Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
TRICK
It had been a week and a half since Nona and I had exchanged “I love yous,” and while there had been a whole lot of good in that time, there had also been some parts that weren’t so great.
Mainly that my kids were back with Emma, and while I talked to them every day, sometimes more than once, I missed them like I’d miss a limb.
Or my heart.
The silver lining there was that the verbal smackdown she’d been handed at Nona’s salon the other week seemed to have done the job.
The woman cared way too damn much what other people thought about her, and that scene was the kind of humiliation most people didn’t bounce back from, so she’d retreated back to her corner and was licking her wounds.
Hopefully she’d stay there for a good long while.
But for every good, there was a bad, and the thing that was bothering me the most at the moment was something I couldn’t put my finger on.
I woke up next to Nona this morning with a ball of dread coiled tightly in my stomach, like a snake just waiting to strike.
I couldn’t figure out what exactly was eating at me, but I couldn’t shake the impending sense of doom.
It was like it had crawled beneath my skin and rooted itself into my bones.
Even Nona’s bright smiles and laughter couldn’t make it go away.
“You good?” Hayes asked, looking over at me as I turned the department-issued SUV into the hospital parking lot.
“Got a bad feeling I can’t shake,” I answered honestly. “Don’t know what it’s about, just know it’s there and not going away.”
“Instinct,” Hayes mumbled. “Keep your eyes peeled, brother. From what I’ve learned, that feeling means somethin’ ugly’s just around the corner.”
Lifting my hand, I scrubbed at my face as I maneuvered the truck into a parking spot. “Fuckin’ shit.”
“Whatever it is, I got your back.”
We climbed out of the SUV and headed for the hospital entrance.
The glass door slid open, and Hayes and I stepped inside.
The antiseptic smell burned my nose while people in lab coats and scrubs hustled all around us as we walked through the corridors toward the nurses’ station.
Tempie was standing there with a clipboard in her hand.
She lifted her head at our approach, and her eyes went wide before warming at the sight of her husband.
“Hey. This is a surprise.”
“Hey, angel.” He slid his arm around her waist and leaned in for a quick kiss.
She turned her gaze to me and offered a sweet smile. “Hey, Trick. How’s it going?”
“It’s real good, darlin’.”
Her grin turned knowing as she mumbled, “Yeah, I bet it is. For Nona too, from what I hear.”
Hayes spoke again, pulling us from our pleasantries and getting straight to business. “Wish this was a social visit, but we’re actually here lookin’ for a patient. Sabrina Lewis.”
Tempie’s expression fell, her unhappiness obvious as she muttered, “Yeah, I know who she is.”
“Twenty-two years old, came in because of a methamphetamine overdose?” I confirmed.
She nodded grimly. “She coded on the way here. The paramedics almost couldn’t resuscitate her. It was touch and go for a while, but the doctors were finally able to stabilize her.”
“Think she’s up for a couple questions?” Hayes asked. “We’re hopin’ she can give us a line on the guy who’s been dealing.”
“Yeah. You can give it a shot.” Tempie gave us the room number, and we started that way when she called out, “Get this guy. I’m sick and tired of seeing kids come through here because of that stuff.”
Hayes gave his wife a sweet smile, telling her, “We will, angel. I promise.”
She returned his look with a soft “I know.”
We headed for the room, and I rapped my knuckles against the wood before turning the knob and pushing the door open. “Sabrina?”
The girl’s blonde hair went flying when her head shot around. Her blue eyes were wide and full of fear. The rim of red around her eyes was a good indicator that she’d been crying for quite some time. “Y-yes?”
“I’m Detective Wanderly, and this is my partner, Detective Walker.” We showed her our badges. “If you’re feelin’ up to it, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Oh, uh….” Her gaze bounced back and forth frantically between Hayes and me. “Y-yeah. Okay. That’s fine.”
She was skittish as a newborn foal. We were going to have to handle this one with care if we wanted any chance at getting something out of her. But I had to give her props for agreeing to speak with us after everything she’d gone through recently. It showed immense courage and strength.
Hayes made sure to keep a comfortable distance, staying back against the wall and letting me take the lead. I grabbed a chair and moved it close to the side of her hospital bed. “How are you feeling?”
“I… what?”
“How are you feeling? I can’t imagine how terrifying what you just went through must have been. Are you okay? Is there anyone we can call for you?”
“Um, no. Th-thank you. My parents are here. They-they’re down in the cafeteria.”
“Would you prefer we wait to speak with you until they get back?”
Her hair swished as she shook her head and whispered, “No. It’s okay. I can… I can talk now.”
“All right, darlin’. We’ll start with my original question. How are you feeling?”
I could tell by the look on her face that she was thrown by my line of questioning.
She’d been expecting the very worst when two police officers stepped into the room.
But it was obvious by looking at her that she wasn’t a typical junkie.
