by Diane Kelly
“When’s your next shift?” he asked.
“Tonight. I told Adriana I’d keep a close eye on her place and ask the other officers to do the same. Of course I’ll tell them to keep an eye on Ryan’s apartment, too.”
“All righty. I’ll give this some thought.” The detective twirled a finger in the air. “Let’s circle back later.”
When I left Bustamente’s office, I made a quick detour into the administrative area shared by the street officers. Brigit lay at my feet while I ran both Adriana’s and Ryan’s names through the Internet. The night’s events had left me befuddled. Might as well see what I could find out about them, see if it might help me make sense of things, get a better understanding about who they were.
The search gave me several links for Ryan Downey. The guy was an open book, though hardly a literary masterpiece. More like a picture pop-up book. His Facebook page included photos of him posing with big-breasted women dressed in tight-fitting comic-character costumes that showed lots of leg and cleavage. All wore heavy makeup and some wore colored wigs. Bright pink. Purple. One was blue, similar to my roommate’s hair. There were a couple recent pictures of him with his arm draped around an unidentified woman with blond hair. He’d also shared dozens of photos of his Camaro, far more than others were interested in judging by the pitiful lack of likes and comments on the latter few.
According to his Facebook profile, he claimed to be in a relationship with a woman he’d identified only as “My Beautiful Blonde Boo.” Was she the young woman in the posted pics? He hadn’t tagged the photos on his page or provided names in his posts. Hmm. When I’d interviewed Ryan, he hadn’t mentioned having a new girlfriend. But I hadn’t specifically asked about his current romantic involvements, either. Was he really dating someone new? Or had he only made the entry to irritate Adriana if she happened to look at his page? Something else to ponder.
Ryan had also posted several photos of him with his nephew. Toby, right? The kid sure was a cutie. There they were blowing bubbles in a park. Another featured Toby feeding ducks by a pond. The Police and Firefighters Memorial wall in the background told me the photo had been taken at Trinity Park. Ryan had shared a photo originally posted by a Randy Downey—Ryan’s older brother?—that showed Toby playing on a playground with a dozen other kids. A sign in the background identified the adjacent building as the Southside Recreation Center. The post read: Toby having fun with friends at Camp Fort Worth! When I was a kid, I’d attended one of the city’s summer day camps myself, though my camp had been at the rec center closer to my parents’ house in the Arlington Heights area.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Ryan, but at least he appeared to be a fun and involved uncle. Similar photos of costumed women, his car, and his nephew showed up on Ryan’s Instagram account. His name also popped up in regard to a local high school’s robotics team. Evidently he’d been on the team himself years ago and still helped out as an adviser on design and electronics. Maybe his technical savvy was where his confidence came from, what made him feel self-assured and superior.
While I learned quite a bit about Ryan—his public persona, at least—Adriana was an entirely different story. When I ran her name through the browser, virtually nothing came up. It was almost as if she didn’t exist. She had no Facebook page, no Twitter or Instagram accounts. She didn’t Snapchat and had no Pinterest. I would’ve expected her to at least be sharing some kind of healthy hummus recipes, maybe one for that zucchini bread she’d made for Ryan. The only entry I found for her was a listing on the staff of the rehab center.
Given the lack of information online, it looked like Adriana had taken pains to protect her privacy. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not like her home was all that inviting. She seemed to be the kind of person who kept to herself, an introvert. Of course there was nothing inherently wrong with that. I’d been a bit of a loner myself as a young girl, quietly reading my books under a tree rather than jumping rope on the playground. With my stutter, I couldn’t trust my mouth to say the chants right. Different strokes for different folks. But Adriana’s reserve did make it harder to get a feel for her, to know what she was thinking, what made her tick. What she might, or might not, be capable of where an ex was concerned.
So long as I was on the computer, I figured I might as well enter my reports on the incident at Adriana’s place and the Lollipop Bandit. Once they were in the system, I became curious. Had the lollipop thief struck before, or was this morning’s heist his first offense?
