Chalk Man by Tony Faggioli

Author:Tony Faggioli [Faggioli, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atticus Creative, Inc.
Published: 2020-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Two hours later and Parker was driving home, and not at all against his will. They’d all been sent home under the cap’s orders. Parker hadn’t known the cap that long, but he was growing to respect him a lot. He’d been transferred in and inherited a squad room turned upside down by the Kyle Fasano case, which had left Parker’s first partner, Napoleon Villa, dead on a baseball field in East Los Angeles. Then, he had stuck by Parker throughout most of the Hymie Villarosa case, even when Parker’s new partner, Detective Campos, was shot and wounded. He’d even tried to defend Parker when the chief and his lieutenants yanked him off that case, after Güero Martinez, the same demented crime boss that had been present the night Campos was shot, had then sent his thugs to kill Trudy.

Now, twelve hours into the investigation of the disappearance of Charlie Henson, when most likely their lead suspect in the case had just tried to blow Klink’s head off, when most captains might hit the gas pedal and have everyone working overtime? The cap had assessed the aftermath of what happened at The Hotel Clarke and called a timeout. Because it was all too much and nothing, absolutely nothing, saps your energy like the tsunami of adrenaline your body endures when your life is genuinely threatened.

So, once Hobbs was in the ambulance and on his way to the hospital, once Ruiz’s body was surrounded by CSI techs and after Solomon was emotionally led off with the watch commander from his station, the cap had looked around and ordered all the uniform officers present at the incident to file short reports and then to clock out, before turning to Parker and Klink and saying only four words. “Go home. No arguments.”

They complied, agreeing to be back at the station in eight hours.

Parker rubbed his eyes with his free hand as he wove in and out of early morning traffic, desperate to get home and get as much sleep as possible before he came back.

If he could sleep. That would be the problem.

His therapist had helped him with this, in many ways.

The good news? The incident hadn’t triggered any of his PTSD symptoms, which seemed like a minor miracle, as the event had felt very much like a military situation from beginning to end, and Parker had more than a few sniper moments in both Afghanistan and Iraq when he had served.

The bad news? The very thought of going home to take a nap while a little ten-year-old boy was quite possibly in the hands of a monster seemed not only counterintuitive but counter . . . instinctive. Like he was a bad human being for even thinking of doing such a thing. Then, to make himself feel even worse, he had a horrible thought: the odds were beginning to lean heavily towards the fact that Charlie might already be dead.

Parker sighed. He didn’t want to think of this as a child abduction case.

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