Unsure of what she’s looking for, he describes the neighborhoods on his beat and tells anecdotes about interesting calls he’s taken in the past. Without mentioning his divorce or admitting that all he can currently afford is a dingy apartment in a rough neighborhood, he points out houses he’s looked into buying, though they’re all beyond his means. She compliments his ability to drive, operate the computer, and talk with her all at the same time. When she isn’t writing in her steno pad, she’s recording him on a digital voice recorder, a device smaller than a cell phone that beeps and chirps from time to time.
When he returns without getting a response at an apartment where a silent 911 was reported, he tells her, “The front door was locked. No noise coming from inside. Nothing more I can do — you just can’t go around kicking people’s doors in.” He types “C UNF” into the computer and clicks “send.” “That’s ‘clear/unfounded.’ We get a lot of those around here. It’s a Hispanic neighborhood, and part of Mexico has a 911 area code. Sometimes they forget to dial the ‘001’ first, so they hang up.” He waits to see how she will react, but she’s too busy taking notes.
As work goes, it’s drudgery, but Brett puts the best face on it. He feels compelled to both entertain and impress. He gets most of the ride-alongs because of his reputation for being easygoing, but he wants to be more than that for Meredith. If I play my cards right, maybe I’ll get to show her my billy club at the end of the shift, he thinks with a barely suppressed grin.
She expresses interest in the mundane. The operation of the computer and what all the codes and responses mean. How he selects which call slip to answer. He allows a hint of pride to creep into his voice when telling her how he reads between the lines, discerning when a call should be assigned a higher priority than it seems to merit at first glance.
He elicits a laugh when he says, “Please don’t steal the police car,” before he goes to ticket a Hispanic teenager who ran a stop sign. The driver’s-license number triggers a warrant flag, so he confiscates the ignition key and returns to the cruiser to await confirmation from TCIC/NCIC.
“Seven minutes is the timer on a stop,” he says, typing a code into the computer. “I’m telling the dispatcher to restart the clock. Otherwise she’ll start sending messages or calling me over the radio to make sure I’m okay.” He twists in his seat to watch the occupants of the other car and make eye contact with Meredith at the same time. He has to be prepared in case the driver decides to run away. “Saturday usually starts out quiet like this and then picks up when the sun goes down. What’s your book about?”
She shrugs. “I don’t like discussing story ideas until they’re finished.”
“Have you published anything?”
“Some short stories. This is my first novel.”
He wants to ask more, but he knows so little about writing and books in general that he’s afraid to look stupid. Awkward silence fills the air between them, interrupted only by the garbled chatter on the radio, including frequent updates on the Astros game. Though it’s early October, it’s warm sitting in the car without the AC running.
When he notices her checking her watch after fifteen minutes, he decides to cut the driver loose with just the ticket rather than waiting for dispatch to respond. Priority-one queries, where the information determines whether or not someone will be arrested, are supposed to take less than ten minutes, but sometimes a request gets lost between the dispatcher and the person who keys it in. Thirty seconds after the other car drives off, the report comes back positive for two delinquent traffic tickets, so he flashes the lights, blasts the siren for a few seconds, and pulls the car over again, this time placing the driver under arrest. He turns the keys over to the passenger after ascertaining that he has no outstanding warrants.
Once he has the prisoner handcuffed and belted into the backseat, he says, “At least now you’ll get to see the jail.”
It takes nearly twenty minutes to drive to the Southeast Jail, where prisoners arrested on minor complaints are held. After they arrive, they have to wait another ten minutes for the garage door to open on the sally port, which is little more than a glorified parking garage with a few podiums. Here, the prisoner’s handcuffs are removed, he is frisked again, and a jail employee asks in a bored tone if he has any medical conditions or any forms of mental illness and if he’s ever attempted suicide. The guy is cooperative and untroubled by the process, which leads Brett to believe he’s been through this before.
Brett ushers Meredith into the small office behind the podiums, where he hands over his paperwork. The other officers waiting in line look her over approvingly and give him subtle thumbs-up signs or winks.
By the time they leave the sally port, it’s nearly six o’clock. Normally he’d have dinner with one of his buddies, but he called to cancel when Meredith was in the powder room at the jail. He doesn’t want to share her with anyone.
“Hungry?” he asks. “There’s a place up here I’ve been meaning to try out.”
“Sure. My treat.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s the least I can do. You must be getting tired of all my questions.”
“It’s good to have the company, to be honest.”
“On TV they always show the cops riding with partners.”
“If we weren’t so understaffed, maybe. You saw how many people were at roll call today? That was a big turnout for a Saturday. Usually we have two or three less than that. A couple of nights ago, there was a house fire, and another unit and I had to do traffic control. You should have seen the call slips piling up. I had nineteen when I got back to the car. Some of them had been holding for eight or nine hours from day shift.”
He wheels into the restaurant parking lot and escorts her into the dim interior. It’s a place where he knows he can get good food and quick service, two important factors to someone who could be called out at any moment. He likes the way she looks in the flicker of the candle on the table, and he takes the opportunity to discreetly appraise her while she studies the menu.