I pulled up the search page and typed in a selection of alternative key terms. Tootsie Roll Pop. Lollipop. Sucker. Grape. Scrubs. Medical uniform. Nurse. The machine whirred for a second or two after my finger tapped the enter key, then spat out a list of seven reports. A quick scan of the reports told me that five of them were irrelevant. The other two reports told me that the man in the scrubs was a repeat offender. Per the information contained in these reports, both of which had been filed within the last month, a man in scrubs had been spotted pocketing grape Tootsie Pops at not only a convenience store on Pennsylvania Avenue, but also a pharmacy on Henderson.
Like the gas station he’d hit this morning, both locations were within a few blocks of Cook Children’s Hospital. The reports indicated that the man’s head was covered with a cap, his face with a surgical mask. The first report indicated another customer had witnessed the theft and reported it to the store management, but the thief had left the building in the meantime. The second report stated that a store employee who’d been stocking sodas nearby had seen the man slip the lollipops into his pocket, but that the man had taken off running when confronted. Though the stocker had chased the thief out into the parking lot, he gave up when the thief turned a corner a block down. Given that nobody had been injured or threatened and the value of the property taken was nominal, the responding officers had filed the reports but performed no follow-up.
While I knew those of us in law enforcement had to set priorities, the type A personality in me wouldn’t feel satisfied until we caught the guy, even if all he got was a slap on the wrists for his sucker stealing. I’d definitely be keeping an eye out for the masked bandit while I went about my patrols.
On the way out of the station, I stopped at the bulletin board to check the schedule. Looked like Derek would be working the night shift tonight, too. While I normally groaned when I discovered he was working my same schedule, it would be helpful tonight. I’d be able to catch him and discuss his earlier visit to Adriana’s house.
Our current shift complete, Brigit and I drove home. The house we shared with Frankie and Zoe, Frankie’s fluffy calico cat, was a modest-sized bungalow-style home with a broad, deep porch. The wood was mauve with ivory trim, the front door painted navy blue to provide a touch of contrast. A giant magnolia tree lorded over the front yard, shading the lawn too much for grass to grow. An ivy ground covering was doing its best to hide the bare spots. A prefab single-car detached garage had been added some time after the house had originally been built, though Frankie and I used it for storage only, parking our cars in the driveway. A six-foot wooden privacy fence enclosed the backyard, giving Brigit a safe place to romp, dig, and do her dirty business, and me a nice, shady place to read in the hammock Seth had bought me as a gift.
I pulled my blue metallic Smart Car to the curb in front of the house. No sense blocking Frankie’s red Juke in the driveway. She’d just have to wake me up to move my car later when she left the house.
Brigit and I went inside to find Frankie sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of Fruity Pebbles on the table in front of her and Zoe on her lap. While Zoe was a fluffy ball of white, orange, and black fur, Frankie’s blue hair matched her eyes and the azure flakes in her bowl, as well.
“Hey,” she said in greeting around a mouthful of cereal. “How was your shift?”
“Weird.” I gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of what had transpired. “I’m totally befuddled. What do you think?”
&nbs
p; “That you’re the only person I know who uses words like ‘befuddled.’”
I gave her my cut-the-crap look.
She lifted her shoulders. “Hard to say. On one hand, who in their right mind would throw a brick through their own window? It would be a pain to deal with and it probably wouldn’t be cheap to get it fixed, either. But on the other hand, would the guy really risk making a false police report about being attacked? And I guess the judge must have believed he was in some kind of danger or they wouldn’t have given him a protective order. Then again, if Adriana didn’t show up to court to defend herself, the judge probably figured it couldn’t hurt to issue the order, just in case.”
In other words, she found the situation as confusing as I did. It was impossible to tell which way was up. Enforcing the law was my job, but how could I enforce it when I wasn’t sure who to enforce it against? Turning to more positive topics, I said, “I’ve got some good news for you.”
