Lena slid off her bulky jacket. She swung the vest around her torso. The front plate was wider than her body. The tail hung down past her ass.
Jeffrey adjusted the plates. He re-aligned the Velcro straps. Lena stood still, her arms out to the side. He’d never dressed a child before, but this was probably what it felt like. He let his gaze meet Lena’s. She looked scared, but so damn eager. This was exactly what she had signed up for. The danger. The action. He saw in her face his own desperate need to prove himself when he’d first put on the uniform. The only other time Jeffrey had seen that man in the mirror was when he was putting on the suit for his wedding.
“Let’s go.”
Jeffrey checked his Glock to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber as they followed Lena outside.
He looked up, wincing in the sunlight. His gaze fell on the children’s clinic, the same way it always did. Sara’s BMW was parked at its usual showroom angle. Jeffrey touched his fingers to his mouth. A trail of blood had dried down from his broken nose.
Lena’s Kevlar vest nearly swallowed her as she sat in the passenger’s seat. Jeffrey had to force himself not to grip the steering wheel. The car stayed silent until they were turning off Main Street.
She asked, “Am I knocking on Nesbitt’s door because you think he won’t be intimidated by a woman?”
“You’re on that door because we need iron-clad probable cause.”
Lena nodded once. She understood that he was counting on her to lie.
She fed his earlier words back to him, “He’s a pot dealer. I smelled weed on him.”
“Good.”
Jeffrey swung the car around the sharp curve that marked the Heartsdale/Avondale line. He felt pain shooting through his jaw from clenching his teeth. Every second that went by gave Nesbitt the opportunity to run. To go out to the shed. To walk down the street. To head into the woods with a hammer.
Three women. Three days.
Nesbitt could not be free for a fourth one.
He counted six Grant County squad cars at the mouth of Hollister Road. Matt was giving Landry, Cheshire, Dawson, Lam, Hendricks, and Schoeder their orders. His BlackBerry was out. He was showing them Nesbitt’s driver’s license photo. They were all wearing Kevlar vests. Guns were being checked. Shotguns were being loaded. Their shared anxiety came out in the usual ways—pushing each other around, bouncing on the balls of their feet, while inside, their guts coiled like springs.
Frank and Brad swerved around Jeffrey’s car. They stopped to pick up Landry, then headed to Valley Ridge. Three men on the back of the house. Four on the front. Four squad cars securing the perimeter.
Was it enough?
Jeffrey slowed his car to a stop. He wanted to look each man in the eye.
He said, “We’re radio silent. You’ve got three minutes to get into position.”
“Yes, Chief.” They sounded like a platoon, but they were husbands, sons, boyfriends, fathers, brothers. And they were Jeffrey’s responsibility because he was the one sending them into the line of fire.
He watched them split into groups. The four squad cars peeled off. Matt and Hendricks jogged toward Daryl’s house, hands holding down their holsters so their Glocks didn’t slap at their sides.
Jeffrey looked at his watch. He wanted to give them every second of those three minutes to set up. He needed them to do what they were trained to do. Take their position, take a breath, and give themselves a moment to adjust to the adrenaline shooting like amphetamines through their bloodstream.
He saw Lena’s mouth open as she drew in air.
He asked, “You okay in that vest?”
She nodded. Her chin hit the collar.
“We’re going to look at supply catalogs tomorrow morning,” he said. “I bet those vests come in pink.”
She was angry until she realized he was joking. She took another breath. She smiled back. Her cheek twitched from the effort.
He said, “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that you can do this.”
Her throat worked again. She nodded again. She stared out the window, waiting.
Jeffrey watched the second hand rotate around his watch. “We’re on.”
He kept his speed under thirty as he drove down Bennett Street. He spotted Matt and Hendricks kneeling behind an old Chevy Malibu that was parked across from Nesbitt’s front door. Jeffrey stopped his Town Car a foot from the charcoal van, making sure it was blocked in.
He looked up at the house. The blinds on the front windows were open. The porch light was on. No faces appeared in the glass.
He told himself this was going to go easy. Nesbitt would open the door. Lena would tell him to step outside. The handcuffs would come out. They would find Rosario Lopez. They would put Daryl Nesbitt in a hole that he would never be able to crawl out of.
