The Policeman's Daughter Read online

  ALSO BY TRUDY NAN BOYCE

  Old Bones

  Out of the Blues

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Trudy Nan Boyce

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Boyce, Trudy Nan, author.

  Title: The policeman’s daughter / Trudy Nan Boyce.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018. | Series: A Detective Sarah Alt novel ; 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017027533 (print) | LCCN 2017031285 (ebook) | ISBN 9780698140721 (epub) | ISBN 9780399167287 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women detectives—Fiction. | Policewomen—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.O927 (ebook) | LCC PS3602.O927 P65 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027533

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Rick Saylor

  CONTENTS

  Also by Trudy Nan Boyce

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Improper Crossing of the Gore

  2. Dreams

  3. Recovery

  4. Cooda Potpie

  5. Faded Light

  6. Knight

  7. Marcy Street

  8. The War Zone and Lil D

  9. The Gang

  10. The Impression

  11. Dogs

  12. Sister Connelly and Bootie Green

  13. Hunting Big D Again

  14. A Girl, a Dog, and Escape

  15. Of the Female Persuasion

  16. Sam’s and the Cappuccino Café

  17. Dirty Red

  18. On the Way Home

  19. Sister Connelly

  20. Victims

  21. Wills

  22. Mary Marie McCloud

  23. Flowers That Grow in Ditches

  24. Red High Heels

  25. Wills Brings Dinner

  26. Roadblock

  27. The Thin Blue Line and the Chaplain

  28. Court, Lil D, Shell Casings, and Mary Marie

  29. Testifying

  30. Answering to Pepper

  31. Establishing Dirty Red

  32. Hard Times

  33. Confrontation

  34. Medicinal Purposes

  35. Taking Lil D to Big D

  36. Stone Man

  37. Sunday Morning

  38. Another Victim

  39. Homecoming

  40. Turning the Corner

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I am saying that a journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do with what you find, or what you find will do to you.

  —JAMES BALDWIN

  1.

  IMPROPER CROSSING OF THE GORE

  They were always close to hard times. So she and Pepper invented a game to play before the calls piled up. Beginning of shift, late afternoon, before the zone began to bust up, before the adrenaline hours, they ran from roll call, scrambling to get to their Crown Vics, eager to get a traffic case on some obscure charge. The winner would be the first one to have written at least one ticket for each of the violations in the traffic code.

  Running her finger down the worn list, Salt had made all the easy ones a hundred times over: “Stop Sign,” “Failure to Yield,” “Improper Equipment,” and she had made the harder ones, A through H. Her favorite so far was the “Lewd Bumper Sticker” case she had made last week. “Fuck Up,” it had read. “Improper Crossing of the Gore” was on her agenda for the afternoon. If she could make this one she’d keep her slight lead on Pepper.

  After shift, on the nights he had ticketed for some obscure infraction, Pepper would make his entrance to the precinct giving her the business and calling himself “Hot Pepper,” inviting the rest of the cops to rain insults, Pepper playing straight to the champions of put-down. “I am black and proud and red-hot tonight,” he said, pimp-walking into the precinct, underscoring his street name.

  Now idling on the expressway, Salt sat parked beside an entrance ramp wall, watching for a gore violation. The vibrations of the concrete ramp beside her reverberated to her hand on the gear arm. Hearing Pepper on her shoulder mic calling out a tractor-trailer-rig stop, she could imagine some weird “tonnage” charge he’d be carrying on about at shift change. Highway dirt blew up from a ragged hole in the passenger-side floorboard. A fine dust coated her arms and everything in the car, one of the Atlanta Police Department’s finest vehicles. The city was playing its budget games again this year, this season with the police vehicle acquisition contract.

  Still smiling at the thought of “Hot Pepper,” she saw a Maxima come shooting from the entrance ramp, sending roadside trash whirling, its draft rocking the patrol car. The driver ignored the thatched lines of the gore island and had to break sharply before he was able to pull into Atlanta’s fragile, rule-dependent, rush hour commuter derby. “As improper a crossing as it gets,” she declared out loud as she hit the blue lights and fell in behind the violator, calling the stop. “Radio, hold me out southbound on the Downtown Connector at Fulton Street on a late-model black Maxima, New York tag, one, X-ray, Mary, two, two, five, occupied one time, white male driver.” The car pulled slowly into the emergency lane, the driver seeming uncertain, brake lights on, off, on, off, his silhouette leaning right. Her foot copied his, on the brakes, on the gas, off, on. She followed him a hundred yards or so until he pulled to a stop in the right emergency lane.