Zoe hopped up onto the table as Frankie raised a hopeful brow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Seth’s station has an opening. He said he’d put in a good word for you.”
Her face brightened. “That would be great! I’ll get my application in right away.”
While Brigit took a drink from her water bowl—slurp, slurp, slurp—I reached over to give Zoe a scratch at the base of her tail, the same spot that was pure bliss for Brigit. Zoe lifted her hindquarters to press them into my hand and began to purr. When I pulled my hand back a moment later, she went from appreciative to angry in one second flat, standing up, swatting at my arm, and issuing an insistent meow.
“Sorry, girl,” I told the cat. “I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed.”
After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I headed to the bedroom, changed into my pajamas, and pulled my curtains tight. I’d had to buy the heavy, room-darkening kind. It wasn’t easy to fall asleep in the daytime without fooling your biorhythms into thinking it was night. On occasion, I drank a glass of wine to relax myself, but a glass of chardonnay didn’t sound enticing at all at the moment. I tossed and turned for a bit, but finally ventured into dreamland.
Around three in the afternoon, I began to stir. Something warm was pressed up against my back. At first I assumed it was Brigit, but when I realized there was a heavy human arm draped over me, too, I knew it had to be Seth. He must’ve come over after his twenty-four-hour shift was up. While I had yet to give him a key to the house, he knew we kept an emergency spare on a hook inside Brigit’s doghouse out back. Still, him coming over like this was something new. In a way, it wasn’t unlike Adriana having a key made to Ryan’s apartment without his permission. But unlike that situation, I was happy Seth was here.
I raised my head to look around. Brigit and Blast were curled up together on her bed on the floor. Zoe had joined the dogs, stretched out along the edge of the cushion.
My stirring roused Seth and he lifted his head from the pillow. “Hey,” he said, his voice gravelly from sleep.
I turned to face him. “Who do you think you are, sneaking into a woman’s bed without her permission?” Just because I didn’t mind didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give him a little hell about it. No sense letting the guy think he could take me for granted.
His kissable mouth spread in a sexy grin. “I’m the male version of Goldilocks,” he said, “and this bed felt just right.”
I felt myself warm at his words. Our relationship had been through some initial ups and downs. Given his rough childhood, Seth didn’t trust or get attached easily. But somewhere along the way his defenses had broken down. I had no idea where our relationship might lead, but for the time being I was quite happy with the way things were. Besides, what woman in her right mind would complain about waking up to find a sexy firefighter in her bed? Still, it was fun to razz the guy a little. “I could have you arrested, you know.”
“For what?”
“Breaking and entering.”
“I didn’t break in. I used a key. A key you told me about.”
He had me there. “I only told you where I hid the key in case there was an emergency.”
“There was an emergency.” He slid me a grin. “I needed ten cc’s of Megan Luz, stat.”
“Okay, but you still entered.”
“I’ve heard of people being charged with B and E,” Seth said, “but never just E.”
“When it’s just E we call it trespassing.”
He sat up and raised his palms. “All right. If you want me to go, I will.”
When he went to slip out of the bed I pounced on him and pinned him to the mattress. “Not so fast, mister.”
He nuzzled my ear. “How about we commit a crime of passion?”
“Misdemeanor or felony?”
“Felony. First degree.”
We spent the next half hour committing crimes in which we took turns playing the role of perpetrator and willing victim. When we finished, we collapsed onto our respective sides of the bed.
“How bad was the fire last night?” I asked.
“The fire itself wasn’t too bad,” he said. “The problem was getting to it. It was in a warehouse and there were wooden pallets and rusty pipes and all kinds of junk around the building. I wrenched my back moving a barrel.”
“Turn over,” I told him. “I’ll rub it for you.”
He rolled over, exposing the army eagle tattoo that spanned his broad shoulders and the scars across his lower back that he’d earned when running from a grenade thrown by a young boy in Afghanistan. It was like a horrific diary entry eternally etched on Seth’s skin.