He told Lena, “You’re in the lead.”
Her hand went to the door handle. She took another breath and held it.
Jeffrey followed Lena as she got out of the car. She adjusted her vest, put her game face on. She had obviously decided to treat this like any other arrest. Nothing was ever routine, but some things were less difficult than others. A guy with an outstanding ticket and his truck stuck in impound. Another $600 added to the police budget. One more mark on the quota that Jeffrey denied even existed.
Lena tapped her fingers on the rear quarter panel of the charcoal van as she walked by.
Jeffrey did the same. He glanced into the garage. The green and yellow rolling tool cart was padlocked. He could see a tool placed on top. Green and yellow stripes. The 1.5-pound mallet was filled with sand and coated in polyurethane. It was one of three hammers in the Brawleigh Dead Blow set.
Jeffrey unsnapped his holster. Lena stood on the porch. He stopped in front of the steps, taking a wide stance. There was twelve feet between him and the door. Enough space for Daryl Nesbitt to try to run. Enough space for Jeffrey to stop him.
Lena didn’t look to Jeffrey for his go-ahead. She raised her arm, banged her fist on the door. She stepped back. She waited.
Nothing.
Jeffrey counted slowly in his head.
When he got to nineteen, Lena banged on the door again.
Jeffrey was about to correct her. This was patrol 101. She was supposed to call out Nesbitt’s name, tell him that she was a police officer.
“Fuck!” Someone yelled from deep inside the house. Male voice. Irritated. “What the fuck?”
Footsteps. A chain sliding. Deadbolts clicking back.
The door swung open.
Jeffrey recognized Daryl Nesbitt from his license photo. His greasy hair was the color of a pinecone. He was wearing a pair of yellow gym shorts. The only other item of clothing he wore was a pair of white gym socks with blue stripes around the tops. His bare chest was flushed red up to his face. Even from twelve feet away, Jeffrey could see the man had an erection. He didn’t smell of pot. He smelled of sex.
Lena’s chin tilted up. She had smelled it, too.
“What?” Daryl glared down at her. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Daryl Nesbitt?” Lena asked.
“He doesn’t live here anymore,” Daryl said. “He moved to Alabama last week.”
The door started to close.
Lena reached out.
It happened so fast that Jeffrey only had time to think the word—
Don’t.
Lena’s hand clamped around Daryl’s wrist. He tried to jerk away. He stepped backward. Lena stumbled forward. Her left foot crossed the threshold. Then her right. She was inside the house. She kept moving forward. Daryl’s arm swung out, disappearing behind the doorjamb. He could be reaching for a knife, a gun, a hammer.
The door started to close.
Jeffrey felt his finger on the trigger of his Glock before he realized that he’d pulled it out of the holster, raised it up in the air and aimed at Daryl Nesbitt’s head.
The gun exploded.
The door splintered as it banged closed.
Jeffrey leapt across the porch. The door was locked. He took a step back and kicked it open. His gun pointed around the room, but nothing looked like he’d been expecting. The dining room. The living room. The kitchen. He couldn’t see any of it. There were doors everywhere, all of them closed.
“On your left!” Matt bolted past him. Hendricks took up the rear. The gunshot had been like a starting pistol. Matt busted through the flimsy door into the hallway. Hendricks broke into the dining room. Jeffrey took a step. His foot hit something hard. He watched Lena’s gun skitter across the floor.
“Lena!” he yelled.
A shotgun went off.
Brad Stephens stumbled into the kitchen.
“Lena!” Jeffrey took the stairs two at a time. He was halfway up before he remembered that someone could’ve been at the top waiting to blow off his head.
Jeffrey ducked and rolled. He ended up in the hall bathroom. He looked behind him. Four bedrooms. The doors were closed.
Lena screamed.
Jeffrey ran toward the master bedroom. He splintered open the door.
Lena was crumpled by the bed. Her head was bleeding. She had fallen against a wooden desk. Jeffrey felt sick as he ran toward her. His responsibility. His fuck-up. Lena’s life. He checked her pulse. The tap of her carotid against his fingertips slowed down his own heartbeat by a millisecond.