Chapter 7

Tony

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” Oz asked when I met him up the hall from Chrissy’s room. I looked him over, taking in his bored and unimpressed look and sighed, trying to put it into a neat little box not that he’d ‘get’ because Oz wasn’t stupid, but more in a way to make him give a fuck about it. That was the thing about Oz, he just didn’t give a fuck unless you gave him a reason to. Once you did, though? He was all in.

“Because like it or not, she’s one of our own,” I said and he raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, how do you figure, man?” He was listening, which was at least something.

I explained about how she may be on the defense side of things but how she was one of the rare ones doing it for all of the right reasons. He just looked at me with that ‘what do you take me for?’ look and I sighed.

“Let me guess, you think she’s an asshole.”

“Yup. All lawyers are.”

“Until you need one,” I said flatly.

“Still assholes then, too.”

“Fine, okay,” I said nodding, “She’s an asshole like I’m an asshole. You may not like me, and think that I’m an asshole, but you put the donation in the hat when it’s passed and you stand up and do the right thing anyways because we’re all part of the same damn community, the blue one.”

He looked me up and down and stuffed his beanie hat for that big bald head of his in the side pocket of his tactical pants. “You’re right,” he said and I felt my insides go liquid with relief. “I think you’re an asshole.” I laughed, I couldn’t help it. Oz was always good at catching a guy off guard. Through his own grin he said, “But you’re right about the other stuff too,” and the last vestiges of apprehension left me.

“Thanks, man.”

“Just doing what we all do best, the black knight routine.”

“Don’t you mean white knight?”

“Man, what is it with all you motherfuckers and everything having to be white all the damn time?”

“Hey, you’re the one being racist on this one, dude!”

“I ain’t racist. Shit, I got a color TV at home.”

“What? How? I can’t even with you sometimes, man.” I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Go on, get out of here. I’ll be here ‘til Poe gets off then he’ll take over for the next watch.”

“You going in to talk to her?”

“Hell no, man. She’s a lawyer didn’t you just hear me? They’re all assholes. I’ll post up outside the door.”

“Good deal, because I wasn’t totally sure how I was going to explain that to her.”

“What, she don’t know about the threats?” he asked, frowning.

“Man, weren’t you listening back at the Ten-Thirteen? No, she doesn’t. She needs time to heal without more stress added on.”

He shook his head, “I ain’t into all that, man. That’s all you. You asked for help, I’m here. That’s all I give a shit about.”

“Tell me about it, and I appreciate that; you have no idea.”

“Don’t be getting all emotional on me now,” Oz said dismissively and I grinned, shaking my head and held up my hand. We knocked fists and I left.

Jaime had taken off ahead of me by a few minutes so it was just me heading back down to the garage. I rode to Chrissy’s place first and banged on the super’s apartment. He grumbled about it, but gave me the key to Chrissy’s new lock and door. I went up to her apartment, the doorway freshly framed; the door giving off the smell of fresh cut lumber under the heavier scent of new paint. I stuck the key in the lock and twisted, giving the door a shove.

“Damn.”

I tipped my head back and let out an explosive breath at the ceiling. I knew that crime scenes didn’t magically clean themselves up, but this shit had slipped my mind. I guess maybe I’d thought that management or the super might have done something about the worst of it, but apparently not.

The stink wasn’t great but it was manageable. I opened up some windows and looked around, heaving a sigh. This was, for the most part, a one man job but the couch needed to go. The blood wasn’t coming out and she didn’t need to come home to this. I pulled out my phone and dialed and knew I was going to owe and owe big.

“Yeah, it’s Youngblood…”

***

Two hours later the couch was lined up to go out the door and there were three trash bags sitting on it, ready to go down to the dumpster in the alley. Backdraft wasn’t a happy camper, but he’d gotten here just in time to help me out with the trash haul and hadn’t had to deal with the joy that’d been scrubbing blood and dried wine out of the hardwood floor on hands and knees. The stains were still super apparent, but nothing short of pulling up and laying new boards was going to help that.

