Guardian of Justice (10 page)

“Save me a piece of that chocolate cake. Your brother told me it’s worth the wait.”

She smiled. “I hope he didn’t say anything stupid while I was napping back there.” Now she felt like a teenager. “Thank you again for coming tonight. I know how difficult it was to tell me about what happened.”

“It was time I move on to the next step. Hey, thanks for a terrific dinner. I’d come in to thank your dad for picking out a great steak, but it’s late and he’s probably asleep by now. Next time I see him, I’ll be sure to thank him myself.” Dallas raised an eyebrow. “Just think, once all of this is settled, we can go out to dinner in a restaurant, like a normal couple.”

Kira’s heart skipped a beat. “Sounds good. Drive carefully going home, Dallas.” She watched until his tail lights faded away. Kent did say something stupid.

She turned and ran into the house after her brother, coming to a sudden halt when she discovered her parents were still awake. “Hi,” she said, feeling like a guilty adolescent. “Dallas thanked you for picking out a great steak, by the way.” She smiled. Despite the emotional evening, she felt lighter than a cloud.

“Hi,” her parents said in unison, sounding suspicious.

“So Mickey’s really out of the way, huh?” her dad asked.

She hit the ground faster than a bolt of lightning. The smile faded from her heart as the reality of a cop’s world returned. “Yep, he’s history,” she told them, unable to hide her relief.

“Kira,” her mother scolded, “a man was just killed!”

Kira stared at her in disbelief. “I didn’t mean that to sound so irreverent, but he did threaten me….”

Kent hid a smile. “Change the subject,” he whispered from the side of his mouth.

Kira felt as if they were ten years old again, lined up for an inquisition as to who ate the dessert Mom had just prepared for a dinner party. “And you, mister, what did you say to Dallas while I was asleep?”

His mouth twitched, and she knew not to believe a word he was about to say. He shrugged. “I just reminded him that we have plenty of shotguns, in case he had thoughts of breaking your heart. He asked if we had plans for Memorial Day weekend, mentioned a huge cake and punch.”

Kira rolled her eyes, and her parents’ shock was almost worth the bad joke. “He’s kidding.”

“Better be,” Dad grumbled. “I barely met him.”

Her mom’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him. I thought this was some official meeting. It was a date?”

Kira took a deep breath and smiled. “No. It was business, but I wouldn’t mind if he did ask me out on a real date. And back to business…Since Mickey’s out of the picture now, we have more questions to ask the children. I’m going out to get the kids from the ranch in the morning, so I’d better get some sleep.”

“Want me to drive you out there?” Kent offered.

“That poor car of yours would fall apart on the dirt roads. Thanks, anyway, I’ve had enough excitement for one week.”

“I want to know what you find out,” Kent hollered as she ran up the stairs.

“I’ll think about it,” she teased.

THIRTEEN

Dallas reported to school the next day, totally unprepared to be greeted by the flirtatious receptionist. “Hi, Officer Brooks.”

He looked up from his desk, terrified to think what she was doing in his office. “Morning. What can I do for you?”

“I talked to the principal after you left yesterday. Once he heard there are problems with security, he changed his schedule, and he’s available now. I left you a message at your house last night. Didn’t you get it?”

He frowned, wondering how she’d gotten his unlisted number. “Tell Mr. Davidson I’ll get my notes and be right there.”

He hurried down the hall, tearing his mind from Kira and the Zelanski case. After barely five hours of sleep, he was already wishing that final bell would ring.

Last night hadn’t gone at all as he’d hoped it would. He’d wanted to know more about how Kira was feeling. How she was coping with the anxiety. Now, thankfully, Mickey was no longer a threat, but Dallas was too much of a realist to believe that whoever killed Zelanski wouldn’t eventually come looking for the same things that Mickey had been after.

Dallas glanced at his watch. He had an hour, hopefully uninterrupted, before the first bell rang. He talked fast, explaining his concerns to the middle-aged principal. Issues related to school violence had changed in recent years, and Dallas was prepared for his concerns to be brushed aside by someone with more experience in schools than he had. Besides that, staff at smaller schools tended to think they were less likely to be affected than inner city schools. Recent history was proving that theory wrong, too.

Mr. Davidson leaned back in his chair and nodded. “I’ve tried to address these concerns at teacher meetings. Things get better for a week or two, and then everyone lets them slide again. Brad was strong with the students one-on-one, but he didn’t like to crack down on anyone after he’d made friends. He seemed to think he knew the community well enough to realize if there were going to be issues. Can’t count on that these days, either.”

Dallas didn’t want to share his experience with school violence, but neither did he want to repeat it. Not every school had an Alek in it, but with the increase in traumatic events, he wasn’t going to take his chances. “Mr. Davidson, I don’t want to discredit the way things have been done here before. Times have changed, and unfortunately, we need to be proactive in our approach. Even then, there’s no guarantee.” He opened the school’s crisis manual, wondering how Mr. Davidson could ignore the facts. Tragedy could happen anywhere. All it needed was opportunity.

