by R.A. LaShea
*****
Waiting for the door to open, Beck clamped down on her urge to give Mr. Freese a helping hand when the process of turning the key in the lock proved seemingly perplexing for him.
“You can’t come in.” He turned as soon as he stepped through the door, and Beck stopped just short of running into him. “I’ll get him a Band-Aid. Then, you can leave. I’ve been cooperative, but you have no right to keep hassling me, so you can’t come back without a warrant.”
Amused at his legal stand, Beck wondered if the small-time crook actually had the nerve to feel violated, or if he was just preaching the Fourth Amendment.
“Williams, did you notice the flaking in the basement? That look like asbestos to you?”
“I did notice that.” Beck was relieved to learn Williams wasn’t above a professional bluff.
“Huh uh.” Mr. Freese shook his head. “There ain’t no asbestos in this place. I know, ‘cause I dropped seven grand getting it cleaned out when the Health Department came after me before. Bullshit, I say. Nobody forces people to live here.”
True. Beck assumed poverty did that.
“Wow. You have just had a steady stream of misfortune, haven’t you?” she said. “So, you already have a record with the Health Department. That should make it easy for them to find you.”
“You can’t threaten me,” Mr. Freese said, but, taking a step over the threshold, Beck felt pretty confident she could.
“It’s not a threat. When the Health Department comes here, how many violations do you think they’ll find?”
“At least five,” Williams surprised Beck by answering. “Roaches out in the middle of the day. You have a major infestation, which I trust you’re making no effort to take care of. The pins are missing from both fire extinguishers we passed. Two stairs are cracked beneath the carpet in the stairwell. The amount of garbage in the dumpster downstairs indicates you’re lax about putting the trash out for every pick-up. And black outlines around the fixtures are most likely from mold growing inside the walls. Final tally, I’d guess you’re looking at upwards of thirty thousand to bring this place up to code.”
Impressed as all hell at the rundown, Beck recalled, after a moment, that Williams had kind of given her a heads up their first day together. “He’s a details guy.” She shrugged.
“What do you want?” Mr. Freese realized he was in no position to argue.
“I want you to let us in, and for you to get my partner a bandage,” Beck responded.
Glancing back into the apartment, a frown pinched Mr. Freese’s face like a prune as he backed out of the way. “Fine. But stay here.”
Storming off, he probably held out hope he could grab the bandage and be back before they did any damage, but part of what they needed was in Beck’s immediate line of vision.
“What are we doing in here?” Williams asked.
“Looking for the things missing from Anthony Figueroa’s apartment.” Beck held up the picture of the vic’s place as CSU found it. “His cell phone, his laptop, and those speakers right there.”
Shaking his head, Williams walked into the living room, plucking one speaker off of Mr. Freese’s TV stand. “You would think he would have at least hidden them.”
“What good would they do him in a closet?” Beck said. “Let’s just hope he’s only hidden the rest. Well, would you look at this.” She didn’t even have to go far. Pulling the laptop through the door at the base of the TV stand, Beck recognized it by the sticker affixed on top. “He made it easy for us.”
“Pretty thoughtful for a scumbag,” Williams uttered.
“Hey. You can’t be in there.” Mr. Freese made it back to the room.
“You have stolen goods in plain sight. Probable cause.”
“That’s not stolen. It’s mine.”
“Yeah.” Beck flashed the sticker on the laptop his way. “How was the Grand Canyon when you were there?”
“Amazing,” Mr. Freese said.
“That’s fantastic,” Beck returned as she got to her feet. “It’s also irrelevant, since this sticker is from Joshua Tree.”
Laughter subdued by the ugly reality of the situation, Williams’ cuffs clinked together as he pulled them off his belt. “Mr. Freese, you are under arrest for possession of stolen property.”
“Stolen? He left it.”
“He died, you idiot,” Beck said.
Williams looked so happy getting to cuff the man, Beck almost didn’t want to let it go. They had a far more important target than a petty quasi-thief who couldn’t get stolen goods beyond his own apartment, though.
“Where’s the rest of it?” she asked.
“That’s it,” Mr. Freese said.
“We know there was at least a cell phone.”
“I already sold it,” he uttered.
“To whom?” Williams gave the man a hard tug on his cuffs when he didn’t answer.
“I don’t know,” Freese said. “My cousin hooked me up with a guy. He paid cash. I didn’t ask for a name.”
“Do you want to stay out of jail?” Beck asked.
“Yeah, that would be preferable,” Mr. Freese responded.
“Then, if you know anything that might be useful to us, you’d better tell us now.”
“Like what?”
“Was there anyone else here the night Anthony Figueroa died? Did you see anyone?”
Mr. Freese’s eyes moving right and left, they were swamped with fear as they studied Beck’s. “Yeah, all right?” he uttered. “There was a man.”
“What man?” Williams asked. “What did he look like?”
“White. Black. Latino,” Mr. Freese rattled off. “Whatever you want me to say, I’ll say it. Just tell me what you want.”
Exhaling the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, Beck glanced away. “We want you to tell us what you actually know.”
“I can’t,” Mr. Freese said. “Because I don’t know anything. As far as I know, the dude shot up and it cost him big. I took his stuff, all right? But that’s it. He owed me money.”
Believing him, much to her dismay, Beck shifted her gaze to Williams, letting it be his call. With some reluctance, Williams unlocked the cuffs, apparently realizing, as Beck did, their best option was to hand the items over to Property Crimes when they were finished with them and let them decide what to do next.
“You are an utterly vile human being.” Beck could not, however, miss the opportunity to share her opinion.
“You friends with my ex-wife or somethin’?”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Williams helped Beck gather Mr. Figueroa’s belongings off the floor.
“You think we’re going to find anything in this?” he asked as they dropped the loot into the trunk a few minutes later.
“Probably not,” Beck acknowledged. “But I feel a lot better knowing he doesn’t get to keep it.”
“No kidding,” Williams returned as the trunk slammed closed.
12 - Beck’s Apartment - Thursday, 6:55 p.m.
Day long, and not nearly as enlightening as she would have liked, Beck startled at the voice as she walked through her door, not sure how, over the course of twelve hours, she had managed to forget Leo was there.
“Hey,” she returned as Leo raised a bottle to his lips.
“How was work?”
“It was work,” Beck uttered. Going to the refrigerator, she grabbed a bottle of water from inside, noting the two beers left in a six pack that wasn’t there when she left the apartment that morning.
“Did you get a chance to talk to her?”
Eyes closing on a sigh, Beck realized Leo’s presence in her home wasn’t the only thing she had forgotten.
“Not yet,” she said. “Sorry.”
“You’re going to, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” It occurred to Beck she had made the same promise the night before as she stepped up behind the couch.
Wanting to ask Leo if he thought it was a good i
dea to be tossing back beers when it was what landed him on her couch in the first place as he put the bottle, once again, to his lips, Beck felt like she’d been doing nothing but fighting since she woke up and really didn’t need to work one more into the day.
“I’m going to bed,” she uttered.
“It’s seven o’clock.” Leo glanced back to her. “I thought we could watch the game.”
“It’s been a long day.” Eyes drifting fleetingly to the man coming up to bat on the screen, Beck turned through her bedroom door and closed it behind her.