Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Six

"One way streets, Little. He's gonna have to go all the way around his fingers to get to his thumb." John put the siren on and turned right. Signal lights came on ahead of them, but they still had to go around drivers who refused to move. "It's a police call. Are you a cop or not?"

Cobblestones growled in their ears and shook their green 2005 Crown Vic as they sped down Virginia Street and under the expressway. Four- to six-story buildings looked down on trendy shops and eateries.

On the riverbank, Vistas on the James's glass-fronted, high-dollar condos rose twelve stories above the floodwall. The building sported a multilevel parking garage and twenty-four hour security in the lobby. Former governor and mayor Douglas Wilder lived in a unit on the sixth floor. It was also home to "The Scudder Residence," "the most spectacular home in Richmond." Strange to be getting an "armed" anything here; it wasn't a place that got a lot of police calls.

The Kanawha Canal fountain twinkled by on the left. John pulled up in the cul-de-sac by the main entrance to the high-rise, snatched up the ignition keys, and jumped out. The entrance door showed him Little's reflection, dragging himself out of the passenger side. John waited a half second, shot Little a scowl, and strode into the lobby.

Polished beige tiles shone up at him. A rainbow of fish and sea plants gleamed in a crystal blue aquarium set into the opposite wall.

A pale, mid-forties woman with a lemon polka-dotted dress, a cinnamon-dyed coif, and a stricken look on her face turned toward him in the lobby. An unarmed guard, a short black woman in uniform, ran in from a side corridor. John flashed them both his badge.

"It's apartment sixteen-twelve, on the river side," said the guard. "There's a struggle over a gun."

"Any idea what's going on?" John flashed a glance at the woman in yellow. "It's Tyler Greenhouse and his daughter," stammered the woman. "Tyler's my neighbor. He had a stroke, and she moved in to take care of him."

Mike sauntered in, missing half of what the woman had just said. She went on. "They don't get along. I hear arguments over there a lot, but—"

"Stay right here. We're going to have more questions for you," John interrupted the older woman. He turned to the security guard. "Take us to the apartment, and then come back down here for our backup officers."

The elevator chimed behind him and the guard hurried past him to the door, which head-butted a plastic trash can tipped over on its side.

John had played basketball at Duke and wasn't a pound over his playing weight, but six flights of stairs were too many for him just now. He picked up the trash can as the security guard punched the sixth floor button. No Little.

"Unit seven-eight-one requesting backup..." Little's voice drifted in. Then footsteps slapped the polished tiles outside; Little pounding in from the lobby. The doors chimed and slid shut. John reached reflexively for the hold button, but stopped. No sense in a potential fatality just because of two minutes' wait. The doors opened again onto a corridor that looked like a posh hotel's.

"This way, Detective." The security guard sprinted off to the left. They swished down a tan, narrow tunnel, footsteps muffled on a plush beige carpet with a filigree design in chocolate. Tall cherry doors flashed past. They turned left again; bluish daylight spilled into the hallway from an open door ahead.

A middle-aged baritone half-shouted, half-whined into the padded silence, "—that bad a parent? I bent over backwards for you kids! If I'm such a problem, just say the word!"