Akker pulled carefully off the highway when we reached the place, the SUV jumping and diving over potholes in a track that wasn’t quite a lane, but not quite a front yard, either. We could see the frame of a house beginning to go up quite a way from the road, the naked wood almost glowing in the light of a full moon. Harder to see was the squat building about a hundred yards to the front and right of the house. It was more like a shed than a cabin, one of those ones you could buy for a couple thousand at a hardware store and have delivered to your site. It was made of dark… something, the moonlight barely reflecting off it.
Akker pulled to a stop a few feet behind a Nissan that was parked beside a tall truck.
“Maybe we should have warned him we were coming.”
“Bad enough we have to wake him in the middle of the night with news like this,” Akker began, killing the SUV’s engine, “but to make him sit and wait for information would be cruel.”
Akker jumped out of the vehicle and marched up to the cabin’s door, once again not waiting to see if I was following. I caught up just as the door was wrenched open, exposing Oliver in all his glory. The man looked so much like his older brother, and he was standing there in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. I had to look away, my thoughts immediately going places I really didn’t want them to go. Not now. Not with this man.
“What’s going on?” Oliver demanded, sounding surprisingly wide awake.
“We need to talk to you about Ox. He’s in trouble.”
Oliver didn’t even hesitate. He stepped back and made room for us to enter. Akker reached over and shoved me forward, making me enter the small building first.
It was surprisingly cozy, this little space. There was a carpet on the floor, handmade shelves and counters in a small area that was clearly used as a kitchen—there was a mini fridge and a hotplate on one of the counters—and a short couch with a small table set in front of it, a television hanging from a brace on the wall beside the door. At the back was a queen-sized mattress sitting up off the floor on a wooden platform. Lying in it was a woman with lots of deep-red hair, her bare shoulders suggesting she was lacking as many clothes as was Oliver. I blushed as I realized we must have interrupted a lover’s tryst. At least she seemed to be sleeping.
Oliver tugged on a pair of jeans and was still pulling on a T-shirt as he made his way to the fridge to grab a can of soda.
“You guys want anything?”
I shook my head out of politeness. I didn’t see how Akker answered because I was still taking in the scene around me.
Oliver sat on the edge of the couch and gestured for us to take whatever seats we could find. Akker pulled over a stool that looked as though it might be used for the girl in the bed to reach a high shelf that ran along one wall in the kitchen area. At a loss for anything else, I sat beside Oliver on the couch.
“Should we maybe go outside?” I suggested, indicating the sleeping woman with a tilt of my head.
“She sleeps like the dead,” Oliver announced, a small smile lighting his eyes when he looked over at her. “Something to do with being a doctor, I suppose.”
I couldn’t help but glance at her again, feeling a little like a voyeur when I did.
“What’s going on with Ox?”
Oliver directed his question to Akker, clearly more comfortable with talking to his co-worker. I understood. Being a cop for so long, I knew that men tended to be more comfortable with one another in tense situations. It was an “old boys’ club” mentality that I’d been fighting my entire career.
“We need to ask a few questions before we explain,” I announced, turning slightly so that I could see Oliver a little better. “Do you mind?”
Oliver glanced at Akker, but then his eyes settled on me. He was a little tense; I could see it in the way his shoulders sat, the fact that the amusement had left his eyes. But he nodded his acquiescence.
“Were you aware Ox was being sued?”
Oliver shrugged. “He told me he was having trouble with some investors, said something vague about needing to use investors to expand the business while I was in jail. He insisted he had it under control, but I knew it was something bigger than that. And Skylar told me he was being sued, but she didn’t know details.”
“He never dropped a name, mentioned who was behind the lawsuit?”
“No.”
“Do you have any ideas who might be involved? Any idea whom he might have asked to invest in the business?”
Oliver began to shake his head, but stopped, an idea making him glance briefly at Akker again. “Our father had all these partners when he first began the place. He gave tiny pieces of the profits to like a dozen of his friends, said it was how a man treats his friends. I remember Ox talking about how he was going to have to revamp all of that sort of stuff when we took over because we didn’t want to have a hundred people trying to tell us how to run the place.”
I wasn’t sure if that information was pertinent, but I saw Akker’s face suddenly light up for a second. He managed to keep his expression indifferent—the man would have made a good cop—but he’d clearly heard something he thought was useful.
“Has Ox said anything else to you about any difficulties he’s been having?”
Oliver shook his head. “Ox keeps stuff close to his chest. I think he’s afraid that, after being in prison, I might freak out over a little bit of stress. Man worries too much!”
“What about your mother?” Akker wanted to know. “Has she been causing trouble recently?”
Oliver shrugged, a dark cloud settling over his features. “She’s still a raging alcoholic, if that’s what you want to know. I’m sure Skylar could tell you more about that than I could, though. She’s the one who fields all of Mom’s phone calls.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?” I asked.
“Just after I got out of jail. She came by to bring me a housewarming gift—a bottle of very expensive brandy. She was so drunk that her driver had to pick her up to get her back in the car.”
“Driver?”
