Policed Read online

  Table of Contents

  Policed

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

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  A rogue police officer can ruin a lot more than a perfect evening out.

  When Kennedy Stern and her best friend Reuben drag themselves away from their grueling studies to enjoy a night off campus, getting pulled over by a belligerent cop isn’t in either of their plans.

  When the police altercation turns violent, the media notes Reuben’s dark skin and labels this instance of police brutality a hate crime. Those Kennedy trusts the most warn her not to get involved, but she owes it to Reuben to pursue justice regardless of the personal cost.

  Nothing remains a secret when a frenzied media and an embarrassed police department delve into Kennedy’s and Reuben’s backgrounds. Some truths, unfortunately, grow increasingly more painful the closer they get to the surface.

  Praise for Policed

  by Alana Terry

  “Policed could be taken from the headlines of today’s news.” ~ Meagan Myhren-Bennett, Blooming with Books

  “A provocative story with authentic characters.” ~ Sheila McIntyre, Book Reviewer

  “It is important for Christian novelists to address today’s issues like police misconduct and racism. Too often writers tiptoe around serious issues faced by society.” ~ Wesley Harris, Law Enforcement Veteran

  “Focuses on a prevalent issue in today’s society. Alana pushes the boundaries more than any other Christian writer.” ~ Angie Stormer, Readaholic Zone

  Policed

  a novel by Alana Terry

  Dedicated to the selfless police officers who courageously serve and protect. May the Lord bless you and keep you safe.

  The views of the characters in this novel do not necessarily reflect the views of the author, nor is their behavior necessarily being condoned.

  The characters in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form (electronic, audio, print, film, etc.) without the author’s written consent.

  Policed

  Copyright © 2016 Alana Terry

  First Printing May, 2016

  Cover design by Damonza.

  Scriptures quoted from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  www.alanaterry.com

  “The Lord works righteousness

  and justice for all the oppressed.”

  Psalm 103:6

  CHAPTER 1

  KENNEDY ROLLED DOWN the car window. “How about next time we don’t wait until halfway into the semester to go out. Deal?” When Reuben didn’t respond, she glanced over at him in the passenger seat. “What are you thinking about?”

  His face lit up with his usual bright smile. “Nothing. Just next year.”

  “Almost sophomores. Can you believe it? And we haven’t gone insane yet. Well, at least you haven’t.” She had to laugh. It was embarrassing enough that she went to meet with a campus psychologist once a week. If she couldn’t find at least some humor in her situation, she was in big trouble. In fact, it was Reuben who had encouraged her to take her mental health more seriously, and she was forced to begrudgingly admit something she was doing must be helping. She’d only had two panic attacks all semester. Not too bad considering everything she’d gone through this school year.

  But she didn’t want to think about any of that. Not tonight. It was only Thursday, not even the weekend yet, but she and Reuben had just finished their chemistry midterm and were on their way to the Opera House to see the Elton John musical Aida. They’d been planning for weeks on this date.

  Ok, so maybe not a date. Not a real one. Then again, Reuben had texted her yesterday, said he had something important he wanted to tell her tonight. Said she couldn’t let him back out. Couldn’t let him change his mind and stay silent. She’d lost several hours of sleep trying to figure out what he was about to divulge.

  Maybe that’s why he was quiet this evening. Beneath his cheerful personality, Reuben could be almost as serious as Kennedy. Her roommate Willow was always teasing both of them for being so studious. Always asking when Kennedy would start dating Reuben for real, but of course, Kennedy never had a good enough answer.

  “He’s either stuck in the Victorian era, or he’s gay,” Willow would quip. Kennedy had gotten used to her roommate’s teasing, though. And tonight she wasn’t going to spoil the atmosphere with negativity from anyone or anything. Wasn’t that what her counselor always said? Only let positive energy in, or some psychobabble like that. She figured if seeing the campus quack helped her sit through a calculus lecture without turning into a wheezing, sobbing mess, it was worth the hassle and the time. Besides, as soon as Kennedy mentioned the words post-traumatic stress disorder to her missionary parents, they threatened to fly all the way to Massachusetts from China to help her get connected with the services she needed.

  Or the services everyone else thought she needed.

  It was funny how she was the one who survived a kidnapping and two separate attempts on her life, and everyone assumed she was a big, blaring psychological mess. What about her roommate? What about Willow, who had slept with every single boy in the theater department by now? Who was going to shrink-analyze this karma-fearing, yoga-practicing, granola-crunching pothead roommate from Alaska and tell her all her deviant behavior was the result of early childhood trauma or rubbish like that?

  And what about Reuben? There wasn’t much Kennedy wouldn’t give to gain unbridled access to his psyche, to figure out what caused those quiet, moody spells that sometimes came over him. He hardly talked about his family or upbringing in Kenya unless it was to boast about the birth of his most recent niece or nephew back home. Of course, there were other things she’d want to know too, but they would have to wait until he was ready to tell her.

  Like tonight?

