Secret Rage Read online

  Greene was the type of person who didn’t get along with people all that well and he had immediately set his sights on Jack’s friend and partner. William “Manny” Armsman was the kind of copper who spoke his mind, even when he shouldn’t, and that had not sat well with the new staff, whose idea of compromise was . . . Well, Jack wasn’t sure what it was, or even if Greene knew the meaning of the word.

  Greene had threatened Manny with a six-month lateral to Forensic Identification Services, figuring the patience and concentration required for the exacting, detail-oriented work would drive Manny — whom Jack often described as a puppy with ADD — insane. Two weeks ago, the sword dangling over Manny’s head had finally fallen and he had found himself the newest member of FIS.

  “It’s awesome?” Jack asked, not sure he had heard Manny correctly. Manny, who had been scared shitless of going to Ident, loving it?

  “Dude, the things they can do! You know how I always bitched about how long it took for them to clear a homicide scene?”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “But now I understand why it takes them so long. Jack, these are the guys that solve the crimes. It’s so freaking cool.”

  Jack had to laugh. Manny, an Ident geek. “So, you thinking of staying?”

  “Maybe,” he said seriously. “Right now they’ve got me doing the smaller stuff like I did back in the division but sometimes they let me tag along on the big scenes. We’re working that machete homicide over in 52 right now. If I want to stay when I’m done my lateral, they’ll send me to Ottawa for the Ident course. You should come over, Jack. It’s cool.”

  “No thanks,” Jack said quickly, not needing time to think about it. He’d seen and waited through what Manny used to do as a Scenes of Crime Officer — or SOCO for short — and dusting for fingerprints wasn’t high on Jack’s job list. Unless, of course, everything got analyzed and solved as quickly as it did on csi.

  “You should see the apartment we’re in. Someone took a machete to this guy’s head and hacked it apart. I can’t believe the amount of blood. It looks like someone tried to paint the room red. It’s so cool.”

  “You called to brighten up my day with that?”

  “Nah, dude. We’re taking a break and I thought I’d call to say congratulations.”

  Perplexed, Jack asked, “Congratulations? For what?”

  “’Cause the SIU cleared you, dude. What else?”

  “What are you talking about, Manny? I haven’t been cleared yet.”

  “Yes, you have,” Manny argued, and the gravity of his voice told Jack this was no joke. “Hang on, it’s in the paper.” Static-like paper rustling filled the phone, then, “Here it is. ‘SIU clears officer in bridge death,’” Manny quoted.

  “Get the fuck out,” Jack breathed. “Don’t be joking, Manny, not about that.”

  “Dude, I’m serious.” Paper flapped in Jack’s ear again, and he could picture Manny snapping the paper straight in his hands. “‘The Director of the SIU,’” he read, “‘said, “In my view, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the subject officer” — that’s you, dude — “committed a criminal offence in relation to the death of Mr. Kayne. Mr. Kayne fell to his death while struggling with the subject officer, who was attempting to arrest him. At this time, no criminal charges will be laid.”’ See, dude? You’re free!”

  “I like how he tacks on the ‘at this time’ bit. Nice.”

  “Whatever, dude. It’s over. Congratulations.”

  Jack was stunned, speechless. It was over?

  “Didn’t anyone call you? Dude, I’m not the first, am I?”

  “You’re the first, Manny. Thanks, but I’m going to let you go; I want to call the Association and my lawyer. Just to be sure.”

  “No problem, dude. Do what you have to do. I’ll head back to my homicide. Congratulations again, buddy.”

  Jack hung up, smiling. Only Manny could sound like a kid on Christmas morning when he was heading back to a decapitated body. Jack paused in the middle of punching in his lawyer’s number — after months of dealing with the SIU, he had the number memorized — thinking he should phone and tell Karen. His wife should be the first he shared the news with. But then again, it was almost nine, and he’d be off duty soon.

  I’ll tell Karen in person. It’ll be the first bit of good news in a long while.

