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“Hurry up!” he admonished in a voice with no accent.
The girl opened up the register and filled a plastic sack with the cash, and as she was about to hand it over the counter, a shadow appeared from between two shelving units. Izzy stifled a groan as she watched a fat, balding man approach the kid from behind. Everybody wanted to be a hero—but few people knew how. The man’s Louisville slugger was no match for the kid’s revolver. Izzy couldn’t tell from the video if it was a .22 or a .38, but either way you just didn’t bring a bat to a gun fight.
The shot was loud and caught the would-be hero in the chest. The girl behind the counter screamed. “What did you do!” she cried, but the dark stain on the floor rendered the question moot.
The gunman swung around and lunged at the girl. He grabbed her arm and pulled.
“Come on,” he demanded. “Let’s go.” He snatched the bag of money on his way out the door with the girl. They moved beyond the camera’s view, leaving the poor store owner the only person left in the frame.
Vernita got the fax the same time the network flashed a mug shot of the gunman.
“That was fast,” a uniform remarked as Vernita placed the paper into her photo copier.
“Kidnapping,” the older woman replied and no other explanation was needed.
“Damn feds’ll be all over it.”
Izzy frowned as well. No one liked the feds stomping and pissing in everyone’s Cheerios. But no one wanted a dead hostage, either. She plucked one of the copies off the stack. It was still warm and the toner was smeared a bit. The kid had left a print at the scene, which was displayed under his short rap sheet for breaking and entering. Izzy studied his face, then glanced down at the known address. When she looked up, she saw Vernita eyeballing her.
“Kid’s a shooter,” the older woman cautioned.
Izzy chewed the inside of her cheek. The kid was a trigger-happy asshole, no doubt about it. Give her a runner or a whiner any day, but a shooter was bad news. No info on a reward yet, but she already knew it would he high. Kidnapping and murder would be five figures at least. Double murder might be six, but Izzy sure as fuck didn’t need a payday soaked in some innocent girl’s blood. It was bad enough the old man bought it. She couldn’t save him, but she might find the girl and make the rest of the year’s rent to boot.
Izzy folded the mug shot and slipped it into her pocket.
“I’ve got a vest,” she told Vernita quietly.
“That won’t matter if he shoots you in the head!” Vernita called after her as she headed for the front doors.
Chapter 4
The young officer who’d responded first to the call was standing on the small front porch. There was a marked contrast been the crew-cut, buttoned-down, spit-shined man in uniform and the man who stood before him wearing a stained T-shirt and ripped jeans. The man’s hands were empty at the moment, but they’d recently been holding a beer. Caleb could smell it on him before he even got to the top step of the porch. The scent was all too familiar and burned his nose.
Bleary-eyed, the man glared as hard at Caleb as he had the rookie. “Was a misunderstanding,” he said in an exasperated tone that told Caleb he’d been repeating that word since the first man had arrived.
The kid smiled politely and nodded. Caleb tried not to roll his eyes. The kid didn’t appear to be stupid, though Caleb didn’t know him personally. They’d only occasionally crossed paths in the locker room. Caleb was reasonably sure that the kid wasn’t buying this bullshit explanation. He was just sorting out a Domestic, by-the-book, as though the guidelines had been recorded and printed by Saint Peter himself.
No one wanted to respond to a Domestic, except Caleb. They were usually frustrating or violent, depending on how long that particular argument had been stewing on the burner. They also had no satisfying resolution—usually. Out-of-control abusers were temporarily taken into custody. Aggrieved spouses more often than not simply refused to press charges and the whole thing went back on the burner at a slow simmer until the next boil over.
When he’d first joined the force, Caleb had known he wasn’t going to go by the book. Hell, he’d barely even read the book. He’d put on the badge, already knowing what it took a few years for rookies to figure out: that Domestics were usually a zero-sum game. You couldn’t win… unless you were playing your own game.
He glanced through the tattered screen door. A waifish woman was gathering empty cans in the living room and straightening lumpy couch cushions. She refused to look at the door and he could already tell she wasn’t interested in helping the police lock up her man. Caleb didn’t care. He probably wouldn’t need her, anyway. He grasped the handle of the screen door and started to pull.
