Against the Paw Read online

  The place was painted a light mauve with ivory trim, the front door a contrasting navy blue. A giant magnolia tree loomed over the front yard, preventing the grass from making any headway, but an ivy ground covering had creeped over from next door and did a fair job of hiding the dirt. A prefab one-car detached garage sat to the back and right of the house, added after the house was originally built. A six-foot wooden privacy fence enclosed the backyard, giving Brigit a safe place to play, chase squirrels, and do her dirty business.

  Frankie and I had been roommates only a short time, but so far things had been going great. Brigit even got along with Zoe, Frankie’s fluffy calico cat. Or perhaps “tolerated” was a more precise word. Zoe was like a pesky kid sister to Brigit. Even now, as Brigit wagged her tail upon seeing me, Zoe crept out from under the couch and swiped at my partner’s moving tail with her paw.

  Frankie had arrived home a half hour earlier after working the graveyard shift at the nearby Kroger store. Though it was breakfast time for most of us, the fact that Frankie would soon be hitting the hay made this early-morning meal dinner for her. Hence the partially eaten frozen pizza and bag of nacho cheese Doritos on the coffee table in front of her.

  I stopped in front of the futon, noted the ring of Day-Glo orange powder encircling Brigit’s fuzzy muzzle, and frowned at Frankie. “I told you Brigit can’t have any more people food until she loses some weight.”

  Frankie didn’t take her eyes off the television, where she was watching a zombie show she’d recorded on the DVR. “I didn’t give her any food.”

  I moved in front of the TV, forcing Frankie to look at me, and put my hands on my hips. “Are you lying to a cop?”

  “No.” A grin tugged at her lips. “I’m fibbing to my roommate.”

  “Who happens to be a cop.”

  She raised an unconcerned shoulder. “You’re off duty.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “A cop is never really off duty.”

  It might sound trite, but it was true. Police work wasn’t one of those jobs you could leave at the office, so to speak. The job followed the officers home, sometimes haunting them, other times consuming them. We cops suffered significantly higher-than-average divorce rates, a slightly higher-than-average suicide rate, and, according to several studies, shorter life expectancies than the average person. So why on earth would we do a job that asked so much of us and the people we loved?

  I couldn’t speak for all policemen and -women, but in my case it came down to a few simple things. One, the world could be a hard, cruel, and violent place, but it had the potential to be so much better. If I could help make it better, why wouldn’t I? Two, I’d never been the type to aspire to a fancy house, expensive jewelry, or a flashy car. Rather, I enjoyed an intellectual challenge. Becoming a detective and solving crimes would give me that challenge I was looking for. Last, and definitely least, because I’d been a twirler in my high school band, I already knew how to handle a baton. Police work was one of the few, if not only, jobs in which baton-handling experience would come in handy.

  Brigit nudged Frankie’s hand, making a wordless request for more crunchy chips.

  My roommate looked down at the dog. “Sorry, girl. Your mommy’s cut you off.” With that she grabbed the bag and noisily rolled down the top to close it.

  Brigit cut a look my way, as if she knew I was the reason why the flow of carbs coated in fluorescent cheese powder had ceased.

  I walked to the kitchen and poured a cup of the low-calorie dog food the veterinarian had recommended into Brigit’s large aluminum feeding bowl. On hearing the clatter of kibble hitting metal, Brigit trotted into the kitchen. She looked down at the paltry serving in her bowl, gave the unfamiliar nuggets a sniff, and tossed me a look that said Are you freakin’ kidding me? Diet food?

  “You need to lose weight,” I explained, as if the dog would understand me.

  Evidently she didn’t give a rat’s ass about her fat ass. She put her paw on the edge of the bowl and flipped it over, spilling its contents all over the floor. She sat down, her expression now offering an insincere Oops!

  I frowned down at her. “You know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  I swept up the kernels and tried again, this time mixing the low-calorie food with her regular kibble. “How’s that?”

  She put her face in the bowl and began to eat.

  “Good girl.”