“This must be boring as hell for you,” he says. “Nothing like what you see on TV.”
“That’s exactly what I’m looking for. Reality, not drama.”
She focuses her attention on him, as if every word he says is gospel. Normally it’s the uniform that makes him feel noticed. Today, it’s being seen in the company of this beautiful woman. He wonders if it’s too soon to ask her to join him at a nightclub after he gets off shift. He usually goes out on Saturdays because he has Sundays off. Maybe he should work that into the conversation first.
“You’ll get a kick out of this,” he says after they give their orders. “A woman was chasing a sexual-assault suspect the other day in her car. She calls 911 and tells the call taker where they’re headed. Then she goes, ‘I’ve got a pistol and I’m going to shoot him. . . . I’m getting ready to shoot him.’ It goes out on the radio, and the responding officer calls back in this deadpan voice, ‘Um, ask her to hold off on that.’” It’s a funny story, much older than he lets on and always good for a laugh. A burst of adrenaline rushes through his veins when she reacts as if it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard.
He tries to ask her questions, but she always turns the conversation back around to the job. Departmental hierarchy and the size of his beat, boring stuff like that, but if that’s what turns her crank, he’s only too happy to explain. He outlines the subtle but important difference between drawing his weapon — which he does occasionally — and actually pointing it at someone, which happens far less frequently. He admits that he has never fired his gun in the line of duty.
“I’m all for the Taser, as long as we can use it the way I feel it should be used. I shouldn’t have to fight anybody anymore, because when you do, you sprain or strain something. People complain when some perp dies after being zapped because he refused to follow orders, but they don’t want to pay officers injured on duty to sit at home because things got out of hand, you k
now?” It’s one of his pet rants, and he stops himself before he really gets rolling. She has a few questions about the way the Taser works, which he answers simply and directly before changing the subject.
After dinner, he responds to a noise complaint — a band playing outside a restaurant — investigates a missing sewer grating, and calls a wrecker to tow an abandoned vehicle, identified by a chalk mark he made on the left rear tire during the previous shift. The work is so mundane, he’s embarrassed. She’s probably not going to think much of the reality of the job when all she sees him doing is writing tickets and getting cars impounded. If she expected Cops, she must be terribly disappointed.
He scours the screen for something a little more adventurous, a little sexier. Normally when he has a ride-along, he picks calls that are unlikely to turn ugly. Now he wants something that might give him a chance to impress her.
“What’s that one?” She taps a coral-red fingernail on a new entry.
“Silent alarm on Westheimer.”
“Like a break-in or something?”
He can tell she’s intrigued by the way her breathing changes. Her right foot taps on the floor mat next to her burlap satchel.
Against his better judgment, he claims the call, knowing he could end up spending the rest of the night filling out paperwork instead of catching the perps in the act. He has a brief fantasy about Tasering a guy while Meredith watches in fawning adoration, after which she agrees to meet him at Numbers for a couple of drinks before sidling up next to him and suggesting in a steamy whisper that it’s time to go somewhere else. Somewhere private.
“No lights or siren?” she asks. She sounds disappointed.
“Don’t want to warn them we’re coming,” he says.
“Is another unit responding?”
“I’ll call for backup if I need it. After I check out the situation.”
“Do you get scared, answering calls like this?”
He considers lying but thinks the truth might impress her more. A chance to show his sensitive side. “I get scared every time I pull someone over for a traffic stop. You never know who’s behind the wheel, what their day’s been like. If they’ve just had a fight with their wife and are looking for someone to take it out on. Or if they’ve just robbed or killed someone and the only thing standing between them and freedom is me. I’ve got two rules for every shift.”
He pauses, waiting for her to ask what they are. When she does, he continues. “First, to go home in the same condition I was in when I came to work.”
“And the other?”
“Get a bite to eat sometime during the shift. That one doesn’t always work out.”
She laughs gently, tossing her long dark hair back. It’s a good moment. He’s about to broach the subject of nightclubs and drinks when he realizes they’re a block from the scene. He keys in the code to let dispatch know he’s on the scene and then focuses his attention on the surroundings. The address corresponds to a jewelry store squeezed between an antiques shop and a joint with a neon condom hanging out front.
The place is dark and looks empty. After wheeling around the corner to check the alley, he stops and uses the handle near his head to direct the spotlight at the back door. He’s about to get out to make sure it’s locked when a set of headlights materializes in his rearview mirror. His chest tightens when he considers the implications of a vehicle suddenly pinning him in.
Meredith bends over in her seat. Brett wonders if she saw something that alarmed her and is trying to get out of the way. Then he realizes that she’s fumbling in her canvas satchel, though he can’t imagine why.
