Frank Zafiro - Beneath a Weeping Sky

The coffee’s aroma filled her nostrils. She sipped again. All around them, Mary’s Cafe bustled with activity. Conversation buzzed, dishes clattered. Linda, the waitress, flitted from table to table, topping off coffee cups and smiling.

From across the table, Westboard slurped his coffee loudly.

Katie shot him a glance, momentarily irritated. He knew she hated that. Then she saw the coy smile playing on his lips.

“Matt-”

He slurped again.

“Knock it off.”

Westboard answered with a long slurp.

“Don’t be a jerk,” Katie said, but with the beginnings of a smile.

Westboard shrugged and put the coffee cup down. “So you going to talk to me or what?”

Katie sighed. “I was kind of enjoying the silence.”

Westboard nodded. “Yeah, silence is good.”

Katie returned his nod and sipped her coffee.

“The other nice thing about silence,” Westboard continued, “is that it solves so many problems.”

Katie swung her gaze back to the straw-haired officer. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“Nooooooo,” Westboard answered. “Not at all. I completely believe that if you have a problem, the best thing to do is to remain absolutely silent about it. If you ignore the problem, it will almost always go away.”

“Shut up.”

“It also works for ostriches, I hear.”

“Asshole,” Katie muttered without much conviction.

Westboard smiled tightly, picked up his coffee and slurped loudly.

Katie groaned. “You’re worse than those two juveniles at roll call.”

“Everyone copes in different ways,” Westboard said, motioning to Linda for more coffee.

“Maybe I cope by being silent,” Katie suggested.

Linda appeared at the table and refilled both cups, disappearing without a word.

Westboard picked up his cup, paused, then slurped.

“Fine,” Katie said, exasperated. “I’ll spill. Will that make you happy?”

Westboard leaned forward. “Yeah. But I think it will make you happy, too.”

“You really are an asshole,” Katie said with a grin.

Westboard grinned back. “And you’ve got a potty mouth, Officer MacLeod, as well as an apparently limited vocabulary. Now what’s up?”

Katie shrugged. “I just keep getting these calls.”

“Calls?”

“From Stef.”

Westboard’s eyes narrowed with confusion. “Kopriva’s calling you?”

Katie nodded, looking away. She figured the relationship she’d had with Kopriva was probably common knowledge in the undercurrent of department gossip. Still, she didn’t care to talk about it out in the open, even with Westboard.

He gave a low whistle. “How long has this been going on?”

“It started a couple of months ago,” Katie answered. “It’s nothing regular, just every now and then.”

“What’s he say?”

“Just that he wants to talk.”

“What do you two talk about?”

Katie shook her head. “It’s usually a message on my machine. Even if I’m home, I don’t answer the phone.”

“Why?”

Katie gaped at him. “Why? Matt, what do we have to talk about?”

Westboard didn’t answer. He turned to his coffee for a moment. Katie stared at him, feeling a tickle of anger in her stomach.

After a short silence, Westboard asked, “How does he sound?”

“Drunk,” Katie snapped.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Katie answered.

Westboard nodded. “That’s all?”

“No.”

Westboard waited.

Katie sighed. “Fine. He sounded like he was hurting, too.”

“That’s probably why the drinking,” Westboard observed.

“So what? He acts like he’s the only one who ever felt any pain in this world. Like he’s the only one who — ” She broke off, biting back tears. She stared down at her hands and realized that she was twisting the napkin in her fingers.

“Everyone copes in different ways,” Westboard said quietly.

The phrase seemed to have a decidedly different meaning to her the second time around. She gave the napkin a final twist and dropped it in next to her cup. She wondered why Westboard was being so sympathetic toward Kopriva. Maybe the next time the sonofabitch calls, she should just give him Westboard’s number.

“Yeah,” she answered instead, her voice thick with sarcasm. “Especially cowards.”

Westboard’s eyes widened slightly. He opened his mouth to reply.

“Adam-116, Adam-114,” crackled both radios.

Westboard lifted his radio to his mouth, his eyes remaining on Katie’s. “Fourteen, go ahead for both.”

“Northgate shopping center parking lot, near the battery store.” Dispatcher Janice Koslowski’s voice remained stoic, but Katie could sense the gravity in it. “I have a female at the pay phone stating she has just been raped.”

Katie and Westboard rose as one, pushing back from the table and bolting for the door. She heard Westboard copy the call for both of them as she swung open the door of her patrol car. A moment later, she fired the engine to life, punched her overhead lights and headed toward Northgate shopping center.

2326 hours

Thomas Chisolm looked up from the theft report he was writing in the car. His radio had been turned low, but the words “Northgate” and then “rape” caught his ear. He turned up the volume.

“Continuing for Adam-116,” Janice’s voice filled the car, “the victim is not very responsive, but says the assault took place within the last five minutes.”

“ Copy,” Katie replied over the air.

Chisolm heard the deep-throated roar of her engine and the yelp of her siren in the background.

“Victim has now hung up the phone,” Janice reported.

Chisolm tossed his half-written report into the passenger seat atop his patrol equipment bag. Without pause, he dropped the car into gear and punched the gas.

Northgate was a ways off, but he figured he’d start that way just in case they decided to set a perimeter and do a K-9 track. Or there was always the chance that someone saw the suspect and got a good description and direction of travel. Plus, there was no telling if the victim had hung up the phone on her own or if the suspect had returned and interrupted her call for help.

As he zipped up Nevada, he listened for further radio traffic. In his rearview mirror, he noticed a blue truck keeping pace with him. He glanced down at his speedometer. Forty miles an hour. The speed limit was thirty.

What the hell was this guy doing?

Chisolm nudged the accelerator up to forty-five. The truck fell back, but kept following him.

“Adam-116 on scene,” Katie transmitted.

“Copy.”

Chisolm turned left on Francis, a wide arterial. He accelerated again, this time up to fifty miles an hour. He hoped there was a chance that the rapist was still in the area. He’d like to get his hands on a guy like that.

Behind him, the headlights of the blue truck kept pace.

Who was this guy?

Chisolm recalled the vendetta that a gang member named Isaiah Morris had developed against Kopriva a couple of years before. The gangster stalked Kopriva on duty before ambushing him at the Circle K at Market and Euclid. The resulting “Shootout at the Circle K” was now department legend, despite Kopriva’s fall from grace last year.

I’ve made a lot more enemies out here than Stef ever did, Chisolm thought. Could this guy be stalking him?

“Adam-116, I’m not seeing the victim yet,” Katie informed Radio.

Chisolm momentarily considered stopping the truck, but rejected the idea almost immediately. Katie might need his help. The blue truck mystery would have to wait.