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“Can’t they come out and explain that it’s a crime? He’ll listen to them.”
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry. It’s up to you to make sure your son is safely buckled. If you were to drive while he wasn’t, you would be the one responsible for the crime, not your son.”
Click.
I rubbed my temple, spinning in my chair to face Hope. I was glad she and I had the same schedule. There were only two dispatchers on duty at any given time, and I much preferred Hope’s softspoken nature and kind heart to Angelica’s constant cynicism. She had something negative to say about every caller, every situation.
But Hope wasn’t like that. She spoke to each and every caller with a big helping of Southern sweetness, and right now, I could use some of that.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder at the screens behind me.
Hope nodded as she angled her chair toward mine. “Sure did. And if you ask me, that lady shouldn’t have kids if she thinks she can call 911 to get the officers to parent them for her.”
My mouth popped open. Sure, it’d been exactly what I’d been thinking when I realized the nature of that mom’s “emergency,” but… Hope?
I’d wanted her to tell me to give the poor girl some grace. Maybe say something about how hard it must be to parent such a strong-willed child, and for all we knew she was recently divorced and trying to make it on her own. Which meant, while we wouldn’t send the officers to tell her kid to buckle his belt, we also shouldn’t judge her.
“You all right?” I asked, leaning forward slightly so I could give her a once-over.
Her eyes were rimmed with dark circles, and her skin looked slightly pale. Despite the long hours and being woefully understaffed around here, I’d never seen her like this. Gone wasthe soft light that made her look like she embodied her name from the inside out, and worry streaked through me.
“Just havin’ a rough day, is all. Nothin’ a good night sleep won’t fix,” she replied, giving me a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
I opened my mouth to protest, but then the non-emergency line rang in my ear, and I spun back to my console with a look that promised Hope we weren’t done with that conversation.
“Charlotte Oaks PD.”
“Got a private impound for ya,” a familiar voice replied.
“Shifty?”
His laughter crackled through the line. “The one and only, Miss Paisley. How ya doin’ sweetheart?”
I chuckled, picturing the old man’s weathered face and toothy grin. “You’re doin’ tows now?”
Tow companies had to call us to run the plate and VIN before they could take a vehicle to their impound lots, just to make sure it wasn’t stolen. It was a straightforward process as long as all the numbers matched, so it’d been the first thing I’d learned to do as a dispatcher.
My original coworkers thought I was weird for volunteering to take tows. I was the only one who didn’t hate them, probably because everyone else found them boring unless the vehicle came back stolen.
Not me. It was nice to follow a simple routine in the midst of emergency caller chaos. A palette cleanser, if you will. Especially as a means to cool my jets after getting off a hot call with an active shooter—adrenaline spiking, fingers cramped from speed-typing in the name of saving lives.
“I’ve been doin’ tows on the graveyard shift for twenty years!” Shifty exclaimed. “But I’m savin’ up for somethin’ nice for the missus, so I told her I was goin’ fishin’ and I’m gonna see how many cars I can swoop up before she gets suspicious.”
Shifty and his wife, Bernice, lived on a junkyard. They seemed to live by the one person’s trash is another person’s treasure code, and considering the garage sale haggling and dumpster diving these two loved to do, I was shocked to hear Shifty’s plan.
“Somethin’ nice, huh?”
“Uh-uh, no, ma’am. I know this is a recorded line, so I’m not spillin’ my guts. But if I see ya ‘round town, I’ll be sure to fill you in.”
Grinning, I agreed with that plan and proceeded to ask the man for the plate and VIN of the vehicle, knowing I’d better hurry before the owner came outside and caught him trying to tow it. Then he’d have to release it to them, and he wouldn’t get paid for it.
But then, as I plugged the info into the national database we used, I sat up straighter in my chair, glaring at the screen.
“You still with me, darlin’?” Shifty asked.
I cleared my throat. “Shifty, you can’t take this car.”
“And why the heck not? It’s parked illegally.”
