Chapter 14
“Well Daniels what do you say we skip
this round and hit the diner down the street?” Deputy Geoff McCleary suggested
from his seat in the passenger’s side of the police squad car.
“No”
“What do you mean ‘no’?” McCleary
exclaimed in astonishment. “You would
not respect the wishes of a officer who has been on the force longer than you?”
“No,” Derrick Daniels replied with a
smirk. “Remember Geoff, I know your
hunger sometimes overtakes your common sense, you can’t fool me. And besides, a year isn’t much longer.”
“Damn rookie,” Geoff mumbled
good-naturedly. “You can admit though
when we do check the places we are assigned we never found anything.”
“Yes that is true, but maybe the one
time that we don’t check them, then something will happen. You can never be too careful you know and the
Chief will be ticked at us if we don’t do what we are supposed to .”
“Yeah, yeah. Turn up here on Hurston and go down Lyons
Rd. We are going to take another route
to our patrol area.”
“Yes, sir.” Daniels replied as he
turned down the designated road. Little
did the two officers know, there would be something they would discover later
that night while they patrolled the area, something they wouldn’t expect at
all.
***
“See Derrick” Officer McCleary
said. “Even though we took a different
route tonight, we are fifteen and a half minutes ahead of schedule. All we have to check is the 7th street alley,
Martin Drive, and Rockridge Avenue and we can go home for the night. You should learn to trust me more often.”
“Yeah Geoff you was right this time,
just don’t make a habit of it.”
“Haha Daniels. Park here and you check out 7th street alley
and I will check out Martin Drive. This
rain is coming down like crazy.”
“Yeah it is.” Daniels replied as he
put the squad car in park and reached for his flashlight and jacket in the seat
behind him. “Meet you back here when I
get finished looking over the area.”
“Yeah see you.” McCleary called out as
he exited the squad car and walked in the opposite direction.
Officer Daniels pulled his jacket
tightly around him to help shield his body from the heavily pouring rain which
fell from the heavens above. As he reached the dead-end of the alley, he was
getting ready to turn around but something on the ground up ahead caught his
eye and he cautiously approached the figure with his hand on his gun. When he got close to the figure he
hesitantly reached out and touched the figure on the shoulder, creeping closer
when he got no response. From what he
could tell from the view he had of the figure, whoever was before him was a
person of small stature and he reached out yet again and gently turned the
figure over onto its back and his eyes widened in shock and disgust. The person before he was not an adult, but a
young boy who couldn’t be much older than 15 or 16 years-old and the boy had
bruises on most of his exposed body. He
quickly observed that the boy was soaked with rain and he was starting to turn
slightly blue around the lips from the cold and without hesitation the officer
took off his jacket and draped it over the vulnerable body. Once he had the boy’s body covered as well as
he could get it covered, he reached for his portable radio with shaking hands.
“McCleary, this is Daniels do you read
me?”
“Read ya loud and clear kid, where the
hell are ya?”
“I can’t explain now but get your butt
here to the alley it is an emergency.”
“Emergency!! What the hell happened?”
“I can’t explain now.” Daniels
repeated as he looked over the boy’s visible injuries. “But dispatch an ambulance and tell them to
get here now this is a matter of life or death.”
He quickly put his radio up and tried
to shake the rain out of his hair while searching the boy for some form of
identification, any kind of identification.
He quickly found a wallet in the back pocket of the boy’s jeans and
shined his light on the wallet to read it as best as he could. By looking at the driver’s license inside he
could immediately tell that who the wallet belonged to was most definitely not
the person in front of him. As he
continued to search the wallet he found a picture and quickly identified two
people in the picture as the boy in front of him and the man the wallet
belonged to.
“Daniels!” a voice yelled.
Daniels quickly got up and turned
around to face the direction the voice was coming from.
“The ambulance is on its way. One of the squads is about 2 miles away from
here coming back from the hospital after taking a patient there. They should be here any second.”
“Thanks McCleary”
“No problem. Oh my god what happened?” the older officer
asked as he stopped at Daniels’ side and looked down at the figure on the
ground.
“I found him lying here just as I was
getting ready to return to the squad car.
It looks like he has been here for awhile look how soaked he is.”
“Poor kid. Did you find any identification?”
“Yeah I found a wallet, but it isn’t
his. But it seems like the kid knew the
owner of the wallet look at this.”
“Yeah it looks like it. We need to contact them and let them know
what is going on here.”
“I found a ID card for the owner with
what looks like a cell phone number. I
will try that number and we will go from there.”
“Good plan. Here.” McCleary said as he tossed the cell
phone that he usually kept on him at all time at the officer at his side.
“Thanks” Daniels sighed as he turned
on the cell phone and called the number that was written on the paper. The phone began to ring and he felt his
breath catch in his chest as a worried voice answered the phone.
“Why me?,” he asked himself. “Why do I have to break the bad news to them,
why me?”
***
