King City (20 page)

Wade had somewhere he wanted to go downtown, but his stomach was growling, so he made a detour first, stopping at one of the mini‐marts in Darwin Gardens that he hadn’t visited yet. The store had more bars on the windows than the county jail.

“What are we doing here?” Charlotte asked.

“Stopping for a snack. I skipped lunch. Or maybe it was dinner. Whatever. All I know is that I’m hungry.”

“There are a dozen places we could go downtown for a decent meal.”

“But that wouldn’t help me build relationships with the people on our beat. I’m getting a Coke and a Slim Jim. Want one?”

“What is a Slim Jim?”

“A stick of spicy meat,” he said. “You could buy it now and eat it in a year and it will still be fresh.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“It is if you leave food in the cupboard as long as I do,” he said.

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” she said.

Wade shrugged, got out of the car, and strode into the mini‐mart. It was like all the others in Darwin Gardens—cramped and garishly lit, with narrow aisles that were overstuffed with items. The front counter was cluttered with impulse‐buy candy and snack displays.

The guy behind the counter was his thirties, lanky and unshaven, with an enormous head of tangled hair and a faded T‐shirt. He forced a smile.

“Hello, Officer, what can I get for you?”

“I’m looking for Slim Jims,” Wade said.

“Over there.” He gestured in the general direction of the rear of the store, which was an odd thing to do, since there was an assortment of Slim Jims on the front counter.

“Thanks,” Wade said and knew in that instant that he wasn’t going to make it downtown tonight, that what he’d wanted to do would have to wait until tomorrow.

He picked up a basket and headed purposefully down the aisle to the glass refrigerator case in the back, which was full of beer and soft drinks.

Wade slid open the glass door and grabbed a liter of Diet Coke, stealing a glance up at the round mirror mounted in the corner, near the ceiling.

The mirror was angled so that the clerk could see if anybody was shoplifting in the back of the store. But it also allowed Wade to see the storeroom door that was behind him and to his right.

The door was ajar, held open by the toe of someone’s scruffy tennis shoe.

At that moment, all that existed in Tom Wade’s world was that mini‐mart, the guy at the counter, and whoever was in the storeroom.

Wade unscrewed the cap from the bottle of Diet Coke, took a sip out of it, and then stuck the open bottle in his basket as he made his way to the candy aisle. He picked up a roll of Mentos mints and a few other candy bars, dumped them in his basket, and then headed back to the register.

He set the basket down on the counter. “I couldn’t find the Slim Jims, so I made do.”

“Sorry,” the cashier said. “We must be out.”

Wade began unwrapping the Mentos as the cashier rang up his items.

“That’s funny,” Wade said. “What are these right here?”

As the cashier leaned over the counter to look, Wade dropped a Mentos into the open bottle of Diet Coke, which burst into a foam geyser that blasted into the man’s face.

In the same instant, Wade whirled around and drew his gun, aiming it at the storeroom door. “Do you want you want to die tonight?”

“No, fuck, no,” someone said behind the door.

“Drop your weapon and step out with your hands behind your head.” Wade took a step back so he could keep his eye on the drenched cashier at the same time. “You too, hands up.”

Wade heard something metallic hit the floor in the storeroom and then the door opened. A man came out. He was thin and jittery and sweating from every pore, his hands on his head.

Charlotte rushed in now, her gun drawn and pointed at the Diet Coke‐doused man behind the counter. “Don’t move, stay right where you are.”

“Is there anyone else with you?” Wade asked.

“No, it’s just us,” the man behind the counter said.

She covered the two men while Wade, his gun still drawn just in case, went to the storeroom and slowly pushed open the door the rest of the way with the toe of his shoe. Inside, he saw an old man sitting on the floor, his mouth sealed with duct tape, his hands bound behind his back, a gun on the floor at his feet.

Wade kicked the gun aside and carefully removed the tape from the man’s mouth.

