Courageous: A Novel

  “Hi, Daddy!” Nine-year-old Emily entered the kitchen and leaned against the counter, smiling at her father. With dark curly hair like her mom’s, she was adorable in her princess pajamas.

  “Hey, sweetheart. Sorry I missed your recital today.”

  “That’s okay.” She peered up with wide, dark, elf eyes. “I messed up three times.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. But Hannah messed up four times, so I felt better.”

  Adam grinned and tweaked her nose. “You little stinker!”

  Emily giggled.

  Adam rounded the kitchen island and embraced his little girl. That’s how it was, Adam realized—this hierarchy of relationships in the Mitchell home. Dylan was hard work with little payoff. Next came Victoria. He still loved her, but these days things were sweet one minute and sour the next. The sour parts often involved Dylan.

  Adam wanted to leave the world’s toughest job at the end of the day. He did not want to come home to it. But Emily was a delight. So easy.

  “Emily’s been invited to Hannah’s birthday party.”

  “She has, huh?” He gave Emily a squeeze.

  “Hannah’s mom says she can take her home after school. But I told Emily she had to ask you first.”

  Emily spun like a gyroscope. Adam loved the delight she took in the smallest of things.

  “Oh, please, Daddy! Please let me go! I promise I’ll do my chores and my homework and . . . everything! Please!” Her smile was big, her dimples in just the right places, and her excitement lightened the whole room.

  Adam asked Victoria, “Has she committed any crimes or misdemeanors lately?”

  “No, she’s been very good. She even cleaned her room without being asked.”

  “Yeah, but not by throwing everything in your closet, right, Emily?”

  The little elf smiled sheepishly.

  “Oh, all right. But you owe me a really big hug.”

  Emily squealed and stretched her arms. “Yes! Thank you, Daddy!”

  As Emily threw her arms around Adam’s neck, Dylan ducked into the kitchen to grab an apple. He stared at his father embracing Emily. His sister took center stage, as always. Dylan felt his teeth clamp together. He always gives her whatever she wants. He won’t even enter a race with me.

  Dylan knew he was invisible to his father, but he saw his mom looking at him. She usually noticed him. His father never did. Except to shut him down.

  Dylan turned his back on his father and retreated to his bedroom.

  He didn’t slam the door. If he had, the house would have shaken.

  Chapter Three

  Monday morning, Adam entered the kitchen at 7:10 and reached for the nearly full pot of French roast. The problem with morning is that it comes before my first cup of coffee.

  Sundays were supposed to be restful, Adam knew, but yesterday had been tense. When Dylan didn’t want to attend church, Adam had to insist, and Dylan pouted through Sunday dinner. Adam came down hard. So Victoria objected, and Adam told her that Dylan needed to grow up and stop sulking when life didn’t go his way. Victoria was convinced Dylan and Emily heard their loud exchange. A frigid wind blew through the Mitchell household all that night.

  Now Victoria sat at the kitchen table sipping her own morning coffee. Her weak smile told him she was still unhappy but probably wouldn’t come after him with a steak knife.

  He ate a quick piece of toast and a bowl of Wheaties, then went through the living room and paid his habitual homage to Steve Bartkowski. Steve was ageless. He demanded nothing of Adam and reminded him of his childhood fantasies. Back then, Adam dreamed of becoming a football player or an astronaut. As he pulled out of the driveway, he thought of the boys who’d dreamed of becoming cops and were now businessmen. Maybe when they saw him, they imagined Adam was living the dream.

  Yeah, right.

  A cop’s job wasn’t easy. So why did being a husband and father seem far tougher?

  The usual buzz of conversation filled the muster room at the sheriff’s office, punctuated by laughter as the deputies shared favorite stories they’d rehashed many times while they waited for their shift meeting to begin. The room was a white cinder-block box crammed with fourteen fake wood folding tables in two rows, a narrow aisle between, and a podium in front. No one could mistake it for an executive boardroom.

  Still, the stark walls and camaraderie were a familiar solace, and when Adam entered the muster room, he felt more at home than he’d felt with his family yesterday.