  The two of them had been through so much together since they met at their freshman orientation last fall. Two kids who grew up on different continents, both living oceans away from their families, doing their best to stay afloat in Harvard’s rigorous pre-med program.

  She didn’t know when it happened. Maybe one night when they stayed up late working on calculus at the library. Maybe one day in the student union as they scurried to finish a write-up for chem lab. Maybe during one of Kennedy’s panic attacks, when Reuben’s calm assurance brought her back to reality, helped her recover from the scars and wounds of last semester.

  She didn’t know when it happened, but Kennedy knew she’d found true friendship. Closer than she’d ever experienced before. Nobody could make her laugh like Reuben. Nobody else would argue literature with her like he did. After spending their first semester at Harvard studying calculus and chemistry side by side, they decided to both enroll in a children’s literature course during their spring semester. Together, they had discussed the stereotypic gender roles of the Alden children as they raised themselves in an abandoned boxcar and analyzed The Giver until there wasn’t a single phrase in Lois Lowry’s weirdly dystopian novel that they hadn’t dissected. One day Kennedy realized she’d found more than a best friend.

  She’d found a soul mate.

  She only hoped that whatever secret he was planning to tell her tonight was the same secret she’d kept hidden, even from herself, until recently. A giddy, nervous energy zinged
up her leg. She really should pay more attention to the road. After growing up on the mission field in Yanji, China, Kennedy hadn’t learned to drive until her pastor taught her over Christmas break. She had just gotten her license and still wasn’t used to Cambridge driving, with all its funny rotaries and ridiculously congested streets. That was another reason she and Reuben had chosen to go out on a weeknight. Traffic wouldn’t be so bad. Besides, they were borrowing Willow’s car, and the chances of Kennedy’s roommate staying in on a weekend were about as high as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book getting detention for failing a math test.

  “So, did you finish reading My Side of the Mountain yet?” Reuben asked.

  Kennedy was grateful to hear the usual conversational tone in his voice. “We weren’t going to talk about school, remember.”

  “I thought that only applied to math and science,” he replied. “By the way, how’s your sociology class going?”

  Kennedy didn’t know why she’d done it, but she let her roommate talk her into taking one of Professor Hill’s courses on the American racial divide to fulfill a humanities requirement. On the one hand, it was nice getting to know Willow and a few of her friends better, but the course itself wasn’t at all what she’d been hoping for. After reading the catalog description, she assumed the class would be about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Million Man March. She quickly found out Professor Hill was far more interested in citing every single instance of perceived discrimination that had occurred across the nation in the past three months than delving into America’s segregated history.

  Kennedy shrugged. “It’s all right. I’ve gotten A’s on most of my papers, but I think that’s just because I’ve learned how to write the way she wants and skew everything from the right angle. Actually, the left angle.”

  The pun was lost on Reuben, who spoke English as his second language, but Kennedy didn’t mind. She’d spent the past ten years in southeast China and didn’t understand a decent amount of slang or the majority of pop culture references either, so she could empathize with him. She often felt that she had more in common with Reuben, an exchange student from Kenya, than she did with her American peers. On more than one occasion, she wondered if she would have ever made it through her first year at Harvard if it weren’t for his friendship.

  “What kind of papers do you write for that class?” he asked as Kennedy merged onto Soldier’s Field Road.

  “A lot of fluff, really. Every week, we have to take something that happened to us personally and explain the racism implicit in the event. Like once, do you remember when you forgot your meal card at the student union and you didn’t have any other ID? I wrote that up about how since you’re black, the cashier automatically assumed you weren’t trustworthy and wouldn’t let you give her your student number, blah, blah, blah. Three pages of drivel about the racial injustices implicit in our interactions with the gray-haired lunch lady who knits socks for her grandkids on her breaks.”

  Reuben laughed. “You really said that?”

  She shrugged. “It was for the grade.”

  “Do you believe it?” he asked.

  “No. But it’s what Hill wants to hear, and it’s a pretty easy class, so I won’t complain too much. It’s kind of a joke though. I mean, they take all these cases where people just run into bad luck or something, and they turn every single one of them into an example of racism.”

  “Like the meal card?”

  Kennedy nodded. “Yeah. I mean, if I forget my card and she says I can’t give her my number, I figure she’s having a bad day. Or maybe her boss is telling her to stop doing that anymore. Either way, I don’t assume it’s racism. But if she refuses to let a black student give her the number, all of a sudden she’s a bigot.”

  “So do you think America still has a problem with racism?” he asked.

  Kennedy had asked herself that same question several times in Professor Hill’s class. “Maybe sometimes, but not like it used to. Take Pastor Carl. He and Sandy got married in the South back when blacks and whites hardly ever even dated. They’ve shared some of their stories with me. It wasn’t pretty. But this is a different era. I mean, you look at Carl and all he does, and he’s the last person to point fingers and say some big, burly white man is keeping him down.”

