Jonathon King - A Killing Night

At 2:20 Marci walked out through the wide wooden door. An older man was behind her and had his fist up against the deadbolt on the inside. We both watched the girl go to a late model, light blue two-door parked right in front and unlock the driver's side. She waved at the old guy who stepped back and pulled the bar door shut. Marci backed out of her spot and came my way, her lights flashing off my truck windows as she bounced over a speed bump and then turned onto the street. All right, I thought. It was an old cop's hunch. Sometimes that's all they are. I sure as hell wasn't going to follow the girl home. I pulled out of my own parking space and as I approached the street another set of headlights met mine. They jounced over the speed bump and I caught the opaque blue tint of the light bar on top. It was the patrol car. Done for the night. Everybody out safe.

He turned left, without a signal, in the direction Marci had gone. My headlights caught the outline of a dark-haired male officer, clean-cut, and then I turned north toward the beach house. The annoying trill of the cell phone woke me the next day, snapping a dream that had me somewhere in the Everglades, someplace other than my river, someplace where I was unfamiliar and lost in a wooded hammock of gumbo limbo and poisonwood trees. It was night and I was crouched in a cover of fern, watching the glowing red spots of a gator's eyes that were becoming larger, though for some reason I felt no fear of them and as I tracked their movement through the trees they took on the shape of a car's taillights and I suddenly heard the sound of a horn in traffic which became the ring of my phone.

I swung my legs off the bed and blinked away the odd smell of the exhaust and marsh grass and picked up the cell.

"Yeah?"

"Freeman?"

It was a man's voice.

"Who's this?"

"It's O'Shea, Freeman."

I registered the Philly accent and recalled I'd given O'Shea my card at Archie's.

"Yeah, Colin. What's up?"

"I don't want to say you dropped a dime on me, Freeman. So tell me it isn't true," he said, biting off the ends of accusatory sentences.

"Well, you just said it, O'Shea," I answered, my head quickly clearing. "So tell me what the hell you're talking about."

"The sheriff's office just executed a search warrant on my apartment."

I was recalling Richards's squeeze plan.

"Did they arrest you?"

"Not yet. But I would like to know how the fuck they put me with you when your two muggers tried to take you off the other night and I saved your ass, again, brother."

I felt my anger mix with an unexpected whiff of guilt which tempered my response.

"I didn't tell them you were with me, O'Shea. But you're also not dealing with some dumb-ass detective with Richards," I said. "She was the one who put me onto you at your local hangout and a description by those two assholes and your patented boot work wouldn't be hard to put together. Your IAD file back home isn't exactly vague on the excessive-force complaints, either."

There was nothing but an empty electronic buzz on the other end of the line for several long beats.

"I'm gonna need a lawyer if this goes any further, Max," he finally said. "How's this guy Manchester you work for?"

Billy was brilliant, but the idea of him acting as a criminal defense attorney for a guy like O'Shea gave me more than a few seconds of doubt. I still couldn't say why I was walking a line with him. But guilty or not, he was going to need a good lawyer.

"Give me a number where I can reach you," I said.

He followed her home, shaking his head and exhaling a little shot of disgust each time she put on a correct blinker or came to a full stop at an intersection. Marci and her proper driving etiquette. This girl gotta loosen up, he thought. But then, maybe she was doing everything correctly in her little blue Honda because he was behind her, toeing the line in front of the cop like all the other lemmings on the road. He liked that idea. Maybe some night he would pull her over. They could do it in her backseat with the lights flashing. She'd love it. But shit, wouldn't that just be asking to get caught? The thought flashed his mind back on the topic of the night. What the fuck was that BSO detective bitch Richards doing in Kim's earlier? He'd seen her come struttin' in all tight-assed like she owned the place. He split and was sure she never got a look at him. When he called Marci later behind the bar she said the woman and that big rangy-looking guy were together, that they were talking with her boss. He called her again an hour later and she said the manager, Laurie, told her they were community-watch cops just checking in to make sure the girls were safe at night and that there hadn't been any incidents.

My ass, he thought. He knew Richards. He'd had one of his friends point her out at a crime scene once. The grapevine had it that she was still rattling the cages about missing girls, even when nobody paid any attention. It's what happened when you let these broads get a little power, twist you with their fucking rank. He didn't know who Mr. Tan Man was. He'd watched him come in, take a sniff of Laurie and then checked out Marci's ass for a while. He had the look of a cop, too. But even an off-duty guy wouldn't dress like that and who has time to work the job and get out in the sun like that guy? At least the guy had good taste in beer. He'd be worth watching out for.

Marci pulled into the lot of her apartment building and he parked the cruiser across the street. Best thing about this department was that they let you take your patrol car home when you were off. They said it bolstered the perception of more cops on the streets. He liked it fine. It kept people out of his way and made them nervous when he was around. Marci waited at her car door until he joined her.

"Hi."

"Hi? That's it? Hi?" she said, pissed. He liked her pissed sometimes.

"Hi. How are you?" he said, playing with it.

"Jesus, Kyle. What was that all about today? You go flying out of the bar without a word and those people are there and you tell me Laurie's lying to me. What's going on?"

"Whoa, whoa. Easy, babe," he said and put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed her back. These girls get so emotional. You gotta calm them down a little. They're like wild fillies when you're trying to break them.

"Come on, let's go upstairs and I'll explain. I'm sorry I was so vague, babe. I didn't mean to scare you," he said.

"I'm not fucking scared. I just don't like not knowing what's going on," she said, stepping away from him. He let her lead the way to her second-floor apartment. When she got to her door he watched her unlock it and walk in, tossing the ring of keys in that little basket on top of the stereo speaker.

He watched her kick off her shoes and go into the kitchen and stand in the light of the open refrigerator staring while she pulled the tie out of her hair and shook her curls loose like she always did. Then she reached in for her bottled water and brought him a beer like she always did. She flopped into the corner of the couch and he joined her.

"All right," she said. "I'm taking it easy. Give."

It sounded like an order, but he let it pass.

"You know that I don't like people in the bar to know I'm a cop. That's all it was."

"Laurie said they were just community watch," she said. "But that big guy didn't look like community watch to me."

"Well, Laurie was right," he said. "But you meet these people when you're a real cop. You give them instruction and show them around the beat so if they see anything that needs to be checked out, they can call an officer to take care of it."

He watched her take a drink of the water, knew she was thinking.

"So you knew the blonde?"

"Yeah. I've seen her around. And I didn't want to take the chance she'd see me and spoil it. My privacy, you know, my place."