When the Tiger Kills

by Vanessa Prelatte

  “C'mon, kid. Time to pack it in and call it a night.”

  Jordan looked up, his eyes still bright and alert, which was pretty impressive, considering the hours that he'd put in that day. “Okay, Sergeant. Let me just save this file, then I'm on my way.” His fingers moved expertly over the keys; then he rolled back his chair and stood up.

  “Uh, Sergeant Melbourne? Do you have a moment? There's something I need to talk to you about.”

  Rafe, who had turned away, looked back over his shoulder at the officer. “Can it wait 'til tomorrow? I'm pretty beat.”

  “Uh... tonight would probably be better. It won't take long, Sergeant. I promise.”

  Sighing, Rafe changed direction and led the way into the break room, Jordan close behind him. A refrigerator stood on the wall to the right, with a long counter running down the remaining part of the wall. A coffee maker sat on the counter, along with a small microwave. A water cooler sat in one corner, and at right angles to the far wall, two small blue tables had been shoved together to make one longer table, with five metal chairs surrounding it.

  Pulling out a chair from the table, Rafe said, “How's your grandfather, Jordan? He miss being on the job?”

  “Can't say that he does, sir. He loves retirement. And my grandmother loves the fact that he's able to keep regular hours instead of being liable to be called upon to go out on a case at any hour of the day or night. They're on a trip now – went to visit some relatives in Israel. They just sent me a picture of my grandma putting a prayer slip into one of the cracks in the Wailing Wall. Probably praying for me to find a nice Jewish girl and get married. She's been after me for years to settle down and give her some great-grandchildren.” He paused for a minute, cleared his throat, passed a hand through his wavy black hair nervously.

  Rafe waited a moment, then said, “What's on your mind, Jordan?”

  “Well, sir, you know that I live across town, don't you?”

  Rafe didn't know, but he nodded anyway. “What's that got to do with anything?”

  “Sometimes I see Detective Cimarron in her car when I'm heading home. She lives across town too, you know? Best way to beat the traffic if you're going that way is to take the Boulevard to the East End Bypass and then cut across Kennedy Avenue to Lexington Way. Well, a few times recently, I noticed that this gray car always seemed to be behind her.”

  “What about it?” Rafe said cautiously. “You're behind her on a regular basis too. Probably hundreds of people take that same route home every day.”

  “Yeah, but I don't make it a point to keep her car in sight. This car does. It looked to me like they were tailing her, sir. And there's something about the two guys inside. I just got a feeling, you know? So I ran the tags.”

  Uh-oh, Rafe thought. He waited expectantly.

  “That car, sir, the gray car? It's registered to The Lewellen Group.”

  Now the fat was in the fire. “So you were concerned that maybe her husband or his family are having Detective Cimarron followed?”

  Jordan nodded. “Yes, sir. I don't know Cimarron very well, how things are between her and her husband. But I think she should know that she's being followed. I just don't know how to tell her. So I decided to talk to you instead, ask you how to handle it.”

  Rafe took a moment to contemplate the situation. Then he asked, “Just how much do you know about Detective Cimarron and her husband, Jordan?”

  “What most everyone else around here knows. That Tyrell Lewellen is Sloan Lewellen's son. That he moved back to town a couple of years ago to recuperate from the injuries he sustained in an accident that caused him to take early retirement from the Air Force. That some local yahoos decided that the best way to get rich quick was to kidnap him and hold up his old man for a hefty ransom. But Cimarron stumbled upon the whole set-up by chance while she was off-duty, helped Lewellen to escape, and brought down the kidnappers. They got married not long afterward.”

