Chapter 40 – Emerson
FORTY
EMERSON
“Do you ever not have that thing on?”
“What? The scanner?” he asks as he turns onto the highway.
“Yes.”
He shrugs. “Does it bug you?”
“Not really. I just don’t understand why you still listen to calls if you’re off duty.” I rub my feet together, and more sand from the playground comes off the soles of my shoes and dusts the floor mat.
“I have a few situations I like to keep an eye on. If a call goes out on one of those, sometimes I like to go so I can make sure what’s going on.”
“Hm.”
“Hm?”
“Sounds to me like someone is attached to—”
“Possible 10-16. 12662 Serenity Court. Officers responding.” The scanner interrupts.
“Son of a bitch,” Grant says as he slams the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.
“What’s a 10-16?” Whatever it is, it obviously isn’t good.
“I jinxed it by saying it,” he mutters to himself.
“Grant? Are you okay?” I stare at his profile and can see the disconcert in his posture.
“No. Yes. Fuck. This is the one case I’m worried about.” He glances my way, and I can see the hesitation in his body language. “I need to . . . shit. My cruiser.”
“If you’re worried, just drive there now. I can sit and wait out whatever you need to do. Don’t waste the time taking me back,” I ramble, hating that he is so upset about this call.
“You sure?” He eyes me in a way that says he knows more than I do, which is obvious, and yet, I’m not sure why he feels the need to relay it.
“Yes. Positive. Go.”
He grabs his cell, punches a few numbers, and then holds it to his ear, waiting.
“Dispatch, I’m an off-duty officer responding to the call for 12662 Serenity Court,” he says.
“Yes. Grant Malone . . . I’m in civilian clothes but want it known to the guys on scene that I’m responding .
. . No. It’s an ongoing situation. I’ve been monitoring every call you have listed there .
. . Yeah . . . I know, but I’m on my way. 10-4.”
It doesn’t take long to make it to the address, but that could be because Grant may or may not have completely demolished the speed limit.
When we pull onto the street and park beside two other cruisers, trepidation takes hold. I’m sure it will be cool seeing Grant in action, but at the same time, I feel like I’m eavesdropping on someone else’s life.
As if I’m violating their privacy by being here.
“Goddamnit,” he mutters as he slams the truck into park, flings the door open, and jogs up the front walkway.
Then I see her.
The little girl sits on a rock in the middle of a planter in the front yard with a teddy bear hugged tight to her chest. She’s looking down at her bear’s face, fingers picking at its eyes, as a big, burly police officer awkwardly tries to talk to her.
“Keely.” I hear Grant say the name, and the minute it is out of his mouth, she looks up. A ghost of a smile turns up the corners of her lips, but something about her face expresses a sadness so strong I can feel it deep in my bones.
Big, burly officer visibly relaxes and has no problem stepping back. Grant lowers himself to the ground and sits cross-legged beside her.
“Oh.” My hand flies up to cover my mouth, and tears sting my eyes at the mere sight of them.
There is a comfort between them, a gentleness to him I never expected to see.
He talks to her, pointing to her bear and the rocks in the planter around her.
It’s so obvious from the outside how hard he is working to make her smile and put her at ease.
Curiosity has me glancing to the backs of the officers standing at the front door, but I can’t keep my eyes away from Grant and Keely for very long.
There is something so precious and heartbreaking about their interaction.
He dwarfs her, and yet, she seems completely at ease with him.
They talk some, his expression so serious when she looks away and then warm when she comes back to him.
He works for her smile, and when she grants it, there is a flicker of hope under all the shadows haunting her eyes.
It kills me. In every sense of the word.
Why does this little girl trust Grant so much? More so, why would a little girl know a police officer enough to trust him?
And then I remember the code 10-16—domestic abuse. Grant told dispatch that he’d been to every one of the previous calls to this address.
Every.
One.
How many times has he been here?
I push the thoughts and scenarios from my mind. I don’t want to think or assume, but it doesn’t stop the sting of tears in my eyes as he reaches out and holds her little hand in his.
Because it’s real. Grant’s hero complex and his need to save everyone is real, and I’m watching it firsthand.
He and Keely are pointing to the smaller rocks around them, and after a bit, I hear her giggle. It’s the most adorable sound in the world. All I can do is stare. And wonder. And hope she’s outside because whatever happened inside doesn’t involve her.
