Father Christmas (18 page)

The perp had a knife.
The lieutenant’s voice echoed inside her skull, making her
tremble, filling her mind with horrifying possibilities.
The perp had a knife.

She couldn’t take Michael home with her,
even though she would like to. It would be too presumptuous. John
had withdrawn from any personal relationship with her. She couldn’t
just take over as a surrogate parent in this crisis.

If he was in desperate shape, his relatives
would have been called. He had all those brothers and sisters—some
of them might be pacing the hospital’s waiting room right now. She
could bring Michael and let one of his aunts or uncles take him for
the night.

Her heart pounded. Her eyes burned with
fear. But she couldn’t let Michael know how frightened she was for
his father. She had to make sure he was safely in the care of
someone who loved him. After she did that, she could worry about
John.

She sent a silent prayer heavenward, then
gave Michael’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s
go find your daddy, okay?”

He smiled up at her with so much trust, it
was all she could do not to burst into tears. “Okay,” he said.
“Let’s go see Daddy.”

WHEN THE NOVOCAINE FINALLY WORE OFF, John’s
right arm was going to hurt like hell. But right now, he wasn’t
feeling any pain.

What he
was
feeling was a heady mix of
exhaustion and exhilaration, a strange emotional high that came
from the realization that he had outwitted death.

From the moment he’d set down his bell and
left his cash-filled bucket to check out the mysterious shadows
he’d seen dancing in the alleyway between a high-end card shop and
a jeweler on Hauser Boulevard, he’d sensed that he wasn’t going to
have a pleasant time of it. A good cop trusted his intuitions. Just
the way an allergic person might feel an itch in the presence of
dust or cats, a cop felt itches in the presence of bad news. By the
time John saw the knife, he was itching all over.

It was a kid, a street punk, dressed
straight out of the street punk manual. The woman wasn’t much
older, but she was better groomed—probably an office worker out to
do some Christmas shopping on her lunch hour. The knife had a
six-inch blade that could have stripped the pelt off a bear, and it
was pressed to the woman’s throat. The kid was asking her to do
something obscene to him when John drew his revolver out from under
his Santa tunic and said, “Police. Drop it.”

The kid didn’t drop the knife, although he
did drop the woman, shoving her against the grimy brick wall and
bolting, around the rear of the card shop and back out the other
side onto Hauser. John took off after him.

On the sidewalk, the kid tried to lose
himself in the milling crowds of holiday shoppers. John tucked his
revolver back into the elastic waist band of his slacks; there were
too many innocent people in the vicinity to risk taking a shot. The
kid still had his knife, though. He gripped it in his fist and
plowed through the throngs, which had the good sense to part before
him like the Red Sea, leaving a path for John as well. Anyone wise
enough not to block the path of a creep with a hunting knife was
also wise enough not to block the path of a really angry cop
charging down the sidewalk in a Santa Claus costume.

As he ran, John considered the kid’s knife,
but only in the most reflexive way. There was a chance of
injury—serious injury—and he factored it into the equation. He
wasn’t one of those crackpots who acted as if they were immortal,
or who measured their manhood by how many stupid chances they took.
But he had witnessed a felony—assault with a deadly weapon— and it
was his job to bring the bastard down.

Pedestrians screamed and gasped as he
sprinted past them, but he tuned them out, hoping they’d stay out
of his way. He would likely run over anyone who crossed his path at
the wrong time, but if he slowed down, he’d lose the perp. Instead
he ran faster, harder, closing in on the kid until he was near
enough to attempt a flying tackle. Feeling the exertion in his
thighs, he leaped forward, snagged one of the kid’s ankles, and
landed him.

John saw the sharp glint of silver in the
punk’s hand as they tangled and rolled along the slushy pavement.
He didn’t feel the first cut, but he heard the rip of his sleeve as
the blade gashed through the red flannel. They wrestled some more,
and he noticed large circles of red spreading into the slush. But
even then, he felt nothing more than anger that this thug, this
SOB, this useless piece of human excrement who had hauled a woman
into an alley and threatened her life, dared to resist him.

