FIC: Human Landscapes [Dani Reese, Gen. Part 2/8]
Back to Chapter 1
2.
Dani didn't know how her mother would take to Karen. Normally, wives don’t take too well to their husband’s blond young female friends or so she’s been informed by various magazines, talk shows and soap operas. More importantly, Karen was her father's partner he spent more time with her than with his family. Dani knew, as a cop's kid, that a bond between partners was sacrosanct.
When Karen and Leyla finally met, Dani expected... She didn't know exactly but she didn't expect her mother greeting Karen with smiles and open arms.
"You should come have dinner with us," her mother said, holding Karen's hands. "Jack, you should have invited her sooner!"
"I see her 24 hours a day already," her father grumbled, "I have enough women around me."
Karen laughed, "You're a cranky bastard, Jack."
Dani's eyes widened. No one spoke to her father that way but to her surprise he laughed. Dani stared at him, as if he’d grown another head.
"Dinner," her mother insisted, "tomorrow evening. I insist."
“Alright,” Karen said, “it’s not everyday a lowly cop gets invited in for a free meal.”
Later, on the way to their car her mother said, "I like Karen." She turned a smile at Dani, "She'll be good for our little one."
Dani scowled, "I'm not little."
"Karen's a good cop, she'll go far," agreed her father and turned a sideways glance at Dani, "You would be lucky to be half as good as Karen."
"Jack..." her mother began.
Complimenting someone to hounding her in one breath didn’t surprise Dani; the fact it took him almost half an hour to do so, did.
"No, let me talk." He stopped, faced Dani, "I saw your grades."
Dani stuck her chin out. "My grades are fine."
"'Fine'?" Jack repeated, "I expect 'better', I expect 'excellent'. I do not expect ‘fine’ not from my daughter. You’ll do well to remember that ‘fine’ will get you nowhere in this world.”
"Jack," her mother pulled at his arm, "let's go."
He stared at Dani. "I want better grades, Dani, do we understand each other?"
She glowered, she wanted to tell him where to take his 'understanding' what she said instead was, "Yes, sir."
"Good, get in the car."
-/-
Reese watched the black BMW park from across the coffee shop and just by looking determined the BMW violated at least 3 traffic laws. Out of habit Reese mentally took down its plates. She scraped the bottom of the yogurt. Beside her, Crews said something inane about frogs. She was used to Crews enough to know he was talking just for the sake of talking.
The yogurt Crews gave was, to no surprise, fruit flavored and despite its lukewarm temperature still tasted great. The things money could buy.
Davis called a few minutes earlier. Since she had yet to update Davis it unnerved Reese that the Lieutenant had someone checking up on her. She didn't like thinking about it. She'd been paranoid before and didn't care for the feeling.
"Is this going to be a problem?" Davis asked half concerned, half measuring.
"Its meth," she answered by explanation then added as the silence stretched. "It wasn't my drug of choice."
"It's still drugs, Dani."
Crews balanced two cups on one hand and a fruit package in the other.
"Crews is here."
"Alright."
Reese signed off as Crews offered the coffee. "Davis is going to pass by."
"We'll be up by then," he assured her then sat beside her and started talking about frogs.
A few minutes after watching two more cars commit various traffic violations and enduring Crews' frog talk Reese had enough. "Let's go."
The air in the apartment was clear but the bodies remained untouched. The victims, according to their license, were Alex Sullivan and John Jackson dropouts from USC turned small time dealers.
They had a different address on their license.
"Just like Farthing and Gale." Crews observed.
"I doubt they're anything like Farthingale." Reese put up the licenses, "This place is where they operate but I'm guessin' this address is where they lived."
"White boys playing at dealers." Reese heard Juarez say, contemptuous. As far as Reese was concerned, dealers were dealers. It didn't matter what color their skins were, as long as their product was good and their supply lasted.
"The question we should ask," she told Crews, "is whose toes they stepped on. An operation like this, it's bound to step on a couple of toes."
"They were also suppliers, right?" He was still munching on the taffy apple. "Maybe a few dealers would come by for--"
"A re-up?" Reese mulled this over then shook her head, "something like this would already be out on the street. Dealers would change their routine, only people that would show would be junkies."
"You know an awful lot about the drug trade." Stark remarked.
Crews frowned, "Bobby--"
"I was a narc cop before I turned homicide." She said flatly, "Don't you have doors to canvass?"
He sketched a sarcastic salute, "Yes, ma'am."
Reese didn't bother to respond. He wasn't worth the effort. "First order of business, we have to determine whose territory this area is."
Crews looked to Juarez, Juarez looked back blankly. "What?"
"Do you know?" Crews asked.
Juarez was tall, good-looking, dark haired exactly the type of guy Reese would hook up with in a bar. But in uniform and light of day, he was exactly the type of guy that annoyed her.
