Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance (10 page)

AS TOBIAS OPENS Jasmine’s apartment door, I pull off the hood of the sweater he leant me. As soon as we walk in, a wave of emotion hits me so hard, I have to take a step back.

“Are you okay?” Tobias asks, reaching out to touch my arm.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine. I was just…unprepared. I just…I had talked to her, I had gotten to know her. And now she’s gone. And I’m indirectly responsible.”

“No, you’re not,” he says. “The killer is responsible. Jasmine had no idea what she was getting herself into.”

“I don’t think any of us know what we get ourselves into,” I say. We step over crime scene tape into Jasmine’s bedroom. Tobias examines the bed. I look over her bed stand. She has a couple of gossip magazines on top of it. I open the drawer and find that it only has a carton of cigarettes and
Pride and Prejudice
. I pick up the book, curious that someone of her profession would own a classic. I flip it open to where she folded over a corner of the book page. She had highlighted a whole paragraph: “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.” I close the book. As I set it back into the drawer, the bottom of the drawer wobbles. It has a false bottom. I press my fingertips against the left side of the drawer and the piece of wood tilts upward on the right side. I pull out the bottom and find a small leather-bound notebook and three gel pens. I pick up the notebook and flip it open to the first page.

February 3, 2014

The new john I had today is different than most, but I guess I think that a lot. But this john seemed to care about everything I said and he told me I was beautiful.

“I found a diary,” I tell Tobias. He walks over to me and peers over my shoulder.

“Of course the forensic team would miss that,” he says. He scans the page. “It doesn’t look like she uses names though.”

“She might not have known them,” I say. “Maybe she put the killer’s name in, though, if they were dating.”

Tobias takes the diary and flips through it. His finger catches on one of the pages and I notice for the first time that there’s a gap in the diary. Someone tore out some of the pages. There aren’t any diary entries after that.

“I have to give it to this killer,” Tobias says, giving the diary back to me. “He thinks of everything.”

“
He left behind the contact lens,” I say.

“For all we know, it’s another dead end that he purposely left for us to find,” he says.

“Do you really think he would expect us to find a contact lens?” I ask.

“If we had a forensic team, yes,” he says. His cellphone rings. He takes it out, glances at the number, and his brow furrows.

“I have to get this,” he says. He walks out of the room and into the bathroom. He closes the door behind him.

That isn’t suspicious at all.

I flip through the diary, only a few words popping out at me.
Love. Wreckage. Curiosity.
I don’t see any names. I suppose someone in her profession wouldn’t want to get too attached to any boyfriend.

I hear Tobias’ voice rise before falling back down to a normal decibel level. I creep up to the door and linger near the doorknob.

“I know. I’ve been busy. It’s been crazy at the station…” his voice murmurs. “I’ve missed you too. You’ve helped me get through these last few months. I couldn’t have done it without you. I’ll come by soon. Give me half an hour to get over there. I’ll see you soon, Mallory. I love you, too.”

I backtrack to Jasmine’s bedroom and pick up her diary. It seems fitting that I would find out about Mallory in a prostitute’s apartment. It’s not the fact that he has kept me from knowing about Mallory or that he told her he loved her that bothers me the most—it’s the vulnerability in his voice. He has always had a tough presence around me and after we made love—excuse me, had sex—I thought I had seen his vulnerable side. Apparently, Mallory has seen something deeper. Something I could never know.

I hear Tobias’ footsteps enter the room.

“I have to get going,” he says. “That was my father. He’s having some issues with the bank and getting a loan, so I need to go talk to some of the people there.”

I nod, but I still don’t turn around. He walks up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. I close my eyes as he kisses my cheek.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I force myself to say. “I just…keep thinking about Jasmine’s life. She spent most of her life being used by men and then she meets this guy who she thinks is great…the one she thinks she is supposed to be with, the first guy who treats her really well…and he kills her.”

“He’ll get what’s coming to him,” Tobias says. “He can’t hide forever. He won’t go unpunished.”

