Tough Customer (7 page)

"There's no need for that. Really."

"Okay, but let's get some ice on it." He stepped aside.

She went past him, down the hall, and into the living room, where her abuser was seated on a sofa, being questioned by Gonzales. Upon seeing her, the guy shot to his feet. "Do you see, Caroline?" he shouted at her. "Are you enjoying my humiliation?"

"Okay, Mr. Campton. Calm down."

"Don't tell me what to do." He shoved Gonzales with both hands. "Do you know who I am?"

"I sure do." Before the offender could react, Gonzales spun him around and pushed him facedown on the sofa. In seconds the man's hands were shackled behind him. "You're the guy on his way to jail."

The cuffed man began screaming a litany of curses aimed at Gonzales. Unfazed by the insults to himself and his lineage, he asked Dodge, "She okay? Do we need an ambulance?"

"I don't think so. Just shut him up."

Caroline King had hastened from the room. Dodge followed and found her in a compact kitchen, where she had planted her hands on the edge of the counter to brace herself against it. "Will he be arrested?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Will he go to jail?"

"Oh, yeah," Dodge said, relishing the thought.

She turned. "There'll be trouble over it. His family has money. Significant money. A battery of lawyers."

Dodge didn't give a rat's ass. "Have you got some ice in here?" Without waiting for an answer, he opened the freezer above the fridge and removed an ice tray. He shook cubes into a cup towel he'd found folded on the counter. He twisted the towel to hold the cubes inside, then passed the makeshift ice pack to her.

She took it and pressed it against her eye socket. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He pulled a chair out from under the dining table and remained standing beside it until she sat down, then he took the second chair. He removed a small spiral notebook and pen from the pocket of his uniform shirt. He wrote down her name. "What's his name?"

She hesitated, then said quietly, "Roger Campton."

Dodge wrote down the name and put a question mark beside it, wondering why it sounded familiar. She seemed to read his mind. "He's part of the Campton Industries family."

Holy shit
. As she'd said,

Significant money
.

This kitchen, the house, the neighborhood itself, were strictly middle class. Pridefully well maintained, but hardly opulent. Again, his puzzled expression must have given away his thoughts.

She said, "You're wondering how Roger and I met."

He gave his head a noncommittal bob.

"He introduced himself to me at a Christmas party at his parents' house last year."

Dodge's eyebrows shot up. "You were a guest?"

"Server. I was working the holiday season for a caterer. It was a moonlighting job."

This told Dodge several things about her. She was a single working woman on a budget that required moonlighting to make ends meet. She paid her own way and wasn't too proud to admit it. Her slim prettiness had caught the rich boy's eye, which wasn't surprising. Nor was it surprising that she would want to hook up with a Campton heir, all that dough, and what it represented.

Right now it represented a black eye, which made Dodge's insides roil with anger. Why would a woman, who appeared to be self-sufficient otherwise, put up with that?

"Has he done this before?" Dodge asked.

"Never."

"Never to you, or never to anybody?"

"Never to me. I don't know about anybody else."

Dodge made himself a note to check on that. "What set him off?"

She raised her shoulders, and again Dodge was struck by how delicate her frame was. "We were having an ordinary quarrel, a difference of opinion, and he flew into a rage. I've never seen him like that before." She wet her lips. "But he's been under a lot of pressure lately."

"What kind of pressure?"

"Business. He and his father have been having disagreements. Roger takes them to heart."

"What did you do or say that caused him to slap you?"

"I said something to the effect that his father had more experience and that perhaps in this particular instance Roger should give him the benefit of the doubt."

"You took his old man's side against him."

She lowered her head, addressing the tabletop. "I guess that's how it sounded to Roger."

"Doesn't excuse him from slapping you."

"No."

"Are you going to stay with him?"

She raised her head and looked at him with surprise. "Of course."

Dodge watched her, said nothing.

She licked her lips. "I'm sure this was an isolated incident, Officer. Roger lost his temper. Flew off the handle. It could happen to anybody who's under stress."

He shook his head decisively. "Most people are stressed one way or another. They don't hit. Only somebody with a violent streak does that."

She set the ice pack on the table. The cubes were melting, dripping through the cloth. She stood up. "My cheek feels much better. The ice helped. I'll be all right. Don't let me keep you from your other duties."

Reluctantly Dodge replaced his pad and pen in his pocket and followed her back into the living room. Through the windows, they saw Gonzales pushing down Campton's head, none too gently, and guiding him into the backseat of the patrol car. "Will he be charged with a crime?" she asked.

"He'll be accused of assaulting a police officer," Dodge replied. "Whether or not the charge sticks isn't up to me or to Officer Gonzales." He paused, then added, "You've got a better shot at him. You could file an assault charge. I urge you to."

"I promise to think about it." Because she avoided his eyes when she said that, Dodge figured it was an empty promise. "Thank you for responding so quickly," she said.

"No need to thank me. That's what we're for."

"I know, but thank you anyway." She gave him a tremulous smile, and he knew that, as soon as he left, she'd start crying. She was barely holding it back. "Good night, Officer--" She gave her head a small shake. "I'm sorry."

"Hanley. Dodge Hanley. Good night, Ms. King." He tilted his head toward the police car, where Roger Campton sat fuming in the backseat. "He won't be out before morning at the earliest. We'll be slow to get the paperwork done. But keep the doors locked anyway."

"I will."

He hesitated on the threshold and looked at her for several moments, but he couldn't think of anything to add to what had already been said. He didn't have a valid excuse for sticking around any longer, so he bobbed his head good-bye and turned toward the patrol car.

"So what I was thinking," Gonzales was saying, "is that we ought to volunteer."