He’s about to reach for the dispatch mike when she straightens up and points a Taser exactly like his own at him. The red panic button on the corner of his keyboard is only inches from his hand. If he could hit it, an alert would go out to dispatch and all units in the vicinity, and his car’s engine and computer would be disabled. The space between them is far less than the weapon’s twenty-five-foot range. Its skin-piercing twin prongs would cover the distance faster than he could move an inch. The tension in her trigger finger is obvious — she won’t hesitate to stun him. He shifts his gaze from her hand to her chestnut eyes, trying to comprehend what the hell is happening. How in a few seconds he went from thinking about asking her out on a date to staring down the business end of fifty thousand volts.
Two people arrive beside the car. They yank the door open, pull him out, and pin him to the ground in the filthy alley, next to a row of garbage cans and a stack of empty crates. He feels a tug at his belt. A moment later his own handcuffs ratchet around his wrists.
“Relax,” Meredith says as she emerges from the cruiser. “Rule number one. Don’t struggle, and you’ll go home in the same condition as when you came to work.”
A male voice speaks for the first time. “You all set?”
“Don’t worry. I know all the codes to enter, and I’ve set up a few voice files on the digital recorder to answer routine pages from dispatch. I’ll let you know if something comes up I can’t handle.”
The second male voice says, “Stay down if you know what’s good for you. Don’t try anything.”
Brett is too frustrated and angry to answer. He shakes his head to acknowledge the order while trying to figure out how to extricate himself from this mess. He feels his service revolver, radio, baton, and Taser being stripped from his side. Without his weapons, all he has are some training and a badge, neither of which will stop a bullet or a paralyzing jolt of electricity. His body armor is in the trunk. He wonders if he’ll get to turn it in at the depot for a new set like his sergeant ordered a few hours earlier.
Two sets of footsteps walk away from him. He turns his head far enough to see the dark figures disappear through the back door of the jewelry store. Another set of footsteps approaches from his left. He twists around to watch Meredith pull a crate from the stack and drop onto it. She has the Taser in a firm grip, though it isn’t pointed in his direction at the moment.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “People know who you are. The community-relations officer who set up your ride ran a background check on you.”
“He ran a background check on Meredith Knight. Getting into a police car for a ride-along isn’t exactly like breaking into Fort Knox. Or,” she says, with a nod toward the nearby building, “a jewelry store. We did the whole thing by e-mail, phone, and fax. He never met me. All I had to do was fill out some forms with fake information, fax them off to him, and that was it. No one even searched me at the police department.”
“How could you know they wouldn’t?”
“It’s not my first ride-along. Just my first at your station. My first as Meredith Knight.”
Brett closes his eyes. “Seems like a lot of effort for a burglary.”
“Well worth it, though,” she says. “The main problem was the alarm. We didn’t know how to disable it, so the next-best thing was to distract whoever responded. If I couldn’t persuade you to take the call, my associates would have ambushed whoever showed up — but that would limit their time inside. This way, we have a few extra minutes to get the safe open. Excuse me.”
She steps past him and leans into the cruiser to enter something on the keyboard. He knows what she’s typing. He explained it all to her in detail. Unless the dispatcher needs to get in touch with him about something unrelated or starts to wonder why it’s taking so long to investigate, the next people likely to arrive on the scene will be the owners, to clear the alarm. They won’t be of much help unless they notice something, and that’s only if they’re in town and get here before the thieves take off. For all he knows, they’re at Minute Maid Park, watching the Astros game.
He still can’t believe the lengths to which they’ve gone for a robbery. Later tonight, after they let him go, he’ll sit down with the police artist and describe her so well that strangers will recognize her on the street. They’ll have video of her too, from police headquarters and the jail. Her picture will be all o
ver the six o’clock news tomorrow, regardless of how this turns out for him.
“You look lost in thought,” she says, startling him. She’s on the crate again, cradling the Taser in her lap.
His approach when interrogating people at a scene is to always let the suspects think they’re winning. In this situation, at this moment, they are. All he wants to do is get through the night alive and with a minimum of humiliation. Losing his service revolver has been the biggest blow so far.
“I’m in a bad spot here.”
“Not if you stay cool,” she says. “Fifteen, twenty minutes, this will be all over. We’ll be on our way, and you’ll never see us again.”
“This must be some haul.”
“You have no idea. We’ve been planning it for two months.”
He tries to decide how much to say. He doesn’t want to give them any helpful information, but he also doesn’t want the volatile situation to get any worse.
“If you’re worried about the owners showing up,” she says, “don’t be. They’re tied up at the moment.”
Brett thinks she expects him to grin at the joke, but he doesn’t. He curses himself for being so entranced by her that he overlooked the possibility that she might have some ulterior motive. Writing a novel. As if.
Her cell phone chirps. She flips it open and glances at the display. Brett deduces that she’s speaking with her collaborators inside the building.
“Not long now,” she says in a chatty tone after she disconnects, as if they’re waiting for a pizza to arrive. “You probably don’t want to go out with me after this, right?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been working up the courage to ask me out all afternoon.”
“You’re nuts.”
“A woman knows,” she says. “Under different circumstances, I might have said yes.”
“Fuck you,” he says. He’s in no mood for her banter anymore. Still, no matter how angry he is with her for setting him up, he’s more pissed off at himself for allowing it to happen.