Principal Davidson shook his head. “We’ll make the changes, but I want you to be prepared for an uphill battle. The parent accountability board had complaints about being inconvenienced when they come to volunteer or to attend parent-teacher conferences. I can’t imagine how they’d feel if something did happen because they didn’t want to walk a little farther. We all caved to the pressure. It wasn’t any one person’s fault. Common case of the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

“Glad to hear we’re of the same opinion on that.” Dallas had half the battle won. “We need to know who is in the building at all times, and feel confident that we can keep our eye on who’s coming and going. The best way to do that is to use one entrance, but if that isn’t possible, we need to make sure office and custodial staff, security cameras or teachers are monitoring everyone coming and going.”

“This exit here has always been the biggest challenge,” Davidson said, his finger on a blueprint of the school.

Within the hour, they had evaluated the layout of the building and agreed to direct all students to use just two doors during the school day. Traffic from the six outbuildings would have to funnel to those same two doors, south and west.

As the bell rang, the principal was adding the change to the announcement list. He said he’d watch and make sure someone was assigned to each door, to remind students to use the proper exits and not let anyone in through emergency exits. Signs were made and posted.

Dallas felt positive about the changes and wondered if it was more than a coincidence that he had found a job in Antelope Springs. God certainly had been pushing him to get back into law enforcement somehow. The security positions he’d considered after his treatment would have been a huge mistake. He realized that now. There was no way he could have settled for calling in the police and standing down until they could take over.

He stood near the main entrance, ignoring the faces as students walked past. The kid who liked to work in Brad Johnson’s office stopped and waved his hand in front of Dallas’s face, like tourists did to the guards at Buckingham Palace.

“Hey, Brooks, how’s it going?”

Dallas froze. He thought he’d made it clear the day before that he wasn’t here to be buds.

“Earth to cop,” the youth said with a goofy grin that looked something like a Jim Carey impression.

This wasn’t a prison, Dallas realized. “Morning, Tucker.” It wouldn’t kill me to lighten up a little,he thought. “How’re you today?”

The teenager shrugged. “Not bad. Homework is done—” he waved his spiral notebook in the air “—and the tardy bell hasn’t rung yet.”

Dallas felt his lips twitch and a chuckle escape. He glanced up at the clock. “With thirty seconds to spare, even.”

Tucker took off running. “Later, Brooks!”

Dallas shook his head as the clusters of teenagers disbursed instantly, seconds before the bell rang.

By lunchtime he’d received two complaints from parents about the locked doors, resulting most likely from the stack of tardy slips the reinforced policy had generated. Dallas noticed an additional half-dozen commendations from teachers and other staff. Not bad for the first day, he thought. Next week he’d plan a lockdown drill. Just because the year was almost over didn’t mean they were out of the woods. It was no time to get lax on safety.

As he turned to go back into his office to return phone calls, he saw Kira and Cody walk through the front doors.

“Afternoon,” Dallas said to them both, noticing that Cody appeared to have gained ten pounds, and looked great. Kira looked as tired as Dallas felt. “I kind of thought you’d call,” he told her.

She gave him a half hearted smile and shook her head. “I was going to wait until after school, but we got away earlier than we expected and here we are.” She was obviously tense after the drive. As many times as she’d had to move Cody and Betsy from home to home, doing so was no doubt getting old.

Dallas tried to read what the kid was thinking and what Kira had told him. “Let’s go into my office,” he murmured. As they walked down the hall to the small room that held his desk, a file cabinet and a couple of chairs, Dallas made an effort to break the ice. “Hi, Cody, how is it going?”

“What are we doing here? I thought we weren’t coming back to Antelope Springs. Officer Brooks, tell Miss Matthews that me and Betsy need to get away from this town. It ain’t nothing but trouble for us. We don’t even have our own things here anymore. And Mickey’s going to find us for sure if we’re back here.”

Dallas looked at Kira, trying to hide his shock. “Sit down, Cody. Miss Matthews, here’s a chair for you.” He closed the door and leaned against the desk.

“Cody,” Kira said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t explain everything to you without Officer Brooks present. We’re working together to figure where might be the best and safest place for you.”

Cody jumped to his feet. “You’re sending me to juvie?”

“What?” Kira dropped her bag and held out her arm to block the doorway. “No. No!” She apologized for her bad choice of words. “We’re going to find a good, permanent home for you and Betsy. Honest. I know what you are going through, and I’m not going to separate you two. I promise.”

“Yeah, right. Heard that before. It’s been two houses already, probably a third tonight, right?” He looked around the tiny office, his gaze landing on Dallas. “What’re you doing in Officer Johnson’s office?”