  Beginning of rush hour was always the most dangerous, traffic just fast enough so that accidents, occurring at the higher speeds, were more injurious. She stepped out of the cruiser, hypervigilant of the roaring freeway on her left. An eighteen-wheeler’s big tires, head high, whooshed close. Speeding cars and a hot wind swirled dust and debris across fourteen lanes. She put her hand up to shield her eyes as she approached the Maxima. Muscle memory took over: coming up close on the rear of the driver’s side, touching the trunk with her entire palm flat on the warm metal, watching the barely visible print evaporate. The oils from her body could be evidence if a driver made a run for it. The safety films at the academy had perps hiding there ready to spring out: “Make sure the trunk is latched.” She pressed the lid but in the noise of the traffic, which wasn’t in the training film, couldn’t be certain what she heard—something, a click?

  She moved to stand just behind the driver’s window and, leaning down, began a polite, “Sir, the reason I stoppe
d you is because you merged illegally, crossing the gore.”

  The driver, about forty years old, didn’t look at her but stared straight ahead, his large hands hovering over the steering wheel. “I crossed what?” His lips were badly chapped, pieces of skin peeling off with some tiny, fresh bloody spots.

  “The gore, the diagonal lines between the ramp lane and the traffic lane. Could I see your license and proof of insurance?”

  His jaw muscles clenched beneath gray-stubbled cheeks. “You stopped me for crossing some lines?”

  She focused on his hands. On the back of his left hand was a fuzzed-line tattoo of a joker with the hat points on the knuckles. A jail-type tattoo of blue-gray ink. “Sir?” Checking the interior of the car. “Sir, do you have your license?”

  “You stopped me for that?” The points of the hat spread as his fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

  “Sir, it’s a violation.”

  “I apologize, Officer. I didn’t know it was against the law.”

  “May I see your driver’s license.” There was a can of carburetor cleaner and a black case on the passenger seat.

  “I said I was sorry. Give me a break.” His eyes were on hers as it registered, all wrong—carburetor cleaner for a new car? No. Carburetor cleaner, the lazy man’s gun cleaner, the black case.

  “Sir, do you have your license?”

  “Look, Officer”—he was beginning to spit his words—“I pulled over, I apologized for breaking a tiny rule that I didn’t know existed. Now why don’t you give me a fucking break.”

  She’d already heard it in his voice anyway: his wires crossed, now pulled too tight, a jailhouse joker, a convict. Now they both knew he couldn’t con her. His right hand went to his jacket. Backing away, she reached for her weapon, unsnapping the safety strap, fast-drawing. “Radio, start me another.” Before she could finish the transmission he was moving, opening the car door. She backed toward her cruiser, seeking cover, careful of the rubble of the freeway under her boots. As quickly, before she could get to the car, he was out of the Maxima, both arms in a shooting stance, short barrel, a glint of fire.

  The world slowed, the expressway faded, and the sounds of traffic were gone. She saw gray-white smoke from her gun, saw the rounds entering the blue cloth of his shirt, and watched as he fell backward in the blowing dirt. Then there was only her own breathing and the weight of her weapon.

  Like a phone ringing in someone else’s house, radio was calling: “3306, 3306, 3306.”

  “3306.” Her mouth formed words but she couldn’t hear them.

  Still in tactical mode, her focus was on the driver, though he had to be dead; she had clearly seen the rounds entering exactly where his heart should be. She moved closer to him, slowly, still pointing the nine, keeping the sights trained, her eyes gritty from the flying dirt and not blinking. She kicked his weapon away, breathing heavy, her mouth open, smelling and tasting gunpowder.

  The stream of time eddied and broke as she pointed her gun at the motionless man. Eventually, she dropped her arms to a waist-high position. Then Pepper was there, calling out as he ran up, “Salt, Salt.” He touched her shoulder. Only then did she holster. But the wind had blown something into her eyes, making it hard for her to see.

  Pepper took her elbow and made a cradle with his arm, guiding her down to the dirt-coated asphalt. “Radio, 3306 has been shot. Ambulance. Code 3!”

  She wanted to tell him it was okay but she got distracted trying to clear her sight. She touched her eyes slowly, carefully. They felt sticky. One eye cleared enough for her to see that her hand was covered in blood, and she was confused because she hadn’t touched the dead man. His blood wasn’t on her. Now her lips were wet and tasted of gun smoke, a sharp flavor mingling with her own trickling blood.

  Pepper was telling her, “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” She felt his hands moving her hair, tracing through her scalp. The words to a childhood prayer had been trying to surface. “Lead me,” was the only part she seemed to remember. And then she lay back and rested on the hot pavement, not far from the gritty white lines of the gore.

  2.

