by Mayer, Dale
With a sinking heart, Alex realized that was quite true. “So, in other words, she could’ve parked in the back lot, come in through that entrance, straight through to Marsha’s place?”
The woman nodded.
“Okay, I’m sorry for bothering you,” Alex said as she stepped back.
The door was closed firmly in front of her, and the bolt shot home. Good afterthought. It wasn’t smart to go to bed with the doors unlocked. Not given the intruder these days.
Out of curiosity, and just on pure instinct that she was missing something, she walked back into Marsha’s apartment and strolled around. It was so strange to be in here. Only a few days before a vibrant young woman had picked up the coffee cup and sipped from it, used the water from the taps, and dried her face and hair with the towels. Alex wandered around. They’d gone through everything, fingerprinted the place, and had yet to find anything useful. There was just no forensic evidence.
She stood in the middle of the empty room, hoping something would jump out at her. After a moment, she shook her head and said aloud, “I’m sorry, Marsha. I will get to the bottom of this. I promise.”
She walked back out to the hallway, locked the door, and headed out to her car. As she buckled her seat belt, her phone rang. “Lance, how are we doing?”
“We’ve got him in custody,” Lance crowed. “He’s on his way to the station right now.”
She grinned. “Now let’s just hope it’s the right guy.”
“Well, he resisted arrest pretty damn good. At least this way we can fingerprint him, get some DNA, and see if he was maybe the guy who the neighbor saw. He had his driver’s license on him, so we’ll do a full check to see what pops.”
“Now that you’ve got him, let’s get that house checked over too. We need fingerprints that match. At least let’s prove he’s the one who’s been in the house. It’ll still take a bit to prove he’s the intruder from the other houses, but it’s a damn good start.”
“Are you coming in?” Lance asked.
“I’m about five minutes away. One of the apartments here is empty, but I’ve spoken to everybody else on Marsha’s floor.”
“Any news?”
“Not really. As usual nobody knows anything about anyone.”
She closed her phone, put the keys into the ignition, and turned it on. It was good news about the intruder, but she couldn’t stop worrying that maybe it was just an innocent man out for a stroll after all. It would take a lot of police work to put that asshole away. If it wasn’t this guy, she was back to square one, and that was not where she wanted to be.
*
“Do you want to go to the coffee shop again?” Corey asked. “Or head home?”
They were still standing on the corner after the suspect had been picked up.
“Home. Although I’d rather go to Alex’s house.”
Corey shot him a sharp glance. “Is that wise?”
“I don’t know. No way to know if she caught her man or not. She caught one, but is it the right one?” He shrugged. “I’m just saying what I’d like to do.”
“Better to stay away until this is done,” Corey advised. “I know she’s a Keeper, but you don’t want to do anything to jeopardize her job either.”
“Keeper?” he asked, a note of humor in his voice.
Corey stared at him. “And you know it. She doesn’t maybe, but I haven’t watched a dozen friends find that special someone to not recognize one when I see one.”
“So?” He was right but that didn’t mean Macklin felt like listening. It was odd waiting on someone else to fix something in his life. Normally he was out there fixing things for other people. Still it was nice to hear Corey’s evaluation. And he was right. They’d both seen a lot of their teammates find the right woman. Hence the joke about Mason’s Keepers. “You looking for yourself?” Mac asked.
“Nah, I’m hoping I’ll trip over her, like you guys did.” Corey walked backward as he spoke. “Coming or staying?”
“I’ll head home,” he decided, “and maybe call Alex later.” He wasn’t going back to Corey’s. There was no way to know when another break-in would happen. He didn’t want to impose on his friend for days, weeks possibly.
“You sure?” Corey turned toward his vehicle. “Do you want a lift?”
Macklin lifted his nose and sniffed the fresh air. Now that they’d caught the suspect, the air was lighter, fresher. It held hope that this could be over soon and also joy that he could see Alex openly.
“Nah, it’s a nice night out. I’ll walk.” And, with a wave, he turned and headed home, his footsteps lighter than they’d been for days.
Chapter 12
Overjoyed at the news, Alex quickly headed back to the station. She wanted to get a look at the intruder. After she parked, she strolled in with a light step. Excitement bubbled through the station. Several people looked up and smiled at her.
“Looks like we got him, Alex.”
“Let’s hope so,” she said. “Now we need proof.”
Lance stepped out of the office. “A full team is doing forensics right now.”
She nodded. “Outside of picking up this person, do we have anything that places him at the scene of the crimes?”
Lance smirked. “I’m just about to head in and interrogate him. Do you want to come?”
She shook her head. “No, not yet. I want to observe though.”
Surprised, Lance agreed. “No problem.” He picked up his notepad and pen off his desk. “I’m going in right now.”
