Jack Daniels Six Pack (95 page)

Children’s parks are a cesspool of germs. All that openmouthed coughing and sneezing, all those sticky fingers wiping noses and then touching the slides, the ladders, the bin of a thousand plastic balls, each other. It’s practically a hot zone.

When he finishes eating, he returns to the bathroom, attaches the jet injector to the tube running up his sleeve, and lightly shakes the cylinder strapped to his waist under his shirt.

There’s plenty left.

He arms the injector using the key to torque back the spring, and walks out of the washroom over to the cubby where a dozen pairs of brightly colored kids’ shoes lie in wait. Getting down on one knee, he pretends he’s tying a lace.

Instead, he injects the rubber soles of five different shoes.

A small child pokes him from behind.

“That’s my shoe.”

He smiles at the boy. “I know. It fell on the floor. Here you go.”

The child takes the shoe, switches it to his other hand, and wipes his nose with his palm.

“Thanks,” says the boy.

The man stands up, winks, and heads north on Lincoln to catch the bus to the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Chapter 1

Three Days Later

I
S THAT A REAL GUN?”
The little girl probably wasn’t much older than five, but I’m not good with children’s ages. She pointed at my shoulder holster, visible as I leaned into my shopping cart to hand a bag of apples to the cashier.

“Yes, it is. I’m a cop.”

“You’re a girl.”

“I am. So are you.”

The child frowned. “I know that.”

I looked around for her mother, but didn’t see anyone nearby who fit the profile.

“Where’s Mommy?” I asked her.

She gave me a very serious face. “Over by the coffee.”

“Let’s go find her.”

I told the teenaged cashier I’d be a moment. He shrugged. The little girl held out her hand. I took it, surprised by how small it felt. When was the last time I’d held a child’s hand?

“Did you ever shoot anyone?” she asked.

From the mouths of babes.

“Only criminals.”

“Did they die?”

“No. I’ve been lucky.”

Her eyebrows crunched up, and she pursed her tiny lips.

“Criminals are bad people.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Shouldn’t they die?”

“Every life is important,” I said. “Even the lives of bad people.”

A woman, thirties, rushed out into the main aisle and searched left, then right, locking onto the girl.

“Melinda! What did I tell you about wandering off!”

She was on us in three steps. Melinda released my hand and pointed at me.

“I’m okay, Mommy. She’s got a gun.”

The mother looked at me and turned a shade of white appropriate for snowmen. I dug into my pocket for my badge case.

“Lieutenant Jack Daniels.” I showed her the gold star and my ID. “You’ve got a cute daughter.”

Her face went from fraught to relieved. “Thanks. Sometimes I think she needs a leash. Do you have kids?”

“No.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. I watched her puzzle out what to say next.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said in my cop voice. Then I went back to my groceries. An elderly man, who’d gotten into the checkout line behind me, gave me a look I usually received from felons I’d busted.

“It’s about goddamn time,” he said.

“Police business,” I told him, flashing my star again. Then I made a show of looking into his cart. “Sir, this lane is for ten items or less. I’m counting thirteen items in your cart, including that hemorrhoid cream. And while hemorrhoids might give you a reason to be nasty, they don’t give you a reason to be in this lane.”

He scowled, used a five-letter word to express his opinion of people with two X chromosomes, and then wheeled his cart away.

Chicago. My kind of town.

I really missed living here.

Shopping in the suburbs was cheaper, less crowded, closer to home, and no one ever called me names. I tried it once, at a three-hundred-thousand-square-foot supermarket that sold forty-seven different varieties of potatoes and had carts with little video monitors that broadcast commercials and spit out coupons. Never again.

You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.

I finished paying for my ten items or less and then left the grocery store. The weather hung in the mid-sixties, cloudy, cool for June. My car, an aging Chevy Nova that didn’t befit a woman of my stature or my style, was parked just up the street, next to a fire hydrant. I stuck my bags in the trunk, took a big gulp of wonderfully smoggy city air, and then started the beast and headed for the Eisenhower to battle rush hour traffic.

“Four more dead, bringing the death toll up to nine. Hundreds more botulism cases have been confirmed, and a city-wide panic has...”

