Keep Her Safe(102)

Cyclops starts barking wildly from upstairs.

Gracie and I exchange looks.

Was Stapley alone in this? Is someone still in the house?

Seizing the Glock in my hands, I head for the stairs, my heart thumping in my chest. “Stay here,” I whisper, taking the steps quietly.

The stairs creak behind me. Not a surprise, Gracie isn’t listening.

I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I’m an idiot, if we should get out of the house and call the cops.

And then I keep going.

Cyclops’s howls of protest are coming from my mother’s room. We find him at the dresser, standing on his hind legs, his front paws pressed against the drawers. Seeing us, he drops to his haunches, his tail wagging furiously.

“What is it, Cy?” Gracie murmurs, edging past me.

He barks in answer, excited.

With a wary look over her shoulder at me, she slowly slides open the top drawer and begins sifting through my mother’s things with a delicate hand. “I don’t know what you want me to see, buddy . . . It’s all the same stuff I saw yester—” Her voice cuts off.

“What?” I edge in next to her, to see the small packet nestled in my mother’s T-shirts. “What is that?”

“My guess is cocaine.”

“Cocaine?” Why the hell would Stapley bother putting drugs in my mother’s drawer?

Gracie looks up at me. “That wasn’t in here yesterday. I went through this drawer for clothes and it was not here yesterday.”

A curse slips out from under my breath as I look around the room. A murder victim’s gun, drugs . . . “What the hell are they up to?”

Gracie’s gaze follows mine. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re doing the same thing to your mom that they did to my dad—planting things to make her look guilty.” Her mouth twists with a bitter smile as she points to Cyclops, who’s busy sniffing around my mother’s bed frame. “They didn’t expect to contend with him.”

I slide my phone out of my pocket. “We need to call the cops.”

“No! Wait.”

“Gracie, we need to report this. It needs to be on record. That blood is evidence.”

“Yeah, but Stapley and Mantis are the cops.”

“Two dirty ones out of thousands of good ones.” I see where she’s going with this as soon as the words leave my mouth. “But Mantis heads Internal Affairs.”

“You heard him yesterday. He said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kinds of things I can get away with.’?” She pauses to give me a knowing look. “What if he can make Stapley get away with doing this? Do you want to risk that?” Gracie slides her phone out and starts punching in numbers.





CHAPTER 42


Officer Abraham Wilkes

April 28, 2003

“Just doing my usual rounds!” I holler from my open window, sounding more chipper than I feel. I left Gracie at home with Dina, with big, fat tears rolling down her chubby cheeks. She doesn’t understand why Daddy’s out so much lately, why he can’t stay home and play.

Isaac tosses the window squeegee into the bucket of suds behind him, sending dirty water onto the sidewalk around it. He slowly heads toward me, wiping his hands with a rag hanging from his back pocket. “I was wonderin’ if I’d see you today.”

“Anything new to report?”

“No, sir.” Isaac’s soulful brown eyes skate over the near-empty parking lot. “It’s been awful quiet here since that excitement the other day.”

I sigh with disappointment. How long before I should give up and accept that Betsy’s gone for good? That it was a fluke that I ran into her in the first place, and I will never find her again?

Maybe Jackie’s right and Betsy doesn’t want to be found. But from the way she looked up at me, those green eyes—twins of Dina’s—wide with a mixture of fear, panic, and relief, I can’t believe that.

“Best be on my way, then.” I have another few local spots to stop by.

“Now wait up a minute.” Isaac comes up close—close enough that I can smell the sweat lingering on his skin—to rest an elbow on the hood of my car. “Those police officers that came stormin’ in here . . . you know ’em?”

“I know them.”

“You friends with ’em?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t call them friends.” Sure, we’ve played ball together; we’ve gone out for celebratory beers after a game. But friends? Hell no, especially not now.

“So if they were doin’ somethin’ they shouldn’t be doin’ . . .”

Understanding settles onto my shoulders. “What did you see, Isaac?”

“The question isn’t what I saw. It’s what you saw.” Isaac stoops over to meet me face to face. “And what you’re doin’ about it.”

He saw Mantis take the money; that much is obvious. He also knows that I saw Mantis take the money. I sigh. “It’s complicated.” “Doing something” means saying something—to my supervisors, to Internal Affairs, to the chief. I read the news; I’m no idiot. Right or wrong, speaking up against a fellow officer is never without consequences. Threats, retaliation, suspensions. The kind of consequences that can make life for me on the force impossible.