Page 3 of Shadows of Justice

“Just tell me the truth! Maybe I went too far asking you to live with me, but it’s been two years! You never consider anything outside of that safe little bubble you live in. How are you going to spend your whole life? Forever stuck in your comfort zone?”

“A year and a half, and you didn’t ask me to move in with you,” I retort, “you informed my landlord I’d be moving out without even telling me! She almost signed a new tenant!”

“I was going to ask you,” Tim says, and I can hear the scary vein on his forehead pulsing like it always does when he’s pissed. “But that worthless immigrant fucking spilled the beans before I could make it a nice surprise!”

I narrow my eyes and scoff.

Racist fucking asshole.

“I was doing you a favor anyway,” he goes on, “living in that dump in the hood is going to get you mugged one day. You should have been thanking me.”

“You know what, Tim?” I begin to tell him off, seething, but I’m distracted when I see that a man is running toward me from down a neighborhood road. He’s waving his arms, a look of panic on his face.

“What? What, Officer Perfect, what?” Tim is literally screaming into the phone, but I’ve stopped listening. I hang up without answering, not giving him another thought.

The man comes closer, his body covered in sweat and breathing hard from his run. For a fleeting moment I think that he looks familiar, but I’ve lived here all my life, so I sort of always think everyone looks familiar.

“What’s going on, sir?” I ask, putting my hand on my belt near my pepper spray.

It’s just an instinct at this point, not meant to offend, but he’s a big guy and there’s no one else in this parking lot at the moment. I quickly look over at the Taco Shack, but the afternoon sun shines off the darkened windows. I have no idea if Carlos can even see me from where I’m standing.

“Please!” the man says. “There’s a little girl in a car, and I don’t think she’s breathing. I can’t break the window by myself.”

I blink at him, completely not expecting that to come out of his mouth, but instantly my mind snaps into procedural mode. I radio Carlos to tell him to come outside, but all I get is static. Motherfucker. That supply officer is getting a piece of my mind when we get back to the station.

“Rápido, please,” he says, his dark eyes swimming with worry as he gestures expressively with his arms for me to follow him.

He’s noticeably good looking, and I mentally catalog his listable features for a future report—over six foot, early to mid-thirties, of latin or hispanic descent. Dark hair and even darker eyes. There’s a thick accent to his voice, maybe South American if I had to guess, and he has strange tattoos on his hands and forearms. Scratch that, those are scars. He has scars all down his arms.

Once again, that feeling of familiarity washes over me, but I can’t put my finger on it.

He beckons for me to follow him once more, and then turns back to run down the street.

“Dispatch, this is Schaeffer,” I say into my radio. “I’ve got a possible child locked in an unattended vehicle on Seedling Street. Send backup. Over.”

“Officer Schaeffer, this is dispatch, backup is on the way. ETA seven minutes. Over.”

“Fuck.” Stats run through my mind of how quickly a child can die from heatstroke in a car from California’s summer temperatures. This kid might not have seven minutes.

I take a last look back at the Taco Shack and bite my lip. This is a procedural nightmare, and following after this guy alone could be bad news—or at the very least, earn me a tongue lashing from the captain. But the thought of a little kid stuck in a car and dying because I was thinking about my ass getting chewed out makes the decision an easy one.

I unclip my Glock 19, and take off after the man.

He leads me to a black, old model Volkswagen Jetta parked halfway down Seedling in front of a modest bungalow. There are a lot of cars parked in the driveway, even one on the grass. The man stops, breathing hard, and he cups his hands around his eyes to peer into the back seat.

“There,” he says, pointing against the dark window. “I pounded on the glass but she didn’t respond. She’s not moving.”

I put a hand over my unclipped weapon on instinct, and his eyes follow the motion.

“Can you break it? The glass,” the man asks, his accent lilting his words.

“Is this your vehicle, sir?”

“No, no,” he says, and tips his head toward the bungalow. “I have a friend here. He’s having a . . . party. There’s a woman inside who usually has her kid with her. As I was leaving, I thought of her and just looked inside out of curiosity.”

“You just had a feeling that made you look in the back seat and find a passed out kid?” I ask him, not entirely convinced.

What if this is a weird trap or something? My gut starts to twist with unease. He gets visibly impatient, and curses angrily under his breath in Spanish.

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