“Thanks for the defense, Catsky.” She stood and walked around the older detective.
He turned with her movements, his arms extended in the shape of Jesus' last stance on the cross. “That's it?”
Miss Sass was still elusive. Amanda gripped the strap of her bag with one hand. “Guess so.”
She didn't wait for his response, but sailed through the station, punched in her code and exited. Once inside her car, she sat for a moment.
What was she going to do? No badge equaled no shoes, no shirt and no service.
She pulled out her phone and hit speed dial.
“Hey, beautiful.” Robinson’s soft tone floated over her.
She attempted to clear the blockage in her throat. “Look who’s all chipper? How much coffee have you had?”
A full, genuine laugh met her ears. It warmed the cold managing to wiggle inside her soul. What would come next?
“None. Turns out, I didn’t need any this morning.”
She found herself smiling, when she shouldn't have had an ounce of the emotion to spare. “Share your secret.”
“The next time we’re together, I will.”
Would there be a next time? Would this mess cost him his job and his life? She swallowed back a healthy dose of the fear swirling her insides. “How’s Lilly?”
“Like you might expect after a year and a half in a coma. Weak. And she can’t remember the accident. I haven’t told her about Jeff or the baby.”
“I'm sorry, Robbie. Just take it one day at a time.” What was she thinking calling Robinson? The man had more than enough on his plate. And somehow he'd taken up for her. Had done so, since the day she’d shown up at his apartment.
“The doctors are running some tests right now, which is keeping her occupied, but I'm sure she's noticed his absence.”
Amanda couldn't imagine waking up from a coma to find life had changed without her. People long gone, new trends and a near-teenaged daughter. “How's Ariana?”
“Over the moon would be an understatement. Been talking nonstop.”
“She takes after you.” Tears pricked her eyes. “I’m so happy for you guys.”
“You okay?” The crunch of something came over the line.
She bit her lip and sucked in a quiet, slow breath. “Mm-hmm. Listen, something is up with Jonas. He spent the night in our lockup. SBI has him in custody, right now.”
“I know.” Another crunch.
“Detective Catsky punched him.”
“I know that, too.”
Well, wasn’t she a useful ball of nothing.
“You forget to whom you speak. One night of spooning scramble your brain, A.J.?”
“Maybe look up the definition of the word in the dictionary, smart guy. Falling asleep mid-sentence and spreading out on a love seat, best suited to small children, is not spooning. There was no spooning.”
Another crunch met her ears along with a chuckle. Yeah, she liked the sound of the warmth within it.
“Okay, okay. Don't get hostile. I know you're a little embarrassed about drooling on my shirt, but relax. Happens all the time.”
A shaky hand found her forehead. Life certainly wasn't boring with Robinson. “Claiming my spot in the line of blonde bimbos, at the front. I bet they would topple over like dominos, if I pushed hard enough. You know, since they are so ill-proportioned.”
A half crunch-choke met her ears. “I am never going to hear the end of that, am I?”
“Not likely.”
“Welcome back, Miss Sass. Where have you been all my life?”
“Getting fired.” She clamped her mouth shut. The words sucked the humor from her soul. She should have said something else. Anything else.
The crunching stopped, silence permeating everything.
“Don't make a big deal of it, Robbie.” Her voice held that thick, shaky I'm-about-to-go-full-girl-and-lose-it-on-you quality. She pressed her head against the cold leather of her steering wheel. “Just pretend I told you something minuscule.”
Please.
The silence held a few more beats. “There goes my plans for the evening. How are we supposed to prank people with only one badge? Wait, that was terrible. Let's start over.” He blew out a breath, the sound rattling over the line. “Okay, hit me.”
A soft sob escaped her lips. She placed a hand over her mouth, but it was too late.
“Where are you?”
He couldn't drop everything, right now, for a few tears. Amanda couldn't either. She took a breath and wiped them away. “No. Stay where you are. I've got to go find Sandra.”
A crunch came over the line. It didn't hold the same whole-hearted quality as usual. “Think that's a good idea right now?”
What she wouldn't give for a moment in his arms. She sighed. “I don't have a choice. We're running out of time.”
“Alright. I'll deal with Jonas.”
“You should look at the paper.”
“Why?”
She straightened and started the car. “We’re on the front page. You're not gonna like the headline.”
“Last night?”
“Yeah. At the gala.”
“I look amazing in my tux, right?”
She pulled out into traffic. Yes. Yes, he did. “That's all you've got to say?”
“You're in the picture, right?”
“No.”
“Liar.” That warm voice slid over her. “Make sure you get a copy. I want to see it.”
Squelching a smile took effort. “Baker Jackson Desmond Robinson the forth, focus. We are in the middle of a huge crisis.”
“So, I shouldn't put my heart on a platter here?”
Hmm. Yes. No. This thing between them was happening at warp speed. The practical side urged her to take a step back. The other part knew things happened in life. She couldn't control when love would arrive. When accidents happened. Or madmen came to destroy it all. When she wouldn't have the guts to say yes. Or no. Or anything.
“I'm hanging up.”
Another warm laugh melted her insides. “I've got you covered. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
Believing that might take more faith than she had. “You aren't even curious about the paper?”
