Frank Zafiro - Under a Raging Moon

His eyes drooped closed and he took a deep breath. When he opened them, he saw the women were awake. Leslie gently stroked Andrea along the curve of her hip. Mace felt no stirring in his loins at the sight. He thought instead of his next fix. More than that, he thought about how he would get the money.

And how good it was going to feel to take out the enemy.

1712 hours

Stefan Kopriva awoke feeling he had forgotten something. Everything seemed normal, but he knew there was something out of sync.

Then he saw Katie MacLeod lying next to him, felt her soft breath on his shoulder.

Kopriva almost jumped in surprise as the events of the previous night came rushing back to him. He willed himself to lie still while he recalled everything that had happened. It reminded him of being drunk and forgetting everything in the morning. Only he hadn’t been drinking.

After he finished booking Belzer and putting the drugs on property, a homicide had been called in at the Qwik-Stop. Inside, a twenty-some-year-old clerk had been shot, probably by Scarface.

Both he and Katie guarded the crime scene for the remainder of the night. Katie’s demeanor hadn’t changed from earlier in the shift. After the scene was secured, they’d gone to breakfast for their seven and she finally told him the problem. Her fiancee had broken up with her after seven months of engagement and a year and a half years together. With no explanation.

Stef, you are a jerk , he told himself.

He and MacLeod went through the Academy together. For whatever reason, that gave them a bond that made talking easier. After the shift secured, they went out for coffee and talked some more. Katie seemed to relax a little more once they were out of uniform. When she became upset, Kopriva offered to take her home. She’d wanted to talk some more. Kopriva lived not too far from the coffee shop, so they’d gone there for tea and to continue talking.

Katie broke down and cried before Kopriva had even gotten the hot water for tea on the stove. Through her tears, he gathered that she thought she’d loved her fiancee, but now wasn’t so sure. It hurt to be dumped but there might there also be a sense of relief.

Kopriva understood some of what she felt. His luck with women bordered on abysmal. He hated one-night stands, but had been involved in little else for the past year. He didn’t know what hurt like hers felt like, but he knew about loneliness.

Around nine in the morning, tired, cried out and grateful, Katie had leaned into him for a comforting hug, which he’d happily given.

Carefully, Stef . Her breath now plumed lightly against his shoulder. He shifted his position in bed and tried to get comfortable. It didn’t work.

How did it really happen?

He hadn’t intended for anything to happen. Had he? He remembered that he kissed the top of her head and told her everything would be all right. He remembered how warm she felt against him and how good her hair smelled. Katie looked up and smiled a tired, friendly smile.

Thanks, Stef.

That’s what she had said.

And then she kissed him softly on the cheek. She started to withdraw her face, then paused. Kopriva remembered that the silence then had been a loud one. Then she kissed his cheek again, softer and closer to his lips.

He kissed her on the mouth and they melted into each other.

Now it was after five in the afternoon and she was lying next to him. The smell of her body that filled his nostrils seemed like an accusation. He’d taken advantage of her, hadn’t he?

Kopriva shut the alarm off so that it wouldn’t wake her. He slipped out of bed and walked down the hall to the bathroom. As he stepped into the shower, his mind whirred with a confused jumble of images. He could see her crying at the coffee shop, her face streaked with tears. Then he saw her athletic body beneath him, her back arching as they made love.

Kopriva forced the image from his mind.

This was a mistake. He’d taken advantage of a woman while she was hurt and rejected.

But there’d always been something between them, hadn’t there? He and Katie always had chemistry, even back at the Academy. Since then, they’d been assigned to separate sectors on patrol. Both worked the north side all year and units were often called on to cross into each other’s patrol sectors. Kopriva enjoyed her friendship but had never considered anything beyond that. She was always dating someone, then got engaged. But maybe this just provided the opportunity for it to come out.

Kopriva shook his head. She’d been vulnerable. Tired. Cried out. He’d taken advantage. No question.

He slapped his hand angrily against the tile in the shower. Honor might have been an out-dated concept for some, but Kopriva adhered to it. It was his lifeboat in a sea of madness sometimes.

Had he just violated it?

Fifteen minutes later, Kopriva shut off the shower. No, he rationalized. He had not violated honor. What had happened wasn’t a mistake.

I’ve always cared about her. There’s always been something there.

Maybe only the timing had been the mistake. And there was nothing he could do to change that now. But overall, he saw this new development with her as a good thing, but one they should probably keep from their co-workers.

Kopriva toweled off and slipped on a pair of boxer shorts. He decided that he would make her breakfast. During breakfast, he would tell her how he felt. He’d let her know that he hoped this was the beginning of something nice.

He walked into the kitchen and removed a frying pan from the cupboard. He began warming it on the stove. In the fridge, he had enough eggs for an omelet. He removed the eggs along with a little cheese and some green onions. As the pan heated up, he walked to the bedroom to wake her in case she wanted to shower before she ate.

The bed lay empty with rumpled covers. Her clothes were gone.

2100 hours

Lieutenant Robert Saylor didn’t have to order the graveyard patrol shift to pay attention. As soon as he stepped behind the lectern of the roll-call room, conversation quickly tapered off.

He put aside a couple of stolen vehicle reports for later, then reviewed the homicide at the Qwik-Stop from the night before. “And that’s the big news, folks,” Saylor said. “The guy day shift nabbed was a copy-cat.”

“No kidding,” James Kahn muttered.

“Yeah,” Saylor said. “No kidding. Well, that also comes from the detectives at Major Crimes, who interviewed day shift’s guy. He is not Scarface. The M.O. he used was similar but not exact. The funny thing is, it was exactly the M.O. the paper published.”

That brought a few chuckles from the assembled troops.

“Imagine that,” Chisolm said to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” said Saylor. “Major Crimes also reviewed the security cameras in the QwikStop. Detective Browning confirmed that it was almost certainly the Scarface Robber. So if Scarface killed the clerk from last night, then he is obviously getting more dangerous. Be careful. Think about how you want to pursue him, whether on foot or in a vehicle.

“Last night’s scene was handled perfectly by patrol units. Just like then, first officer on scene is in charge. I don’t care if it is the newest recruit we got. Until a sergeant or myself can get on scene and be briefed, the first one on scene is site commander.”

Saylor glanced down at his notes. “The clerk evidently pulled a gun, so maybe Scarface won’t kill unless provoked. But who knows, so be careful.”

Saylor moved briskly through the stolen reports and several other less important administrative items, then turned things over to the sergeants for their platoon meetings. He turned and strode from the room.