AN: Okay, okay! I'm really sorry. I know we're coming along, slowly but... slowly. I hope you find this one worth the wait.
Saturday 3:16 pm
"And I'll never have that recipe a-gain! Oh nooooo!"
Kiff finally unplugged her ears as Rickles finished the song he seemed to have on a loop in his head. He'd been warbling it non-stop all day, even as they scrubbed Fielding's blood out of their ambulance. Now, as they cruised along the road on a posting and there was truly no escape from the endless rendition of 'Macarthur Park', Kiff was finding it harder and harder to keep from strangling the poor kid.
This was turning out to be a very lousy day. Kiff had always wondered how she would handle it if a friend wound up in her ambulance. Now that it had finally happened and poor Fielding was lying in a coma at County General, she decided she didn't care for it one bit. Then there was that Tru Davies. The second she'd walked through the firehouse door that morning, Kiff had had a bad feeling. Then she winds up getting arrested for accessory to armed robbery? No. Something wasn't right.
Not that bad feelings were anything new to Kiff, especially since...
"Kiff? Hellooo?"
"Hm?" Kiff said, only then realizing that Rickles had been talking to her instead of picking up the song yet again.
"I said, why the long face? You look like somebody just ran over your dog. Somebody ran over my dog once. His name was Buster. Or maybe it was Boomer. He was okay, though. He just kind of ducked between the wheels and -"
"I don't have a dog, Rickles."
"Oh. Did your stock crash? There's been a lot of that going around lately, you know. But at least we're not in Russia, right? I mean, what's the ruble worth now? About point-oh-oh-three cents?"
"I don't have any stocks."
"Oh. Then is it gas or something? I've been having that too. I think it was that chili Mike O. made for dinner last -"
"I didn't eat the chili. I don't like chili. For God's sakes, Rickles, my friend got shot. You were there. Not to mention that a very innocent girl who once saved my life is now sitting in jail with a bunch of hostile cops. You want to try and analyze me some more?"
Rickles put on his confused frown, an expression that appeared so often that Kiff was sure his eyebrows would eventually grow together.
"You mean that chick they picked up at the hospital while she was talking to you? I thought she was the one who got Fielding shot."
"Trust me. She didn't."
The emergency tones came over the radio, mercifully ending the conversation.
"CREW FOUR-SIX, CREW FOUR-SIX: ROLLOVER CAR ACCIDENT AT HIGHWAY THIRTY-FIVE AND SILVER CREEK."
Kiff snatched the radio mic' from the console.
"Dispatch from crew four-nine."
"GO FOR DISPATCH, FOUR-NINE."
"We're in the area. Do you want us to back up four-six?"
"UM... SURE. KNOCK YOURSELVES OUT."
Kiff flipped on the lights and siren.
"Drive, Rickles."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Kiff smiled as Rickles drove. He may be a bit of a dim bulb, but he knew when to shut up and work.
They were at the scene in less than five minutes. They pulled up next to the creek, where four-six was already parked. A car was on its side in the water, already draped with snow on its upturned surface. Mike O. and Mike W. were struggling up the bank with a large man on a backboard.
Kiff yanked on her black stocking hat and jumped out into the ever-thickening snowfall, jogging up to take a corner of the backboard while Rickles took another.
"Thanks," puffed Mike O.
"How many?" asked Kiff.
"Two. Unrestrained in the front seat, both with a brief loss of consciousness, but they've come around since we got here. The other guy wouldn't let us board him. He's inside already."
Once they were on level ground, Kiff skipped ahead to open the ambulance doors and found herself face-to-face with...
"Lawrence!"
Lawrence blinked at her from his spot on the bench seat. He had a wool blanket draped over his shoulders and he was holding a bloody towel to his jaw.
"Frink. The hell are you doing here?"
"I'm working. What are YOU doing here?"
"Rolling my friggin' car. What's it look like?"
Kiff bit her tongue. Cops always made the worst patients. As the others loaded Hal onto the mounted cot, she hopped inside and knelt next to Lawrence, where she tugged the towel away from his face.
