Jeremiah’s Revenge

by Sandra Brannan

  “Not drawing attention to himself,” I said. “Smart.”

  Streeter Pierce came into the room, talking with my doctor.

  Laurie continued, “He doesn’t do much. He does his job during the week and watches television at night. He works like a dog on Saturdays leaning on people and is a major couch potato on Sundays. I’ll bet you he does the same thing this weekend. A pretty predictable and routine sort of guy, if you ask me.”

  “You’re probably right,” I agreed.

  The doctor stood by my bed and folded her arms across her chest. She was annoyed at me. I mouthed “one second” and held up a finger. Streeter scowled.

  “If he’s truly retiring in four years, and he’s building a secret nest egg that he doesn’t want anyone to find out about, do you think he’d risk picking up new customers in his operation so late in the game?”

  “No, ma’am. I think he has all he wants for right now.” I tried to keep my words to a minimum.

  “So what about Ridgewood? And your brother?”

  The doctor glared at the clock. Maybe she’d be so pissed she wouldn’t let me go home.

  “I’ll let you know when I see him on Tuesday. I’ll give him a hug for you, Mom.”

  “Mom?” Laurie asked. “Is Streeter there?”

  “Absolutely. Gotta go. Call you back.” I ended the call and glanced up at Streeter and shrugged. “My mother. She wants me to call her after I have dinner with Ole tomorrow night.”

  “You’re not going to Fort Collins tomorrow.” His voice sounded like a lawnmower had discovered a horseshoe.

  “The hell I’m not.”

  The doctor cleared her throat.

  “Doc, can I go home now? Please?”

  She finally smiled. “Everything does appear safe for you to go home. But we’d like you to stay at least until tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow? Why?”

  “We’d prefer to watch you another night, particularly since you haven’t hit the twenty-four-hour mark yet. Concussions can have delayed consequences. We want to make sure you are all right. Plus you indicated on the admission paperwork that you live alone.”

  I exchanged a glance with Streeter, who flashed me a crooked grin. I noticed his eyes were steely and focused. All work. No pleasure. Damn it.

  “So the discharge order will come tomorrow morning during my early rounds.”

  I was not happy. “What about Beulah?”

  The doctor cocked her head, curious.

  “Her bloodhound.” Streeter touched the doctor’s elbow. I envied the woman. “Which I’ll handle. Thank you, doctor.”

  She left, calling back over her shoulder, “You two have a good night.”

  I gathered the blanket around me and slid down under the covers.

  Streeter walked slowly to my bedside, sat on the edge of my bed, and pried my fingers off the blanket. At first, I resisted. Then I figured, what the hell. I let him tug the covers off me, revealing that I was fully dressed, ready to go—shoes and all.

  “Seriously?” he asked. “You thought you could fool us by slipping a hospital gown over your shirt?”

  “Streeter, I—”

  “Don’t ‘Streeter’ me. Now strip. Get back into that gown. And be a good patient. Please.”

  I could hear the guard outside my room laughing, and I pointed to the doorway. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Absolutely. Until we figure out what this is all about. Even when you go home.”

  I leaned into him and whispered, “But can’t you be my protection? Sleep with me?”

  He closed his eyes, bussed my right cheek, and moaned softly. “You know there’s nothing I’d rather do.”

  I sighed, leaned back in my bed, and crossed my arms. “When the doctor releases me, do you mind if the bodyguard escorts me home to gather my things for Fort Collins? Because I’m headed there tomorrow afternoon. I have work to do Wednesday morning.”

  He hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll make it happen.”

  I was surprised by his answer. I thought he’d fight me. But he didn’t.

  Before he left, he dropped a small tube of toothpaste and a real toothbrush on my bed, along with a pack of M&M’s. My hero.

  I stared at my bounty for longer than I realized, when I noticed it was 5:30 and panicked. I punched numbers into my cell.

  “Laurie? Oh good. I thought you’d left.”

