Chapter 13

Tony

 

It was hard as hell for me to fall asleep knowing she was just down the hall and hurting like she was. I wanted to fix it, and I couldn’t and that drove me next to insane. She was still racked out when I got up the next morning, and I let her sleep, standing in the doorway for a minute watching her chest rise and fall, her face slack and angelic but still tight with pain, a fine line developing between the sweeping arches of her brows.

I went down to make coffee, feed Roscoe, and to make some calls. First thing first, I needed to get her prescriptions that’d been left with the inpatient therapy facility called into the pharmacy closest to my house.

I sighed, because before I could even see to her comfort, I had to call my Captain. He picked up on the second ring, his own voice rough around the edges.

“Hello?”

“It’s McCormick.”

“Hey,” he started and without any preamble went right into it, it was one of the things we liked about each other. “Robbery is running prints and shit out of her place. It’s in their hands, that part of things. Still no leads on the murder of her friend, and still nothing on the dude making threats, but there hasn’t been one in a minute. Not sure where to go from here.”

“Robbery canvas her building?”

“They know how to do their job, Tony. Too bad I can’t say the same for you. What the hell were you thinkin’ having her gather stuff up and pack it up before robbery and CSU got the chance to do anything?”

“Yeah, sorry. Habit I guess, and the truth on that? Guess I let my heart overrule my head. These cocksuckers have already taken so much from her. Her whole life is down to one suitcase and a couple totes. Completely understand if you wanna give me a rip.”

“You taking the day to get her squared away?” he asked, pointedly ignoring the notion of writing me up. I think the guilt at our inability and ineffectiveness up to this point was eating at him, too.

“How’d you guess that’s what I was gonna ask?”

“Yeah, well, between you and me, this has got to be one of the biggest pain in the ass cases to ever hit our division.”

I made a disgusted noise and agreed with a, “Who you tellin’?”

“Gotta love this social media shit,” he griped. “Wish we could go back to the days where you got your news from the newspaper and not the internet.”

“I don’t think there’s even a precedent for what we’re seeing.” I shook my head as I said it, realized he couldn’t see it, and stopped.

“I don’t think there is either, I mean, not to this extreme.” We were both quiet for a minute and he said, “You’ve got the day to get her straight.”

“Take it out of my vacation if you can?”

“Yeah, yeah, I could do that. Shit, you got more than enough of it.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“You bet.”

I had close to three hours in which I handled all other business before I looked up and saw her standing in her pajamas, hair tousled in the doorway leading from my kitchen and dining room to the staircase upstairs.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Your physical therapist. They know to come here and given your circumstances, are willing to make house calls. Your insurance is in the know and still willing to cover. You’re good to go.”

She blinked and asked a bit incredulously, “You did all that for me?”

“Seems to me it’s about time someone out here did something to make your life easier, not harder.” She leaned her good shoulder against the doorjamb and I smiled and asked, “Need help with that?” indicating the sling dangling from her fingers. She nodded and I pushed off the stool at my kitchen counter.

I quietly helped her into the sling, carefully avoiding jostling her arm. She adjusted the strap across her chest with her good arm and I wound the one around her waist and threaded it through the metal loop for her. She said, “That’s good,” when I had it tight enough for her and I stepped back.

“I’ve got to run into the city and drop the cruiser back at the motor pool. I’ll pick up my bike, come back down this way and get your prescriptions on the way. You going to be good for a couple three hours on your own?”

She smiled bravely and said, “As long as you give me the Wi-Fi password.”

I grinned and said, “As long as you promise to stay off social media.”

She sniffed and nodded, her eyes growing glassy and said, “Had to disable all of my accounts while I was still in the hospital. I went to log on and two minutes of it was more than enough for me.”

I sighed and shook my head, “Me and my mouth again.”

“No, it’s fine, really… I know you’re just looking out.”

“Yeah.”

“So, um, yeah.”

“Help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen. I’ll be back and with food. Coffee is made, there’s creamer and shit in the fridge. Can you manage?”

“That’s at least one thing I can do one-handed,” she was smiling again and I nodded.

“Okay.”

I slid past her and went upstairs. She’d tried to make the bed, but there was only so much she’d been able to do. I could respect the effort, though. I put her bags up on the bed and opened them for her so she could try and put some things away if she wanted to. I pulled open the dresser’s drawers and found them mostly empty. The few odds and ends I dropped into one bottom drawer so they’d be ready for her.

A quick shower and shave, some clean clothes, and I was ready to go. I shrugged into my jacket and cut, and headed out the door after a brief exchange with Chrissy, giving her the Wi-Fi password and making sure she was set for now. Couldn’t say I blamed her for not wanting to deal with getting dressed or doing anything today. She looked pretty tired, despite sleeping, and I had to wonder if it was a good sleep.

