You'd Have to Ask - 14. Chapter 14

Kelly and Cole

Cole gets to the station with 10 minutes to spare. He spots Kelly in the Ready Room. He sits down beside her and waits for the Sergeant.

Cole checks out Kelly, he notices that she is looking pretty good. “Too good!” he thinks to himself, “I hope this isn’t going to be a problem”

Pretty soon they are out on patrol, Cole tried to get Kelly to drive but she was OK to let him do it.

The first part of the shift goes through with no excitement. The have their lunch at a Restaurant with a couple of other cops.

Back out on the street they hear the radio squawk. It’s a domestic call and Kelly radios in that they are on the way.

Cole arrives at the house silently. Both officers get out and head to the door. They can hear the sounds of yelling and thumping. Cole tries the door handle but it is locked. He bangs loudly to see if someone will open the door. No one answers, he asks Kelly to stand back and he takes a run at the door and hits it with his shoulder. The door flies open.

The man, who had the woman held with one hand and was getting ready to hit her with the other.

“Freeze” Cole yells out as he and Kelly enter the house.

The man pushes the woman away and she flies across the room and hits a wall. The man then turns and starts to come towards Cole. Cole takes his baton out and has it in the ready position. The man gets set to take a swing at Cole, Cole deflect the man’s arm with the baton. Kelly is getting her cuffs out while this is happening and she is also making sure that the woman doesn’t get involved.

Suddenly the woman gets up and starts to come towards Cole and the man. Kelly gets her baton out and blocks the woman’s path. The woman seems intent on striking both Cole and the man.

“Are you going to calm down?” Cole asks the man.

“The fucking slut, she was fucking around on me while I was at work!” the man yells.

“Listen, I want to hear your story, but first we have to get some control in here”, Cole says. “I am going to get my cuffs out and you are going to let me put them on, Ok?”

The man stands there and Cole can see that he is trying to work stuff out in his head. Pretty soon Cole notices that the man has resigned himself to what must come. The man puts his hands out in front of him. Cole quick cuffs one hand and then turns the man around. He asks the man to put his other arm back and then he cuffs it too.

Cole watches to see how Kelly is doing. The woman has not calmed down and appears to still want to strike out. Cole asks the man to stay where he is and he steps over to back up his partner.

The woman turns and starts to run to the kitchen. Kelly gives chase. Cole looks at the man and tells him for his own safety he better not move. Then he is in the kitchen too.
The woman appears to be running to the drawers. Kelly is yelling at her to freeze but the woman doesn’t stop.

Cole knows if the woman gets a knife that this will get ugly. He takes out his pepper spray and yells at the woman. She turns around, startled and the order. She can see the canister in his left hand and she reaches her hands to cover her eyes. Cole looks to Kelly, this is not ideal, but it has to be done.

Cole sprays the woman’s face in a figure eight pattern. The woman starts to scream about her eyes burning. The woman had stop moving now other that to rub her eyes. He checks out Kelly, he can see that the spray has started to affect her too.

“Better cuff her fast Kelly, there is some wash in the car!” Cole says. He can feel his eyes start to sting as well.

Kelly gets the woman cuffed and escorts her out to the living room. Cole sees that the man is still there. He is looking at the woman who is now bawling her eyes out and screaming. They escort both people out of the house.

When they are outside, Cole runs to the car, he radios in for an EMT unit and advises that pepper spray has been used. Cole takes the flush kit from the car and takes it back to the people on the lawn.

Cole attends to Kelly first. He notices, as he is finishing that the woman is still screaming and then she starts yelling about a baby.

“Do you have children?” Cole looks at both of them.

“Yeah, my son, he is five years old. He is in the back bedroom asleep.”

“Asleep my ass” Cole thinks to himself, “You going to be OK Kelly?”

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep my eyes open Cole!” Kelly says in a controlled voice. “But if there is a kid in there, you’d better get him!”

Cole races into the house and heads for the bedrooms, they are to the left of the kitchen.
He opens the only closed door and he sees the boy hiding in the corner holding a teddy bear and a blanket. The boy is crying “Mommy, Mommy, I want my Mommy!”

Cole bends down and picks the boy up. He puts the blanket over the kid’s head and takes him out to the front of the house to join the others. Outside he takes the blanket off the boy’s head.

The boy continues crying, he sees his mommy crying and trying to reach up with her hand to her face, but his mother’s hands won’t come up. He sees that his Dad is trying to bury his face in the shoulder of his shirt.

“What’s the boys name?” Cole asks calmly.

“Danny” the man answers.