  “You said you’d call back. I was waiting.” She was an eight-to-five woman. So her staying this late and being willing to adjust her schedule meant the world to me.

  “Listen, you’re probably right, and you’re the field agent and all. But I was thinking. Maybe Roth’s about to retire, has been really careful up until now, and won’t be adding new accounts. But what if greed gets the best of him?”

  “Could be, Laurie. It would explain Ridgewood. When did the activity in his other three accounts start?”

  I heard more tapping on the keyboard.

  “One account was opened nearly five years ago.” I heard her pause again.

  The guard peeked around the corner again and smiled at me. I covered the phone. “My mother.”

  “Right,” he said, flashing me a thumbs-up.

  “The other two were both opened over the past two years. The activity seems to have leveled off over the last year with consistent monthly deposits of about twelve to thirteen thousand dollars.”

  I whistled again. “Nearly $150,000 a year? We’re in the wrong business.”

  Laurie chuckled. “True.”

  Then something struck me. “That means our boy is going to be a millionaire by the time he retires in four years.”

  Laurie said, “Correction. He would have been a millionaire if he hadn’t been caught. By the way, what did Bert Ridgewood have to pay last Tuesday?”

  “A thousand.” I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my jeans, and removed my shirt. I was leaving my underwear and socks on. Bare feet on floors grossed me out. I folded my clothes and crawled back into bed. My head ached less and less as the day wore on. “And he said Roth comes around every quarter.”

  She let out a thoughtful hum. “So he’s leaning on a dozen or so every quarter? Did I do the math right?”

  I calculated. “A hundred and fifty divided by four is thirty-five to forty-thousand divided by say two thousand a year per operator. Yeah, I’d say he’s squeezing at least twenty to thirty operators.”

  “At least. Can you imagine how those operators must feel?”

  “Outraged, helpless, dirty, used, embarrassed, and ashamed. Out of control and pissed. Yeah, I can imagine. I got an earful. Ridgewood was livid.”

  “So was Matt Juzlig.”

  I looked at the clock. “I’ll call them tonight if I can. How many gave you cell phones?”

  “All of them. Those are the numbers I gave you.”

  “Got it.”

  By 7:30, I had talked to all four of the operators on Laurie’s list. Matt Juzlig felt as violated as any rape victim I’d ever interviewed. The others were equally upset. Roth had threatened to shut all of them down if they didn’t cooperate. On top of that, he’d convinced them he had a lily-white record with the EPA, an impenetrable reputation, and no court in the land would believe low-life polluters over him.

  They believed him.

  He’d wedged those operators’ asses in a sling, and they couldn’t do anything about it. They had to just grin and bear it. And it pissed me off. Not only for the operators as victims, but also that it gave regulators and the EPA a bad name. And I knew how that felt, considering all of us special agents were under scrutiny after what Jenna and Jack had done.

  I understood that there were people who chose to do bad things in every business and that no line of work was above reproach from infestation by cockroaches. But for some reason, this guy had a particular knack for getting under my skin. Maybe because he targeted people in an industry I happened to love.

  I thought of Ole. There was nothing that could keep me from dr
iving up to Fort Collins tomorrow. Not even Streeter.

  I wondered what was wrong with me to be so laser-focused on taking down Dick Roth that I hadn’t even thought about the guy who’d attacked me. Maybe it’s because I knew Streeter would be working on that, and there was no way he’d let the perpetrator get away with what he’d done to me.

  So I left the grey pickup guy to him while I worked on a strategy to make a solid case against Roth. I placed one more call to a detective friend of mine in the Glenwood Springs PD, so that Juzlig had professional help getting evidence on Dick Roth.

  Then I fell asleep dreaming of cuffing the bastard.

  STREETER COULD NOT REMEMBER a time when he was as happy as he’d been over the past few days with Liv.

  She was everything he’d imagined.

  His feelings for her inspired him to work even harder while he looked for the thug who had attacked her. He would find him and make him pay for what he’d done to her. He had all night. She was safe at St. Joe’s with a posted guard.

