CHAPTER ELEVEN

Brent’s Ram pickup truck pulled up at the small house on Norris Avenue and he got out just as a patrol car pulled up too.

“Lieutenant Pyles told me to meet you here, sir,” the officer said as he got out of the patrol car. “I thought I was gonna be too late, but looks like my timing is perfect.”

But as soon as he said those words, they heard a woman screaming inside the house. They both ran as fast as they could up onto the porch. When Brent saw that the door was locked, he kicked it with his boot so hard that the door not only opened, but fell from its hinges. Brent and his officer, their guns

drawn, ran inside.

The screams were coming from the bedroom. Brent ran ahead of his officer until they both were in the master bedroom. A man was standing over the bed, his hand closed into a fist and lifted up as if he was about to hit the woman that was lying on the bed. Brent ran and grabbed his hand and flung him away from the bed, throwing him against the wall. Then he slammed the man’s face into the wall and placed his arms behind his back.

“What are you doing in my house?” the man was yelling. “This is a private residence! What are you doing in my house?”

“I’m stopping you from beating your wife!”

“That bitch ain’t my wife!”

The young officer looked at the victim, who was clad in nothing but an open bathrobe, and she didn’t seem offended at all. And she didn’t bother to close her bathrobe, which was odd to the young officer.

“That bitch ain’t nothing to me!” the perp continued yelling.

Brent slammed his face against that wall again. “Call her a bitch one more time!” He slammed his face again. “Go on and do it. You’re the big man. You’re the bad man. Go on a do it!” He kept slamming his face and slamming it.

The man was crying out. “I didn’t mean it that way, Chief. I didn’t mean it that way!”

The young officer wasn’t surprised that the chief was brutalizing the man. It was the way he operated on thugs like that and everybody in the department knew it. But it was still shocking to see. Especially when Brent kept doing it even as the man was begging him to stop.

“She was begging you to stop too,” yelled Brent. “But did you stop? Did you stop? Did you stop?” The man was bleeding as Brent kept slamming his face into that wall.

“I won’t do it again, I promise. Chief please! I promise!”

And finally, Brent stopped. Then he flung the man onto the floor. “Cuff him and frisk him,” he ordered his officer, “and haul him downtown.” The officer gladly took charge of the man before his boss killed him.

As soon as Brent released the perpetrator, the sobbing woman jumped up from the bed and ran to Brent, throwing herself into his arms. Showing emotion, the officer noticed, for the first time since they ran into that bedroom. “Oh Brent, it was awful what he did to me. Just awful.” She was crying in Brent’s arms.

Brent remembered her only when he saw her. He knew who she was. He knew it was Zibby Palance. They went out a few times in high school: the quarterback and the head cheerleader. It was all fun and games for him back then. But from what he’d heard years later, it wasn’t fun and games for her. She was serious about him.

“I told him to stop but he wouldn’t.” She looked up at Brent, her big blue eyes sobbing. “But he wouldn’t, Brent. He wouldn’t.”

She held onto her looks, which was more than a lot of the girls around Jericho could boast about. She didn’t crack at all, he noticed. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

Zibby nodded her head. Then she scrunched up her face and began crying again. “Not really.”

“Where did he hurt you?”

“All over,” she said, opening her bathrobe wide to reveal her naked body. “I need to go to the hospital.”

Brent saw her naked body, which, he noticed, held up well too, but he quickly closed her bathrobe and tied it shut. He didn’t see any bruises on her, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been brutalized.

“Should I request an ambulance for her, sir?” the officer asked him.

“ Her ? I’m the one need an ambulance after what the chief done to me,” the perp yelled out.

“Shut up!” the officer yelled back at him.

“I don’t wanna go in any ambulance,” Zibby quickly said. Then she looked those big blues up at Brent again. “Can you take me, Brent? Please?”

Since all the Sinatra young people were in New Jersey with his kid sister Ashley, and he was certain MaKayla wouldn’t be home yet, the idea of being home alone depressed him. And he wasn’t going to be able to get any good sleep until his wife was home safe and sound. Why not take Zibby to the hospital?

“I hate ambulances,” Zibby pleaded with Brent. “Please take me.”

Brent nodded his head. “Okay,” he said and her face, the officer noticed, beamed. Brent noticed it, too, but he seemed more taken by the beauty of the beam than by the obvious manipulative nature of it. It was as if she hadn’t aged a day since high school.

But by the time they all made it outside and Brent and his officer were putting the perp in the patrol car, another call came in. Which meant they were having a particularly violent night. “Another one?”

“Yes sir.” It was Doke again. “Bad situation at The Hayton, Chief.”

“What this time?”

“Judge Clayton is dead.”

Brent stopped all movement. “ Dead ? Was it natural?”

“No sir. It’s a homicide.”

“Damn!” He could hardly believe it. “Damn! Who’s on the case?”

“Right now Phil is. We thought it was a simple disturbance call. He likes to take those. We had no clue it was going to be this high profile, or a dead body involved.”

Brent knew it was a case he had to take. “I’ll get over there,” he said.

“There’s more, sir.”

The brand-new judge in town was just murdered and there was more ? “What?”

“Mrs. Sinatra was found there too.”

Brent frowned. “Who?” Then it registered what he was saying. “My wife ? Was found where?”

When he said the name wife, Zibby and the officer looked at him.

“She’s okay, but she was inside his hotel suite, sir. She was there when the manager let Phil and a couple uniforms inside.”

Brent was stupefied. He didn’t even know how to process that kind of information. She was supposed to be at a meeting, not inside somebody’s hotel room. Least of which Judge Clayton’s! What on earth was happening? “But you say she’s okay?”

“Yes, sir, she’s definitely okay. I made certain to check on that before I called you. But yeah, she was in that hotel suite with Judge Clayton.”

When Doke said it that way, Brent understood the implication. And he didn’t like it one bit. “What’s the number?”

“1498. I have an officer stationed at the door.”

“I’m on my way,” Brent said. But then he added: “Keep it internal. No leaks. And when I say none, I mean none.”

“Yes sir.”

And Brent ended the call.

He forgot all about Zibby as he hurried to his truck, hopped in, and sped away.

But the officer noticed that instead of Zibby being angry that he left her standing there as if she was nothing to him, she seemed enraged. Infuriated even. As if that ride to the hospital wasn’t going to be just a ride to the hospital, but so much more. She went back into that house and slammed the door.

The man in the back of the patrol car grinned. “She ain’t pressing no charges now,” he said. Then he laughed out loud.