  Keeping an eye on the clock, Jack dialed his lawyer.

  Jack slid open the kitchen door and stepped out onto the deck. Justice bounded up the stairs from the lower level to head-butt Jack in the groin.

  “Thanks, big guy.” Jack scratched behind Justice’s ears then nudged him aside with a knee. “Downstairs,” he commanded and the shepherd dutifully trotted down the steps with Jack following.

  The deck, a sprawling two-tier construct, was Jack’s pride. The lower level boasted an enclosed hot tub and enough space for a half dozen people to lie out in the sun. Right now, with the sun gone and the first stars of the night sprinkled across the darkening sky, Karen and Justice had the deck to themselves. The dog flopped down next to where she was stretched out on a lounger and propped his chin on the chair next to her leg. She paid him no attention.

  Jack paused at the top of the stairs to admire the picture before him. Karen was wearing denim cut-offs, leaving her shapely runner’s legs bare to the warm night air. Her long blond hair trailed lazily over an old T-shirt.

  God, she’s beautiful; his heart did its usual pleasant little stagger-step. He could never comprehend how a front-line grunt wound up married to such an amazing woman. All the tension and unspoken pain that had haunted the house for the last four months dwindled away to nothing at the sight of his wife lying out in the gentle moonlight.

  He tramped down the stairs. “Hi, hon.”

  “Hi.”

  That sounded kind of frosty. “Anything wrong?”

  “How was your day? Anything happen at work?” she asked in lieu of answering.

  Something is definitely wrong. He dragged over a chair to sit next to her, Justice between them. Sitting down, he wracked his brains trying to figure out what could be the source of this icy greeting. Everything had seemed fine when he left for work this afternoon, or as fine as it could be.

  “Um, nothing out of the ordinary.” Now was probably not a good time to attempt to lighten the mood by relating the tale of the cursed complainant. “I did get some good news, though. Very good, in fact.”

  “And?” She cocked an eyebrow at him, her eyes as chilled as her tone.

  What the fuck? “I found out the SIU cleared me,” he bluntly said. He’d planned on telling her the whole story of Manny calling, but if she wanted to be terse then he’d give it right back.

  “I know.”

  “I guess —” congratulations aren’t forthcoming, then, he almost said but bit off the words in time. It seemed Karen was spoiling for a fight, but it wasn’t in him tonight; there’d been too many arguments, too many harsh words lately.

  “You guess what?” She shifted onto her side to face him directly, arms crossed angrily beneath her breasts. The motion pushed her breasts up tight against the shirt. Braless, her nipples were clearly visible beneath the thin material. She knew where he was looking and glared at him, snapping, “You guess what?”

  He dropped his eyes, feeling like a schoolboy caught sneaking a peek, as if he hadn’t seen her breasts, held and stroked them thousands of times before. Jack felt his own anger stirring, rising in response to Karen’s confrontational attitude. He pushed it down but not without effort.

  “Nothing,” he muttered. With his anger on leash, for now — Please, God, don’t let me lose my temper — he felt crushed, deflated at Karen’s hostility. The elation he’d been riding since his lawyer had confirmed the SIU’s announcement was dead. Nothing but squashed roadkill. Fuck.

  “When did you find out?” he aske
d, still staring at his hands.

  “Mom called me just after you left for work. She read it in the paper.” His eyes cut to her. “You knew all afternoon and didn’t call me?”

  She jerked back at his hard tone then visibly steeled herself. “I was wondering when you were going to bother calling me. But I guess calling your wife comes a distant fucking second to sharing the news with all your cop buddies.”

  Justice whined beneath the exchange of bitter words and sat up between their chairs, his ears flicking nervously.

  “Actually,” he informed her, “I didn’t find out until —” he glanced at his watch “— a little over an hour ago. Manny called to congratulate me. It would’ve been nice to hear it earlier; I could’ve buggered off early and we could’ve gone out for a celebratory dinner.” And the way this is going, I should have taken up the shift’s offer of wings.

