Courageous (5 page)

Meanwhile, David seemed determined to remain skeptical. But by the time he was three bites into the cheeseburger, his attitude had been realigned.

Some guy who looked like he’d never left Woodstock, inhaling through the sixties and never exhaling till the seventies, popped a quarter into the Rock-Ola. On came “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

“Tell me about your former partner,” Nathan said.

“Why?”

“If you were taking someone’s place at a job, wouldn’t you want to know about him?”

David put on the plate what had nearly been his last bite of cheeseburger. He begrudgingly wiped his fingers with a napkin. “His name was Jack Bryant.”

Nathan waited. Nothing came.

“And?”

“What more do you want to know?”

“Why is this so difficult? Ask me about my last partner and I’ll tell you all about him. Seymour James. Fifty-three years old. Wife and three kids, like me. Smart guy and funny. Coaches Little League. Orders his cheeseburgers rare. Seattle Seahawks fan, but the Falcons are gradually winning him over.”

“Bryant and I didn’t always . . . get along very well.”

“Why?”

“I was a rookie; that’s why!” David raised his voice a few decibels too loud. Four people turned and stared.

“Okay,” Nathan said. “I get it. Why did he transfer?”

“He and his wife split up. So he moved back to Chicago to go into business with a friend.”

“No longer a cop?”

“It’s some kind of security business.”

“No kids?”

“Two.”

“And he moved to Chicago?”

“Yeah.”

“So now he doesn’t see his kids?”

“I think he took them for a week this summer.”

“Well, good for him,” Nathan said with a frown.

“Hey, he’s an okay guy.”

“I would think an okay guy would either stay at his job or find one where he could stay near his kids.”

“Why are you judging him like that? You don’t even know him.”

“No, I don’t. He was probably a good cop, and I’ll bet he’s a great security guy. All I know is, those things aren’t as important as being a good husband and a father.”

“His wife left him.”

“Was that because he was such a great husband?”

“Look, man, what’s it to you?”

“I’m talking about a guy being there for his wife, making it work. And if you’re separated, being there for your kids so they can still see you several times a week. At least they don’t have to say, ‘My dad left me.’”

Both men were adrift in thought. When the huckleberry pie with French vanilla ice cream appeared, it brought them back to dry land.

Nathan took a deep breath. “David, you’re right. I didn’t know your partner. And I shouldn’t judge him. I’m sorry. It’s a sore spot; my mom never had a decent husband, and I never had a dad.”

David restricted his eye contact to his steadily disappearing huckleberry pie. The conversation was over.

In the Mitchells’ backyard, Emily threw a tennis ball to Maggie, her year-old golden retriever.

“Can’t I let her in, Mama? She won’t make a mess.”

“We’ve been over this, Emily. Your father let you get Maggie on the condition that she can’t be a house dog.”

“Couldn’t she just
visit
the house and sleep in the backyard?”

“No dogs in the house. That’s your father’s rule. And his father’s rule before him.”

Adam stepped out on the porch. “Come inside, Emily.”

“I want to play with Maggie.” She gazed at her mother, then at her father. “Does it say in the Bible that you can’t let dogs in the house?”

“Well, no. I don’t think so . . .”

Emily smiled broadly. “Then can she sleep in my room?”

“No. I told you; we can’t have an indoor dog.”

Maggie drew up close to Adam’s feet, nuzzling him. Emily scratched her under the ear while the dog emitted groans of ecstasy. There was nothing Maggie loved more than snuggling close to Emily. Victoria had earned Maggie’s affection by grooming her with a stainless steel brush. An occasional pizza-flavored toy hadn’t hurt Maggie’s feelings, either. And though he did nothing to encourage her, the golden hadn’t given up on Adam.

Emily buried her face in the fur on Maggie’s neck.

Adam thought this was all too much fuss over a dog. But he did enjoy his little girl’s smile and her contagious giggle.

Javier Martinez was thirty, short and stocky, strong and boyishly charming. He was working happily at a construction site—double-checking a blueprint—when he was approached by the foreman’s assistant, a friendly giant named Mark Kost. “Hey, Javy,” Mark said, slapping him on the back. “Boss wants to see you.”

Javier took off his white hard hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his old brown T-shirt when he entered the foreman’s office.

The foreman sat behind a desk in a small trailer lined with wood paneling fresh from 1972.

“Mr. Simms, you wanted to see me?”

“Yeah, Martinez, have a seat.”

Simms, eyes down, shuffled some papers. Finally he stopped, adjusted his glasses, and glanced up. “Look, Javier, the past two weeks you’ve done great work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But this project is over budget, and I have to let a few guys go.”

“I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?”

“It has nothing to do with your performance. It’s just . . . you were one of the last guys I hired, so you gotta be the first I let go. Sorry. Don’t take it personally.”

Javier didn’t know how else to take it. “Sir, please. I have a wife and kids. It’s very hard for me to find work.”

“I really am sorry.” Simms handed him an envelope. “I added a few extra dollars.”

Javier held the envelope, stunned, then slowly got up. He walked to the door, fighting the desire to plead for his job. He dreaded facing his sweet wife with the discouraging news of her husband’s unemployment . . . again.

He walked four miles to a small, low-income house. A steel-blue Continental manufactured during the Carter administration sat in the driveway.

Inside the house, Carmen Martinez attempted to clean while Isabel, five, and Marcos, three, chased each other through the kitchen.

