Read Online Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent by Judith Reeves-Stevens - Free Book Online
Authors: Judith Reeves-Stevens
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Sikes. “You going to be okay?” Her large, dark eyes studied him. Their deceptive softness had led more than one cornered adversary to gamble that she would lack the guts to pull the trigger.
Sikes relayed the question to the rest of his body and waited for everything to report back. “It’s just the . . . the smell . . . you know?”
Angie pushed her glasses back up with a single finger. “Oh, yeah, Sikes. I’ve been doing this gig for ten years. I know all about the smell.” She took a clean napkin from him and wiped at a corner of his mouth. “Now you know why coroners smoke those big cigars.” Then Angie nodded over at the Continental, parked all by itself, straddling three sets of lines that marked the asphalt into parking spaces labeled COMPACT ONLY. “Enough of the small talk,” she said. “Time to work.”
Sikes walked back to the victim’s car with his new partner. He had met her six months ago when he had been the first officer on the scene for a robbery and shooting in a parking lot behind Mann’s Chinese. She was quick, thorough, and—unlike a lot of the detectives he had worked with while in uniform—in her written reports she had given him full credit for the way he had secured the scene, found the shell casings, and canvassed the parking-lot attendants. That report had earned Sikes a commendation, and that commendation, in turn, had lifted his spirits enough that he had gone into his detective exams without his traditional feeling of examination panic. As far as he was concerned, that change in attitude had made all the difference, and he had aced both the written and the orals.
When his passing grades had been posted Sikes had called his mentor, Theo Miles—what other cops would call his rabbi on the force. Theo had taken Sikes off the streets at that mystical conjunction in Sikes’s life where he still had the freedom to choose between hot-wiring muscle cars for the rest of his life—which undoubtedly would have been short and miserable—or finding a real direction to follow and a purpose to be guided by. With patience, trust, and—when all else had failed—a good left hook, Theo had pointed Sikes in that right direction and given him a purpose the young man could believe in—that he had it in his power to change not only his own life but the lives of others who were just as troubled as he had been.
After Sikes had screwed up college, Theo had even gotten Sikes into and through the academy. He had also become Sikes’s first partner of sorts in a special drug detail that had lasted most of a year while Sikes was still in uniform but loaned out to Vice as a new face who wouldn’t be recognized by the old-time dealers who seemed to know every undercover cop from Sacramento to San Diego.
But for now, Theo was still happily partnered in Vice, and he had told Sikes that a rookie detective’s first partner should be someone who would be able to teach Sikes as much about the departmental bullshit of being a gold shield as Theo had been able to teach him about walking a beat.
After that conversation the first name that had come to mind for Sikes had been Detective Two Angela Perez, and though it was unusual for a rookie detective to be given the Homicide desk for his first posting, the recent commendation helped clinch his request at division headquarters. Sikes, however, suspected that the real clincher had been the photograph of Victoria he still had in his locker. Angie had wandered into the locker room one day at the end of shift to talk with Sikes about his request, which, he could tell, she was not inclined to support. While they had talked—Angie unperturbed by the cops who milled about nervously, wondering if they dared change in front of her—she had seen Victoria’s photo and asked about it.
Sikes had told her flat out that being a successful detective was part of how he planned to get back together with Victoria and Kirby—his wife and daughter. At the time he had seen
Sikes relayed the question to the rest of his body and waited for everything to report back. “It’s just the . . . the smell . . . you know?”
Angie pushed her glasses back up with a single finger. “Oh, yeah, Sikes. I’ve been doing this gig for ten years. I know all about the smell.” She took a clean napkin from him and wiped at a corner of his mouth. “Now you know why coroners smoke those big cigars.” Then Angie nodded over at the Continental, parked all by itself, straddling three sets of lines that marked the asphalt into parking spaces labeled COMPACT ONLY. “Enough of the small talk,” she said. “Time to work.”
Sikes walked back to the victim’s car with his new partner. He had met her six months ago when he had been the first officer on the scene for a robbery and shooting in a parking lot behind Mann’s Chinese. She was quick, thorough, and—unlike a lot of the detectives he had worked with while in uniform—in her written reports she had given him full credit for the way he had secured the scene, found the shell casings, and canvassed the parking-lot attendants. That report had earned Sikes a commendation, and that commendation, in turn, had lifted his spirits enough that he had gone into his detective exams without his traditional feeling of examination panic. As far as he was concerned, that change in attitude had made all the difference, and he had aced both the written and the orals.
When his passing grades had been posted Sikes had called his mentor, Theo Miles—what other cops would call his rabbi on the force. Theo had taken Sikes off the streets at that mystical conjunction in Sikes’s life where he still had the freedom to choose between hot-wiring muscle cars for the rest of his life—which undoubtedly would have been short and miserable—or finding a real direction to follow and a purpose to be guided by. With patience, trust, and—when all else had failed—a good left hook, Theo had pointed Sikes in that right direction and given him a purpose the young man could believe in—that he had it in his power to change not only his own life but the lives of others who were just as troubled as he had been.
After Sikes had screwed up college, Theo had even gotten Sikes into and through the academy. He had also become Sikes’s first partner of sorts in a special drug detail that had lasted most of a year while Sikes was still in uniform but loaned out to Vice as a new face who wouldn’t be recognized by the old-time dealers who seemed to know every undercover cop from Sacramento to San Diego.
But for now, Theo was still happily partnered in Vice, and he had told Sikes that a rookie detective’s first partner should be someone who would be able to teach Sikes as much about the departmental bullshit of being a gold shield as Theo had been able to teach him about walking a beat.
After that conversation the first name that had come to mind for Sikes had been Detective Two Angela Perez, and though it was unusual for a rookie detective to be given the Homicide desk for his first posting, the recent commendation helped clinch his request at division headquarters. Sikes, however, suspected that the real clincher had been the photograph of Victoria he still had in his locker. Angie had wandered into the locker room one day at the end of shift to talk with Sikes about his request, which, he could tell, she was not inclined to support. While they had talked—Angie unperturbed by the cops who milled about nervously, wondering if they dared change in front of her—she had seen Victoria’s photo and asked about it.
Sikes had told her flat out that being a successful detective was part of how he planned to get back together with Victoria and Kirby—his wife and daughter. At the time he had seen
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