than the wiry, copper color. Her green eyes caught his from the end of the bar almost forty minutes and a drink ago, and now they’d been dancing the pick-up waltz for a steady half-hour. She made the first sexual innuendo and after that, Gio set the hook.
When Johnny asked if they wanted another round, he looked at her questioningly.
“Okay,” she said. “Unless you want to go somewhere else.”
Gio glanced at the rise and fall of her bosom for a long second then met her eyes and flashed his best smile. “Just the tab, Johnny. Thanks.”
He paid Johnny and tipped him well. Johnny always clued him in on the new bunnies, so Gio always took care of him. As he slid off the barstool, he found something was missing. It took him a few moments before he realized what it was.
He felt no excitement.
The realization was a strange one for Gio. This chesty, beautiful, redheaded woman had consented to go home with him, yet he found himself almost bored before it had even happened. The promise of her breasts seemed empty.
At the door, he brushed past a woman that stopped him dead in his tracks. Their gaze met and locked for a moment. Her pale blue eyes struck him like a punch in the chest. Then she continued past him. Shorter than the redhead behind him (Gio struggled to remember her name was Tiffany), this woman had blonde hair, a trim figure and walked with confidence.
Gio watched her go, feeling a tug, surprised to feel it come from his chest and not his loins.
Those eyes…
Tiffany, his hand in hers, stepped ahead of him and pulled him toward the door. Giovanni glanced at her and the irritation on her face barely registered with him as they left the bar.
2322 hours
From his vantage point in the corner of the bar, Karl Winter watched Gio leave with the redhead, while at the same time ogling the blonde. Winter shook his head. Seated with his back to the door, Ridgeway hadn’t noticed.
“What?” Ridgeway asked, turning to look.
“Gio just left with the redhead,” Winter told him, glad he hadn’t taken Ridgeway’s bet earlier. “On the way out, he was eye-fucking the blonde over there.”
Ridgeway looked at the blonde, nodding with approval. “Good taste,” he said, then turned to face Winter. “Poor boy thinks too much with his little head instead of his big one.”
“A wine glass and a woman’s ass,” Winter quoted the maxim that every policeman had been told since time immemorial. Those were the two things that would get a cop into more trouble than anything else. He wondered if they told the women officers something similar. Or if they had to.