“It's in my nature to be curious. You focus on Sandra. Remember, she's just a suspect. Nothing more. You've got all you need, badge or not.”
CHAPTER FORTY
For both their sakes, Robinson had remained calm during his conversation with Amanda. Every cell in his body had urged him to march to the third precinct, bang Dentzen's door down and shake some sense into the man. He’d resisted. It wouldn’t do more than waste his time.
Instead, he'd tried to be what Amanda needed—the smug bastard who came off as king of the world. An indestructible and unflappable guy without worries. It had taken every ounce of willpower not to jump in his car and head in her direction.
After their conversation, he'd focused on getting Ariana to school. He went home. Took a shower and changed. Then, like a diligent leader of the Charlotte field office, he stuck to the plan. And entered the Channel Six news station a little after ten-thirty.
He showed his badge and sailed through security. Since they were between broadcasts, the station was quiet. He entered the office that had once been Kara's. Instead of Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer’s pictures filling the space, blank walls met him.
Jonas had a box in front of him, on his desk. A coffee mug, two hardcover books, and a stack of notepads, resided within it. One lone manila folder, peaked out from a spiral-bound notebook.
“You’re a hard man to track down, Jonas.” Robinson leaned against the doorjamb and braced one hand on his hip, at the edge of his duty belt.
The other man didn’t respond, but continued putting things in the cardboard box. He'd changed out of his blue polo, a worn and faded, black Metallica shirt now paired with jeans. The bruise around his eye was a deep purple around the edges.
The camera hungry, people person stayed silent. How muc
h of that persona had even been real?
“Of course, that’s not your actual name.” He pushed off the doorframe. “It’s Parker Scott Williams. Jonas was your mother’s maiden name.”
Jonas sighed. He flicked a hand across his face. “What do you want?”
“Why'd you let Detective Catsky punch you?”
The other man’s eyes met his then, something dark swirling in their depths. “Why ask the question if you know the answer? You know where I've been, who I've talked to in the last twelve hours. Even let Nettles sandwich me against the side of a van and practically dislocate my shoulder.”
“You let that happen. There was a small escape window. Both times.” Robinson stepped closer. “Both times, you pushed for information, instead of freedom.”
Smart or stupid? He might have done the same.
“I’ve been working up to this for two-and-a-half years. You two come along and blow it out of the water.” He held up two fingers, in a peace sign. “In two-and-a-half weeks. This guy is gonna run again. And more people will die.”
“We cross referenced it in our databases and didn’t get one matching hit to any cold cases.” It was hard to match the game this guy was playing, with the constant switch and bait.
Jonas shook his head. “You won’t. I barely got the go-ahead on this assignment. And if I come out of this empty-handed, I’m done.” His hand found the edge of the box. He looked around the room. “I'm already done.”
“This personal?”
Jonas scrunched up his lips, then folded them inward. He pulled a stack of laminated pictures from the manila folder and flopped them down in front of Robinson.
A demolished building sat on top, debris littering what appeared to be a parking lot. Robinson picked them up and flipped through them, each one worse than the last. Destroyed buildings. Lost lives. More destruction. And death. A different source of detonation used for each. The size of the structures grew bigger.
“My wife was in the first building. There was no warning. One minute, city hall was there, the next, gone.” Jonas snapped his fingers. “Six months later, same thing. Only this time, it was a mall. Then a car dealership. A rehab center. A hospital. Different towns. Camera’s disabled. Every time I get one clue, this guy moves on. He likes media attention and it got me thinking. I couldn’t catch him in a conventional manner. Why not hide in plain sight.”
Hide in plain sight? Is that what their guy was doing? Hanging out where they all passed him, because he was so easily overlooked? It was the best cloaking. “Why Charlotte?”
Jonas pulled out a map, pushed the box to the edge of his desk and spread the paper across the surface. North Carolina's borders stared up at them. He tapped the town of Hickory, a little more than fifty miles northwest of Charlotte. “Small shopping mall explodes. Pyrodex and open flame. Fifteen dead.”
“Dangerous game to play.”
That finger moved across the state and north to Greensboro. “Three months later, a car dealership. Rags stuffed into the gas tanks of twelve cars, in the middle of the night. The vehicles were located inside the dealership. Four of those actually exploded, destroying a portion of the building. No lives lost.”
“Why bother?”
“Practice for something bigger, is my guess. Both times cameras were disabled with a Trojan type virus.” He moved his finger east to Durham. “Four months later. Rehab center near Duke. C02 canisters with homemade ignition wicks. Killed twelve. Six months after that, Fayetteville. A hospital.”
“Let me guess. Oxygen tanks.”
Jonas nodded. “Killed seventy-two.” He pointed toward each city again, the pattern forming a circle. “Charlotte seemed logical. Worst case scenario? I wasted my time and energy.”
Robinson stared at the map. “There's anywhere from three to six months between occurrences. The last explosion, in Fayetteville happened, when? Seventeen months ago? That's way too long.
“If they are related—and I'm not saying I believe they are—the time lapse is suspicious.” Almost as if something had happened, in the life of their perp, to make him fall off the radar. And come back with the biggest punch yet.