I nod, finally turning toward him. He wraps his arms around me and kisses my temple. “I hope so. I hope he gets exactly what he deserves.”

~~~~~

I sit in my red Volvo S60, flipping through Jasmine’s diary. Her attitude seems to switch between the innocent, bubblegum-popping teenager (
Pumpkin spice coffee is being sold at Coffeebuds—I need my fix!, The cute FedEx guy seemed to notice me for the first time. I wonder if I should ask him about his package?
) and the manipulative and pessimistic prostitute (
Sometimes I think about leaving this city and living wild in the woods like an animal—let freedom ring!, A man told me today that I would burn in Hell for my sins…I thanked him for his concern by telling another nearby man that he touched me inappropriately…I may burn in Hell, but not alone
). Both sides break my heart a little bit. One is who she should be if she wasn’t working on the streets and the other side is what the life as a prostitute has turned her into.

I hear a car rumble to life. I look up to see Tobias get into his black Ford Taurus. His car is pointed away from my direction, so he doesn’t notice me. He drives forward. I flip on my turn signal and follow him.

I try to convince myself that I’m only doing this to test my detective skills since my plan to get the PVP killer to reveal himself seems to have failed, or I’m only doing this because I’m curious. I ignore the pain in my chest and the urge to turn around and return to my apartment. I ignore everything except the black car that is going in the opposite direction fromthe police station. I had waited two hours for him to leave his apartment after ignoring his phone calls. There is no turning back.

His route takes me through various parts of Detroit—the good, the bad, and the ugly. I keep at least one car between us the whole time, though I don’t think he has ever taken much notice of my car, considering we’re in his Taurus most of the time.

After fifteen minutes, his car parks in front of a townhouse with a wrought-iron gate around it. A woman is standing in the small yard. She has short blonde hair that ends at her shoulders and a blue strapless dress on. Tobias steps out of his car, walks over to the woman, and wraps his arms around her. He kisses the side of her head and she leads him into the townhouse.

I grip my steering wheel and my teeth grind against each other. I should have known. He was stressed from the case and he used me as a way to relax. I’m the other woman.

I take out my cellphone and dial his number. He doesn’t pick up.

Anger boils in my veins until I feel like they could explode. I let him mistreat me in the beginning of our professional relationship for the sake of solving the case. I had no reason to allow him to treat me like shit this time.

I wrench open my car door and get out. My hands are balled into fists and I storm up to the apartment. I pound on the townhouse door. I wait for someone to answer the door. I wait to feel an ounce of the respect I deserve.

Tobias opens the door a second before he realizes it’s me standing in front of him. The recognition dawns on his face, followed by confusion and shame. I grab him by the collar of his shirt and yank him out of the townhouse. He stumbles forward.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“What am I doing here?” I hiss. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Mallory is my friend,” he says. “Again, what are you doing here?”

“Friend?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips—mostly so that I can resist the urge to hit him. “Is that why you lied to me the other day about how it was your father who called you? And you told me you didn’t have friends, remember? It’s why you only have one chair in your apartment.”

He clenches his jaw. “Did you follow me here?”

“Yes,” I say. “I did. Because I knew you were lying and I knew…I should have known that you didn’t want a relationship. You are an asshole. I knew it from day one.”

The woman—Mallory—walks up to the door. She opens it and steps out, her face full of confusion.

“Tobias, what’s going on?” she asks. Tobias gestures to me.

“Mallory, this is my girlfriend, Lauren,” he says. “She thinks we’re dating.”

Mallory tilts her head, her eyes wide, before she laughs. She reaches out to me but I pull away from her.

“Lauren,” she says. “Honey, please. Tobias and I are not in any kind of romantic relationship.”

“Then why did you lie to me? Keep her a secret from me?” I ask Tobias. He shoves his hands into his jean pockets. Mallory shrugs. I turn toward her. “How do you two know each other?”

“I was his partner’s wife,” she says. “We’ve known each other for almost a decade.”

I shake my head. “I…don’t even know what’s going on but I can’t deal with this right now. I’m going to go.”

I walk back to my car. As I reach for the door, Tobias comes up to me, grabbing my arm.

“Lauren,” he says. “Don’t be mad. Please.”

“Something is going on that you’re not telling me,” I say. “I don’t want a relationship where I don’t know half of what’s going on. I’m not Jasmine. I’m not going to write about you in a diary without your name. I’m not going to be kept in the dark. I’m not…I just can’t deal with that in my life.”

“Just trust me,” he says. “This has nothing to do with us.”

“How can you expect me to trust you?” I ask. I pull my arm out of his grasp and get into my car. He steps back as I turn on the car. I drive away, watching him become smaller in the rearview mirror.

