Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft

by Catherine Nelson

  “How’s the arm?” he asked, glancing at me as he tapped out several keystrokes. “Haven’t seen much of that sling lately.”

  “Better. And I hate the sling.”

  “You’ve brought in quite a few captures, some at decent bounties. I’m sure you can afford to take a couple weeks off.”

  “Geez, Amerson, you sound like Ellmann. I don’t need time off. I’m fine.”

  I was pretty sure I’d get into trouble if I was just supposed to be sitting around at home doing nothing. There was a better than fair chance I’d get into plenty of trouble anyway, but the other way almost guaranteed it.

  He clicked the mouse a couple times then sat back.

  “Okay, forget I mentioned it. I sent your payment.”

  “Thanks. What else do you have?”

  He swung his chair to his left and reached for a stack of files in a tray on the edge of the desk. He fingered through the stack, calling out names, charges, and recovery fees as he came to each one. When I was interested, he handed me a file, and I glanced through it. Most were low-level bonds. The high-dollar cases went directly to the full-time recovery agents or guys with more experience. Those on Amerson’s desk were the ones with smaller recovery fees (or bounties) that had come in within the last twenty-four hours that he would try to assign to agents like me, who took cases as they came. I handed the files back to him, keeping two.

  Martin Fink, forty-seven, with a history of DUIs, had been arrested for driving under the influence and without a license. He’d been released on a ten-thousand-dollar bond and missed his court date two days before. That he’d been eligible for bail at all was a real testament to the fact that our jails and prisons are overcrowded. He’d managed to hold a steady job and had a local address. Chances were good he wouldn’t be hard to bring in.

  The second was Cory Dix, twenty, enrolled in Colorado State University. Dix had been arrested by CSU police after streaking naked through a campus gathering by a Christian organization. After making a nuisance of himself there, he came across a pizza delivery car sitting outside the dorms. The delivery guy was inside, so Dix drove the car back to his house, one block from campus. He and his roommates had eaten most the pizza they’d found in the car by the time the police caught up with him. There was a list of charges, and the bond was for five thousand dollars. There was no job listed, and his parents, who lived in Washington, put up the collateral, but he was a full-time student. I thought I could track him down.

  “I’ll take these two.”

  “I need someone to take this one,” he said, pulling the file off the top of the stack before replacing it in the basket. “Danielle Dillon, felony assault and property destruction, fifteen-thousand-dollar bond. We forfeit in seventy-two hours.”

  I took the file from him and opened it.

  “That’s not much time,” I said. “Why hasn’t she been found yet?”

  “The information listed for her is either out of date or false. The address we have doesn’t match the address on file with the DMV or any address known by the police. I’ve had guys out to all of them and they’ve turned up bupkis. Every phone number I’ve been able to track down for her is disconnected. None of her friends or family is being very helpful. You sort of have a gift for running into people. Maybe you could run into her.”

  “Who secured the bond?” I asked, thumbing through the file.

  “Her grandmother. Put up her house.”

  I looked up. “Grandma is about to lose her house and won’t say where the girl is?”

  Amerson shook his head. “No. I talked to her myself, but I don’t think she knows where the girl is.”

  I closed the file and set it on the other two. “All right, I’ll look into it. But you better have someone else available, because if I can’t find anything, I don’t want to be responsible for losing Sideline fifteen grand or an old woman her house.”

  Amerson turned to the computer and began printing the authorization-to-capture paperwork.

  “No pressure or anything, Grey, but if you can’t find her, no one can.”

  __________

  “How have things been since we last talked?”

  “Fine. No change, really.”

  My therapist and I go way back. The court had ordered therapy for me thirteen years before when I’d shot and killed my father after discovering him attempting to molest my younger brother. He’d also tried to kill me, which was why the police never put me in jail—or juvenile detention, as it would have been.

  For a shrink, Dr. Cheryl Hobbs isn’t so bad. Now forty-five (or thereabouts), Hobbs is a decent woman who tells it to me straight, and even if she can be a moron sometimes, she isn’t totally stupid. She’s about five-five when she stands and is still rail-thin, though she has gained a couple dress sizes in the years I’ve known her. She usually wears her shoulder-length light brown hair layered and down, though today it was up. She has brown eyes and wears square-framed glasses. She was dressed in a brown knee-length pencil skirt and brown striped button-down blouse.

  But no shrink is without his or her own issues, and I’ve long suspected for Hobbs it’s a milder form of OCD. She’s overly particular and detail oriented. A perfectionist, but to an extreme. This hasn’t necessarily affected my therapy, but it is evident. Her hair, done up in a French twist, was absolutely perfect, straight and even, not a single hair out of place. Her glasses never had streaks or smudges, her clothes were never wrinkled or misaligned, her desk and office were tidy to the point of Spartan. She had a thing about coasters, and everything was at right angles. Also, she liked to conduct business in a particular sequence. At various points in our history, I’d made attempts to alter that sequence, and the results had not been favorable.

  She sat now in the same chair she always occupied while I was in the one she always indicated for me. A yellow legal pad was propped on her crossed legs, and she was reviewing notes from past sessions while occasionally making new notes. I was back in the sling, less out of compliance and more out of function. I’d filled an ice pack before leaving the bonds office, and the sling held it in place perfectly.