  Kennedy frowned. Had she offended Reuben? Before taking Hill’s class, she wouldn’t have even asked herself that question, but now all the guilt she’d absorbed from being told how anyone with her complexion had inherited an incurably racist constitution, she wasn’t so sure. “I know it can be harder for black people to have some of the same opportunities, especially when we’re talking about kids from inner cities. But my guess is most of that’s related to poverty and education and things like that. It’s a socioeconomic issue, not a racial one.”

  Had she expressed herself correctly? Why did she feel so nervous? If anything, Hill’s class made her feel more uncomfortable talking about race with a black man. Or what was she supposed to call Reuben? She couldn’t say African-American, since he wasn’t a US citizen. Why did it have to be so complicated? She decided to steer the conversation in a new direction. “What about in Kenya? Is there much racism there? Or reverse racism against whites or anything?”

  “Not really. The white people who travel to Kenya are either tourists who come with lots of spending money or missionaries who start up schools or hospitals, so white and black relations are pretty good. There’s still a lot of prejudice between different tribes though.”

  Kennedy kept her mouth shut so she wouldn’t say something ignorant. Up until now, she hadn’t thought about how Kenya’s tribal past would still have implications on its society today. She glanced at the clock on Willow’s dashboard and then saw blue and red flashing lights in her rearview mirror. Some cop was trying to pass. She merged over to the right.

  “What’s he doing?” she mumbled when she saw the police car switch lanes with her. She checked her speedometer. She couldn’t have been speeding. Traffic was too congested. “Is he blinking at me?”

  A familiar, unsettling quiver started in the base of her abdomen. No, she couldn’t give in to anxiety right now. She had made so much progress moving on from the trauma of last semester. She was healthy. Whole. She could see a policeman without giving in to flashbacks of her abduction. She could get pulled over without her mind convincing her she was back in a car chase, fleeing for her life while bullets shattered the windows around her.

  Couldn’t she?

  She slowed Willow’s car down to a stop. The police pulled up directly behind her.

  Great.

  “I wonder what I was doing.”

  Maybe Willow’s registration had expired. It sounded like something her roommate would let happen.

  “What’s taking so long?” Kennedy glanced in the rearview mirror. The policeman still hadn’t gotten out of his car. She turned to Reuben. “I’m really sorry. We might be late. Maybe I should hop out and explain to him we’re in a hurry.”

  Reuben raised his eyebrows. “I think we better stay here.”

  She sighed. This was supposed to be a fun night out together. Well, at least it would be memorable. She wondered what Willow would say when she heard they’d gotten pulled over in her car. She didn’t know anything about traffic laws and write-up procedures. Would the ticket go to her or Willow? Kennedy would find a way to pay it regardless, but she didn’t want it to count against Willow’s record in any way.

  Finally, the policeman sauntered over to them. He had that typical side-to-side gait Kennedy always associated with cops in movies. Mr. Bow Legs. She tried to remember from the police shows she watched with her dad what she was supposed to do now. Keep her hands on the wheel? No, that was only for suspects and criminals. This was just a traffic stop. Kennedy had replayed every move she’d made since she turned onto Arlington. Not a single mistake. It had to be something to do with Willow’s car. She held her eyes shut for a moment. That was so like her roommate. Why couldn’t Willow learn a little
personal responsibility?

  Officer Bow Legs rapped on her window. His hands were massive. Another tremor blasted through Kennedy’s abdomen. She forced herself to take a breath from deep within her belly. While her psychologist was busy probing Kennedy’s past — certain that her missionary-kid upbringing overseas was the real culprit for her PTSD and not the fact that two different men had tried to kill her last semester — Kennedy had found a few websites with practical advice to ward off panic attacks.

  Inhale through the nose. Expand your belly.

  Her three-hundred-buck-a-session shrink would be shocked to learn it could all come down to a few simple breathing techniques.

  Kennedy rolled down the window. Her first inclination was to apologize to the officer, but somewhere in the back of her head, she remembered her dad warning her about assuming culpability. Or was that only if you’d been in an accident?

  The policeman was glaring at her. She did her best to keep her face neutral, reminding herself she had nothing to be scared of. She hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t dark yet, but the cop held up his flashlight and shined it into the cabin of the car. Reuben shielded his eyes.

  “Hands behind your head!” Mr. Bow Legs shouted at him.

  “He was just keeping the light ...”

  “You shut up,” the policeman snapped.

  Kennedy glanced over to Reuben who had interlaced his hands behind his head.

  “Where’s your driver’s license?”

  Kennedy reached for her purse in the center console.

  “Get your hands on the wheel!” Bow Legs barked. How far behind were Willow’s car tags?

  Kennedy hoped he couldn’t see her exasperation. Or was that fear? “I was going to show you my license.”

  “All I asked was where it was.”

  She peeked at the time. She and Reuben had to find a parking spot right next to the Opera House and be at will call in fifteen minutes if they wanted to catch the show. It would be best to comply. Cops had hard jobs. She had seen them risk their lives for her on more than one occasion. Bow Legs was probably extra tense after a long day at work. The least she could do is make this stop as easy as possible.