The Baby Cop

“Ms. Grant.” The interruption to Regan’s self-analysis followed a soft knock on her door. A cascade of long black hair appeared first in the narrow opening.

“What is it, Danielle?” Regan shook herself out of her stupor. She dropped her hands from the temples she’d been massaging and grabbed one of the files Detective Knight had tossed on her desk.

At her response, a young woman’s head and shoulders emerged. Bright eyes peered furtively around for a moment before her red lips formed a disappointed pout. Regan could think of no other way to describe the look.

“Nicole told me Ethan Knight was in your office. I’d hoped to catch him before he left. M-Ms. Grant, is everything all right? You don’t look well.”

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” Regan didn’t realize she was crumpling Knight’s carefully typed report in one fist. When Danielle Hargreaves’s gaze drew Regan’s attention to the fact, she quickly dropped the paper and smoothed it out.

“I’m sorry if you had personal business with Officer Knight, Danielle. As you can see, he’s gone. And I really mustn’t take time to chat.”

“It’s Detective Knight, Ms. Grant. And my business with him isn’t personal. I need to give Ethan my sister-in-law’s name and address. She’s been approved to provide foster care for up to three kids. I’ll have my fiancé, Brian, pass the word to Ethan. They work out of the same police unit.” The dark head started to pull back and the door began to close.

“Danielle, wait!” Regan issued a rather sharp call to the newest caseworker in the department. She and Danielle had inadvertently gotten off to a bad start. Now it seemed the young woman blamed Regan because her predecessor had broken the hiring rules. The irregularity had come to light when Nathaniel collected all the employee records to discuss each one with Regan before she took over Anna Murphy’s old position. In actuality, Regan had begged Nathaniel to give her time to evaluate Danielle’s performance, rather than outright fire her. He’d refused.

Unfortunately there was no way to tell Dani that Regan planned to drag her heels about the firing until after Dani had completed her thesis. Regan could scarcely admit to a subordinate that she’d started her tenure by going head-to-head with their boss.

As the weeks went by and the rumors circulated about Regan’s hard-line approach, she’d tried to ignore the talk.

Dani stepped nervously back inside the office. “Yes, Ms. Grant?”

“Please, when we’re one on one, call me Regan.” She smiled, hoping to put the young caseworker at ease. Danielle’s work was exemplary from what Regan had been able to judge by follow-up visits to Dani’s clients. Regan was sure that once she clarified the rules regarding the chain of command in all foster placement cases, Danielle would understand.

Appearing extremely uncomfortable, Dani focused on her watch. “I have a client to visit at four, Ms. Grant. It’s three-forty-five now.”

“It’s Regan, remember? And this won’t take a minute.” She motioned to the chair recently vacated by Ethan Knight. When Danielle remained standing, Regan cleared her throat. “Apparently Detective Knight had some type of arrangement with Mrs. Murphy to circumvent normal placement procedures. As of today, children in need of foster care will go through accepted channels. It’s a universal method of placement used by Family Services in nearly every city in the U.S. Your sister-inlaw’s name will reach our intake office on a computer printout. She, in turn, receives a placement when her name rises to the top of the list.”

“But…but…” Dani’s brow furrowed.

Regan injected a little steel in her voice. “That allows our department to function as a well-organized team, Danielle. It gives the assigned caseworker time to examine a prospective home, as well as evaluate all children in need of placement. A good match ensures a positive experience for both foster child and foster family. Go on to your appointment,” Regan said more gently, making a shooing motion with her hands. “If your sister-in-law is desperate for the monthly stipend allotted to foster families, she shouldn’t have to wait long. Mr. Piggot sent me a memo yesterday indicating that demand for foster families outweighs applicants.”

“Maddy doesn’t care about the money!” Danielle blazed. “She signed up because she cares about kids—and…and as a favor to Ethan. Because he likes to know his abused kids will be going to loving homes. That’s Ethan’s whole intent, Miss Grant. He wants the kids to be more important than the dollars they generate for the foster families.”

Regan’s mouth fell agape. She quickly closed it, then again smoothed the pages of Ethan Knight’s report. Pages fast representing a thorn in Regan’s side. “Surely you understand that our department is a minor part of a massive state operation, which receives federal funding.” Turning, she pulled two fat books from the floor-to-ceiling bookcase behind her desk. “Each and every office is governed by the same rules. Rules established by supervisors who have served countless hours in the placement and entitlement of families in need. Nowhere within these guidelines is there any rule remotely pertaining to what Detective Knight does or does not want.”

Regan noticed that her voice had risen.

“Yes, ma’am. I understand what you’re saying. Um…I really have to go to my appointment, Ms. Gr—Regan. I’m meeting a client at her job. She only has a twenty-minute break and I don’t want her to lose her job on account of me.”

“No, of course not. I’m glad we had this opportunity to talk, Dani. If other caseworkers have sidestepped rules to accommodate Detective Knight, please set them straight. Or better yet, ask them to pay me a visit. As I said in our first group meeting, I have an open-door policy. One that allows us to iron out differences before they become insurmountable.”

Nodding, Dani backed out of the office, quietly closing the door behind her.

