I snorted. “I remember.”
I stared down the sidewalk where my father had been just moments before; he was now gone. I wondered how long it would be before I saw him again. Another decade? Ever?
“I don’t know if you think that because he chose my mom it meant fucking sunshine and rainbows for our house. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t lie to you. We have a…strained relationship and I didn’t expect him to come by and see me, but I’ve been avoiding his calls for weeks. I won’t do that again, just to make sure he stays away. I still want to get to know you and Wyatt. I plan to track him down soon.”
“I’m sure you will soon enough. Wyatt helps out Ridge and Foster too. And he just graduated from the police academy. This is after he went to the fire academy. He’s not sure which he’d like to pursue.”
“He did?” Chase asked, raising his brows.
I nodded. “He wants to speak with Chief Talbot and Chief Sanchez, see if he can get on here in Hawk Valley. He’s willing to take whichever is available.”
Chase nodded and rubbed the back of his neck, wincing. “Think we’ll be able to work together?”
“Wyatt will probably crack a few jokes, get some jabs out of his system, and then that’ll be the end of it. It won’t be if he sees Cody around town,” I said, referring to our father. “I’ll have lunch with you.”
Chase grinned. “I’m glad. You can invite Wyatt if you want or you can wait until we get the jokes and jabs out of the way before you join the both of us.”
I laughed. “We’ll see. I’ll see you around, Chase.”
4
Colt
When I signed up for the police academy, I had grand ideas about what my job would look like. I’d be there to help and protect. I’d solve crimes. Stop burglaries. Keep citizens safe. That’s not every call though. Some people call 911 when their power goes out or a car is parked in the street in front of someone’s home. The one type of call I hate the most are neighborly disputes, because typically when the police are called out once, it’ll only be the first time unless one of them moves away.
Deputy Simone Dessen raised her hands. “Hold on for a dang minute,” she said. “I can’t understand what you’re saying if you’re yelling over each other. Denny, what’s going on here?” Marshall started to wail that Denny could speak first “Marshall, you will get your turn.”
Denny Baker was the neighbor who had called 911 to complain. I’d pulled on scene seconds after Deputy Dessen. She was out of her squad car and striding across the well-manicured lawn toward the two men in a face-off between their homes. Denny’s paunch was hanging over his faded denim jeans, and his face was a ruddy red as he kept on glaring at Marshall even as he spoke to us. “This old fool’s fence is on my property.”
“No, it’s not! It’s on mine!”
“It’s on my property by two inches!” Denny shouted back at Marshall. “I found an old map for the plot of my yard, and his fence is on my side. Now, I did the neighborly thing and went to talk to him about it.”
Marshall scoffed and muttered under his breath.
“Marshall,” I warned, feeling a bit like a kindergarten teacher settling a dispute between two boys about their damn blocks.
“There’s nothing we can do to settle a property dispute,” Simone said. “You’ll have to take it up with the council or the zoning board.”
Denny held up a hand. “Now hold on a minute. That’s not why I called. This old fool wouldn’t listen to reason and tried to run me over in his driveway.”
Marshall’s mouth opened again. I sent him a hard glare and it closed. Marshall’s salt-and-pepper hair was thinning on top and thicker on the sides. He didn’t have the belly of Denny and was thin as a rail, a good six inches taller than Denny too.
“I let it go,” Denny continued. “Let him get some of his anger out, even though I said I would pay for half the fence. Though when I researched for it to see what to do I found it should be all on his shoulders because he’s the one that set up the fence in the wrong damn spot.”
“Get to it, Denny. Why did you call?” Simone asked, resting one hand on her belt and holding the radio on her shoulder with the other. Cop uniforms aren’t comfortable. They’re bulky with the bulletproof vest underneath and the cumbersome belt around the hips. Finding a position to stand in for a long period of time isn’t easy. I had my fists planted on my hips, as they often were.
“Come on over here,” Denny said and strutted across his lawn to the side of his house. The white siding of his home was no longer only white; splatters of colored paint, big globs of the stuff, were dripping down.
I shifted my focus from Denny to Marshall then back again. “Guessing this wasn’t some artwork Shonda put up,” I said sarcastically.
Denny snorted and Marshall had gone quiet. “Shonda is out of town with her sister. If this isn’t fixed by the time she gets back, I’m afraid you’ll be coming back here, officers, to dig up my body from the back yard. She’s been wanting me to paint the house this color for a long time. Finally got around to doing it, and now it’s ruined because this old fool started shooting it up with his paintball gun.”
“Did you shoot Denny’s house with a paintball gun?” I asked Marshall.
His nose stuck up straight in the air and he snarled. “Yeah, what of it? I’ve got a right to defend my property.”
“Christ,” Simone muttered. “That’s not... What do you mean defend your property?”
Marshall stuck out a long, gnarled finger, pointing at Denny’s chest. “That asshole said he would take down my fence.”
“No,” Denny hollered, face turning red. “I said the zoning office would make you take it down if I was right.” He turned to Simone. “Deputy Dessen, I told him I was going to the zoning board and filing a dispute, and if I was right, he would have to take down the fence.”
“Same difference,” Marshall yelled.
“Not exactly,” I responded, shaking my head and making eye contact with Simone, a silent battle over which of us would take him in and book him. I relented, letting her handle him. I would stay with Denny while he filled out a report and snapped some photos of the side of the house.
“Marshall, defending your property doesn’t mean vandalizing someone else’s home. We’re going to have to take you in.”
“Why?”
“You vandalized your neighbor’s home.”
“Nothing he didn’t deserve.”
Simone cuffed him and began to Mirandize him while I snapped photos of the house. “Let’s fill out that report, Denny. Faster we do that, the faster you can paint over this and Shonda won’t know that someone messed up her pretty white home.”
Denny filled out the report and handed it to me once he was done. “I’ll probably drop the charges. I don’t want to fight with him, but that fence is on my property. I didn’t want to involve the board, so I tried to take care of it privately.”
He shook his head, muttering to himself before speaking to me again. “Should’ve known better. But, anyway, I think I’ll let him stew and then drop the charges. I can do that, right?”