  Adam and Shane sat next to each other on uncomfortable black stacking chairs, as they had for the last thirteen years, Styrofoam coffee cups, notepads, and pens in front of them. Ahead and to their left sat twenty-three-year-old David Thomson, fresh faced, looking like a grad student playing cop. Ten other deputies, eight men and two women, sat around them, two per table.

  Adam turned to Shane. “Hey, I’m grillin’ steaks on Saturday. What are you gonna do about it?”

  “I’m gonna come over and eat one. Maybe two.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” He leaned forward. “David, you’ve got no life. Why don’t you come too?”

  “I’ve got a life.”

  “Yeah? What are you doin’ this weekend?”

  “Uh . . . I’m, uh . . . Well, it depends on whether—”

  “Right. See you Saturday.” Adam and Shane laughed. David smiled sheepishly.

  Sergeant Murphy—a stocky, savvy veteran—began roll call. “Okay, let’s get started. First, Deputy David Thomson has survived his rookie year.”

  Applause broke out. Adam raised a hand for a high five. David grinned in embarrassment and raised his hand to acknowledge the praise.

  “You know what that means,” Shane said. “Now you can start using real bullets!”

  Everyone laughed. Meanwhile a uniformed officer walked in the door, recognized only by Adam and Shane.

  “Now I want to introduce you to Deputy Thomson’s new partner, Nathan Hayes. He’s joining our shift. He has eight years’ experience with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department in Atlanta. But he grew up here in Albany. Let’s welcome him.”

  The cops clapped for Hayes. He waved as he sat in the empty chair by David, then extended his hand to him.

  “Unfortunately Deputy Hayes already had a run-in with a couple of our gang members. I’m sure you’ve heard the story. I don’t know department policy in Atlanta, Hayes, but in Albany we recommend staying inside vehicles on the highway.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “We have two new warrants today: Clyde and Jamar Holloman. Two frequent fliers who opened up a drug operation on the 600 block of Sheffield. I’d like both warrant teams to handle this one. Everyone else stick to your normal beats. Now the sheriff has something he wants to tell us this morning. Sheriff?”

  A tall, sandy-haired man in uniform entered the room. From his haircut down, he looked like a Marine because he was one. His steely blue eyes seemed tired. Sheriff Brandon Gentry rarely made appearances in the muster room, so the deputies knew this must be important.

  “An e-mail came across my desk I’d like to share with you. A recent study was done on the increase in violent gang activity. It says almost every case has something in common. Runaways, dropouts, kids on drugs, teens in prison.”

  Sheriff Gentry paused and checked the printout. “The attribute they share is most of them came from a fatherless home. That makes kids growing up without dads our worst problem and the source of a thousand other problems. The study shows when a father is absent, kids are five times more likely to commit suicide, ten times more likely to abuse drugs, fourteen times more likely to commit rape, and twenty times more likely to go to prison.”

  He eyed the deputies before he continued. “The study ends by saying, ‘As fathers check out in increasing numbers, these percentages continue to rise, with escalating gang violence and crime.’”

  The sheriff lowered the paper. “So maybe you’re thinking, why tell u
s this, since by the time we face it on the streets, it’s usually too late? The answer is what we’ve told you a hundred times—the divorce rate for cops is high. I know your shift work is hard. But the bottom line is this: when you clock out, go home and love your families. All right, you’re dismissed. Get out of here.”

  The sheriff strode out, and the deputies rose.

  “‘Go home and love your families’?” Sergeant Brad Bronson snorted, addressing Sergeant Murphy. “In the old days they just told us, ‘Round up the bad guys and do your job!’”

  “Yeah, and most of us were getting divorces, including you and me. The sheriff’s just trying to look out for the men. You might wanna show more respect.”

  “He’s all hat and no cattle,” Bronson said to Murphy, way too loudly. “He’s been livin’ too long in high cotton.”

  Adam sized up Brad Bronson, a piece of work if there ever was one. Six and a half feet tall, over three hundred pounds nonstrategically distributed, he was saggy fleshed, a giant marshmallow in pants, but still managed to intimidate. The hair that once grew on his huge billiard ball head had been rerouted out his ears. His forehead was the gray of smudged newsprint, some veins permanently broken from his history of head-butting uncooperative perps. Thick-throated and chinless, Bronson smelled of cigar smoke. The sergeant believed “too stupid to live” was a valid jury verdict.