I’m not sure how long I sit and stare at the two of them, but it’s long enough that my feet are numb from their positioning and the sky has slowly faded to black. So lost in thought, I’m startled when Grant slides behind the wheel, starts the car, and pulls away from the curb.
“The fucker’s lucky he wasn’t home,” he mutters under his breath but doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask for more.
I turn some in my seat so I can study him and try to wrap my head around how the man, who seemed so at ease moments ago with a little girl, now feels like a ticking time bomb.
The lights from passing cars and streetlamps lighten and darken the features of his face, leaving me to wonder what’s going on in that mind of his.
I’d also love to pepper him with questions about what the call was all about, but for a woman who doesn’t like to answer questions herself, the safe strategy is to keep my mouth shut.
We drive for some time, winding up through the hills around Sunnyville until Grant pulls off the asphalt and onto a graded road.
We continue for a ways, and it’s only when he pulls into a clearing that overlooks the city and all of its lights below that I know where we are: Grant’s place he goes to think.
Our silence stretches, long and thick and heavy, but with the windows down, the sounds of the nightlife around us soften the tension in it. Every part of me wants to ease whatever is upsetting him but I have no clue how to even begin to do that.
“You want to talk about it?” I ask, hoping enough time has passed that he can think rationally about whatever happened.
His sigh is heavy. “I’m not sure that I can.”
“Because it’s a case?”
Without answering, Grant opens the door and gets out of the truck.
I watch him pace back and forth, the moonlight above accentuating the tension seizing his posture.
I slip out of the cab and find a flat slope of rock near the front of his truck and take a seat, cross my legs, and focus on the twinkling lights of the city.
They almost look like embers burning in the bottom of a fire pit, and I wonder what each of those lights represent.
Is one of them Keely’s?
How many of them hide the horror happening beneath their cover?
I shake the thought away. Too much thinking for tonight. Too much delving into a past I don’t want to delve into.
“Remember the side of your house?” Everything inside me freezes.
The minute I’m determined to get out of my own past, he brings me right back into it.
“Remember how we used to go and sit there and play whatever the hell we used to play back then because you wanted to get outside? Sometimes, you’d paint those rocks of yours with silly pictures, other times I’d play Barbies with you.
I hated it, but I played because you were always playing cops and robbers with me? ”
“No.” I whisper the word, not sure if it’s because I don’t want to remember or because I don’t want to talk about it.
Either he doesn’t hear me or he doesn’t care, because he keeps talking. “After you left, I used to go there. I’d just sit there by myself because I missed you so much. I’d pretend that you were inside and you were going to come out to play any minute.”
Every part of me wants to reject what he’s saying.
I want to cover my ears like the little girl he remembers would have done and shut him out.
I don’t want to know that he was hurt, too.
It’s so much easier to think I was the only one who hurt.
It’s so much easier to remember how much I hated him for pulling my world apart instead of looking at it like an adult and realizing he did the right thing.
But I don’t lift my hands. I don’t turn to face him. I need to hear this. I need to listen to him. I need to face what I don’t want to know and am scared to death to remember.
“I missed you, Em. You were my best friend. You were the one I told all my silly secrets to. You were part of my every day, and then you were gone . . .”
I told him my secrets, too. But mine were far from any secret an eight-year-old should have.
I push up from where I’m seated and walk a few feet away from him, hating the hurt in his voice that somehow I had a part in putting there. But at the same time, I’m angry at him for driving me up here where I can’t exactly escape the conversation.
Was this his plan? Trap me here and force me to talk?
“Do you remem—”
“What are getting at, Grant? What’s the point to this conversation?”
“I just—” He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. “There are so many things I want to ask you, so many things that I want to know—”
“They’re none of your goddamn business!” I shout in an explosion of temper I’m not sure he was expecting.
“No?” he shouts back, crossing the distance and getting in my face just as unexpectedly.
“No.” I stand my ground.
“Oh, so, what? You’ll open your legs for me but not yourself?” His eyes burn with anger as we wage a visual war of contempt.
“Fuck. You.”
“That’s the point,” he sneers. “That’s all you want to do.”
“And?”
“And what?
“That was the deal, Malone. You agreed to the rules.”