Clancey was horrified at what had happened and sick with fear for little Tad. One of those vicious blows had caught the little boy in the head and he was bawling. She didn’t want to tell the truth, out of fear of what her stepbrother might do, but the doctor on call at the emergency room quickly realized that she was a victim of a brutal assault. He dragged the truth out of her. She told him she was afraid for her baby brother, who’d also been a victim of the attack. The doctor had called the police.
Clancey hadn’t wanted to cause trouble. The policeman, a veteran, did. He drove Clancey to her home after she was treated, questioning her about the incident. He insisted on seeing Tad, who was obviously injured. He said the child would need medical attention and called for an ambulance. Then he promptly arrested Morris, who was staggering and screaming curses at everyone, even a shaken Ben. Half the neighborhood came outdoors when they heard him yelling. Ben had pleaded with Clancey to tell the police Morris didn’t do it, but to no avail. She explained to him that Morris had attacked Tad for interrupting his video game, then he’d beaten her up when she tried to save her little brother.
Ben said Morris would never hurt a child—those bruises were from falling when he’d been playing with Clancey. The policeman said that it was odd that the bruises on the child were shaped like the metal shovel from a fireplace set, wasn’t it? He added that Clancey’s broken ribs were hardly from a fall while playing. He sent Morris off in another squad car and went into the house to question everybody who lived there. Clancey was intimidated by Ben and said as little as possible, but her grandfather was a gold mine of information on Morris’s recent behavior. He added that he thought the boy was on drugs and that he was selling them as well, to afford his expensive video console and the games to go with it. That provoked a violent reply from Ben. The policeman had calmed them both down and continued taking notes. The ambulance arrived then, and Ben climbed in with Tad, already complaining about the expense of it.
The kind policeman had told Clancey it would be all right. They’d lock up Morris and he wouldn’t be a threat to her or Tad again.
She wrote out her version of what had happened and signed it. So did her grandfather. Ben would be required to do the same, later. Her grandfather took her prescriptions to the pharmacy and paid for them out of his own pocket. They both knew that Ben wouldn’t spend a penny on her. She’d turned on Morris.
But Morris was permitted bail while he awaited his trial, which they said could take months. Ben tried to mortgage the house to afford a fancy lawyer for his son, only to be reminded that Dalton Reed was co-owner of the property and until he could be found or declared dead, Ben had no right to sell it. He blamed Clancey for that as well, and he paid no more attention to Tad than was necessary. They’d kept the little boy overnight, to observe him after the mild concussion. Clancey had stayed with him. Her boss, who was then the detective lieutenant at a precinct close to Clancey’s home, Cal Hollister, had gone to the hospital to sit with her. He was one of the kindest men she’d ever known, although she had no romantic feelings for him. A widower, he kept to himself and had nothing to do with women. But he liked Clancey. He was furious about what Morris had done and promised that he was going to speak to Darrell Tarley, the assistant district attorney on the case, and make sure Morris didn’t weasel out of the very serious charges. The fact that Morris had used a weapon in the assaults made it a second-class felony, which carried a penalty, if convicted, that would put Morris away for several years. Clancey felt guilty for hoping the justice system would remove the frightening man from her life, and Tad’s.
For Clancey, it was agony to live in the house, which her late mother had left jointly to Ben and her grandfather. The pressure of her unsettled home life affected her job performance, but Hollister, aware of her problems, protected her. She also had a growing health issue that Ben and Morris ignored. They barely spoke to her.
From high school graduation, she’d worked as a clerk for the San Antonio Police Department. The precinct where Hollister presided over the violent crimes unit was close enough to home that she could walk to work and back. At least Ben did finally understand that Tad was in danger every time Morris was interrupted at his eternal video games. He yelled furiously at the child, who cried even louder. It frightened Clancey that Morris threatened Tad. He wasn’t tolerant of any noise when he was playing. If he lost his progress in the first-person shooting games he favored, he shouted curses at his little half brother. Ben, trying to ward off more trouble for his oldest son, had found a nice elderly lady who worked cheap to take care of Tad in the daytime and keep him quiet.
Morris didn’t have a job, a fact that annoyed Clancey to no end. She worked a six-day week for a paycheck that was not as much as Ben made on his