"Let me see. Come on, don't be such a baby."
Lawrence grudgingly let her examine the cut and start taping a proper bandage in place.
"Wow, nice one. You're going to need stitches."
"Fuck you, Frink."
"What's your problem, man?"
"Maybe you should ask your girlfriend," Lawrence said poisonously.
"Lawrence, for the last time, I am not gay - not that there's anything wrong with that. But if I were gay, I swear, your sister would be at the top of my list of romantic conquests..."
"That bitch Davies!"
"Davies?" Kiff frowned. "How is this her fault?"
Lawrence clamped his jaw shut and averted his eyes. The barely contained murderous gleam reminded Kiff of how he looked when he'd arrested Tru. So much so in fact that... No, he wouldn't. Would he?
A question suddenly occurred to Kiff.
"Lawrence, how'd you get out of the car?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're soaking wet. Olson said you were gorked when he got here. So why are you sitting here talking to me instead of drowned in your car? The only thing I can figure is someone pulled you out and left you on the bank."
The ire in Lawrence's eyes suddenly turned to terror.
"How the hell should I know if I was so out of it? Get the hell off me!"
"Lawrence, who else was in the car?"
Lawrence was just looking like he was about to crack, out of spite if nothing else, when Mike O. stuck his head in through the rear doors.
"We're rolling, guys. Frink, you staying or going?"
Kiff fixed Lawrence with a pointed look.
"I think I'm through with this guy."
With that, she hopped out of the ambulance and started striding toward the wrecked car, Lawrence's bellow of "Stay out of it, you goddam - !" cut off by the closing of the doors.
Two things struck her upon examination of the car: The upturned backseat door was open, and its window was starred and streaked with dried blood. The backseat?
Of course. Why shouldn't it be?
"Whatcha looking at, Kiff?"
Kiff jumped at the sudden appearance of her partner at her shoulder, but quickly recovered.
"Rickles, do me a favor and give us a boost."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
Rickles made a stirrup of his hands for her to stand it and hoisted her up peer into the backseat. No one was there, but there were bloody fingerprints on the doorframe and the faintest remains of staggering footprints off into the woods on the other side of the car.
"Kiff, don't get me wrong, I mean you're not heavy or anything, but my eyeballs are starting to freeze and it's still snowing and... Kiff, my fingers are separating."
Kiff jumped down.
"Rickles, wait for me in the rig. I'll be right back."
"Where are you going? Bird-watching or something? Because I'm pretty sure they all flew South for the -"
"Rickles, stop talking. Go to the rig, crank the heat, and find some ABBA on the radio."
Kiff pulled her hat down over her ears and set off along the trail of tracks. With every step she took, the dread built until her heart was beating like a taiko drum and she was shaking with more than the cold.
Why was this happening again? For God's sakes, Kiff had paid her dues with hanging in there when everyone hated her, everyone else was trying to kill her, and the remaining few were getting kidnapped and shot. Kiff was the hanging-in-there sovereign. When was it ever going to end? Why was she still - ?
Kiff's mental rant was interrupted when she tripped over a snow bank, landing face-down in the snow. This was getting to be ridiculously familiar.
And then the snow drift moaned.
Kiff flipped over and began furiously pawing into the snow until she found a bit of cloth that turned out to be a sweatshirt that turned out to contain none other than Tru Davies.
Tru was nearly as white as the snow, except for her lips and eyelids, which were blue. Blood sat in frozen rivulets over her face from a laceration on her forehead. She was beyond shivering. Only the slightest tremor remained in her body.
"Davies! Come on; don't do this to me again!"
Tru didn't respond at all. Kiff put her fingers against Tru's icy throat and felt for a pulse. It was slow, around 40, and as weak as the sunlight in the snowstorm.
"Shit!" Kiff grunted as she hoisted Tru's body up over her shoulder. Yes, this was turning out to be a very bad day indeed.
