Visible Threat (5 page)

9

“S
HE IDOLIZES YOU, HUH?”
Maggie asked as she undid the tie that held her long blonde hair up off her collar.

“Yeah, it was kind of scary.” Brinna sat on one of the benches in the locker room, leaning against a locker. Their shift was over, and this was the first time since dinner that they’d had time to talk. Brinna was tired since she’d worked the whole shift and filed for overtime. “To have someone look up to you like that . . . well, what a responsibility.”

“Can’t go ignoring any more lieutenants, can you?” Maggie teased.

“Ha-ha.” Brinna waved her hand dismissively. “It’s more than that, and you know it. When I think of how I used to look up to Milo, it makes me wonder if he felt this same sense of responsibility and how he dealt with it.”

Maggie yawned and dragged a brush through her hair. “He dealt with it fine. Wasn’t he a great mentor?”

“Yeah. Until the end, I never felt he let me down in any way.” Brinna frowned with the memory of Milo’s suicide.
Every time she thought she’d dealt with the deep feeling of betrayal she’d experienced when Milo died, wounded feelings would resurface and stab at her like the fangs of a snake.

“He was dying; cut him some slack.” Maggie fixed her hair up again and shoved the brush into her purse. Casting a glance at Brinna, she waved her hand. “Oh, relax; you’re a good cop. Just keep being a good cop, and everything will be fine.”

“I hope you’re right.” Brinna shook her head as if to shake away doubts and fears. “If that interview with Tracy does anything, I want it to convince the powers that be that I’m worth as much as Gracie thinks I am so that they let me keep Hero.”

*   *   *

Tracy’s article came out on Friday, the day Henry Corliss was arraigned. Brinna was off that day but went to the arraignment anyway. She wondered if Corliss would fight
 
—try to muddy the water with legal maneuvering. She hoped not. Nikki Conner didn’t need to be put through a long, painful trial. Brinna was pleasantly surprised.

Corliss was held to answer on all charges, and he waived his right to a preliminary hearing. Wondering if his move was some slick legal trick, Brinna took a few minutes to speak to the prosecutor.

“Hey, if it isn’t the hero cop,” Assistant District Attorney Swift said with a grin. “Can I have your autograph?” She held up the article on the front page of the local section of the paper. “Local Hero Garners a Little Hero Worship” was the headline.

“What can I say? Positive press is always welcome, right?”

“I don’t know about the press,” Swift said, lifting an eyebrow, “but I do know it’s a great thing when a witness photographs a crime in progress. Sure makes my job so much easier.” She laid out the photos Gracie had snapped on her phone when Corliss forced Nikki into his car. Brinna had already seen them and knew they were clear. It was doubly fortunate that not only was Gracie brave enough to take the pictures, but she had one of the best phones on the market for photographs.

“So does this have something to do with Corliss waiving the preliminary hearing?”

“Yep.” Swift grinned. “We’re hammering out a deal with Mr. Corliss. The point being to avoid traumatizing the Conner girl any further. And to save this city from what is sure to be a media circus.”

“It won’t be a cake deal, will it?”

“Not on your life. Not with the type of evidence we have.”

It was Brinna’s turn to grin. “You just made my day.”

“Inspire more hero worship, and we’ll celebrate like this more often.”

10

D
AYS HAD PASSED,
but Ivana had no idea how many. She could hear rain falling outside, but no longer was her time divided by sunlight and darkness. It was divided by quiet and cruel. During the quiet, she and Ana and Galina could wash, sleep, eat, and be alone with their thoughts. During the cruel periods . . . Ivana worked hard to black them out
 
—those times when the men invaded the small room. She bit a cuticle so hard it bled. She wondered if she could stand one more section of time where the small space in which she was imprisoned was filled with men.

Rolling over in bed, she hugged a pillow to her chest. The only thing she was sure of right now was that Demitri was gone, and he had been for a few days. Lately there’d only been Simon. If it were possible to like anything about this situation, Ivana liked Simon. He was kind. At least, he was as kind as a jailer could be. He never raised his hand or a belt or his voice. But he still brought in the men.

