Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (2 page)

I tailed him to a convenience store and watched him buy a carton of cigarettes. Jeremy
didn’t smoke. My hopes were high. I followed him down Ponce de Leon to a Wendy’s on
Scott Boulevard and watched him go through the drive-thru. Next stop: a motel off
Church Street sandwiched between car dealerships. It was the kind of place the Bureau
put their agents on assignment—stucco façade, two levels of crappy carpeting, and
a great view of the parking lot. He got out
with the cigarettes and a bag of fast food under his arm and climbed concrete steps
at the corner of the building. He stopped at the fourth door. I picked up binoculars
and checked the number. Two Twenty-Eight. Maybe I’d play that one in the lottery tonight.

I couldn’t see who was behind the door when it opened, but I was feeling fairly confident
it was Jeremy’s fast-food-eating brother, Ronald. I slipped into a Kevlar vest and
a lightweight black jacket that identified me as bond enforcement in big yellow letters
and walked into the management office.

“My name’s Keye Street. Bond enforcement.” I slapped my identification on the counter.
“Mind telling me who’s in Two Twenty-Eight?”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

I smiled, took my ID back. “That makes two of us.”

“We just renovated,” the clerk told me.

“Understood,” I said. We exchanged a long look. I waited him out. Finally, he fingered
his keyboard.

“Coleman,” he said. “Jeremy.”

Just as I thought. Jeremy had gotten the room for his brother and now he was delivering
food and cigarettes. A lot of cigarettes. Either Ronald was a chain smoker or he was
about to take off. “When’s he checking out?”

“Tomorrow,” the clerk told me. “You’re not going to shoot up the place, right?”

“Right,” I said. I left the office, followed the concrete steps to the second level,
and went down the breezeway to Room 228. I pressed my ear against the door. A noise
from Room 232 got my attention. A tall, scrawny guy with a scruffy goatee came out.
I hoped he’d go the other way, but some people just cannot mind their own business.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked.

“Bond enforcement,” I whispered. “Keep moving.” He hesitated. He was going to be trouble.
“You been hanging out with Ron?”

“I don’t know no Ron,” he said. He was lying. Paranoid eyes darted from me to the
parking lot.

I could hear the television inside, the occasional murmur of male voices. I reached
for my Glock and made sure he got a good look at it. “Get him to the door.”

He glanced at my gun, knocked lightly, raised an unsteady voice. “Hey, Ron, wanna
hang out, man?”

“I’m busy,” a voice yelled from inside. I gave him the signal to keep talking. “Um … Ron,
man. It’s kinda important,” he said, talking into the closed door.

“Go fuck yourself,” his pal Coleman yelled.

“Okay, just go,” I told him and looked over my shoulder to make sure he was leaving,
then tried the door. Locked. I knocked loudly.

“
Goddamnit
, Trevor!” Coleman yelled. I felt the vibration of heavy footsteps. The door swung
open and Ronald Coleman stood there shirtless in jeans holding a half-eaten chicken
sandwich.

“Bond enforcement, Mr. Coleman. Put your hands behind your head and step out of the
room, please.”

Coleman made a backward dive for the bed, rolled over a white paper sack that had
a blob of ketchup and some oily fries spilled out like he’d been using it for a plate.
But he held on to his sandwich. I heard him hit the floor with a thud on the other
side. The bathroom door slammed.

Oh boy
. I was clearly dealing with another genius. The chemical smell in the room was undeniable.
I saw a tiny piece of foil with a crack rock about half the size of a marble on a
table at the window. I looked at Jeremy. “He still carrying that thirty-eight he used
in the carjacking?”

Jeremy shrugged.

I gestured at the drugs, the small brass pipe, and a cigarette lighter. “Are you smoking
that shit too? You need to get a grip, Jeremy. Or you’re going to lose more than the
fourteen grand.”

Jeremy’s glassy eyes looked away.