Saturday 3:19 pm
Sergeant Sykes felt like he was suffocating. He'd known it was a bad idea from the start. They should've just waited for the system to take care of Davies. They WERE the system. And now the goddam system was going to find out and IA was going to send them all to jail, he just knew it. God, he hated irony.
"Ahem."
Sykes looked up and there was that guy who'd identified himself as Davies's lawyer twenty minutes before. He had a strange look about him, not unfriendly, just patronizing somehow.
"C-Can I help you?"
"Sykes, right? I just wanted to congratulate you on that ingenious bit of stalling earlier. I drove all the way across town to meet with my client, only to find she wasn't there. The problem with stalling is that it only lasts for so long, and you eventually have to think of a better idea."
"I-I don't... We didn't..."
Jack's smile broadened and he leaned forward over Sykes's desk.
"Listen, Officer. Can I let you in on a secret? I don't like defending cop-killers. I get so tired of that whole 'by protecting the guilty, we're ultimately protecting the innocent' bullshit. I mean, what do they think you guys are doing out there anyway? However you're handling this, they won't hear it from me. Fact, if there's anything I can do to help, all you've got to do is say it. Understand?"
The breath that Sykes had been holding left him like an elephant from his shoulders.
"That... That's nice of you."
"Hey, anything I can do for the boys in blue. The bad news is I've still got people to answer to, which means I've still got to meet with my client some time today. So if you could just tell me where she is..?"
Sykes swallowed.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean? Isn't this the kind of thing the man watching the door is supposed to know?"
"I told you she was being transferred. Transferred out of here, you know? But if she's not there, WE don't KNOW where she IS."
Jack blinked. "Are you telling me that you lost her?"
"They guys 'transferring' her got in an accident. They're over at County. But Davies... Well, she didn't quite get transferred. Understand?"
"Yes. Yes, I do. Thank you, Officer. You've been very helpful."
Jack turned and left the station house, wishing he could slam the glass door behind him. Un-fucking-believable.
Saturday 3:24 pm
Kiff never thought she'd be so happy to have a dim bulb for a partner. All she'd had to do was rattle something off about how she was having a delayed traumatic reaction to Fielding's situation and couldn't possibly finish the shift, so please drop me off at home and send my apologies to the captain and whatever you do, don't look back here because my uniform is constricting me in my hyperventilating state and I simply have to take it off right now... Or some such spiel. Whatever it was she said must have worked, because she soon found herself at the threshold of her building with Tru across her shoulders in a fireman's carry.
She made her way through the front door, down the hall, and into the ancient elevator for the five-floor journey, all without being seen. That is, until the lift paused at the third floor to admit the be-curlered, mustachioed caretaker. The notorious busy-body gave Kiff a sideways look.
"Hello, Mrs. Hostetler," Kiff said politely.
"Kathleen. Why is there an unconscious young lady on your back?"
"Er... Ever had sex-on-the-beach?"
It was a moment or so before Mrs. Hostetler realized she was talking about the mixed drink.
"Of course not!"
"Well, neither had she. Whoops, here's my floor. Have a nice day, now."
Safely on her own floor, Kiff released the breath she'd been holding. Sixty years and the Germans were still persecuting the Jews.
She hustled into her tiny one-bedroom and straight to the bathroom. There, she turned the hot water on full-blast. As the water heated up, she stripped Tru down to her underwear and shed her own boots and jacket. Otherwise fully-clothed, she pulled Tru into the tub and held her under the steaming water.
"Come on, Davies... Come on..."
It was several minutes before Tru began to shiver. With a sigh of relief, Kiff set Tru gently on the bathtub floor, put the stopper in place, and stepped out onto the tile. As the tub began to fill, Kiff began to rummage through Tru's jeans pockets until she came up with a cell phone.
Kiff pushed her sopping wet hair out of her eyes and squinted at the tiny screen. Office tools, phone book, scroll, scroll, Dad, scroll, Davis, scroll, scroll, scroll, Harrison...
Davis. That ewok-looking M.E. Yes, that would do.
She punched the call button.
"Yo," said the voice that picked up.
"Hello? Dr. Davis?"