This whole scene was foreign to her. “I-I’m okay,” she answered, her voice wobbling as tears welled in her eyes. “It was… I was so scared.”
I kept my voice low and even as I replied, “I can only imagine. Do you remember much of what happened last night?”
She pulled in a breath and began recounting the evening in surprisingly vivid detail, and I discovered that I’d been correct in my initial opinion.
This wasn’t a girl who was well acquainted with drugs.
Not at all. This was the first—and definitely the last—time she’d ever smoke meth.
She’d been at a party with some friends when her boyfriend passed her a pipe.
She’d been drinking and wasn’t really paying attention.
Assuming it was weed, she’d taken a hit.
Seeing as she’d never done drugs before, that first hit messed with her in a big way, so when her boyfriend had her good and high, he took advantage and kept pushing the pipe at her.
It all went downhill from there, and the fucker bailed when Sabrina went down.
If it hadn’t been for one of her friends, tonight would have turned out very different.
Leaning forward, I braced my elbows on my knees and asked, “Sabrina, can you tell us where we can find your boyfriend?”
She began worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, and her tears finally broke loose, spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t… I don’t want to get him into trouble.”
My stomach began to churn, and the voice in the back of my head that was a father before everything else began to yell and rage.
“Listen to me, sweetheart. I know you probably care about this guy, but what he did to you, that’s unforgivable.
If I had to guess, he was well aware of the fact that you’d never even consider touching that stuff, and by doing what he did, he broke that trust. You might not see it now, but trust me.
This guy doesn’t deserve your loyalty. What he did to you is one of the worst betrayals I’ve ever heard of. ”
Her face crumpled, and she buried it in her hands as her body racked with gut-wrenching sobs.
Hayes and I remained silent, giving her the time she needed to get all the pain out.
The minutes ticked by, and I was starting to consider coming back at another time when she finally lifted her head and started speaking in fast run-on sentences.
She gave her boyfriend up, telling us exactly where we could find him.
I started to stand from the chair when she finished, but her hand shot out, grabbing hold of mine. I looked down at her, a careful expression on my face. “Am I…?” She swallowed thickly. “Am I in trouble?”
I offered her the most comforting smile I could manage. “No, sweetheart. I think you’ve been through enough. But if you’re smart—which I think you are—you’ll dump this boy, and you never look back.”
Sabrina nodded as a few more tears broke looks. “Y-yes, sir. Believe me, I will.”
Reaching toward the bed, I placed my hand on top of hers and gave it a squeeze. “Good.”
We’d just left as her parents were reentering the room, and I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t going to be alone in there.
“Wanna send some uniforms to pick him up and bring him to the station?” Hayes asked in a furious grumble as we started out of the hospital. “Something tells me a ride in the back of a cruiser’ll scare the shit out of a dickhead like him.”
My blood had gone from simmering to a full rolling boil as Sabrina recounted her night, and I was itching to get my hands on the fucker. “Oh, hell yeah.”
Micah, Leo, Fred Duncan, and a few other cops were congregated in the hallway as Hayes and I exited the interrogation room.
“Jesus Christ,” Micah grunted, a sinister grin stretched across his face. “That was the funniest shit I’ve seen in a long goddamn time.”
“Thought he was gonna piss his pants,” Duncan cackled, holding his gut as he laughed. “Never seen a grown man cry that hard before. Could barely understand a word coming out of his mouth.”
“Yeah, well it’s just too bad we can’t book him for bein’ a dick,” Hayes grumbled as we all started for the bullpen.
“True enough,” Leo agreed. “But at least you made him sob like a baby. Second best thing to an actual arrest.”
We made it to my and Hayes’ desks, and I turned to hand the sketch we got from the asshole’s description of his dealer to Duncan. “Get that circulating. I want this guy, and I want him yesterday, yeah?”
The loser hadn’t been able to give us a name, and the number he had was to a burner that was untraceable.
We tried calling to see if we could set up a buy, but there was no answer, so we brought in a sketch artist to see if we would get lucky going that route.
But without a name, it was going to take some time, and that gnawing I’d been feeling in my gut all goddamn day told me we didn’t have much of that.
Duncan took off to make copies of the sketch and pass them around, and I sat back in my chair, watching as two patrolmen led the dumbass kid we’d just been questioning through the bullpen and out of the station.
He was still blubbering the whole way out, and all I could do was hope his pride never recovered from the hit it took today.
It was the very least a prick like him deserved.
However, I’d seen Sabrina’s father before leaving the hospital earlier that day, and judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t going to just sit back and let the kid get away with the harm he’d caused to his daughter.
And from the incredible size of the man, I knew the lesson he intended to mete out would be one that stuck with him for a very long time.
I spent the next couple hours on paperwork, but all the while, that ugly feeling that something wasn’t right tore away at me.
And nothing I did could settle it.