by Dale Mayer
“Your point?”
Kai shook her head and told Joy, “If you haven’t been feeding men lately, honest to God, it’s brutal.”
“Sounds like it,” Joy said, “but I can handle sandwiches.”
“Good enough,” she said.
“And, yes, the guys will be here in another hour or so,” Tyson said.
She looked at him. “Did they find anything?”
He shrugged. “Nothing more than they expected.”
“That’s too bad,” she said. “I know it’s been a pretty rough day for them already, but you would hope that there would be answers at the end of it.”
“There will be,” Kai said solemnly. “The thing is, you’re just not at that day yet.”
*
Johan met up with Galen and said, “So I didn’t see anything. You didn’t either, did you?”
“Nope, outside of that foreman, you didn’t meet anyone else down there.”
“No, I didn’t, and it’s possible it was him, but he was in the office, so justifiably in his own space.”
“Any reason as to why he was there?”
“Came in to get caught up on paperwork,” he said. “My guess is he doesn’t much like being home alone with the wife. She nags at him to retire, and he’s terrified that’s his future.”
“Well, he might not get a choice after this scenario,” Galen said. “It should be interesting to see the fallout from the murder.”
“And no security cameras to say who came in at any time, right?”
“No identity to the one man who came in behind him, if that’s what you’re asking. Visitor pass to one Donald Duck, as we learned earlier, but no sign of his face appearing on any of the cameras because they were down.”
“So were the camera systems down when he got here?”
Galen shook his head. “Not sure. Looks to me like maybe he took them down remotely at some point. Either that or he’s sophisticated enough to edit out his entry and stitch clear time back in without it being detected. Or he knew where the cameras were,” he said, “and mapped out his pathway with minimal exposure, until he could get in here and take down the cameras.”
“Are you ready to go?”
“Nothing more we can do here,” he said. “I’ve downloaded some files that I didn’t understand at first glance, and I don’t have time to look at them here,” Galen said. “So we’ll go through them when we get back to the hotel.”
“We’re going to Joy’s place,” Johan said. “Kai and Tyson are there. Remember?”
“Right,” he said, “we can do it there too then.” He stood, and they quickly locked up everything as it should be and walked out.
“I wish we could figure out if anybody is coming in and accessing this room we’re using as our temporary office here,” Johan said.
“Well, we can certainly set it to see if anybody comes in after us, but you know the police should be doing a full search.”
“Yeah, but I highly doubt they will,” he said. “Not to this extent. It’s a huge building. They’ll do a full sweep and won’t find anybody. At any locked doors, they’ll kick them in, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Probably,” he said. “There are still a lot of places besides that.”
“You’re not kidding. I didn’t realize they had a catwalk in the shipping dock area.”
“I wonder what that’s for,” Galen said.
“Apparently it’s been there since before that foreman’s been here. And it does look like some hoses are up on the top.”
“So then it would be a catwalk for access?”
“Exactly.”
The two men walked out of the building, where a police officer walked over to greet them. As soon as they explained who they were, they were cleared to leave.
He stopped a few feet away from the officer, turned back, and said, “Has anybody else come out?”
The officer shook his head. “No, nobody came by since I’ve been stationed here.”
“Okay,” he said and gave Galen a sharp look as they headed to their vehicle. “So does that mean the guy who came in with Barlow left before us or is he still in the building?”
“Could be either,” he said. “But without bringing in heat-seeking equipment, which they can hardly justify in a situation like this, we won’t know.”
“Well, let’s take a drive around the parking lot to see who and what’s around here, if anything,” Johan said. “You realize it also means the foreman’s still here.”
Frowning, Galen thought about it as he drove and pulled up beside the officer and said, “You know the foreman is still in the shipping area, right?”
The officer frowned, made a note of it, and thanked him.
They pulled around and checked out the other parking lots and found an older midsize truck parked not far from the shipping docks. Johan wrote down the license plate. “I bet if we check that, it’ll be the foreman’s.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. We should check the cameras to see when he came in.”
“You didn’t see him earlier?” Johan asked Galen.
“There was no sign of him coming in, but I think he went through the shipping area. There’s a door to the outside right there.” He pulled the vehicle up on the side so they could see it.
Johan nodded and continued the theory. “So he parks here, uses that door to enter, and it’s just his little secret area. I’ll bet he’s not even been in the rest of the building in the last ten years.”
“I’d agree with you there,” Galen said. “Why would he? When you think about it, if you work in this area, do you have any reason to go anywhere else?”
“Not only no reason but probably no will. Guys like that want nothing to do with management and stick to their own areas.”
After the slow pass around the parking lot, they left with a wave at the officers standing outside on duty and headed back into town. “She’s only a few blocks from here,” Galen said. “I didn’t realize it was that close.”
“Walking distance for sure,” Johan said.
“Well, if she needs to save money, she could park her vehicle, I suppose.”
