Janice Johnson - The Man Behind the Cop

“Along with your sister’s children? And her husband? What about his family?”

Lenora’s eyes filled with fears and longings. “I know that can’t be. But I wish.”

“You realize you’ll have to stay away from your family and friends for now. He’ll be watching them. But if you can stay safe long enough, he’ll lose interest.”

Lenora agreed but didn’t look convinced. And as scared as she had to be right now, who could blame her?

When the hour was over and Karin was walking her out, Karin asked, “Will you call me once you’re at the safe house?”

“Of course I will.” In the reception area, furnished like a living room, Lenora hugged her. “Thank you. You’ve helped me more than you can imagine.”

Touched, Karin hugged her back. “Thank you. ”

Lenora drew back, sniffing. “I can keep coming here, can’t I?”

“As long as you’re sure he’s never known about A Woman’s Hand. Remember, you can’t do anything predictable,” Karin reminded her.

“He’s never heard about this place or about you.” Lenora sounded sure.

“Great. Then I’ll expect you next Tuesday. Oh, and don’t forget that Monday evening we’re having the first class in the women’s self-defense course. It would be really good for you.”

They’d talked about this, too—how the course wasn’t geared so much to building hand-to-hand combat skills as it was to changing the participants’ confidence in themselves and teaching preparedness.

Lenora nodded. “I mentioned it to the director at the safe house, and she said she’d drive me here. She told me I could leave Enrico and Anna there, that someone would watch them, but I think I’d rather bring them. You’ll have babysitting here, right?”

“Absolutely.” Karin smiled and impulsively hugged her again. “Good luck.”

She stood at the door and watched this amazing woman, who had defied her husband’s efforts to turn her into nothing, hurry to the bus stop so she could pick up her children and be home before he was, ready to playact for three more days.

Karin seldom prayed—her faith was more bruised than her most damaged client’s. But this was one of those moments when she gave wing to a silent wish.

Let her escape safely. Please let her make it.

The blue-and-white metro bus pulled to a stop, and Lenora disappeared inside it. With a sigh, Karin turned from the glass door. She had five minutes to get a cup of coffee before her next appointment, this one a fifty-eight-year-old rape survivor who’d been left for dead in the basement of her apartment building when all she’d done was go down to move her laundry from the washer to the dryer.

In the hall, Karin slowed her step briefly when she heard a woman sobbing, the sound muffled by the closed door to another office. Maybe they should have called the clinic A Woman’s Tears, they ran so freely here.

Sometimes she was amazed that of the five women psychologists and counselors in practice here, three were happily married to nice men. She was grateful for the reminder that kind, patient men did exist. They might even be commonplace and not extraordinary at all. In the stories—no, the tragedies —that filled her days, men were the monsters, rarely the heroes.

She shook her head, discomfited by her own cynicism. This path she now walked wasn’t one she’d set out on because she’d been bruised from an awful childhood or an abusive father. True, her parents had divorced, and she thought that was why she’d aimed to go into family counseling, as if the child inside her still thought she could mend her own family. But her dad was a nice man, not one of the monsters.

She couldn’t deny, though, that the years here had changed her, made her look at men and women differently. She dated less and less often, as if she’d lost some capacity to hope. Which was ironic, since she spent her days trying to instill hope in other women.

In the small staff lounge, she took her mug from the cupboard.

Shaking off the inexplicable moment of malaise, she thought again, Please let Lenora make it. Let this ending be happy.

“MAN, I WISH I could shoot from the free-throw line.” Grumbling, the boy snagged the ball that had just dropped, neat as you please, through the hoop.

The net itself was torn, the asphalt playground surface cracked, but playing here felt like going back to the roots of the game to Bruce Walker, who waggled his fingers. “Still my turn.”

Trevor bounced the basketball hard at him. “It’s not fair.”

They argued mildly. The game of horse was as fair as Bruce could make it, handicapping himself so that he shot from much farther out. He pointed out that he was six feet three inches tall and had been All-Southern California in high-school basketball.

“Whereas you,” he said, “are twelve years old. You’ve developed a dandy layup, and you’re quick. One of these days, you’ll start growing an inch a week. Kid you not.”

“An inch a week!” Trevor thought that was hysterical.

Bruce guessed the idea held appeal for Trevor because it transformed him into a superhero. He was at that awkward age when most boys were physically turning into young adolescents, developing muscles, growing hair. In contrast, Trevor could have been ten years old. He wasn’t much over five feet tall, and so skinny even his elbows were knobby. His voice wasn’t yet cracking, or even deepening. He wanted to be a man, and didn’t even look like an adolescent.

Yeah, tough age.

Bruce, a homicide detective with the Seattle Police Department, had volunteered to be a Big Brother and had been paired with Trevor DeShon a year ago. He’d made the decision to offer his time as a form of payback. A cop had befriended him as a kid, making a huge difference in his life. What went around came around, Bruce figured.

Trev’s mother had struggled to keep them in an apartment after Trevor’s father was arrested for domestic violence. Her jaw had been wired shut for weeks after that last beating.

His dad had never hit him, Trev said, but that was because his mom always signaled him to go hide when Dad walked in the door drunk and in a bad mood. He’d huddle in his room, listening to his parents scream at each other, and would later get bags of frozen peas or corn to put on his mom’s latest shiner.

Bruce didn’t want Trevor growing up to be just like his dad, or turning to drugs like his mom. Maybe Bruce, by being a role model, showing Trevor there was a different kind of life out there than what he saw at home and in his rough neighborhood, could change what would otherwise be an inevitable outcome.

What Bruce hadn’t expected was to worry about the kid as much as he did.

After the game of horse, they practiced layups and worked on Trevor’s defensive moves, after which Bruce let him pick where to go for dinner.

That always meant pizza. Their deal was they both had a salad first so they got their vegetables. Bruce pretended not to notice how much cheese the boy put on his.

They did their best talking while they ate. Tonight, Bruce asked casually, “You heard from your dad lately?”

Trev shrugged. “He called Saturday. Mom wasn’t home.”

Mom would have hung up on him, Bruce knew. Trevor hadn’t seen his father in two years, although the guy had tried to maintain contact, Bruce had to give him that.

“You talked to him?”

“He asked about school ’n stuff. Like you do.”

“You tell him about that A in social studies?”

Trevor nodded but also hunched his shoulders. He stabbed at his lettuce with the fork and exclaimed, “Mom and me don’t need him. I don’t know why he keeps calling.”

“He’s your dad.”

Ironic words from him, since he hadn’t spoken to his own father in years and had no intention of ever doing so again. But Trevor didn’t share Bruce’s feelings toward his father. The boy tried to hide how glad he was that his dad hadn’t given up, but it shone on his face sometimes.