Coming Out of the Cold

PROLOGUE

“Where’s Marti? Go get Marti!”

Eric Peterson hurriedly opened the sliding glass door and yelled for his friend, and the party’s host, to come outside.

Marti Nash had just walked in to grab more drinks for the coolers when Eric yelled her name. Worried that some of her daughter’s friends might be getting too rowdy, she turned back around and hurried outside.

“What is it?” she asked Eric as soon as she stepped out onto the patio. They were in her backyard, celebrating her daughter’s sweet sixteen birthday, and young people were everywhere. Some were in the pool. Some were playing chess on one end of the patio while there was a card game going on the other end. It was loud outside and fun-filled, but what she didn’t see was anybody being rude or rowdy. “Why did you call me out here? I was getting more drinks.”

“Look.”

“Look at what?”

“Look!” Eric turned Marti in the direction where she could see across the far end of her backyard. That was when she saw Kamille Oliver, her best friend, walking across the lawn with Andy Sloan. And Marti couldn’t believe it. “Oh no she didn’t!”

“Why would she bring him here?” Eric asked. “She knows you can’t stand that man.”

“Be nice, Ma.” Jaleesa Nash, Marti’s daughter, hurried over to her. They said she looked just like her mother, but Marti could never see it. “I mean it, Ma. He’s just being nice. You be nice too.”

“And you stay away from him,” Marti admonished her daughter.

But when Andy yelled out, “ Is that my little Jaleesa over there, ” her daughter smiled and hurried to him. She vigorously embraced the man that used to be her mother’s patrol partner for nearly five years, and was considered a member of the family, before Marti requested and received a different partner. Everybody knew Marti despised him.

But Andy seemed as oblivious as Jaleesa. He was smiling as he hugged Marti’s daughter. “Long time, no see, fly girl,” he said as they rocked each other side to side the way they used to do. “It’s been too long. Way too long! And look how big you’ve gotten,” he added as he pulled back and looked down the length of her. “You’re a big girl now!”

Then he glanced over at Marti. “Hey Markita.” He said it with that grin she hated. “Still looking good I see,” he added, looking up and down her body. They never slept together, nor came close to doing so, but she was certain he told people that they had. That was the kind of man he was.

And Marti wasn’t playing along. “Can I talk to you?” she said to Kamille, the woman that had brought him there. Without cracking a smile, Marti reopened her sliding glass door and stepped inside without waiting for a response from her best friend.

“And hello to you too,” Kamille said sarcastically as she followed Marti into the house.

But as soon as she walked into the kitchen and closed the sliding glass door, Marti let her have it. “Why did you bring that bastard to my house?”

“You mean your partner?”

“My ex -partner. And he’s ex for a reason. He’s a jealous, slimy bastard and you know it.”

“Who wouldn’t be jealous? He’s still a beat cop and you’re already a detective lieutenant. I’m jealous too!”

“He claims I earned what I have by sleeping my way to the top. You know he said that, right?”

“Girl, everybody knows Andy just be running his mouth. He said the same thing about me when I became a detective. He says a lot of things. Why you take him so seriously?”

“I take everybody seriously. I don’t put anything past anybody.”

“Except for me, of course,” Kamille said with her high-wattage smile.

Marti couldn’t help but smile too. They’d been best friends since grade school. Went through the police academy together. “Except for you, child,” she said, and they laughed.

“By the way,” asked Kamille, “have you heard anything?”

“About what?”

“About how I did on the sergeant’s exam?”

“Child no, and stop changing the subject. Why did you bring him here? You know I don’t roll with crooked cops like that. They wanna keep guys like him on the force? Fine. Keep’em. I don’t have any jurisdiction over those hiring and firing decisions. But I’m not letting cops like that hang around me or mine. And you know how I feel about that. Why did you bring him here, Mill?”

“He missed you and Jaleesa. You used to treat him like he was a member of your family. Like he was your brother and Jaleesa’s uncle. Then you wouldn’t even talk to him anymore.”

“That’s before I found out who he really was. That’s before I saw him taking a bribe right in front of me.”

“Internal Affairs investigated and said he’s clean.”

“That’s because they’re dirty too,” Marti proclaimed.

Kamille laughed, which caused Marti to smile. “You need to get over yourself, and I’m not joking,” Kamille added. “Andy’s been a good cop for seven long years. He was your partner for five of those years. Then he has one little hiccup and you kick him to the curb? That ain’t right. I’m sorry, but that ain’t right. He just wanted to drop by and wish Jaleesa a happy sixteenth, that’s all he wanted to do. He hasn’t seen her in years, thanks to you. What’s so wrong with that, Marti?”