"I think this is Cinco territory."
"'Think'?" she repeated, incredulous, "isn't this your beat?"
"It was, detective--"
"Either it is or it isn't, officer."
His face flushed red, Reese raised her eyebrows, dared him to say something that could have him writing tickets for a month. "I'll find out."
"You do that."
-/-
Everybody knew about the Bank of LA shootout. It was hard to miss when it was all anyone- the media, her friends, her teachers-- wanted to talk about. The story was everywhere. It was the ultimate in the long line of surreal and crazy Los Angeles stories, a cool action story to be told and retold until all the facts changed depending on the storyteller.
For Dani, it was a different thing all together.
The shootout was nothing but an endless source of conflict and tension around the house. No one mentioned the incident without one or both of her parents tensing up and starting one of their many low voiced arguments.
Sudden closed doors and arguments punctuated the months following the shootout. Men in suits would arrive in their house leaving her father more forbidding than before, her mother grim and silent.
Dani remembered the morning of the shootout. It was an ordinary day and her father told Leyla he would be gone the rest of the week because of his SWAT team’s training maneuvers.
When the news about the bank hold-up came in her mother turned white and fell boneless on the couch and when the dust settled and the news heading changed from ‘hold-up’ to ‘shootout’ Leyla’s hands turned cold.
Dani sat next to her to comfort her mother. Leyla didn't cry but the grip on Dani's shoulders tightened.
At first, even with all the money lost, her father and his team were hailed as heroes. It became one of the most talked about cop stories anywhere.
But whatever accolade was given came with a price. Scrutiny and suspicion was leveled on her father’s team, IA came and went but the investigations seemed routine over and done with with a few amicable pats on the back. A few months after the shootout IA closed the case. A week after the investigation was closed two of her father's friends came to their house. They talked behind closed doors, Dani remembered her mother bringing in food and then appearing moments later with the strangest expression Dani’s ever seen. Dani never knew what happened but as soon as Jack’s friends left, Leyla re-entered the room and began shouting at her father.
Dani hid inside her room until the fighting was done.
It was the longest fight Leyla and Jack ever had. Dani found herself hyperaware about everything every whisper and gesture could mean anything.
She would lay awake at nights wondering if this was it, the night one or both of her parents would come in and announce their separation. Dani tried imagining how it would happen. She stared at the ceiling and listened to her breathing and tried to ignore the very conspicuous silence.
In the end, nothing came of the fighting. They fought until they stopped fighting, until the fighting slid into the background. another thing they let slip and let go but never forgotten. Somehow, her father managed to win her mother over or very probably it was because their religion forbade it.
The Catholic Church forbade divorce.
Dani didn’t know if she should feel relieved or angry, her parents were together but Dani couldn’t understand how religion could force a person to stay in a relationship that was clearly broken.
-/-
"He's a good kid," Mrs. Jackson clutched Reese's hands, “he just lost his way! He'd never did this before he met that boy!"
Reese hated this part of the job: the denials, the pleas; stages of grief. She loved other aspects loved puzzling over bits of clues left over a scene, loved asking questions that made suspects sweat, love how it can all come together beautifully that the arrest was just icing.
This part, she didn't love.
She lowered her voice and asked, carefully, quietly, "Do you know anyone who'd like to hurt your son?"
"We haven't spoken in a year," and from the catch in her voice Reese understood it was this admission that broke down the denial and the next words came out in a sob, "My baby boy..."
Reese looked on helpless then caught Crews' eye. He was staring at one of the photos on the mantle, mind miles away. She wondered if he did that because he was as uncomfortable as she was or it was just another thing prison taught him. He put down the picture and approached Mrs. Jackson, touched her shoulder. She looked up, still sobbing.
"We're very sorry for your loss." And he meant it too. He always meant it.
"You know what Davis would say about this?" They were back in the car, much later after the Jacksons and the Sullivans. They were going nowhere. Interviewing Jackson and Sullivan’s crew was just as futile. The people they hang around with were posers, hanger-ons. They all had the same thing to say about Jackson and Sullivan:
“They were okay, got money and knew how to get well, y’know.” They always end up with an eyebrow waggle and Reese would always return with an expressionless, unimpressed stare.
There was only one other place to go before hitting the-the places where-- Before going some place else.
"Drugs and money," Crews said, obliging. "Hey, Reese."
"Mmm?"
"When you were doing drugs, how did your parents take it?"
The only reason why she didn't swerve off the road was because she expected something like this. "You mean my dad?"
"I meant your parents, your mother."
Reese glanced at Crews, they've come a long way but she wasn't sure she was ready to tell all. If she would ever be ready.
"It broke her heart," she said, after a moment, and left it at that.
--
On to Chapter 3