Page 21 of Unlawful Hearts
They all started piling up.
Bar fight. The woman had a black eye. Claimed it was from a stranger. The officer noted she kept glancing at the man beside her. No charges filed.
Teenager picked up with bruises on her ribs. Said she fell. Officer didn’t press for more information or follow up. Just dropped it..
A woman tried to file three reports. Each one "lost" before it reached intake.
Each folder weighed more than it should’ve.
I made a list. Columns of missed opportunities and failed follow-throughs.
Highlighted names that had surfaced more than once.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with it yet. But doing something felt better than nothing.
I stacked the incident reports into a mess that probably wouldn't make sense to anyone but me, then paused as one file caught my eye.
A domestic battery case from last fall. The victim was nineteen and reported a live-in boyfriend for repeated assaults. The officer on the scene failed to take a statement. No follow-up.
But scribbled at the bottom of the supplemental notes, added days later in shaky handwriting, was a name.
Remi Carter, trauma advocate, present during intake.
I blinked. Flipped to the next one. Different case, similar outcome. Another woman was injured. Another intake was buried in administrative apathy.
Remi’s name again.
Not as a cop. Not as a lawyer. Just… someone who showed up. Who stood beside the women when no one else did. Who spoke up when the victims couldn't.
She’d been there more than once. Holding someone’s hand in the waiting room. Pushing officers for a full statement, making herself an obstacle to neglect.
That quiet resolve of hers, I was starting to see it everywhere.
And Ava was there too, but in different, more subtle ways. Like theyhad decided a long time ago that Remi was the shield and Ava was the quiet constant. One stood in the line of fire while the other kept things going in the background. Which, if I were being honest with myself, interested me. It was like their personalities and demeanours were the opposite of the roles they took in their work... their relationship. Ava was all fire and determination, but she was the steady, constant one who called for help while the steady, calm Remi took the brunt of the hits. In all of my years, I had never met anyone like them, and that both intrigued and terrified me.
A knock came at my office door. Two soft raps, followed by the sound of the handle turning without invitation.
Her perfume caught the air, a mix of vanilla and something bitter. Erin Voss.
She leaned against the doorframe like she owned the place.
“Early start,” she said, stepping inside with two coffees in hand. She set one on my desk in front of me.
I didn’t reach for it.
I didn’t look up. “What do you need?”
“Thought maybe you could use something to cut through the fog,” she added. “Rough couple of weeks.”
“Not sure caffeine’s going to fix that,” I muttered, setting down another file.
She watched me with too much interest. “Still chasing ghosts?”
I didn’t answer.
She nodded toward the spread of folders. “You’re not going to find the answer in the past, Harlan.”
“We failed Sofia a long time before the night she died, Sergeant.”