“Get out,” I told him. He didn’t hesitate. He headed for the door while I moved slowly
into the room and around the bed, weapon trained on the bathroom. The unpredictability
factor is pretty high with these guys anyway, but when there’s a crack pipe in the
room, it goes into orbit. “Hey, Ronald, you missed your court date. We need to get
this straightened out.”

“Screw you,” he yelled.
Sque woo
. He was actually finishing his sandwich while being pursued by a bail recovery agent.
You have to admire that on some level.

I pressed into the wall on the other side of the door in case he wanted to do to me
what he’d done to the guy in the Krystal parking lot, and double-checked my vest.
“Open the door and kick the gun out. I want to see your hands on your head. I’ll give
you to three.
One
 …”

“Leave me alone or I swear I’ll fuck you up.”

“Two …”

Bang
. Ronald discharged his weapon. The bullet tore through the cheap hollow-core door
and shattered the mirror over an oak veneer dresser. So much for the renovation.

“Still here,” I told him.

Bang, bang, bang
.

“Jesus.”
I pressed in hard against the wall. “You realize how stupid this is, right? You’ve
trapped yourself in the bathroom. Now just come on out.”

I heard fast shoes hitting the concrete breezeway, shouting. The manager/clerk showed
up at the open door, red-faced and raving.

“You need to stay back,” I ordered the manager loudly.

“I called the cops,” he yelled. “You’re gonna pay for the damage.”

In that case, I aimed for the space between the bathroom doorknob and frame and fired.
One solid crack and the door swung open. I pressed back into the wall and waited.
The hotel manager glared at me like I’d just dropped his ice cream in the sand.

“You need to clear out,” I told him again.

Bang
. Shot number five was followed by a guttural yell, the kind you imagine coming out
of someone who’s just thrown himself off a cliff. Ronald Coleman came blasting out
of the bathroom with his head down like a defensive lineman. He rushed right past
me, leveled the manager at the door with one shoulder, and sailed over the balcony.

I rushed out the door and peered over the railing. Coleman was spread-eagled on the
hood of a Buick, facedown. I leapt over the manager and took the steps two at a time.
A Decatur police car was pulling into the lot. I holstered my weapon, grabbed Coleman’s
arms. He was groaning, trying to move. I cuffed him and ran a zip-tie through the
cuffs to his belt loop.

The officer approached. I held up my ID. “Bond enforcement,” I announced. “And this
is Ronald Coleman. Jumped on aggravated assault with intent, armed robbery, and carjacking.”
I put my ID away and reached into my jacket for the paperwork. “I think we need an
EMT.”

The officer eyed me skeptically. “Ya think?” Cops don’t like to see criminals get
away. But they don’t have a lot of affection for bail recovery agents either. At least
not ones in their jurisdiction. He looked over the paperwork, then at Coleman, whose
cheek was pushed into the hood of the car like it was a really soft pillow.

“He threw himself off,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously. He’s high as a kite.”

“You see drugs upstairs?”

I nodded. “Crack.”

“Anyone with him?”

“Nope. Just Ron and the crack pipe,” I lied, and glanced at the orange Charger sitting
in the parking lot. I thought Jeremy must be behind the wheel, though it was too dark
to know. Maybe he’d been waiting for his brother to make a run for it. Maybe he was
ready to mire up even deeper in his brother’s crash-and-burn life. Maybe he wanted
to be sure Ronald was okay. Maybe he just needed to sober up before he drove. Whatever
it was, I decided Jeremy had had enough trouble already. He’d veered off the path.
Who hadn’t? This is what happens when you watch someone for a few days. Empathy kicks
in. You begin to feel their life. I’d seen Jeremy spend long days at work and come
home with a take-out carton to an empty house. I’d been there. I’d watched him risk
too much for family. I’d been there too.

