His eyes sought hers and his expression hardened. "I"m doing my job here, Jade. You"d do well to remember that."
Howie walked over to where we stood, our eyes locked.
"Hart had his pet zombie here, all droolin" and threatening me, right here," Howie, the braniac, pointed to where we stood and expounded on his supreme intelligence, "He threatened me. Can you believe this s.h.i.t? He threatened me with death!" he snorted. Howie thought he was so funny, what with his supposed pun and all?
No.
But Garcia wasn"t caring about the intellectual quotient that was Howie, that accusing stare landed on me like a ton of bricks.
He pressed the tip of the police-grade baton into the tender spot in my throat.
"Nah, Garcia. Do ya see any dead people?" I said out of my half-closed mouth.
Garcia gave a tight smile. "Why would this guy lie?" he asked, jerking his chin in Howie"s direction.
Seriously? d.a.m.n... why wouldn"t he? Had Garcia taken a look around the digs here? h.e.l.l, it was Planet Dysfunction.
"He was here! I swear!" Howie said, throwing out his hands, trying his best to look sincere.
He wasn"t doing half-bad considering he was telling the truth. I"m sure it wasn"t normal for him but whatever.
Garcia straightened, removing the hardness of the piece from under my chin. I fought not to rub it. His stare turned to Brett and Jade. "I"m going to ask this question once: was Clyde the zombie here today, threatening the victim?"
"Who Howie?" Brett asked with surprise. "He"s the victim?"
Garcia nodded slowly. "He looks like the victim," his gaze took in Jade. "Did you see the zombie?"
Jade gulped when he pointed the nightstick at her.
I didn"t like that one little bit.
She shook her head.
Garcia stepped toward her and I did the dumba.s.s again and grabbed his forearm. He whipped that stick around and caught me under my knee.
"d.a.m.n man!" Brett yelled. "You"re a cop! You can"t whale on him like that!"
I folded where I stood. I hadn"t liked him going toward my girl like he meant harm.
I noticed he wasn"t responding to things neutrally anymore, the back of my leg was one big throbbing inferno of pain.
"Raul!"
I knew that voice. I went ahead and puked on the overgrown and weedy Frazier lawn. I guess the hit to my jaw along with the bludgeon to the back of the knee had done me in.
A concussion was looking probable about now.
Gale ran to me, jerking me up to my feet. I turned away from her, puking some more. With any luck I"d get some on that tard, Howie.
I swayed and she said quietly, "Clyde sent me."
Well d.a.m.n, that was fast.
Garcia pivoted in his shiny cop shoes and strode to her. It cleared my head immediately.
Nothing like a Chick In Danger to set a dude on point. Even a chick that was a cop.
Former cop.
Jade came jogging after him with Brett on her heels.
He moved to stab a finger in Gale"s chest and I swung her behind me, my leg screaming in protest at the pivot.
"Hey Caleb!" she said loudly, "I"ve got this!"
His manic gaze swung to mine and he said quietly, "Get out of my way. As it is, you"re in a boatload of trouble young man."
"You deck your former partner in front of four witnesses and you"ll be on the same boat." I looked over at Howie who scowled at me. "Three witnesses," I corrected.
That clown couldn"t tell something straight if he had a gun barrel pressed to his forehead.
His expression darkened and he opened his mouth to say something.
"Shut up, Frazier," I said preemptively.
Gale had weaseled her way around me and stood shouting at Garcia. Jade and Brett slid to a stop at the edge of the ragged brown gra.s.s. I couldn"t believe the entire neighborhood hadn"t gotten out of their houses to see what the noise was about.
Guess it was pretty typical.
I spit a mess of puke and spittle out on the gra.s.s where no one stood and met Garcia"s eyes.
He moved to go around Gale to get to me and she grabbed his forearm to restrain him and he swung the nightstick around, lifting the club above his head, I had a second to react and it wasn"t enough.
Gale was trained in hand to hand but not hand to baton. She lifted her forearm to defend her face when the wrist that held it was clamped like a vise.
Clyde was back and things went from bad to worse in a hurry, landslide style.
Garcia, who had lost all sense of justice, his badge winking in the early morning light swept his free arm into Clyde"s temple. The knuckles of his index and middle fingers jabbing the tender side of Clyde"s head. Clyde stumbled and loosened his hold suddenly.
Garcia tightened his grip on the baton, turning on Gale again in a rage. The face that I"d known before, changed irretrievably into a mask of hate.
Clyde shook his head and charged Garcia. He took him in the gut and they flew, landing onto the patch of gra.s.s that was alarmingly close to my puke.
Jade ran to me and buried her face against my chest. Brett followed her and I left her with him and ran to Garcia and Clyde.
Clyde had started the head banging.
"You will not touch my intended!" Bang, thwack, bang.
"Clyde," I bellowed.
He paused in his a.s.sault, gazed at Gale and began again.
Garcia began choking from the hold on his throat by Clyde. I roared over there, sliding in like it was home base and screamed at Clyde, "Release him!" I gave the command everything I had, something like tectonic plates slipping inside my brain, the strength of my command making me ill.
