The Darker Hours Page 18

  “Good morning,” Boyce said, moving to give her room. Spark yawned again.

  “Where’s your manners?” Joanie said from the kitchen area.

  “Mornin,’” Spark mumbled.

  “Have a late night?” Boyce said to Spark.

  “She don’t need a late night to sleep the day away,” her mother said as the coffee started gurgling. She came back into the living room and sat on one of the chairs. She tucked her legs up underneath her. She looked at Boyce. Her eyes were solemn. “I guess I need to thank you. I don’t remember what happened, but Annie Marie says you saved my life.”

  “Her and that guy,” Spark said.

  Joanie shook her head, her hair falling down into her eyes. “I don’t remember any of it.”

  “You took too much medicine for your backache,” Spark said.

  “I guess that’s what happened. I’ve been having really bad back pain. Who was the man you were with? Another policeman?”

  “A friend,” Boyce said. “We were lucky he was along. Lucky he had Naloxone in his car.”

  “What’s Naloxone?”

  “It’s an antidote for opioid overdose.”

  “Those pills were opioids? I never knew that.”

  “You all okay now?”

  “Yeah. I don’t take those pills no more. A friend at work gave’m to me. Said it would help my back. They were still in the pharmacy bag. I thought they’d be okay. I guess it was lucky you came by when you did.”

  “I just thought you were sleeping,” Spark said.

  The coffee beeped and Joanie got up and made two cups. “Cream and sugar?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Boyce said.

  Joanie fixed the coffees, then carried two cups back into the living area. She gave one to Boyce. It was steaming.

  “The reason I’m here,” Boyce said, “is that Annie Marie was talking about her friend George. She said something I want to ask him about. She said that George thought Marcelino Torres, the guy they call Mookie, was an undercover policeman. I’d like to know why he thought that.”

  Joanie carried her coffee to her chair. “Do you know why?” she asked her daughter.

  “No. But he did say that once. I don’t pay too much attention to what George says.”

  Boyce blew on her coffee and sipped it. “Would you mind if I took Annie Marie over to George’s to talk to him?”

  “I don’t mind,” Joanie said. She looked at Annie Marie. “But don’t you forget you’re supposed to clean the bathrooms today.”

  “I won’t forget.” She looked at Boyce. “Let me brush my hair.”

  Growing up.

  Fifteen minutes later they found George on his porch steps flipping a pocketknife and sticking it in the dirt. Something a boy would be doing if he was alone and bored. He looked at Boyce and Spark warily as they got out of the Miata and walked up to him.

  “Your mom take the X-box away from you again?” Spark said.

  George shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Didn’t want to play it anyway.” He looked at Boyce with suspicion. He flipped his knife again.

  “Hey George, how’s it going?” Boyce said in a friendly tone.

  George just looked at her. He didn’t say anything. He reached down and picked up the knife.

  “You know that guy Mookie?” Spark said. She moved over to stand in the spot so he couldn’t throw the knife again. “You know who I mean. He hangs around here once in a while.”

  George shrugged.

  “You once told me he was a cop. Why’d you say that?”

  He just shrugged again.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Don’t screw around. We need to know.”

  He shrugged. “Just saw him a couple of times sitting in a car with two other cops.”

  “Uniform cops?” Boyce said.

  He shook his head, “No, like you. Regular clothes.”

  “Who were the cops?”

  He shook his head again. “Don’t know’m.”

  “What’d they look like?”

  “I don’t know. One guy was tall like Mookie. The other guy was shorter. Had dark curly hair. White guys. Cops all look alike.”

  “Where’d you see them?”

  “That Circle K. You know, where we got hassled.”

  “What kind of car did they have.”

  “I don’t know. Big one.”

  “Do you see them in the neighborhood often?” Boyce said.

  George shrugged. “I don’t know. Ain’t my job to keep track of them.”

  “You seen them lately?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  Boyce watched him for a moment. “So, I don’t get why you would think Mookie is a cop. Just because he was talking with two guys you think were cops.”

  George looked up at her. “Cop goes into a store, wants a six pack. He picks it up and leaves. Ain’t nobody gonna say nothin’. Cop wants a haircut; he sits in the chair and gets a haircut. Barber don’t charge him nothin’. Same with Mookie. Mookie wanted something he just picked it up and took it. Just like a cop.” He looked at Spark. “You want to shoot hoops later?”

  “I gotta clean bathrooms,” she said.

  51

  Boyce drove Spark back to her house. When she pulled up in front of the trailer Spark didn’t get out right away. Boyce shifted around to look at her. Spark was staring straight ahead.

  “You okay?” Boyce said.

  Spark turned to look at her. “You know, I don’t think I really thought about it. Not till Mom said it.”

  “Said what?”

  “You saved her life.” Tears came to her eyes. “I mean, if you hadn’t come along when you did, I would be sitting on the porch while my mom died. I wouldn’t have a mom now.”

  “You’d have done something. You’re smart. You would have figured it out.”