"No, this is Harrison, a.k.a. Doctor Love. Who's this?"
Kiff cringed. She must have dialed Tru's sleazy little brother by mistake.
"This is Kiff, Kathleen Frink. Remember me?"
"I certainly do!" Harrison's voice brightened. "So my sister finally dropped you my number."
"What?"
"Frankly, I was starting to wonder if she'd ever get around to it. She knows how I love a woman in uniform."
Realization hit Kiff like a stomach virus.
"Wait a minute. I -"
"I've got it all planned. We'll go to this nice little Italian joint that -"
"No, no, no, I didn't -"
"Right, right. Italian's too cliché. Do you like Indian food? I know this place where you eat with your fingers. It's so cool."
"HARRISON. Tru didn't give me your number. I found it myself."
"Ooh! A woman in uniform AND she shows initiative. Then why don't we just skip dinner and get straight to the -"
"Listen you fakacta little man!" Kiff yelled into the phone. "I do NOT want to have sex with you. The idea so nauseates me that I'd rather run naked into an active leper colony than have sex with you. If someone held a cute little bunny over the grand canyon and said 'I will drop this rabbit right this second unless you promise to have sex with Harrison Davies some time before you die,' I STILL wouldn't have sex with you!"
"You called to tell me that?" said Harrison.
Kiff took a deep breath. "I called because your sister's in trouble."
Harrison was suddenly all business. "What kind of trouble? Where is she? Is she dead? Is she sick? Is she bleeding?"
"Well, she's not dead... quite."
Kiff rapidly filled him in on the events of the day while keeping one eye on the filling tub and its quaking occupant. Harrison responded with a series of uh-huh's and oh-jeez'es amid a series of background noises: Fabric rustling, doors slamming, footfalls racing, and the hum of a car engine.
"... And that's how fugitives are made," Kiff finished. "So now we need to figure out what to do with her next, preferably before the fuzz figures out what happened. I mean, technically I am committing a pretty serious crime and... Hello? Hello?"
Rather than a reply, there was a knock at the door. Frowning, Kiff went out to the foyer and set the chain before opening the door to peer out into the hallway. There was Harrison, his face flushed and his shoulders heaving with his labored breath as though he'd just run up the stairs all the way from the ground floor.
"Hey... how 'bout... letting me in...? I could really use a... chair... or a bed."
Kiff shut the door, released the chain, and let Harrison in. She then pulled him into the bathroom. The sight of his sister made Harrison's legs go weak, and he dropped to his knees next to the tub. Tru was nearly submerged in the steaming water, and yet she continued to shiver as though she we were having a seizure. Tentatively, he reached out and touched her icy face, jerking away as if he'd been burned.
"Jesus Christ! What's wrong with her?"
"She almost froze to death. I'm trying to re-warm her with the hot water, but that's a lot less practical than the things they can do in the emergency room."
"Is it going to work?"
"Eventually... probably. But she also needs her head x-rayed and her spine checked and... God! Why is this happening again?"
"All right! Okay. Here's what we're going to do: We're going to get Davis over here to take a look at her and then we're going find a place to stash her until she wakes up enough to drive to Canada. I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a Canadian guy..."
Harrison was interrupted by a pounding at the door, or if you prefer, a lambasting at the door. And there was no mistaking the bear-like roar that accompanied the noise.
"Open up, Frink! I know you're in there! Let me in or I'll shoot the lock!"
Harrison watched the color drain from Kiff's face until she was as pale as Tru.
"Shit," she said numbly.
"Who is that? The friggin' brute squad?"
"It's Detective Patterson, the guy who wants your sister's head to be driving distance from the rest of her."
"Shit!"
"All right... All right. Wait here and make sure Tru doesn't drown. I'm going to see if I can get rid of him. If you hear blood spattering, I suggest you jump out the window before he can get his hands on you."
Kiff took a deep breath and made her way out front. When she opened the door, she did her best to look surprised.
"Patterson. What are you doing here?"
"Girl scout cookies. I highly recommend the thin mints."
He shouldered his way past Kiff into the apartment.