Regan stared at Dani’s petite shadow on the frosted glass until it disappeared. She shuffled the Knight reports to the bottom of her stack of current cases, all the while thinking Anna Murphy must have been ill for some time before anyone had ever realized. Otherwise her department wouldn’t have fallen into such disarray. Anna’s name had been practically a byword in the hierarchy of the state Family Services system for as long as Regan could remember. That was a big part of why she’d accepted this assignment. Not that she was having second thoughts now. And yet, Regan did wonder how much had slipped by Anna M.

She tapped the eraser end of a pencil on the pile in which she’d placed the Knight reports. In an earlier examination of the department’s active cases, Regan recalled seeing Ethan’s name on countless records. Maybe she ought to pull them all and have a second look. Regan sighed. What she supposed she should do was pay a visit to every foster home where Knight had placed a child.

“Oh, brother,” she muttered. But it was the only way she’d know for sure that the department was in good shape.

Picking up the phone, Regan called Records and asked to have all the currently active case reports transferred to diskettes. “I want to take them home to study on my laptop,” she informed the clerk.

She sighed again. There were many evenings of work ahead.

ETHAN DRAGGED into his office sometime after midnight. He’d been down at the jail for two hours trying to sort out the legitimate arrests he and Mitch had made from the innocent kids accidentally caught in their raid on the drug dealers’ house. The young kids who were buyers needed help. But no officer on the Desert City police force believed they’d get the right sort of help if they were tossed into juvie. Mitch’s specialty was getting these kids into programs where they’d learn productive ways of spending their free time. Mitch was a whiz at wangling slots in already overloaded boys’ and girls’ clubs and sports centers. That was why Ethan let Mitch go to visit the parents, while he stayed to word their reports in such as way as to put the scum responsible for selling drugs to thirteen-year-olds behind bars for the maximum sentence. Or so he hoped…

Sinking into his swivel chair, he booted up his computer and went into e-mail to retrieve his messages. Using his free hand, he filled Taz’s bowl with kibble. Ethan kept a sack in his desk drawer; it saved taking time to run by his house on days when one shift overran another.

Thirty-four messages. Ethan groaned.

“Damn, damn, dammit all,” he swore roundly. The first two messages informed him that two of the scuzz-balls whose paperwork he’d completed were already out on bail. The next thirty-two were from family and friends telling him Regan Grant had phoned making appointments to visit his network of foster homes.

“It shouldn’t worry me, Taz,” Ethan said, pausing to rub dog’s neck. “All those folks are doing an A-1 job. Everyone Grant’s called, the kids are settled in fine. Better than fine,” he said with satisfaction.

Before Ethan finished his sentence, a dark shadow fell across his computer. He glanced up, giving Taz one last pat. “Hiya, Fitzgerald. Chief demoted you to graveyard? What did you do to piss him off?”

“Manny Garza’s wife went into labor at noon today. His partner and I agreed to split Manny’s shift for the next few days.”

“That’s great. Everything all right with Mary Garza? Isn’t the baby early?” Ethan asked when Brian Fitzgerald looked puzzled.

“Time flies when you’re having fun, Detective,” Brian said around a cockeyed grin. “It’s been nine months since Manny strutted around the office bragging that he was going to be a first-time dad. He told us the minute the rabbit died.”

“What cave have you been living in, Fitzgerald? Rabbits no longer have to kick the bucket. Now they have this innocuous little strip of litmus paper that turns a different color if the lady’s pregnant.”

“Have a lot of experience checking those strips, do you, Knight?”

“The sum total of my experience comes from having six sisters, Fitzgerald, five of whom married. Plus, one of my brothers has a wife. So get outta here. You must have reports to write or something.”

“Always. But I actually stopped in to pass on some information. Dani asked me to tell you that her brother’s wife, Maddy Hargreaves, has been approved to take up to three foster kids.” He dug in his shirt pocket, pulled out a pink message sheet and slid it across the desk to Ethan.

“Good for Maddy. She and Greg have that great old six-bedroom house down in the central area. Their Josh needs to be around other kids. Did Maddy tell Dani what ages she’d prefer?”

Brian shook his head. “Oh, wait. Dani said something about preschool or kindergartners. Her message was a little garbled, what with all the complaints about her ogre of a boss.”

“Regan Grant?” Ethan stopped folding the message and pinned Brian with a wary look.

“One and the same. I hear you’ve met Her Royal Battle-ax. I probably don’t have to tell you that rumors say she’s gunning for Desert City’s favorite shining knight.”

Ethan flushed. If he had to have a nickname, he preferred the Baby Cop. “Word travels,” he murmured. “Guess Mitch shot off his mouth about me tangling with her, huh?”

“You duked it out with Grant?” Brian’s eyes widened. “Wow. Is that why she climbed all over Dani about making sure Maddy’s authorization for foster care goes through the proper channels?”

Ethan shook his head grimly. “Kick me for finding anything attractive about the new supervisor. I’ll take someone with Anna’s lived-in face and big heart over Regan Grant’s angel looks anyday. She’s got a rule book in place of her ticker.”

“She pretty?”

“Who?” Ethan asked idly as he tucked the message into his jeans pocket.

Fitzgerald threw up his hands. “Battle-ax Grant. Who were we just discussing?”