Witness

by Denise Gwen

  The dealer looked up, saw Kathryn, then quickly looked down. In the next moment, he cut his eyes to the right and jerked his head at the shambling man. The shambling man stopped dead in his tracks, glanced to his right, saw Kathryn, and cut away to the left.

  Heading to the exit.

  “Oh, no,” you don’t,” Kathryn said under her breath.

  The shambling man lunged for the exit, pushed on the door, and emerged into bright sunshine, blinding her as she chased after him. She sprinted after him and easily over-ran him as he hurried for the parking lot. “Hold on there, fella,” she said, grabbing him by the left elbow, “what’s your rush?”

  “The fuck you want?”

  “What’re you doing, walking around the Casino like you own the place?”

  “Free country,” he said, his voice slurring.

  “Empty out your pockets.”

  “Fuck you,” the man snarled. “I don’t get to do nuttin’.”

  “You’re on the premises of this Casino—”

  “I’m outside.”

  “—And I’m entitled to search anyone whom I deem suspicious, and you, fella, are one suspicious looking dude.”

  “You don’t got no right to stop me.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve heard reports about you, handing out envelopes to people, and I wanna know what’s going on here. Are you running a drug ring? What are you up to, Mister? Whatever it is, I do know this. I sure as hell don’t like it.”

  “You ain’t searching me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kathryn grabbed the baton from her hip and pushed it up against the man’s throat. An easy way to stop someone in his tracks; one of the first skills taught her at police officer school, and she watched with a grim satisfaction as the man’s eyes went large, first with anger, then with surprise, then pain. He brought his hands up to his throat and stepped backwards, but Kathryn kept up with him and soon had him pressed up against the outside wall.

  “Good,” Kathryn said. “Now, I’ve got your attention.”

  The man made strangling noises and she knew she’d have to let up the pressure soon, or else the man might pass out, or perhaps even worse, die, if he lost air flow for too much longer.

  She released the pressure of the baton a fraction of an inch and the man gasped for air.

  “Come with me to the office,” Kathryn said evenly. “Understand? No attitude, no nonsense, got it?”

  The man gazed wildly at her.

  “Got it?”

  “Yes,” he rasped.

  “Okay, then. You’re coming with me to the office.”

  The man nodded again, and she brought the baton down from the man’s neck and held it loosely at her side, at the ready, just in case this guy decided to do something clever.

  “Ya didn’t need to choke me.”

  “Oh, really? Listen, punk. No more of your crap.” Jerked her head toward the door. “The office. Now.”

  “Okay,” the guy said sullenly.

  “After you.”

  He stepped past her and walked back to the entrance. She kept a watchful eye on the fellow as they walked back into the Casino and headed toward the office. When they walked past the blackjack table, the man didn’t cut his gaze one way or the other, and the blackjack dealer studiously kept his gaze on the green velvet. The pit boss stepped forward. “Hey, Kathryn. What’s up?”

  The shambling man came to a stop and stood there expectantly as Kathryn drew close to the pit boss. “This man was behaving in a suspicious manner,” Kathryn said, “and when I went to confront him, he became belligerent.”

  The pit boss put his hands on his hips and stared at her.

  She pressed on. “I used my baton to subdue him—”

  At this, the pit boss inhaled with a noisy sucking sound. “Was that entirely necessary?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Kathryn asked.

  His black eyes bored into her. “You heard me.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  The pit boss, Herb Smith, jerked his chin at the shambling man. “Looks like it’s time I made some introductions. Kathryn McGlone here is a new member of our security team. Kathryn, meet Walter Cummins. Walter, meet Kathryn McGlone.”

  Still not quite following the sudden and peculiar change of conversation, Kathryn thrust her hands on her hips. “Mr. Smith,” she said respectfully, “I appreciate the introductions, but I still want to interview this man—this, Mr. Cummins—and find out what he was doing in the Casino.”

  Herb Smith chuckled. “Hopefully, he was spending money at our Casino and gambling, am I right, Walter?”

  “Yeah, Herb,” Walter Cummins said. He stood with his legs wide-apart, fully at easy, comfortable, and in control of himself and his surroundings.

  Which wasn’t something Kathryn could say for herself.

  Kathryn fought back a flash of irritation. “Mr. Smith, you’ll have to excuse me, but right now I need to interview Mr. Cummins.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Herb said, his eyes hard.

  “Um,” she said.

  “Walter Cummins here, is a good friend of the Casino, and he’s essentially allowed a free pass.”

  “Why didn’t anybody tell me this?” she asked.

  “We’re telling you now.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “So now I know. Thanks a bunch.”

  Herb held out his right hand to Walter. “Walter, as ever, it was good to see you.”

  Walter shook hands with Herb, shot her one last, sneering smile, and walked away.

  “Don’t ever compromise me again like that,” she said.

  Herb’s face turned thunderous. He hooked his thumb. “The office, over there.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Let’s talk in private. You need to know something.”

  “Okay,” she said, but inwardly she was a tiny bit frightened. What’d she done?

