Illegal Alien Read online

  ILLEGAL ALIEN

  By Carrie Harris

  Illegal Alien

  Copyright © 2016 by Carrie Harris

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  ASIN: B01LYGNRV5

  Edited by Kelley Lynn of CookieLynn Publishing

  Cover Design by Steven Novak

  Find Carrie on the web!

  http://carrieharrisbooks.com

  http://twitter.com/carrharr

  For Sarah,

  My best friend and favorite Spice Girl

  PREFACE

  As a former Toledoan, I feel like I should probably mention that the Toledo in this book lives in my dreams. I’m going to claim about 90% accuracy, but there are some things I refuse to believe have changed since I moved away. (Olga’s Restaurant is not allowed to leave the mall. I forbid it.) Anyone familiar with T-town might also notice a few liberties taken with building layouts, locations, and the undersides of bridges. My apologies if you happen to have a deep love for one of those places. It’s nothing personal.

  I also owe a debt of gratitude to Colin for talking to me a bit about police work and to Emily for giving me a peek into what it’s like to convert to Judaism. Any mistakes or over-simplifications on these topics are my fault alone. I owe thanks to my critique group, Elana, Ali, and Sara, for their advice and encouragement. A quick shout out needs to go to my agent Kate for her constant support, and to Kelley, my editor, for her invaluable feedback. Steven made me one of the most gorgeous covers ever, and I am thrilled by it! As always, my family puts up with a lot of craziness and kooky dinner conversation on my part, and I can’t thank you guys enough for that.

  Lastly, I’d like to thank you for giving this book a chance. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to sit here in my sugar skull pajamas and have extended conversations with people who don’t exist. I hope you have just as much fun reading this book as I had writing it.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 1

  “Get your hands off me, soccer mom!” Demetrious White yelled as I closed the handcuffs over his wrists.

  My partner, Detective Ronda Ross, let out a snort of amusement without moving from her spot flanking my left shoulder. Her gun remained steady, trained on the grimy floor of the porch just shy of the perp’s feet. I muffled a snicker. Out of all the insults I’d heard in my almost twenty years on the force, “soccer mom” was my favorite so far.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” I said, my voice wavering only slightly with restrained laughter.

  I ran through the rest of Miranda at top speed. It wasn’t like White hadn’t heard it before, and he wasn’t listening anyway. He was too busy trying to get a rise out of me while I droned on about his rights.

  “Man, you got nothin’. Why you gotta do me wrong, soccer mom?” he said. When he got no reaction from that, he took a different tack. “I bet you’re a killer in the sack. Maybe you and I could take a little time in the backseat of the squad car. I got an anaconda I’d like you to meet. Give you a little sump’n-sump’n, you get me?”

  I got him all right, but this wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. By this time, I’d finished with the pleasantries and started moving him toward our police issue sedan. I hated that car—it looked like it should belong to a washed up G-man—but I was looking forward to stashing White in the backseat so I could relax. The walk of shame to the car was always a tense moment. Ronda was a fairly solid woman, and I wasn’t exactly a waif, but most of the lowlifes we arrested had us on size. White was no exception. If he was going to make a break for it, this was the time.

  As if on cue, he lurched forward, trying to pull his arms out of my grip.

  “Let me go, bitch!” he shouted. “Fucking lesbian cop. Suck my dick!”

  Strong-arming him wasn’t going to work when he had about a hundred pounds on me, so I didn’t try to wrestle him back into line. Instead, I gave the chain between his wrists a sharp yank as he pulled away. End result: he nearly yanked his own shoulders out of the sockets. Skinned his wrists something fierce on the sharp metal too. He let out a yelp of pain as all the fight went out of him. I shoved him the last few steps to the car while he yowled about police brutality. It was a relief to close the door behind him, although that only made him shout louder.

  “Well, that escalated quickly,” observed Ronda, relaxing from her ready stance. “Soccer mom.”

  “Don’t you start too,” I warned. “I’ll put you down.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t take me if you invited the entire nursing home as backup.”

  “So first I’m a soccer mom, and now I’m the leader of a geriatric street gang?”

  “What can I say? You’re a woman of many talents, Audrey.”

  “Now you’re laying it on thiiiick.”

  We paused for a moment to grin at each other. It wasn’t so much about the banter—that was fun and all—but more about the fact that we felt good about this case. We’d built it up together, brick-by-brick. We had physical evidence up the ying yang, all fully documented and quintuple-checked. We had the murder weapon, fingerprints, and DNA results. We had witnesses with statements that almost agreed for once. No case was ever open and shut, but if Demetrious White didn’t go down for the murder of Ronald Montrose, I was going to eat my shoes. It felt good. Almost good enough to distract me from the cracks about my appearance. I’d just gotten my hair cut, and so far, reactions hadn’t been what I’d hoped for.