Dodge, who'd been woolgathering, brought his partner into focus. Their shift had ended a half hour earlier. Now they were seated on opposite sides of a booth at Denny's, where they were having breakfast before going home.

"What?"

"You haven't been listening, have you?" Gonzales used the handle of his fork to stir sugar into his coffee, then sucked it off before applying the tines to his huevos rancheros. "Your mind's still on that broad."

"What broad?"

His partner guffawed. "Don't play dumb. The little one? Red hair?"

Angrily Dodge speared a chunk of potato and put it in his mouth. "She wasn't a broad."

Gonzales grinned. "Sure are touchy about her."

"Drop it."

Gonzales shrugged good-naturedly and picked up the subject where he'd left off. "I was saying we should volunteer for that task force they're pulling together to catch that bank robber." He plopped a strawberry into his mouth and chewed vigorously. "What do you think?"

"You read my mind."

"Yeah?"

Dodge had been thinking about it for days, ever since he'd heard about the task force. For more than a year, an armed robber had been plaguing area banks. During the last robbery, a bank guard had been shot. He was still recovering from a serious wound. It was feared that, if the culprit weren't caught, someone would eventually be killed. The perp had grown bolder with each robbery, and now his holdups had taken on a taunting attitude, as though he was enjoying his celebrity, having a whale of a good time, and thumbing his nose at the police in the process.

Working with several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Houston PD was determined to catch him. They had a list of possible suspects comprised of felons convicted of similar robberies who had served their sentences or were out on parole, but there was no evidence connecting any of them to the current crimes. The robber could be one of them or a new and clever crook on his debut crime spree.

Bottom line, the authorities really didn't have anything. Thus, the task force.

With the ink on his sheepskin from Texas Tech barely dry, Dodge had joined the HPD. His goal was to make detective and ultimately Homicide as soon as possible. He had the innate skills for crime solving. He just needed to pay his dues in the rank and file, get some seniority, and distinguish himself.

He'd been thinking that this task force might provide him an opportunity to prove himself a notch above the rest. If he got one of the coveted spots on it and impressed his superiors, it would speed his way toward achieving his goal.

"I put my name on the sign-up sheet yesterday afternoon."

Gonzales looked crestfallen. "You did? Oh."

Dodge smiled at him. "I put yours on there, too."

Gonzales beamed. "Good. Great. We'll both look more handsome out of these uniforms."

"Whoa. A lot of cops want on the task force. We haven't been selected yet."

"We will be. You for sure."

"Why me for sure?"

"It's bound to involve
undercover
work." Gonzales bobbed his eyebrows. "That's your speciality, partner."

Dodge cut into his rare steak. "Rumor."

Gonzales gave him an I-know-better look.

Dodge said, "All that gossip about me? It's bullshit."

Gonzales pushed aside his empty plate and leaned across the table. "That multiple murder at the strip club last month?"

"What about it?"

"There's nothing to the story that while the detectives were questioning the so-called eyewitnesses, you took the hostess of the club behind the building for a little one-on-one?"

"I was off duty. I just happened by. Got lucky."

"Lucky?" Gonzales scoffed. "I'll say. Within twenty minutes, she'd given up the shooter. You walked the detectives straight to where she told you he'd be hiding. There's no truth to that story?"

Dodge reached for his coffee cup. "I didn't take her behind the building."

"But you got her to give him up."

"Wasn't that hard to do." He grinned. "Not once I'd convinced her that a guy like that was no good for her, that she could do a lot better."

Gonzales was laughing, shaking his head in admiration. "Didn't you say that the solution to most mysteries could be found under a woman's skirt?"

"I never said that."

"You're quoted."

"Locker room talk." But Dodge's sly grin gave away the lie.

They finished their meal, divided the check, and paid out. As they separated outside the restaurant, Gonzales said, "Makes me feel a little better, knowing there's one woman you can't have. That redhead isn't gonna give up a superrich guy, even one who knocks her around now and then, for a street cop. You'll have to live without that one, Dodge."

Gonzales was proven right. When Dodge reported for duty that evening, he learned that Roger Campton had been released from lockdown before noon. His lawyers--plural--threatened a countercharge of police harassment, and Ms. Caroline King had declined to press charges. It was even said by the lawyers that she regretted having involved the police, that it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding, a mountain made of a molehill. Et cetera.

Dodge had figured that was the way it would shake out, but he didn't like it and couldn't leave it at that.

After his shift, he told Gonzales he didn't feel like breakfast and went instead to her house. He was parked at the curb in front of it when she came out to get her morning newspaper. He got out of his car and started up the walk.

"Ms. King?"

She shaded her eyes against the sun and regarded him warily.

"It's Officer Hanley."

She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, no shoes. Compared with his size twelves, her feet looked like a child's.

"Oh. Hello. I didn't recognize you without the uniform."

"I just got off duty, thought before I went home, I'd come by, see how you're doing."

"I'm fine."

"You've got a bruise."

She touched the edge of her eye. "Not surprising. My skin is so fair, I bruise if you look at me hard."

"He did more than look at you hard." The statement was out before he could stop it, and he'd sounded tougher and more dangerous than the guy who'd slapped her. But he didn't apologize for what he'd said.

She seemed embarrassed, even apprehensive. "I didn't press charges."

"I know. I checked."

"Roger was mortified by his behavior. He'd had a shouting match with his father and took his residual anger out on me. Both have apologized. Roger has sworn that it'll never happen again. I'm confident it won't."

Dodge wasn't, but he didn't tell her that. "Everything's okay then?"

"Everything's fine."

He stood there, feeling oafish, searching for something to say to prolong the conversation but thinking of nothing.

"I need to..." She gestured behind her toward the front door, which she'd left standing open. "I'll be late for work."

"Oh, sure, sorry. I just came by ... you know, to check on ... things."