“Ox hired her a driver after…” Oliver tilted his head slightly. “He just didn’t think she should drive anymore.”
“Probably a smart idea,” Akker commented.
I was aware of their mother’s drinking habit, so I didn’t question those comments.
I glanced over at the sleeping woman again, still feeling as though we were interrupting something. I don’t know why I was so bothered by it. When I arrived at a suspect’s house to question him, I never had a problem with interrupting a birthday party or a romantic evening. I guess this time it bothered me because this was Ox’s brother and he looked so much like his brother! It almost felt like I’d caught this man I was beginning to have feelings for in an intimate moment I wasn’t supposed to know about.
It was just weird.
“Could you tell us about the night your father died?” I asked suddenly, blurting it out like it had been on the tip of my tongue since we’d arrived—which, I supposed, it had been.
Oliver looked sharply at me, his eyes narrowing a little as he regarded me. “My father’s death? Why is that important? It happened more than eleven years ago!”
“I’m aware, but it’s important. Can you describe what happened?”
Oliver glanced at Akker. “Is she serious?”
“If you could indulge us,” Akker said, waving his hands.
Oliver shook his head, taking a moment to pop the top of his soda and take a drink. “My father…” He sighed. “I was… I don’t know, fourteen, almost fifteen, the night he died. We were at the house having dinner. Ox came home from college for the evening because Father said he wanted to make an announcement, but he and Mother both got pretty smashed before Ox even got there. They started arguing over dinner, my mother calling my father names about something he wanted to do, something she didn’t like. I don’t know what it was about. They fought so much back then that I’d stopped paying attention.”
He took another
swallow from his soda, holding it between both hands when he was done, studying it like his memories were playing against the soft aluminum. “They went upstairs. Ox and I were doing the dishes. He was telling me how he wanted to get an apartment for his sophomore year at UT, saying he wanted me to come stay with him. Then we heard this noise… Turned out it was Dad rolling down the stairs.”
“He fell down the stairs?”
“Yeah. We ran into the living room, found Mom kneeling beside him, crying. Paramedics came, said it looked like a heart attack. Coroner said the same thing a few days later.”
“He had a heart attack?” Hope suddenly swelled in my chest. “Before or after he fell?”
Oliver shrugged, glancing at Akker again. “It’s kind of like the chicken-and-egg. No one could tell if the fall caused the heart attack or if the heart attack caused the fall. And Mother… she wasn’t much help. She was so drunk she couldn’t remember arguing with him, let alone watching him fall.”
I looked at Akker myself, wondering what Lindsay could have gotten on Ox that would suggest he killed his father. It seemed clear-cut to me. The man died of a heart attack while fighting with his wife. But then… that wasn’t possible, though, was it?
“Your mother wouldn’t…”
I stopped because I couldn’t make myself form the words. I knew parents could be quite cruel. I’d seen it in action when I was a kid. And I’d seen things since becoming a cop that made my family drama seem almost tame. But I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that was trying to form in my head.
“Would your mother lie to the cops about what happened that night?” Akker asked for me. “Could she have told someone that Ox pushed your father?”
“Hell, yeah.” Oliver grunted. “My mother is capable of some very cruel things, especially if she thinks those acts will get her what she wants.”
And then it seemed to dawn on him, why we were asking these questions, why we were dragging him out of bed in the middle of the night.
“Oh, damn!” he cried, slamming down his can of soda and jumping to his feet. “Tell me that’s not what all this is about! Tell me that bitch isn’t going after Ox!”
“I’d guess there’s no love lost there.”
He swung on me, the anger written across his face making me stiffen a little, preparing for a blow that I knew, logically, would never come.
“That fucking woman uses and manipulates everyone around her. She sucks you in with sweet words and then she shoves a knife into you as easy as pie. She made me think that I was the only one who loved her, that I was the only one who could help her, the only reason she had for getting out of bed in the mornings. But then I go to jail and she doesn’t come see me a single time! She doesn’t even write, and she never sends money to my commissary account, never does anything. It’s like she forgot I even existed!”
He threw his can of soda, watching as it bounced off the far side of the building, spraying sticky fluid all over the floor.
“And now she’s after Ox!”
“We need your help, Oliver,” I said as calmly as I could. “There’s been an arrest warrant issued for your brother, but the cop who issued it can be… I’m afraid he isn’t the most honest cop in the precinct.”
“Who is it?”
“Chad Lindsay.”
Oliver nodded, running his hands over the top of his head as though the name not only meant something, but was one he’d learned to dread.
“I know Chad Lindsay. He was the guy who arrested me the night of the accident.”
Akker and I exchanged a glance.
“Really?”
He nodded, lowering his hands so that we could see his face. “Man’s a real piece of work. I had a broken nose from the accident. He thought it was funny to make it worse. He liked to yank on it, twisting it around, thinking it would get me to say things he wanted to hear.”
“Like what?”
“He wanted me to admit I was driving the car. He wanted me to tell him that I saw the other car coming and purposely swerved into their lane. He wanted it clear that I was responsible for what happened.”