  As we got into the car, I said, “And by the way, this is not soccer mom hair at all.”

  “It’s a bob,” said Ronda. “You couldn’t get more soccer mom if you tried, right, Demetrious?”

  His only response was another stream of profanity, and it wasn’t even done well. Just the same crap over and over again. When he didn’t get a rise out of us, he started kicking at the windows and the backs of our seats. I hated when suspects did shit like that. It made me question my life choices.

  “I’d argue that this is a practical cut for a police officer, Demetrious,” I said casually, glancing
at him in the mirror as I pulled out into the street. He stopped shouting and looked at me like I was insane. “Bear with me here. It’s short enough that it’s not blocking my field of vision. Doesn’t need to be pulled up for duty. Not easily accessible as a handhold in a fight. It’s the kind of haircut that’s ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.”

  Ronda snorted. “Well, it looks like you’re ready to drive a carpool at a moment’s notice. Sorry.” But she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded amused. Damned trainees always love to put one over on their superiors. In the past, I’d always quashed those tendencies in my junior partners, because my job was to teach them their job, not to become life-long buddies like some clichéd cop movie remake. But I’d loosened up a little with Ronda. Her sense of humor was a lot like mine, and it amused me too much to put an end to it.

  “Come on, Demetrious. Back me up here,” I prompted, glancing into the mirror again.

  He stopped mid-kick, shoe still aimed at the battered upholstery at my back. “Huh?”

  I’d confused him. Most people were scared of Demetrious White, and he wore that intimidation like a suit of armor. He was probably used to making women cower, and we’d knocked him off his game. The vulnerability looked odd on him. He was a thick, pasty guy with a face dotted by acne pockmarks and old scars from lost fights, and his Adam’s apple stared back at me in the rearview mirror. He had a giant tentacled eyeball tattooed on it, and here I was, asking him for fashion opinions.

  “Never mind.” I put on the blinker. “It’s not important.”

  It took us a while to make it to the precinct. Toledo roads are notoriously bad, but in February they become pits of hell, if hell’s full of black ice and insufficient road salt. We were on the tail end of a cold snap, so road conditions were barely decent. However, they were compounded by rush hour traffic, which is a bitch because everyone in Toledo would rather be out of it. It took us over a half hour to drive downtown, but we made it without dying in a 10-car pileup, so I considered it a success.

  From the outside, the police department looked like the kind of place you might film a period drama full of tea drinking and suppressed sexual tension, full of tall windows and ornamental pillars. From the inside, it looked like the kind of place you’d film a gritty cop drama, which just went to prove that exteriors could be deceiving.

  We took White in through the back entrance, which led right into Processing. On the way into the building, we passed a girl who must have been arrested for hooking or had gotten drunk and disorderly after a white trash party. I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that much neon-tinted pleather on one body. Funny thing was, she had the gall to stare at us as she came out the door and we went in.

  Although the more I thought about it, we had to have been a sight. We had Mr. Eyeball-Throat, now back to his patented glowering and swearing routine. Ronda had him by the cuffs, and she was on the taller side for a female, well built, with long black hair and a patented Don’t Fuck with Me glare. Some women have Resting Bitch Face, but Ronda had a Resting I’ll Tear Your Throat Out Without Breaking a Sweat Face. I wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she came off as bigger and more physically threatening than she really was. It was handy in a partnership of two women who often worked with the type of people who considered anything with breasts to be a designated strike zone.

  Out of the three of us, I was the least likely to stand out in a crowd. Apparently, I’d gotten myself a soccer mom haircut without realizing it. The hair notwithstanding, I didn’t wince when I looked in the mirror but didn’t get wolf whistles on the street either. Average height. Caucasian. I’d always been in good shape, because when you’re a cop, cardio can literally make a difference between coming home in a car versus a box. But over the past couple years, I’d landed in middle age squarely with both feet, and things were starting to move. I could still outrun most of the guys in the Crimes Against Persons unit, but my body looked like I spent most off my time eating bonbons and lounging on the couch. I tried not to care about that and mostly succeeded.

  I gave the neon pleather girl a sunny smile and a little fingertip wave, and she looked like I’d pointed a gun at her and said boo. I mentally revised my opinion—she was definitely a hooker. Probably had a serious dickstain for a pimp too, if she was that jumpy. When I was younger, I would have tried to talk her into making different life choices, but now I knew it was wasted breath. That was sad, and I forced my thoughts back to happier things.

  Demetrious White was going away for a long, long time.

  We ushered White up to the Processing desk, walled off behind a cloudy expanse of bullet-proof glass. Marlene, the no-nonsense booking officer, gave us a fleeting glance over the half-moons of her glasses and then went right back to her typing.

  “Who do we have here today?” she asked through the speaker. “And why do we have him?”