I felt a little lighter when I went out my front door and got in the unmarked. The tension between me and Chrissy was undeniable, as much as it was undefinable. Sexual? Some of it, but a lot of it had to do with the weight of the situation. Shit was dire, nothing was certain for her, in her present state she was wounded, homeless, with the world out to get her. Her future didn’t look much brighter and her past was tainted with an appalling sadness. She was alone, cast adrift and everyone was hostile or, even though it wasn’t necessarily true in the case of the department, on the surface it looked like everyone was apparently unwilling to help.

I was only one man, and couldn’t reverse all of the ills in her life, but fuck if I didn’t want to try. I was well aware I couldn’t save everyone. I’d been a cop long enough to know that, but I wanted to do everything and then some to save her… because if anyone deserved saving, it was Christina Marie Franco. She was one of the good ones, I wholeheartedly believed that and knew it was the truth, even if none of these other assholes in this city could see it.

I got a text as soon as I pulled up to the booth leading into the precinct’s underground garage. I used the key card to lift the gate so I could pull in and checked my phone. It was from my partner.

Finally a fucking break. You should come in.

I didn’t even bother responding, I just went upstairs.

“Holy shit, that’s gotta be some kind of a record.”

“Guess my ESP was working double-time,” I cracked back. “What’s up?”

“Neighbor across the hall dimed out some fuckin’ teens in Chrissy’s building. Apparently the Super has a bad habit of leaving the office unlocked and one of the kids jacked the key to her apartment. Guess one of ‘em’s a big baseball fan, convinced his buddies it’d be easy and fun times. They knew she wasn’t home on account of the fucking vultures that’ve been this city’s news reporters lately. They figured if they fucked some shit up, spray painted her walls, they’d get away with it on account of her address having been posted for everyone and their dog to see. Robbery put out a BOLO to all of the area pawn shops and sure as shit, they got one of ‘em trying to pawn the jewelry she had listed with her insurance company.”

I dropped into my chair at my desk saying, “Well fuck me sideways, it’s about time we got some good news and some kind of break when it comes to this mess.”

“Thought you’d like that.” Jaime leaned back in his own chair his expression pretty pleased with himself, a grin on his face like the fuckin’ cat that’d got the cream.

I raised an eyebrow. “You got something else?”

His face fell and he scowled, “Thought you might actually be happy with that… excuse the fuck out of me.”

“Easy partner, I am happy about it…” I propped my boots on my desk.

“Let me guess, it’s just bugging the shit out of you that we ain’t got a shooter.”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Well, they all fuck up eventually.”

I nodded, reclining in my seat and said, “Yeah, well, you got that right.” It was just a question on if another body hit the floor, first. I sure as hell hoped not. One was enough.

“So what’re you doing here anyways?” he asked, interrupting my dark thoughts.

“Dropping off the cruiser, picking up my bike. You seriously wanted me to come in just for that, though? A bunch of punk kids?”

My partner grinned and I dropped my boots to the floor and leaned in whispering harshly, “Man, fuck you. You do have something else.”

Jaime started laughing at me and said, “Yup.”

“Something about our case.”

“Yup. I got good and bad, what do you want first?”

“You know I like my dessert first.”

“Good, because the bad news kind of was a spoiler for the good. They caught our shooter.”

“Really?”

“Ballistics just came back on the gun, he got pinched for a liquor store robbery while Chrissy was still in the hospital. CSU was backlogged on weapons testing and they just got around to it. They got as good as it gets for a match on the gun as being the same gun that put holes in our girls.”

He tossed a manila file folder onto my desk and I picked it up, flipping it open. “In living color… fancy,” I muttered and let my eyes rove the mugshot. The dude wore a dirty red hooded sweatshirt in the picture. Usually, we printed these things out, we kept them in black and white to conserve cost. I could see why my partner had sent it to the color picture, though. I flipped to the next page in the file, the police sketch that’d come from Chrissy’s description.

“Damn. She pretty much nailed it.”

“Just got to get her in here for a lineup. I already put a request into the jail to have his ass brought in.”

“K, but there’s more bad news,” I said my brain catching up.

“Ah, figured that shit out, did you?” Jaime nodded.

“If our perp was in jail while Chrissy was in the hospital, then the threats, it’s not the same guy, is it?”

“Well, our shooter was picked up on the…” he grabbed the file folder out of my hands and looked himself, “21st at around two-thousand hours.”

I shook my head. That was after the flowers but before the deal with Yale. So, no, not the same guy. What the fuck, Christ? When you gonna cut this girl a break? I thought.

“The thing with Yale was a few days later, so it definitely looks like the shooter and the assclown making threats aren’t the same guy.”

“Of course not, that would make this shit easy.”

