that Andy had brought backup, only to discover she wasn’t there. Recognition sank into my consciousness that the cop voice I’d heard yelling at the back of the house had been hers. The woman moves like a cat.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, because good manners are always important, even when about to embark on a foot chase. Darting around the side of the house, I was able to get to the backyard in time to see Andrea disappear through an open back gate. I struck out after her and heard a decided scraping and clacking sound. Looking up the alleyway I could see the departing figure of Paul, the scraping sound I’d heard coming from his cleated soccer boots striking the cracked and broken pavement. By the time they hit the street at the top of the alley, the gap between them was closing. He may have been a fit young teenager, but no one can run down a perp like Andy, adrenaline being one of her essential food groups.
I set out after them at a reasonable pace, knowing it was unlikely I could immediately catch up but figuring what I lacked in short bursts of speed I could make up for in endurance. When I turned the same corner around which I had seen Paul and Andy disappear, the two had begun to run up the grassy hill at the front of a corner house. For a brief moment Paul appeared to gain the upper hand as his soccer cleats found purchase in the wet grass. But as he reached the top of the rise, Andy reached up and forward, grabbing his leg just above her. With a near grace bordering on ballet-like, she pulled the teen’s leg up and over her head, sending Paul like a wet bag of cement onto his torso. I almost thought I could see the air expel from his body as the wind was knocked out of him.
Hitting the damp grass, he began to slide downward. Though she tried clumsily to jump over him as he slid down the hill towards her, Paul’s shoulder caught Andy’s left leg, tripping her and bringing her crashing down on top of my already collapsed student, violently pushing out what little air remained in his already strained lungs. The two of them slid and rolled a few feet before coming to a stop in a muddy mass, Andy’s semi-automatic in hand and pointed ridiculously close to Paul’s face. At the site of the gun barrel at the side of his nose, Paul’s eyes widened in terror, and he appeared to hyperventilate, though I’m sure his breathing had yet to recover from his fall. To his credit, he didn’t lose control of his bladder, for which, having stared down the business end of a firearm myself, I would not have blamed him if he had.
“Andrea!” I yelled.
“I’m fine!” she grumbled back at me as she scrambled atop Paul.
“I don’t care about that. Put your gun away. He’s just a kid, for god’s sake!” In one deft move, she spun Paul over onto his stomach, face down in the slippery, muddy grass. I thought I could just make out muttered, whimpering apologies as he struggled to regain his breath. “Paul, don’t say anything else right now,” I told my prostrate protégé as I trotted up beside them.
“Are you kidding me?” Andy protested. “Are you defending him now?”
“No. I just … I don’t know what I’m doing. Old habits die hard, I guess. Just make sure you inform him of his rights.”
She threw me a scornful look. “Yeah, Counsellor. I’ll Mirandize him.” I knew she was mad because she called me “Counsellor,” a title she generally put out with no small amount of contempt. She also threw in Mirandize, an American term that has no legal bearing in Canada, but, much to the police’s consternation, is often cited by arrestees who have grown up watching television and movies from south of the forty-ninth. It was never difficult to discern when my best friend was displeased with me, especially since it happened with such frequency.
The Vancouver Police Department headquarters is just beneath the Cambie Street Bridge in a facility that opened a few years back as the department grew bigger than its less glamorous Downtown Eastside facility could accommodate. Though it maintained both the new and former VPD locations, along with a small array of “community police stations” perpetually threatened by budget shortfalls, the detective and major crimes divisions were housed in the swankier new digs that many citizens had protested were the Taj Mahal of law enforcement. Coincidentally, my own teachers’ union owned the building immediately adjacent to VPD’s H.Q., just on the opposite side of the intersecting roadway. It too had its vocal opponents, who referred to the office building as the Crystal Palace of educational advocacy. Neither nickname was particularly apt; having had occasion to involuntarily find myself inside both, I could attest that the two facilities were pretty ordinary.
Andrea had dispatched two uniformed patrol officers to pick up Krista Ellory while she changed into some fresh clothes. By the time Krista was ushered into an interview room with her mother, Andrea was looking her professional best: business suit and running shoes, as formal as it gets with her. The two teens were placed in interview rooms separated by the anteroom in which we stood watching through panels of one-way glass. Was there anyone on the planet who didn’t know that big “mirror” in an interview room wasn’t for fixing up your hair? Looking through the window at Krista and her mother, I could not place the face: I had already known by the name she was not one of my students, but her face wasn’t even remotely familiar. I had to assume that she’d had no particular personal vendetta against me and was along for the spray-painting ride with Paul. “So, which one first?” I asked.
“Both the moms are here, and neither wants a lawyer,” Andrea replied, smiling smugly. Kids and parents could waive their immediate right to legal advice, but police couldn’t use any information obtained from a minor without some form of guardian present, the theory being that kids lacked the sound judgment to assess the merits of speaking to the police without legal counsel. As a lawyer I thought anyone — kid or adult — who allowed themselves to be interviewed by the police without counsel lacked sound judgment. “Think I’ll take the girl first.”
“The ‘girl’?”
“Chicks like to talk. She’ll roll faster than he will.”
“That’s quite the sexist presumption. You sure you’re not distantly a Steinem?”
“I work in an old boy’s club.”
“And you’re fighting to change all that with your progressive attitude.”
She raised her arm in a salute as she headed for the door. “Chicks rule,” she proclaimed. “Watch and learn, girlfriend.”
Krista Ellory sat sullenly at the small table in the characterless interview room, the only furnishing beyond the table being five metal folding chairs. If there was remorse in her head for having contributed to the badly misspelled mischief on my doorway, it was well masked. Indeed, she looked as though she was ready to kill.
“Hi, Krista,” Andrea’s voice came sweetly through the intercom on the wall, and if you didn’t know her, it sounded like a teenager’s.
“Who the fuck are you?” Krista asked.
My detective super-hero friend remained calm. “I’m Andrea,” she said, her name ending with a youthful upward inflection that made it sound as if she wasn’t sure of her own identity. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“Like that’ll fucking happen, old woman,” was Krista’s response. I glanced towards the mother. If her daughter’s language was anything out of the ordinary, Mom gave no sign. She also made no attempt to correct her daughter’s behaviour.
“Krista,” Andrea continued in mock disbelief, like Krista had just asked her to do her math homework. “I really want to help you here.”
“Really?” Krista’s face momentarily lit up then instantly turned dark again. “Fuck you!”
Andrea