“Danny” Cole says, he can see the boy wants to go over and comfort his mother, “I am a Police Officer and I am going to help your mother and father. But in order to do that I need a promise from you.”

“What’s that? Mister”, Danny asks.

“Well I need to give them some medicine that will make their eyes feel better, will you stay here so that I can do that?”

“I want my Mommy!” Danny answers.

Cole sees that this isn’t going to be easy, in order to keep the scene under control he can only do one thing. He takes Danny to the patrol car and puts him in the back seat.

The kid is banging on the windows as Cole goes back to the gathering. He picks up the wash kits and gives one to Kelly.

Cole then heads over to the woman, he asks her to kneel on the ground and Cole helps steady her as she kneels. Once the woman is kneeling, he puts the apparatus over her eyes and starts the wash. The woman calms down after about a minute. She then starts to react to her son banging on the window of the patrol car.

“My baby! My Baby” she starts screaming.

“Please be quiet Mam, your son is safe and no harm is going to come to him.” Cole says.

Kelly goes over to the man and asks him to kneel and then she administers the wash.

As she is finishing, the EMT wagon shows up.

“Well we may as well use them while they are here” Cole says to Kelly.

“We had to use some pepper spray in a confined space.” She tells the EMT, “There appears to be cross contamination. We have administered the wash.”

The EMT’s take over and do their job.
When they are finished Cole says, “My partner was exposed too, you may want to check to make sure she is OK”

Cole helps the man up and leads him to the car as the EMTs tend to Kelly. When he opens the door, Danny comes bounding out. Cole was ready for this and manages to scoop the boy up.

“Please sit in the car Sir” Cole asks.

The man does as he is told. Cole then heads over to the Mother. She is still kneeling on the ground. He lets the boy down and he immediately clings to his mother.

“Do you have a place you can stay tonight?” He asks her. “The pepper spray’s is going to be around for awhile.”

“My Mother lives close by, we can stay there.” She says, “Where are you taking my husband?”

“We are going to take him down to the station.” Cole explains, “Do you wish to press charges?”

“No, no he’s done nothing wrong!” she pleads, “We were just having a fight. Surely everyone’s had one of those. Is there a crime against that?”

“We are just taking him down to the station for the night. You may not wish to press
charges but we did see him push you” Cole explains.

“So he is just going to be there overnight? When can I come and get him?” She asks.

“First thing in the morning” Cole says, he gets his wallet out and gives her his card. “Call this number if you need anything.”

The EMTs pack up their stuff and indicate they are leaving.

“Is it OK to take the cuffs off?” Kelly asks.

“Yeah, I’ll hold Danny to make it easier for you” Cole gently pulls the boy off his mother.

Cole gets his cell phone out and asks the woman to call her mother. Cole and Kelly go in the house. The spray has dissipated a bit.

“We should open some windows to get this stuff out of here.” Kelly says.

“I guess we are going to have to check on this place throughout the night to make sure nothing goes missing.” Cole says.

When they are done Kelly has the woman lock the door. She managed to find the woman’s purse when she was opening windows.

The woman’s Mother arrives. Cole and Kelly watch as the Mother and child get in the car. They can see the boy’s mother start to explain what happened.

Cole and Kelly get in the cruiser. Kelly radio’s in that they are bringing the man to the station.

“We are just taking you in to let you cool down.” Cole tells the man. “Your wife has decided not to press charges.”

“How nice of her” the man says “Fucking slut!”

Kelly tenses, Cole looks to see what she is going to do.

“No need for that now guy.” Cole says firmly.

“She screwed my best friend! How am I supposed to feel?” He says rather loudly.

“Well this is something you and your wife are going to have to work out.” Kelly says, “There are places available that can provide counselling”

“Besides you have to think of your son, Danny” Cole says.

“You’re right. Danny has been such a good kid” the man says, “I grew up in a house where there was a lot of fighting. I promised I was not going to subject my son to it.”

“Well the ball is in your court now” Cole says, “Try and use this time to get back on track.”

“Easier said than done!” The man says, “Fuck what a mess.”

The man tries to control tears. He doesn’t succeed. He buries his head in his lap so the officers don’t see him.

When they get to the station they go through the standard routine and get him in cell.

“You got the names of anybody we can contact?” the man asks, “For counselling?”

“Ask at the front desk before you leave. We have pamphlets from various agencies”, Cole says.

Cole and Kelly head to the front of the station.

“Now the fun part” Cole says.

“What do you mean?” Kelly asks.
“Well because we escalated to batons and OCS, we have to write an incident report,” Cole says.

