Cross Fire, page 15
“I’m sorry for my temper,” Marx said. “I didn’t mean to come across as angry or impatient with you.” He grabbed a bottle of cold chocolate milk from his desk and offered it to me.
“You’re apologizing with chocolate milk?” I asked, taking it. I wasn’t one to turn down chocolate anything.
“The vendin’ machine’s out of M&M’s, so yes. And I don’t want you in the middle of this case. I told you that before when you were snoopin’ through my file.”
“I’m already in the middle of this case.” I tried to twist the cap off the bottle, but it didn’t budge. Seriously? “Even if I wasn’t staying with you, I saw Tear’s face at the scene of a crime, and I heard him and his partner suggest that it wasn’t the first time they tried to put a stop to your investigation. If they decide I’m a problem, it’s not gonna have anything to do with this discussion.”
“She has a point,” Sam agreed.
“You’re not helpin’,” Marx grumbled in his direction.
I tried one more time to open the bottle and then gave it a frustrated look before setting it aside. I wasn’t getting into a struggling match with a bottle cap tonight. “Please just let me help with this case.”
I needed the distraction. I wanted to think about anything but Collin.
Marx leaned forward and twisted the cap off the chocolate milk for me. “I appreciate that you wanna help, but you’re not a cop, and you’re not a drug dealer turned informant, so there’s not really much you can do.”
“I lived with drug traffickers,” I reminded him, glaring at the bottle cap that had popped right off for him. “And I overheard their grown-up discussions more than once, so I’m not exactly clueless about the wonderful world of illegal substances.”
“You were nine. Overhearin’ conversations doesn’t make you an expert in criminal behavior.”
A small spark of interest lit Sam’s eyes, but his voice sounded as flat as usual. “You lived with drug traffickers? Why have I never heard this story?”
“It’s a complicated story,” Marx answered vaguely.
“They hit me with their car when I was nine and decided to take me home,” I explained.
Sam frowned. “Like you were a stray puppy? They just . . . hit you with their car and decided, ‘Hey, she doesn’t have any ID tags, let’s keep her’?”
“Pretty much,” I said before taking a delicious, chocolaty sip of milk. I smacked my lips thoughtfully. “Needs marshmallows.”
Marx smiled. “I guess you’ll just have to make do without.”
“So about your drug dealers. I—”
“Did you ever have access to the drugs?” Sam interrupted, apparently curious now.
I sighed impatiently and looked at him. “Once, and only because I was playing where I wasn’t supposed to.”
“What happened?”
“I thought all packages should have pretty decorations, so I sort of, um . . . bedazzled them,” I admitted reluctantly.
Sam coughed a laugh. He had a sister; he knew what bedazzling meant. Marx, on the other hand, gaped at me in confusion before asking, “You did what?”
“She means she stuck shiny beads on everything,” Sam explained after clearing the remnants of laughter from his throat.
Marx blinked before saying slowly, “You stuck shiny beads on the bags of heroin?”
“Yep.” And Paul had been so angry that he was speechless. He’d also taken my bedazzler away and thrown it into the woods where he knew I was too afraid to go after it. “Now can we focus?”
Marx relented. “Why do you think it’s not gang related?”
“Gangs are racially segregated, right? Tear is white, and this guy,” I said, pointing at the question mark representing the mysterious man who had been working with Tear, “had a faint Hispanic accent and he definitely had the coloring. I saw his arm in the mirror.”
A thin line of interest formed between Marx’s eyebrows. “You’re sure?” At my nod, he and Sam exchanged a look.
“You think Tear is an enforcer?” Sam asked.
“If it’s not a gang, then yes. Which means this guy”—Marx pointed to the question mark I had indicated—“is also an enforcer, and we don’t know who he is yet.” He scribbled something beneath it.
“Titanic?” I wondered aloud.
“Hispanic,” he corrected.