  He studied the reports from the DMV that had been sent over earlier: the names and addresses of ten individuals. He narrowed the list down to four possible suspects and, addresses in hand, he drove the streets of the greater Denver area, finding the locations and checking them out personally.

  The first house had no car in the driveway. Maybe it was in the garage. He could see an elderly white couple through the front picture window of the house, so he drove toward the next—while he thought of Liv.

  She was warm, caring, witty, and wonderfully genuine. She’d renewed his youth, faith, and love after decades of solitude and loneliness. The past weekend was absolutely perfect. Whether it was their time together at his cabin in Conifer, or several weeknights at Liv’s apartment in Denver, it didn’t matter where they were—they never had enough time to talk. And touch. And learn.

  The fall nights were cool and still, cloudless and full of stars. During the week, they’d enjoyed each other’s company as they prepared meals together, cleaned the dishes, and took Beulah on strolls along city sidewalks.

  Over the weekend, they took easy hikes in the Rocky Mountains. He worried about this time of year, being on the heels of serious rattlesnake season. And he worried about her changing her mind about him—running away after realizing it was far too soon after Jack’s death.

  But she hadn’t, and she appeared to be as happy as he was. He couldn’t help but notice how her happiness painted her in an even more beautiful light than she already was—which he didn’t think possible.

  Liv meant everything to him in a different way than Paula had. It was hard not to compare them, and Paula had meant the world to him, too. Their life together had been brief and preoccupied with achieving goals. Now he’d allowed himself to dream of how his and Liv’s lives could be someday.

  Paula and Liv were very different from each another. But so was he—he’d changed with age. He appreciated precious moments of togetherness and intimacy much more than he had in his younger years—whether they were walking hand in hand or he was gazing into her sea-green eyes that danced with life and understood his thoughts.

  Streeter absolutely, and without hesitation or condition, loved Liv Bergen and had loved her for quite some time. He vowed to never take his time with her for granted.

  He pulled into the second neighborhood and found an old car in the driveway of the house. It was the right license, but the wrong car—not a grey beater, as Liv had called it.

  He drove on through the night.

  Work had not been the same since Liv had kissed him last Monday night. He frequently found his thoughts preoccupied with tender memories of her during their late nights together out on his deck drinking coffee and listening to the orchestra of nocturnal wildlife. He had shared thoughts with her that he’d never uttered to another human being—not even Paula. They hadn’t been apart for a moment since—until she decided to go home last night. He didn’t know why he felt so uncharacteristically comfortable with her. He felt she was safe somehow, and his trust in her was unconditional. He knew she would never repeat his words, and his faith in her allowed him—for the first time in his life—to let down his guard completely.

  He thought about the emotional freedom he felt with her. She hadn’t pried, yet she had an insatiable hunger to know everything about him. He chuckled at the thought of how she managed to pry out of him that he’d never worn a costume as a kid trick-or-treating and how much that idea seemed to bother her—like he’d been cheated somehow out of childhood.

  He, too, hungered to know everything about her. The more she shared with him, the more he needed to hear. Meaningless tidbits, like how her mother sewed all nine of the Bergen kids’ costumes each year and that Liv’s favorite time was when they were all dressed as clowns. Maybe he had missed out on something in his childhood.

  In the short time they’d spent together, he’d realized how perfect they were for one another and how foolish he’d been for not pursuing her sooner. He couldn’t even remember what it was that had made him resist her. It didn’t matter now. They were together.

  He turned right on the street of the third address, and his gaze instantly landed on the F150 grey pickup truck. It was a beater. He cruised past, verified the license, and called in for backup.

  Within fifteen minutes, he and Phil Kelleher were on the front porch knocking on the door.

  The man who opened the door was exactly as Liv described.

  “Julius Chavez?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Streeter flashed his credentials. “Special Agent Pierce. Mind if we come in?”

  “Shit.” He turned his back to them and walked slowly to his recliner. The door was open. His hands were visible.

  Streeter exchanged a glance with Kelleher, and they both followed.