  I fixed myself a bowl of healthy, whole-grain cereal with soymilk. While working as a police officer involved the occasional foot chase, cops spent most of our time sitting in our cruisers, driving around. Not exactly good for the heart or body mass index. To avoid ending up with thick thighs or pancake butt, I tried to eat right and performed isometric exercises with my glutes while out on patrol.

  I carried my breakfast to the kitchen table and took a seat.

  Zoe, Frankie’s furry calico cat, leaped up onto the table and tried to stick her head into my bowl.

  “Scram,” I told her, defending my cereal with a wave of a napkin.

  Zoe took a couple of steps back and sat down on the table, lifting a leg and spreading her fuzzy toes to clean between them.

  “Learn some manners,” I told her.

  The cat gave me a look even more arrogant and disdainful than the one Brigit had given me earlier. When had these animals figured out that they were in charge?

  When I’d finished my breakfast and brushed my teeth, I returned to the living room and patted my leg. “C’mon, Brig. Time to get to work.”

  Brigit hopped down from the couch to follow me.

  “See you later,” I told Frankie as I opened the front door.

  “If you happen to talk to Seth,” she called from the couch, “tell him I’m ready to get back on the horse.”

  I stopped in the open doorway. “Really?”

  I’d been pestering Frankie for days to go on a double date with me and Seth. I was tired of seeing her mope around, lonely and depressed, and there was no end of eligible young guys at the firehouse or the military base where Seth served his one-weekend-a-month army reserve duty.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just make sure Seth gets me someone tall. I want a guy who can look me in the eye, not the mouth.”

  “Tall. Got it. Any other requests?”

  She shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt if he was hot, too, as long as he’s not a jerk.”

  “No jerks. That’s fair.”

  Her lip curled up in a mischievous grin. “It wouldn’t hurt if he was rich, either.”

  “It never does.”

  With that, I raised my hand in good-bye and led my partner out the front door. As we walked down the porch and over to my tiny metallic-blue Smart Car in the driveway, I sent a text to Seth. Frankie’s ready to date. Wants a guy who’s hot but not a jerk. I hoped I wasn’t asking too much. After all, the hot gene and the jerk gene seemed to be linked. It probably went back to some attractive caveman who saw his reflection in a mud puddle and realized he looked damn good in that saber-toothed-tiger loincloth. Me sexy. Oogah.

  I bleeped the locks open and let Brigit into the passenger seat. Circling back to my side, I climbed in, gently elbowing Brigit back to give me at least a partial view out of the side window. The enormous dog took up nearly the whole cab. “Sit back, girl.”

  She complied, settling back in the seat.

  As I put the gearshift in reverse, a reply text arrived from Seth. I’m on it.

  I drove to the Western-1 substation—W1 for short—where I’d been assigned since joining the Fort Worth Police Department a year and a half ago. The W1 division covered nine square miles. Bounded on the north by Interstate 30, on the east by Hemphill, on the south by Berry Street, and on the west by the shore of the Trinity River, W1 included Texas Christian University, Colonial Country Club, Forest Park, the Fort Worth Zoo, and several quaint and relatively quiet older neighborhoods. All in all, it wasn’t a bad gig, especially for a cop like me who thrived on the mental feats posed by police work rat
her than the physical ones and was mostly just biding her time until she qualified to make detective.

  There was only one bad thing about working in W1, and there he was now, exiting his truck and making his way into the station with his usual testosterone-driven swagger. Derek “the Big Dick” Mackey.

  Blurgh.

  While I prided myself on my brain, Derek’s claim to fame was his brawn. He was built like a dump truck. Solid, immovable, and carrying a heavy load. But while dump trucks were generally filled with dirt or debris, Derek was full of himself. The guy was also known for his bravery, boldly going alone into situations where other officers would wait for backup.

  To call Derek a thorn in my side would be an understatement, but in order to tell you what the guy really was I’d have to use at least five of the seven words the FCC wouldn’t let anyone say on regular TV. Instead, how about I use creative license and say he’s a tasbard and a sasshole?