  Shane whispered to Adam, “There’s a lot of gravity in this world, but Bronson uses more than his share.”

  “Well, boys,” Bronson said with a growl, “I’ll keep the streets safe while you take the ladies to the ballet.”

  “Where you headed today, Sarge?” Adam asked.

  “The toughest part of town. ’Course, the toughest part of town is wherever I happen to be standin’.” Even now, Bronson gave Adam his hundred-yard stare, the one that would have made Clint Eastwood in his prime melt like a salted slug. He cleared his throat, sounding like he was mixing cement.

  Bronson acted tough, but Adam sensed more beneath the surface. In the twelve years Adam had known him, Bronson had been through two wives and had four children between them. Bronson constantly caused headaches for his superiors. He’d earned the particular ire of the public information officer, who repeatedly lectured him on his public demeanor and disdain for the media.

  As the deputies made small talk on their way out, several shook hands with Nathan.

  “Hold on,” Shane told Adam, then went to talk with Riley Cooper.

  Adam approached Cooper’s partner, Jeff Henderson, forty feet away, standing by his patrol car. Now a fifty-six-year-old veteran, Jeff had made a career of breaking in rookies, as he’d done with Adam seventeen years earlier. Last year, after their youngest son’s graduation, Jeff’s wife, Emma, had filed for divorce and moved to California to live near the older children and grandchildren.

  Jeff’s jaw was still chiseled, but his cheeks were fleshier and his blue eyes that used to flash bright seemed dimmer now. Adam reached out his hand. Jeff shook it, his grip looser than before.

  “How are you, Jeff?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t complain. Wouldn’t do any good if I did.” His once-booming voice now seemed as weak as his handshake. Though he smiled, it appeared pasted on.

  “How’s Jeff Jr.?”

  “Still alive, I guess. He hasn’t spoken to me for a year. He and his sister side with their mother. Brent’s at college now, hasn’t been back.”

  “I’m sorry, Jeff.”

  “That’s life.”

  “How’s the stomach?”

  “Sometimes it’s okay, other times . . . feels like it happened yesterday.”

  “It” happened fourteen years ago when Jeff and Adam confronted a shoplifter fleeing a store. Jeff tackled him on the sidewalk, and the guy buried a blade deep in Jeff’s stomach. It pierced his small intestine. He’d had two surgeries and unending therapy, but things hadn’t been right since.

  Time was supposed to heal Jeff, but it didn’t. It just made him older. Some cops stayed fresh; many became shopworn. Jeff put in his time now, doing his job with less passion. He had another young partner, Riley Cooper, who was eager, as Adam had been. But Jeff didn’t appear the energetic mentor anymore. He had so much to offer, yet he no longer seemed to offer it. Sadly, Adam thought, that wasn’t just Riley’s loss, but Jeff’s.

  Whether it was the ongoing pain or the trauma of the stabbing, the Jeff that Adam had known years ago and the one he knew now weren’t the same guy. At first, Emma had been the model cop’s wife, standing by her man, trying to help him. But he wouldn’t let her. One day thirteen years ago, Adam went to pick up Jeff at his house. Before Adam got to the door, it opened. Jeff came out in a fury and slammed it behind him. Emma called out the window, “Stop blaming your family! We’re not the ones who stuck that knife in you!”

  Adam had never forgotten that awkward moment. Neither had Jeff, though he never let on.

  Jeff peered at Adam as if through a fog. “Your family okay?”

  “Yeah. You know, the usual stuff. But we’re fine.”

  Jeff nodded. To Adam they seemed like two old men on the front porch in their rocking chairs saying, “Yessir” to each other with nothing to talk about. He thought of inviting Jeff fishing or to a ball game. But if they couldn’t keep a conversation going for five minutes, why shoot for hours?

  “Ready to go, Adam!” Shane called as Riley Cooper, sunglasses donned and full of strength and youthful enthusiasm, approached Jeff’s car.

  “Later, Jeff,” Adam said.

  “Later.”

  As Adam walked toward Shane and his car, he thought about the sheriff’s encouragement to leave his work behind him when his shift was over. How many times had he been told that? A hundred? How many times had he actually done it? A half dozen?