Moving to her back, Ivana stared at the dingy ceiling. Her
chest burned with a hopeless certainty that she would never see Villie again. Demitri would be back
 
—curse him
 
—but Villie was gone forever. She fought hard to suppress the despair that engulfed her when she thought of her sister, but she couldn’t stop the tears. They rolled down her cheeks freely and silently. On the other side of the room, Ana and Galina slept.

Instinct told Ivana it was late afternoon. The tears intensified as a smothering thought hit her:
I can’t stand another night or another man.
Leaping up from the bed, she choked back a sob, not wanting to wake the other girls, who undoubtedly would scold her for the tears.

Dragging her palms down her cheeks, she made her way quietly to the bathroom. She rinsed her face off, dried it with a damp, dirty brown towel, and was about to throw it into the hamper when an idea formed. Her eyes traveled from the hamper to the toilet and back again. She remembered an accident at the orphanage when the toilets on the second floor backed up. It was chaos for a bit: water flooded the floor of one of the younger girls’ dorms, and little girls screamed and jumped onto the furniture to keep dry.

Was American plumbing the same? she wondered. She recalled a matron grumbling because someone had flushed a towel down the toilet and this caused the overflow. Standing very still, Ivana forced herself to consider all the consequences. What was the worst that could happen? Demitri would kill her; would that be so bad? No more men.

Ivana stepped to the door of the bathroom, peered around the doorjamb, and considered the locked bedroom door. What she planned would get it unlocked. She just prayed it
would be unlocked long enough. Decision made, she turned back to the toilet and threw the hand towel into the bowl and flushed. Two more towels did the trick. When water covered the floor, Ivana stepped to the bedroom door and screamed.

Her roommates, of course, heard her first and were out of bed in an instant. When they saw the flooded bathroom floor, their curses joined Ivana’s screams. Sooner than Ivana would’ve expected, Simon knocked at the door.

“What is the matter?” he yelled in their native tongue.

As Ivana hoped, Ana took the lead. Ivana knew Ana considered herself in charge of the other girls, so this was natural.

“The toilet is backed up; there’s water everywhere!”

Simon swore, and Ivana heard the key working in the lock. “It must be this blasted rain. Every day in this country it rains!”

The door came open, and Simon stepped in. He went directly to Ana, who now stood on the bed with Galina to avoid the encroaching flood.

“Why didn’t you turn the water off?” he demanded.

Ivana didn’t wait for Ana’s answer. While Ana and Simon argued and surveyed the bathroom, she ran out the door and down the hall. Unfamiliar with the layout of the house, she ran blind at first, then came skidding to a stop when she heard voices.

The TV
 
—that’s the TV.

Heart pounding, fear gripping her like a vise, Ivana headed for the light. She burst into what she assumed was a living room once she saw a window and cloudy daylight. Just then Simon screamed her name.

Ivana didn’t look back. Biting her lip, she worked the lock on the front door, pulled it open, and ran.

Ignoring the pain in her bare feet and the cold, driving rain, Ivana knew it would take death or absolute freedom to stop her.

11

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
you have to go again?” Brinna glared over her shoulder at her four-legged partner. From the back of the Explorer, Hero regarded her with soft brown eyes, panting, his sign to Brinna that he needed a pit stop. It was their first shift after a dry weekend. She faced the front and peered out the windshield. The respite from the rain had not lasted long. Right now the raindrops weren’t big, but they were steady. The traffic light turned green, and with a sigh, Brinna directed the patrol vehicle to a local park.

In spite of the rain, she’d brought Hero to work for two reasons. The first was a hope the rain would stop, and the second was a premonition that he wouldn’t be her partner much longer and she needed to make the most of every night.

“I guess it’s my fault for giving you those table scraps,” Brinna grumbled as she parked the car and climbed out. Hero jumped out after her and trotted to a tree to take care of business. She watched the dog, painfully aware that her act of annoyance was just that
 
—an act. She would truly miss
these moments, rain and all, if she were no longer able to work with Hero.