  Derek and I had been partners for several months when I’d first joined the force. During that time, he’d bombarded me with crude, sexist jokes and filled our cruiser with the scents of sweat, onions, and gas. Clearly, he’d been trying to break me. And break me he had. When we’d arrested a woman for driving under the influence and found a bag of meth in her car, he’d suggested I perform an on-the-spot body cavity search. The lewd remark was the last straw. I’d pulled out my Taser and replied to his comments via a high-voltage response that caused him to wet himself and very nearly got me fired. Derek’s inappropriate comments could have put him out of work, too. Luckily for both of us, Derek and Police Chief Garelik were personal friends. The incident was kept off our records and I was allowed to keep my job on the condition I partner with Brigit, whose handler had resigned from the force to take a job in private security. While I hadn’t been at all happy about being paired with a K-9 at first, now I couldn’t imagine working with any other partner.

  I parked, let Brigit out of my car, and clipped her lead onto her collar, leading her inside for the morning briefing. It would probably be over quickly. Things had been pretty routine in W1 the last few days. Routine was a good thing in my book. Over the recent months I’d dealt with a psychopath setting bombs around the city, a purse-snatcher/pickpocket who’d targeted tourists at the stock show and rodeo, and a brutal bastard who’d abused his girlfriend and their child, burglarized homes, and murdered a drug dealer. Who could blame me for wanting to take a break from all the crime and violence?

  I took a space along the back wall of the briefing room next to one of the other female officers in W1. Summer had been with the force three years longer than me, had witnessed three more years of the havoc people could wreak on themselves and each other, yet somehow maintained a disposition as sunny as her curly blond hair. She must be an expert at compartmentalizing, a skill I had yet to fully develop.

  “Hey, you two!” She sent a smile my way before crouching down to give Brigit a nice scratch under the chin. “How’s Sergeant Brigit today, hmm?”

  Brigit responded by licking Summer’s face from chin to ear. Slup!

  “Listen up!” came Captain Leone’s voice from the front of the room, where he’d stepped up to the wooden podium. The captain, a fortyish guy with dark, spongy hair, ruled W1 less with an iron fist and more with his terrifying eyebrows. We officers feared that if we didn’t obey his orders, his crazy, wiry brows would reach out and throttle us. “We’ve got several things to go over today before you head out on the streets.”

  Her cheek slick with dog drool, Summer stood back up next to me and we directed our attention to the captain.

  “Number one,” the captain said, scanning the room with a pointed look. “Check your spelling and numbers when entering traffic ticket information into your computers. The traffic court’s been throwing out citations left and right.”

  He went on to say that one of the local attorneys who handled traffic tickets en masse had successfully argued dozens of cases where the data contained typos, claiming that if a cop couldn’t accurately input a driver’s license or license plate number, the officer might have also erred in putting in other data, such as the purported violation or alleged speed the driver was going. A rather lame argument, in my opinion, but since we officers rarely had time to appear in traffic court to defend our actions, the judge probably felt compelled to dismiss the cases. At least the offender still suffered, though his punishment came in the form of attorney fees rather than a bad mark on his driving record.

  “Make regular rounds by the high schools during the morning and afternoon hours,” Captain Leone continued. “Lunchtime, too. With the end of the school year nearing, students about to graduate might pull some crazy and stupid pranks. We don’t want things to get out of hand.”

  While babysitting high school kids held little appeal to us officers, until the epidemic of senioritis died out in June it couldn’t hurt for law enforcement to be more visible and to stay in the vicinity should things go awry.

  “Last but definitely not least,” Captain Leone said, “keep your eyes peeled for this SOB.”

  He held up a mug shot. It was difficult to tell much about the guy from my vantage point at the back of the room, but he appeared to be Caucasian with brown hair.

  “Name’s Ralph Hurley. He served three years in the state lockup for multiple counts of burglary, aggravated assault, battery, and criminal trespass.”

