A Smudge of Gray (2 page)

Chapter 2

SEVEN DAYS EARLIER

A knife sliced a large cake, which read
“Congratulations Detective Brian Boise.” Officers stood around it like vultures
awaiting their turn at a lost hiker. The cake was white sponge with vanilla
icing. A chubby officer grabbed his plate and sliced the “Bri” from the first
name. Then, his friend, a skinny street patrolman, killed the last two letters.

“It’s vanilla,” the chubby officer
mouthed as he chomped away.

“Mmmm,” the skinny officer exhaled.
“Where is Boise, anyway?”

“He’s probably fucking his desk.”

Both officers meandered out of the
break room and looked at the main floor. Gobs of people flurried. Fans lined
the ceiling and swirled the stale air. The two officers walked toward the rows
of desks in the back as the smell of sweat hit them. They passed the four desks
composing the robbery department, and then shuffled through the assault section
as an Asian storeowner babbled in broken English about a man who had busted up
his store. Further in the back was the detective area with five old mahogany
desks providing the crew with a reprieve from the streets. Each desk had mounds
of paper, an abused computer, and a tired phone. Four of them were unoccupied
as their owners were out in the field detecting crimes. But the last desk hid
its occupant with files stacked two feet high and Post-it notes sticking to
everything, including other Post-it notes. In front, the nameplate, which read
“Det. Brian Boise,” was nearly falling off.

The detective had recently turned forty-three-years-old,
and just as he was currently absent from the cake in the break room, he had also
been absent from the cake his wife had ordered for his birthday. Brian was
trying to be a family man, raising his impressionable nine-year-old son
Jonathan and keeping his wife Anne Marie satisfied. He was a logical man with
an ounce of feistiness and a pound of compassion. Brian was finishing paperwork
on his recently solved case, a case that had brought him to the bowels of the
city to search for one of the worst criminals he had ever encountered. As his
hand clutched a black BIC Round Stic Pen, he seemed more worried about filling in
the suspect’s blood type than eating the cake the captain had ordered for him
in the break room.

As the two officers approached the
detective, they saw two-day-old stubble painting his face—stubble that, only
five hours ago, touched the breath of the heinous murderer. Brian’s dress shirt
and tie, recent purchases at the factory outlet, were sweat-soaked and had blood
splattered from the wound he had inflicted by sending two lead bullets into the
suspect’s leg and shoulder. But this was the way the detective liked to roll; his
life revolved around that desk and the many facets of law enforcement that it
entailed, some more gruesome than others. This was his life for the ten years
he had been fighting crime.

“Hey, Boise. Congrats, man,” the burly
officer boasted, as he took a bite out of the letter “b.”

“You da man, one more fuckin’ lowlife
off the streets,” the skinny one added.

“Just doing my job, what they pay me to
do,” Brian responded, taking a moment to make his parted hair lay to the right.

“What do you need the money for?” the
skinny officer asked.

“Family.”

“A family? Boise has a fuckin’ family?
Let me see your family,” the big officer pressed.

Brian stopped writing and grabbed his
wallet. He rooted through old receipts and expired insurance cards.

“Where’s the picture, Boise? Huh? Don’t
be ashamed to be single. But just remember to put your beef into a taco every
now and again to keep the mojo flowing,” the skinny one said.

“As long as it’s not filled with sour
cream,” the chubby officer said, as everyone laughed except for Brian, who used
ignorance to put out their fire. “Hey, Boise. Word in the captain’s office is
that you’re up for promotion—chief detective.”

“A promotion would be nice but I’m not
expecting anything.”

As the plump officer tried to lean
against Brian’s desk, his round backside knocked over a folder, sending its
contents to the abused tile floor.

“Your filing system is fuckin’ top
notch, good job setting an example,” the culprit replied as he rested his cake
on the desk in order to pick up the papers. This time he dropped the cake on
the floor. It detonated. A piece stuck to Brian’s black dress shoes, purchased
by his wife from the Payless shoe store in the mall.

“Shit!” the flabby officer yelled.

“Nice going, you fuck,” laughed his
partner, taking another bite. “Hey, your cake is great, Boise.”

“Yeah. Hurry up and solve another case,”
the chubby officer said as he kicked the fallen cake under the adjacent desk.

“Next time, tell them to get chocolate,”
the skinny patrolman added.