  Rafe nodded. “What you don't know is how the kidnapping affected Ty Lewellen's parents. Sloan Lewellen handled everything stoically, but Maeve Lewellen – the mother – it practically destroyed her. She was beside herself, hysterical, until it was all over and her son returned safely. And she blamed Sloan for not protecting her son better.“

  Rafe got up out of the chair and poured himself a glass of water before he continued. “Sloan Lewellen has his own security detail; it's been providing protection for him and his family for years. During his son's time in the Air Force, his protection detail was dropped, for obvious reasons. And Ty, who never considered himself to be a prime target for kidnappers, refused to have the protection reinstated after he retired and moved back to Mountpelier. He reasoned that after all those years in the military, he could take care of himself. He's been trained in self defense, and he's proficient with any number of weapons. Unfortunately, he didn't reckon on the fact that none of that would do him any good if he was unconscious. The guys who kidnapped him managed to slip him a drug, and that was that. Next thing he knew, he was bound and locked up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

  Crumpling the paper cup he had been drinking out of and tossing it into the waste paper basket, Rafe continued, “After it was all over, Sloan made sure that his son was once again placed under the protection of Lewellen Security. Detective Cimarron was aware of all of this. What neither she nor her husband realized at first, however, was that Sloan Lewellen had arranged for a team from Lewellen Security to keep her under surveillance as well after her marriage to Ty. Of course, she spotted them almost immediately. Why they thought that a trained cop wouldn't pick up on the fact that she was being followed is beyond me. She was angry, of course, and confronted her father-in-law at once, demanding that he put a stop to it. He just picked up the phone and called Ty's mother. Have you ever met Maeve Lewellen, Jordan?”

  “Can't say that I have, sir.”

  “Well, suffice it to say that she has no equal when it comes to the power of persuasion. The long and short of it is that Cimarron, for her mother-in-law's peace of mind, agreed not to interfere with the arrangements that Sloan had made with Lewellen Security, as long as they keep in the background and are discreet about it. But you understand that she would be embarrassed if anyone else found out, don't you? Her being a cop and all. She'd never live it down.”

  After Jordan had left, Rafe pondered how to handle letting Dawn know that a fellow police officer was on to the fact that she had a security detail assigned to protect her. He was still mulling it over when he pulled into his own driveway. Hitting the remote control for the garage door, he eased his car inside and parked. Then he got out of the car and hit the button to close the garage door before opening the connecting door into the house. Taking his coat off and hanging it up in the hall closet, he wandered back into the kitchen to make himself a whiskey and soda. Carrying his drink back into the living room, he settled down into his recliner with a sigh of satisfaction. He knew from experience that he needed a little winding-down time before he went up to bed. Otherwise, he'd just toss and turn and get more and more frustrated as sleep eluded him. His Uncle Nick had been the same way. More times than he could count, they'd sat right here in this living room, winding down together after a day on the job.

  That practice had ended when he'd met and married Cynthia, however. He'd moved into her apartment after the wedding. That had lasted for a few months, while they went house hunting. After months of searching for just the right place, they'd finally found what they wanted – a split-level, three bedroom house in a brand new development. And they'd been happy there. At first. Until Cynthia decided that she didn't like being married to a cop. Then the quarrels had started, the endless nagging. Why couldn't he get a different job? One with more regular hours, so that they could spend more time together. One that wouldn't constantly screw up their vacation plans. One that would pay better. He could go back to school at night, get into law school. Once he'd graduated and passed the bar, he could open his own practice. With her traini
ng as a legal secretary, she could handle the office side of things. It would be the perfect arrangement.

  No matter how many times he'd told her that he didn't want to leave his job, that he was a cop and wanted to stay a cop, she wouldn't let it alone. Once Cynthia got an idea in her head, not even a stick of dynamite would dislodge it. She wanted to be married to a lawyer. Since Rafe wouldn't oblige her, she'd found someone else – one of the partners at the law firm where she worked, an older man who'd fallen head over heels in love with her. When she had informed Rafe that she wanted a divorce, he'd agreed without much of a fight. Anything to end the constant nagging. He'd moved out, gotten a place of his own, a tiny efficiency apartment not far from work. But then Nick had gotten sick, and he'd moved back into his uncle's house so that he could help out as much as possible. After Nick's death, he'd inherited the house, so he'd simply decided to stay.

  Nick's death had hit him hard, and he knew that Dawn had been similarly affected. Even now, two years after Nick had passed, sometimes he still couldn't believe that his uncle was gone. He wondered how Nick would have handled the cases they were working on right now, how he would have proceeded.

