Chapter 23

After I parked in front of my parents’ house, I left her sitting in the back seat of the cruiser while I went to talk to them. I’d considered for a moment going to Rosita, who I knew for a fact would help her but between running her restaurant and trying to get the food bank off the ground, there wasn’t really time for Rosita to deal with someone who’d need support. Besides, Tessa’s boyfriend worked at the mine, and since he was an asshole, there was always a chance he’d gotten friendly with Evan. They’d only been here a few weeks and I hadn’t seen him before tonight, but even if it was only an outside chance, I didn’t want to risk giving Evan another thing to go after Rosita for.

My mother, on the other hand, had all kinds of time and loved finding projects to work on. They might have their flaws as parents, but I’d always been loved and never been ill-treated. That was exactly the kind of environment someone like Tessa could use, at least until we found her something more permanent.

“Henry, it’s late. Is everything okay?” Mom asked when she finally opened the door, pulling her robe tight around her.

“Yes, but I could use some help. This is going to be a lot, so just hear me out.”

With her agreement, I walked Mom through who the girl in my car was and what had happened that night. I explained the background of what Tessa had said about the previous times this had happened when she tried to leave him and added that she didn’t have any friends or family in town and didn’t have any kind of money or resources in her own name. Her boyfriend would be out on bail, probably in a few days, and the last thing she needed was to be in their apartment when he got back.

“That’s how they do it,” Mom said. “They isolate them from the people who could help them, so they’re totally dependent on their abuser. People will put up with a lot if they think there’s no way out.”

I hadn’t ever heard my mom talk about this kind of thing before and was surprised when she sounded like she knew something about it.

I must not have been hiding my thoughts very well, because she said, “Don’t look at me like that; you’d be surprised at the things I’ve seen. I’m guessing by your bringing her here you’d like for her to stay with us?”

“Yes. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to take her. I know it’s a lot to ask.”

“No, you did the right thing,” she said, patting me on the arm. “Don’t leave her sitting in the car. Go get her.”

“Are you sure Dad’s going to be okay with this?”

“I’ll worry about your father. You go get her and bring her inside.”

“I won’t say where I put her, but it’s not a big leap for him to find her. Not in a town this small.”

“We’ll be fine. I know where your father keeps his shotgun and, like you said, it’s a small town. You, Al, or Orville aren’t very far away if something happens.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

“You’re a good boy, Henry. Now, stop stalling. Go get her.”

I gave Mom a tight smile and went to the car to get Tessa. I wasn’t able to stay long since I needed to get back to the sheriff’s office and start the paperwork to process the boyfriend. We had entered into one of those situations I had noticed when reading over all of the county statutes and procedures but hadn’t had a chance to bring it up with Orville yet.

Technically, we weren’t allowed to leave a prisoner unattended in our lockup, but with only one officer on duty, our options were to ignore any other calls for service that happened until the next shift started, get someone not working at the moment to transport the person up to Summersville, or do it ourselves and leave the county with no one on duty for two hours or so. None of those were good choices, and I’d meant to ask Orville which one we should choose if something like this happened, but the run-ins with Evan had been distracting enough that I’d forgotten until now.

Al was still at the station when I got there, because of the no prisoners being left alone policy, so I sent him on his way. He looked tired and I knew he’d be wiped in the morning, but I’d had to follow policy. We both knew the shoe would be on the other foot soon enough.

I checked on the boyfriend, whose name was Lonnie Moss, and found him mad as hell, throwing every kind of curse he could think of as soon as he saw me. He was, however, uninjured and healthy, so that was good enough for me. I ran him through the system and was completely unsurprised to find he had a record for violence, including a conviction for domestic assault four years prior against a different woman and a regular assault charge that didn’t have any other notes describing it.

I wrote up the arrest and followed procedure by sending a copy to the neighboring police department that would end up housing Mr. Moss, along with a copy to the DA so they could decide if they were going to advance with the charges.

After logging his possessions into inventory and filling out the arrest documents, I was only left with one thing to do, which I’d been putting off.