“A crooked cop is a crooked cop is a crook. I don’t want my child to have anything to do with somebody who takes an oath to defend and protect and all he’s doing is lining his pockets. That’s what’s wrong with it.”

The sliding glass door opened, and Eric peeped inside. He looked nastily at Kamille. “You okay, Marti?” He could see Marti was visibly upset.

“Yeah, I’m . . .” Marti couldn’t lie and say she was good because she wasn’t. “What’s up?”

“Sorry to disturb you, but we’re out of drinks.”

“I’ll bring some out.”

Eric looked at Kamille nastily again. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Boy bye!” said Kamille, offended.

“You don’t talk to me that way,” Eric shot back.

“You don’t talk to me that way either. Yeah I brought Andy over here. What’s the big damn deal?”

“You know Marti doesn’t want him here. You know that!”

“I’ll bring the sodas out, Eric,” Marti said to end the back and forth. Eric gave Kamille another hard look and then retreated back outside, sliding the door shut behind him.

“Who does he think he’s talking to?” Kamille asked. “I’m a Detective in the Memphis Police Department, thank you very much. He’s got some nerve. He don’t know me like that.”

Marti began walking toward the frig. “Just get Andy away from my house,” she said as she began pulling out a 24-pack of canned sodas in a long carton. “I don’t want that kind of dirty around my child.”

“Your child,” asked Kamille, “or your career?”

Marti looked at her best friend. They were both ambitious as hell and never tried to hide it. They both wanted to be at the top of their profession. But Marti’s moral core always remained intact. On that she did not compromise. “I don’t want him around my child and my career,” she said. Then she looked at Kamille. “Why would you and your career want to be around a piece of filth like him anyway?”

“Why do you think? He’s cute. For a bougie brother, he ain’t bad looking at all.” Kamille nor Marti liked bougie brothers . They were too soft, too self-centered, too dainty for their taste. “I’m not like you, Marti. I can’t live without a man for years on end. I’m sorry. But I can’t do it. I have gots to have that hood.”

Marti frowned. “Hood? Andy’s bougie. He’s no hood rat.”

“I didn’t say nothing about no hood rats.”

“Then what hood are you talking about?”

“That manhood ,” Kamille said, pointing to her midsection. “That’s the only hood I’m interested in. Man hood. And yes, I gots to have that. And the bigger the better. The meatier the better.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Marti said with a smile.

“And it don’t get any bigger and meatier than Andy’s, I’m here to tell you right now.”

“So that’s all it takes for you? He’s good in bed?”

Kamille looked at her friend. “You are so hard, you know that? Always was and always will be. You expect too much from these men out here. That’s why you haven’t had a long-term relationship since Rog. Since Jaleesa’s father. They’re men , Markita! Men! You can’t expect too much out of no man.”

Marti shook her head. “That’s crazy.”

Kamille was offended by what she saw as a crass, I’m better than you response. “I’m not like you, okay? I’m not perfect like you.”

But Marti shot back. “I’m not perfect, either, and never tried to be.”

“I need a man, okay?” Kamille was blunt. “I gots to have a man. I’ll do anything to keep me a man.”

“Including diving to the bottom of the barrel and dragging Andrew out?”

“Including that, yes ma’am, yes ma’am. He’s good in bed? And cute? Hell to the yes! Let it be known that I, Kamille Oliver, will dive to the bottom of any barrel if he checks both those boxes.” Then Kamille smiled. “I do have my standards you know.”

Marti shook her head and laughed as she grabbed another case of sodas out of the frig. “You don’t be about nothing good. That’s what I know!”

“Got that right,” Kamille said with a laugh of her own. “Oh, by the way, you were right.”

“Take this outside,” Marti said as she pushed one of the cases of sodas toward the opposite side of the counter. “What was I right about?”

“About the Evans case,” Kamille said as she walked over to the countertop. “He didn’t do it.”

Marti looked at Kamille. “But everybody on your team were convinced he was guilty as sin.”

“ I was convinced he was guilty as sin too. Wasn’t just my team. I was convinced too. But he wasn’t guilty. The DNA came back last night. And guess who done it?”

“His roommate.”

“Just like you said,” said Kamille as she nodded her head. “I don’t know how you do it, girl, but you got a knack for solving these complex cases.”

“Wasn’t nothing complex about the Evans case. Just a group of cops too willing to roll with the obvious rather than with the truth.”

“Count me among them,” said Kamille, raising her hand. “You’re the best cop on the force. Period. You could be chief someday. You got what it takes. That’s what you ought to shoot for.”

“And give up day-to-day police work to be a paper-pusher?” Marti shook her head. “Not a chance.”

