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Was this the woman
he loved or some scary ass bitch who was cracked out of
the same dysfunctional mold as he was? Bud
White had not returned home last night. He slept in an empty cell
for a few hours. It seemed appropriate to him. He hung out at the
station after he found out about the interrogation, but he avoided
her like the plague. Once she and Coffee were in the room, Bud
joined one of the assistant DAs in the observation area. He watched
Lonnie and Coffee play the game, he knew the tactics well. The DA
had switched the audio on and it caused Bud to stiffen up to hear
what was going on.
Coffee leaned in toward the informant. Lonnie was pacing behind him
reading off of a yellow legal pad.
"Hey, don't mind her. She had a fight with her old man last night
and she's in bitch mode." He leaned back, took a pack of Marlboros
from his pocket and slid them across the table.
"Here, settle down. We're gonna be at this for a while."
The forty-or-so-year-old man snapped up the pack. He eyed Lonnie for
a moment as if he expected her to protest. Seeing no emotion in her,
he slipped a cigarette out and lit up.
"What do you want from me Coffee? We've been through this already."
His voice was gravely, as if he'd been smoking since the day he was
born. Tall, lean and dark in complexion, he went by the name Brodie.
Coffee lit a smoke for himself and the small room became a little
hazy.
"We've got a few more questions for you, Brodie. You see, this case
is starting to turn even uglier then it was before."
Lonnie slapped the legal pad down on the table. She leaned on her
hands and got into Brodie's personal space.
"Uglier than you, you ignorant fuck. Are you one of them? You like
to play with kiddies? You know what happens to men who go down for
playing with kids? They get a big red 'P' painted on their foreheads
when they go to prison, spend the rest of their days as someone's
bitch."
"Easy, Lon." Coffee's voice was calm and even.
The DA remained stoic but Bud White's ass clenched. Was she capable
of this? His fists were balled up and the muscle in his chest
twitched.
"Chill out, White," the DA ordered. "You know how this works."
Bud didn't even give the man in the three piece suit a second look,
let alone the courtesy of a second thought. He remained glued to the
one way glass.
Coffee took a long drag from his smoke. His calm demeanor offset by
Lonnie's tight strung presence unnerved Brodie. The informant
struggled not to turn and look as she walked behind his chair.
Fixing his eyes on Coffee for some kind of waver in him, Brodie was
not sated.
"Can we get to the point?" Brodie asked
"Of course. We don't want to keep you any longer than we have to.
You see, we've got a homicide on our hands and the victim seems to
be of similar origin as the kids we intercepted from the shipment
you tipped us off about. This puts a whole 'nother spin on things.
We need to know more. I don't want a tip on a shipment. I want a tip
on who's doing this."
"Now!" Lonnie demanded from his blind side. "...before anyone
else is hurt or killed. Anyone, Brodie."
The informant spun around in his chair and threatened to stand up.
He grasped the back of the chair and shot back at her.
"What about me? They'll fucking kill me if they find out I'm talking
to you."
Without warning she lunged at the man, pinning him against the table
with a well placed forearm. She stood on his foot where it met his
ankle to disable him.
"What makes you more important than a fourteen-year-old girl? You
deserve to die, you cocksucker!"
"Get her off of me, Coffee. I didn't kill the little cunt. It wasn't
me!"
"Who did? Tell me who did, you useless fuck!" Lonnie stood him up
and put him in hold that threatened to steal his consciousness.
Bud vibrated. He didn't see her, he saw someone else. The moment he
heard the words useless fuck he saw a flash of eyes that were
similar to his. He felt a cold slap across his face and before
another second passed he was inside the interrogation room. Coffee
had no time to react before Bud swept her off of the informant and
her feet. He had her pinned against the wall again, second time in
as many days.
"White! God damn it! What the fuck are you doing?" Coffee was trying
to pry his arms from around the speechless woman and Brodie took
this time to try to make his escape. He was stopped short by the DA
who blocked the door.
The next thing to register in White's mind was the sound of a
pathetic little gasp. He shucked Coffee's arm away from him and
released Lonnie. Bud stood there trembling but no more then she was.
He was going to do it again. She could see it coming.
"Don't you dare leave. Not this time. We're going to sort something
out and we're going to sort it out now." She turned her head to her
partner and the look on her face made him shudder a bit.
"Please, show Mister Brodie to one of our guest rooms wouldja? We'll
finish this up later."
Coffee looked at Bud as if he were gazing on a condemned man. He
shrugged a shoulder and turned away to lead Brodie to one of the
holding cells.
