Chapter 2

Bob walked into the squad room and tossed his notebook onto his desk. His inbox was full, and he groaned. He could hold his own on the streets. He'd been shot at half a dozen times, and had survived them all. He'd been in two wrecks, and all he'd suffered was a deep bruise in one thigh. He'd processed enough blood and body fluid evidence to infect a hundred thousand people with Hepatitis, or HIV, and was still clean as a whistle. The paperwork, though, would kill him. He knew it, deep in his heart.

That would wait, though. Mrs. Fetterman was due for her interview. He'd much rather gaze on her lovely form than some piece of paper.

There was a note stuck to his monitor: "See Dillworth."

He groaned. Frank Dillworth was the new Detective Captain and he was an idiot. He'd been Captain of Logistics for years, and was pretty good at that, though he'd bowed down to the penny pinchers at every opportunity. Why he'd wanted to take over supervision of an experienced and hardworking bunch of detectives was anybody's guess. He and Bob had had three or four run-ins already and he'd only been on the job for two months. Dillworth didn't know a damn thing about being a detective. Half the time he didn't even know the law. He was a toady ... a brownnoser ... and he was already responsible for two veterans cashing in their chips and retiring, when they could have stayed on for three or four more years.

He knew there was a problem when he entered Dillworth's office to find him fawning over Lacey Fetterman ... and Teresa Green. Teresa looked up and a look of triumph came over her face.

"Yes sir?" said Bob.

Dillworth looked away from Lacey, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. Her eyes went to Bob and then down to her lap.

"I'm reassigning Mrs. Fetterling's case to Simpson," barked Frank.

"Fetterman," corrected Bob. "It's Lacey Fetterman."

Frank's face suffused with dark purple. Bob hoped he'd have a stroke.

"I don't need any sass from the likes of YOU!" said Frank, his voice rising. "Mrs ... Fetterman ... has been kind enough not to press charges against you. You're off the case and that's final!"

Bob looked at Lacey, who was looking at him again, through lowered lashes.

"Tell Simpson about the orgasm," he said. "It's important."

Frank leapt to his feet, outrage on his face. "THAT'S IT!" he screamed. "YOU'RE THROUGH! PACK YOUR FUC..." He stopped and went suddenly white. Bob ached to see his eyes roll up in his head as he toppled, a coronary thrombosis doing what needed to be done. "Pack your stuff," he huffed, calmer now. "I'm recommending you be fired. Go see the freaking union rep if you want to, but I'll have your backside for this, Duncan!"

Bob turned to leave. The look on Lacey's face was one of shock ... and something else. He didn't have time to think about it. "Tell him," he said to her. Then he closed the door, before Dillworth could scream again.

He didn't get fired. The higher ups knew that the reasons they'd put Frank Dillworth in the Detective Captain chair was because of what he could do for them, when they needed a favor, and not because he had a clue. They had assumed he'd just ride the coattails of the experienced and effective force he was put in control of. Good men made a supervisor look good. Nobody thought he'd actually try to investigate anything. They certainly didn't think he'd run off the good men who could have made him look good. Now, they were stuck with the ramifications of their choice.

Dillworth did reassign the Fetterman case to Don Simpson, but Detective Simpson couldn't get anything done on it, because he had to report directly to Frank three times a day and then run off to do whatever lame-brained idea Frank had come up with since the last time he'd reported. The case went nowhere, and finally stalled.

Bob found all this out in the locker room ... most of it from Don, who said he hated Bob because he'd lipped off to the boss, which had pulled Don into the mess and gotten Frank's fingers where nobody wanted them. Bob knew Don didn't actually hate him, but he wasn't happy.

"That bastard will hit again," said Don, sitting down beside Bob. "He's a classic control pervert. Beat her up, made her do things. He even made her cum."

"I thought so," said Bob. "When I talked to her at the hospital I knew she was holding something back."

"I almost didn't find out," said Don. "That little bitch that was with her wanted to approve every question I asked. She said Dillworth told her that was fine! Can you believe that shit?"

"So, how'd you find out?" asked Bob.