“I’m going to get you, Marcos!”

“No, you’re not!”

“Isabel! Marcos!
Dejen de correr!
Stop running and clean up your toys! I need to start lunch.”

She turned to see Javier standing quietly in the doorway. “Javy! What are you doing home? Why aren’t you at work?”

“They let me go.”

“What? Why?”

“I was the last one hired. They went over budget.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I would have talked to them not to do this. We have two children to feed, and . . .”

“I tried to tell that to Mr. Simms. It made no difference.”

“Javy, we owe four hundred dollars in a week. All we have is leftover rice and beans. Marcos needs shoes.”

“I tried to tell him, Carmen! I tried.” Javy handed her the envelope. “Here’s three hundred dollars. Get what you need for the children. I’m going back out to look for work.”

Javier moved toward the door. As he walked away, he felt Carmen’s hand on his arm.

“Javy, wait. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to react that way. Why don’t you take the car? We’ll walk to the store.”

“I cannot drive while my family walks. I will do the walking. Carmen, God will find me work.”

Javier paused. “Do you have anything I could take with me to eat?”

Carmen surveyed the meager options. “A tortilla?”

Javier smiled weakly, took the tortilla, and walked out. He didn’t have to see Carmen’s tears after he left their home. He’d seen them before.

Chapter Six

Adam had watched the late-night comedians, and morning came too early. He groused to himself about having to get up at 6:00 a.m. for the Responder Life breakfast. The chief coffee maker—Victoria—wasn’t up yet. He’d have to survive somehow.

Whose idea was a 6:30 breakfast?

Adam showered, stumbled in the dark to dress, then hurried through the living room and out the door without even seeing Steve Bartkowski.

He entered the rec center ten minutes late.
Sure hope the coffee’s good.
Grateful it was a legal drug, and in this case a free one, he sipped coffee to pull himself back into the world he’d checked out of only five hours earlier.

Breakfast was decent, though no threat to Pearly’s, Adam’s favorite restaurant. He focused on the Denver omelets and Danish, while Nathan, sitting across from him, met people right and left.

After the meal, Chris Williams, Albany’s assistant chief of police, introduced the speaker, Caleb Holt, fire captain at Albany District. Adam had seen Caleb around town and at a couple of crime scenes where there was rescue assistance. Caleb was a local hero for his dramatic rescue of a little girl. He talked about how God saved his soul and saved his marriage and saved him from pornography.

It sounded to Adam like a little too much saving. He was grateful to be a Christian and be saved from hell. But he’d always been wary of those who tried to make him feel guilty because he wasn’t doing more. He was comfortable with his decent, churchgoing life.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

After the breakfast wound down, the deputies headed to the sheriff’s office and sat through a routine muster. Before dismissing the troops, Sergeant Murphy said, “Deputy Fuller, I need to talk with you.”

When Shane and Adam came up together, Murphy said, “Deputy Mitchell, just do some paperwork until we’re done, okay?”

Sergeant Murphy had called them both deputy. Official titles meant business—or trouble.

When Adam walked past Sergeant Murphy’s open office door, he saw Diane Koos, the public information officer, inside. Koos was an attractive, quick-witted professional who had been a local news anchor before the sheriff had surprised everyone by offering her the PIO job. She’d surprised everyone by taking it. She was tough, no doubt about it, and meetings with the PIO were rarely good news.

It was 8:50 a.m. before Shane appeared at the desk where Adam read and signed a few reports.

“Let’s get out of here,” Shane said through clenched teeth.

“What happened?”

“We’ll talk in the car.”

The moment the doors closed, Shane practically yelled, “Jamar Holloman’s attorney filed a complaint against me.”

“Brutality? You didn’t do anything but chase and handcuff him, did you? I mean, besides tasing him.”

“That’s it. But they claim I didn’t warn him before I tased him.”

“Is that true?”

“I won’t lie to you, Adam. I did not say the words, ‘I’m about to come around the corner of the shed and point a Taser at you and pull the trigger if you run.’ But I’m there by myself, no partner to tackle the guy when he takes off. And that’s exactly what he would have done. He ran halfway across Albany with us chasing him!”

“I ran the first leg of that relay, remember?”

“I’m thinking, obviously the Tasers have cameras in them now; you
know
what I did, so
why are you asking
? But Sergeant Murphy gives me a perfect opportunity. He says, ‘The camera comes on just before you tase him. So it’s possible you warned him before it was recording.’ You should have seen the PIO scowl at Sarge.”

Shane raked his fingers through his already-tussled hair. “So Koos wants to know if I’m aware of how far a Taser will fire. I say, ‘Twenty-one feet.’ She asks how fast can a guy go from a dead stop and reach twenty-one feet, and wasn’t I capable of uttering a warning in that amount of time. Of course she’s got a folder of information from books and procedure manuals. She doesn’t know any of this stuff without researching it.”

“What happened next?”

“Stiff as a corpse, but colder, Koos asks me if I’m ‘guilty as charged.’ I say, if you mean, did I shorten the chase by tasing a guy who’d proven he’s a runner and wasn’t going to turn himself in, then ‘yes, I’m guilty as charged.’”

“Shouldn’t running from his house, where we came with a warrant, and knocking down a deputy qualify as a clear intent to evade arrest? And shouldn’t the fact that you and I chased him for a mile or more serve as a clear warning that we will do what is necessary to apprehend him?”