“I’ll grab a coffee and step into the observation room.” She also wanted to give them a little bit of time to settle in. She didn’t want Lance thinking she was watching his every move. What she really wanted was to get an eyeful of the person they’d picked up. So many things just didn’t make any sense. What, if anything, did the guy have to do with Marsha? That was one of the biggest issues for Alex. She knew in her heart that Macklin had nothing to do with Marsha’s death, but, until she could close that file and find out who had killed her, that question would always be hanging over his head. And she wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
With her coffee, she stepped into the observation room. She listened as Lance asked his questions. She studied the man as he answered. He was young, maybe twenty-five, could be as old as twenty-eight. Long and lean as many people had described him. Very short hair.
He stretched back and kicked his legs out under the table. “I was out for a run and then a walk. There’s no law against that. There have been police crawling all over the place. I heard about all the break-ins, and, just like everybody else, I’m out wandering around, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“So have you ever been in the house?”
The young man’s face twisted. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?” Lance asked.
“There are a lot of parties around here. I’ve been to a lot of house parties over the last few years. There could’ve been one there. How am I supposed to know? I used to come out so drunk I couldn’t remember anything.”
Alex had to give him points for that. If they found prints in the house, they could easily be tossed off as being from one of those parties. Given his age, he could have been there. Betty’s son had lived there while she’d been traveling. Who knew what he might have been up to. There were a lot of parties. And there were any number of reasons why his fingerprints could be inside the house. She considered the suspect more closely. He had long fingers, striking high cheekbones. She wanted to know how much of his persona was based on ego. There was certainly a lot of casual confidence and a twitch of arrogance, as if holding back how brilliant he was.
Lance seemed nonplussed. “C’mon, Andy. If you didn’t have anything to do with it, then answering these questions won’t hurt you in any way.”
“Sure. That’s what you cops always say.” Andy shook his head. “No way in hell you can place me in that house anytime recently because I wasn’t there.”
“Do you know anybody staying there?”
“Graham Kroger was there, but I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“Graham was killed on an overseas mission.”
Andy froze. “Really?” He turned and stared off into the distance, and then he shrugged. “That sucks, man.”
“But it doesn’t involve you in any way, right?”
At that, Andy’s gaze zeroed back in on Lance. “If you mean, did I have anything to do with his death, then obviously the answer is no.”
“Where do you live, Andy?”
“Nowhere in particular.” He flashed a grin. “I’ve been staying with a girlfriend for the past couple months. But apparently she’s moved out and didn’t bother to tell me. So, when I went back to the place after an all-night party, it was empty.”
“Where was that?”
He rattled off an address.
Alex wrote it down. She didn’t know what game Andy was playing, but it wouldn’t make sense to give an address if he couldn’t back it up. Still, she’d get one of the officers to check it out.
“And how long did you stay there?”
“It was her place. She was there for probably three or four years. I was only with her for a couple months.”
“Do you happen to know Kathleen Matron?” Lance went through a series of names. All the residents of houses that had been broken into. Each time Andy shook his head. “No. No. No. No.”
Lance leaned back, tapped his pencil on the tabletop. “What do you do for a living?”
“Currently I deliver pizzas.”
“Interesting,” Alex said to herself. That was a great job for getting around, scoping out houses. Keeping an eye on empty houses. Knowing where single women might live.
“How long have you been doing that?”
“Two years.”
Lance continued the same line of questioning. But there wasn’t a lot more that was useful. Either Andy had nothing to do with it or he was an excellent liar.
Alex was voting on the latter. She hoped some evidence came out of Betty’s kitchen. She left the observation room and headed to her office. There she phoned Candice, the head of the crime scene team. “Did you find anything?”
“No fingerprints of any kind.”
“Shit.”
“I know. We are looking for DNA, but the food boxes were tossed and dishes were in the dishwasher, and it was turned on.”
“Therefore, sterilizing everything.”
“You did pick up a suspect, did you not?”
“Sure, but we don’t have anything to hold him on.”
“So, let him go, keep the tail on him. He’ll slip up soon enough.” And with that, Candice hung up.
Alex sat there, wondering. It wasn’t a bad idea.
At a scuff at her door, she looked up to see Lance.
He held up his notepad. “I can go over this with you.”
“I was there for the most part. He’s either a very good liar or he had nothing to do with it.”
“He’s the type we tend to love to hate in the first place,” Lance said. He was fatigued, which showed as he crashed down on the visitor’s chair across from her. “He’s got that arrogance we all want to pound into the ground. As if he’s above the law. As if he thinks he’s smarter than all of us.”
“And, if he’s done this, he’s certainly been smart so far. His job is something that gives him access to all the houses. We’d have a hell of a time tracking through the pizza deliveries to see if he ever delivered to any of the houses on those streets, but I’m sure he has.”
“Chances are also good it was an easy way to keep an eye on the women and the empty houses.” Lance echoed her thoughts from earlier.
“Exactly. Forensics found nothing.”
Lance stared at her. “Nothing?”