I though I was gonna toss my cookies again.
Clyde let go instantly, staggering to his feet. He backed up, clutching his head with both hands.
Garcia held his throat, gasping and choking.
Gale held up her pulse like a bright red talisman.
She"d pulsed for back up. We all stared at Garcia on the gra.s.s, coughing up a lung, glaring at us. Even Howie gazed at him.
He"d well and truly lost it.
Two cop cars showed up and four patrolman poured out, weapons naked in their heads.
Ready.
They pointed the guns at Clyde.
I moved in to protect my zombie.
I never noticed Brett take Jade in his arms and her shoulders slump in relief.
If I had, maybe I could have started to counter it then. As it turned out, maybe it wouldn"t have mattered anyway. I"d set the stage.
Brett had always been ready to dance.
My parents and Gramps stood in the police station while Gale spoke to them in a low voice. I"d managed to get in there without cuffs. A first in the last year. Brett, Jade, Howie... and Clyde were there as well.
Listening.
The cops droned on like bees that were winding down close to the hive.
The bottom line was they had two suspended cops now. Garcia had gone off the deep end. But, unlike Gale, he was suspended without pay, pending an IA investigation. Internal Affairs was gonna do the probe. Actually, Jonesy had a name for it. When I"d pulsed the group in the back of (another) gross cop car ride I took the time to remember what Jonesy said.
Internal Affairs, huh? Jonesy Yeah- CH I think it"s more like Internal a.n.u.s Probe. Ya know, IAP- Jonesy laughs maybe- CH Do ya want some moral support? I could get Terran and the rest of the guys down there...
No! CH laughs worried about what might go down, Hart? Jonesy h.e.l.l yeah, actually.
Kinda... right now, things aren"t going so great. I want as few extras as we can get- CH How"d profanity-block Brett happen to be jag-up on the spot? Jonesy Death Connection, Jones- CH Emotive response medium I thought you did a manual overdrive on the emote function? Jonesy Yeah, the emote thing goes automatic every time I start up- CH That blows! Jonesy Yeah.
Okay... just, tell everyone what happened- CH Right. Hart? Jonesy Yeah? CH Do ya think you can make it to the probation date? Jonesy pause in pulse communication I don"t know- CH That sucks, man- Jonesy Yeah, no profanity-block- CH Ttys, bro- Jonesy K- CH.
pulse terminated by Mark "Jonesy" Jones I had slid my pulse into the back pocket of my jeans as we pulled up to the Kent Police Station, the cruisers lining the parking lot like sardines in a can.
I missed school today, my vacation for the last mess almost over.
Wished it"d been for a different reason.
Jade stood next to me as Dad and Gramps had The Lawsuit discussion. Basically, I was sixteen for another couple of weeks and a cop had hit me with a police weapon. Hence, the suspension.
Dad turned to me, his face a hard mask of worry and anxiety. The thing was, they probably didn"t see it but I was on to the whole thing. Gramps looked like he was discussing lawn fertilizer. He didn"t get rattled that easy.
"Come here, son."
I squeezed Jade and she let out a breathy exhale. I tilted her chin up and met her eyes, I searched the green depths and found a lot of things in there I didn"t like. Uncertainty and apprehension stood there like they were setting up camp for the duration.
"It"ll be okay, babe, you"ll see," I said.
Those eyes got wet with tears, soaking her eyelashes, the sootiness of them glistening and dark like her hair. I swept Jade against me and gave her a hard hug. Reluctant to release her, I gave Clyde a look. He nodded, his gaze shifting to Brett, who looked back levelly. He was a little too confident with the dead now. He"d had the brush with it and was all cozy with my zombie now.
I knew that was a one-way street. Clyde wasn"t the cozy type.
And Jade. That was such a disturbing new development I didn"t even know how to quantify it all. But I"d been using him all week to watch over her. In essence, I"d made it worse. But with Frazier dragging his millimeter d.i.c.k around I had to take drastic measures.
I breathed in the fragrance of her hair as her head sat tucked underneath my chin. My eyes closed and I heard Dad call again, "Caleb?"
"I"m coming," I said, releasing Jade as I turned to walk over to the guy in a smarmy suit. He was a lawyer, I could tell, having had my fair share of attorneys around in the past. That made me think of the last day in court. As I approached the tight knot of my parents, Gramps and the ambulance-chasing lawyer, I thought of how my fate had been sealed months ago.
I approached the stand as Toothy stood on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, lifting and settling his body weight over and over again, his arms clasped behind his back. As Gramps would say, he was chompin" at the bit to nail me on the stand.
He looked like a horse too, with that mouth full of square yellowed teeth.
Prosecutor had a smirk on his mouth that I wiped off his face with a smile that overturned his with the velocity and fierceness of its delivery.
I looked at the Judge, his face flushed, a fine spiderweb of broken capillaries stood testimony to his love of booze, swarming his nose.
"You"re still under oath, Mr. Hart."