“But she still needs the car to get groceries, so it’ll save a little on gas but not on insurance.”
After that, they pulled up in front of the apartment and stopped. Both looked around, just to see if they’d been followed or to find anything of interest.
“With Edward stepping in with that compliance request, no one should know that Joy found the missing ketamine, much less reported it to the authorities, right? So do you really think she’s in any danger?” Galen asked, as he slowly hopped out. “Seems to me that, chances are, she’s a minor cog in this wheel.”
“Yeah, but Chelsea got taken out. And was only here three months. With Joy finding something in her first six weeks, that makes her more of a disruption, in my estimation.”
Galen nodded, staring at Johan all the while.
“Plus the stakes just went up now, with the CEO being killed,” Johan said. “So take out the big cheese at the top and then you don’t have to worry about the little guys, or maybe the killer is just working his way down the list, taking them all out who might pose a problem for him.”
“When you’ve already killed one person,” Galen said, “everybody else is that much easier. Now he’s committed. So, if anybody else is on his list, who he feels needs to go in order to give himself a clean sweep, then he’s just getting started.”
Johan nodded and headed up the sidewalk toward the front door of the apartment building. As he stopped and turned around, a large truck came barreling down, turning onto the street. He watched from the stoop right at the entrance as it came past his vehicle and slowed. It didn’t park, but it went on, as if looking for the right apartment. As it drove past, Johan stared directly into the passenger’s face. He frowned, and the vehicle immediately picked up speed and jolted forward.
“Who was that?” Galen asked.
“I�
“I didn’t see a license plate or the driver, but I’ve got a picture of the truck,” Galen said, flicking through his phone. “If somebody works at Westgroup and owns this vehicle, then we would have a connection. But could just as easily have been a friend or family member of someone on staff.”
Johan said, “It’s almost guaranteed the only reason for coming down here is—”
“There could be lots of reasons,” Galen interrupted. “But the prime one, given our circumstances, is to find out if Joy’s living here.”
“Find out if she’s living here and to check out the area.”
“All that’s changed now that we’ve been seen.”
“Not sure about we,” Johan said. “Definitely me though.”
“Maybe we need to move her out of here,” Galen said.
“It’s possible,” he said. “Or we set the place up as a trap.”
“You think they’ll be back?”
“Absolutely,” he said, as he entered the main hallway and headed for the stairs. “That I can guarantee.”
Chapter 11
When a knock came at the door, Tyson hopped up and opened it, getting there just ahead of Joy. She looked at him in surprise as he smiled and said, “It’s safer this way.”
Uncertain, she stepped back as the knock came again. He opened the door. “About time you got here.”
Johan smiled and said, “Right. It’s been a bit of a long day at the office.” His gaze immediately zoomed in on her.
She could feel the same tingling awareness from the minute the door opened to reveal him there. And the fact that he was looking at her the way he was, well, just sent her stomach churning again, not to mention adding heat to the fire that never seemed to go out down below, not since that damn kiss. She’d been kissed a lot; she’d had multiple boyfriends after all, but there’d been just something behind the punch that he’d packed that made her stop in shock. And she’d felt a response that she had never felt before. She was curious and wanted to know where it would go but not under these circumstances. And she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to get hooked up with anybody in Levi’s group. Not that she had anything against them, but she had certainly heard enough about them from Kai that Joy knew these were not guys to fool around with, not guys to expect one-night-stand kind of relationships. All good things, but that didn’t make her feel any better. She wasn’t sure she was at all prepared for this guy.
She smiled at him, but her smile faded when he walked forward, snagged her into his arms, and gave her a big hug.
“Oof,” she managed.
He set her back down again. “Sorry, there’s something very disturbing about seeing your boss on the floor,” he muttered. “All I could think of was it could have been you.”
She hugged him back at that point because she really hadn’t considered that. “It’s hard to imagine that he’s been shot,” she said. “I was just talking to him.”
“And we don’t know what triggered this,” he said, “but you have to stay safe.”
“I’m planning on it,” she said. To keep herself busy and to avoid the awkward moment of separating, she immediately walked into the kitchen and put on coffee. She could hear the others discussing their day, but there wasn’t anything solid, as far as she could tell.
“What now?” she asked when she turned back to face him.
“Dinner,” he said promptly. “We didn’t have any lunch.”
“Ah,” she said nodding. “Are we going out then?”
“Or we can bring in,” he said. “Either way, your choice.”
“Despite my healthy appetite, apparently I don’t eat anywhere near the amount that you guys do,” she said, “so hardly my choice.”
“Good point,” Kai said. She looked at the others. “Are we doing any nighttime activities?”
“Possibly,” Tyson said, “but it’ll be hours yet before the police are done.”
“Oh, wow,” Joy said. “Maybe I missed something in the conversation. What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about doing a thorough search of Barlow’s office and his house,” Johan said.
“Are you allowed to?”
