The number of arrests started to drop just after a specific group of cops moved over to the gang unit. Conn knew these guys. They were the guys he met for a beer a couple of times a month, guys who got him through his rookie probationary period, who’d watched his back ever since.
The official story was that the Strykers were in disarray, weakened, no longer a threat. The Twentieth Street Bloods and the Murder Angels were smaller, more deadly gangs with connections to out-of-state groups that made them a higher priority than the homegrown Strykers. Conn now saw it a different way. The department had missed it, because you couldn’t compile statistics on arrests that never happened. Someone in the gang unit was at the very least taking money not to go after the Strykers. At the very least. Worst-case scenario, they were actively distributing, insinuating themselves into the management structure. No, it wasn’t the kind of racket a big city gang was running, but as he’d just spent the last two weeks telling Cady, people did all kinds of crazy, illegal shit for not very much money at all. They seized the opportunity in front of them. When Lyle Jenkins died, someone smart stepped in.
Someone connected to, or very possibly inside, the Lancaster Police Department. And Conn knew who, because he had something in common with the gang officers too. The majority of the members of the gang unit were trained by Kenny Wilcox, his training officer.
*
Cady switched off the mic, set her guitar in its stand, stood up and put her palms to the small of her back, and stretched until her spine popped. “Ow,” she said, twisting from one side to the other to generate another series of cracks from her hips to her neck. She’d been sitting still for far too long, which was fine when she came out with a melody or a chorus or an idea to show for her work. That kind of soreness was like the way she felt after good sex, a pleasantly lingering ache the reminded her she’d done something awesome. Today she had nothing to show for hours of work except the frustrating sense that the song still wasn’t right, the solution just out of reach.
She opened the drawer where she stashed her phone so it wouldn’t distract her while she worked, and automatically swiped through her social media apps. The posts getting the most attention were the pictures Conn took at the Christmas tree farm. She paused to answer a few of the more recent replies, extolling the coats’ cool features—a phone pocket, a loop for your ear bud cord, the gorgeous wool, the silk lining, the neat way the coat swung as she moved—and texted Em.
Have you seen the chatter about the coats? So cool!
The reply came almost instantly. OMG so not what I was expecting. They weren’t supposed to get this much attention.
It’s nice to have options. Cady slid her phone into her pocket as she climbed the stairs to the main floor in search of Conn.
Conn.
As much as she’d tried to put him out of her mind, he kept drifting into her awareness at the least opportune times. Most men played their cards close to their chests, but Conn had made an art of stuffing everything inside, just like he shoved his hands into his pockets. He all but vibrated with tightly leashed energy that danced between the demands of his job and the very real possibility it would consume him. He walked a fine line between light and darkness, between the good he did and the bad he was capable of doing.
That was the song she wanted write, about struggling with frustration, that sense of being trapped, wishing you could change that, not knowing how, feeling called to more. A song about her, about him, about everyone. Everyone struggled with that, in her experience. In their depths, everyone wanted meaning, connection, more than another song about love, lust, and everything in between. Maybe that’s what her song was missing, the turn from falling in love to finding the love that led you through the deep waters everyone feared.
The idea held some promise. She set it on the back burner of her brain to let her muse chew it over, and headed upstairs for something to eat.
Conn was sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, his laptop in front of him but dark and quiet. Arms folded across his chest, he stared into the low, flickering flames. Outside the big windows the twilight clung to the last rays of the setting sun, the bare branches of the trees not much darker than the sky.
He looked up when she cleared the landing. His face was impassive, and his eyes reminded her of the night sky, infused with color yet bleak, cold, empty. She longed to walk up to him, give him a kiss, rub his shoulder and tell him that together they’d face whatever was bothering him, but were they at that point?
If you have to ask, the answer’s no.
He didn’t move as she crossed the hardwood floor to the kitchen and ran water into her steamer. “I can’t help but notice that there’s a really big Christmas tree in my living room,” she said.
“Shane brought it over while you were working. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t want to disturb you.”