Guardian Of Justice. Carol Steward

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СКАЧАТЬ no lights on, no sounds.

      Pulling a small pad of paper and a pen from his chest pocket, Dallas jotted down a few notes for the report. “I need your name,” he said with his pen poised.

      She threw her head back and crossed her arms over her chest as she let out a groan. “Shirley Mason.”

      He heard dialogue from dispatch coming through the radio on his shoulder and turned it down slightly so it didn’t interrupt his discussion with the family.

      Dallas shot a quick glance at the boy. Drops of red on the floor next to the window caught his eye as he did so. “And this young man is your son?” he asked.

      The woman nodded.

      “Your name?” Dallas asked the teenager.

      After a short pause, the boy answered, “Cody.”

      “Last name?”

      “Jones,” Cody said.

      “What happened here?” Dallas asked him.

      “I just told you what happened. You got more questions, ask me,” Shirley ordered, making it clear that she’d do the talking.

      Dallas looked at Cody’s bare feet and the shards of glass surrounding them. “You cut?” Something didn’t add up here. Dallas lifted the boy out of the glass, noting the lack of meat on his ribs.

      Cody shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, with obvious satisfaction at disobeying his mother. Her glare was lethal.

      “So who’s bleeding?” The child he’d heard running had sounded much smaller. Was that who’d been cut? Could that be who’d slammed the doors? A sibling, maybe? Was Cody trying to protect a brother or sister? “Ma’am, please go sit on the sofa while we sort through all of this.” He checked the boy for cuts while the mother stomped over and dropped onto the shabby couch.

      “Who else is or was in the house?”

      No answer. Over the mike, Dallas heard broken messages from a frantic voice. Why in the world wasn’t dispatch intervening? He didn’t need a distraction right now, he thought, as he turned the volume down even more.

      The beeping of a car horn sounded. What’s going on now? He went to the door to see what was happening, and noticed the lights of his cruiser flashing. Then the siren started, drilling through the brick walls.

      “Don’t either of you move an inch!” Dallas said as he rushed out the door. He jumped off the porch in time to see a man running down the street.

      Dallas looked frantically for the social worker. “Miss Matthews?” He turned and scanned behind him, then spun back to the car. Where is she?

      Again he radioed dispatch. “We have a suspect fleeing a domestic disturbance. He’s headed south on Sixth Street, toward Main Street. Long dark hair, medium build, average height, jeans and white T-shirt. There are three, possibly more subjects here at the house.”

      He couldn’t see Miss Matthews in the car, but the doors were still closed. And the passenger half of the windshield was shattered like a spider web.

      “Subject may have vandalized a police cruiser,” he reported. He looked down the street again, then scanned the area between the car and the road, seeing nothing. He leaned closer to the cruiser and finally saw her lying across the seat with her hands over her head. She’s hurt! He realized. The adrenaline pulsing through his body came screeching to a sudden halt.

      Mark Pierson’s police car rushed past the house and took off after the suspect while Dallas tried to open his cruiser’s door.

      It wasn’t closed tight, but it was locked. He knocked repeatedly. “Miss Matthews, open the door.” When she jumped, she hit her head on the steering wheel. She turned toward him, rubbing her temple. Her huge eyes shone with fright as she fumbled for the door handle.

      “Are you okay?” Dallas reached across and turned off the siren and lights, then backed out of the car again. She was shaking. He quickly took stock, glad to see that the broken windshield had held. The majority of the damage was right in front of the passenger. He shook her gently. “Miss Matthews?”

      “Stay in the car, out of harm’s way, my foot!” She pointed to the windshield and started to climb out, but Dallas stopped her.

      He touched his hand to her shoulder and knelt down between the door and the car. “Hang on there for a minute. Tell me what happened.” Kira’s cocoa-colored skin seemed paler than it had before the incident. Was she in shock?

      “What happened? Didn’t you hear me telling dispatch?” Wide-eyed, he gazed darted from the shattered windshield to him.

      The frantic voice made sense now. “A little, but it wasn’t really clear,” he said, not about to admit she’d sounded like a lunatic. He hadn’t even realized it was her speaking. Now he at least understood why.

      She was going through everything that had happened when as another officer approached. Pete Ford paused, listening.

      “You’re sure he wanted to get in in order to take the car?” Pete asked.

      The social worker glared at him. “Look at the driver’s door! It has to have a dent the size of…” She glanced at her hand, then at Dallas’s. “The size of your fist,” she said, grabbing his wrist and lifting it in the air.

      Pete walked around the car and nodded. “Yep, it sure does.”

      “And when he couldn’t get in, he must have decided I could be convinced to let him in, for he threw the rock at the door again and again. He obviously wasn’t thinking about safety glass.” She shivered.

      When Miss Matthews had finished talking, Pete pointed to the house. “Who’s inside? I’ll catch up there.”

      “Mom and a son. Shirley—” Dallas glanced at his notes “—Mason, and Cody Jones. I suspect there’s a younger child, but no one is talking yet. This guy must have been leaving the back of the house as I was going in—”

      “He jumped the fence about three to five minutes after you went inside,” Miss Matthews confirmed.

      Dallas waited a minute to make sure she was through. “I think we need to get that cleared up right away, find out what he was doing here. The suspect I saw running had dark hair—”

      “It was past his shoulders,” Miss Matthews interrupted again. “And frizzy. Wild looking…” She held her hands a few inches from her head to show how full the guy’s hair was. “He was Caucasian. And had tattoos all over his arms.” Dallas’s mind drifted and he wondered if he had sounded as frazzled after the shooting that day.

      Dallas glanced at her hair. From the looks of it, her own would frizz out just as far if it wasn’t in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her brown eyes were huge, with long lashes framing them. Her gaze darted back to the car, as if it would bite her.

      “He was high or stoned, one of the two. His eyes were…scary.” She looked back at the windshield and wrapped her arms around herself. “He was bleeding. He put his hands and face up against the glass, so you can probably get fingerprints.” She pointed. “Don’t let СКАЧАТЬ