“Chocolate ice cream cake,” his partner added.

“Aww…”

Suddenly, the sound of a kid’s crying
pierced the trio’s eardrums. A rookie detective escorted a plump,
twenty-something woman to his desk near Brian. She was making a statement on a
case, but was also making a statement with her agitated three-year-old daughter
propped on her side. The rookie detective and two officers at Brian’s desk stared
at each other and made faces to mock the crying kid. Brian, on the other hand,
knew just what to do. He opened his desk drawer, grabbed a buried lollipop, and
walked to the toddler with a smile.

“Here you go. Mommy will be done soon,” Brian
said as he handed the girl the candy.

Her cries faded to whimpers, and then to
the sound of sucking.

Brian resumed his seat in front of the surprised
officers. A phone rang somewhere on his desk.

“Excuse me, guys,” Brian said as he
searched for the ringing. He lifted some files from a kidnapping homicide last
year, and then scooted a reference manual highlighting the effects of every
known drug by the FDA. Finally, he found the phone under a manila folder
containing the confidential informants’ leads for the burglary/murder he had
just solved.

“His next big case awaits,” the skinny
officer mocked.

“Let’s see if there’s any more cake
left,” the beefy patrolman said as both wandered away.

Brian finally picked up the phone on its
fourth ring. “Detective Boise speaking.”

“Hello, Detective Boise. This is your
wife.”

Anne Marie was at home, standing in
the small kitchen of their city apartment drying dishes from the afternoon
snack she made for her son. She was a petite woman with an ounce of compassion
and a pound of feistiness. She complemented her husband well and kept him
grounded with his obligations to his family, but Brian never made it easy. She
wore her thirty-nine years well, but flaunted her figure to no one, except for the
man she had married.

“Oh, hi, honey,” Brian replied in a
changed tone.

“Is that it?
Hi, honey
.”

“What? Did I miss something?”

Their son Jonathan hollered in fun as he
played a video game in the living room. Jonathan was like any other
nine-year-old, playing games, trying different sports, and listening to his
parents, at least most of the time. He didn’t like the fact that he lived in an
apartment, missing the big backyard and interior space that some of the kids in
his school had. But what he did have were two parents who loved him deeply.

“Miss something? Yes, you missed Jonathan’s
basketball game—
again
,” Anne Marie replied as she turned and watched
Jonathan engrossed in his game.

“Oh, shit. That’s right,” Brian
responded as he lowered his head.

“Brian, I don’t know how much more I can
take of this. This job has consumed your life. You are never around anymore for
me or your son.”

“Well, I do have good news. Have you
seen the T.V.?” Brian lifted his head back up.

“No. Why?” Anne Marie responded as she
looked through the tenth floor window at the city below.

“I just nabbed the copycat killer. My
four-month investment has paid off. The captain is really buzzing. I think I
may be up for a promotion.”

“Which means even more time away from
your family.”

“Just bear with me. Please… Please.” Brian
lowered his voice as lovers did when they expressed their feelings verbally.
“You know how being captain one day has always been—”

“See! This is what I mean! Your family
should come first, and this job is killing your family. You know what happened
today at the game? Jonathan said that he looks up to Coach Wilson more than he
does his own dad. And he only sees Coach Wilson three times a week.” Anne Marie
threw the dish towel into the sink.

Brian paused and held his head down in
shame, a position his skull seemed to occupy far too frequently.

“I’m sorry. I will make it up to you
two. My mind is just not right,” Brian said, trying to reason.

As Brian stared at a large divot in the
surface of his desk, thoughts of his family flowed through his mind. He tried
to contemplate ways to make things right—taking them out for dinner, a weekend
trip, buying more meaningless stuff. Just as quickly, a female officer dropped
a manila folder in front of Brian, bringing him back to the stuffiness in his
office. He looked up, but she was already out of his office space.

“I have to go. I’ll be home when I can,”
Brian replied, but all he heard was a click.

Brian put the receiver back on its
base. A migraine pounded inside his head. He took a deep breath—a deep breath
of mustiness. Brian felt bad, a feeling he felt too regularly. He popped some
aspirin and stared across the room at the flurry of activity on the main floor
of the police station. He zeroed in on a uniformed female officer escorting a
handcuffed woman wearing torn fishnet stockings with dried black eyeliner trailing
from her eyes. As Brian’s mind paused from thinking, another figure meandered
through the crowd, a figure with two shining bars on his shoulders; it was the
captain. Brian looked at the folder in front of him and opened it.

