The Night Watcher. John Lutz
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have heard a shot. Then she realized the sound she’d heard was the apartment door shattering, but not because Stanford had kicked it in.
Someone inside had kicked it out, and with great force.
“Look out, Rica!” Stanford shouted.
The form that broke from the apartment was massive and moving fast. The guy wasn’t built like Vernel Jefferson. He should have been an NFL linebacker. He came toward Rica head down, legs and arms pumping. She gulped and moved to stand in the center of the hall, wielding her baton, holding her ground.
The man rushing toward her grinned as he flashed beneath the dim lightbulb.
The hell with this, Rica thought, and drew her 9mm handgun from its holster.
“Halt! Police! Halt!” Rica’s command sounded feeble even to her.
But miraculously he did halt. He skidded to a stop about ten feet from her, his face stiff, his bulging eyes fixed on the gun.
Then his grin returned.
“Sheeeeit!” he said. He was wearing a sleeveless gray undershirt to show off his muscles and baggy pants. His chest was heaving and he blew breath like a cornered bull as he shot a glance back at Stanford, who was just now getting to his feet, then back at Rica. His smile broadened and he began strolling toward her with a deliberate, casual gait. She couldn’t help thinking he was a handsome guy. Great smile. She smelled his sweat and fear as he got closer. “You gon’ be a good lil’ pussy,” he said softly. “I jus’ know it.”
And he did know it. Rica was frozen. She could only stare at him as he approached her, then gingerly removed the 9mm from her hand. Then oddly, for he was on fleeing fugitive time, he reached out and squeezed her left tit. Not hard, and his fingers danced in a quick massaging motion as he withdrew his hand.
The man sensed greater danger from behind and turned to aim and fire at Stanford, who was running toward him, still moving unsteadily after being struck by the exploding door.
That was when Rica’s paralysis passed. She used the baton in her left hand to strike the man hard on the side of his head. Then she switched hands and clubbed him on his right collarbone. The crack of the bone was something she still dreamed about.
The gun dropped to the floor.
He didn’t attempt to pick it up. Instead he turned slowly toward her. He looked betrayed, and damned if she didn’t feel as if she had somehow betrayed him.
“Nigger bitch!” he said, kind of surprised, and reached for her.
Training took over. She used the baton as a jabbing weapon, driving its tip deep into the man’s stomach just beneath the sternum. Warm breath that carried the stench of bourbon whooshed out of him as he doubled over. She brought the club down twice on his head, driving him to the floor, knocking him into a daze if not unconsciousness. As she bent over him in the dim hall to wrestle his wrists behind him and click on the handcuffs, she picked up her gun and slid it back in its holster.
“That’s good fucking work!” Stanford said, as he reached the fallen suspect and got down on one knee to make sure she didn’t need help.
“I dunno,” Rica said, breathing hard. “This can’t be Jefferson.”
Stanford laughed. “Whoever he is, he didn’t want any part of the law. Maybe he’s Jefferson’s brother.”
In fact, he turned out to be Jefferson’s cousin and dealer, who’d just finished administering a beating to Jefferson for molesting his girlfriend’s young daughter and for not paying money owed on a drug delivery. Vernel Jefferson was unconscious inside the apartment. Cousin Jamal Jefferson hadn’t found Vernel’s stash, which earned Vernel a possession charge to go along with the child molestation. There were three active warrants on Jamal the dealer, one of them for a homicide in Queens.
It turned out to be a productive night’s work.
If Stanford had seen what happened with Rica’s gun, he never mentioned it, at least to her. Maybe the hall was too dim. Maybe he’d been woozy from getting cracked with the door and knocked back against the wall. Definitely he might have been shot and killed that night, and it would have been Rica’s fault. Jamal the dealer didn’t mention the gun during his trial two months later, possibly out of embarrassment at being brought down by a five-foot-two female cop.
Rica knew she’d somehow gotten a second chance.
At Blender’s Lounge the night after the shooting, where some of the cops from the Eight-oh went to drink when off duty, they toasted Rica. The place was noisy and crowded, warm with so many bodies.
Ed Kaline, still in uniform, raised a mug of beer high and whistled shrilly for silence. “To Rica Lopez!” he shouted. “A small cop with a big blue heart!”
Everyone applauded and shouted. Rica felt great, but at the same time wondered if she should have said something about the gun. It didn’t figure anyone would ever find out. Even if Jamal Jefferson mentioned it at his trial, who would believe him? Anyway, it wouldn’t be mentioned in court. How he was captured had no bearing on his case.
Rica forced her concerns aside, grinned, and drank.
She’d probably drunk a bit too much when a tall, handsome plainclothes detective came up to her and patted her on the back. She’d heard about him, seen him around, knew his name was Stack. Even then, the other cops seemed to think he was something special, though she didn’t know why.
“Congratulations on a fine collar,” he said with a smile that suggested he meant it.
Rica thanked him and he introduced himself.
“I was lucky,” she said.
“No,” he told her.
“I was scared,” she admitted.
He nodded and looked closely at her. There was something about his calm gray eyes that held her. He rested a big hand gently on her shoulder and his voice was soft and only for her. “Everybody, especially when they’re new, gets scared, does something wrong. The best of them make it right. I think you’ll be among the best of them.”
That’s when she realized he knew about the gun, and that he wasn’t the only one who knew. There were few secrets in the badged and blue, mostly male world she had entered and had now become a part of, peopled by fellow professionals who understood in ways only other cops could comprehend.
That was the night Rica became a better cop. The night the blood coursing through her veins turned blue.
Looking back on it, she realized it was also the night she fell in love with Ben Stack.
FIVE
January 2002
The sweet, burnt smell remained in Hugh Danner’s co-op unit. Rica wondered if it would ever leave completely.
Helen Sampson said, “I don’t want to go into the kitchen.”
“You don’t have to,” Rica assured her. “We only want you to look around, see if anything might be missing or out of place.”
“Not in the kitchen.”
Rica exchanged glances with Stack. “Of course not.”
Helen Sampson was wearing a simple black dress and black flat-heeled pumps. Her straight blond hair was lank and looked greasy, and it had dark streaks, though Rica was sure she was a natural blonde. She was a gaunt, attractive woman with pale blue eyes, but she looked almost unbearably weary. Her grief was dragging her down. She glanced around her, then began walking slowly about in the living room, now and then running a finger lightly over things as if checking for dust, or maybe making sure she was among real objects and not in a bad dream.
“Approximately how many times have you been here?” Stack asked her.
She paused and looked at him as if he’d awoken her. “I’m not sure…a