“Was it just them?” Wade asked.

The man nodded.

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “I’m used to it. Those two assholes came in, pointed a gun at my face, and said they’d let me keep my brains if I didn’t make trouble. I didn’t get this old being stupid. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get robbed by somebody.”

“Those days are over. I owe you $2.99 for a liter of Diet Coke and a buck for a roll of Mentos. Don’t let me forget.” Wade turned back to Charlotte. “Cuff ’em and read ’em their rights.”

She did.

They took a report from the shopkeeper, then drove the two robbers back to the station and locked them up while Charlotte filled out the necessary paperwork.

Wade used the time to start patching some of the holes in the walls left from the shelves, the posters, the firebombing, and the drive‐by shooting.

At daybreak, he went upstairs for a quick, two‐hour nap, showered and shaved, and put on a pair of jeans, a T‐shirt, and a Windbreaker. He came back down to the station to find a sour‐faced Billy waiting for him at Charlotte’s desk.

“I am definitely switching to nights next week,” Billy said. “I haven’t had to draw my gun once yet, and she’s got to three times.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that trick with the Mentos,” Charlotte said. “It wasn’t something we were taught at the academy. Where did you learn it?”

“
America’s Funniest Home Videos
,” Wade said.

“I can’t picture you watching that show,” she said.

“My daughter did,” Wade said. “In fact, this is my day with her. So here’s what’s going to happen while I’m gone.”

Wade told Charlotte to transport the two robbers to the lockup downtown and to take the patrol car home with her. He showed Billy where the patching and painting materials were and told him to stick around the station and work on the walls.

“What does that have to do with being a cop?” Billy asked.

“It’s about showing your pride for your profession, among other things. It’s why firefighters keep their trucks as shiny as jewels.”

“But I don’t know how to paint,” Billy said.

“It can’t look any worse than it does now,” Wade said. “The important thing is, I don’t want you going anywhere while I’m gone.”

“I went on patrol before, remember?”

“That was before the drive‐by,” Wade said. “I don’t want you out there alone right now.”

“What if an emergency call comes in?”

“It’ll be a trap,” Wade said. “Nobody calls the police down here. Not yet, anyway.”

Wade told Billy to call him if anything came up and then headed out in his rented Explorer for the suburbs of New King City.

As he drove across the Chewelah River on the King’s Crossing Bridge, passing the familiar landmarks of what was once his daily commute, he felt as if he were awakening from a bad dream. The closer he got to Clayton, the suburb where he’d lived, the farther away and less real Darwin Gardens became.

By the time he pulled into the driveway of his house, he could almost believe none of it had ever happened—the corruption of the MCU, the trial, his divorce—and that it had just been one miserably long drive home.

He got out of his car and stood in the driveway for a moment, looking down the street of tract homes. Everything seemed cleaner and more colorful, as if the sun somehow shined brighter here. The air was tinged with the fragrance of flowers and freshly mowed grass instead of exhaust fumes, puke, and dried pools of urine. The asphalt was black and smooth instead of gray and riddled with potholes. There were no bars on the windows, no graffiti on the walls, no used condoms and syringes in the gutters.

Paradise.

Being back in New King City again, he could understand the temptation to haul away any transients who showed up here, to do whatever was necessary to prevent this place from becoming the one he’d just left. It would be a crime to let this become Darwin Gardens, especially while his family still lived here.

But intellectually, he knew that the rot that crept into the once prosperous south side, eventually turning it into Darwin Gardens, wasn’t carried like a plague by the wandering homeless. It was far more complicated and insidious than that.

The future of these suburbs, the safety, beauty, and cleanliness that made them so desirable, had more to do with the continued economic survival of the New King City tech companies than anything else. All it would take was a few of those employers shutting down and outsourcing their business to India or China, putting thousands of the heavily mortgaged owners of these tract homes out of work, and New King City could quickly become Old King City.