He used his hand to deflect the second slash
of the knife, but the blade sliced through his glove, stinging
wickedly. More blood leaked onto the sidewalk. John’s blood.

Fueled by rage, indignation, and the fierce
sense of justice that kept good cops from going bad or giving up,
he slugged the punk in the jaw, snapping his head back. Stunned by
the blow, the kid deflated, his eyes getting wilder but his body
losing power. Before he could regain his breath, John had him on
his stomach, the knife tumbling from his fingers as John cuffed his
hands behind him.

Only after John had rolled the kid onto his
back again, with his manacled hands under him and John’s knees
planted firmly on his chest, did John turn off his reflexes and
turn on his brain. Struggling to catch his breath, he reached under
his tunic for his radio. When he pulled it out and lifted it to his
face to call for assistance, he realized that his glove was soaked
with blood and his fingers were tingling.

If he tried to stand, he probably would
collapse. So he just stayed where he was, sitting on the bastard
while he called for back-up. He remained on the chilly sidewalk,
watching his blood leak in dark stains through the cheery red
fabric of the Santa suit, and waited for help.

He might have faded to black once or twice
on the ride over to Arlington Memorial, but all in all, his
injuries weren’t critical. No major arteries had been severed, no
tendons cut. Eighteen stitches closed the wound in his forearm, and
a flock of butterfly-clips currently held the skin of his palm
together.

He was alive. He’d nailed a prick who didn’t
deserve the space he took up in the world. He’d saved a woman from
an assault. He’d gotten cut. He was bloody but unbowed. He had
survived.

Definitely a high.

The doctor molded wads of bandage into the
curve of his palm, arched his fingers around the packing, and then
wrapped about a mile of gauze around it. “If you use this hand,
it’s not going to heal,” he said. “I’m binding it this way so you
won’t be able to move it and reopen the cut.”

“
Uh-huh.” John’s tongue
felt as dry and rough-textured as the bandage the doctor was using
to tie up his hand. He needed a drink. As soon as he picked up Mike
and got home, he was going to pour himself a generous portion of
something strong.

“
I know you’re
right-handed, so this isn’t going to be easy for you,” the doctor
commiserated. “But it’s a tricky wound. Hands can take forever to
heal if you don’t keep them motionless.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
What’s your name?” the
doctor asked evenly, measuring off a strip of adhesive tape and
snipping it with a scissors.

John frowned. “John Russo. One of the
uniforms took care of the paperwork—”

The doctor cut him off with a laugh. “I just
want to make sure I’m not losing you. You have a glassy look in
your eyes, Detective. It isn’t too late to go into shock.”

“
I’m not in
shock.”

“
Good. If you were, I’d
admit you for observation.”

“
Come on, Doc. It’s a
scratch.” He eyed his bare arm wrapped in white bandage, and then
his immobilized hand. “Two scratches,” he amended.

“
And some bruised ribs,”
the doctor reminded him. As best John could figure, the perp had
kicked him in the chest a couple of times while they’d been rolling
around on the sidewalk. He’d been wearing thick-soled shit-kicker
boots. John had a few technicolor welts on the left side of his
chest, but they didn’t hurt, either. Not yet.

His shoulders ached, but he suspected that
was from sitting on an examining table with no back support. He and
the doctor were enclosed in a small corner of the emergency room, a
nook blocked off from the ER waiting area by a pale green curtain.
The Santa tunic had been cut off him by an earnest intern who
hadn’t looked old enough to shave. Seeing the costume reduced to
rags brought a wry smile to John’s lips. Maybe, finally, he
wouldn’t have to play undercover Santa Claus anymore.

“
What time is it?” he
asked. “I’ve got to pick up my kid.”

“
You’re not going anywhere
until I release you,” the doctor reminded him. “Wasn’t someone from
your squad supposed to bring some clothes to the hospital for you?”
He eyed John’s blood-spattered Santa trousers and shook his
head.

“
They’re probably outside
in the waiting room.”