  Kathryn turned on her heel and walked to the office. Herb stepped ahead of her and unlocked it, opened it, and held it open as Kathryn walked through. He followed her inside and led her down the hallway to the room where suspects were supposed to be interrogated. Kathryn had been shown this room on her first tour of the Casino, and expected fully to walk into this room now, but as Herb stood in front of the door, considering, he apparently reached a sudden internal decision and went to the employee break room instead.

  Kathryn, not liking where this was going, but suddenly not knowing how to deal, followed as Herb walked into the break room.

  “Ladies,” Herb said to two waitresses, “please give us the room, will ya?”

  The ladies took one look at Kathryn, then at Herb, and quickly grabbed their things and left. Herb gestured for Kathryn to sit, but she remained standing.

  Herb put his hands on his hips and studied her.

  “Well?” Kathryn asked.

  “Kathryn, I know you got the official tour of the Casino on your first day here, but I’ll bet nobody told you the real rules of the place.”

  At Herb’s smug face, and not liking it one bit, Kathryn said nothing. She knew the chain of command in a sheriff’s office. The Sheriff was the boss, and his deputies were assigned various ranks and positions. Everyone knew their place. A junior deputy sheriff answered to a captain, of course. A captain answered to a sergeant. And everybody answered to the Sheriff.

  But Kathryn realized with a sudden, hard flash of knowledge, she did not know the chain of command at this Casino, and this was a troubling thing, because she never liked to be caught unaware of what was going on. So where was this going on, and why was a pit boss interfering with a security guard’s work?

  “And I know you’re from Sheriff Randalls’s office, and you’re probably a black-and-white-rules-these-are-the-rules kind of gal, aren’t you?” Herb asked.

  “I like to think everyone is, sir,” Kathryn said evenly.

  Herb did not take offense at this, or rather appeared to take Kathryn’s comment at face value, for he chuckled and shook his head, as if wh
at Kathryn had just said was funny or cute or adorable, like a puppy barking on cue.

  Kathryn started doing a slow burn.

  “Walter’s one of our special guests here,” Herb said.

  “I still wanted to ask him some questions,” Kathryn said.

  A glint formed in Herb’s eye, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, you go ahead and do that. And when you do that, make sure you’ve got your resume all dusted off, cause you’re gonna need it when I toss you out of here on your ass.”

  Kathryn said nothing, but inwardly she was seething.

  22

  Tuesday, April 2, 2:45 p.m.

  Kathryn was watching the CDs the security personnel at Kohl’s had emailed to her, so that she could possibly ID the person they said kept coming to the store in a variety of disguises. This person was a clever thief and had managed to take off with a lot of dollars’ worth of merchandise, and the security people at Kohl’s thought they’d narrowed it down to this one person, and she said she’d look at it and see if this person matched any other perps who were outstanding in the community and known to sell questionable merchandise at the pawn shops.

  She took the videotaped CDs back to her office and manipulated the disks in such a way she could watch four separate angles of the store at the same time, with all four scenes playing in a single box on her computer screen. She fast-forwarded through it. Lots of movement at periods of time, and nothing at other periods, but otherwise nothing strange or untoward.

  Oh hey, what was that?

  A large shadow, someone tall and heavy, loomed just out of the screen’s viewpoint. Hm. This person was standing in the women’s clothing department, but almost out of the range of the security camera. Interesting. Did this person know the range and scope of the security cameras? Was that how this person had succeeded in evading prosecution? She wondered if this person had sidled into the store and quickly disappeared out of the range of the cameras? On an impulse, she checked the camera range for jewelry and accessories, and, sure enough, the shadow hovered there in the dead zone between women’s fashion and accessories.

  Was a store employee stealing from the store?

  The shape snaked down the corridor and disappeared completely.

  “Oh, hey, where’d you go?” She clicked the keys. “Okay, let’s see where you’ve gone to, fella,” she said, clicking the keys.

  The tall, massive person, reached up to the shelf and plucked first one box off the shelf, then the other, and carried them away as easily as carrying two boxes of tissues. This person who removed the boxes was that strong, he carried the boxes easily out of the store and nobody stopped him.

  Clearly, an employee.

  How was someone getting away with walking out of the store with all this merchandise, though?

  She reversed the scene back to the entrance to the store and a shadow of light shone down and she watched closely as the person walked into the store and slid immediately out of view of the cameras.

  There. A face.

  She narrowed in on the image and went into super slow-mo action.

  There. Closer focus.

  The image was still grainy, but she took a snapshot of the face and saved it to a private folder. She’d call in the security people, ask them if they knew of anyone on the payroll with exceptional height who’d managed to disappear on camera.

  A knock at the door.

  She jumped, startled, and quickly paused the images on her laptop.

  Rob Billings poked his head in.

  “Hey, Rob, what’s happening,” she said.

  “Why aren’t you out on patrol?” Rob demanded.

  “Doing some investigative work for Kohl’s,” Kathryn said, quickly shoving her notes into a binder and zipping it closed. She gazed at the screen image on her laptop and heaved a sigh of relief. Once the screen went to the standard shot, nobody could get into her computer without her being present; she alone knew the password to her laptop.

  For her own reasons, she didn’t want Rob nosing around in her computer.

