Читать книгу Guardian Of Justice - Carol Steward - Страница 7

Dallas approached the modest brick house, taking mental notes. Small basement windows. Tall juniper bushes block the view from street to front door. The edge of a curtain is caught in the closed window. Where’s the screen? He stepped closer and looked around, wondering if he’d missed it on the ground nearby. The other windows each had them. Why not this one? He glanced at the front door again, then the window. Dallas heard a loud bang and reached for his gun as glass shattered.

A deep voice yelled profanities. Doors slammed, as if someone was leaving. Someone madder than a raging bull. Dallas stepped back into the driveway, around the junky old car, and took a look around the corner of the house to get his bearings. A heavy padlock secured the chain-link gate to the backyard. Junk was piled on the other side. He listened, but didn’t hear any sounds of movement. He had a sudden image of being back in the high school the day of the shooting.

Inside, a woman’s voice bellowed, “You just had to torque him off, didn’t you? I don’t know how you think we’re going to come up with the money to fix that window!”

“Same way you pay for everything else, I ’spect,” a young boy snapped back, a slight crack in his voice.

Dallas heard the sound of skin slapping skin. It didn’t sound like a prank call any longer. He glanced toward the cruiser. Looked like Kira Matthews was going to be working tonight, after all. She was already on her way.

“Get back in the car,” he said as quietly as he could, waving her away. She took her own sweet time following his order, he noted. He crept up the steps and to the side of the entrance.

“PD 138 requesting backup ASAP. Domestic disturbance in progress.”

“Copy 138.”

“One-ten responding,” Mark Pierson replied.

Dallas knocked on the door, ready to announce his presence, just as the woman blasted the child with enough profanity to burn even his jaded ears.

“Police, open the door,” he yelled.

The woman murmured something that he couldn’t make out, then yelled, “Hold yer horses.”

Dallas heard faint footsteps run on hard floors inside the house. “Police. Open the door,” he repeated. He rested one hand on his gun and the other on the handle of the screen door. He pressed the button and pulled. Locked. “Ma’am, open the door, now.”

He heard three locks click before the wood door opened, then one more click opened the screen. The residents were afraid of anyone getting in, that was for sure. In most neighborhoods, two locks were overly cautious. In this subdivision, three was definitely overkill. A padlocked gate and heavily secured door? Something wasn’t right.

“Yeah?” The woman who appeared pulled the door closed behind her, blocking his view of the inside.

He nodded toward the house. “We had a 911 call from this residence. I’m going to need to come in and make sure everything is okay, ma’am.”

“No one here called you.” She glanced behind her and muttered another profanity before returning her attention to Dallas. “My kid just broke that window and I lost my temper. Ya know, kids don’t have any respect these days.” Her speech slurred and she tugged her stringy blond hair away from her pocked face. “It’s no big deal. I mean yelling, ya just gotta do it sometimes with fifteen-year-olds.” The woman’s hands didn’t stop moving in random jerky gestures.

Keep her calm, she’s on some sort of drugs. “I’m going to need to talk to everyone, make sure you’ve all calmed down before I can leave.”

There was a long pause before she opened the door and motioned him inside. “See? The kid is fine.”

Dallas looked around as he stepped in, adrenaline causing a pulsing in his temples. He had a bad feeling. Just like the day in the school. “Is there anyone else in the house?”

She got a panicked look on her gaunt face. “I don’t want no trouble, Officer.” Her head twitched as she spoke.

Dallas took another step inside. A gangly boy stood, barefoot, in the middle of the broken glass, glaring at his mother. “Who was slamming doors when I walked up the steps?” Dallas asked.

No one said a word. Everything seemed quiet elsewhere in the house. Was it too quiet? He glanced down the hall toward the next room. There were no lights on, no sounds.

Pulling a small pad of paper and a pen from his chest pocket, Dallas jotted down a few notes for the report. “I need your name,” he said with his pen poised.

She threw her head back and crossed her arms over her chest as she let out a groan. “Shirley Mason.”

He heard dialogue from dispatch coming through the radio on his shoulder and turned it down slightly so it didn’t interrupt his discussion with the family.

Dallas shot a quick glance at the boy. Drops of red on the floor next to the window caught his eye as he did so. “And this young man is your son?” he asked.

The woman nodded.

“Your name?” Dallas asked the teenager.

After a short pause, the boy answered, “Cody.”

“Last name?”

“Jones,” Cody said.

“What happened here?” Dallas asked him.

“I just told you what happened. You got more questions, ask me,” Shirley ordered, making it clear that she’d do the talking.

Dallas looked at Cody’s bare feet and the shards of glass surrounding them. “You cut?” Something didn’t add up here. Dallas lifted the boy out of the glass, noting the lack of meat on his ribs.

Cody shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, with obvious satisfaction at disobeying his mother. Her glare was lethal.

“So who’s bleeding?” The child he’d heard running had sounded much smaller. Was that who’d been cut? Could that be who’d slammed the doors? A sibling, maybe? Was Cody trying to protect a brother or sister? “Ma’am, please go sit on the sofa while we sort through all of this.” He checked the boy for cuts while the mother stomped over and dropped onto the shabby couch.

“Who else is or was in the house?”

No answer. Over the mike, Dallas heard broken messages from a frantic voice. Why in the world wasn’t dispatch intervening? He didn’t need a distraction right now, he thought, as he turned the volume down even more.

The beeping of a car horn sounded. What’s going on now? He went to the door to see what was happening, and noticed the lights of his cruiser flashing. Then the siren started, drilling through the brick walls.

“Don’t either of you move an inch!” Dallas said as he rushed out the door. He jumped off the porch in time to see a man running down the street.

Dallas looked frantically for the social worker. “Miss Matthews?” He turned and scanned behind him, then spun back to the car. Where is she?