~~~~~

WHEN I WAS SIX, I drew all over a painting my mother bought because I didn’t think it was colorful enough and I wanted to make it more beautiful. I realized when I was done that I had made it worse. When my mother discovered the ruined painting, she confronted me with it. I denied doing anything to it. She told me that secrets were like bedbugs—they’re parasites, they bite, and, worst of all, you don’t even notice it until you’re infected.

I never told my mother that I ruined her painting and the guilt, like an infection, still gets under my skin.

Now my secrets are affecting my current life and Lauren refuses to speak to me except about the PVP killer case. She wasn’t at my apartment when I returned. I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell her the truth. I’m not even sure I could get the words out.

Lauren reads Jasmine’s diary at her desk. I’m fairly certain at this point that she just enjoys reading it and it has nothing to do with the case anymore.

“Lauren,” I call out. “Did the diary have any other pages torn out?”

“Not yet,” she says, flipping over to the next page.

“Well, if you do find any, it would be great if you told me,” I say. She doesn’t respond. I sit back in my chair. I stare at the photographs of Jasmine’s crime scene. If only she hadn’t told the killer that we talked to her. If only she hadn’t trusted him so blindly.

I glance over at Lauren. Her hair is pulled up into a bun, but two strands sway loosely in front of her eyes. She suddenly straightens up.

“What is it?” I ask.

“September 30, 2014. I rushed into the teacher’s classroom and told her that a kid was having convulsions in the gym. She rushed to the gym to save this kid,” Lauren quotes. She swallows. “The teacher had no idea that He—capitol H there—was waiting for her.”

“Ashley Barker,” I say. “So, Jasmine did know he was a murderer.”

Lauren shakes her head. “I can’t believe it. Her mind was a bit warped though…the capitol H pretty much shows that she saw the killer like a god.”

“It doesn’t have his name anywhere?” I ask. Her eyes scan through the next two pages.

“No and the diary ends on October 4,th so it never mentions Jeff Patton’s murder,” she says.

“I guess having a name in a diary was too easy. Do you want coffee or anything?” I ask her. She shakes her head, reading the last page. I get up to go to the break room and nearly run into Jared.

“Hey, Rodriguez,” he says.

“Jared,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t know you ever came up from forensics.”

“I do if there’s something I really need to show you,” he says. “Your killer apparently has a thing for your lady friend.”

“What makes you say that?” I say, my heart dropping.

“He left a message,” Jared says. “In the victim’s throat. It’s gross, but I have to give the man credit for being creative.”

He pulls out three evidence bags. One has a plastic tube in it, one has a photograph, and the last one has a piece of paper. Lauren walks over to us.

“The photo and the note were in the plastic tube,” Jared says. “It preserved it from the bodily fluids.”

“Still gross,” I say, taking the photograph from him. It’s a photo of Lauren and me leaving my apartment.

“Still creative,” Jared says. Lauren takes the note from him.

“What does it say?” I ask.

“He’s angry,” she says. She hands the note to me. I read it through the plastic bag.

How could you choose this spineless policeman over me? I thought a woman like you would appreciate someone better than that. At least I know how to keep you entertained. Then again, he has a secret, doesn’t he? You should research the Delray massacre. I hear that it rained down blood on your boyfriend.

I glance at Lauren, but she’s already sitting back down at her desk.

“Thank you, Jared,” I say. He nods and scurries toward the elevator. I pull my chair up to Lauren’s desk. She sharpens a pencil.

“I can’t tell you about the massacre,” I tell her. “But I’m begging you to not look it up.”

“Fine,” she says. I blink.

“Really? You’re not going to put up a fight?” I ask.

“No,” she says. She turns and looks straight at me. “Because a relationship between police partners should involve trust and faith. If you want me to not look up something that happened, I won’t do it.”

“So…why are you still angry?” I ask.

“Because I’m angry at you on a personal level, not a professional level,” she says. She jots down words on a pad of paper:
self-absorbed, jealous, vindictive.
I can only pray that she’s writing about the killer and not me.

“Well, are you going to return to my apartment?” I ask.

“No,” she says. I clench my fist.

“It’s not safe anywhere else,” I say. “Jasmine’s murder clearly shows that.”

“Jasmine thought she could trust her killer,” she says. “I’m not going to let some stranger into my apartment.”

I slam my fist so hard against her desk that her cup of pencils rattles.

“Cody Moore got into your apartment. This is back to being professional,” I say. “He kills you and that’s a problem in my professional life. That’s a dead partner on my hands.”