“Were you?”
I knew it was a loaded question because the man had gone to prison for the accident, served two years up at Huntsville. But I also knew that Ox had been hanging around the prosecutor’s office, trying to get someone to reverse his conviction since before he pled guilty in the first place. I knew Ox believed his mother was driving and, knowing her history with alcohol, I’d always suspected he was right.
Oliver sat heavily on the edge of the coffee table. “You want the real truth?”
“Yes.”
He glanced over at the sleeping woman in his bed, touching a scar on his forehead, then delivered a deep, heavy sigh. “She called me. She’d been in this bar and she wanted a ride home. When I arrived, it turned out she was more interested in the car I’d driven up there than me. She’d lost track of her own car—left it at another bar or club she’d been at—and hadn’t wanted to call a cab. She snatched the keys out of my hand, promising to pay for any damage she might inflict on my new Cadillac. I hardly had time to get in before she tore out of the parking lot.
“She was swerving. I was arguing with her. I grabbed the wheel but the other car… it was a group of teenagers, some of them drunk, on their way home from prom. The driver was distracted; he didn’t have a seatbelt on because… well, I think his girlfriend might have removed it for him. He came into our lane and my mother was already partially in his lane. It was nearly head on.”
“Did you get out of the car? Did your mother?”
“Of course I got out of the car! Those kids were screaming, crying, begging for their parents. The driver… It wasn’t pretty. And that girl of his… she was hysterical. Someone had to do something.”
“Your mother?”
“She was plastered. She thought it was a game of some sort. She got out and walked right up to that dead boy and poked her finger—”
“I think we get it,” Akker interrupted.
“How did Lindsay end up on the scene?”
Oliver shook his head. “I don’t know. But he was there quick, like he’d been listening to the scanner, waiting for the call. I mean, hell, he was there less than five minutes after the first squad car arrived.”
That made me curious because Lindsay’s role at the police department was thefts and embezzlement and stuff like that. It wasn’t his job to investigate a traffic accident, no matter how much he might want to make it his purview.
“Is it possible someone from the scene called him?”
“Who? All the kids were in shock.”
Yes, but what about your mother…
I didn’t say it aloud because I wasn’t sure I wanted to set Oliver down that train of thought. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go down that line of thought. But if it was what happened that night, it opened a whole new investigative avenue.
“Had you ever met Lindsay before that night?”
Oliver seemed to think about it a moment, his brow furrowing a little. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
I glanced at Akker. I thought I had all the answers to the questions I had at this moment. He seemed to agree. He stood and held out a hand to Oliver. As they shook, he said, “Thank you for your help.”
“Tell me what you’re doing to help Ox. What can I do?”
“We’ve got everyone working on it,” Akker assured him. “Cheryl and Skylar and Brock and Prescott are all at the office going through records and things. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and protect Ox. I promise.”
“I want to help.”
I glanced one last time at the sleeping woman on his bed. “I think you might be better off here for the time being.” I saw him look over at the woman too, a complicated expression of affection and dread on that face that looked so much like Ox’s. “We will protect Ox, even if he doesn’t want us to.”
Oliver nodded. “He can be stubborn when he thinks he’
s doing the right thing. I just wish… Hell!” He smacked one fist into the palm of his other hand. “I wish I’d realized what was going on! Maybe I could have done something before this.”
“It’ll be all right,” Akker assured him. “We’re on it and this is what we do.”
“And I know he appreciates it. At least he will when it’s all resolved. Just… be careful. I’ve met Lindsay, and I know what a scary guy he can be. You don’t want to make him your enemy.”
I thought about that as Akker drove through the city on the way back to Caballo as the sky slowly began to fill with light. I knew what kind of man Lindsay was. At least I thought I did. But what if it was more than what I knew? What if he was more dangerous than I imagined? What if it wasn’t just him?
Thoughts I never thought I would entertain started to flood my mind. I was a cop because as a kid I’d seen evil. And then the police had come, and everything had changed. I wasn’t scared all the time anymore. I wasn’t hurting all the time. The darkness was slowly lifted. I thought that cops were the superheroes of the real world and I desperately wanted to be one. I worked hard, overcame some pretty drastic hurdles to make it. And now that I was here… was it possible that there were some cops in my own precinct who weren’t the superheroes I’d always imagined they were?
I knew, as an adult living in the real world, that being a cop wasn’t always peaches and cream. Some of the things we saw, some of the truly dark things human beings could do to each other, made cops bitter. I knew that. But even jaded, even made bitter, they still adhered to a code that was written on the side of most police cruisers: to serve and protect.
But had Lindsay gone further over that line than I’d ever imagined?
“Cheryl says she has something for us to look at,” Akker announced as he glanced at his phone. “She’s probably got the original investigative report.”
“I probably shouldn’t see it. If anyone finds out what she’s done…”
“But we need what’s in it to proceed.”
“Why don’t you drop me at my car? I should go check in on Ox.”
“He’s somewhere nearby?”
“Close enough.”
Caballo Security Box Set Page 81