  “To celebrate what, Jack?”

  “Celebrate what?” he asked, perplexed. “How about the SIU not charging me with murder or manslaughter.”

  “You mean celebrate going back on the road.”

  Ah, now I see. “That’s why you’re mad? Because I’m going to get out from behind the front desk?”

  “And what’s going to happen this time, Jack? Another dead partner?”

  Jack flinched. Karen had cut him with that one. “Karen, that’s —”

  She pushed on, ignoring his words, shoving the knife ever deeper. “How many more scars, Jack? How long do you expect me to sit here and wait for someone to come and tell me you’re dead? Or you’ve killed someone else? That asshole broke into our house because of you and you shot him in my home! In my home!”

  Your home? “What do you want me to do, Karen? Quit? Is that what you and your mother want, for me to quit? In case you forgot, I was a cop when we met and I was still a cop when we got married. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. And no amount of conniving and manipulating by you or your mother is going to change that. I’m happy as a cop. Don’t you want me to be happy, Karen?”

  “I want you to be alive!” she screamed.

  “I’m not going to die. I have a greater chance of being killed driving to work than I do on the road.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.” She jabbed an angry finger at his shoulder, eyebrow and neck. “Any of those could have killed you.”

  The skin of his neck was clear, but the other two bore nasty, permanent testimonials to how bad things could get in a copper’s life. He was lucky the cut to his neck hadn’t been deep enough to scar, but then, if it had been any deeper, he probably wouldn’t be sitting here and Karen would have gotten that solemn visit she feared so much.

  “But they didn’t, Kare,” he said, softening his tone and reaching for her hands. She snatched them out of his reach and crossed her arms once again, practically clutching herself, shutting him out completely.

  “It doesn’t matter; you’re dying anyway. That place is killing you, a little bit every day.”

  “Come on, Karen. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? You’ve got a temper now, Jack. You never used to. You work out all the time. You’re obsessed with getting bigger. You swear, you’re moody, you spend more time with other cops than you do with me.”

  If this is what I have to look forward to at home, who’d blame me?

  “You’re not the man I married.”

  Justice whined again, louder this time. He nudged Jack’s fingers with his nose, trying to flip the hand onto his head. Jack stroked Justice’s head and strong neck, letting the feel of the velvety fur soften his anger.

  But Karen had no outlet other than Jack and she wasn’t finished. “And that dog. I can’t believe you brought it home. Neither can my mother.”

  “I really don’t care what your mother thinks, Karen. If I hadn’t rescued him, he’d be dead and after the hell he went through, there was no way I was going to dump him off at a shelter.”

  “When you’re not here, he follows me around the house,” she complained.

  “He knows you don’t like him and he’s trying to win you over.”

  “You didn’t even ask me if you could bring him home,” she accused.

  “Like you asked me about getting pregnant?” he countered.

  She had no answer for that.

  Jack rose to his feet. “I won’t be a puppet, Karen. Not for you and especially not for your mother.” He climbed the stairs, stopping at the kitchen door. “By the way, I’m back on the road tomorrow so I’ll be starting at five, not one-thirty.” He waited, not knowing what he was expecting or hoping for, but got frozen silence. He shook his head and went inside.

  Justice walked to the stairs, pausing to look back at Karen, whining apprehensively. Faced with the same frigid stillness as his master, he darted up the stairs and disappeared into the house.

  Friday, 20 July

  1023 hours

  Come on, Jack, up, up, up!

  Jack clenched his teeth, fighting the barbell sitting on his shoulders like a dead weight. A three-hundred-and-forty-five-pound dead weight. He groaned out the last rep and took a shaky step forward. The barbell clanged onto the rack and he sagged beneath it, hands on knees, drawing deep breaths.

  Good set, he congratulated himself.

  One of the definite advantages of shift work was being off when the rest of the world was working. This time of day, the gym was all but deserted, just a few other mid-morning regulars, and Jack had the squat racks to himself.