“Great, we’ll be here for hours!”

“The best is if we do it separately. The we can condense them” Cole says. “The Sergeant will then review it and hopefully that’s it.”

The fill out the paperwork and file it with the Sergeant. When they are finished they head to the car.

“Coffee?” Kelly says, “I’m buying.”

“Sure, I could go for that, gotta calm down anyway.” Cole says.

“You handled that pretty well Cole” Kelly says. She is starting to like the guy. For all of his toughness he is pretty sensitive.

Cole can feel her eyes on him, “Fuck it”, he says to himself.

“You been seeing anyone since your divorce?” He asks.

“Nope, haven’t had the urge” Kelly says, “Its kind of nice being free. How about you, are you seeing anyone?”

“Well I opened the door,” he says to himself, out loud he says “I have been seeing someone for a couple of years”.

“That’s great Cole” Kelly says. She is disappointed. She did some digging around but could not find out for sure whether Cole was attached. He seems to keep his private life pretty quiet. Which is hard in a small town.

They pull up in front of the coffee shop. Kelly radio’s in and then they head in.

“I’m looking forward to my days off”, Cole says “I have to finish the deck before winter sets in.”

“How much have you got done?” Kelly asks.

Cole responds by laughing. “I got the posts in, I did them when I poured the foundation.”

Kelly laughs. “The best laid plans of mice and men!” she says, “What has kept you from finishing the deck?”

“Life” he says. Cole reflects back on the last couple of months. I am probably going to need some help. It may be a good chance to see Lance again. Where has that guy been?
Kelly can see he has wandered off.

“Well we have two shifts left after tonight”, she says. “If you need any help, just let me know”

“Nah, I won’t need any” Cole says, he would rather have Lance there with no one else around. Cole figures he has delayed the talk long enough.

“So what are you up to on your days off?” Cole asks.

“Not much, I may look at real estate or I may head down to Calgary.”

“Buying a house, sounds like you like it here” Cole says with a smile.

“Yeah, I like it. It’s not too big and close enough to Edmonton and Calgary to let me get away.” Kelly says, “That what’s made me leave Peace River”.

“I guess it was hard up there after you and your husband split?” Cole asks.

“Yeah, it was the station was split, most of the guys were his friends so it was kind of hard to work there.” Kelly says “My partner was his best friend so that was really hard.”

“I bet” Cole says.

“Ever spent 12 hours with a person and not talk?” Kelly asks.

“Boy that would be hard.”

“It’s not like I wanted to talk about Rick anyway.” Kelly says sadly “I felt like a pariah.”

“Well we don’t have any problems like that here”, Cole says, “Most of the people get along well”.

Cole’s mind wanders off into the future. If word gets out about me, I’ll probably have the same problems. He recalls his conversation with Kat. Cole thinks about how he will handle it.

The rest of the night passes quietly. They go back to the station for shift change. The Sergeant catches them and says he reviewed the ‘Use of Force’ reports and finds no problems. Cole hopes it the last time he sees the damned thing. There is nothing worse than someone suing the department and having the reports reviewed by lawyers.

Cole says good night to Kelly and heads over to the Fire Station, it is next door. He asks to see when Lance is on shift again. As luck would have it, Lance is there as he is starting a Dayshift.

One of the fire guys goes and gets Lance.

“Hey Cole, long time!” Lance says with a smile.

“Well I could say the same, you do know how a phone works don’t you?” Cole retorts.

“Been busy”, Lance says with a wink.

Cole catches the wink, “Maybe Lance has finally found someone,” he says to himself.

“I came to ask a favour.” Cole says, “I need to get the deck finished before the weather gets bad.”

“And you need a guy that’s used to manual labour to help?” Lance finishes Cole’s sentence.

“Kinda like that, know anyone?”

“As a matter of fact, I think I know of a great guy that could help.” Lance says, “When do you need me?”

“Well I have two more night shifts, how about noon on Thursday?”

“Hey you just happened to pick a day that I can help” Lance says.

“Great, come on over round noon. If I am not up feel free to make a lot of noise” Cole says.

“An offer I can’t refuse!” Lance laughs, “a cop giving me permission to break the law.”

“Well I won’t be on duty so it may be up to another’s discretion, besides the RC’s patrol my neighbourhood.”

“Foiled again, don’t worry I’ll be there at noon and ready to go.” Lance says. “I better get back to work, the A is watching my ass again trying to pin something on me.”

Cole gets the reference to A. It looks like Brent is still up to his tricks.

“Fine, I’ll see you then”, Cole says and heads out the door.