Besides, on a boring shift like this, it was nice to get out and stretch a little. She glanced at her watch, tapped it, and yawned. Two hours into the shift and not a single radio call. She looked around the soggy park. It felt as if Long Beach were becoming a bog. The rain no doubt contributed to the lack of business for the police force. Sometimes even crooks didn’t want to get wet.

While Hero sniffed around and Brinna got wetter, her thoughts drifted back to the case she, Jack, and Ben were working on. It had been a week since the girl’s body had been pulled out of the San Gabriel River, and they still had no ID for her. They knew a lot about her: that she’d gone into the water dead
 
—there was no water in her lungs
 
—and that she’d suffered many beatings and possibly rape in the weeks before her death. Her age was closer to twenty than twenty-five, and dental work verified she had been born and raised in Eastern Europe. But as yet, she had no name. Jack had taken to calling her Alice because she’d fallen through the looking glass in the worst way. Brinna liked Alice better than Jane Doe, but the absence of anyone stepping forward to identify the body nagged like a toothache.

Who was she?

Hero finished up and splashed toward her.

“You ready to get in the car and make it smell like wet dog?” Brinna asked. For an answer she got a tail wag. The pair navigated a path back to the patrol SUV, dodging puddles. They were halfway there when her call sign came up on the
radio. Maggie wanted her on a clear radio channel, so Brinna switched over.

“Hey, Brin, Rick has been monitoring the fire channel. The swift-water rescue team has been called out. Seems someone fell into the river. We’re heading down to watch them work and help if we can.”

“Count me in. Where are they now?” Brinna opened the door and Hero jumped in. She grabbed a towel she kept in the unit and wiped her face as Maggie answered.

“They started up near Hawaiian Gardens, but they’re sending a team south to the bridge at Seventh Street. River’s moving fast. If there is someone in the water, they’ll be flowing in a swift current.”

“Not a false alarm?” Brinna asked even as she directed her unit toward the channel. Every wet year there were false sightings of people in the water. People mistook debris for bodies all the time.

“Doesn’t look false right now. My partner sure thinks it’s the real thing. You’d think he just mainlined caffeine.”

“10-4. I’ll miss everything to the north. I’ll head down to Seventh Street in case they make a try there.” Brinna belted herself in and drove as fast as was safe in the prevailing conditions. She felt energized. Rick was right: there was a rush involved with any type of dangerous work. The professionals who put on wet suits and stretched themselves to the limit to save someone from a rushing, dirty river had to be adrenaline junkies. Their lives were definitely on the line.

By the time she reached the flood control channel, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still dark. She parked on the bike
path that paralleled the riverbed, got out, and quickly walked toward the channel. The rescue diver team hadn’t yet arrived. She’d switched her radio to the fire channel and monitored the progress of the team farther north. It was definitely no false alarm. Even with the rain and the cloudy late-afternoon weather, someone had gotten too close to the water and was now in the current being pulled toward the ocean.

“I see the victim, current moving fast . . .” The exact location cut out, but the urgency in the voice infected Brinna. She cranked up the volume to hear how things were going even though she knew there would be no back-and-forth on the air. The men involved with swift-water rescue did not pause in the action to carry on a radio conversation.

“Rope in the water . . .” This time she heard the location. They were about a mile from her, and they’d thrown a rope with a life preserver across the channel in the hope the victim could catch it and hang on while they pulled the person out.

“Regroup! Caught the rope but lost it!”

Brinna clapped her hands in frustration. The victim must have been too weak to hang on.

Runoff roared down the channel, and Brinna felt more adrenaline surge through her. The power in the water was awesome. Could a rescue team snatch the unfortunate person from such a force?

Bright lights cut through the gloom as Rick and Maggie parked their unit behind Brinna’s. A second unit pulled in behind them, and Brinna recognized Matt and Jeff, another pair of shiftmates. It was a slow night. This rescue, if it did happen at this bridge, was likely to be the only action.

