Wicked Break

Seventeen

I sat in the Jeep, staring at the police station.

I’d told Carter about the phone call and he waved me out of the diner. He and Dana would find their own way home.

He understood.

I didn’t want to go in angry, frustrated, and disappointed, but I knew I didn’t have that much self-control. I just wanted to corral all three of those emotions before facing my mother for the first time in nearly four years.

I struggled out of the Jeep, cursing the fact that my body was still hurting. All the driving I’d done hadn’t helped, either. The traffic on Pacific Coast Highway roared behind me. I walked up the steps to the SDPD building and wondered what excuse I was going to hear.

Liz’s office was on the third floor and I found her sitting at her desk, studying a file spread out in front of her.

She looked up. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You got here quick.”

I slid into the chair against the wall. “Didn’t want to change my mind.”

She nodded, then rested her chin in her hand. “One of our guys stopped her on Morena. Car was weaving all over the place. She blew a.21.”

I laughed, not meaning it. “That low, huh? She must’ve been taking it easy today.”

“I was down at booking when they brought her in,” she said. “I recognized her and had her moved to holding.”

“She charged yet?”

Liz shook her head. “No. I waived it. We’ll let her sober up and she can go. With you, if you want.”

I leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. “Probably better if she was booked. Maybe, for once, she might get it.”

“We can, if that’s what you want to do,” she said. “But I pulled her record. Three DUIs in last four years and a citation for public intoxication. They can’t defer her to a program this time. She’s out of freebies.” She paused. “We book her, she’s gonna stay and I can almost guarantee she’s gonna get time at Las Colinas.”

I looked back at Liz, a mix of emotions running through me. “Maybe it’s time for that.”

Liz folded her hands on the desk. “She’s still your mom.”

“Barely.”

“Still. But I’ll do whatever you want to do.”

I pushed back in my chair and stared at the ceiling again. I wanted her to make sure I never had to see my mother again in a jail cell. I wanted her to erase the years I spent growing up while my mother spent them in bars. And I wanted her to pay back my mother for all the embarrassment heaped on me because of her actions through the years.

But I knew Liz couldn’t do any of those things.

I rocked the chair forward again with a clunk. “I’ll take her,” I said. Duty and obligation had won once again.

Liz stood. “Let’s go downstairs, then.”

I followed her down the hall to the elevator bank.

“You look a little better,” she said. “Your bruises are fading.”

“I guess. You confirm on Pluto?” I asked, trying to think of anything but what was waiting for me in the basement of the building.

“Yeah,” she responded. “Like you said. We got a match on dentals.”

“Cause of death?”

“Blunt trauma to the head,” she said. “Probably a bat or something like it.”

I hadn’t felt lucky at the time, but maybe my pal Lonnie had done me a favor by having Mo use just his fists on me.

“We’re trying to track down an aunt in the area,” she said. “I’ll let you know what we find out.”

We stepped into the elevator. She pushed the button marked B, the doors shut, and the elevator glided downward.

“Thanks for doing this,” I said.

“I figured you’d want to know she was here.”

I looked at Liz. She wore a white oxford open at the neck and dark navy slacks. Her hair was down, behind her shoulders. She was looking back at me and her face looked like she needed some sleep.

“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m sorry about on the phone and all. I didn’t know why you were calling.”

She leaned against her side of the elevator. “Because if you’d known why I was calling, you wouldn’t have been an ass?”

I shook my head. “No. I might’ve been less of an ass, though.”

The elevator came to a stop.

“I doubt that,” she said as the doors slid open.

“Me, too. Just thought I should say it.”

I followed her to a counter where she signed a clipboard and motioned for me to follow. We walked down a narrow hallway and she stopped at the corner where it turned to the right.

“There are four cells,” Liz said. “She’s in the third one. The others are empty, so you’ll have a little privacy.”

I nodded, looking down the short hall where my mother waited behind bars.

“You want me to go with you?” Liz asked.

I shook my head. “No. It’s okay.”

“I’ll send someone down in a few minutes to release her and do the paperwork.”

“Good idea. If she’s in the cell I can’t kill her.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I figured.”

I looked at Liz. “Thanks. Seriously. For calling me and doing this.”

Liz glanced down the hallway. “I remember when we were in high school. My junior year, your sophomore, I think. I came over to interview you for the school paper. Something about basketball. But you weren’t home yet. I sat out on the patio with her for an hour or so. We just talked. Mostly about you.” Liz turned back to me. “I remember thinking she was so cool, that I liked her so much. I had no idea what was really going on.”

“No one did,” I said.

“You never shared it with anyone.”

“I did eventually. With you.”

“After like, what? Eight years? When we were in college?”

“I don’t know. Probably.” I shoved my hands in the pockets of my shorts. “I was already missing a father. I didn’t need the world to know it was a double whammy.”

She studied me for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. Then she said, “No one would’ve thought any differently of you.”

I shrugged because I didn’t believe her and it wasn’t something I was looking to dive back into. I knew that my life was different and that now, as an adult, the reflections of my mother’s actions didn’t shine as brightly on me. But as a teenager, trying to fit in and project a certain image, I knew that some people had looked at me differently.

And it had hurt.

Liz’s stare softened and she gestured down toward the cells. “Go see her.”

“Okay.”

She hesitated for a moment, started to walk back toward the desk, then stopped. She turned around.

“And call me in the next day or two,” she said.

“Yeah. I’ll let you know what’s going on with her,” I said.

She ran a hand through her hair and blinked. “For whatever. Just call me.”

She turned and walked back toward the elevator.

I watched her go, wishing I were in a different spot so I could ask her what she meant by that.

But I knew why I was there.

I turned back to the short hall that housed the cells. I forced my feet, heavy with anger and resistance, to move, knowing that the longer I stalled, the harder it would be to see my mother.

It was time to say hello to Carolina Braddock again.