That was part of why he found Sergeant Hayley Moreno so sexy. She had brains as well as beauty and a smoking hot body. She had to have brains to have made it to sergeant, even here in the less than booming metropolis of Blackjack, New Mexico. Not that he didn’t like it here. It had taken a bit of adjustment, but he’d learned to love the slower pace of life here. It hadn’t hurt that Nancy loved it here and Warren had to agree, it was a good place for his nieces and nephews to grow up. He tried not to think about it too much but he thought it would be a good place to raise his own children too. And if he started before too long, they would grow up with their cousins. The idea made him feel good inside, and made him ache for the children he’d not given much thought to before the last year.
He fought to keep his gaze from straying back to the dance floor where he’d last seen Hayley. Sgt Moreno, he reminded himself. If he wasn’t careful, he would slip and call her Hayley to her face. That wouldn’t be good. It would piss her off and the last thing he wanted was her mad enough to refuse to see him once he was no longer one of her officers. He knew better than to hold his breath, but he did hope to get the promotion. Once he was a detective, there was no policy against them seeing each other. He’d actually looked it up to be sure. Detectives and Sergeants were actually equal status in BPD, so there was no conflict about one dating the other. He scanned the club again and spotted the object of his thoughts sitting at a table with a woman who looked surprisingly similar to her across the table and the man she’d been dancing with next to the other woman. It looked like he was with the other woman, not Moreno. A tightness in his chest he’d only been vaguely aware of loosened a little and he let out a breath of relief. Maybe it wasn’t someone she wasn’t interested in romantically, but someone she considered family. Hope blossomed somewhere deep inside that maybe, just maybe she wouldn’t turn him down once she was no longer his supervisor.
It was pushing eleven and Warren was about ready to head home when Johnny nudged him and nodded toward the dance floor.
“Hey, I think that’s the guy I saw with that girl we found last week.”
Adrenalin rushed through Warren as he tried to follow Reed’s gaze.
“Which one?”
“The guy who looks like he’s headed to a frat party instead of a country bar. With the MNM t-shirt.”
The t-shirt was what let Warren spot him. There were a few people in t-shirts in the crowd, but only one advertising the local community college. The guy looked closer to his age than the victim, and Warren wondered for a moment how he could possibly get his name. He couldn’t walk up and ask about the girl. He was off duty and not even an official detective. The only thing he could come up with was to see if he could get a photo and maybe compare it to staff photos on the school’s website.
“Here, let me get a picture of the two of you together.” He maneuvered so Johnny and Monica were between him and the man Johnny had pointed out to him, and held his phone up. He took a couple of shots of his partner and the girl, but also zoomed in and took a couple shots of the man.
“Send me a copy.” Monica recited her number and Warren texted her the photo of her and Johnny. While he was at it, he sent the photo of the stranger to detectives Howard and Cooley, letting them know that his partner said he thought this was the man he’d seen with their victim a couple nights before they found the body.
He watched the man a while, but saw nothing suspicious, nothing to give him an excuse to stop the man or speak to him. At almost midnight, the man left, seemingly alone, and Warren called it a night and went home, alone and all thoughts of Sgt Moreno temporarily forgotten.
Chapter 18
Hayley visited with her sister and the Manning brothers, dancing occasionally until a little after midnight. After her third huge yawn that she couldn’t suppress, she decided to call it a night.
“I’m gonna have to head home guys,” she said with a wry smile. “I’ve been up since five this morning and I’m running out of steam.” She turned to Tracy. “I had a good time tonight and you don’t dance as badly as you claim.” She looked back at her sister. “Give me a call after work tomorrow. I’m gonna go home and go to bed. I could use a few hours of shut eye.”
“Do you want me to give you a ride?” Tracy asked. “Are you sure you’re not too tired to drive?”
“No, I’m good I can make it no problem, but if I say much longer I might not.”
“Sounds good, sis.” Denni stood and gave her a hug. “Get some sleep and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“All right.”
Hayley made her way out of the dance club and out to her car. She yawned again before starting the engine, glad that she lived only a few minutes away.
She pulled into her driveway not five minutes later and went inside. A quick sniff told her she hadn’t picked up any odors she needed to wash off before bed, so she made her way through the dark house to her bedroom, stripped out of her clothes and slid naked between the sheets. As much as she loved her sister, she was grateful for her bed tonight. Her last thought as she drifted off to sleep wasn’t about her sister, or even Tracy, despite how much she’d enjoyed the evening. No. It was about that irritating, yet somehow undeniably sexy officer who would be back on her squad when she went back.
Chapter 19
Warren walked into the squad room ready to start his first day back on patrol, though he wished he was still up on the third floor trying to find who had killed the Snyder girl.
“Hey it looks like we’re back together.” Johnny slapped him on the back as they headed into briefing. “Oh, that guy last night? Monica says he’s a psych professor out at MNM. Says she’s never heard anything about him dating students or doing anything inappropriate, but he gives her the willies. That’s her term, the willies.”