Nodding, the doctor smoothed the last strip
of tape around John’s hand. “I’ll see if they’ve arrived. Don’t you
dare move while I’m gone. I mean it, Detective. You stand up too
quickly and you’re going to keel over and smack your head on the
floor. The last thing you need right now is a concussion.”

“
Uh-huh.” He secretly
tested his thumb to make sure the doctor hadn’t taped it too tight.
He wasn’t planning to play the Minute Waltz on the piano any time
in the foreseeable future, but he had to have
some
movement in his fingers. If he couldn’t do the
most basic things—button his jeans, grip the steering wheel in his
car—he’d be no use to himself or Mike.

The doctor set his tools neatly on a wheeled
tray, then shot John a warning look and pulled back the green
curtain.

“
Daddy!” Mike shrieked
from the waiting area, and a blur of energy flew toward John,
barely slowing enough for him to make out the yellow rubber boots,
the blue-and-green parka, the mittens flapping loosely from a cord
strung through the jacket sleeves. Then he saw Mike’s face. His
tousled hair, his shining eyes, his dazzling smile.

John couldn’t imagine a
more welcome sight. And then he
could
imagine one, because it materialized before him: Mike
hurtling joyously at him, and Molly behind Mike, loitering near the
curtain, cautious but hopeful, her eyes damp and her smile fraught
with worry.

Had she been crying? For him?

If she’d shed any tears,
it had probably been because she’d been stuck taking care of Mike
for an extra hour, and Mike in top form could reduce anyone to
tears. John concluded that Mike must have reduced Molly to weeping
because it was a safer explanation than the alternative: that she
cared to cry over
him
.

Whether or not she cared, she obviously
didn’t feel comfortable enough to enter his little curtained
compartment. She held his gaze for an immeasurable moment, then
lowered her eyes to his naked chest, wincing when she spotted the
bruises. She lifted her gaze back to his face.

“
You’re all right.” It was
half a question, half a sigh. Her voice wavered.

“
Yeah.”

Mike was skipping and
twirling around the foot of the table, trying to figure out a way
to scramble into his father’s lap. “We were at the policeman
place,” he reported, bustling with excitement and self-importance.
“We saw a tree. They have a very, very, very big tree.
This
big!” He extended his arms as wide
as he could. “Is Santa Claus gonna leave toys for the policeman
people?”

“
I think he’s going to
leave toys that the policemen can give to needy children in town,”
John explained. The Arlington Fire Department ran the city’s
Toys-For-Tots program, but the police force usually collected
donations for the firefighters.

“
Look at this!” Mike
touched the bulky bandages covering John’s hand. “Your hand looks
so big! It’s funny, Daddy!”

“
It’s all gauze and tape,”
John told Mike, ruffling his hair with his left hand. He wanted to
cup his hand around the back of Mike’s head and cling to him. He
was beginning to come down from the high, and as he descended the
truth caught up with him. If the punk had nicked a vein he might
have bled to death. He might have died on Hauser Boulevard, on a
cold, wet sidewalk, in front of holiday shoppers. He might have
died and never had the chance to see or touch or talk to his son
again.

But if he wrapped his arms around Mike, the
good arm and the bad, and hugged as hard as he wanted to, until he
popped the sutures the doctor had tacked into his arm, until his
muscles ached and his bruised ribs cracked and he squeezed tears
from his own eyes, he would only frighten Mike. The boy didn’t
understand what John had just been through. He couldn’t begin to
understand. At his age, he shouldn’t have to understand such awful
things.

Mike’s hair felt downy beneath his fingers,
still baby-soft. John traced the curve of Mike’s skull, down to the
hollow at the nape of his neck. So precious, he thought. His little
boy. His little boy might have lost his daddy the way he’d already
lost his mommy.

But he hadn’t. Fate had been kind to Mike
this time. To Mike and John both.

He raised his eyes back to Molly, who still
hovered near the curtains, watching him. He wondered what she saw
in his face, what his eyes might be giving away. “I’m okay,” he
murmured, needing reassurance as much as she did.