  I’d been waiting to say this ever since we’d pinned the murder on him.

  “Well, Marlene,” I said, “I’d like to make an accusation. I think Mr. White killed Mr. Boddy in the warehouse with a lead pipe.”

  She stopped typing, pulled her glasses down her nose, and stared at me with her rheumy eyes.

  “Come again?”

  “I thought the deceased’s name was Montrose.” Ronda looked perplexed.

  “Come on. Mr. White? In the warehouse? With a lead pipe?” I asked, grinning. “Anybody? Buehler?”

  I glanced around. Demetrious White spat at my shoes, which didn’t help things at all. And Ronda stared at me like I’d lost my marbles. She even gave Marlene a significant glance and twirled one finger next to her head. Traitor.

  I sighed. “You all need a serious board game education. Don’t any of you have kids? Clue. Mr. White in the warehouse with a lead pipe. Get it?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” said Ronda. “But I’m not happy about it.”

  Marlene just clucked her tongue as she slid the booking paperwork to me through the slot. We’d already prepped most of it in advance to get the arrest warrant, so it would be a relatively easy process from here. I looked it over anyway. All Demetrious’s soccer mom jabs and poor quality cussing aside, he was a violent repeat offender who did not deserve to walk, and I wasn’t about to let an uncrossed “T” or undotted “I” slip past me. I’d seen the body of Ronald Montrose. Although he’d been a drug dealer, gang banger, and generally unsavory guy who society would be better off without, no one deserved to die like that.

  Ever heard people say so-and-so was beaten to a pulp, but they didn’t really mean pulp? Because pulp essentially meant all the hard, bony bits were no longer hard because they’d been crushed into tiny little pieces? Well, in this case, when I said Montrose was smashed into a pulp, I meant it literally. I was happy as a clam to have the perpetrator off the streets.

  Of course, I was a clam with a soccer mom bob, but I couldn’t have everything. Still, I whistled merrily as I took myself off to my desk to finish up the paperwork documenting the arrest. Later on, I’d hand it off to the Assistant DA in a folder with Hello Kitty stickers all over it, because I knew that bothered him.

  At my desk, I wrote myself a note to make a hair appointment.

  CHAPTER 2

  Even with my hair-related regret, I felt awfully good about the day as I pulled up to the curb outside a friend’s house. Unlike our downtrodden G-man work sedan, my ride was on point. Probably too nice for the streets of Toledo, but I’d wanted a GT convertible ever since I was a kid, and after spending years pinching pennies as a young single mom, I figured I deserved a treat. My son, Greg, had gotten a full scholarship to the music program at Oberlin. At first, I’d felt guilty about using his college savings on myself, but he’d insisted since he no longer needed it. We’d come to an eventual compromise—both of us got new-to-us cars, and the rest of the cash stayed in the bank for emergencies. He might be a musician, but he’d never be a starving one if I could help it.

  I’d named the car “Candyass,” since she was ca
ndy apple red and the name Candy felt a little too exotic dancer for my personal taste. Plus, I’d inherited my Aunt Rose’s tendency to swear a lot. Her dog’s name was Dumbass, which pretty much made me a chip off the old foul-mouthed block. But if I was going to take after someone, I could have done a lot worse than Aunt Rose.

  I stepped out of Candyass and into the roadside heap of snow that the plows had left behind. I liked snow okay when it was white and pretty, but we’d moved into the grey and dirty stage, and I was ready to be done with the whole winter thing. Too bad that Toledo winters always stuck around too long. Then we’d get about two nice days of spring before summer leapt on us and tried to steam us alive.

  As annoying as the slush in my shoes was, I felt pretty good as I snagged my craft bag and a six pack out of the backseat. My knitting group met twice a month, and I always looked forward to it. The phrase “knitting group” might sound awfully middle-class conservative housewife, but it wasn’t like that.

  I tucked the beer under my arm and walked up the sidewalk to Leah’s house. When I was about halfway there, the front door opened. Out stepped Bug Murphy, our friendly neighborhood county coroner. I’d always liked Bug—he would have gotten my Clue reference—but his eyes freaked me out. He had myopia? Hyperopia? Dystopia? Some kind of -opia. Whatever the cause, he wore thick glasses that made his eyes look too big for his face. Some people might have developed a complex about that, but not Bug. He owned it. I think he even gave himself the bug-eyed nickname. Then again, his real name was Phil, so it wasn’t much of a loss.

  He smiled as he saw me, and his giant eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “You have beer,” he said. “Remind me again why I haven’t learned how to knit?”

  “You’re a klutz?” I said. “A blind one?”

  “Oh, right,” he said mildly. It was impossible to get a rise out of the guy, who couldn’t have gotten more chill without becoming comatose. Probably a good characteristic for someone who had to deal with some of the more horrible sides of human nature on a daily basis.