“The rescue team should be here any minute.” Rick’s voice vibrated with excitement as he trotted Brinna’s way. “They’re not sure they’ll be able to stop her farther up. The current is wild.”

“It’s a her?” Brinna asked.

“That’s what the original call said. This started way upriver, probably in Hawaiian Gardens. Someone walking their dog called to say they saw a girl in the river. Apparently she caught a center bridge support and was stuck up there for a while but lost her grip just as a rescue diver went into the water to grab her.” Rick was as animated as Brinna had ever seen him.

He and Maggie joined Brinna at the bank when the fire channel exploded with the news that they had missed the girl again. Sirens were audible, and Brinna knew the second team was close to their location.

“I can’t believe anyone could last all that distance in this stuff.” Brinna yelled to be heard over the roar of the water and shone her flashlight upriver. A dark, angry mass of dirty water, like fast-flowing brown lava, spewed down the riverbed.

The radio erupted with emergency traffic. “Rescue 7, rescue 7, we’ll be delayed. There’s a traffic collision at Studebaker and Willow, you copy? We need medics at our 10-20.”

“Whoa!” Brinna and Maggie exclaimed simultaneously.

“Nothing happens all night, and now the rescue team runs across a crash.” Brinna knew the dilemma: the firefighters were on their way to one emergency when they ran across another one they couldn’t ignore. She wondered if their delay would cost the girl in the river her life.

She realized she couldn’t passively sit by to wait and see. “Come on, we have to do something!”

Brinna started for the water’s edge, grabbing her leash from her belt without any clear idea of what she would do with it.

“What can we do?” Maggie asked, hanging back on the bike path.

“The girl will be here any minute, so we need to think of something,” Rick called as he jogged after Brinna. Matt and Jeff, also caught up in the adrenaline rush, hurried to the water’s ragged edge.

Brinna slipped and narrowly regained her balance. She stopped and shone the light upriver again. “The only chance we’ll have is if she’s near this bank. We’ll have to hope she’s in reach.” She hollered to the guys as she switched the focus of her light down to the slippery, rocky banks. Farther upriver the banks were concrete, angled down at forty-five degrees. Here rocks formed the steep banks, every bit as slippery as the concrete walls.

“Chance? In reach?” Maggie exclaimed. “We have no chance no matter how close to the edge she is. If she’s even above the surface, she’ll be going so fast we’ll be lucky to see her go by!”

“Where is the glass-is-half-full person I used to know?” Brinna called over her shoulder. Yet even as the words were out of her mouth, she knew Maggie was right. The swift-water rescue teams were set up with ropes, pulleys
 
—all manner of safety devices. The odds were that she would be forced to watch as the girl was dragged down the river to her death.

What transpired next happened so fast Brinna would
never remember it clearly. She and Rick stepped as close to the water’s edge as possible. Frigid spray soaked the bottoms of their trousers.

“Here, Rick, hang on to this end.” She tossed him the clip end of the leash. “I’ll loop the handle around my wrist. That way if I slip, you’ll have a hold on me.”

“You’re not going in the water, are you?” Rick asked as he took the clip. Matt and Jeff stepped up to either side of him, also ready to help.

“No, I just want to be as close to the edge as possible. This is just a precaution,” Brinna answered as she took off her gun belt and threw it in Maggie’s direction. “Let’s see what happens.”

She shone her light upriver and almost didn’t believe what it illuminated. A blob of white bobbed toward her in the middle of a swarm of debris. An arm snaked up out of the dark water; it was the girl.

“There!” Brinna yelled.

She stepped forward, intending to kneel and steady her position. Instead her feet jerked out from under her; the flashlight flew from her grasp. Into the cold, dark water she fell, even as debris smacked into her. The frigid chill of the water took her breath away.

She was only vaguely conscious that mixed in with the debris that hit her was the girl, but Brinna held on to her with one arm. Her last thoughts were of the pain in her wrist and shoulder as the leash pulled taut and of the determination to hold on to what had hit her.

Then everything went black.