“She give you a name?”
Johnny shook his head. “She couldn’t remember his name, but MNM isn’t a large school, how many psychology teachers can there be?”
“Probably not more than ten or twelve in the whole department.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and sent a message to Howard and Cooley with the new information, as he found a space along one wall to stand and listen to what was new since he’d left the day before. He was a little surprised when he was partnered with Johnny for the day, but went with it. The changes would happen in their own time. All he could do was bide his time and wait.
Thirty minutes later Warren and Johnny made their way out of the station house to their car.
“I missed you, man. A different partner every day gets old, really quick.” Johnny tossed the keys in the air and caught them again. “You want to drive?”
“Go ahead.” Warren didn’t want to have to focus on the road, he wanted to consider what he’d learned and maybe use his phone to research psych professors out at MNM.
Not that he found much, no photos, not even short bios on each teacher, just a list of names. It wasn’t much help, but it did let him know that the psych department had six professors, and two of them were women. Which narrowed his search to four names. Well, that was something. It didn’t mean they had narrowed the suspects on killing the Snyder girl to four, but it would give them someone new to talk to.
Warren turned to the on-board computer and ran the four names. The first was a man approaching sixty, balding and wore little round glasses. Nope, not the right one. The next one wasn’t any closer he looked about the right age, computer said he was 32, but he was heavy, not the man his partner had pointed out the night before.
With number three he struck pay dirt. Dillon Becker. Warren tilted the screen toward his partner.
“Lookie here.”
Johnny glanced over at the screen then back to the road.
“That looks like him. Does he have a record?”
“Just a speeding ticket, two years ago, nothing else.”
Warren sent the name and info to the detectives, hoping they’d include him when they talked to him. An hour later he received a message back from Detective Howard tel
ling him to meet him on the third floor the next day. Triumph raced through him as he wondered what they’d turned up.
“You brought us the lead, we figured you ought to hear what he has to say,” Zeke Howard said. They were on their way out to Middle New Mexico college, where the detectives had scheduled an appointment to talk to one Professor Becker.
“We could have had him come in to the station house but people tend to talk more if they think we believe they might know something, rather than if they think they’re suspects,” Bryan Cooley twisted around to look at Warren as he rode in the back of their sedan.
“We’ll go in easy, tell him we’re looking into Ms. Snyder’s death, and that we have a witness who puts her in his company a couple days before her body was found, but leave out much of our theory. Leave out the bit about her being pregnant. See what he says first, then go from there.” Zeke glanced at him in the rear view mirror.
“You ever been in on a questioning like this?” Cooley wanted to know.
“I’ve been in on a few interrogations, but nothing quite like this.” Warren watched the two detectives. “Nothing where we were trying to get them to confess or give us a clue. We usually had enough evidence to damn them before we asked a single question.”
“That’s not typically how we do things,” Bryan said.
“Not to say that we don’t ever,” Zeke put in. “Just that it’s not usually how things work for us. We usually have to build a case bit by bit with small bits of information dropped here and there, small contradictions, small inconsistencies. That’s typically how we have to solve our cases.”
Either way, Warren was glad for the chance to see what the professor had to say.
A couple hours later, they left the campus, no better off than they’d started. The professor admitted to knowing the girl, but not to anything more. Said he’d seen her at the club that night, and yes, they’d spoken but only in passing. He claimed he hadn’t been with her and whoever had said so had been mistaken.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Howard said once they’d made it back to their unmarked car.
“I think he’s full of shit.” Warren didn’t bother to couch his opinion in polite terms.
“What makes you say that?” Cooley looked at him a moment.
“He sounded too practiced as if he expected us to come see him eventually and he’d practiced his story.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “It was too pat, too down. Not the slightest variance, even natural ones. No hesitations, no considering a question. I know this sounds stupid but that’s the best I can describe it.”
“It’s not stupid. You did a pretty good job of describing how he told it. I thought the same thing as he was giving too much detail and making excuses as to why he was at the Silver Spur that night,” Zeke spoke from behind the wheel as they headed back to the station house where Warren had left his car.
“So how do we get the truth out of him?”
“We do more leg work, we try to confirm his alibi, which will at least seem to be rock solid, and it may actually be. He will have set up something to cover his ass that he thinks we can’t break,” Howard said.
“We’ve encountered his kind before,” Brian spoke up.
“Though not over a crime this big.” Zeke glanced at him in the mirror.
“They always think they’re smarter than we are and that they can’t get caught because they’ve out smarted us.”
“It’s always amusing to watch when they realize they’ve been outsmarted.”
Warren watched the two take turns as they filled him in. It reminded him of his parents and how they tended to finish each other’s sentences. He knew they’d been partners for several years, but it was in that moment he realized how much partners at work was sometimes like being a married couple. The more time you spent with someone the more likely you were to know what they were going to say next. He sat back in the seat and fought the amused smile as he listened to them outline their plan for catching the smug professor for killing Tanalynn.