  Now Adam Mitchell had to serve arrest warrants on a couple of those fatherless young men the sheriff talked about. And if he wasn’t careful, they could make Adam’s kids fatherless too.

  Seventeen-year-old Derrick Freeman made his way from the train tracks toward Washington and Roosevelt. Tall and slender, he was dressed in a purple plaid shirt with a black Volcom tee underneath and long black denim shorts. He approached an abandoned warehouse, cell phone to his ear.

  “I can’t do that right now, Gramma! I’ll be home later.” His jaw clenched. “I don’t know when. I’m gonna take care of that later. Bye. I said bye!”

  He crammed the phone into his pocket and peered into a shadowy building.

  Big Antoine, TJ’s right-hand man, spoke out of a dark corner. “Hey, man, why you talkin’ to yo gramma like that?”

  Derrick squinted. He saw Antoine leaning against a concrete pillar, wearing a camo do-rag and closely trimmed goatee, dressed in an Army shirt. Torn-off sleeves emphasized bulging muscles. He slowly and deliberately skinned an apple.

  “Tired of her naggin’ me. I’m gonna do what I wanna do, man.”

  “Ain’t she takin’ care of you?”

  “She workin’ all the time. I take care of myself.”

  The way Antoine used the knife on the apple made Derrick’s nerve endings crawl. He wondered if someone with that same kind of knife had put the two scars on Antoine’s right cheek.

  “So you ain’t got nobody? Well, little wannabe, you better be sure you ready to do this. It ain’t no game, man.”

  Derrick took a few steps closer, eyes still on the rotating knife scalping the apple. “Tell TJ I want in. I’m ready.”

  “You think you ready. TJ’s gonna check you out. Watch out, man. TJ’s a beast.”

  Derrick hesitated, then blurted out, “Is it true the Waterhouse kid died when he was jumped in?”

  Antoine stared. “Got a little rough. Stuff happens. That kid was weak. TJ don’t mess around. He’s gonna make you prove yo’self.”

  Derrick sucked in air, stuck out his chest, and tried to deepen his voice. “Then I’ll just prove myself.”

  “Good. Just remember . . . I warned ya.”


  Chapter Four

  Adam drove with Shane toward southeast Albany, with Nathan and David behind them. Adam pressed the number 2 on his speed dial to reach Victoria. “Listen, a truck with the lumber’s coming soon. Tell them to pile it next to the driveway, okay?”

  Adam felt the phone buzz and pulled it away to read the screen. “Hey, Victoria, the sheriff’s calling. I gotta go. Love you. Bye.”

  Adam pushed the button to connect. “Hello, sir. Yes. Headed right there.”

  Shane pointed left to indicate the turn.

  “Yes, sir. We did that. Thank you, sir. Love you. Bye.”

  Shane gaped at him wide-eyed.

  “Oh no, no, no!” Adam stared disbelievingly at his cell.

  Shane snorted. “Did you just tell the sheriff you loved him?”

  “I can’t believe I said that. Should I call him back?”

  “You gonna tell him you don’t?”

  Adam grimaced as Shane picked up the car radio. “693c en route to the 600 block of Sheffield. Reference 10-99.”

  “10-4,” the dispatcher replied. “693c.”

  In the second squad car, Nathan followed Adam and Shane. They were senior officers in this arrest, but this was like the neighborhood Nathan grew up in on Albany’s east side. This westside area had long ago seen its best days and showed no hope of rebound.

  The farther they drove, the rougher the neighborhood. As the cruisers approached the house, two gang members sitting on a front porch next to the target house yelled, “5-0,” then walked across the yard. Not for a fight, Adam hoped as he and Shane pulled up and stepped out of the car. He studied their faces. They didn’t match the mug shots accompanying the warrant.

  Nathan and David passed the house and turned on the next street, pulling around to the back.

  “You want the door, Rookie?” Nathan asked.

  “I got it. And I’m not a rookie anymore.” David stationed himself on the grass at the base of the back door stairs. Nathan tipped up his sunglasses and positioned himself where he could see both the side of the house and David. Hands on his hips, Nathan had the steady eyes of a Secret Service agent. David practiced reaching for his Glock 23.