"Come on in," Kiff muttered, annoyed.
Patterson was already peeking around corners and looking in closets.
"If you're looking for the deodorant, it's in the linen cabinet," said Kiff.
"Just came by to say thanks for taking such good care of my guys. I went to find you at the station, but they said you went home because you was feeling so bad about Fielding."
"Yes."
"I also heard you went off to poke around the accident scene without your partner. You know that kid ain't too bright, but he sure can be helpful."
Kiff ground her jaws together. "Yes."
"So where is she?"
"Who? What the hell is going on?"
"Can it, Frink. You know who I'm talking about."
"Obviously I don't," said Kiff. "And whoever it is, I don't think you're going to find them in my pantry."
Patterson took a jar of capers from the shelf he'd bee rifling through, looked at Kiff directly, and dropped it on the hardwood floor.
"Hey, those were imported!"
Patterson advanced on Kiff, his shoes crunching in the broken glass and brine.
"I said, where is she? Where's that Davies bitch?"
"Davies?"
"Don't play dumb with me, you little yid. We seen you two together at the hospital."
"Of course I know who she is," said Kiff. "Your guys arrested her right in front of me, which is why I'm surprised that you of all people are asking me where she is."
Patterson's mustache quivered in anger.
"And I suppose you had no idea that she escaped this afternoon."
"I was working this afternoon."
"Working, huh? Then why are you all wet?"
Kiff folded her arms defiantly. "I prefer to shower with my uniform on. It saves time."
"Oh yeah? Why don't I grab you a towel."
Patterson made a move for the bathroom. Before she could stop herself, Kiff lunged after him.
"No, wait!"
"Why?" Patterson said, not missing a triumphant step. "Something in there I shouldn't be seeing?"
Kiff froze, knowing the only way to keep him away from Tru now was to hit him over the head with a skillet. She was rapidly weighing the pros and cons when the bathroom door opened and Harrison's voice sang out.
"Babe, is that the pizza guy? Make sure there's no olives on it before you - Oh." Harrison put on and innocent frown at Patterson.
Kiff and Patterson both stared. Harrison had emerged from the bathroom, wearing one of Kiff's blue towels around his waist. From the look of things, that was all he was wearing.
"This a friend of yours, Kath?" asked Harrison.
Kiff shook herself out of the stare.
"Er... PETE... this is Detective Patterson. He was just leaving."
"No, no! Stay," Harrison said brightly, brushing past the cop to Kiff. He stood behind her to wrap his arms around her stiff body and plant a kiss on her neck. "Big strong guy like that? Normally I'm not into this kind of thing, but I'll try anything once."
Patterson fled for the door. Kiff pulled away from Harrison and followed him. In the frame, Patterson paused and shook a finger at Kiff's nose.
"I'll be back. And when I do, I'm bringing a warrant and a lot more cops."
Kiff smiled sweetly.
"Kiss your wife for me."
With that, she shut and locked the door. Harrison spread his hands.
"You gotta love me."
"I don't even like you," said Kiff.
Harrison shrugged. "Well, you can't have everything."
At that moment, the towel dropped.
"No," said Kiff. "You really can't. And for God's sakes, you could've left your shorts on!"
Saturday 4:00 pm
I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT, Jack mused as he drove through downtown. I GAVE HER TO THEM. I EVEN THREW IN A SMALL-TIME HOOD FOR GARNISH. HOW DO YOU MISS-PLACE THE CITY'S MOST WANTED UN-CRIMINAL?
He sighed. Months of planning down the drain. He should've known better than to entrust his masterpiece to amateurs. But all was not lost. Plan B had been included in the preparations.
He cast a glance into the back seat, where a grocery bag full of fuses and timers was still sitting nicely upright.
All was indeed not lost. Not by a long shot.
TBC...
And there you are. I know the chapters are slow in coming, but at least they're long ;) Thanks to all for your patience and kind words so far, especially Cherrygirl (I don't know if I would've continued without your support). See you at the next update, which will hopefully be sooner than the start of the next administration.