“But aren’t you afraid you’re as high as they’re gonna let you go? Because let’s face it, girl, the MPD is still a good old boys’ network. They might be black boys, but they’re still good and old.”

Marti laughed.

“And they don’t treat neither one of us with the respect we deserve. They look at us like okay, we’re smart black women, but we’re women . And women should never get ahead of them. So who did we sleep with to get the promotions we have gotten? That’s how they think. I get that all the time, and I know you get it even more so. Hell, we didn’t have to sleep with anybody to get where we are. And I’m getting tired of them claiming we have. But we put up with it like it’s nothing.”

“I never said it was nothing,” Marti admitted.

“And you got everything going for you: You’re gorgeous. Which I am too, by the way,” Kamille added with a grin. “But you’re next level gorgeous even though you don’t believe it.”

Marti didn’t believe it and never would, even though men declared it all the time. But to her the mirror didn’t lie. When she looked in it, she saw a frightened kid staring back at her, not some bombshell like they claimed.

But Kamille kept on singing her praises. “Not that I don’t have it going on too, don’t get it twisted. But you have that perfect slenderness with your curves. Whereas I left slender behind a decade ago, and it ain’t coming back no time soon. I’m getting that middle-age spread.”

“Thirty-three is not middle age, Kamille. We’re thirty-three. We’re not old.”

“You know what I mean! But you’re the total package. And you’re smarter than any of those guys on the force will ever be. And you’re athletic too.”

Marti smiled. “ What ? I am not athletic!”

“But you look in shape, that’s all I’m saying. You’re the best we have to offer and those guys don’t appreciate it. I don’t get that.”

Marti grabbed the second case of sodas and began to head for the exit. “Nothing to get,” she said, although it was a painful truth she had to deal with on a daily. “We love our jobs. Why be upset because some man won’t put respect on our names? Bump that!”

“The two favorite words of losers,” she said as she grabbed a case of sodas and followed Marti.

“But getting back to the point.” Marti stopped walking and looked sincerely at her best friend. “Get Andy away from my house. For real. Find an excuse, do whatever you have to do, but get him gone. He’s bad news.”

“What’s so bad news about him? That’s what I don’t understand. He’s never done anything to you or Jaleesa. You’re just going by your gut again. Without any proof of any corruption whatsoever.”

Marti looked at her with that serious look on her face she was known for. “I saw him collect a big money bribe from a hapless storeowner who didn’t have money to be giving to no crooked cop. I saw it with my own two eyes, Kamille! Then he had the nerve to ask if I wanted some too. Like who does that ? Get him away from my house and my child and I’m not playing. Right is still right and wrong is still wrong.”

Kamille frowned.“Damn!What’s that?”

Marti was confused. “Right and wrong?” But then she also heard what sounded like a very loud argument going on outside. And one of the voices, the loudest voice she realized, was Andy’s. “Oh hell no!” She angrily hurried out of the sliding glass door, with Kamille right behind her. “Coming to my house starting trouble? Oh hell no!”

“You don’t know if he started it, Marti.” Kamille was hurrying to keep up with her. “Marti, slow your butt down. It’s just an argument!”

But as soon as both ladies stepped out onto the patio, Andy stood up from the poker table, pulled out his weapon, and shot the young man he was arguing with. Then he quickly turned his gun toward the other young people at that table, forcing them to flee for their lives.

“Drop that weapon, Andy, what are you doing?” Kamille was crying out as she and Marti dropped their sodas and began pulling out their weapons too. Andy turned his gun toward them as soon as he heard Kamille yelling his name, as if he was ready to fire on her too. But before he could get another shot off, Marti’s training kicked in and she knew she had to shoot and shoot to kill. Or be killed. She fired seven consecutive rounds into Andy’s body in such rapid succession that it felt to Marti like she only fired once. She took out her former partner, a man she used to respect, easily. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

But as soon as he did, screams were heard behind him. Bloodcurdling screams. Somebody was down behind him. One or more of her bullets had apparently traveled straight through Andy, and hit an innocent bystander.

Marti’s heart dropped. She was neutralizing a threat. She was doing her job. She never meant to hurt any of her daughter’s guests!

She and Kamille began running toward the downed young person to render aid: another part of their job. But as soon as Marti realized who that downed young person was, she stopped in her tracks.

She could see people gathering around her child.

She could see Kamille crying and cradling the young girl’s head in her lap.

She could hear people yelling to call 911.

She could see young people still screaming from the top of their lungs and holding their hands over their heads and walking around like zombies.

But Marti Nash was unable to move so much as a muscle.

Detective Lieutenant Marti Nash, for the first time in her entire life, was paralyzed with fear.