I switched the radio station to an oldies channel, and let Roger Daltrey serenade me through the stop-and-go.

It took an hour to get to the house. It never took less.

By my rough calculation, I was averaging ten hours a week driving to and from work, so if I retired in ten years, I will have wasted over five thousand hours—two hundred days—in the car.

But, on the bright side, I had a big backyard that demanded to be mowed, trees that needed trimming, a clothes dryer in need of repair, a hole in the driveway, mice in the attic, a loose railing on the stairs, water damage in the basement, and flaking paint in the bedroom.

Lately, my sexual fantasies revolved around once again having a landlord. Looks, age, and hygiene didn’t matter, as long as he had a tool belt and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it.”

Being a homeowner sucked. Though officially, I wasn’t a homeowner. Chicago cops were required to live within the city limits, so the house was in my mother’s name. While far from feeble, Mom had recently had some medical problems, and we decided that it would be best if she moved in with me. She agreed, but insisted we buy a house in the suburbs. “Where it is less hectic,” she’d said.

As far as the city knew, I still had my apartment in Wrigleyville. A dangerous game to play, but I wasn’t the first cop to play it.

I exited the expressway onto Elmhurst Road, drove past several tiny strip malls—or perhaps it was one giant strip mall—and turned down a side street festooned with eighty-year-old oak and elm trees. There weren’t any streetlights, and the cloudy day and abundant foliage made it look like dusk, even though dusk was an hour away. I pulled into the driveway, pressed the garage door opener, pressed it again, pressed it one more time, said some bad words, then got out of the car.

The suburbs smelled different from the city. Woodsy. Secluded. Clean and safe.

I hated the suburbs.

I lugged the groceries to the front door, set them on the porch, reached for my keys, and froze.

The new door I recently had installed—a security door made of reinforced aluminum with the pick-proof dead bolt that I always made sure was locked tight—was yawning wide open.

Chapter 2

C
OP MODE TOOK OVER.
My mother, the apple of my eye who’d guilted me into buying this suburban hell-house, was visiting friends in Florida and wouldn’t be back for another week. Latham, my boyfriend, had a key, but he also had a car, which wasn’t parked in the driveway or on the street.

Several times in my professional past, people had figured out where I lived. Bad people. Which is how I let my mom convince me to move to the middle of a forest preserve.

I set down the bags and opened my purse, removing my .38 Colt Detective Special, using a two-handed grip, elbows bent, barrel pointing skyward. I nudged the door open with my shoulder, holding my breath, trying to listen. The hardwood floor my mother adored squeaked like a tortured squirrel with every step I took. A male voice came from deep inside the bowels of the house.

“Debemos cantar algo más...”

I considered my options. My radio was in the car. Cell phone was in my pocket, but 911 would take a few minutes to respond.

“¡Dios mío!”

From behind. I spun, dropping to one knee, hearing and then feeling my Donna Karan skirt tear, drawing a bead on a chubby Mexican man in a full red and gold mariachi uniform, complete with sombrero and oversized guitar.

“Jack!”

I ascertained that the mariachi wasn’t an immediate threat, turned toward the other voice, and saw Latham standing in the hallway, wearing a tuxedo.

“Jesus!” I said, hissing out a breath.

Latham smiled. “Don’t shoot them until after you’ve heard them play.”

I holstered my gun, Latham came over to help me off my knee, but somehow he wound up on his.

“Latham, what are—”

Guitars began to play, and two more mariachis joined their friend next to the breakfront. Latham dug into his tux jacket, coming out with a jewelry box. His red hair was combed back, but a lock of it curled down his forehead. His green eyes were glinting.

“Jacqueline Daniels, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in my entire life.”

Oh my God.

He was proposing.

I had a huge rip in my skirt. I bet my hair was a mess. Did my makeup look okay? I hadn’t checked it in hours.

“I want you to be my wife. I promise I’ll do everything within my power to make you the happiest woman on the planet. Jacqueline Margaret Daniels, will you marry me?”

He looked so damn cute, his eyes all glassy, a goofy smile on his face, that dumb music playing behind us.