“My death wouldn’t be your fault,” she says.

“Tell that to my first partner!” I yell. The whole station goes quiet. Lauren looks at me, her forehead furrowed.

“He died?” she asks. “I thought he retired.”

I shake my head, rubbing my face. I stand up.

“I can’t talk about this right now.”

I begin to walk away. She grabs my wrist.

“Tell me,” she says. Her voice is soft enough that I can feel my hard shell cracking, but I don’t have the time to shatter right now. I unwrap her fingers from my wrist and let her hand fall away from me.

“I can’t,” I say. I walk away from her and out of the station. As soon as I’m outside, I turn around to face the brick building. I curl my hand into a fist and hit the bricks until my knuckles are lined with blood and regret.

~~~~~

I sip more coffee as I sit in my Taurus outside of Lauren’s apartment. I imagine this is how she trailed me to Mallory’s townhouse, but I’m not trying to keep tabs on her. I just want to make sure that the killer doesn’t attack her. I just need reassurance that she is safe.

Her lights go out around midnight. Three hours later and I have to lower the window so the cold wind will help me stay awake. Still, sleep is a Greek siren, luring me to close my eyes and let unconsciousness take over.

I dream that I take the steps up to Lauren’s apartment. I make my way to her bedroom. She begins to rouse from her sleep as if she can feel my presence. I walk up to the side of her bed and touch her shoulder. She opens her eyes. At first she is surprised to see me there, but I see the hidden relief too, as if all she had been waiting for was for me to come to her. She sits up and her fingertips trail down my arm. I bow my head and kiss her, tasting the sweetness of her lip balm. She lifts her sheets, inviting me to join her under the warmth. And I want to because it’s so cold and I can hear someone knocking, knocking to steal away our moment of peace.

I jerk awake as the knocking becomes louder. A policeman in uniform stands outside of my Taurus.

“Sir, you can’t sleep here,” he says.

“I’m a detective,” I mumble. I try to look at the cop, but sleep is still clouding my vision and his flashlight is hitting me right in the eyes.

“That doesn’t matter, sir,” the policeman says. “You can’t stay. There’s a killer on the loose and we have to take all precautions.”

I start my car with the policeman’s flashlight still blinding in my eyes. The policeman walks away as I begin to drive. I figure I’ll drive around for a few minutes before returning and hope the policeman isn’t still there. I’ll have to figure out who he is and tell my captain to get him to give me a break. Then again, I might have to explain to my captain about how the killer has been focusing on Lauren and why I didn’t tell him this when I first found out.

Something creeps at the edge of my tired thoughts. I keep driving as I try to figure it out. As I grip my steering wheel, I realize what it is: Detroit police have a Ford Model T on their patches. I had only caught a glimpse of the policeman’s patch, but I remember the star stripe across it. That was a New York police badge. There is absolutely no reason the New York police would be in uniform down here, much less bothering a man sitting in his car.

I take a sharp turn and speed down the road. I don’t care if a real police officer pulls me over. I might need their help at this point.

As soon as I’m in front of Lauren’s apartment, I park the car, but I don’t take the time to turn it off. I jump out and try to pull open the building’s door. It doesn’t budge. There’s a Knox Box, which allows the fire department or the police in if they have the master key, but I don’t have time to go back to the station. I slam my hand on all of the buttons on the intercom system. I keep pressing all of them. If it doesn’t wake someone up and force them to let me in, at least it might scare away the PVP killer.

“What?” an old lady’s voice creaks through the intercom. “Do you know how early it is?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry, but I need to get in.” My words crash against each other as I try to speak quickly. “I am a detective of the Detroit police department. This is a police emergency.”

“How do I know you’re not some pervert or scoundrel?” she croaks. I grit my teeth.

“Because if I were a pervert, I wouldn’t need to break in,” I snarl. “Anybody can see straight through the windows because half of you don’t have shades.”

“You’re not a very nice policeman,” the old lady says. I bang my hand against the intercom.

“Let me in or so help me God, I will charge you with obstruction of justice.”

The door clicks as it unlocks. I jerk it open and run up the stairway. I reach Lauren’s door and bang my fist against it.

“Lauren! Lauren!” I yell. “Open up!”

I dial the police station between knocks on her door. Nobody answers the phone. They’re probably on their 10th coffee break.

“Lauren!” I yell. “Open the damn door!”

As I’m about to try to break down the door, it swings open.

~~~~~