The Policeman's Daughter (A Detective Sarah Alt Novel) - Hardcover

Boyce, Trudy Nan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399167285 ISBN 13: 9780399167287

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2018

Synopsis

From author Trudy Nan Boyce, whose police procedural debut was hailed as "authentic" (NYTBR) and "exceptional" (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), returns with a stunning prequel to the Detective Salt series, the story behind the case that earned Salt her promotion to homicide.

At the beginning of her career, Sarah "Salt" Alt was a beat cop in Atlanta's poorest, most violent housing project, The Homes. It is here that she meets the cast of misfits and criminals that will have a profound impact on her later cases: Man Man, the leader of the local gang on his way to better places; street dealer Lil D and his family; and Sister Connelly, old and observant, the matriarch of the neighborhood. A lone patrolwoman, Salt's closest lifeline is her friend and colleague Pepper, on his own beat nearby. And when a murder in The Homes brings detectives to the scene, Salt draws closer to Detective Wills, initiating a romance complicated by their positions on the force.

When Salt is shot and sustains a head injury during a routine traffic stop, the resulting visions begin leading her toward answers in the case that makes her career. This is the tale of a woman who solves crimes through a combination of keen observation, grunt work, and pure gut instinct; this is the making of Detective Salt.

About this title

About the Author:

Trudy Nan Boyce received her Ph.D. in community counseling before becoming a police officer for the city of Atlanta. During her more-than-thirty-year career she served as a beat cop, a homicide detective, a senior hostage negotiator, and a lieutenant. Boyce retired from the police department in 2008 and still lives in Atlanta.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Trudy Nan Boyce

CHAPTER 1—IMPROPER CROSSING OF THE GORE

 

They were always close to hard times.  So she and Pepper invented a game to play before the calls piled up.  On Friday, their Thursday, because their off days were Sunday and Monday, they had run from roll call, scrambling to get to the Crown Vics.  In the late afternoon, before the zone began to bust up, before the adrenaline hours, they would try to make a traffic case on some obscure charge.  The winner would be the first one to have written at least one ticket for each of the violations in the traffic code.

Running her finger down the worn list, Salt had made all the easy ones a hundred times over, “Stop Sign,” “Failure to Yield,” “Improper Equipment,” and she had made the harder ones, A through H.  Her favorite so far was the “Lewd Bumper Sticker” case she had made last week.  “Fuck Up,” it had read.  “Improper Crossing of the Gore” was on her agenda for the afternoon.  If she could make this one she’d keep her slight lead on Pepper.

After shift, on the nights he had ticketed for some obscure infraction, Pepper would make his entrance into the precinct giving her the business and calling himself “Hot Pepper,” inviting the rest of the cops to rain insults, Pepper playing straight to the champions of put-down.  “I am, black and proud and red hot tonight,” pimp walking into the precinct, underscoring his street name.

            Now idling on the expressway, Salt sat parked beside an entrance ramp wall, watching for a gore violation.  The vibrations of the concrete ramp beside her reverberated to her hand on the gear arm.  Hearing Pepper on her shoulder mike calling out a tractor-trailer rig stop, she could imagine some weird “tonnage” charge he’d be carrying on about at shift change.  Highway dirt blew up from a ragged hole in the passenger side floorboard.  A fine dust coated her arms and everything in the car, one of the Atlanta Police Department’s finest vehicles.  The city was playing its budget games again this year, this season with the police vehicle acquisition contract. 

Still smiling at the thought of “Hot Pepper” she saw a Maxima come shooting from the entrance ramp sending roadside trash whirling, its  draft rocking the patrol car.  The driver ignored the thatched lines of the gore island and had to break sharply before he was able to bull into Atlanta’s fragile, rule-dependent, rush hour commuter derby.  “As improper a crossing as it gets,” she declared out loud as she hit the blue lights and fell in behind the violator, calling the stop.  “Radio, hold me out southbound on the Downtown Connector at Fulton street on a late model black Maxima, New York tag ‘one x-ray, Mary, two, two, five,’ occupied one time, white male driver.”  The car pulled slowly into the emergency lane, the driver seeming uncertain, brake lights on, off, on, off, his silhouette leaning right.  Her foot copied his, on the brakes, on the gas, off, on.  She followed him a hundred yards or so until he pulled to a stop in the right emergency lane.