"The Fetterman woman finally asked the bitch to be quiet. I wanted to laugh, but I didn't. She said she just wanted to get it over with and started talking. I could hardly keep up with her on the computer. When she said she had an orgasm, the bitch started screaming again, and the whole thing fell to shit." Dillworth wanted to take that part out of the statement, but he couldn't figure out how. I told him I'd already saved it. The stupid fuck bought it. I was lucky to get her signature on it."

"Well, you got it," said Bob. "That's part of an MO. It will help get him, sooner or later." He sighed. "If any of his other victims will admit it too, that is."

"Yeah," said Simpson, putting on his shoes. "So, how's traffic?"

Bob shot him an evil look and Simpson laughed. "Hey, at least nobody's shooting at you!" He grinned. "I might ask for a transfer myself," he said, his smile fading. "I can't get anything done with Frank Fucking Dillworth dogging my tracks. He says I have promise! Can you believe that shit?"

Don Simpson had been a cop for six years and a detective for two. He deferred to Bob's ten year record, but he was very good, when given the chance to be so.

"A nice, quiet squad car and writing a few tickets now and then might be nice," sighed Don.

"I've already gained four pounds," said Bob. "Sitting around all day doesn't do you any good."

"Protect and defend!" said Don, standing up and saluting. "See you later, buddy. I know it doesn't mean much, but I think you're better off."

"Yeah," said Bob, glumly. "Better off." In two weeks, three drunks had puked in the back of his patrol car and another one had puked ON him. Everybody he pulled over was irate at him for molesting them. Everybody seemed to feel like they had an inalienable right to drive fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit, run red lights at their whim, and park wherever they felt like. He'd been called a communist, an agent of the Gestapo, a "fucking pig" and a "pig fucker." All in just two weeks. If this was "better off," he had no idea how he was going to do his last nine years.

A week later, Bob was standing at a vending machine in the gym he belonged to, drinking the last of a bottle of Gatorade, when she walked around the corner and literally ran into him.

"Oh! Excuse me," said that soft voice.

Her eyes lit on his face and widened.

"What are you doing here?" she gasped.

"I play racquetball here," said Bob.

He looked at her. She WAS beautiful. Her long black hair was held back in a pony tail that reached to her lower back. She was dressed in tight shorts and a white T shirt that clung to her body like it was two sizes too small. Her breasts bulged in that way that announces they're confined in a sports bra and don't like it. There were just the last traces of bruising on her throat and jaw, where her attacker had hit her with his fist.

She had a sports bag slung over one shoulder, the handle of a racquetball racquet sticking out. He noticed that it had sticky tape wrapped around the handle. Well worn sticky tape. That was interesting. The only people who needed sticky tape were people who were power hitters. It kept the racquet from twisting in the grip. His eyes went to her right hand, but it was bare of a glove. She wasn't sweating, either. She had just arrived.

While he was examining her, she examined him too. He was taller than she was, by a couple of inches. Out of his suit, he looked rugged, rather than beefy. His tank top was wet, in a drooping oval from his neck to his stomach, and his arms and wide shoulders had a sheen of sweat on them. He was wearing a headband and two wristbands that were dark with sweat, and the hand holding the bottle was gloved. His left hand held an E-Force Lethal 160 racquet. She stared at the racquet. Those things cost over three hundred dollars, and she was shocked to see a mere detective ... ex detective? ... holding one. All in all, he looked as lethal as the racquet.

She felt a flutter in her belly. It horrified her and she shrank back.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," said Bob, seeing the look of horror on her face. "I'm not mad about anything."

His tone brought her back to this place ... here ... in the gym she was so comfortable in. It was the only place she could go to battle the demons that ate at her. Here, on the court, she could slam them ... slam HIM. Her rapist was only the latest of a string of frustrations she had battled on the racquetball court at the gym. Before that it had been her boss, whose eyes undressed her constantly. She'd gone out on her own, because of that, and was now in direct competition with him, running a successful business called Fashion La Femme. Her customers had come with her. Before that it was her lemon of a car, which Paul wouldn't let her get rid of, because it was only two years old. Sometimes it was meat, which she was trying not to love, because Paul had become a vegetarian. Occasionally it was her mother, who never listened and forbade her to talk about divorcing Paul.

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