19. Linc
Remy’s annoying voice blares through the speaker on my phone, and I want to hang up on him, but not before I get what I’m calling for.
“I need your help, man. Are you going to do it or not?”
“No,” Remy snaps irately. “I’m not. You were supposed to watch Nox yesterday but you said you wouldn’t, and now I’m trying to work from home and keep him entertained on my day off and I wanted to go pick something up for Parker as a surprise. You’re annoying me. Why would I help you?”
Squeezing the steering wheel in my cruiser so hard I think it will break, I focus on my breathing. It isn’t exactly easy while I sit in the parking lot of Taco Bell after meeting Kennedy for lunch. My fuckin’ cruiser isn’t comfortable on a good day, and I’m definitely not having a good day.
“Because you love me, and you owe me, and I played roller derby again for you and your friend and ended up with my balls out.”
Silence on the other end of the line lasts way longer than it should have. Finally, Remy sighs, huffing and blowing loudly into the mouthpiece. “What do you want?”
“I need to switch shifts.” I tap the steering wheel more. “Seeing Kennedy randomly when our shifts work out isn’t cutting it for me anymore.”
“What do you expect me to do about it? I’m on the same shift you are.”
“I’m gonna ask Dom to switch with me. I just want you to... encourage him to take it. If I try, he’s gonna throw the balls thing in my face and shit.”
“Fine. But you owe me.”
“Done and done.”
My radio crackles loudly, ending our conversation. “Unit 14, please call in. 10-45 in progress.”
Fuck.
Domestic dispute was the ten code for 45, and dispatch wouldn’t be requesting that I call in unless there is a connection to the police department or county in some way. I check the CAD, my computer aided dispatch, but there is nothing there yet.
“Hey, Teri,” I say as soon as she answers the phone.
“I’ve got an active domestic dispute at 45 Oak Street.” She doesn’t pull any punches. “That address is in the system belonging to Royal Prince, Linc.” She pauses, which tells me Teri knows exactly what happened with him and Kennedy in the past. And it gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “You need to know,” she starts again. “The report was from a neighbor saying that it looked like he was hitting a curly-haired redhead through the front window, but they couldn’t be sure.”
My heart stutters in my chest, almost coming to a standstill. Then I remember there is no way. Kennedy literally left me at Taco Bell maybe twenty minutes before the call, and she is going to an appointment, dragging Parker along with her. That doesn’t do anything to my blood pressure, though.
“It’s not Kennedy.” The relieved sigh on the other end gives me more information than anything I could have collected on my own. “I’m en route. Send backup.”
Before I can say anything else or get distracted, I pull out onto the main road in Birch and head toward Oak Street. The entire time, my lights and sirens clear the road, and thoughts of what I may find when I get there keep flashing in my mind.
His front door is open when I pull up to the house, and I get out of my cruiser after telling dispatch I’m on scene with my gun in my hand.
Yes, I have problems with Royal. Yes, I think he’s a fuckin’ prick. But no matter what, I’ll treat him with the same dignity and respect that I will for anyone I’m responding to a call for.
“Birch Police Department,” I call out before entering the residence. I also make sure that my body cam is turned on, because I’ll be damned if Royal comes back and says that I didn’t do my job. “Birch Police Department. I’m coming into the residence.” As I step inside, I hold my gun and flashlight together to make sure that I can see in the darkened rooms. There aren’t any lights on, and there must be blackout curtains on the windows.
For the first ten feet or so, I can’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. Once I make my way into the hall of the single-story ranch, I hear muffled sobs coming from the kitchen at the end of the corridor.
“Hello?” I raise my voice, praying to everything I hold holy that I’m not about to see someone whom I care about in Royal’s kitchen. “Birch Police Department. We received a report of a disturbance. The front door was open. Can you hear me?”
Something metal in the kitchen clangs and falls to the floor with a loud crash. I step into the kitchen with a wide arc of my flashlight. A shock of red hair is the only thing I see, and I slam my hand onto the light switch on the wall so that I can see exactly what I’m dealing with.
For a fraction of a second, I think I’m wrong. I think Kennedy is sitting there at the kitchen table with a steak knife clutched in her hand. Instead, I look down into Mallory’s black-and-blue face, red with blood under her nose and on her mouth. Her face is so swollen I almost don’t recognize her. But the blue eyes hit me. Ones that I found condescending and lifeless before are now filled with fear and pain.
“Mallory? Mallory Mitchells? Are you okay? Is he still here?” I put the gun away and grab the mic at my chest when she shakes her head in the negative. “Dispatch be advised, one party on scene; she’s denying the male party is present. Please send an ambulance for the female subject. I haven’t cleared the house yet. How long until backup arrives?” I gently pull the knife away from Mallory, and she lets me take it without so much as flinching. I set it on the counter behind me.
“Unit 10 on scene now,” comes the response, not from Teri but from Amie.
Teri responds, “10-4. Dispatching an ambulance now.”
I move to the hall and shine my light for Amie when she appears at the doorway. “Do you want to stay with her while I clear?”
The look on her face, in the light that the outside offers in the shadows, clearly tells me to go fuck myself. Amie has her gun and light out, and she immediately goes in the opposite direction. I look over my shoulder to see that Mallory hasn’t moved from her spot, and she still stares at the doorway, at me, with fear.