“You ready?” he demanded.

“Yeah.”

“One, two, three; lift!”

We wrestled the damn couch, a real nice silvery microfiber that looked like suede, out to the alley. We set it down by the dumpster. We looked at each other, chests heaving and arms burning and Backdraft asked, “This ain’t just about feeling sorry for a victim, is it? You like her, don’t you?”

“Be lying if I denied it.” I said.

“Didn’t you date this bitch a few years back?”

“One, she’s not a bitch and two, yeah, yeah we dated.”

“Well then what happened?”

I shrugged, “It just didn’t work out.” He gave me a look like seriously, and I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t like it was some epic fucking romance or anything. It was three and a half dates and none of them made it past first base.”

“Dude, all that tells me is that you seriously suck at sealing the deal.” I turned and he followed as we made our way back into the building and up to Chrissy’s floor.

“Wasn’t like that, either. Chrissy’s a classy girl. Not some ‘one and done’ type deal. At the time I really was hoping we’d reconnect when we were both in a better position.”

“You could have had her in multiple positions if you’d tried harder,” he cracked and I shook my head.

“You may be all about the Holster Humpers, and Badge Bunnies but that’s not my thing.”

He frowned and shook his head, “It was fun while it lasted, but I’m pretty much over it, now.”

“What’s going on with you?” I demanded and he sighed, and leaned back against the brick wall of the building next door to Chrissy’s.

“Shit’s going sideways with Torrid,” he said and didn’t sound happy about it. I searched his face and asked, “Sideways how, exactly?”

“Same shit, different day… I work too much, I’m never home. We’re always broke, and somehow that’s my fault. You know, typical couples crap. What else you need me for?”

It wasn’t ‘typical couples crap,’ we all liked Torrid enough, but she was a high maintenance bitch and Backdraft needed someone decidedly less so. He wasn’t suited for an alpha female, being too damn alpha himself. He needed someone decidedly more submissive, but it wasn’t my place to tell him something he already knew.

I shook my head and said, “That’s it, man.”

“Seriously? You called me down here just to move a couch and three bags of trash?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you needed help cleaning up, I thought there was more.”

“No, man. I just needed a hand with the couch. Too awkward to get it on my own.”

“Shit, I take back every curse I uttered when I hung up the phone,” he said. I laughed and he asked skeptically, “You need anything else?”

“No, man. Get out of here.” I pushed off the wall of Chrissy’s apartment building and opened up my arms. We bear hugged and slapped each other on the backs.

“Sweet, call me anytime if it’s going to be like that,” he declared and I nodded.

“I’m holding you to that, asshole.”

We clasped hands and bumped shoulders, slapping each other on the back in a manly hug one more time.

“See you around, brother.”

“Keep the shiny side up, man.”

He turned around and I watched the emblem on the back of his cut, our club’s colors; fade into the dark. It made me smile every time I saw it. Most people wouldn’t get it, but the ‘Young’ in my road name totally did. We were a real life pack of superheroes when you thought about it, and every time I watched one of my brothers’ walk away, I saw that shield and that knight’s piece with the rays coming off of it and thought to myself that it was just our team’s emblem.

I loved being a cop. I didn’t always love what came with it, the suffering, the broken, and the violence, but I loved being a part of the solution to it all. I wouldn’t trade that part for the world.

I looked at Chrissy’s suddenly empty living room and sighed. Her laptop was on the coffee table along with its charger, plugged in off to the side and fully charged. I think that was our first clue that this whole thing hadn’t been a robbery. Well, that, and the fact that there was way too much media attention surrounding Chrissy and coincidences were pretty few and far between when it came to police work. Usually the most obvious answer was the answer. Occam’s razor totally applying. That was the philosophic principle that if two options presented themselves, it was usually the simpler of the two that was the answer. The more assumptions you had to make, the less likely that was to be the answer.