  In the morning, he decided, he and Dawn would go over the case files together with a fine-tooth comb. They'd find the link. They had to.

  Rafe left for work early the next morning and had breakfast at Fredo’s. Not just for the good food, but also with another purpose in mind. There were a couple of guys he needed to have a word with, and he expected them momentarily. Sure enough, a few minutes later, they walked in. Their real names were Hal and Morgan, but Dawn, a fan of Dr. Seuss, always referred to them as Thing One and Thing Two.

  They saw him sitting there and were about to pass him with a nod when he said, “Gentlemen. A word with you?”

  He stood up and led the way into the private dining room. One of the reasons Sloan had invested in and expanded the restaurant was for purely practical reasons: the office above the private dining room gave the security team assigned to Dawn a convenient place to watch police headquarters while Dawn was inside. By watching from the office window, they could easily determine when Dawn left the building and pick up her tail again. At first, Dawn had deliberately given them the slip, but after her conversation with Maeve, she simply ignored the two of them and let them go about their job.

  Entering the private dining room, Rafe pulled out a chair at the table, sat down, and without preamble said: “You got spotted.”

  The two exchanged a glance, and then Hal asked, “Who?”

  “One of the patrol officers who generally goes home by the same route as Detective Cimarron. You were too obvious, and he got suspicious, called in the plates, figured out you were Lewellen Security. Fortunately, he decided to come to me with the information before taking it any further. I explained the situation to him, and he's promised to keep it quiet.”

  “Will he keep his promise?”

  “Yeah. He wants to make detective. The last thing he needs is to piss off two Homicide detectives by embarrassing them. He's too smart for that. Better for him to keep his mouth shut. That way he'll have two friends up the ladder who owe him one.”

  “Have you notified Detective Cimarron?”

  “Not yet. I'll have to, though – eventually.”

  Hal looked at his partner and said, “We'll have to notify Mr. Lewellen.”

  “Is that absolutely necessary?” Morgan replied.

  “If you want to keep your job, it is. I've worked for Sloan Lewellen longer than you have. The best way to get yourself fired is by trying to hide something from him.”

  He held his partner's eyes for a moment, then turned back to Rafe. “It won't happen again.”

  Morgan obviously wasn't happy. “How are you going to promise that? We don't keep her in sight, and something happens to her, Mr. Lewellen won't just fire us – he'll have our heads. It's different when she's on the job – she's usually with him” - he nodded in Rafe's direction - “but when she's on her way home at night, she's all alone. And don't tell me that being a cop is enough to protect her. Out of all the professions, cops have one of the highest mortality rates. We were hired to protect her. We can't do it with our hands tied behind our backs.”

  “He's right about one thing. If someone is going to target Detective Cimarron, they're more likely to do it when she's alone, on her way to or from work. And we can't assist her if we aren't close by,” Hal commented to Rafe.

  “I've been thinking about that,” Rafe replied. "Maybe I can convince her to install a Sergeant in the Trunk.”

  Morgan looked puzzled, but Hal, who had been a cop for twenty years before going into the private sector, understood the lingo immediately. “A GPS tracking device? That would help. We'd know where she was without having to keep her in sight. We could get in front of her more often than not. That would mix things up a little. You actually think you can convince her to let us put a tracking device in her car?”

  “Once I let her know that another cop has spotted you, she might be more open to the suggestion. The last thing she wants is for anyone to know that she has a private security detail following her.”

  Hal nodded. “Let us know what she decides. In the meantime, we'll do our best to be discreet. However, protecting the subject's life is our main priority – not her reputation.”

  “Understood.” Rafe finished his coffee and set his cup down. “I'll be in touch.”

  Dawn took the news that Jordan had spotted the Lewellen Security team assigned to her more philosophically than Rafe had expected. With a shrug of her shoulders, she said, “Someone was bound to catch on sooner or later; I told Sloan that. At least it was someone you're sure can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. And I've got enough on my mind right now to spend too much time thinking about it. Take a look at this.” Tapping her finger on a photograph of the campsite in the Crystal Rogar case, she placed it side by side with a photo that Walsh had taken of the evidence he’d found at the place where Will Preisinger had gone over the cliff. “You see it?”