She shook her head. “No fingerprints. Nothing they see so far. Obviously they are doing some testing, but you know it’ll take forever.”
“So I’ve got no reason to hold him.”
“No. I imagine he has a lawyer on the way. The only thing we did was pick up somebody suspicious off the streets. Candice did suggest we turn him loose and keep a tail on him.”
Lance nodded. “I was thinking of that when I was in the interview room. It’s not a bad half-measure. He’ll slip up. We just have to be ready.”
“I know.” She stared at no point in the room, thinking of her options. Her pencil automatically drew circles on a piece of paper as her mind spun equally around and around. “Then let’s do that. Take his fingerprints. Ask him for a DNA sample and see what he says. Then release him. We need to check out that address he was staying at. He says he doesn’t have one now, so where is he going for the night?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “We want him to stay in town, and we want him to come back tomorrow morning.”
“Why come back tomorrow morning?”
“If he doesn’t come back, he becomes a suspect, and, if he does come back, we can confirm where he slept, in case we lose him, or he lies to us.”
“I like that.” Lance hopped up from the chair. “I’m about to release him then.”
“Who do we have to run a tail on him?”
“I thought to put Wilson and Owen. They’re out in cruisers right now.”
“Then put them on him.”
“He’s on foot.”
“Then they’ll be on foot.”
He chuckled. “Owen will love that.”
After he left, she sat back and thought about that. There were more fit men and women per capita here in Coronado than any other place in the world most likely. They should give chase for a good mile without even catching their breath. Keeping a tail on some young male on foot should be second nature to them all. If it wasn’t, they needed to up their training. She knew there hadn’t been much money set aside for things like that. But, if this case was ever a good one to bring to the bosses and show they needed more budget money, she’d use it.
Tired and frustrated, she got up and headed to the squad room to assign an officer the job of checking the address in Andy’s statement. With that taken care of, she headed home.
Her phone had gone off when she’d been busy at the station. She hadn’t even checked to see who it was. Now she realized it was most likely Macklin. She pulled it out as she unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped inside. Macklin. He’d left a voice mail. “Call me.”
She snickered. “Like hell.” She tossed her phone on the kitchen table and dropped her purse beside it.
However, just as she was headed for the shower, her phone rang again. She picked it up, saw it was Macklin.
“You didn’t call when you got home.”
“How do you know I’m home already?”
“I didn’t, but, since you didn’t call me, I’m calling you.”
“Are you stalking me?” she asked incredulously.
“Of course not.” He sighed. “You do realize you’re a single female living alone, though not necessarily in the same grid that we were looking in, but you’re not far out.”
She straightened and frowned. “So? Hundreds of us are here.”
“True, but I can’t say I’m terribly comfortable with the concept of you living alone right now.”
“That’s probably just your line to get into my bed.”
“Oh!” His voice piqued with curiosity. “Will that work?”
“Hell no.”
“Because, if it will, I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
She sat down on her bed and raised her hand to her forehead. “Did you hear that part about hell no?”
But his voice turned serious again. “Would you object to somebody sleeping on the couch?”
She frowned into the phone. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Why?” But something in his voice got her nerves going. She stood and looked around. She’d walked in, assuming the place was safe, and had been completely relaxed. Her bed, closet, everything appeared
to be the same. Feeling foolish for even questioning it, she walked out and back through her living room, then into her kitchen.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, you made me nervous,” she snapped. “So I’m checking out my apartment.”
“You didn’t do that first?”
“No. I didn’t. Besides, I’m on the second floor. Everybody else had a house.”
“Not Marsha.”
“But she was on the ground floor. And that may not be related in any way to the break-ins.”
“Maybe not but it’s still not safe for women right now.”
She stared out into the night. It would be so wrong to bring him over.
“Please.” His voice was very quiet. “I’ve been lying here, trying to sleep, but I can’t because I’ll worry about you all night.”
“What about all the other women living alone in the area?”
“I can’t worry about everybody.”
It was a good answer. And one she would use herself. “You know I’m the one who people call to protect them, right?”
“We’ve been over that. Right now I don’t think you should be alone.”
“Right now I don’t think you should be spending the night.” A heavy pause suddenly turned sexual. She shook her head. “Don’t even think that.”
In an all-too-innocent voice he said, “Think what?”
“About sex.”
“Well, the only reason you wouldn’t want me to stay there is because you’re afraid you might succumb to my charms,” he said in a smooth voice. “I promise I’ll stay on the couch… unless you drag me to the bed.”
“Well, I won’t be dragging your fat ass anywhere, will I?”
“No, but you can join me on the couch,” he said suggestively. “I’m on my way.” And he hung up.
*
Macklin dressed quickly, threw a change of clothing and his shaving gear in a small bag he used for the gym, grabbed his keys and wallet, and walked out. He didn’t know what was wrong, but, ever since he got back to his place, he had this nagging sense of something not being right. And every time he tried to think about what direction it came from, all he could think about was Alex.