  He scanned the room. There were no pictures on the wall just a single crucifix—Catholic; one recliner, occupied by Chavez; one dirty couch; a TV tray; and a television. It was an old-fashioned one with an antennae with aluminum foil balled up on the rabbit-ear ends. It felt like they’d been dropped back in time.

  “This your parents’ house?” Streeter guessed. “Are they home?”

  “Dead,” he said.

  Streeter sat on the couch. Kelleher chose to stand. He probably didn’t want to get anywhere near that filthy couch, and Streeter couldn’t blame him. He was particular about his suits and germophobic.

  Streeter grabbed the remote from the TV tray and muted the set. “Where were you last night?”

  Chavez bunched his shoulders to his ears. “Nowhere. Turn it back on, man. I’m missing my game.”

  It was preseason Monday night football. He was watching the Broncos pummel the Patriots.

  “Look, it’s getting late.” Streeter hoped his compromising tone didn’t belie his true desire to beat the mess out of this guy. “How about telling us who hired you, and we’ll leave you to your game.”

  Chavez cut a glance toward Streeter. “Hired me to do what?”

  “Follow that woman last night to her apartment.”

  Streeter noticed a tremor in Chavez’s right foot. He was nervous. “Need a smoke to help you remember?”

  The walls had a dingy yellow tint and the odor of permeated smoke seeping from the drywall, indicating several chain smokers had lived here.

  “Maybe. Yeah.” Chavez reached for his pocket. Both agents reached for their guns. Chavez held out his hands in surrender. “Hey man, you offered. I’m just getting a cig from my pocket, okay?”

  Streeter nodded as the guy fished a stick from the box in his breast pocket. He popped it between his lips.

  “Now my lighter.” Hands up in surrender, he pointed to his pants.

  Neither agent removed his hand from the butt of his service weapon. But this time, both nodded.

  Chavez reached into his right front jeans pocket and retrieved a lighter with a white skull etched on the metal frame. He flicked three times before the flame stayed lit and slipp
ed the lighter back in his pocket.

  Both agents slowly released their ready positions. Chavez relaxed with each inhale.

  The tremor in his leg slowed.

  Streeter waited.

  Chavez drained his beer. “Want one?”

  Both agents refused to respond.

  He drew a few more pulls on his cigarette before tapping off ashes. “Your loss. Who is she to you?”

  “A coworker,” Streeter said.

  “He never told me she was a cop.”

  “Not a cop. An agent. FBI.”

  He mumbled a string of curses that were meant for someone else.

  Streeter held his gaze. “Want to tell us who ‘he’ is? Who hired you—so you can get back to your game?”

  “I am so screwed.” He leaned back in his chair, sucked on his cigarette, and lay still for a long time staring at the ceiling. “I’m dead either way.”

  Streeter agreed. No matter what, he wanted to see this guy dead, even if he had to kill Chavez himself. Instead, he asked, “How’s that?”

  “My job was to shadow her. Follow her. Confirm her patterns. Her address.” He sat up and stubbed out his cigarette. “I didn’t know she was with the FBI, so I’m a dead man walking with you two.”

  “And if your boss finds out you killed her?” Streeter noticed Kelleher cut a glance his way, hoped Chavez hadn’t noticed.

  All the color in his face drained. “She’s dead? Not again. Ah, man. I am truly screwed.”

  He slapped his hand over his eyes.

  “Again?”

  The guy lowered his hand, straightened in his chair, and hung his head. “In the ring. I killed a man, but I didn’t mean to. It’s why I hung up my boxing gloves. For good.”

  Streeter glanced over at Kelleher, warning him to stay quiet. “Your boss. How much did he pay you?”

  The man leaned back and appeared defeated. “Five hundred up front and another five when I confirmed.”

  “Last night? Or this morning?” Streeter narrowed the scope of the investigation quickly through his interrogation.

  “Last night. But he never showed.” He shook his head, visibly upset.

  “Tell me about his plan.”