“Hello?” a sleepy Sarah said when I called their home number.

“Hey Sarah, it’s Henry.”

“Something better be on fire,” she said, sounding grumpy.

I didn’t blame her. It had taken time to get Tessa settled in at my parents’ house and more time to get Lonnie processed. I’d half considered just waiting here at the station until morning before bothering Orville, but even though Buxton was usually pretty quiet at night, I didn’t want to end up in an emergency that didn’t leave a lot of time to make a decision on what to do with Lonnie.

“It’s not, but it is important. I need to talk to Orville.”

She didn’t say anything else, but I heard some mumbling and rustling before Orville’s tired voice said, “What’s happening?”

“I’m really sorry to wake you up, but I have a situation I don’t know how to handle. I’ve got a guy in lockup on an assault charge. The policy is to not leave him unattended, but there’s still a lot of my shift left. I’m not sure how to handle this, especially if any more calls come in.”

“Have you already processed him and sent his booking docs to Summersville?” he asked, still sounding half asleep.

“Yes, and I copied the DA like the policy says. I was going to take him up there in the morning when Al comes on, but I didn’t know what to do if a call for service comes in in the meantime.”

I heard him rustling around and coughing a few times. I’d probably be fuzzy as hell if someone woke me up and then started peppering me with questions before I could wake up all the way. If anything, this will teach me to not put off addressing issues like this until they came up, since that usually happens at the least convenient times.

“Sorry, man. I know you worked all day.”

“It’s okay,” he said and then paused for a big yawn. “This has only happened a few times and I meant to update the SOP, but just never got to it. Go ahead and load him up and take him up there now. Switch the calls over to my phone and I’ll handle them until you get back.”

“You sure? It’ll be at least two and a half hours.”

“Yeah. Al’s on in the morning and Sarah will be working, so I can get a nap once she goes to work if I’m really beat. Besides, odds are there won’t be a call.”

“Yeah. Tomorrow I have something else related to this I need to tell you.”

“Tell me now.”

“The person he was assaulting was his girlfriend. They’re both new in town and she doesn’t have any friends or family nearby. Doc Thompson came out and checked her, and only found a broken nose, so she’s fine, but the fight started when she was trying to leave him. Since she couldn’t really go home, because he’s almost certainly going to get bail, and she has no one else to turn to, I set her up with my mom. They have an empty bedroom, so she can stay there for a few days until she figures out what she’s going to do next.”

“You know that makes you personally involved in this mess, right?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t just leave her. He kept all their money and wouldn’t put her name on the account, so she literally has no access to resources.”

“I get it, but you’re going to have to deal with it.”

“I just wanted to make sure I didn’t step over any lines.”

“As long you’re not engaging in any kind of physical relationship, you’re clear. The DA will probably give you hell, but since you didn’t know her before tonight and she’s staying with your mother and not you, it shouldn’t cause a problem for the prosecution. You know you’re signing up to be responsible for her, right? I’ve seen this before. If she’s serious about getting away from him, she’ll need a bunch of help. And he’s going to figure out you’re the one helping her. It’s a small town and people talk.”

“I know. I can handle it.”

“Okay. Go. Get him booked into Summersville and get back so I can go back to bed. We can talk about this later if we need to.”

“Sure thing. And sorry about waking you up.”

“It was the right call. The three of us need to sit down and rewrite the policy to make something like this SOP, ‘cause you’re right, we can’t take the only guy working out of service.”

“All right. I’ll call you when I get back,” I said, and hung up.

Moving a prisoner from a cell into a car by yourself would have been a big violation in New York City, but since pretty much everything out here was done with one person working, this wasn’t going to be the last time I did it. Besides, Al had moved him in here without a problem.

The basic procedures made it at least mostly safe. I had him stick his hands behind his back and then handcuffed them through the slot in the door made for that exact purpose. I also attached leg chains and hooked them up through the bars, which I hadn’t done before, but knew it was at least possible. Between the handcuffs and the leg-chains, it would have been hard as hell for him to make a break for it, but I took each step carefully getting him into the car.