Chapter 8
EIGHT
There wasn’t a damn thing that he could do.
Walker Ashley felt the weight of his badge as it smacked into his chest as he stood up from the crouch, he’d been examining the overgrown grass along the side of the exit ramp.
“Found anything?”
He looked up at Officer Pilar Bravo, soon to be Pilar Ashley, and shook his head. “Nope. You?”
She gave him a look that said he could kick rocks. “If I had, you would have heard me calling for CID to photograph and log in the evidence.”
Walker nodded and sighed.
“Hey.” She moved to his side so that they were shoulder to shoulder before she nudged his elbow with her own. “What’s up with you?”
He looked at her and blinked.
He was happy to have someone at the scene who didn’t give him shit about bringing Kennedy with him. “I wasn’t all that thrilled about being called back in.”
She nodded, understanding.
Pilar was dedicated to the job. Hell, she’d taken a bullet for the job and was right back at it even though her fiancé, his brother Roan, had wanted to tie her to the bed and beg her to quit.
She understood what made him tick because it made her tick too.
“I was wondering why you were on scene tonight. I thought you’d been on the drug bust earlier.”
His smile made her smile a little too. “Guilty as charged. And I did go out. Had a beer.”
“Oh?” She grinned at him. “Is that where you picked up Kennedy?”
His smile dimmed a little, worried at her reaction.
“We met for a drink at Ciro’s.”
She turned her head to the side and looked at him.
He felt a little like a bug under a microscope when she narrowed her eyes.
“Wow, sis. You keep that up and you’re gonna find yourself on my side of the Precinct.”
Her look turned from shock to suspicion and then distaste.
“Yeah, no thanks. I’m not looking to make the jump across the building.”
Walker drew back at the comment, leaving off on his bullet search since they’d all come up empty over the last two hours. “What’s wrong with being a detective? You wouldn’t have that shit dry-cleaning bill for your uniforms?”
She scoffed at him. “What’s wrong with the uniform?” Pilar stepped back and lifted her hands in a random gesture. “It looks good on me.”
“I’m not big on the uniforms. You know I’ll only pull one on for ceremonies.”
Pilar shrugged. “It’s not your thing, but it is mine.” She lifted a hand up and tucked an invisible strand of hair behind her ear. “Your brother likes it on me.”
Walker winced a little. “Yeah, my brother likes to strip you out of it, but that’s his kink, not mine.”
“Kink?” She whispered the word. “Not likely.”
“Oh yea?” He grinned at her. “Ask him about it. I bet you’ll end up face first on the bed with your uniform pants down around your-”
“Ashley!”
“Fuck.” Walker turned and shook his head. “Hank? Funny that you’re here.”
Detective Henry Jerzek walked up, pressing a handkerchief to his face as he moved. “Why the fuck is it so damn hot at this time of night?”
Walker shared a look with Pilar who shrugged out of Jerzek’s sight. “It’s not that hot, Hank. Maybe you ought to go and see my brother about a physical.”
Jerzek’s expression turned downright sour. “The fuck I will. Who the hell trusts a saw bones like your brother anyhow? The man’s too damn young to be any good at his job.”
Gesturing at Pilar, Walker huffed a little. “Hank, you remember Officer Bravo?”
The older man lowered his handkerchief and golf-clapped his hands together. “Bravo! Bravo!”
Walker blew out a breath. “Well at least we know you’re the same misogynistic bigot you’ve always been.”
“Fancy words won’t get you anywhere, Ashley.” He all but sneered his name. “What’s the point anyway? You got a problem with a woman being at the scene? Well, join the club.” He waved the handkerchief in front of his face and even Walker could see the rivulet of sweat coursing down the man’s neck and into the collar of his dress shirt. “What’s your point?”
Walker wanted to plant his fist in the other man’s face but held off… barely.
“Well, I know it’s hard for you to remember things in your elder years, but Officer Bravo is engaged to my brother, the ER doc and trauma surgeon who might one day have to save your life. So maybe you ought to watch what you say.”
Jerzek paused for a moment and then shoved his handkerchief in his suit pocket. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I say about you, your fancy ass brother or his little woman-”
Walker’s hand tightened into a fist, but Pilar was the one who hissed at him to stop.
“If I do ever need him to fix something inside me, it’s not like he can refuse, right? Docs have that hippo… Hippopo- That… hippocampus oath they have to follow. So what? Look,” he gestured at the scene, “we’re done here. Shots were fired, but we’ll have to wait and see what the geeks can do with the traffic cam feed since no one really saw anything and the brain trust we have here at the scene can’t find a damn casing.”
He took a few steps away and spun around grousing, as if either of them cared what he said. “What kind of gun doesn’t spit out a casing or two, huh?”
Pilar shared a look with Walker before they both blurted out at the same time, “A revolver.”
Sneering at them, Jerzek walked away, mumbling to himself, and brushing sweat away from his face.
Pilar spoke first when he was out of range. “How long until he retires?”