2

Lieutenant Aaron Rauser was sitting at the kitchen bar with a toasted bagel, a tub
of Italian cream cheese, and a jar of honey. I could smell coffee. Rauser likes it
strong. Rauser’s new dog, Hank, and my cat, White Trash, were sitting side by side
looking up at him. When it comes to begging, dog and cat unite against their oppressors.
White Trash actually seems to enjoy getting to know Hank. She preys on his weaknesses.
Hank, bless his little heart, has a short memory. White Trash hides in shadowy places
and waits for him to trot by, oblivious, leaps out on hind legs like a kangaroo, and
scares the hell out of him. This terror is repeated daily.

Rauser leaned over and gave them mascarpone off his finger. This does nothing to improve
their behavior but it is really cute. I gave him a kiss. His skin smelled like shaving
cream. His thick black-and-silver hair was damp and raked back off his face. He was
wearing a light blue dress shirt he hadn’t gotten around to buttoning. A glimpse of
tight abs and chest hair isn’t a bad way to wake up.

Rauser had been sharing my loft for a little over a month now. An EF4 tornado had
blown into town early in July, chewed up a path through Atlanta, then slammed Rauser’s
neighborhood full-force. About ten thousand pounds of pine tree sliced the house in
two like an axe splitting wood. I remember it well. I was inside the house at
the time. Rebuilding was supposed to take a couple of months. It now looked as if
it might take six. We hadn’t discussed this extension. Maybe we were both trying to
figure out how we felt about it.

“You get any sleep?” I asked. I’d felt him climb into bed with me at about three.
This was not unusual. Seems like the bad guys always come out at night. I reached
down and gave Hank and White Trash a pat.

Rauser mumbled an answer at me. He was more like my father every day. I thought about
that. Maybe he’d always been like my dad. Oh God. I did
not
want to be one of those women who look for a father in their partners. The idea pretty
much makes me want to shove an ice pick in my eye.

Rauser got up, poured coffee into a mug, handed it to me, then refilled his own. In
certain light his gray eyes are flecked with gold. But this morning with the sun bleeding
through the windows overlooking Peachtree Street, the flecks were green on a field
of blue-gray. And boy, did he look grumpy.

“Want to talk about it?” I asked.

“Long night. A fatal stabbing. A security guard was shot and killed because some thugs
wanted the copper pipes from a warehouse where he made rounds. And a drive-by. Nineteen-year-old
victim. Gang tats. Couple thousand bucks in his pocket.”

Murder was not an unusual topic for us over breakfast. It works for me. I don’t need
Care Bears and roses. “You have the best stories,” I said sarcastically.

Rauser almost smiled. He’d gotten awake enough to remember he liked me. “Heard you
brought in the shooter in that car theft and shooting last night.” He said it casually.
Depending on Rauser’s mood, this could be a delicate subject. He didn’t always approve
of my bail recovery jobs. And I’m not open to discussing the work I take or the choices
I make. Again, I don’t need a daddy. So the tension usually just hangs there. “Heard
there were shots fired,” he added.

I took a sip of coffee, set the mug down. “What else did you hear?”

The skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “I heard there was a Ronald Coleman–size
dent in the hood of a Buick.”

I laughed. “The guy locked himself in the bathroom and then tried to shoot himself
out. He was a total doofus.”

“Criminals usually are.” I reached for his bagel. An eyebrow came up. “You want one
of your own?”

“No. I want a bite of yours,” I said. He put another bagel in the oven while I took
a moment to admire the way he wore his jeans. “Why are guys so weird about food sharing?
It’s a knuckle-dragger thing, isn’t it? You want to take it to your cave and be alone
with it?”

He closed the oven door and looked at me. “I know you don’t wanna pick on me this
morning.”

“I kinda do,” I told him. “I think it’s your grumpy face.”

He opened a kitchen drawer, pointed down at the contents. “Want to tell me why you
felt the need to label the silverware?” He began to read the bright green sticky notes
inside. “Knives, small forks, long forks, short spoons, long spoons. What the hell
is that, Keye?”

So now we were getting to what was really wrong with his mood. I didn’t say anything.

“Not only have you labeled the silverware drawer, you’ve dumbed it down. You think
I don’t know what a salad fork is?”

I tried unsuccessfully not to smile.