“He needed some time off. I’m filling in.”

That seemed to settle okay with the kid. Kira sat down again and motioned for Cody to do the same.

Then she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Cody, Officer Brooks and I need to talk to you a little more about what happened the night we were called to your house.”

“How come? Did something else happen?”

Kira looked at Dallas, silently asking him to do the honors. No use wasting time here.Dallas crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, something more has happened, Cody. First I want you to tell me about your relationship with Mickey, before that night.”

Cody eyed Kira, who had a strained look on her face. “Betsy and I don’t like him.”

Dallas waited a minute, hoping the boy would go into more detail. “Can you tell me why?”

He squirmed in his chair, holding tight to his backpack. Finally he shrugged. “I dunno. Why? What’d he tell you?”

“Nothing. We haven’t talked to Mickey,” Dallas said. “Did you and he fight a lot?”

“Yeah, kind of, I guess.” Cody glanced at Kira and his eyes got huge. “You’re not going to send us back with him, are you?”

Kira was caught off guard. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Never.” Then she added, “And you know that your mother isn’t going to be able to come home, either, don’t you? I don’t want you to have a false expectation.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s an idiot to have gotten mixed up in drugs again.” Cody said it with such seriousness that Dallas lost his edge. “But I’m going to take care of Betsy. I’m all she has left now. She misses Mom.”

“Of course she does,” Kira said sympathetically. “And I know that you feel responsible for taking care of Betsy, but that isn’t…that isn’t your responsibility.”

Dallas understood. She had probably wanted to be there for her brother, and never forgave herself. She wasn’t about to let Cody live with the same guilt. This case hit too close to home, just like returning to a school setting did for Dallas.

“Cody, we need you to help us figure out why Mickey was trying to find Miss Matthews. Do you have any ideas why he might have wanted to find her?”

Kira was still trying to regain her composure, and Cody frowned. “Did he beat you up, too?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said hesitantly. “Did he beat you up?”

“Nah, but he did my mom.” Cody looked at his backpack. “I don’t think he really liked her. He’s just using her and our house to hide his business.”

“What makes you say that?”

Cody shrugged. “He never really talked nice to her. He made her run errands for him all the time. You know, meet his clients for him.”

Dallas tried to ignore the insults popping into his head. “Did Mickey ever meet with his customers?”

He shrugged. “Not as much as Mom did. Sometimes, if she had to run a package when she was dropping us off at school, we’d go along. But don’t tell Mickey. He don’t know we found his stuff.”

“Stuff?” Dallas said innocently.

“You know what I’m talking about, or we wouldn’t be in foster care. I’m a kid, but I’m not stupid.”

“Mickey can’t hurt anyone anymore, Cody. But we need to find out who he was working with. We’re hoping you can help us with that information.”

Cody looked at Kira, then back to Dallas. “You caught Mickey?”

Dallas shook his head, watching Cody’s expression as he broke the news. “Someone killed him yesterday.”

Fear filled his eyes. “Really? You aren’t pulling my leg, are you?”

“We won’t lie to you,” Dallas promised, watching as Cody tried to hide his tears. “Miss Matthews and I need to know why you were fighting with Mickey. What started the argument?”

The boy wiped his eyes. “Mickey was always mad when a new shipment came in. This time was even worse.” Cody sobbed harder the more he fought for control. Kira started to comfort him, and Dallas held her back. Finally, Cody regained control. “I just wanted him to get out of our lives. He was a bully.”

Kira nodded, but then she noticed Dallas looking at her, and she stopped. She switched mode, from sympathetic to the tough woman he needed to see right now. “We want to make sure everyone is safe now, Cody, and somehow, things just don’t seem to be adding up.”

The teen shrugged.

Dallas was out of ideas. Cody was holding back. Until he trusted them, they were out of luck. “Miss Matthews. Why don’t you check him into classes and—”

“I don’t want go to school here,” he insisted.

“From what I understand, you didn’t like it in Fossil Creek, either,” Dallas said. “At least you know everyone here. You can pick up on your classes again. You know the teachers, and they’ll work with you to get caught up. You’ve only missed a couple of weeks.”

Kira agreed. “You only have four more weeks of school, Cody. Mickey’s not a threat to you anymore, so we really have no reason not to bring you back home, do we?” She paused. “Okay then, your new foster home will be ready for you after school. I’ll be back to meet you out front.”

Cody sulked.

She stood and motioned for him to lead her to the office. “Officer Brooks will be here if you have problems.”

The instant the words were out, she froze, as if she realized what she’d said. She stood and rolled the chair back to Dallas, mouthing a silent apology. Much as he wanted to ignore that this was part of his responsibility now, truancy, teenagers and their safety all went with the oath he’d taken to serve and protect. “You know where I am if you need something, Cody.”