Walker shifted from one foot to the other to get some feeling back into his legs. “Not nearly fast enough for me.”
They started back toward the other officers that had been called out to the scene.
“You know,” Pilar mused aloud, “I think they mentioned him at the beginning of the Mayan calendar, he’s been around so damn long.”
Walker grinned at the woman he already considered his sister-in-law. “Naw, he’s the one who ate the other dinosaurs.”
They laughed as they walked beside each other.
Kennedy had a sinking feeling in her gut when she got back to the station and saw the looks that people were throwing her.
The intern that never seemed to leave the desk just inside the station door stood and a piece of crunchy Cheetos fell from one of the folds in his sweater vest. “Miss Heart? Mister Rhames would like to speak to you in his office?”
She looked at the younger man and the neon orange powder at the corners of his mouth. “I was heading to the editing room to piece together my footage.” She lifted her phone and wiggled it in the air. “I was sent to the road rage shooting and-”
The intercom screamed as it turned on.
The system had been installed sometime in the eighties and had never been updated.
“Heart? Get in my office!”
The intern smiled at her, folding his arms across his chest. “See?” His smug smile was only mildly less irritating than his cowlick of a hairstyle. “I told you that, Mister-”
“David? Take her phone to the editing room and-”
“I’ve already sent the video files!” She was shouting, but then again everyone in the newsroom had already heard the first part of her summons. She gave David a sickly-sweet smile. “You can go to the room and start editing if you like.”
His self-important smile seemed to freeze.
Even he knew that her tone of voice was bullshit.
“But I’d wash your hands if I was you. The editors don’t like pseudo cheese dust on their controls.” With that parting shot she turned and pushed open the doors behind him.
Mister Rhames’ door was locked when she reached it.
And she had to wait while he looked for the remote he used to unlock the office door.
It took awhile because his desk was a fucking disaster zone.
But he found it and managed to unlock the door.
Kennedy walked in with her head held high and her best on-camera smile on her face. “Mister Rhames?”
He straightened up in his chair and glared at her, his hands braced on the edge of his desk. “Are you an idiot?”
She blinked at him, processing his words through her exhausted brain. “Sir?”
“You!” He pointed at her head. “Are. You. An. Idiot?”
She didn’t lower her chin, not even a fraction.
Nor did she let him see how pissed off she was.
“No, sir. I am not an idiot.”
“Well,” he huffed and stood up from his chair, “you could have fooled me.”
She didn’t move from the spot where she was standing. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
Smirking at her, he took a few stiff-legged steps to the end of his desk, and she wondered how long it had been since he’d gotten up and moved around. With his age and the amount of brandy that he consumed on a daily basis, she didn’t think it was a good idea for him to be sitting around for more than twelve hours a day, but no one asked her.
And her boss thought she was an idiot, so there was that too.
“Here I am, sending you out to cover a fantastic news story and what do I hear?” He pivoted and started to walk back in the other direction. Well, walk wasn’t really a word that fit what he was doing. He had that strange Frankenstein monster… Toy Soldier look to his movements.
“Well?”
She blinked back at him as she shook her head. “Well, what? I’m not sure what you’re talking about?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about?”
She managed the perfect Charm School smile as her boss, a man more than twice her age, sing-song her words back at her with a saccharine sweet tone.
“Well, Miss Heart… did it ever occur to you that you shouldn’t sleep with the enemy?”
His words had caught her unawares.
But his words were also confusing as hell.
“Enemy, sir?”
“So!” He stuck his spindly finger in the air in a move akin to a celebration or triumph. “You’re admitting that you slept with him!”
“With whom, Mister Rhames?”
“With him, Miss Heart! I know when Hank called, I thought he was full of shit, but I have to admit he finally sniffed something out without the need of a hound dog.”
“Hank? Henry Jerzek? What does he have to do with anything?”
“You know who he is?” Her boss looked like he was in sore need of actual food and a few days of sleep.
“Sir, I cover the news in this area. Detective Jerzek is the most senior detective at Precinct Four. If I didn’t know who he was then I’d have to seriously reconsider what I do for a living.”
“Well, from what I understand, it’s that other detective that you’re doing.”
She didn’t say anything back to that.
Kennedy didn’t just hate her boss at that moment, she was considering planting her fist in his face.
Or her knee in his crotch.
Shuddering, she decided that would be the last thing she’d do. None of her parts would ever come that close to that part of his.
“Really, Miss Heart? Kennedy? That sweet as pie persona doesn’t fit here.”
“It’s not a persona, Mister Rhames. It’s who I am. And I am not sleeping with the enemy as you like to put it. But even if I was, when did the police become the enemy? They’re public servants. And the detective you’re talking to isn’t anyone that I’d go to for any kind of news. He can barely keep his own cases straight, let alone giving you some kind of report on me.”
“So,” he leaned forward with a wicked gleam in his eyes that made her almost sick to her stomach, “you’re telling me you’re not… sexing up the detective?”