Chapter 20
Thursday night Hayley’s lazy evening at home was interrupted by a local news story about a Blackjack police department detective severely injured in a motor vehicle accident. Dread filled her as she knew the panic that would race though the entire department.
The news didn’t give a name, but the officers on scene never would have released it, not until that detective’s family could be notified. Without waiting for more information, she shut off the TV, pulled on jeans and tennis shoes and headed to Highland County Medical Center. It didn’t matter who it was, when one of their own was injured, no matter how, they all turned out to support them.
At the front desk she flashed her badge and the elderly woman behind the counter directed her to a waiting room. Hayley followed her directions, but would have found the right place even without them. The room was filled to overflowing with BPD personnel, in and out of uniform.
“Who?” she asked a uniformed officer as she reached the edge of the crowded room. The officer turned and she recognized him even if he wasn’t one of hers.
“A detective,” he kept his voice low. He stood loosely, feet apart and thumbs hooked in the front of her duty belt. She knew the stance, it was a common one among uniformed officers as they tried to balance out the extra weight worn around their waists.
“The news said that much, I want to know who, and who the family is.” She glanced at his name tag. “Do you know who it is Officer Williams or do I need to ask someone else?”
“I don’t know the first name, I’ll I’ve heard is Detective Cooley.” He nodded toward a group of people in plain clothes. “There’s his partner and his wife. I’m not sure of either’s name.”
“Thank you, Williams.” She looked toward where he’d motioned and couldn’t miss Hathaway standing nearby, a somber look on his face. She wondered for a second as she made her way carefully through the crowd if he’d known the injured detective.
“What do we know?” she asked another officer as she got closer to the core group where everyone seemed to be hovering, waiting for news.
“It’s serious.” The officer barely looked at her. “But not critical enough to fly him out. He’s got at least one broken leg, broken arm, we’re not sure what else yet. They took him in for some tests and we’re still waiting on news.”
“Thanks.” She didn’t push her way to where the wife and partner stood side by side, looking shell shocked. They had enough going on and they’d already spoken to enough people, both in and out of uniform, that the faces were blurring together. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She would be here when they found out exactly how bad his injuries were, good or bad.
An hour and a half later most of the crowd was still there, though some of the uniformed officers had left to resume their shift, and they still knew no more than when she’d arrived. Hayley had waited until Maggie Cooley, who’s husband’s first name was Brian, had sat down to wait before she’d found a nearby seat herself. She had spoken to a few officers, but mostly kept to herself as she thought about what the other woman must be going through.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” that deep, rumbling voice that kept creeping into her dreams drawled beside her. Hayley glanced up, not at all surprised to find Officer Hathaway standing a couple feet away.
“When one of us gets hurt, we all turn out.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s your day off, I didn’t expect you to know yet.”
“It was on the news. They didn’t give names, at least not in the headline, but I didn’t wait around to find out if they did. As soon as I heard, I got dressed and came over.”
He glanced at the watch on his left wrist.
“Had to have been the six o’clock news, and you had to get dressed?” The tone of his voice made it a question and teased just a little.
“Well, changed. There was no way I was gonna show up in my weekend clothes.”
He looked her up and down.
&nb
sp; “I don’t know, your weekend clothes look pretty good to me.”
She knew part of his teasing was a way to blow off steam and as unprofessional as it was, she let it go.
“Do you know him?” she might allow the teasing but she wasn’t going to encourage it.
“The man down?” He waited for her nod. “Yeah, he’s one of the detectives I’ve been working with on this murder case.”
“Murder?” She frowned.
“That body Johnny and I found a couple weeks ago? You questioned me about taking so long with the report after shift, remember?”
“I do. I didn’t know that was the case you’ve been working on. They just told me they wanted you, not why.”
He nodded and was quiet a moment before speaking again.
“Anyway, yeah I know him, and his partner over there.” He nodded to where the partner, a man who looked maybe fifteen or twenty years older than herself. She’d seen him around the station house and knew he didn’t normally look this old, she estimated him at maybe forty or forty-five, barely more than ten years older than her thirty two years.
“Any idea what happened? How’d the accident happen?”
“Not a lot of details, but from what I’ve heard he was off duty and alone. Someone ran a red light and broadsided him.” Warren shook his head slowly. “Officer’s who’d been at the scene said the driver’s door was pretty much in the passenger’s seat. They had to take him out the passenger’s door.”
She sucked air through her teeth making a hissing noise. “Not good. The other driver?”
At that moment a short man in scrubs appeared in the doorway.
“Mrs. Cooley?” he said.
“Yes.” She stood and the rest of the room followed suit. Maggie approached the man, along with the detective who was her husband’s partner. Hathaway stepped away from Hayley and stood beside the man he’d been working with for the last couple weeks as Hayley edged closer. She wanted to hear, but didn’t need to crowd those who were closer to the situation.
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