Page 57 of Man Cuffed
I knew I’d like having Meg in my car. But I like it way too much. And it’s a slow night, so I can’t even complain that she’s too distracting.
At last, on Lake Drive, I spot a swerving Mini Cooper. “Hit the lights, Meg.”
She lets out a squeal that’s really fricking adorable, and then flips ‘em on.
The driver doesn’t fight it. She pulls right over, stopping abruptly. I pull in right behind her. “Same rules apply,” I tell Meg. “You keep your cute butt in that seat.”
“Yessir.” But it isn’t flirtatious. She looks nervous, watching me with tense eyes as I get out to approach the vehicle. And I’m cautious, even though this will probably shake out to be the world’s least interesting drunk-driving incident. But you never know. And even run-of-the-mill drunks can become angry and volatile when they realize they’re about to get arrested for a DUI.
Not this drunk, though. The vehicle’s only occupant is a tearful college girl. She apologizes profusely all the way through her field sobriety test.
“My boyfriend ditched me!” she cries after failing to walk a straight line. “He went home with another girl!” Then she leans against my uniform shirt and sobs.
Oh, man. Tears! It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for her. Almost. “That’s what Lyft is for,” I say gently. “These gentlemen are going to take you down to the station.” Lance and the trainee are just walking up to us.
“Don’t throw me in the slammer, Officer!” she slurs.
I glance at Meg, who’s rolling her eyes in the passenger seat. “I’ve seen better acting jobs in porn.”
Lance chuckles as he leads the sad little perp to the back of his cruiser. “You can ride along with me any time, Meg.”
I growl.
But then Lance drives off, and Meg and I are alone again. “You were so kind to her,” Meg says softly. “Aren’t you angry that she’d drive around that drunk?”
“Well, I don’t like it.” I shrug. “But, to paraphrase Hemingway, as a cop ‘you should not judge, you should understand.’”
“What’s there to understand, though? You don’t get to see the reasons that people do things. She fed you that line about her boyfriend dumping her. But we don’t even know if it’s true.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her as we cruise around another quiet neighborhood. “The law doesn’t care why she’s driving drunk. And it’s not my job to hate her for it. This might just be the wake-up call she needs, you know? To stop taking risks that endanger herself as well as others. Everyone makes mistakes, Meg.”
She’s very quiet for the next half hour, while I respond to a couple of calls that are canceled before I’m even on the scene.
“Are we having those brownies yet?” I ask. “Sounds like something that would go nicely with our coffee.”
“Later,” she says with a smug little smile.
“They’re just brownies, right?” I have to ask. “Law-abiding brownies?”
“Oh, these brownies don’t break any laws. But they are especially sinful.”
I’m about to ask why when we get another call. Code 415. The dispatcher gives me an address in a nice enough neighborhood.
But my jaw tenses and then locks right up. “Fuuuuck,” I murmur before I can stop myself. Why on God’s green Earth does it have to be that address?
“Everything okay? What’s a 415?”
“Disturbing the peace.”Especially mine.
“And that wrecks your day?”
To distract her, I point at the switch for the flashing lights. “Go on. You know you want to.”
She flips the switch. But she also gives me a look, like she knows I’m trying to change the subject.
And I am.
I drive in silence, feeling more dread with every block we pass. Of all the houses in a city of two hundred thousand, this is the one I would most like to avoid.