Then he held out the ring, and I started to cry. A solitaire diamond, shining like it had batteries, exactly the kind of ring I’d always dreamed of having.

He took my left hand, went to put the ring on.

I pulled away.

His cute face crumpled.

“I’ve thought it all out, Jack. I know you’ve been burned by marriage before. And I know you just moved here, and you aren’t going to abandon your mother. We have time to work all of that out. I’m not setting a date. I just want...need...the commitment.”

For some insane reason, I thought about the little girl at the supermarket, and how right it felt to hold her hand. What are you thinking, Jack? You’re forty-six years old. You can’t possibly...

My cell phone rang once. Twice. Three times.

“Are you going to get that?” Latham asked.

Shit. I dug the phone out and slapped it to my face.

“Daniels.” I turned to the mariachi band and yelled, “Shhh!”

“This is the superintendent’s office. She’s called an emergency meeting. You need to get to police headquarters immediately.”

The secretary broke the connection. Latham knelt patiently at my feet. To our left, three fat mariachis waited expectantly. I felt like a spotlight had come on and I’d forgotten my lines.

“You have to go,” Latham said.

“Latham—”

“It’s okay. Go ahead.” He smiled, and the smile was so pure, so genuine, it broke my heart.

Then he put the ring back in its little red box, and my heart broke a second time.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” he said. “Do you mind?”

I reached out a hand and touched his freshly shaven cheek.

“Of course I don’t mind. I love you. I just—”

He stood up, kissed me, and the mariachis broke into song. I’d never kissed a guy with a band playing backup music, and I found it incredibly stupidly romantic and more than a little exciting. My hips touched his, and he slipped his hand down the small of my back and pulled me even closer. It had been about a week since I’d had sex, and I moaned a little in my throat, arousal flush ing through me like a drug. Then the lovely guitar strumming was replaced by screams of pain and terror.

My unfriendly cat, Mr. Friskers, had wrapped him self around one of the mariachis’ heads like a face-hugger from the movie
Alien
. He did this often enough that we kept a loaded squirt gun in the refrigerator. Latham jogged off to get it, and I tried to explain to the mariachis that pulling wasn’t going to work, because the cat just dug in harder.

They tried to pull anyway.

Mariachi blood flowed.

Latham came back with the squirt gun and some paper towels, apologizing profusely in bad Spanish. After the first spritz, Mr. Friskers fell to the floor, hissed at Latham, and then bounded off down the hallway.

The mariachi escaped with both eyes still in their sockets, but his mustache was dangling at an odd angle. His bandmates found this amusing enough to spur them into giggling fits.

“Go save the city,” Latham said, pressing a paper towel to the bleeding singer’s face. “We’ll talk later.”

“Are you sure?”

He winked at me. “Go on. I have to find the rest of this guy’s mustache anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said, though it felt like spoiled milk in my mouth.

“Call me before you get home. I’m cooking dinner. German.”

My favorite kind of food. I felt like a super-jumbo cowardly jerk.

I walked out the door, past the grocery bags I’d left on the porch, and climbed into my car. In the driver’s seat, head buzzing, I stared at the large tear in my skirt but found myself unable to go back into the house to change. I couldn’t face Latham.

He deserved so much better than me.

I pulled out of the driveway, thinking about my rocky relationship with the world’s most adorable accountant, Latham Conger. He was a bit younger, attractive, intelligent, caring, good in bed, and the most patient and forgiving person I’d ever met. In all the fairy princess fantasies I’d die before admitting I had, he perfectly fit the role of Prince Charming.

Unfortunately the fairy princess fantasy didn’t mesh well with the veteran city cop reality.

The Ike got me back into Chicago in an hour and some change.

Police headquarters was located in a sprawling 400,000-square-foot building on Thirty-fifth and Michigan. The lobby, like the exterior, was a mixture of orangish brown and off-white. Lots of tile. Lots of fluorescent light. It reminded me of a hospital.

My partner, Sergeant Herb Benedict, was pacing the hallway in front of the super’s door. Herb was ten years my senior, and twice my weight, and he sported a walrus mustache and hound dog jowls. Worried wasn’t a look that Herb wore often, but at that moment he looked positively distraught.