Chapter 3

A suburban home sat in a large lot under
the warm afternoon sun. Sculpted grass, lush trees, and Roman-inspired pillars
accented the house and its placement among other equally impressive mini mansions.
Birds chirped in the trees, basking in the life around them. It was the type of
home that every American family craved, the type for which husbands worked
countless hours to pay the mortgage and wives worked even harder to brag to her
friends. In this particular residence, a husband, his wife, and their two kids
called it their castle.

The landscaped backyard was like a play land;
toys and games were scattered across the grass. The two kids of the house jumped
on a trampoline, laughing and hooting as they bounced. They were nine-year-old
twins, Kevin and Katie, and were spoiled just as much as their parents loved
them. Kevin had short black hair and had the same nose and brown eyes as his
sister. Katie had long black hair, a color both had inherited from their father.

“Higher! Higher! Go Higher!” Katie
yelled as she watched her brother reach for the puffy white clouds.

Kevin soared in the air and did a back
flip, which amused his sister.

“Kids! Your father should be home soon.
What do you want to eat?” their mother hollered from across the yard.

Laura was their mom. She was a
housewife, a homemaker, and a babysitter when the kids weren’t in school. She
was a woman in her mid-thirties with an hourglass figure and blessed with the
gift of a beautiful singing voice. She had the naive look of an auburn-haired
Hollywood star from the 1940s with her simple elegance, but she had a little spark
to her, the kind that surfaced when the kids were asleep and her husband was
not. While Laura spoiled her children, her husband spoiled her with a large
bankroll, which offered her a life filled with salon trips and a closet filled
with designer clothes.

“I want spaghetti!” Kevin shouted.

“I want hot dogs!” his sister
contradicted.

Laura walked from the back patio into
the yard. She dodged the squirt guns, the bicycles, and a basketball as she
made her way toward her kids. She looked at them having fun, enjoying their
youth, as she remembered playing with her older sister much the same some
thirty years ago.

“Don’t you get tired of that thing?
That’s all you two do is jump on it all day long.”

“Not all day, Mom. We have school,”
Kevin clarified.

Kevin performed a soaring front
flip as Katie giggled even louder. Their mother shook her head and offered them
a disapproving look, scrunching the freshly exfoliated pores on her brow.

“Come down and get cleaned up before
your father gets home.”

“Dad! Dad! Dad’s home!” the kids yelled
in tandem.

Katie and Kevin jumped from the
trampoline and ran toward their father at the back patio. Their dad was tall
and wore a dark gray suit with black onyx cufflinks securing his French cuffs.
He was wheeling a 20” Travelpro Rollaboard carry-on featuring toughened nylon,
waterproof ball-bearing inline skate wheels, and a Checkpoint-friendly laptop
compartment—the ultimate addition to the frequent business traveler. The kids hugged
him tenderly, just as two kids did who adored their father. Katie looked down
and saw her dad’s shoes still highly polished even from his long day. She
studied the charcoal gray color and the small white patch on top. They both
looked up at their father’s loving smile—the smile of Trevor Malloy.

“How’s my little offspring doing?”
Trevor asked.

“Guess what we did after school, Dad?”
Katie asked as she tugged his suit jacket.

“They jumped on that trampoline the
minute they got home, that’s what they did,” Laura said as she walked toward
her family. “I don’t know why you bought that thing for them.”

“Ah, they’re just kids playing.
Something I wish I did more of when I was young,” he said as he smiled at his
son and daughter.

“How was your trip, Dad?” Kevin asked.

“Like every trip—long. But it’s over. What
do you want for dinner? How about if Dad cooks out on the grill?” Trevor said.

“Yeah! Yeah!” the kids yelled.

“Is that okay, honey?” Trevor asked his
wife.

“Sure. It means I don’t have to cook.”

Laura leaned in and kissed Trevor. “Glad
you’re home safe,” she whispered.

“I missed you all,” he replied as he
embraced his family.

Trevor was a family man, a man who
worked to serve his kids and his wife. He believed that the man was the central
element in a family unit, not in a disrespectful way, but in a traditional way.
Above all, he believed it was his duty to provide and protect, no matter what
it took.