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diligence and go get your kid. Sylvester will survive without Officer Maguire patrolling the land on her steel horse for a few hours.”
    I give him a curt not and storm past the locker room and out to the Tahoe.
    Grace answers her phone on the first ring. “Feeb, you better get over here.”
    “What, why?”
    “I couldn’t take Carrie back to the house. I’ve been circling the block for the last--”
    I toss the phone on the seat, pull out my sidearm, check the chamber, reholster it, back out, throw on my lights and sirens, and make for my home like a bat out of hell.
    Since it’s about four blocks, it takes all of two minutes.
    I jam up on the brakes when I see what Grace meant. My house is surrounded by news vans like the one we impounded earlier. They’re set up with broadcast towers on my lawn.
    Rage seethes up my face, burning to my hairline. Yeah. I flip off the lights and siren and roll up slowly. They run up to me and I roll my window down.
    “Get out of my way,” I snarl.
    They just ignore me.
    My chest tightens. I start to feel helpless. I’m surrounded, they’re pressing in from all sides, surrounding the car. I don’t know where Carrie is. Where’s my baby?
    Suddenly, they rush away from me, crossing the neighbor’s lawn.
    Oh, Alexander’s lawn.
    I’ve come to think of it as “the neighbor’s” house, using a generic term since I don’t know the owners. It’s Alexander’s now, until he leaves.
    Great.
    That clears enough of a path for me to pull into my own driveway.
    Grace must have been circling. She pulls up to the end of the driveway. I step out and run to the side of her little Beetle and pull the door open, and scoop Carrie into my arms.
    “Go,” I tell Grace. “I’ll call.”
    She nods and pulls off. I make a direct line for the door. I’m not fast enough. Here they come.
    “Officer Maguire,” they all say, but out of order so it sounds like a gibberish chant. The questions buffet my ears.
    Carrie is a tough kid, a real tough kid. She’s smart, she’s resilient, and she’s level headed.
    When she’s surrounded by strangers pointing cameras in her face, after her aunt panicked and scared her shitless, she starts wailing, and buries her face in my shoulder.
    “Let me through,” I bellow, but my voice is thin and reedy.
    Then the loudest voice I’ve ever heard thunders in my ears. “Everybody, move,” Alexander roars.
    It’s like a freaking dinosaur descended from a flying saucer and started stomping through the crowd. Alexander takes a cameraman in front of me and picks him up, bodily, from the ground and lifts him out of my way.
    “You fucking heard me,” he booms. “Get out of the way!”
    I run for my front door and Alexander keeps pace with me, shoving through the crowd. I put Carrie down, not by choice, and she clings to my leg and wails while I fumble with the door.
    I finally get it open, just as one of the jackasses steps onto my porch. “Broadside, are you and this cop an item?”
    “What?” he snarls. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “She’s not really your type. When did you start seeing each other? After the arrest?”
    “It was a citation!” I shout, “Not an arrest!”
    “Get out of here,” Alexander snarls.
    “I want him arrested for assault!” someone yells. It’s the guy he lifted out of the way. Great.
    “Get in here,” I yell at him.
    “What?”
    “Inside, now.”
    He looks at me for a moment as if he’s about to say something about my tone and then pushes me inside with one big hand on the small of my back.
    My god, it’s like I weigh nothing at all. He’d have as hard a time lifting a doll.
    He slams the door shut and I grab my belt radio. “Bill, it’s me. There’s a freaking riot on my front lawn. Send everybody.”
    It crackles. “What? A riot what?”
    “Just send me some backup! Get them out of my yard!”
    Carrie runs around shutting all the blinds and drapes while I awkwardly stand in my living room with