Again he radioed dispatch. “We have a suspect fleeing a domestic disturbance. He’s headed south on Sixth Street, toward Main Street. Long dark hair, medium build, average height, jeans and white T-shirt. There are three, possibly more subjects here at the house.”

He couldn’t see Miss Matthews in the car, but the doors were still closed. And the passenger half of the windshield was shattered like a spider web.

“Subject may have vandalized a police cruiser,” he reported. He looked down the street again, then scanned the area between the car and the road, seeing nothing. He leaned closer to the cruiser and finally saw her lying across the seat with her hands over her head. She’s hurt! He realized. The adrenaline pulsing through his body came screeching to a sudden halt.

Mark Pierson’s police car rushed past the house and took off after the suspect while Dallas tried to open his cruiser’s door.

It wasn’t closed tight, but it was locked. He knocked repeatedly. “Miss Matthews, open the door.” When she jumped, she hit her head on the steering wheel. She turned toward him, rubbing her temple. Her huge eyes shone with fright as she fumbled for the door handle.

“Are you okay?” Dallas reached across and turned off the siren and lights, then backed out of the car again. She was shaking. He quickly took stock, glad to see that the broken windshield had held. The majority of the damage was right in front of the passenger. He shook her gently. “Miss Matthews?”

“Stay in the car, out of harm’s way, my foot!” She pointed to the windshield and started to climb out, but Dallas stopped her.

He touched his hand to her shoulder and knelt down between the door and the car. “Hang on there for a minute. Tell me what happened.” Kira’s cocoa-colored skin seemed paler than it had before the incident. Was she in shock?

“What happened? Didn’t you hear me telling dispatch?” Wide-eyed, he gazed darted from the shattered windshield to him.

The frantic voice made sense now. “A little, but it wasn’t really clear,” he said, not about to admit she’d sounded like a lunatic. He hadn’t even realized it was her speaking. Now he at least understood why.

She was going through everything that had happened when as another officer approached. Pete Ford paused, listening.

“You’re sure he wanted to get in in order to take the car?” Pete asked.

The social worker glared at him. “Look at the driver’s door! It has to have a dent the size of…” She glanced at her hand, then at Dallas’s. “The size of your fist,” she said, grabbing his wrist and lifting it in the air.

Pete walked around the car and nodded. “Yep, it sure does.”

“And when he couldn’t get in, he must have decided I could be convinced to let him in, for he threw the rock at the door again and again. He obviously wasn’t thinking about safety glass.” She shivered.

When Miss Matthews had finished talking, Pete pointed to the house. “Who’s inside? I’ll catch up there.”

“Mom and a son. Shirley—” Dallas glanced at his notes “—Mason, and Cody Jones. I suspect there’s a younger child, but no one is talking yet. This guy must have been leaving the back of the house as I was going in—”

“He jumped the fence about three to five minutes after you went inside,” Miss Matthews confirmed.

Dallas waited a minute to make sure she was through. “I think we need to get that cleared up right away, find out what he was doing here. The suspect I saw running had dark hair—”

“It was past his shoulders,” Miss Matthews interrupted again. “And frizzy. Wild looking…” She held her hands a few inches from her head to show how full the guy’s hair was. “He was Caucasian. And had tattoos all over his arms.” Dallas’s mind drifted and he wondered if he had sounded as frazzled after the shooting that day.

Dallas glanced at her hair. From the looks of it, her own would frizz out just as far if it wasn’t in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her brown eyes were huge, with long lashes framing them. Her gaze darted back to the car, as if it would bite her.

“He was high or stoned, one of the two. His eyes were…scary.” She looked back at the windshield and wrapped her arms around herself. “He was bleeding. He put his hands and face up against the glass, so you can probably get fingerprints.” She pointed. “Don’t let anyone touch that spot.”

“We’ll take care of that, don’t worry.” Dallas focused his attention on Kira, wishing he could have prevented this incident. He realized she was processing the experience, a bit at a time. Normally, he’d have been irritated with her for interrupting him, but he understood her shock. He’d been there. He moved to the trunk, popped it open and pulled out a blanket, forcing his post traumatic stress symptoms from his mind, only allowing it to help him prevent her from experiencing a delayed reaction as he had.

Returning, he unfolded it and offered it to her. “Why don’t you cover up with this for a few minutes and rest. We’ll talk more in a few minutes.”

She needed to know someone was there to let her talk.

Thank you. I don’t know why I’m so cold.”

Dallas knew that soon she’d realize she did know why, she just didn’t want to admit it. She wanted to be in control, just like she was every other day. A strong woman like her walked into domestic disturbances on a regular basis, but after tonight, things would be different. “Go on in, I’ll be a few more minutes,” Dallas said to the other officer. He couldn’t bring himself to walk out on Kira yet.

Pete nodded and went inside without a word. Dallas liked knowing the men serving next to him here in the middle of rural Colorado. Pete had a wife and a one-year-old son. That was more than Dallas had known about most of the officers in Phoenix.

He looked into the cruiser, surprised to see Miss Matthews had leaned her head back and closed her eyes. He knew her calm wouldn’t last very long.

More officers showed up, and he let them assist in the search for evidence, and keep spectators off the premises while they finished the investigation. He assigned one officer to find out what neighbors knew about the family.

Dallas took the opportunity to take notes for his report. About ten minutes later he noticed Miss Matthews’s eyes were open again, and he leaned back into the car. “Are you warming up?”

She nodded. “I thought for a minute that he was going to go into the house after you. I couldn’t think of anything to do except pray and honk the horn, hoping maybe that would scare him away.”

Dallas reached for her hand and held on tight. He wished he could give her the strength to get through the evening unscathed. “You did a great job. I like your quick thinking. Take a deep breath and be thankful that it wasn’t any worse.”