  Spark leaned her head on her forearms on the dash. She made no sound but her shoulders began to shake. Boyce sat still a moment, then she leaned over and laid her arm across Spark’s back. Spark turned into her arms. Now, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Boyce gathered her in and held her until the sobbing subsided. Finally, Spark sat back. Boyce reached to the back seat and fumbled her purse into her lap. She found the tissues and pulled two out and handed them to Spark. Spark wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  She leaned back in the seat but made no attempt to get out. Finally, she said, “That was embarrassing.”

  “There are a lot of things to be embarrassed about, but this isn’t one of them,” Boyce said. “Like the time in high school when I was wearing a loose skirt and when I went to the bathroom, I accidently tucked the back of the skirt into the elastic of my panty hose and I walked the entire hall with my hind end hanging out.”

  Spark guffawed. “Oh my God. Did you really?”

  “Afraid so.”

  She hitched around to look at Boyce. “How did you become a detective?”

  “Well, I was a patrolman for a few years first.”

  “How did you become a patrolman?”

  “I applied to the police academy. It took three tries before I was accepted.”

  “Three times? Why?”

  “You had to take a test.”

  “You flunked a test?”

  Boyce smiled. “Well, not exactly. Actually, I scored pretty high, but they kept taking all boys.”

  “They didn’t want girls?”

  “Not at first. Then they got a new boss and a new mayor and so they decided they wanted a few women. So, that time I got chosen.”

  “Why did you want to be a policeman?”

  “My father was a policeman. And when I was really little, there was a TV show called Police Story with a lady detective. I thought she was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to be just like her.”

  “And now you are.”

  Boyce smiled, “I’ll take that as a compliment. But to tell the truth, when I got old enough to graduate from school and I had to make a decision, I realized there weren’t many choices
for a woman. Not like today.”

  “What choices?”

  “Well, a lot of my high school friends went to college, then got married and never did use their education. But some became teachers, some became nurses. Some became accountants. Some went into business but none of that sounded good to me.”

  “Don’t you want to get married?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I thought your friend was nice.”

  “Jackson? Yeah, he’s nice. But Jackson’s just not the marrying kind. But then, neither am I.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Not long. Couple of years. Maybe a little more.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  Boyce smiled. “He was looking for a girl.”

  “Like to date?”

  “No, not that. He lives on a houseboat at the marina at Lake Pleasant. A couple of bad guys drugged up a little girl, about your age, maybe a year or two older. And while she was passed out, they wrapped her in plastic and dumped her off the dock where Jackson’s boat is. So Jackson jumps in and saves her but the next day she disappears, so he came to the precinct trying to figure out who she was and where she might have gone. He wanted us to help him find her.”

  “What do you mean, she disappeared.”

  “It’s a long story but it turns out she was the granddaughter of the Columbian Consul, which is like an ambassador, and two drug cartels were each trying to get her so they could blackmail the old man. As an ambassador he had a lot of power.”

  “Did he find her?”

  “Oh yeah. Jackson is an unusual guy. He has a very specific set of skills.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Jackson doesn’t talk about it, so if you ever see him again, don’t bring it up. In fact, he won’t even tell me much, but my boss, Captain Mendoza found out about him. Jackson was a Navy Seal and at one time was a part of a covert team that did secret missions for the government.”

  “Oh my God. He was a spy?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say it that way.”

  Spark was mesmerized. “But you said he lives on a boat.”

  “Well, that covert stuff was in the old days. He stepped on a bomb and lost a foot and so he’s retired now.”

  “Wait. He lost a foot?”

  “He stepped on an IED and it blew his foot off, so he had to retire.”

  “He doesn’t have a foot? I didn’t see that. He doesn’t limp or anything.”

  “Yeah, he’s pretty good at hiding it.”

  “What did he step on? An IE……”

  “An IED. It stands for Improvised Explosive Device. It’s a homemade bomb the bad guys make, then bury where they think the Americans would be walking.”

  Spark shook her head, grinning. “Wow.” She opened the door and slid out. She leaned back down and looked at Boyce. “Nothing exciting ever happens around here. Maybe I’ll be a cop.” She turned, slamming the door behind her. She ran up the steps yelling, “Hey Mom, I’m home!”

  52

  Jackson was on the couch holding the TV remote when Boyce came in. She placed her purse on the kitchen counter. She unloaded her pockets.

  “People wonder why I don’t have a TV on the boat.” He turned the TV off and tossed the remote onto the couch beside him. “There is absolutely nothing worth watching.”

  “Yeah,” Boyce said, looking in the refrigerator. “Leave it to Beaver went off the air a long time ago,” She studied the refrigerator contents. Finally, she took out a bottle of water and twisted off the cap.

  “You shouldn’t sneak out on me like that. I’m only here to help,” Jackson said, watching her.

  She shrugged. “I was getting claustrophobic.”

  Jackson understood that. “Are you in for the night?”

  “Yeah. I’m not going anywhere. Why? You want the night off.”

  “This is my second day in these clothes. If you are staying in, I thought I’d run out to the boat and do some laundry and check the mail. Air the place out. I’ll be back early tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t think you even looked at your mail.”

