The Skin Gods by Richard Montanari Read Free Book Online Page A

door.
     
     
“Yes, honey?”
     
     
“Mommy?”
     
     
Uh-oh, Jessica thought. There was always a Mom/Mommy preamble whenever Sophie was about to ask a tough question. It was the toddler version of the perp-stall— the technique that knuckleheads on the street used when they were trying to cook an answer for the cops. “Yes, sweetie?”
     
     
“When is Daddy coming back?”
     
     
Jessica was right. The question. She felt her heart drop.
     
     
Jessica and Vincent Balzano had been in marriage counseling for almost six weeks and, although they were making progress, and although she missed Vincent terribly, she was not quite ready to allow him back into their lives. He had cheated on her and she was not yet able to forgive him.
     
     
Vincent, a narcotics detective working out of Central detectives division, saw Sophie whenever he wanted, and there wasn’t the bloodletting there had been in those weeks after she’d introduced his clothing to the front lawn via the upstairs bedroom window. Still, the rancor remained. She had come home and discovered him in bed, in their house, with a South Jersey skank named Michelle Brown, a gap-toothed, saddlebag tramp with frosted hair and QVC jewelry. And those were her selling points.
     
     
That was nearly three months ago. Somehow, time was easing Jessica’s anger. Things weren’t great, but they were getting better.
     
     
“Soon, honey,” Jessica said. “Daddy’s coming home soon.”
     
     
“I miss Daddy,” Sophie said. “Awfully.”
     
     
Me, too, Jessica thought. “Time to go, sweetie.”
     
     
“Okay, Mom.”
     
     
Jessica leaned against the wall, smiling. She thought about what a huge, blank canvas her daughter was. Sophie’s new word: awfully. The fish sticks were awfully good. She was awfully tired. It was taking an awfully long time to get to Grandpa’s house. Where did she get it? Jessica looked at the stickers on Sophie’s door, her current menagerie of friends— Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale.
     
     
Jessica’s thoughts of Sophie and Vincent were soon replaced with thoughts about the incident with Trey Tarver, and how close she had come to losing it all. Although she would never admit it to anyone— especially another cop— she had seen that Tec-9 in her nightmares every night since the shooting, had heard the crack of the slug from Trey Tarver’s weapon hitting the bricks above her head in every backfire, every slammed door, every television show gunshot.
     
     
Like all police officers, when Jessica suited up before each tour, she had only one rule, one overriding canon that trumped all others: to come home to her family in one piece. Nothing else mattered. As long as she was on the force, nothing else ever would. Jessica’s motto, like most other cops, was as follows:
     
     
You draw down on me, you lose. Period. If I’m wrong, you can have my badge, my weapon, even my freedom. But you don’t get my life.
     
     
Jessica had been offered counseling but, seeing as it was not mandatory, she declined. Perhaps it was the Italian stubbornness in her. Perhaps it was the Italian female stubbornness in her. Regardless, the truth of the matter— and it scared her a little— was that she was fine with what happened. God help her, she had shot a man, and she was fine with it.
     
     
The good news was that in the ensuing week, the review board had cleared her. It was a clean shoot. Today was her first day back on the street. In the next week or so there would be the preliminary hearing for D’Shante Jackson, but she felt ready. On that day she would have seven thousand angels on her shoulder: every cop in the PPD.
     
     
When Sophie came out of her room, Jessica could see that she had another duty. Sophie was wearing two different-colored socks, six plastic bracelets, her grandmother’s clip-on faux-garnet earrings, and a hot pink hooded sweatshirt, even though the mercury was supposed to reach ninety