Kurt shook his head.
At that, the detective quickly checked the kid’s pockets. And what he found there made him even angrier. Handcuffs. What looked like drugs. He lifted the drugs to the guy’s face. “If this is a knockout drug,” he said, “you’re really going down.”
The kid started blubbering immediately. “I was just following orders,” he said.
“He was supposed to knock me out and then what?” she asked in a horrified voice.
He looked at her, shamefaced. “I was supposed to let them in.”
Chapter 11
Laurie Ann just couldn’t believe what she heard. She looked up at Kurt, but he held her close.
“Nice,” Kurt said. “Well, I hope you enjoy jail. I’ve got some friends over there. I’ll make sure I let them know that you’re fresh meat,” he said in a distant, hard voice.
The kid started crying. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. I can’t go to jail.”
Amos waved the bag and drugs. “Really? And how do you plan to stop it?” the detective asked. “Because this? … This is beyond a lark now,” he said. “This isn’t vandalism. This isn’t hoodlum bullshit.” He dumped the contents of the bag on the kid’s belly, causing some pain. “Now you’ve moved into the big-time. Congrats. An awful lot of jail time is in your future.”
And he hauled him to his feet and marched him downstairs. Laurie Ann sank down to the top step and stared as the detective led the punk out of her sight. She felt chills ramping up inside and working through her system. Immediately Kurt sat down, pulled her into his arms, and just held her. And then a wet nose pushed against her neck. She reached up a hand and gently stroked Sabine. “Hey, sweetie. How are you?” The dog nudged her closer, and the three of them just sat, curled up together.
“It’s been a really shitty night,” she said. “I don’t even know what to think about it. To realize just how close a call I had.”
“But luckily you didn’t suffer through any of that,” he said. “That’s the thing to remember. You were smart enough to call somebody who could help you.”
“What if I hadn’t?” she asked on a whisper. “What if Jeremy were here?” she asked, tilting her head back. “What if he’d woken up? Would they have killed him?”
He didn’t say anything, but she could read the answer in his face.
“My God,” she said, “I just …” and she fell silent.
“I know,” he said. “That level of violence is always shocking. When it’s directed at you, it’s always horrifying,” he said. “But you’re okay, and Jeremy wasn’t here, and we’re making it through this,” he said. “Hopefully, with any luck, all of this group will be taken care of.”
“I’m scared to hope …”
“Sure, but the cops gave them a chance. They let them out of jail, and they went straight for you,” he said. “The judge won’t let them out of jail again.”
“Really?” she said, “Somehow I’m afraid to believe in that.”
“Well, I can make some phone calls, let people know just what’s going on here,” he said, “and see if we can make sure they don’t get out. They don’t have an easy future in front of them regardless.”
“And right now I really don’t care,” she said. “They made those choices.”
“Just like I made the choices I made a long time ago,” he murmured.
She nodded. “And I get that, but you weren’t this bad.”
“No, but, if I’d stayed, I would have been.”
She thought about that for a long moment and then nodded. “I guess once you head down that path, it’s hard to back up, isn’t it?”
“It is, and you have to get out of it. That’s why I had to leave.”
“I always knew you had to leave, and I always understood that you felt you had to leave, but I have to admit there were times when I really didn’t want you to be the one who was leaving.”
“Of course not,” he said, “particularly once you found yourself pregnant.”
“Pregnant and nowhere to go,” she said with a laugh.
“I’ll have a talk with those parents of yours,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “It’s a waste of time and energy.”
“Well, rejection is a great teacher, isn’t it?”
“That’s one way to put it,” she said. “I really hated them for a long time, and then I realized how much energy it was to maintain that hate. So I let it go, like so much else in my world. I just let it go because I had to focus on the things that I needed to focus on, and that was to maintain my health so I could do right by my son.” She added, “Nothing else mattered.”
“And that’s what is important,” he said, “so good for you.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but now I’m sitting here, tired and exhausted, wondering just how much of any of this is important.”
“All of it. All of it. Rarely does anybody in their lifetime come across something like you’ve had to deal with tonight,” he said. “So let’s just hope it’s over with.”
She nodded. “Do we have to go down and deal with the cops?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’ll give statements, and we’ll go over the entire scenario and probably have to deal with forensics. I’m not sure.”
“Great,” she said. “So do you still have your motel room?”
He looked at her in surprise and then nodded.
“So what about us going to your place,” she said, “while the cops are all over this place?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” he said with a smile. “Let’s get you a small overnight bag,” he said. She quickly packed up a change of clothes, and then they walked downstairs.
The detective stopped, looked at the dog, and asked, “Is she safe?”
“She is. Sabine’s also the one who warned me tonight,” Kurt said.
The detective nodded. “Well, I’m glad that tonight ended well for you,” he said to Laurie Ann. “We need to get your statement. Then you can go someplace while forensics do their stuff in here.”
“And you will take a good measure of the place, even though nobody was killed, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
And this time she believed him. Something a whole lot more concerned and sincere was in his voice.
“I really don’t want to end up raped, murdered, or my son killed because nobody cared enough to stop this from happening.”
He nodded gently. “We’ve got them now. They won’t be getting out of this one.”
“I wonder if a good lawyer would get them out though?” Kurt asked.
“I don’t know,” Amos said. “Again, we catch them, and somehow they end up back on the streets, no matter how much work we put into it.”
And Kurt recognized that same frustration in Amos from before. “Not an easy job,” Kurt said.