“Maybe you should let Sam write on the board, because that looks like a sinking ship.”
He pursed his lips and offered the marker to me. “His writin’ is worse than mine. If it’s so bad, you write it.”
I shrugged and hopped off the desk to take the marker. I walked over to the board and erased his Hispanic Titanic and rewrote it. I put a little smiley face at the end of it just because.
“If it’s not gang related, that’s both good and bad for us,” Marx said. “Good because their loyalty to their employer won’t be nearly as strong as one gang member’s loyalty to another. Bad because if our drug entrepreneur is hirin’ his help, then he doesn’t have a shortage of applicants.”
“So even if we catch Tear and his partner, he’ll just hire more,” Sam supposed.
“Exactly. Our best chance is to catch one of them and get them to roll for a reduced sentence.”
“If they’re organized well, each level is only going to know the next person up the chain. The street dealer will have the name of his supplier, but probably not who his supplier receives the merchandise from.”
“Then we’ll work our way up the chain, startin’ with Tear.”
“You know we should hand this case off to narcotics.”
“I have six dead bodies. If narcotics wants this case, they can fight me for it.”
“Seriously?” a male voice asked from behind me, surprising me so much that I almost dropped the bottle of chocolate milk on the floor. I twisted around to look at the person who had spat that single word with such exasperation.
Jordan stood there with his arms crossed and a disgruntled expression that looked out of place on his usually relaxed face. “I called everyone in this room when no one showed up to self-defense training. Guess how many people answered.”
“We’ve been a little busy,” Marx informed him almost dismissively.
“I sent you a text,” Sam replied.
“Training was at 11:30, Sam. You responded fifteen minutes ago to a message I sent at five after twelve, which is only . . .” Jordan glanced at his watch. “Five and a half hours late.”
Sam shrugged.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and turned it back on. Two missed calls and a text from Jordan popped up on the screen. “Sorry,” I breathed guiltily. I had finally given him my number, and when he tried to use it, my phone was turned off.
“Why was your phone off?” Marx demanded with a note of disapproval. “You need to keep it on and charged at all times, Holly.”
I bristled indignantly. “Why? Because I’m a woman and the only way I can protect myself is to call a man to do it for me?”
Silence met my angry question. Sam opened his mouth to say something that would probably only fuel the sudden anger that had welled up inside of me, but Marx held up a hand to cut him off.
“That isn’t what I meant, Holly.” He folded his arms and frowned. “Nobody in this room thinks that. I don’t know what Collin said to you when he called, but you are not weak or incapable.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the desk and looked down at my phone. I wasn’t so sure about that. Collin had reminded me just how weak and incapable I was by referencing all the times he’d held me down and . . . hurt me. A strong person would’ve been able to stop him. A capable person would’ve been able to keep him from ever doing it again.
I wasn’t that person.
Marx leaned forward to capture my downcast gaze. “You’re not weak and incapable, sweetheart. If you were, you wouldn’t have survived this long. You hear me?”
I forced a nod.
“Good,” he said, straightening. “And just to be clear, I would recommend everybody in this room keep their phone on and charged. Not just you. It has nothin’ to do with you bein’ a girl. But your sadistic foster brother does tend to make me a bit more concerned.”
“Which was what I was gonna say before I was so rudely censored,” Sam said, with an irritated flick of his eyes toward Marx.
I puffed out a breath and hunched my shoulders. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I do appreciate you guys.”
“We know,” Marx said. “Given everythin’ that’s happenin’, you’re allowed to feel a little stressed out. Just please don’t turn your phone off.”
I hadn’t planned to turn it off, but Sam’s warning that there might not be a way to block Collin from calling made me anxious. I didn’t think I had the nerves to deal with that right now.
“I think I’m gonna take a walk,” I said, sliding off the desk. I needed some fresh air and open space.
“I’ll go with her,” Jordan volunteered before Marx could warn me not to go outside alone.