Her brows raised high over her eyes, almost disappearing into her hair. “Sexing up?” Her brow furrowed and she shook her head. “What decade does that phrase even come from, sir?”
His mouth dropped open at that and his eyes darted to the side as if his brain had stopped working inside his head.
“I’d like to remind you of the contract that you and I signed when I took the job here at WCCN. There is a morals clause in that contract, but it by no means gives you the right to say who I can and cannot have a relationship with outside of work.”
“Then you’re admitting-”
“I am admitting to no such thing, sir. If you think that I’m having an inappropriate relationship with anyone, then I do believe you are allowed to issue a grievance based on my contract. But if all the evidence you have is the word of a man who is a raging bigot and misogynist at best and likely a walking sexual harassment lawsuit at worst.
“Other than that, you have zero say in who I see.”
“But what about your-”
“Don’t, sir.” She stared him down. “Don’t lower yourself to saying it.”
He had the sense to back down, but the look was still in his eyes.
He was calling her a whore.
He was talking about her sleeping with a police officer as if she needed that to get information.
He didn’t have to spell it out for her to understand that much.
It wasn’t unusual for a woman to have that not only insinuated about her, but to be accused outright, straight to her face.
“My sex life is none of your business, sir. To even imply that some rumor you heard from a sour old man, who has nothing better to do with his time than spread such stories, has any kind of real knowledge of my personal and private life, is laughable.
“Ridiculous. And I would hate to have to file a grievance against you that would, in this day and age, garner quite an audience.”
“No.” He seemed to shrink before her, backing away. “No, I wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“No,” she agreed, “I don’t think either of us wants that to happen.”
He put a smile on his face that didn’t have a hope of reaching his eyes. “Well, we’ll just have to forget this little meeting. Won’t we?”
“Forget?” She shook her head. “No, sir. I won’t forget.”
His hands made some vague gestures in the air. “Really, Kennedy? Can’t we just put this behind us? I don’t want to think that this will affect how we work with each other.”
“We don’t, sir. I don’t work with you. I work for you.”
She reached into her pocket and lifted her phone up into the air beside her head. The screen was facing toward Victor Rhames.
With a single look at the screen, Mister Rhames’ legs seemed to give out and he backed up until his calves hit the front of his chair and he sat down, hard. “I told you to give that phone to… give the phone to…”
Smiling at him, she shook her head. “If you’d be listening to what I said instead of rehearsing a ridiculous interrogation in your head, you would have heard that I’d already sent the files to the editing server. I kept my phone, sir. And,” she took a step forward, planting her feet just a little under shoulder-width apart, “you should realize that there are a number of ways for recordings to be made. Right now, even without my phone, I have three devices with me that I could use to video or audio record what happened in your office.”
Victor’s face was paler than the eggshell white of his office walls.
“So, here’s what I’m going to do, not because I’m feeling nice or even magnanimous.” She sighed and felt a huge wave of relief fall away from her shoulders. “I am going to leave. I’m off the clock. And that means when I walk out of the doors of WCCN, I am on my own time.
“If you want to dictate where I go from here and who I spend my time with, then maybe you should find a woman who wants to give you that permission. I am not that woman.”
“No,” his voice shook as he spoke, “I see that you are not.”
“Good.” She smiled and dropped her chin in a decisive nod. “We can finally agree on something.”
Kennedy turned and headed for the door.
“Miss Heart?”
She stopped just shy of the big glass door, her hand on the push bar. “Yes, Mister Rhames?”
“Get some rest. I, ah… I think I’ll go home and do the same.”
Kennedy looked back over her shoulder with the first genuine smile that she’d had in his office. “Yes, sir. That sounds like a great idea. For both of us.”
As she walked past the intern desk, the security doors opened up from the employee parking lot and John stormed in. “Kennedy? Are you okay?”
Goodness.
John looked angry.
Like a big ol’ bear ready to rip through a campsite and tear some assholes to shreds.
“John. Hey,” she reached out to him and when she was close enough, she touched her hand to his shoulder, “what are you doing here?”
He took hold of her arm and pulled her to the side, the furthest point away from everyone that they could get and still be inside the newsroom. His kind eyes searched her face. “I heard that someone was trying to get you in trouble.”
She smiled at his words and the look in his eyes. “They tried, but they didn’t get very far.”
He searched her gaze for a long moment before the boiling mad look slowed to a simmer. “And did you leave them bleeding?”
Kennedy drew back with a grin. “My, my… aren’t you a vicious man at this late hour?”
His expression clouded again. “You need me to give you a ride home?”
She couldn’t help the smile that touched her lips. John had been many things to her in the time that she’d known him. Mentor. Teacher. Friend. And very nearly a father.
Before she could stop herself, Kennedy gave him a big, bear hug.
When she stepped away, she could tell that John had been taken aback by the sudden affectionate touch.
“So, that’s a yes?"
Laughing, she slipped her arm into the crook of his and they walked out together.