“Technically, no,” he said, “which is why we have to wait for the police to finish first.”
“And, of course, they’ll have taken any forensic evidence they can find.”
“True enough,” Tyson chimed in. “He does have security in his home though,” he said. “I’ve had that on since I hacked into it this morning, and, so far, nobody’s been there.”
“Not even the cops?” Johan asked.
“Not yet, no.”
“Does he live alone?”
“Yes,” Tyson said, “or at least he’s been living alone in recent history. The property is in his name only too. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a girlfriend who comes and goes though.”
“Or a boyfriend,” Kai said. “He broke up with Phyllis for a reason, but we never did hear why, did we?”
“No,” Joy said. “I was wondering about doing some research into the news to see if there was anything back then.”
“Chances are he hushed it up pretty quickly,” Tyson said. “I did do a general search but haven’t come up with anything.”
“Maybe we need to talk to Phyllis again,” Johan said.
“Have you talked to her yet?”
He looked at her, smiled, and nodded. “Just with you there. And when I said we, I meant you.”
She wrinkled up her nose at him. “I’m not sure she’ll want to talk to me after this.”
“Do you think she was still holding a torch for your boss?”
“Like I said, a love-hate relationship. I’m sure there were times when she missed him terribly. But I think there were also times when she hated his guts.”
“And that can lead to all kinds of behavior.”
“True, but I doubt that she killed him.”
“Maybe not. It’s hard to say at this point in time.”
“So, dinner?” Joy looked at the clock. “It’s five o’clock.”
“You want to get out of here for a bit?” Johan asked her.
“I wouldn’t mind, yes,” she said. “But obviously it needs to be good food and lots of it, if we’re going out for nighttime activities,” she said. “And we need to not be too late with dinner.”
“No ‘we’ about it,” he said. “You’re staying here. And we won’t go until after midnight anyway.”
She glared at him. “Why can’t I go?”
“Because,” he said, “it’s not what you do.”
“Maybe it’s what I want to do,” she challenged. But really she had no intention of going into Barlow’s office or his house in the middle of the night, and the last thing she wanted to do was get caught doing such a thing.
He gave her a big but sweet smile. “Frustration can manifest itself in many ways,” he said. “And you’ll have to find another way to release it because you’re not coming with us.” And his word was final.
Her shoulders sagged. She glared at him, her gaze sweeping the three men, who completely ignored her, and Kai just sent her a commiserating look. “Are you going too?”
Kai shook her head. “No, I’m staying here with you.”
Joy nodded. “And Tyson?”
“I’m staying here,” Tyson said.
“Is that because you’re off duty or because you’re on duty looking after me?”
He looked up with a gentle smile. “Because I want to spend time with Kai.”
And Joy’s heart melted a little more. “Okay, you’re forgiven.”
He grinned. “Thanks for the pass.”
Johan glared at her. “So I’m not forgiven when I’m looking into the case that you brought to everybody’s attention?”
She glared at him. “That doesn’t sound fair either.”
“Whatever,” he said. “We do what we feel is right, and this is next on our docket.”
“Fine.”
After that, the discussion turned to dinner. She quickly grabbed her sweater as they swept out of her apartment. She stopped and watched as Johan did something at the door. She looked at him and frowned, a question in her expression.
“Somebody put those bugs in,” he said, “and we’ll want to know if anybody’s been here while we’re out.”
“Okay,” she said, seeing he had just jammed a tiny hair into the door. “What’ll that tell you?”
“It’ll tell me if somebody opened the door,” he explained.
“Can’t it fall accidentally?”
“No,” he said, “it’s wedged in just enough.”
With that, he reached out, cupped her elbow, hooked her arm within his, and said, “I hear you were going to cheat me on a steak earlier.”
“I was not,” she protested, “but I didn’t really think about how much you guys eat.”
“I’m not a big eater,” he said, “but I am somebody who likes to have enough to feel full.”
“Which is why we’re going out for dinner,” she said, “because apparently I can’t judge food that well. Or know that a barbecue grill is required.”
“It’s not a matter of judging food. It’s just making sure there’s lots of it,” he said with a laugh.
At that, she nodded, and, with a final last glance behind her, she headed out to the vehicles. She stopped as she was led to the vehicle that he’d driven. “What if I want to go with Kai?”
“Too bad,” he said, “Galen’s going with Kai.”
“What if I don’t want to spend time with you privately?”
“Don’t you?” he asked, a suspicion of a smile in his voice.
“Maybe not,” she muttered. “You’re way too sure of yourself.”
He’d turned on the engine but stopped and turned to look at her. “Where you’re concerned, I’m not.”
She gave him a quick frown at that. “Why not?” she challenged.
“Not sure,” he said. “That kiss packed a punch I wasn’t expecting.”
“Good,” she said. “It’s only fair that you should have been rattled by it too.”
“Meaning, you were as well?”
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