Take Chrissy’s place, for instance. It was neat and clean, dusted and everything orderly that hadn’t been fucked up after the whole having her shit kicked in. Nothing was out of place, simple deduction being that no robbery had occurred and the gunman was legitimately here to kill her. Sami Lynn Hayworth may have been the first one shot, but that was because she’d been in a direct line of sight to the front door, Chrissy’s position in the apartment hadn’t been.

I could make other, subtler deductions about Chrissy’s lifestyle and tastes based on what was present. She didn’t have a cable box. That meant one of two things. Either she wasn’t much of a TV watcher or she was too busy with work to bother with owning cable. The latter was definitely the simpler answer because of the stack of movies on top of the Blu-ray player and the fact that there was a Netflix emblem on the Blu-ray’s remote.

I felt a little like a creeper going through her little one bedroom, but I located her tablet and her kindle and had my curiosity resolved as to why she needed both. The kindle wasn’t one of those ones that could double as a tablet. Instead, it was one of those weird ones that looked like a printed page. A pair of reading glasses were perched forlornly on the edge and it struck me.

I was in Chrissy’s home. Going through her belongings and yeah it was to help her, but this moment deserved so much of my attention and care. This was a total invasion of her privacy which had already been violated on so many levels, first by that asshole, and then by me and CSU. Now, here I was again for a different reason, but damn. I needed to do everything here with respect.

I opened closets and looked for a bag to put it all in and I came up with a big beach tote. I wondered then if it was something she liked to do. Judging by the wear on the buttons of her kindle, she liked to read. There was a light dusting of sand in the bottom of the bag and I suddenly had an image of her on a beach somewhere, lounging back in a chair, painted toes digging into the sand. It was a nice image, sun gleaming on her skin, bringing out those Italian roots and kissing it with that olive tone most women dropped serious dough at a tanning salon for.

“Shit, McCormick. You have one hell of an active imagination.” I said to myself on a sigh.

As much as I both did and didn’t want to, I went through her drawers and found her some of her own things. Underthings, a nice set of pajamas in a silvery satin, top and bottoms. They were one of those sets that looked like – and felt like – expensive shit. I folded them with care and found another set just beneath them in a burgundy. I packed those, too. I skipped the skimpier lacey things and tried to get my mind out of the gutter but it was hard.

Chrissy Franco looked like a younger version of Monica Bellucci. All large dark eyes, high cheekbones and those lips that begged to be kissed. Though I’d never gotten to see under her pencil skirts and satin blouses, the way the material had clung to her figure left all the right things to the imagination but left no doubt that the body under them was straight bangin’. It’d been such a bitch not taking her up on the offer of a one night stand on our last date, and I’d kicked myself for it a lot over the last few years, but still, I stood by what I’d said.

Christina Marie Franco was a woman who deserved way better than that, and I wasn’t going to be that guy.

I pulled the shit together that I thought she would need along with the items she’d requested and made sure that everything was good. Satisfied, I took the bag and items out to the living room, made sure the bag was packed tight enough and wound her laptop cord up and stashed both the laptop itself and the cord in the top of the tote and with a last look around, scooped up her purse and her keys and went out the front door, locking it up tight.

I went down to the super’s apartment to give him the keys and he scowled at me.

“Those are hers, you’re going to see her ain’t ‘cha?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Then what’re you tryin’ to hand ‘em to me fer?”

He slammed the door in my face and I had to laugh a little. Sometimes the people in this city were, well, they were just something else.

I stashed things between the two hard sided saddlebags on my bike and tried to decide if I wanted to swing by the hospital, or just head home. It’d been a long fucking day, so I went with home over the hospital for now. I mean, I had said I would bring her what she’d asked for tomorrow when I’d seen her, except in about an hour and a half more, it would be tomorrow.

I rode across the bay bridge, locked the bike in the garage, and called it good for tonight. I’d gone above and beyond, it was true, but then again, Chrissy wasn’t just any vic, either. I needed to quit lying to myself that I would do this for anybody because it straight up wasn’t true.

Here was to second chances and all of that.