The Bitterest Pill

Thirty

While Peter Perkins did a more thorough search of the upstairs rooms, Jesse remained in the kitchen with Kathy Walters. She was really shaken, as much by the fact that the cops were going to have to search the entire house and garage as by the probable truth of her son’s drug dealing. He could see in her face the regret over having opened up the door to Jesse and the fallout that would likely ensue.

“Kathy,” Jesse said, “I’m not here to make your life or your marriage any harder, but if there are things we are going to find in the house that shouldn’t be here, tell me now and I’ll see what I can do. If we find something when we’re searching for more of the stolen goods, it will be out of my hands and up to the DA.”

Her deep blue eyes, the blueprints for which she had passed on to her son, were darting from side to side as she thought about what Jesse had said. That meant only one thing to Jesse: She and/or her husband had something to hide.

“Joe’s really not as bad as he seems,” she said, making a case for her husband. “He just gets worked up sometimes when he drinks. He don’t mean nothing by it. He loves me in his way, and let’s be honest about it, I’m no catch anymore. A forty-three-year-old woman with a seventeen-year-old son who hates the world.”

Jesse had heard this same sort of thing many times when he was in uniform in L.A. and occasionally in Paradise, battered wives making excuses for their abusers. It was one of the reasons why answering a domestic call was so dangerous for cops. The women who had called for them often feared their husbands’ reprisals. There were hundreds of incidents each year when domestic disturbance calls turned violent, even deadly, for the responding officers. It wouldn’t do any good for Jesse to try to talk her out of it, so he didn’t bother.

It was then that Joe Walters came through the front door, crazy-eyed and smelling of scotch.

“Get the fuck outta my house!” he said, charging right at Kathy. “What the fuck did you let them in here for?”

Jesse stepped between husband and wife. Jesse held the warrant out to Joe Walters. “We have a warrant to search the premises.”

Walters grabbed the warrant and ripped it in half. “Fuck you and fuck your warrant. Get outta my house.”

Jesse didn’t budge.

“Why didn’t you call to tell me about this, you stupid bitch?” Spit flew out of Walters’s mouth as he yelled at his wife. “Instead I gotta get a call at work from Larry next door, telling me there’s cops over at my place.”

“I wouldn’t let her call you,” Jesse said. It was a lie, but he figured it was worth a shot.

“Bullshit! You can’t stop her from making a call. This is her house. She ain’t under arrest, and all you’re doing is executing a search warrant.”

“You know a lot about the law,” Jesse said. “You a real lawyer or a jailhouse lawyer?”

That didn’t go over well with Joe Walters.

“Fuck you! Who do you think you are?”

Jesse had had enough. “Sit down, Mr. Walters.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Unless you took a cab here or walked, I’ll arrest you for DWI.”

Walters sat down, but Jesse knew it was only a matter of time. He could see Walters was seething, and seething drunks can control themselves for just so long.

“Jesse, you better get up here,” Peter Perkins called from upstairs.

“In a minute, Peter.” Jesse turned to Kathy Walters. She was on the verge of panic, because she also knew about seething drunks and what awaited her the minute the cops left. He wagged his index finger at her. “You come with me. You, Mr. Walters, stay right there.”

“It’s all your fault,” Walters said, his voice getting louder and louder as he worked himself up. “You and that mutant brat. He’s poison, that fucking kid. He caused all of this. You shoulda smothered him in his crib.”

When he was done with his rant, he charged. Jesse stepped around Kathy Walters and threw a forearm into Joe Walters’s face. His nose broke in a spray of blood and mucus. But Walters was a tough guy and didn’t go down. He came at Jesse again. This time, Jesse planted his foot in Walters’s crotch. Nobody was tough enough to shake that off. Walters crumpled to the floor, bloodied and breathless.

Jesse knelt down beside him and spoke loud enough so that only Walters could hear him. “Listen to me, you piece of crap. I’m going to make you my personal business from now on. I come by here and see one mark on your wife or your stepson, what I did to you just now will be nothing. Stay down and stay down here. I hear you on the move, I’m charging you with DWI and assaulting an officer. Nod your head if you understand.”

Joe Walters nodded.

Upstairs, Peter Perkins pointed toward the door on the far right and held up an evidence bag containing a nine-millimeter pistol. “Loaded. Found it in the master bedroom in the nightstand.”

Jesse asked, “Your husband have a permit for that?”

She shook her head.

“I didn’t think so.” Jesse could see in Perkins’s expression that he had something to say out of Kathy Walters’s earshot. He turned to her and asked her to wait in her bedroom. She walked into the bedroom, zombielike. Her world was coming apart at the seams, with no sign that the seams would hold.

Perkins walked toward Chris Grimm’s room. Jesse followed him in.

“Beside the swag,” Perkins said, “there’s a passbook account with thirty-five grand in it. I found a few keys, business cards, and slips of paper with phone numbers on them.”

“Any drugs?”

“None.”

“He probably kept them somewhere else,” Jesse said. “Okay, I’ll send Gabe over to help finish the search. In the meantime, I’m arresting the husband on weapons charges. Come downstairs and witness the Miranda. I don’t want this guy slipping through our fingers.”