  He straightened up and loosened his weight belt. Normally, he’d be in the small, cramped gym in the station’s basement training with Manny, but because the inside crew always started earlier than the road coppers, their training time together had suffered since Jack had been on restricted duty.

  But now I’m back on the road and he got his ass transferred to Ident. Oh well, Manny always hated training legs. Just wish they had a power cage here.

  Jack preferred doing his squats in the rack with the adjustable safety bars. The gym near his home only had the type with the fixed rack angling slightly away from the mid-thigh-high supports. Not the best if you ran out of gas at the bottom of a squat.

  Not much chance of that happening today.

  Jack now knew that anger was amazing workout fuel. He and Karen had gone to bed last night with a minefield of unresolved issues separating them. The king-size bed had felt a mile wide and the new day had done nothing to reduce the distance. Karen was a fourth-grade teacher currently enjoying summer break and Jack had learned that a downside to shift work was both of them being home when neither of them especially wanted to see the other.

  Jack’s anger had simmered in the silence and instead of sharing a leg workout with Karen, he’d found himself alone in the gym.

  Fine by me, he told himself and quickly stamped down any thoughts that dared to say otherwise. If Karen wanted to be mad because he was going back on the road, that was her problem, not his. He was a cop when they met and if she had harboured a secret plan to change that, well, too bad. And the more Karen and her mother plotted behind his back, the more he wanted to dig his heels in. There was no scheme that could get him to quit the job he loved.

  Especially getting pregnant.

  That’s when the trouble really started. Not when I threw Kayne off the bridge, not when I brought Justice home, but when Karen and her mother decided a baby was the leverage they needed to get me to quit. Well, fuck you, Evelyn. I won’t be a puppet for you or your daughter.

  Jack’s anger was boiling up again so instead of adding twenty pounds to the bar, he slapped on thirty pounds of plates.

  Fuck it. It’s my heavy set anyway.

  He cinched up his weight belt and ducked under the bar. Letting the thick trapezius muscle act as a cushion, he hoisted the barbell and stepped back from the rack. The ends of the bar bounced ever so slightly as he settled h
is stance. Jack grinned at himself in the mirror. Nothing like lifting heavy.

  He squatted until his thighs were parallel with the floor then powered up, the weight fighting him all the way. Standing straight, he sucked in a couple of deep breaths then dropped into the next rep, then the third. On the fourth squat his quads were screaming and the weight had tripled on his shoulders but he squeezed out the rep.

  Come on, Jack, one more rep. Fuck Evelyn and her plans.

  He hit the bottom of the rep and immediately knew he was in trouble. He was driving up with everything he had but sinking lower into the squat. The weight was compressing him. His ass was almost on the floor and his chest was being driven into his thighs.

  Fuck me!

  Jack was about to let go of the bar and pray it didn’t do a number on his spine as it rolled off his shoulders when it finally thunked down onto the safety rack. He squirted out from under the bar and collapsed to hands and knees. He grasped the rack to pull himself to his feet, then hurriedly scanned the gym to see if anyone had witnessed his blunder. No one was paying him any particular attention and he sighed in relief.

  At least my dignity’s intact.

  Everything between his knees and shoulders felt like it had gone through an ironing press. He had an irrational fear about taking off the weight belt as it might be the only thing holding him in one piece. Whether he fell apart or not, one thing was certain: this workout was getting cut short.

  Wearing the gun belt tonight is going to be a fucking treat.

  “Sheee-it, buddy! That gotta hurt,” Connor crowed, laughing.

  “It did,” Jack validated with an embarrassed grin tugging at his lips. “And that’s why I’m not driving.”

  “And that’s why I don’t do heavy squats.”

  Jack actually wasn’t feeling all that bad. His ribs were a little sore on one side — probably from being squished up against his thighs — but his lower back hadn’t stiffened up like he had feared it would. In fact, it felt kind of loose, like he’d just had an amazing massage.

  My own personal version of the medieval rack. I think I’ll stick to my massage therapist.