“Right, let me know when you’ve got the guy here. I’ll bring Chrissy in for a lineup and then we can see what shakes loose out of the guy.”

“Think she’ll pick him?” Jaime asked, worried.

I nudged open the file folder and separated the arrest sheet with the dude’s mugshot and the artist’s sketch from each other, putting them side by side.

“What do you think?”

Jaime sighed. I think I had more faith in our girl than he did when it came to making the ID, but then again, we’d seen it about a hundred times or more. Witnesses got in here for a lineup and the pressure of making a positive ID got to be too much. Next thing you know, they’re second guessing themselves and they shake apart right then and there and we get no closer to catching the happy bastards.

“Yeah, well, here’s to hoping. Go on and get out of here.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to be gone long, but we were all more than reasonably certain that nobody knew where we’d hidden her. I mean, it wasn’t like house calls were a thing in this day and age, and it was so not even normal protocol for a detective to take a victim home with them like some sort of stray puppy.

I got the hell out of there and rode back across the bridge towards home, stopping at the grocery store and pharmacy on the way. I figured she was probably starving and it’d been a while since I cooked, so I figured why not? I liked to cook, mostly Italian shit, but I was pretty solid on the Irish front, too. It was just typically pointless cooking for one, so I didn’t have much by the way of occasion to do it.

I half wondered what I would find when I got there and when I came through the front door I’d found her pretty much exactly as I’d left her, curled up on the end of my couch, her e-reader thing in her good hand, but the screen blank. She looked back at me when I came through the door leading out to the garage and I realized she’d been staring out the front window.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” she echoed back.

“You doing alright?”

“Yeah, just… thinking.”

“Got some news for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, why don’t you come on into the kitchen while I fix us something to eat?”

“Okay.”

She got up and despite being winged as bad as she was, she managed to make it look graceful. She set her e-reader on the coffee table and padded barefoot into the kitchen behind me. I set the bags on the counter and she managed to get herself up onto one of the bar stools.

I went around and hung my jacket and cut off the back of one of the dining room chairs and pushed back the sleeves on the thermal I’d put on under my tee shirt.

“What’s the news?” she asked and I met her solemn gaze and started with the big stuff.

“We caught your shooter.”

“What? Are you serious?”

I filled her in on everything and she listened, her attention rapt, and said, “So I suppose a lineup is in order?”

“Yeah, no pressure.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose as I unloaded the bags I’d brought in.

“I’ll do fine,” she said and stared out the gauzy curtains over the back slider out onto the deck. “It’s not like I’ll ever forget that face.”

I set down the loaf of bread I’d just pulled out of the bag and leaned my hands on the countertop. “I believe you. Your sketch was spot on.”

“So does this mean I’m safe?” she asked and I think my expression said it all because her shoulders dropped.

“Looks like the guy that shot you, and the guy that made a play for you at the hospital aren’t the same dude, but to answer your question…” I came around the kitchen island and touched the side of her face. “You’re with me, so yeah, you’re safe. Nobody, aside from me, the Captain, and Jaime know where you are.” Which wasn’t precisely true. I mean, Yale and the rest of the guys knew, but that honestly wasn’t here nor there.

I stood inside her space and just kind of chilled there, hoping it was reassuring and not overbearing. She looked up at me, her breath shallow and her eyes longing, and I understood that. I think what I was feeling was a perfect match to what she had going on inside, at least where we were concerned about each other.

“Kiss me…” she murmured suddenly, and I wasn’t about to say no.

I lowered my lips to hers and kissed her carefully, moving slowly. Her lips parted beneath mine, inviting. I took the invitation, slipping my tongue past her lips, chest seizing, heart stuttering inside the cage of my ribs when she let out this low, sultry, desire filled moan that held that perfect edge of relief, that sound that said, I’ve waited too long…

I could have stood there and kissed her for ages, but all things, especially the good ones, must come to an end. Both of our stomachs putting out a loud and grumpy growl put the kibosh on moving things along further and I drew back with a chuckle, pressing a kiss to her forehead before letting her go.

She sat with her eyes closed for a moment, fingertips pressed to her lips as if committing every single last moment of the kiss we’d just shared to memory, like it would never happen again.

Even though it wasn’t our first kiss ever, it felt like a first kiss. You know, like the first kiss, and I don’t know… maybe it was. I knew I wanted more, and I also knew that she was on board with how she was staring across the counter at me now.

“Thank you,” she murmured and I smiled crookedly.

“If you think that was any kind of hardship for me, you’ve got another think coming…” I growled and she smiled.

“Thank you for that, too.”

“You’re welcome,” I said realizing that I’d done something that even I couldn’t fully understand. One of those mysteries of being a woman thing. I also knew that it wasn’t a mystery I needed to solve. That whatever it was, it was okay and so I just let it be.

I had a lunch to cook anyhow.