  He handed the picture printout to an officer sitting on the front row so it could be passed around. While the photo made its way around the room, the captain gave us the scoop. “Hurley broke into several homes in affluent areas of San Antonio at night. Despite being six feet four and two hundred and fifty pounds, he was able to sneak through windows without making a noise and surprise his victims. News reporters dubbed him the ‘Silent Giant.’”

  The captain went on to tell us that Hurley had threatened the residents, sometimes with a handgun, other times with a shotgun, forcing them to turn over their debit cards and provide the associated PINs with the proviso that if the PIN didn’t work he’d return at some point in the future and make them very sorry they’d given him a false number.

  “He’d hit their accounts right away,” the captain explained, “and withdraw as much cash as he could before the victims could notify their banks to deactivate the stolen cards. In most cases he went after female victims who lived alone or whose husbands were not at home, which tells us that he cased their residences before breaking in.”

  An involuntary shudder went through me. Hurley’s victims must have been terrified to face down a super-sized man like him, especially when they were surprised alone in their homes and Hurley’s intentions were unknown. And to realize that Hurley had been watching them while they went about their lives totally unaware? So creepy. Surely the victims would spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, fearing any man who gave them a second glance.

  “Hurley was recently paroled,” the captain continued. “He’d been ordered to wear an ankle monitor to track his whereabouts, but he cut it off Sunday morning.” Captain Leone went on to tell us that Hurley made a quick escape from the efficiency apartment he’d rented in San Antonio, which was a four-hour drive to the south of Fort Worth.

  Given the limitations of an external apparatus like an ankle monitor, maybe it was time to insert a microchip in violent parolees so they could be tracked. Heck, Brigit had a chip in case she got lost or stolen. The mere thought of Brigit being in danger turned my insides to ice. Instinctively, I reached down to stroke her head. She looked up, her big brown eyes locking on mine as if she were trying to read my thoughts. When she gave my hand a comforting lick, I had to wonder if she could, in fact, read my mind. More likely, my emotions had caused me to release some type of fear pheromones and Brigit had picked up on the scent, a canine form of mind reading.

  I raised a hand and Captain Leone lifted his chin in acknowledgment, inviting me to speak. “If he robbed and battered multiple victims,” I asked, “why’d he o
nly serve three years?”

  “Plea bargain,” he replied with a scowl. “Hurley always wore a ski mask and gloves when he broke into the homes and made the withdrawals at the bank. No one could positively identify him. He was also careful not to leave fingerprints.”

  In other words, all of the evidence against him had been circumstantial. The district attorney must have decided it was better to put Hurley behind bars, even if for a relatively short time, rather than risk a “not guilty” verdict at trial and having the man go free.

  Without bothering to raise his hand, Derek asked, “He shoot any of the women?”

  “None that could be confirmed,” the captain replied. “He shoved one victim against a wall and pushed another down a flight of stairs. Broke her arm and collarbone. A woman was shot and killed in her home around the same time Hurley committed his other crimes, but law enforcement wasn’t able to pin the murder on him. The bullet didn’t match any of the weapons in his possession at the time of his arrest. San Antonio PD believes he ditched the gun.”

  Unfortunately, a significant number of murders went unsolved, the killers never brought to account for their crimes. The inability to apprehend and successfully prosecute violent criminals was the most frustrating aspect of law enforcement. Being a cop meant accepting that we could only do so much, that some scores would never be settled, that evil would occasionally prevail. We could only hope that, more times than not, the scales would tip in our favor and justice would be served.

  Leone’s grip on the podium tightened. “On Sunday night a woman in Alamo Heights was shot three times in her home. The bullets damaged some vital organs. One lodged in her skull. She’s in intensive care, fighting for her life. Hurley’s a person of interest in that shooting, too.”

  Summer took a quick look at Hurley’s mug shot and handed it to me. My eyes moved over the photo. Hurley looked like your average Joe, with brown hair and brown eyes, no obvious distinguishing features. Where’s a gold-capped tooth or a Texas-shaped scar when you need one?