  “What about the nightmares?”

  “I’ve still got them,” I said, wondering if she thought they’d simply go away.

  “Are you still seeing the same thing? Are you seeing your father?”

  With all the attempts on my life had come incidents of self-defense. Not unexpectedly, I had some post-traumatic stress stuff after killing my father. Not surprisingly, defending my life again several weeks ago had triggered it all. Back on the surface, I was experiencing horrible nightmares.

  Scenes from the recent shootings and the car chase would replay themselves in my head. Somehow my mind had inserted the night my father died into some of those dreams, and I’d see him coming after me in different settings, in place of or in conjunction with my latest would-be killers. I hadn’t really had a good night’s sleep since.

  “Yes.”

  “I know you’d been sleeping alone last time we spoke. Is that still the case?”

  “Yes, for the most part.”

  Because of the dreams, I sometimes woke up screaming or crying or both. Not only did I find this embarrassing and unsettling, but it kept Ellmann from sleeping. I was sure he was sincere when he said he wanted to be there for me, but I thought it unfair for us both to be awake and miserable all night. Plus, we’ve only been dating a short time. I thought it was probably too soon for us to spend every night together.

  “How does Alex feel about this?”

  I shrugged my good shoulder. “I don’t know. I think he gets frustrated with me sometimes, but he understands. I also think a part of him is relieved, because he really wasn’t getting any sleep. He needs to be rested to do his job.”

  “Do you feel like you’re letting him in?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Yes. Why? Is that not coming across?”

  “Has Alex said anything about you being distant, or wanting you to open u
p to him?”

  “Sometimes he says I don’t lean on him, but I don’t think that’s the same as keeping him out. I mean, the only person who knows more about me than Ellmann is Amy. That’s saying something.”

  Amy Wells has been my best friend since before our first birthdays, and we literally grew up together; we are more like sisters. We know everything about each other—all the dark and dirty secrets, of which there are plenty. Amy is the only person on the planet who knows every detail of my life, every skeleton, every sin, and loves me anyway.

  “Ever since you first mentioned Alex, you’ve called him by his last name. Why do you do that? Is that an attempt to distance yourself from him?”

  This was one of those times when I think Hobbs is a moron. Freaking therapists, man, they’re always trying to read into every tiny detail of everything. Sometimes a name is just a name; sometimes it doesn’t mean anything.

  “No. I call him by his last name because everyone else calls him by his last name. A lot of cops are called by their last names. When I met him, it was in a professional capacity, so I called him by his last name. I guess it stuck.”

  “You have a history of keeping people at arm’s length,” she persisted. “You don’t let people in. Why would Alex be any different?”

  I bit back a sigh and turned to stare out the window. Hobbs’s office is on the first floor in an old Victorian-style house off Remington and Elizabeth, a block from campus. Many of the houses in town had been converted to similar office spaces. In this neighborhood, being so close to campus, most houses are occupied by college students. Hobbs’s office window overlooks Remington and the side yard. I watched cars slow for the intersection and bikers and pedestrians flow by in streams.

  Hobbs’s office wasn’t the only one in the house. There was a photographer and another therapist on the first floor, a massage therapist and an acupuncturist on the second. There had been three accountants sharing the bulk of the space on the first floor until last May. They’d made it through tax season then decided to expand. They moved to a bigger space and hired another accountant. A week later, a medical marijuana dispensary moved in. Everyone in the entire house had made a fuss, but the landlord had rented it anyway. Now there was a lot of activity on the property, lots of people stopping by to legally buy dope.

  I was thinking about Hobbs’s question and how to answer it, trying to decide what the answer was, when I saw a familiar face through the window. I sat forward and stared closely for a moment, then I bent and pulled my bag onto my lap, retrieving the files I’d gotten from Amerson. I flipped open the one marked “Martin Fink” and looked at the photo stapled to the inside.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath as I confirmed the man on the street was in fact Fink.

  “Excuse me?” Hobbs said. “What’s going on?”

  I glanced at my watch as I stuffed the files back into my bag. My session wasn’t even halfway over. Through the window, I watched Fink round the corner to the front of the house. I pulled the handcuffs out of my bag before dropping it back to the floor.

  “Uh, I need to use the bathroom,” I said, jumping up. “I’ll be right back.”

  I left the office then walked the hall to the front, where I saw several people passing in and out of the door, Fink among them. The small entry area and front room, which had been converted to a waiting area, was empty aside from those walking to and from the dispensary. Fink was at least fifteen years older than anyone else either coming or going. His brown hair was thinning badly on top, and his midline was expanding, drooping over his belt. He was wearing ill-fitting stonewash jeans, loafers with tassels, and a white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt with pink stripes.

  “Oh, my gosh,” I said, as if surprised to see him, and walked toward him. “Are you Martin Fink?”

  “Yes,” he said, slowing as he looked at me, obviously confused. “Do I know you?”

  I stopped a couple feet in front of him.