  DREAMS

  She was a chair maker, alone in sepia-tinted woods, wearing overalls and gloves. In the distance, seen through a mist, were trees, their almost black trunks visible in a light fog. The trunks of the closer trees, their limbs bare, appeared darker. The ground was covered in brown leaves. A clearing, her workspace, room for materials and the work.

  She had just finished the first chair of rough, gray, uneven boards that stuck up at odd heights on the back, a chair of the folk, not a standard size but larger, with an unusual elegance.

  Then someone faceless, nameless, but important, came into the clearing and admired the chair and then vanished.

  She began to decide what to use for her next chair, whether to use some rough tree limbs, some shiny painted-primary-color boards, or the same rough weathered boards that the first chair had been made from. She chose the rough boards and began again.

  The dream shifted. The mist swirled back revealing the upstairs of her house. Trees gave way to walls. Leaves blew back from bloodied flowers on the rug. Terror crept into her gut at the realization of what was coming. Her paint-stained hands were sticky but now with viscous blood.

  Her father’s skull rolled at her feet while she stood frozen, unable to move, call out, or cry for help.

  3.

  RECOVERY

  Salt woke to twilight and tentatively made her way from the hospital bed to the wide window tinted with an aqua color that washed the panorama, high above the city of Atlanta, with a softer, cleaner light, a vastly different perspective than from the streets of The Homes. She touched the crease in her scalp, which in her reflected face seemed to continue down over her forehead, eye, and cheek, effects of the anesthesia still lingering.

  Grady Hospital, called “The Gradys” by some old Atlantans, plural from a time when the hospital was divided by segregation, was all too familiar. She frequented the trauma center to interview victims and witnesses and sometimes for wounded colleagues. It never seemed to change: the muffled sounds, soft-soled shoes on linoleum, the muted opening and closing of the doors, and the sick smells underneath disinfectant.

  But her first time here she had come to see her father. He was restrained with bandages that tied him to the bed and she’d overheard someone say it was so he wouldn’t throw furniture. “He’s a jumper,” she remembered someone saying and she’d thought they were wrong because she’d never seen her father jump or even run anywhere. He was a walker.

  She had worn her Sunday dress. Her mother told her, “Smile and tell him you made an A on the math test.”

  “But I—” Salt had said.

  “Put on your best face. Do you want him to worry?” Her mother pushed her into the room.

  The room had been too warm, too close, as this room was now. Arms spread, she pressed her body and the stitched wound against the cool glass.

  “You look like an angel.”

  She jumped, startled, then realized there had been a knock but she’d thought it was part of the memory.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” At first Salt didn’t recognize the chief, the big guy himself, his uniform blending into the darkening room. Only his shiny brass badge and insignia caught the light. He was a huge man with terra-cotta skin and gray eyes. Her father’s face began to recede though she held on.

  “Where were you?” her mother had asked. Her father moaned in the bedroom. His voice heard from anywhere in the house.

  “Stay here with him,” shouted her mother.

  Salt had given a little push to the door of her parents’ bedroom and stood looking through the barely cracked door. Her father was lying on the floor and when he lifted his head to look up at her there was sticky blood on his face.

 
She shook her unbandaged head to get out of the memory, then quickly realized that her backside might be exposed through the loosely tied hospital gown and tried to sidestep her way back to the bed. “I think I’m still a little confused, the drugs maybe. No one told me you were coming.”

  “I always make my way here ASAP when my officers are injured. How’s your head feel?”

  “They said it’s superficial, a mile—mild—concussion.”

  The chief walked to her side at the bed and put his hand out. “Good, that it’s not so bad. Bad enough,” he said, shaking her hand, the movement jarring her eyesight. “If there’s anything you need, tell Major Townsend. At the window, what were you looking at?”

  “Just looking. The city is really different from up here. You know ‘A kinder, gentler, city,’” she said.

  When he smiled it was like the grin of the Cheshire cat, all teeth gleaming through the dimness. Closer now, his eyes looked tired. Salt felt groggy from the anesthesia, trying to work out if the chief was part of the memory or the here and now.

  “It’s the whole picture, not just one perspective, that makes it really beautiful. You did what you had to do on the expressway. I hear about your everyday work, Officer Alt,” said the chief. “I hope you know the regard your fellow officers have for you.” He turned, walked over to the window, and stood looking out.

  After what seemed a long silence Salt said, “Chief?”

  It was his turn to snap back to the moment. “Some days it’s hard to tell the forest for the trees,” he said.

  She thought of the trees in her dream. “Yes, sir,” she said, and fumbled for the light switch pinned to the hospital pillow.

  As the fluorescent light flickered on, the chief turned to leave. He stood with his back to the door and snapped to attention. He saluted her: “Salt,” then made an about-face. Before she could return the salute he was gone and she realized that he had used her street name.