Beginning of rush hour was always the most dangerous, traffic just fast enough so that accidents, occurring at the higher speeds, were more injurious.  She stepped out of the cruiser, hyper vigilant of the roaring freeway on her left.  An eighteen-wheeler’s big tires, head high, whooshed close.  Speeding cars and a hot wind swirled dust and debris across fourteen lanes.  She put her hand up to shield her eyes as she approached the Maxima.  Muscle memory took over; coming up close on the rear driver’s side, touching the trunk with her entire palm flat on the warm metal, watching the barely visible print evaporate.  The oils from her body could be evidence if a driver made a run for it.  The safety films at the academy had perps hiding there ready to spring out, “Make sure the trunk is latched.”  She pressed the lid but in the noise of the traffic, which wasn’t in the training film, couldn’t be certain what she heard, something, a click?

She moved to stand just behind the driver’s window and leaning down began a polite, “Sir, the reason I stopped you is because you merged illegally, crossing the gore.”

The driver, about forty years old, didn’t look at her but stared straight ahead, his large hands hovering over the steering wheel, “I crossed what?”  His lips were badly chapped, pieces of skin peeling off with some tiny, fresh bloody spots.

“The gore, the diagonal lines between the ramp lane and the traffic lane.  Could I see your license and proof of insurance?” 

His jaw muscles clinched beneath gray stubbled cheeks, “You stopped me for crossing some lines?”

She focused on his hands.  On the back of his left hand was a fuzzed line tattoo of a joker with hat points on the knuckles.  A jail type tattoo of blue gray ink.  “Sir?” checking the interior of the car, “Sir, do you have your license?” 

“You stopped me for that?”  The points of the hat spread as his fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

“Sir, it’s a violation.”

“I apologize, Officer.  I didn’t know it was against the law.”

“May I see your driver’s license.”  There was can of carburetor cleaner and a black case on the passenger seat. 

“I said I was sorry.  Give me a break,” his eyes were on hers as it registered, all wrong – carburetor cleaner for a new car?  No.  Carburetor cleaner, the lazy man’s gun cleaner, the black case.

“Sir, do you have your license?”

“Look, Officer,” he was beginning to spit his words, “I pulled over, I apologized for breaking a tiny rule that I didn’t know existed.  Now why don’t you give me a fucking break.”

She’d already heard it in his voice anyway; his wires crossed, now pulled too tight, a jailhouse joker, a convict.  Now they both knew he couldn’t con her.  His right hand went to his jacket.  Backing away, she reached for her weapon, unsnapping the safety strap, fast drawing.  “Radio start me another.”  Before she could finish the transmission he was moving, opening the car door.   She backed toward her cruiser, seeking cover, careful of the rubble of the freeway under her boots.  As quickly, before she could get to the car, he was out of the Maxima, both arms in a shooting stance, short barrel, a glint of fire.

The world slowed, the expressway faded and the sounds of traffic were gone.  She saw gray white smoke from her gun, saw the rounds entering the blue cloth of his shirt and watched as he fell backwards in the blowing dirt.  Then there was only her own breathing and the weight of her weapon. 

Like a phone ringing in someone else’s house, radio was calling, “3306, 3306, 3306.”

“3306,” her mouth formed words but she couldn’t hear them.

Still in tactical mode, her focus was on the driver, though he had to be dead, she had clearly seen the rounds entering exactly where his heart should be, she moved closer to him, slowly, still pointing the nine, keeping the sights trained, her eyes gritty from the flying dirt and not blinking.  She kicked his weapon away, breathing heavy, her mouth open, smelling and tasting gunpowder. 

The stream of time eddied and broke as she pointed her gun at the motionless man.  Eventually, she dropped her arms to a waist-high stance.  Then Pepper was there, calling out as he ran up, “Salt, Salt.”  He touched her shoulder.  Only then did she holster.  But the wind had blown something into her eyes, making it hard for her to see.

Pepper took her elbow and made a cradle with his arm, guiding her down to the dirt-coated asphalt.  “Radio, 3306 has been shot. Ambulance.  Code 3!” 

She wanted to tell him it was okay but she got distracted trying to clear her sight.  She touched her eyes, slowly, carefully.  They felt sticky.  One eye cleared enough for her to see that her hand was covered in blood, and she was confused because she hadn’t touched the dead man.  His blood wasn’t on her.  Now her lips were wet and tasted of gun smoke, a sharp flavor mingling with her own trickling blood.

Pepper was telling her, “You’re okay.  You’re going to be okay.”  She felt his hands moving her hair, tracing through her scalp.  The words to a childhood prayer had been trying to surface, “Lead me,” was the only part she seemed to remember.  And then she lay back and rested on the hot pavement, not far from the gritty white lines of the gore.       