“Be careful with her, Jordan. He was on the premises today,” Marx said.
Jordan glanced at me, then nodded at Marx. We left the squad room for a breath of fresh wintery air.
14
Dear Izzy,
I encountered the strangest thing today: a box of Lucky Mallows cereal with no marshmallows. How does that even happen? Somebody had one job: add marshmallows, and they failed.
I sighed and scratched out my ridiculous attempt at a letter as I frowned at the box of cereal on the counter. I had poured out the entire box of cereal into a large bowl, and there hadn’t even been a fragment of a marshmallow.
“That is so weird.”
I suspected foul play.
I dropped my pen, unable to think of anything meaningful to say to Izzy, and walked into the kitchen to find something else to eat. Maybe I would make breakfast for Marx before he got up and did whatever he did on Saturdays.
He had been unusually quiet the past few days after learning his ex-wife had been avoiding his phone calls. The heartache I had glimpsed in his eyes that day at the precinct lingered in my memory. I knew the pain of longing for unattainable love.
I blew out a heavy breath and opened the refrigerator, determined not to trip and fall down that rabbit hole of bad memories.
I tapped my lips with a finger as I considered the options. Maybe bacon and eggs would cheer him up. My breakfast-making skills were usually limited to pouring cereal into a bowl, but how hard could it be?
I gathered the items from the refrigerator and plopped them onto the counter. I read the directions on the back of the package of bacon. Heat skillet, spread out strips of bacon, and cook to desired crispness. That didn’t sound so hard.
I hummed quietly as I danced around Riley in the kitchen. He had decided that lying directly under my feet was a splendid idea, and I kept tripping over him.
He watched longingly as I placed raw bacon into the skillet. “I’m not so sure bacon is good for you.” I dropped a piece on the floor for him, and he scarfed it down before lifting his imploring eyes back to my face. “You didn’t even taste that.”
He licked his muzzle and gave a little snort of satisfaction.
I ignored his cuteness and plopped a few more strips of bacon into the skillet before turning it on high. I scrambled some eggs and poured them into another skillet.
A quiet creak of floorboards from outside the front door drew my attention. Marx's apartment building creaked and groaned like an old man's bones, and I wasn't used to it. I also wasn’t used to the sound of feet shuffling down the hall at all hours. No one walked by my front door unless they intended to visit.
I had just decided to dismiss the noise as another of the residents walking down the hall, when a shadow shifted in the narrow strip of space below Marx's door. A deep, murmuring voice spoke just outside the apartment, and a tingle of warning crept up my spine.
Had Collin figured out that I was staying with Marx?
Nerves had me trading in the spatula for a meat tenderizer as I crept toward the door in my slippers.
I peered into the peephole, half-expecting to see those cold blue eyes from my nightmares—all the while hoping it was just the grouchy neighbor lady—but the warped, dark-skinned face on the other side of the door didn’t belong to Collin or the elderly woman.
My death grip on the meat tenderizer relaxed, and I rested my forehead against the door in relief.
“You boys had better leave before I call the police,” a woman said, her familiar voice colored by disapproval and brittle with age.
Boys? There was more than one man loitering in the hall?
“And buy some belts,” she snapped. “They sell them at the store, right nearby pants that will actually fit you. The whole world doesn’t need to see your underpants.”
One of the men said something to her, but his voice was too low for me to catch the words through the door.
“Your mother should wash your mouth out with soap for using that kind of language!” she said a little louder. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Curious, I cracked the door to peer into the hall. I caught sight of black dreadlocks and a red bandanna disappearing down the steps.
My eyes drifted back to the rail-thin woman in her flower-printed robe, who stood in the doorway across the hall. The flowers were pink today. Yesterday they had been blue.
She huffed in disapproval and pressed a hand to the small of her back as she bent to pick up the paper. I hurried to get it for her.
“I can get my own paper,” she groused. “I’m not dead yet.”