  “Once in a blue moon there’ll be something I need to see. Car registration and such.”

  “Go on. I’m just hanging here. Probably go to bed early.”

  He stood. “If anything happens, call 911, then call me.”

  She nodded.

  After he left, she undressed, thinking about taking a shower. She changed her mind and decided to go for a run. Not exactly staying in, but she wasn’t worried. She put on a sports bra, a loose tee shirt, running shorts and New Balance running shoes. She snapped a fanny pack around her waist. She placed her phone and her gun in the fanny pack. She went out the back and took her time checking the surrounding area. Nothing looked out of place.

  As she ran, she thought about Annie Marie Morales. And Annie Marie’s mother. She liked Joanie. There are millions like her. Under-educated, working menial jobs, raising kids that were born because they were young and impulsive and had given no thought to birth control. Now facing everything alone.

  There was something about this kid. Boyce had recognized early in her life that when all the other females were oohing and aweing about somebody’s baby, she just didn’t feel it. At first it bothered her, but the older she got the more she accepted that she just didn’t have the maternal gene. So now, as she ran, she wondered why this young girl was getting to her.

  She came to a fork in the mountain path and she took the trail that was the long way around. “Maybe it’s because I see me in her,” she said out loud.

  She took the shower when she got back. She had been cautious approaching her place, but again, nothing looked out of place. She pulled a frozen pork steak from the freezer and thawed it in the microwave. She found a can of peas and a can of asparagus. She was basically a heat and eat girl. Once the meat was thawed, she browned it in a cast iron skillet then put it in a baking dish and covered it with cream of mushroom soup. She put it in the oven to bake. She opened the cans and poured the vegetables into small pots to heat on the stove top.

  Once she felt the pork steak was done, she pulled it out and let it cool on the counter while she heated the vegetables. She poured a glass of wine and set up a tray table. She settled in front of the TV. Jackson had been right, there was nothing on, She watched Wheel of Fortune as she ate. She cleaned up, turned off the TV and curled up with another glass of wine and a J.D. Robb novel.

  When enough time had passed, she got up and turned on the upstairs landing light, then turned off the downstairs lights. She checked the front and back locks and went upstairs, She brushed her teeth and went to bed. She couldn’t fall asleep right away. When she finally did, she went down deep.

  The phone rang. She rolled over and looked at her clock. It was three-thirty. She swung her legs out of the bed. She let it ring again, waiting a second to gather herself.

  “Boyce,” she said when she picked it up.

  “Detective, it’s Captain Mendoza. I just got a call from Detective Bennett. He says Marcelino Torres wants to surrender. He says Torres is afraid he’ll be shot on sight, so he wants to surrender to me and me alone. No one else is to be there.”

  “Be where?”

  “At 19th Avenue and Hatcher. There is a large empty building. Used to be a hockey rink. He’s been holed up there. I want you to come with me.”

  “He says alone.”

  “He’s not in charge. Meet me there.”

  “When?”

  “In an hour.”

  Boyce looked at the clock. “Four-thirty,” she said.

  “Correct. Bennett wants to take SWAT in, but I told him no. We’ll play it straight until we can’t. I’ll have a team a couple of blocks away. In the meantime, I told Bennett he and Barbieri are to keep hands off.”

  “Did the video check out? With him and Marcelino at the Safeway?”

  There was silence. “I don’t know. First I’ve heard of a video.”

 
; “One hour,” Boyce said.

  53

  The abandoned hockey rink building wasn’t very far away. Boyce reached it way early. There wasn’t much traffic so she knew if anyone was watching, she would draw attention. She drove by it, turned at the corner and drove at a normal speed along the side. There were streetlights that illuminated the front parking lot, but the side and back were in the dark. She went around the block, found a place to pull off the street and sat and watched the building. She had a half hour. She scooted down in the seat, rested her head on the head rest and waited.

  Twenty-five minutes later she watched Captain Mendoza’s personal car pull into the front parking lot. At the same time, two blocks south, a dark van pulled to the curb and parked. SWAT.

  She started the Miata, pulled onto the street and drove to Mendoza. She pulled up beside him. He was leaning against his fender. He was wearing an overcoat and a snap brim hat. The air was cool bur his coat was open. She got out.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” she said.

  “What could go wrong? Besides, I’ve got Calamity Jane,” the Captain said.

  “You’re hilarious.”

  Boyce touched the handle of the Glock on her belt. She didn’t need to disengage the safety because the safety was built into the trigger mechanism. The gun wouldn’t fire, even accidently, unless the trigger was fully pulled.

  “You ready?” he said. She nodded and they started toward the door.

  The door itself was industrial, made of metal, but as promised, it was unlocked. Mendoza turned the knob and pushed it open. They both had experience clearing a room and neither one of them trusted Torres. They went in quickly. Boyce went to her right with Mendoza on her heels. He moved to the left. He had left the door open allowing the outside light in. It was dim inside and then after a moment the door shut on its own. Now it was pitch black. They stood, silent, waiting. There was no sound.

  After a full minute Mendoza finally said, very softly, “Okay.”