10. TEN
TEN
GARRETT
Once or twice a month, depending on the rotation, I found myself sitting in the booking office, a role that wasn’t very high on the list of my favorite aspects of the job. Being out on the streets in a cruiser responding to calls felt like doing something. We were helping people and most of the time they were appreciative. Being at the station waiting for other officers to bring prisoners back felt a lot like babysitting. They screamed and yelled, denied everything, and occasionally tried to swing at us or spit on us. I’m pretty sure it’s similar to what I imagine parents of toddlers would say was a regular day for them.
When the last prisoner got transported, leaving me with no charges, I made my way up to dispatch to stretch my legs.
“Would you rather call out your ex’s name during sex, or the person’s best friend’s name?” Peter asked the second I crossed the threshold.
The one bright side to being the booking officer, was working with Peter. He was everyone’s favorite dispatcher, in large part, because of his ability to ask impossible and bizarre questions that entertained us for an entire shift. Sometimes even multiple shifts depending on how heated the debates got.
“Nope. There’s no good answer for that one. You’re screwed no matter what you do.”
“Not true!” Hayes piped up as he brushed past me holding a tray of coffees and a white paper bag, the latter of which he shoved at me. “I grabbed this for you this morning. It was the last one so you and your insatiable sweet tooth better love me.”
I knew what it was from the swirling blue font on the front—a giant cinnamon bun from Bella’s. There were a lot of bakeries in Boston, as there are in a lot of big cities, and while many claimed to be the best, Bella’s actually was. Especially when it came to their cinnamon buns.
Hayes leaned against the wall, crossing his ankles and looking at Peter. “Does my ex’s name or my partner’s best friend’s name sound similar to my partner’s name? If it sounds similar, you could get away with it.”
“See? Turner is a problem solver.” Peter raised his coffee cup toward Hayes.
“All right, let’s run with that.” I spoke around a piece of cinnamon bun, and swallowed before continuing. “So, Kinsley. Her best friend is Cory, and your ex is Becca. How are you making that work?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t have sex. ”
We laughed, and I asked, “So you’re just not going to have sex with your wife anymore?”
There was silence for a moment, and then he sighed. “Is not calling her anything an option?”
“No, you have to call her something.” Peter said.
“Are pet names allowed?”
Peter rolled his eyes. “No, it has to be one of the two options, man.”
“Well, shit. Who put you in charge of making the rules?”
I shook my head, peeling off more cinnamon bun. “You should be used to this by now, dude.” I looked at Peter. “I stand by my original statement. You’re screwed no matter what.”
Hayes and Peter debated the topic for several more minutes before Hayes left for a call requiring Tank.
On his way out, he held the door open for a woman and boy who couldn’t have been much older than sixteen. She walked straight up to the window, one hand gripped firmly around the boy’s upper arm.
“Good evening, ma’am. What can I do for you?” Peter asked.
“I need to file a report.” There was no question, this woman was pissed. Her glare turned from Peter to the boy, who stared down at the linoleum flooring.
“Okay, sure. Officer Adler can help you out.”
I stepped forward. “What’s going on?”
“My son somehow came home with a tattoo on his arm. He only just turned seventeen three weeks ago. Go ahead, Elijah, show him. ”
“Mom, come on,” the boy pleaded.
His mother didn’t wait for him to do it. She reached down and yanked the sleeve of his sweatshirt up to reveal a fresh tattoo on the boy’s forearm. Her eyes then darted to me.
“He’s a minor. Tell me how he’s getting a tattoo without parental permission.”
“Elijah, is it? Where’d you get the tattoo?”
Silence.
“Elijah Simmons, the officer asked you a question,” the woman hissed and nudged him.
He was reluctant to squeal, but it was unclear whether that was because he was protecting the tattooer or because he was scared of his mother.
“Look, Elijah—Eli—can I call you that?” I asked, trying to meet the boy’s gaze. When he finally looked up there was fear in his eyes.
“You’re not in trouble.” I glanced over at his mom and added. “At least not with me. I just need to know where you got the tattoo so we can look into it, okay?”
He nodded with a sigh. “DelINKquent Tattoos. I got it at DelINKquent Tattoos.”
My stomach dropped.
“Are you sure?”
He looked over his shoulder at his mother, who nodded in my direction, urging him to talk to me.
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember the artist’s name?”
He cleared his throat and shifted in place. “I think she said her name was Cory.”
No. She wouldn’t.
I schooled my expression into indifference at the information, even though my insides were anything but.
“All right, Eli. Thanks.” My hands moved on autopilot as I grabbed the necessary paperwork for them to fill out. The entire time the mother and son sat in the lobby writing down their statement, I tried to figure out how everything they’d just claimed could be false.
Maybe there was a different DelINKquent Tattoos, or maybe the kid had remembered the name of the studio wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a real tattoo, but one of those realistic-looking fake ones and this was some prank the kid thought would be funny.
But it clearly wasn’t fake, and nothing about this was funny.
“What happens now?” The woman’s voice snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts.
I cleared my throat, signed the bottom of their statement, and passed them their copy. “I’m going to write up a report based on your statement, a detective will look into it, and reach back out to you if they need anything else from you.”
“I want her shut down and her license revoked.” She pointed a bright red nail my way before storming out of the station with Eli in tow.
I was frozen in place, my heart pounding in my chest, as I stared down at Cory’s name on Mrs. Simmons’s statement.
“When the kid said Cory, he didn’t mean Kinsley’s Cory, right?”
I had forgotten Peter was there.
I raked a hand through my hair and turned. “No. He meant Kinsley’s Cory.”
“Shit. What are you going to do?”
It was a rhetorical question because there wasn’t anything I could do. Mrs. Simmons came to the station to file a statement, and it was my job to write a report.
I didn’t answer Peter. I simply sat down at the computer and opened up our records console.
The report was short, containing only the information the Simmons had provided, but every word felt cutting. Submitting it felt like pulling the lever of a guillotine.
Because if Cory really was the one to give that kid his tattoo, Mrs. Simmons might just get her parting wish.