“Mallory, I’m going to stay right here until Officer Lee comes back in the room. While we wait, do you want to tell me what happened? Or do you want me to wait?”
She shakes her head woodenly. “He made me color my hair, Linc. Held me in the shower while he poured red dye all over it and made me do it. He said he thought I looked better. But you know why he did it, right? He’s trying to make me her.” Mallory’s tears are almost enough to make me offer her comfort. But she is still the same person who tried to physically harm Parker. She is the one who took out Royal’s anger at Kennedy on everyone she cares about.
“Mallory, the ambulance is on their way, okay? We’ll get you taken care of. You can press charges, and you can file a restraining order against him.”
Thankfully, Amie walks into the kitchen right then, because Mallory goes fucking crazy. She starts screaming and dives for the knife on the counter.
“What the shit, Linc?” Amie grabs her, and I get the weapons out of the way.
While Amie puts Mallory in restraints, more for her own safety than for ours, I clear the kitchen of all the knives and wonder what the hell I said wrong.
“You’re going to be okay,” Amie whispers, trying to soothe the obviously distraught woman.
“He didn’t do anything,” Mallory insists as she refuses to look at me. “He didn’t do anything, and I won’t press charges against him because I fell.” Her eyes move wildly between the two of us and I fight the urge to snap and rage against the lies she is telling. The pain she endured at the hands of Royal sends a jolt through my body.
I have my phone in my hand, taking photos of her face and arms before the ambulance gets there to make sure I have them before she is cleaned up. Not only will we need them for the report, but whether or not she presses charges, I want it documented.
Abusers don’t start with what we are looking at. They escalate from somewhere. They start with a minor act. Something they like that makes every dark and perverse desire they have stand out. Pain.
Kennedy. Kennedy had been engaged to him. She’d broken it off, and she’d run away from her life with him. Hell, I can still smell her perfume in his fucking house, and she hasn’t been there in months.
“Is he obsessed with her?” The question tears from my throat like a tornado ripping through the countryside. “Is he planning on hurting her, Mallory?” The thought makes me sick, and I struggle to keep my lunch from coming back up.
Mallory doesn’t meet my eyes. She doesn’t move an inch. She doesn’t say a word. And as much as I want to shake her, to demand that she tells me the truth, I can’t. She is a victim too, even if she is an unlikable one.
Bootsteps approaching have both me and Amie turning to see the paramedics arriving on scene for Mallory. The entire time they talk to her, prod her, and assess her injuries, Mallory doesn’t say a word.
If she hadn’t just gone off on us, I’d think that she is in a catatonic state. As it is, there isn’t much we can do other than file a report.
Amie waits until the ambulance pulls away from Royal’s house before she shuts her body cam off and turns, waiting for me to do the same.
“I know how to hide a body,” she offers in complete seriousness. “My husband’s a lobsterman; you know that. Just need a hacksaw and some of his lobster traps. They’ll never even find the bones.”
Despite her good-natured appearance, I know Amie would help me hide a body if I needed. She knows who Royal is, who he’d been to Kennedy. Hell, she knows that if Chief Townsend finds out his daughter had been in a physically abusive relationship, he’ll lose his shit. We all know there was something wrong and that he hurt her, but not like that.
I seriously consider her offer for a second before shaking my head. “We can’t. You’d lose your job, and I don’t want to go to prison when I finally got the girl.”
Amie shrugs and then looks around Royal’s house. “He’s a douche, anyway. Constantly defending assholes who try to game the system. Do you think he’s going to have an alibi for today? To keep her from being able to press charges if she’d wanted to.”
“Oh,” I scoff. “Without a doubt. Might as well take some photos for the report, but I don’t think it’s going to amount to much more than that.”
I hide the tremble in my hand as we document the scene and then sign off. I’m still shaking, still trying to wrap my head around the trauma Kennedy must have faced at his hands when I pull into Remy’s driveway after work. Thankfully, I didn’t have a single other call after that, because I don’t know if I’d be able to get images of Kennedy, bloody like Mallory had been, out of my head.
Remy meets me at the door. “Heard about the call. Nox is out back with Rett. Do you want a beer?”
I don’t have to say a word. He just hands me the beer and leads the way to their backyard, where Nox is playing soccer with his friend, Everett James, the son of one of our high school friends.
When I tell him what we saw, what becomes more and more clear must have happened to his sister, Remy is more than ready to commit murder.
“I’m gonna kill him. I’m going to cut his body into tiny pieces, and then I’m going to drop those pieces into the middle of the ocean and nobody’s gonna know what happened to him.” Just like with Amie, I know for a fact that he isn’t kidding. He’ll do it, and I can’t blame him, honestly.
“I just don’t know why she’d protect him after that. I saw what he did to Mallory. What he probably did to Kennedy. I don’t know how she feels safe.”
“Because.” Nox gasps for air as he stumbles forward, showing that he’s been eavesdropping on our conversation. He and Rett share a look before he turns back. “Because you have her six.” He gulps for air again. “She said that you sit outside her house at night, protecting her. You’ve got her six, Uncle Linc. Why would she worry about anything when you’re there?”
Rett shoves him in the arm and they take off again, kicking the soccer ball around the yard like Nox hasn’t just gutted me with a word. Kennedy knew. The entire time. She knew that I was there. And she didn’t push me for more.
“I fucking love that kid.”