He turned toward the house and saw Alison standing on the front walk, studying him.

“You’re looking at the street like you’ve never seen it before,” she said.

“Maybe I haven’t,” he said. “At least not the way that I do now.”

Alison looked beautiful, and he felt a sudden, and painful, longing to hold her. And with that longing, he felt guilty for having been with another woman. The guilt made no sense, of course, since they were divorced. But ending the marriage wasn’t his idea. He’d gone along with it because it was what she wanted. If she changed her mind now, he’d come back to her with no hard feelings, as if the divorce had never happened.

She tipped her head toward the Explorer. “What happened to your car?”

“It’s in the shop, having some body work done. I had a little accident.”

“Are you OK?”

“Just fine,” he said.

“You don’t look it.”

I suppose I should look terrific after losing my family, my home, and my career and starting over as a beat cop in the worst corner of King City.
That’s what he thought, but it wasn’t what he said.

“I’m not getting enough sleep lately.”

“Brooke tells me you’re back on the force,” she said.

He nodded. “It’s not the same job, but it’s the same pay, rank, and benefits.”

“That’s good,” Alison said, putting her hands on her hips, letting Wade know that trouble was coming his way, “but I would have appreciated hearing about the job from you rather than my daughter.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t plan it that way. Things were hectic and Brooke caught me off guard.”

“You haven’t learned a thing,” she said. “So I guess you gave up on the idea of going into private security.”

“That was your idea, Ally, not mine.”

“The department must have offered you something great to keep you from the private sector. What did they do, make you the head of the MCU?”

“They put me in charge of a community substation in Darwin Gardens.”

She stared at him in shock. “That’s a hellhole.”

“Pretty much,” he said.

“Don’t you see what they’re doing? It’s retribution, Tom. They are trying to humiliate you or, more likely, get you killed for what you did.”

“That’s not how I see it,” he said.

“I’ll remember that at your funeral,” she said. “Next month.”

“The job gives me a salary that allows me to support my family, pay the mortgage on this house, and still have a little bit left over to take care of myself. It also comes with a health plan that will cover Brooke’s orthodontia, among other things. I can’t do that working campus security at a college.”

“But that’s not why you took the demotion.”

“Lateral move,” he said.

“Whatever.” She kept staring at him.

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

She shook her head with disappointment. “We’re divorced, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped caring about you, Tom. I’d make whatever sacrifices I had to—I’d sell this house without a second thought—if it would keep you from taking a job that’s suicide to pay our bills. But there’s nothing I can do to save you from your own twisted sense of honor.”

That’s when Brooke came out of the house, marching up purposefully behind her mother. She was tall and thin like her mother, with a runner’s slim, muscular legs and long hair tied in a ponytail that fell almost to her waist.

There was an adorable band of freckles across her nose and cheeks that gave her a huggable cuteness that was dramatically undercut by the mature intensity of her brown eyes, narrowed now in a stony gaze. Wade could see himself and his father in that gaze, and he was pretty sure that Alison could too.

“I hope you two aren’t fighting again,” Brooke said.

“We’re not,” Alison said. “I was just telling your father that I’m concerned about him.”

“I am too,” Brooke said. “You look terrible, Dad.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said. “But you know what would really help?”

“Two Advils and some concealer?”

“A big hug and a kiss,” Wade said and crouched down so she could run into his open arms. She groaned at the request because he was treating her like a child, but she gave him what he wanted, hugging him tight and kissing him on the cheek.

“I know you won’t take the makeup,” Brooke said into his ear, “but I would still recommend the Advil.”

He looked over her shoulder at Alison. “I’ll have her back by dinnertime.”

“There’s no hurry,” Alison said. “It’s not a school night.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got the night shift,” Wade said.

“Of course you do,” she said. “I’ll bet that you even volunteered for it.”

“I assigned it to myself,” he said.

“Of course you did,” she said, turned her back to him, and walked into the house.