Copper Lake Encounter. Marilyn Pappano
him back home to Copper Lake, where he’d been the first black officer hired by the department. A few decades behind other southern cities but light-years ahead of plenty of places.
He’d gotten Tased for the honor of serving and protecting. He’d been spit on and wrestled with and even shot. This Saturday morning, though, he thought the job would finally kill him. Turning to glare at the prisoner in the backseat, he gritted out, “Remember that right to remain silent? For the love of God, Maggie, would you use it?”
She stopped wailing long enough to glare back at him. “Come on, Ty, you know me. You arrested me, what, three times? You know I would never make meth in the house where my kids are at!”
Ignoring the snort from Pete Petrovski, his partner, behind the wheel, Ty scowled again. “I’ve arrested you at least eight times, Maggie, and twice your boyfriends were making meth in the house with your kids there.”
Mascara ran down her cheeks in streaks, a fine fit to her stringy bleached-blond hair and clothes that smelled as if she’d worn them most of the week. “They’ll take ’em away for sure this time! Ty, you can’t let that happen!”
He faced forward again and tried to tune out the howls from the backseat. It was a fine show, impressive for someone who hadn’t been treated to the scene plenty of times already. He didn’t feel any sympathy for Maggie Holigan. She’d been given multiple chances to get straight, to be a good mother to her kids, but she’d thrown them all away for men, for drugs, for oblivion.
He did feel sorry for the two girls, though. It wasn’t easy being a Holigan in this town. If there was a wrong side of the tracks further dividing people who already lived on the wrong side of the tracks, the Holigans were there. Mothers run off, fathers in prison, drugs and booze incapacitating the few who stuck around, looked down on by even the other poor people and no one who cared enough to take the kids in and give them a chance.
Ty gave a silent prayer of thanks for his grandfather, who’d taken him in when he’d needed someone.
Her histrionics getting no response didn’t curb Maggie’s tears. In fact, she increased the volume another ten decibels. Pete grimaced and settled his left arm on the door frame. Ty would bet he was holding one finger in his ear. He wouldn’t mind doing the same, though it wasn’t the most dignified way for a police officer to go about his official duties.
By the time they reached the station with the adjacent jail, Maggie had stopped to take a few breaths. Though it was routine for her, he glanced around. The way his luck ran, one day she’d shriek so long and loud that she’d bust a vessel in her brain and die right there, in a place as familiar to most people as their homes, handcuffed in the backseat of a police car.
He couldn’t help thinking, albeit guiltily, that her daughters would be better for it.
The rest of the suspects taken into custody at Maggie’s house—her boyfriend of the month, his cousin and three buddies—had already been escorted inside and were going through the booking process. Ty freed Maggie’s left wrist, waited until she sat on a bench and then hooked the dangling cuff to the metal loop welded there.
“Isn’t this a fun way to spend a Saturday?”
He didn’t have to look to know it was Detective Katherine Isaacs standing behind him. She’d been teamed with their boss, Tommy Maricci, this morning, and they’d been the first to return to the station with their prisoners. As he’d been the first black hire, the first black detective, Kiki had been the first female.
“Yeah,” he said before he turned. “Hell of a morning.”
She wore her brown hair pulled back tightly, braided to control its natural frizz. Like everyone else, she was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, though she definitely looked better in them. With pale skin, a few freckles and blue eyes, she was smart and aggressive, the first requirements for a woman in a male-dominated field. The only problem was she was so used to going balls-to-the-wall for what she wanted that she had trouble accepting that she sometimes couldn’t have it.
And what she’d wanted, for the past few years, had been him.
“You got plans for tonight?” she asked as they both turned toward the hall that led to their office. Her head topped his shoulder; she wasn’t more than a few inches shorter than him and probably didn’t have much more body fat than him.
He missed the days when he’d dated shorter, softer, rounder women.
“Uh, yeah. I’m going over to my grandfather’s house. Fix him some dinner, watch a movie. He’s partial to John Wayne.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Really. Saturday night, and you’re hanging out with Grandpa? Come on, Gadney. Doesn’t Pops go to bed with the sun?”
“Actually, he stays up later than me most nights. Says he doesn’t have enough time left to waste it sleeping.” Ty repeated Granddad’s words with a smile that was more grimace. Everyone had a time to die, and Granddad’s couldn’t be too far away. He’d already lived eighty full years, forty of them mourning his wife, twenty-five of them raising various grandkids and great-nephews. It had been a good life, and he was ready to meet his Maker.
Ty would never be ready for life without Granddad in it.
He opened the door at the end of the hallway that led into the police department proper, and Kiki brushed against him as she went through. “Can’t you visit Pops tomorrow? It’s Saturday night, Ty, and I want to party.”
“You’ve got other friends to party with. Granddad’s expecting me.” He said it in as friendly a voice as he could muster, but it didn’t win him any points with her.
Her lower lip sliding into a pout, she muttered something that he was pretty sure was obscene before turning into the women’s locker room. Lieutenant Maricci, coming out of the men’s locker room, gave a rueful shake of his head.
“I warned you, Gadney. Never date within the department.” Maricci held up one finger and then stuck up another. “Never date a woman who can take you in a fair fight.” Another finger. “Never date a woman who’s a better shot than you.” One more finger. “And never date a woman who’s just freaking nuts. It gets ugly when it goes bad. And it always goes bad.”
“Yeah, Lieutenant, I know.” He’d known it wasn’t a good idea the first time a bunch of them had gone to a party at Kiki’s place and he hadn’t been smart enough to not be the last one to leave. A good time, a few beers and...
He hadn’t gotten home until the late the next morning.
That had been two years ago, and they’d been together off and on since. Sometimes she said she loved him, and sometimes she said she hated him. He felt bad about it, but he didn’t love her. He didn’t even much like her when he was with her.
More important, he didn’t like himself when he was with her. Too many arguments, too much pressure, too much everything except satisfaction.
“What about Maggie’s kids?” he asked before Maricci could walk away.
“Social workers are on their way to pick them up from the neighbors and will take them to an emergency shelter.”
“They bite, you know? And they’re really good at hiding. And running away.”
Maricci grinned. “Yeah, first time I removed them from the home, my shins were bruised for a week. It took two of us to put them in the car because by the time I got one buckled in, the other was unbuckled and out the door. They’re showing the finest rebellious spirit of their uncles.”
They both got somber. It was one thing for the grown Holigans to raise hell, but it sure made it hard to find placement for the five- and six-year-old girls when it was like herding cats one-handed. “I don’t suppose a respectable, law-abiding relative has turned up since the last time Maggie was in jail.”
“Law-abiding, definitely not. But maybe one of the guys has conned some innocent into marrying him or has found God in prison and wants to do the