  “What paperwork?” Rob asked with a belligerent frown.

  “I do paperwork, Rob,” Kathryn said. “From time to time.”

  “That’s news to me,” Rob said, and slammed the door shut.

  Kathryn stood up, tucked the binder into her jacket pocket, grabbed her keys, and walked out of the office.

  Time to talk to security at Kohl’s.

  A few minutes later.

  Kathryn met with the security people, told them of her findings, and, when she asked whether they had an employee of exceptional height, they shook their heads with confusion. “No,” Billy said. “Nobody’s taller than me, and I’m five-eleven.”

  “Hm,” she said. “Then who can it be?”

  “You’re doing such good work, Deputy McGlone. You’re really doing your best.”

  “Well, apparently, not good enough, because you all don’t know who’s been stealing from your store.”

  “All the same,” Mary said, nodding at Billy. “You’re putting so much effort into this, and you’ve really helped us to narrow down our issues.”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “We had no idea we had a dead zone in our camera ranges.”

  “We’ll take care of that right away,” Mary promised. “But please keep us posted on your findings.”

  “I will,” Kathryn said, shaking her head with bemusement.

  How come people in the outside world loved her, and nobody in her workplace could stand her?

  A few minutes later.

  As Kathryn drove herself back to the station, dispatch called. She picked up on the first ring.

  “What’s up, Margie?” she asked.

  “You need to get back here, fast,” she said, her voice strained.

  “I’m on my way,” she said, and clicked off.

  When she returned to the station, she walked to dispatch and checked in with Margie. “I met with the security detail at Kohl’s, and I’ve told them of my findings that the thief might even be an employee of the store. It’s someone who knows where the security cameras are pointed, and this person cleverly manages to stand just outside the periphery of the camera.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Margie said absently.

  “What’s up?” Kathryn asked, noticing Margie’s ashen face.

  Without looking at her, Margie said, “They’re waiting for you, Kathryn, in the conference room.”

  Uh oh.

  Kathryn ran a hand across her face. “Oh, boy.”

  In a careful, low voice, Margie said, “A lot of people think something’s wrong with the Coroner’s report. You’re not the first one, Kathryn, but you’re the first one who’s been vocal about it.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Heads are starting to roll,” she said.

  “Margie?”

  “Remember what you told me, the day Miranda Randalls was found dead, what you said to me about the soup he brought?”

  “Yes, I thought something was hinky that day, when he came into the break room.”

  “You mentioned something else to me, do you remember?”

  “Um, what did I say?”

  “Something about a ceramic dish.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right.”

  “Well,” Margie said, rising to her feet and holding her empty coffee cup, “Just keep all that information in mind.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Things are happening around here.”

  Kathryn gulped.

  “You better get in there,” Margie said.

  Kathryn stood there, feeling gut-punched.

  Margie nodded glumly. “I feel like such a goddamned coward, Kathryn, but I need this job. I can’t lose it, so I’ve kept my mouth shut.”

  Fully understanding now what waited for her in the conference room, Kathryn stood up tall, adjusted her gun belt, patted Margie on the arm, and walked down the hallway.

  Thirty minutes later.

  As she walked down the long, narrow h
allway to the Sheriff’s Office, a sensation, a dissonance, a sense of apprehension fell over her and she began to worry. Something was wrong, something was very wrong, and when Rob stepped out of the Sheriff’s Office and slung his hands on his hips, she knew she was in trouble.

  “Hey, Kathryn,” he said.

  “Hey, Rob.”

  The first thing Kathryn noticed as she entered the conference room was the presence of a lot of people she didn’t recognize. For sure, there was the Sheriff, and his second in command, Rob Billings, but as she walked into the office and stood there, she saw two other men sitting at the table, dressed in business suits. Kathryn closed the door behind her and stood at attention.

  The older of the two men rose to his feet and extended his right hand. “Kathryn McGlone,” he said, “I’m Steven Kramig. I’m with the Rowan County Prosecutor’s office, and this is Kevin Schneider, my assistant prosecutor.”

  Kathryn, inwardly trembling now, shook hands and stood there quietly.

  Kramig got straight to it. “We’ve received information that you’ve been tampering with some of the evidence boxes in the evidence lock-up.”

  Kathryn was about to open her mouth to deny it when she suddenly closed her mouth.

  Without any further preamble, Randy pressed a button on the laptop in front of him, turned it around so that it faced Kathryn, and Kathryn watched as a grainy, black and white image appeared on the screen.

  It appeared to be the entrance to the evidence room, with the countertop. Someone, not the clerk Kathryn had been dealing with the other day, stood behind the counter. The person lifted the lid and another person, dressed in a Deputy Sheriff’s uniform, walked through. Then the camera image changed to an aisle in the evidence room. The deputy sheriff, who appeared to be slight and slender, perhaps a woman, walked down the long hallway. An image of a second room, toward the back of the building. In this image, the deputy sheriff walked to the end of the building, turned to her left, and lifted first one evidence box off the high shelf, then another, and hoisted both boxes down the hallway. This time the deputy sheriff faced the camera, and Kathryn saw her face.