"Told you she had a fight with her old man. Guess it gives you some
time to think." He gave the DA a 'yeah yeah yeah' as the man
informed him that he could only hold the informant for twenty four
hours. Coffee made it a point to close the interrogation room door
as the three left. He stopped to turn the audio switch off in very
much the same way Lonnie turned the bad cop switch off. Once outside
the observation room, he made sure the sign that said 'In use' was
displayed so no one would enter.
"You wanna tell me what that was all about, Bud?" she asked as she
rubbed her throat.
He didn't answer right off because he didn't know. He had no idea
what had come over him but there was one thing sure. Lonnie
Brannigan could cull as much if not more emotion from him than his
old man. Why?
"Talk to me. What do you see? Why do you love me one minute and hate
me the next?" She turned one of the wooden chairs around and sat
down. Bud still wouldn't look at her.
"Alright, Bud. If you don't want to talk then you'll have to
listen."
"I don't have to do anything."
"No, you don't. You can run away from me again, but I'm asking you
to stay. Please work this out with me. Bud, I know this is hard for
you. I know how much you hate seeing me do this job, but I'll admit
something. I think there are some of us who have to do it. I think
you feel that way too. I mean … no one sees what we see. They like
to think they know, but they're sadly mistaken."
"Tell me why, Lon. Tell me what has you stuck here."
She swept the loose tendrils of hair back from her eyes. Lonnie
nicked a smoke from the pack on the table and lit it. She hunched
forward and looked down at the painted cement floor wondering for a
moment why there was a drain there, perhaps for the same reason that
a cop as hard as cement needed a drain once in a while. To get rid
of the puss that festers inside from all of the infection in today's
society.
"I dunno. The thing that sticks out most in my mind is an incident I
had a few years back. It was a quiet shift, I was on days and for
the most part, it was run of the mill. My partner and I were
shooting the shit about it wondering if we were jinxing things. Then
we got this call from dispatch for a domestic. The 911 operator said
the caller was male and he was calm, but there was a woman sobbing
in the background. Well, we took the job without backup and when we
got on scene we found the male sitting in the bedroom. He was stoic,
calm and the woman was no where to be found, but there was blood
everywhere. More blood than I'd ever seen. My partner called for
backup and I asked him where the woman was and he said ....gone
and the kids are gone too. It only took a few minutes for me to
find out what he meant by that. The blood trail led to the kid's
bedroom and there was a large hump on the bed with the duvet pulled
over top of it." Lonnie stopped to choke back a sob. She crushed the
cigarette out on the floor right next to the drain.
Bud's expression softened. He could taste the metal in his mouth
that came with the obvious end to her story, but being a cop himself
he knew he had to let her finish. "Go on," he said softly but he
stood his distance.
"I...I pulled back the covers and expected the worse. There were two
of those big green trash bags there and ...and one of them had a
piece of bone and a tiny hand protruding from it. I can't tell you
how hard I battled with myself to stay professional, to not give in
to vomiting right then and there. I lost the battle. For the first
time in my life, I lost it. I wanted to kill the man who murdered
his children and I didn't care what the consequences were for me."
When she looked into Bud's eyes, her jaw was clenched. He could see
the pain overflowing from her, but once again he saw someone else.
Himself.
"Bud, I wanted to torture him. I wanted to make him suffer and if it
were not for my younger partner...God knows what I'd have done. He
stopped me."
"Is that what happened to make you beat on the witness?"
"I reckon so. There just kids, baby. They're helpless, trusting
kids. I don't understand why and I never will."
So that was it. She championed kids just like he championed the
damsel in distress. Is that what she was now, a damsel in distress?
She's certainly not helpless and she's far from trusting.
"About the question you asked me a few minutes ago...the one about
why I hate you sometimes even though I love you. Lonnie, I'm not
used to caring about anyone in a personal way. I'm just stupid. The
only reason I come off as hating you sometimes is because I hate
myself."
"You hate yourself and you see yourself in me, so you hate me too.
What a pair we are, huh?" Finally she reached to touch him. Placing
a hand on his face brought on the waterworks and she didn't hold
back. "Maybe we deserve each other, but hate shouldn't be part of
us. I love you. I love you with all my heart and I'm learning to
understand you."
"Lonnie, I ain't the kind of guy to bring you flowers and shit like
that. Stop crying now. C'mon."
"You just found the difference between us. I can cry sometimes."
"You don't know how wrong you are, Lon."
"Maybe. I don't need proof. I just need to feel you."
Slipping her arms around him, she kissed the corner of his mouth.
Bud turned his head just enough to kiss her proper. It didn't matter
where they were. This room, this nasty place where confessions are
obtained through many methods, some of which are not always
honorable, was right where they both belonged. |