Forcing that awful thought aside, I wriggled to my knees on the bed next to him and began massaging his shoulders, rubbing my thumbs over the eagle’s feathers. “How’s that feel?”
Seth moaned in delight. “Like heaven.”
“Guess that makes me an angel, then.” My mind flashed back to the fictional vixens on Ryan’s wall. I supposed it made sense for me to be some type of angelic superhero. After all, my last name—Luz—meant “light” in Spanish. I only hope I wouldn’t be like Lucifer, the other angel of light, and fall from grace, ending up in hell. Then again, hell couldn’t be much hotter than the brutal Texas summers.
I reached over into the drawer of my nightstand and retrieved the peppermint pain-relief cream. I always kept a tube handy. Between chasing suspects who were trying to flee and the repetitive hand motions of traffic duty, cops constantly found themselves with a wrenched muscle or tight tendon.
I squeezed a dollop onto the small of Seth’s back and worked it around his lower lumbar before moving up his spine. As I rubbed his sore back, I told him what Adriana had said when I returned to her house, about Ryan’s penchant for role-play.
“A crotchless tiger costume?” he said. “Did you ask where I can get you one?”
I grabbed my pillow and put it over his head.
His muffled voice came from beneath. “What’s your next move?”
Lest I suffocate the guy, I removed the pillow. “The supervisor on duty said I made the right call not to arrest anyone. We got Detective Bustamente involved. The detective had some suspicions about the footprints and sent a crime scene tech to the house to take a look.”
My hands burning from the cream, I slid off the bed to go wash them.
When I returned to the bedroom, Seth had turned over onto his back. “Let me take you to dinner before your shift.”
He’d get no argument from me. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but that theory worked just as well on a woman.
We cleaned ourselves up and left the dogs canoodling on the couch while we went out for an early dinner of Mexican food. As much as I would’ve loved a margarita, I wasn’t sure the effects would wear off before I had to leave for my shift, so I settled for eating half my body weight in guacamole instead. I made a mental note to take Brigit for some long walks during tonight’s shift to burn off the calories.
On the drive back to my place, I asked Seth to s
wing by the W1 station. Detective Bustamente’s car was still in the lot. Good. “Mind if I run in for a minute? I want to see if he’s heard anything from the crime scene techs yet.”
“No problem.” Seth slowed, turned down the next side street, and circled back, pulling to the curb just past the front doors to let me out.
I scurried inside and down the hall to the detective’s office. I found him toying with a red rubber band, stretching it every which way between his fingers as he stared off into space, probably contemplating an investigation. When he spotted me in his door, he asked, “Who and why would someone steal two hundred bowling balls?”
I vaguely remembered dispatch announcing an alarm call late last night at the Cowtown Bowl ’n’ Roll, a combination bowling alley and roller-skating rink. I’d been dealing with a speeder on Rosedale at the time. I’d assumed it was like most other such calls, a false alarm. Looked like my assumption was wrong.
“Fraternity prank?” I suggested. “Maybe a competitor trying to put them out of business?” I had no idea how much it would cost to replace two hundred bowling balls, but it wouldn’t be cheap.
He pointed a finger at me. “You’re thinking like a detective, Officer Luz.”
“What did the crime scene tech think of the footprints at Miss Valdez’s house?”
“He couldn’t conclusively say the prints were real or faked,” the detective said, “but he thought the ones in the garden soil might have been too deep to have been made naturally. It also looked like additional dirt had been spread in that particular part of the garden to ensure a good print.”
“So it’s likely Adriana made them?”
“Let’s say it’s ‘possible.’ It’s also possible Ryan faked them to make Adriana appear vindictive, to throw suspicion off himself.”
“What about the brick? Any fingerprints on it?”
“Two sets,” he said. “One set matched prints that were found on the rubber toe of the shoe. Our best guess is that they’re Mr. Downey’s. The other set were small, like a child’s.”