I mutely offered the paper, and she snatched it with a scowl, looking like she wanted to swat me on the nose with it.
I stepped back beyond her reach and asked, “Is . . . everything okay?”
“Street hooligans. Always up to no good. I don’t think that boy’s washed his hair in ten years. And those clothes . . .” She shook her head.
“Were they bothering you?”
Marx could probably help with that. I imagine it could be handy to have a cop as a neighbor.
“Do you think I'd be standing out here in my house coat and slippers if they weren't bothering me? Of course they were bothering me. Stalking up and down the hall, loitering on the sidewalk, probably trying to spy or sell their marijuana.” She said the word like mary-jew-anna, then fixed me with a look. “Do you do that marijuana?”
“No, ma’am.”
She nodded, as if that were the correct answer. “I’ve seen you around here with Mr. Marx. Are you family?” When I shook my head, she frowned. “Cleaning lady? I’ve never seen a man with an apartment that spick-and-span, so I know he has a cleaner.”
“I’m not his cleaner.”
“Well, who are you then?”
I wanted to tell her it was none of her business, but I didn’t want to upset the relationship Marx had with his neighbors.
“Holly.”
She sniffed and narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to burn the whole building down, Holly?”
I caught a faint whiff of smoke wafting through the open doorway. I drew in a sharp breath, and my gaze snapped back inside.
“Oh no . . .”
Smoke was pluming from the skillet of bacon. I dashed back inside, slamming and locking the door behind me.
I rushed into the kitchen and hopped over Riley to reach the stove. I pulled the skillet off the burner and waved an oven mitt over it to disperse the smoke and calm the volcanic grease eruptions.
I yelped and dropped the entire skillet on the floor when a horrendous wailing erupted in the apartment. I slapped my hands over my ears.
Marx rushed into the kitchen in his pajama pants and T-shirt. “Holly, what on earth are you doin’?” He maneuvered around me to turn off the burners and yank the eggs off the stove.
He stepped over Riley and the splattered bacon to open the kitchen window and then waved a towel under the smoke alarm on the ceiling.
When the shrill wailing finally subsided, I uncovered my ears and reluctantly admitted, “I was making you breakfast.” I looked down at the burnt bacon on the kitchen floor and added sheepishly, “I hope you like your bacon extra crispy . . . and smoked.”
He took in the mess on the floor, which Riley was happily helping to clean up, and released a frustrated sigh.
“I’ll clean it up,” I offered quickly.
“No. You and your fuzzy slippers get out of my kitchen before you catch my apartment on fire,” he demanded, but there was no bite to his tone. “And take your dog.”
“But I can—”
“Out,” he said more firmly, and I clamped my mouth shut.
I grabbed Riley’s collar and led him away from the temptation of bacon and around the peninsula. I plopped onto one of the stools and watched Marx clean up.
“I’m sorry I destroyed your kitchen,” I said, hoping to soften whatever anger must be brewing beneath his calm exterior.
“You didn’t destroy my kitchen.”
“I made a mess.”
He glanced at me as he set the skillet in the sink and filled it with water to soak. “That you did.”
The foot I was bouncing nervously on the rung of the stool abruptly stilled at the complete lack of anger in his voice. That was it?
I burnt breakfast, filled his apartment with smoke, set off screeching alarms that startled him out of bed, and then dropped greasy bacon all over the floor. And “that you did” was his only reaction?
Cautiously, I asked, “You’re not mad?”
“Did you do it on purpose?”
“No.”
“Then no, I’m not mad. And it was very sweet of you to try to make me breakfast. Just . . . don’t do it again.”
“What if I promise not to burn anything next time?”
“I don’t think that’s a promise you can keep.”
I sighed and dropped my chin into my hands. If I hadn’t gotten distracted by the people in the hallway, I might not have burnt anything.
He gave me a small smile. “I know you’re tryin’ to make me feel better, but I’m fine.”