  “Not yet. I’m Zoe Grey. I work for your bond company. You missed your court date. I need to take you in to reschedule.”

  He looked at me, considering the sling, then laughed. I should have left it in Hobbs’s office.

  “What, you’re going to arrest me? You’re going to arrest me?”

  “I am,” I said, holding the handcuffs in my right hand for him to see. “Please turn around.”

  “No,” he said, like a spoiled kid. “I won’t.”

  “Please, sir, it’s better if you cooperate.”

  “What are you going to do, make me? You’re a girl, and you’re crippled, too. Go away. Quit bothering me.”

  He turned. Taking the cuffs in my crippled left hand, I reached for him with my right, placing my hand on his shoulder. He reacted immediately. Grunting, he spun around, his right hand in a fist, swinging toward my face. I deflected the blow, stepping out of the way. His momentum carried him forward when he missed his target, and he stumbled. When he righted himself, he charged me, both hands outstretched toward me.

  I grabbed two of his fingers and pushed them back in one of my most trusted moves. He dropped to his knees, crying out in pain. Maintaining the grip, I stepped around him, bringing his hand behind his back. With my left hand, I reached up and pulled the sling over my head, allowing me full use of my crippled arm. I secured the cuffs around both of his wrists then jerked him up. I held him by the back of the shirt as I marched him back down the hall to Hobbs’s office. This would seriously alter Hobbs’s routine. I hoped she could roll with it.

  She turned toward the door when it opened, her eyes wide when she saw Fink. I steered Fink in and sat him down on the sofa then shut the door. I replaced the sling and adjusted the ice as I went back to my chair and sat down. Hobbs looked at me.

  “What’s going on?”

  Fink launched into a very loud rant about his rights and injustice and a bunch of other crap. I cut him off then told him to keep quiet. He didn’t seem as interested in challenging me now as he had been in the waiting room, even if I was just a crippled girl.

  “He’s an FTA,” I explained. “I’ll take him in when our session’s over.”

  Fink recovered before she did.

  “What?” he said with a groan. “You want me t—no. No, no, no. Just take me in! Please!”

  I’ll admit, this was the first time anyone had begged me to take them to jail.

  “Quiet, Fink. I have to pay full price if I leave early. You’re not worth that much money.”

  3

  “I got Fink,” I said to Amerson over the phone.

  He asked and I briefly explained how I happened across Fink.

  “See,” he said. “That’s exactly what we need for Danielle Dillon.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” I sure wasn’t. “Does Dillon have a vehicle registered with the DMV?”

  I was sitting in the truck outside the detention center, Dillon’s file open on my lap, leaning against the steering wheel. I’d read through it, including the notes of those who had already tried locating her. All of her information was useless; it was like starting from scratch. With less than three days to do it.

  “I don’t think so. There should be a note in her file.” I heard the tapping of a keyboard over the line.

  “I don’t see one.”

  “Okay, I’ll find out and call you back.”

  I thanked him and disconnected.

  There were four addresses known to be associated with Dillon, all local. There was also her grandmother’s house, which was about to become Sands and Meeker’s new house if I couldn’t find Dillon in time. No other friends or family were listed. In the spirit of being thorough, I started the truck and motored off to the first address before I hit campus. I didn’t think I’d find Dillon today, but I’d start turning over the rocks on my way to pick up Dix, who I did think I’d find.

  The address was near the country club and on a lake. Technically a reservoir, the lake isn’t big as far as lakes go, but it means the
price tags on the houses in this neighborhood are huge. Born and raised in Fort Collins, I’d never been to this neighborhood or the Country Club. I don’t like golf, but I especially don’t like rich people. I used to run with that crowd, wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes, jewelry, makeup, and perfume, eating and drinking in places with black-tie dress codes. I’d gotten more than my fill then, and I never wanted to go back. I was sort of annoyed Dillon had this address in her file and that I had to check it out.

  There was a large iron gate at the perimeter of the property, which I could see was spacious, and it was standing open. I drove through and parked in the circular drive in front of the door. I picked up the yellow legal pad I use for taking notes while working cases and wrote down the make, model, and license plate number of both cars parked in the driveway. I would do the same with any cars parked in the immediate vicinity as I left, with the intention of running them later. This is a technique that has worked for me in the past, and I never know what will pop up. I didn’t think it’d blow this case wide open, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

  I half expected someone in a uniform to answer the door when I rang the bell, but instead it was a woman in her fifties with ash-blonde hair. She was wearing heels with her trousers and pearls with her blouse. I managed not to roll my eyes.

  “Yes?”

  I handed her a card. She didn’t invite me in, but through the open door I could see the elaborate interior of the enormous house. The furniture was big and expensive, overly ornate, and there was art everywhere. Paintings adorned the walls, but it also appeared this woman or someone else living here had a penchant for sculpture.

  The three-foot sculpture in the entryway behind her appeared to be made of marble and looked very much like what I remembered seeing in history books about the Ancient Romans. The sculpture was a nude woman with curly hair flowing over her shoulders and a garment of some kind pooled at her feet. Whatever it was, I could guess it was expensive. And just like all the other art in the house, it was taking up space and needing to be dusted. I hate rich people.