CHAPTER 2—DREAMS

 

            She was a chair maker, alone in sepia-tinted woods, wearing overalls and gloves.  In the distance, seen through a mist, were trees, their almost black trunks visible in a light fog.  The trunks of the closer trees, their limbs bare, appeared darker. The ground was covered in brown leaves. A clearing, her workspace,  room for materials and the work.

            She had just finished the first chair of rough, gray, uneven boards, which stuck up at odd heights on the back, a chair of the folk, not a standard size but larger, with an unusual elegance. 

Then someone, faceless, nameless, but important, came into the clearing and admired the chair and then vanished.

She began to decide what to use to for her next chair, whether to use some rough tree limbs, some shiny, painted-primary-color boards, or the same rough weathered boards that the first chair had been made from.  She chose the rough boards and began again.

            The dream shifted.  The mist swirled back revealing the upstairs of her house. Trees gave way to walls Leaves blew back from bloodied flowers on the rug. Terror crept into her gut at the realization of what was coming. Her paint stained hands were sticky but now with viscous blood.

            Her father’s skull rolled at her feet while she stood frozen, unable to move, call out or cry for help.   

        

     CHAPTER 3—RECOVERY

 

            Salt woke to twilight and tentatively made her way from the hospital bed to the wide window tinted with an aqua color that washed the panorama, high above the city of Atlanta, with a softer, cleaner light, a vastly different perspective than from the streets of The Homes.  She touched the crease in her scalp, which in her reflected face seemed to continue down over her forehead, eye and cheek, effects of the anesthesia still lingering.

            Grady Hospital, called “The Gradies” by some old Atlantans, plural from a time when the hospital was divided by segregation, was all too familiar.  She frequented the trauma center to interview victims and witnesses and sometimes for wounded colleagues. It never seemed to change; the muffled sounds, soft-soled shoes on linoleum, muted doors, and the sick smells underneath disinfectant. 

But her first time here she had come to see her father.  He was restrained with bandages that tied him to the bed and she’d overheard someone say it was so he wouldn’t throw furniture. “He’s a jumper,” she remembered someone saying and thought they were wrong because she’d never seen her father jump or even run anywhere.  He was a walker.

She had worn her Sunday dress.  Her mother told her, “Smile and tell him you made an A on the math test.”

            “But I,” Salt had said.

            “Put on your best face.  Do you want him to worry?” Her mother pushed her into the room. 

The room had been too warm, too close, as this room was now. Arms spread she pressed her body and the stitched wound, against the cool glass.

“You look like an angel.”

            She jumped, startled, then realized there had been a knock but she’d thought it was part of the memory.

            “I didn’t mean to scare you.  Shouldn’t you be in bed?”  At first Salt didn’t recognize the Chief, the big guy himself, his uniform blending in the darkening room.  Only his shiny brass badge and insignia catching the light.  He was a huge man with terra cotta skin and gray eyes. Her father’s face began to recede though she held on.

“Where were you?” her mother had asked. Her father moaned in the bedroom.  His voice heard from anywhere in the house.

            “Stay here with him,” shouted her mother.

Salt had given a little push to the door of her parents’ bedroom, and stood looking through the barely cracked door.  Her father was lying on the floor and when he lifted his head to look up at her there was sticky blood on his face.

            She shook her unbandaged head to get out of the memory then quickly realized that her backside might be exposed through the loosely tied hospital gown and tried to side step her way back to the bed.  “I think I’m still a little confused, the drugs maybe.  No one told me you were coming.”

            “I always make my way here ASAP when my officers are injured.  How’s your head feel?”

            “They said it’s superficial, a mile, mild, concussion.”

            The Chief walked to her side at the bed and put his hand out. “Good, that it’s not so bad. Bad enough.” he said, shaking her hand, the movement jarring her eyesight.  “If there’s anything you need, tell Major Townsend.  At the window, what were you looking at?”

            “Just looking.  The city is really different from up here.  You know ‘A kinder, gentler, city,’” she said.

            When he smiled it was like the grin of the Cheshire cat, all teeth gleaming through the dimness.  Closer now his eyes looked tired.  Salt felt groggy from the anesthesia,  trying to work out if the Chief was part of the memory or the here-and-now.

            “It’s the whole picture...

About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0399167285
• ISBN 13: 9780399167287
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352