  At first he didn't, but then he got it. “The beer bottles. It's the same brand at both scenes.”

  “Yeah, and it's not the most common brand, either. I looked it up. It's produced at a small, local brewery in Black Line, Vermont.”

  “Never heard of it before.”

  “Neither had I. It's not sold nationally. I checked. So do you buy that it's just a coincidence that bottles of Black Line beer happened to turn up at two different crime scenes in states as far away as Alaska and Colorado?”

  Rafe grinned. “Nope. No way.”

  Dawn grinned back at him. “Now we get to the good part. Do you know where our first possible victim, Alissa Gordena, was raised?”

  “I bet I can hazard a guess. Black Line, Vermont?”

  “Right on your first guess.”

  Rafe thought about it for a minute, then said, “I'll have to update the lieutenant. She's at home today, so I'll have to get ahold of her on her cell.”

  “Shit.” It was the first word that Lieutenant Westbrooke uttered after Rafe outlined the latest developments in the case. “I was hoping that you were wrong. I'll have to inform Chief Wirthing. It will be up to him as to whether or not to call in the Feds. How would you feel about that?”

  “Not thrilled,” he admitted. “At the same time, though, the more people we have on the case, the better chance we have of finding Lee.”

  “It's Sunday. Chief probably won't make a decision until tomorrow. In the meantime, what's your plan, Sergeant?”

  “Follow up on the first victim – Alissa Gordena. If she really was the first victim, and not just the first one we found, there's the possibility that she had some sort of personal relationship with the perp. We'd like to fly up and interview her mother personally, then check out the plant that manufactures Black Line beer.”

  “Fly to Vermont? Not sure the budget can handle that.”

  “There's a Lewellen Air flight leaving shortly that's headin
g in that general area of the country. Cimarron can make arrangements for the two of us to be on it, which means that we can fly up and back at no expense to the department. The only expense would be for a rental car.”

  “Okay - I think that the budget can handle that. Go ahead and make the arrangements, and update me as often as possible on this one, Rafe.”

  “You got it, LT.” As he disconnected, he caught Dawn's eye. “She's letting the Chief know the latest.”

  “You think he'll want to call in the Bureau?”

  Rafe shrugged. “Not sure. In the meantime, we keep working the case. You get ahold of Ty?”

  Dawn nodded. “He's already on his way to Nyetimber. By the time we get there, he'll be fueled up and ready to take off.”

  “Great. Onward and upward, partner. Next stop: Black Line, Vermont.”

  Dawn adjusted herself more comfortably in her seat on the private jet Ty had elected to fly on their trip to the East and looked over at Rafe, who was seated across from her. “You want something to eat or drink? There's plenty of stuff on board; Ty made sure it was stocked up before we left.”

  “I'm okay for now. Maybe later.” They were the only passengers on the plane. Although he hadn't filled the lieutenant in on all the details, Rafe was aware that this wasn't a regular Lewellen Air flight; Ty was actually flying to Trenton, New Jersey, in order to visit an old friend, and he was making a little detour to drop them off in Vermont before continuing on to his ultimate destination.

  Dawn's Satphone rang just then. Rafe listened to her side of the conversation and saw the corners of her mouth lift slightly. When she ended the call, he lifted his eyebrows inquiringly. “You look like a cat who's just heard that a bunch of cage-free canaries are moving into her house. What's up?”

  “Prentiss just told me that he and Noritaki struck gold on the second canvass of the neighborhood surrounding the park where Cullen's body was found. They spoke to one of the residents who wasn't at home when we did the first canvass. He lives right across from one of the entrances to the park. When they showed him Cullen's picture and asked him about the night of the murder, he recalled seeing Cullen enter the park with another man at about 10:00 p.m. And he's positively identified the other man as Jago Bolt.”