Unless, Amanda was right and Lilly’s coma was a part of the fallout. The accident wasn’t. But this guy had already proved he was quite distinguished in the art of improvisation.
“Where does the city hall come into play, Jonas?”
The other man cleared his throat and produced a picture from his wallet, but kept it out of Robinson’s reach. A tall woman, with long, blonde hair, smiled as she sat within the circle of a younger Jonas' arms.
“Three years ago, as of last week. In our hometown of Boone. Went with a friend to the DMV. Five minutes later, the small building was gone.” He tucked the picture away.
The small, northwestern town blew the circular pattern out of the water. “I take it you've been in each locale, on or before the tragedy. What led you to the other cities?”
Who was to say Jonas wasn't behind everything?
“The media. Six months after my wife's death, I heard about the first explosion. Used some extended leave to go check it out. While I'm there, Greensboro is hit and the SBI field office put on high alert. I started watching the news for anything related. In any city.”
Robinson sat, flipped through the pictures again. Imagining the horror wasn’t hard. “That's a lot of TV.”
“Used recordings, newspapers, and the internet. Guess who was in Durham two weeks prior to the next incident?”
The pictures dropped from his hand and flopped on the desk. He already knew what Jonas would say. Amanda had tested for her detectives shield and gone to Duke to speak to the criminology students. Five months after that, they'd both made headlines working on a joint task force that apprehended a serial killer in Fayetteville. Last spring, it happened, again.
Amidst Chaos, the FBI Charlotte field office and CMPD work as a cohesive unit. He and Amanda had been in the picture beneath the headline. She shoved a co-conspirator, to a ten year old murder, into the back of a cruiser. In the background, he shouted orders to his CSU. He couldn't remember who had submitted the photo that time, hadn't cared at the juncture. What other headlines had Amanda made?
“You've been in each location. Has this guy ever made contact before?”
Jonas stuffed a fern-like plant into his box. “No. Never had more than one event in an area, either. Maybe I’m wrong.”
The way the other man stared at him, full of conviction with a hint of anger filling the room, Robinson knew Jonas didn’t believe his words.
“You specialize in Internet Crimes Against Children, so why are you here? Why did they send you?”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
No big deal.
Amanda stood in front of the Blue Ridge Neurological Center, frozen outside the etched glass doors. The long, silver-handled door held one name. Sandra Porterville, M.D. Pertinent office information sat above it. A large picture of the brain, broken into hemispheres, was on the other side.
How had the woman, who'd taken her mom's basic anatomy class three times, gone on to become a neurologist? Amanda pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She'd never been one to need hand-holding, but she'd kill for one of Robinson's random phone calls. Maybe he'd call her a wuss and it would snap her out of this terrified-can't-breathe stance.
A grown woman, with a mother and father who were the best a person could ask for, shouldn't care about random birth mothers.
A woman who'd spent most of her career pulling information from unlikely suspects, shouldn't cower at the thought of asking some basic personal information.
She rubbed her hands on her pants. If it weren’t for Beth and this current nightmare, she probably wouldn’t be here. With terror seizing her entire body.
The time for chickening out had come and gone with her departure from Robinson's presence this morning.
Come on, put your big girl panties on.
What if Sandra refused to see her? What if she wasn't even
working today?
“Amanda?” The male voice made her jump. Rupert stepped up next to her. A wary look covered his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find a way to go inside.” To understand and move on.
Rupert stuck his hands in his pockets. “They say the first time is the hardest. I don't think that's true, because I never want to go inside. The doctor is pretty cool. Seems to know her stuff.”
Amanda looked at the cascading water sculpture, just inside the door. “She's my biological mother. Found out yesterday.”
He rocked back on his heels, rubbed a hand across his nose and let out a low whistle. “Did I say she was cool? I meant horrible. Not sure why I still come.”
She blinked a few times and turned toward him. He didn't look sick. “Why are you here?”
Sweat dotted his upper lip and his face had taken on a sudden pallor.
“Rupert?”
“Getting my test results. Figuring out if I'll be going under the knife, again.”
Again? “Do Jordan and McKenna know?”
He gave a sardonic, half laugh. “You're kidding me, right? What am I supposed to say? Hey, we've been watching fluid develop on my brain, slowly, for over a year? Placing another shunt is easy. The recovery isn’t. Like seventy percent chance of dying on the table, while some chick has her fingers in my brain. Dude, I have no interest in your wife—probably didn’t when we were dating, either. I just want my son to have family when I die.” Something glittered at the edge of his eyes.
Whoa. That wasn’t what she expected. Words failed her. “I don’t think you’ve ever said so much to me, before.”
“Wow.” The word came out on a release of air, as if he'd meant to sigh, instead of talk. “I didn’t mean to off-load all that on you.”
She shook her head. “Everyone needs someone to talk to. So, this fluid on your brain. Does it have a term? Or negative effects if you decline another surgery?”
“Think Alzheimer’s, but add severe headaches, loss of balance and bladder control with a frequent need to nap. And all those things can happen, even after surgery. It’s a huge turn on for the opposite sex.”
DISCONNECT (The Bening Files Book 2) Page 38