January's Betrayal (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 3)

by A. E. Howe

  “You understand that I want to be a part of your life?”

  “Yes, all of my life. I think I get it. And I want to be a part of yours. I want to know what upsets you or worries you or, hell, just pisses you off.”

  “Exactly.” She leaned over and kissed me lightly. “I know your job sucks sometimes and it’s dangerous. But I want to be there for you, and to do that I have to know what you’re going through.” Cara set down her mug and leaned into me, hugging my arm. Alvin, who was curled up on the other side of Cara, let out a little huff as he readjusted himself.

  “It makes sense. But you have to know that there will be times when I have to process events in my own head before I can tell you about them.”

  “I know, and maybe that’s where I was wrong. Pressing you too hard. But if you promise me that you won’t hold things back, that you’ll tell me what you can when you can… Well,” Cara pulled my head around and kissed me passionately, “maybe I can find a way to make you feel better. That’s all I want.”

  “A kiss won’t heal all wounds.”

  “A kiss never made things worse,” she told me and we dislodged Alvin from his place on the couch.

  When I looked at my watch it was past midnight. “I’ve got to go,” I said, putting my shirt back on and looking for my shoes.

  “You can stay here.”

  “I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.” I cringed when I thought about my bargain with Lt. Johnson. I couldn’t put off working with Matt any longer. The thought of spending most of the day with Matt, who I’d never been fond of and now suspected of colluding with men who were determined to damage my father and the department, made me sick to my stomach.

  I remembered my promise to Cara and explained, “I’ve got to work with Matt tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it. I haven’t told you everything about him, some of it I can’t. I’ll tell you all I can later.” I stopped putting on my shoe and looked at her. “I should be able to have one day off this weekend. Can we go somewhere?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Morning came early. My first thought was that I needed to hurry and get into work. Then I remembered what my day was probably going to be like and my second thought was: To hell with hurrying! I spent forty-five minutes longer than I should have eating my cornflakes and giving Ivy some attention before heading to the office.

  “Lt. Johnson thought you needed some help with your case load.” This was the least confrontational statement I had been able to think of on my way to Matt’s desk.

  He looked up at me with hooded eyes. “The lieutenant said I’d get some help.” His look implied that he wasn’t happy with the help he was getting.

  “I thought you were a type-A personality. I’m surprised you need help.” I couldn’t resist the chance to give the smug bastard a hard time.

  “I’ve been carrying your and your lazy partner’s cases for the last week.”

  “You might have heard that one of our deputies was involved in a shooting. I’m sorry if everyone has to step up and carry a little bit of the weight while we look into it.” I knew I was taking this too far, but I couldn’t help myself. Ever since I began to suspect him, I’d tried to avoid contact for this very reason. My impulse control wasn’t always what it should have been.

  “I heard. Maybe your father should look beyond his own family when assigning important cases.”

  I felt my blood rise, but before I could open my mouth, Matt raised a hand to stop me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with something approaching sincerity. I almost got whiplash from his change of direction. I’m sure my mouth fell open.

  “Look, I’ve just been working hard. I really would appreciate your help on a couple of these.” He indicated the pile of case folders on his desk.

  Now I knew he was into something crooked. The Matt I knew never would have poured water on one of our fights. He didn’t want trouble because he didn’t want too much scrutiny. Fine. I’d take the opportunity to try and catch him out. I was pretty sure that he didn’t know I suspected him of anything. Honestly, I didn’t care if he did.

  “Here are a domestic and a burglary. Both of them need some follow-up.” He held out the folders.

  I thought about making some smartass comment, but decided the best thing I could do was keep my mouth shut. I took the folders and sat down at my desk.

  An hour later I walked back over to Matt. “How’d it go?” he asked, all sunshine and rainbows.

  “The burglary I was able to link to two others. Deputy Ortiz is working on those and said that he’d go over it and see if it fits the MO of the others. If it does, he’ll ask Lt. Johnson to let him have it. The perp in the domestic is going to plead guilty to a lesser charge. I talked with the State Attorney and he agreed as long as the husband agrees to pay the hospital bills as restitution. There was also a restraining order thrown in for good measure. I wrote up the reports. They’re in the online files.”

  “Great. Look, there’s one other I want your opinion on.”

  “What is it?”

  “A shooting,” he said, looking me hard in the eyes.

  “Sure. What happened?” I asked warily.

  “A black male was shot standing on the corner of Jefferson and Alabama in the late hours a couple Saturdays ago.”

  “I remember that.”

  “I was on call and got out there by five Sunday morning.”

  “Drugs?”

  “No doubt. But, and it’s a big but, one of my witnesses said that he saw a car at the time of the shooting. Didn’t actually see the car at the shooting because he was a block away. However, he’s sure that the car must have been there.”

  “I don’t get it. You have a car at the scene or at least close to the scene. That’s good, right?”

  “My witness is a three-time loser who knows every cop and deputy in the county. He’s sure that the person driving the car was a deputy,” Matt said, looking me straight in the eyes, the same way you try and intimidate a suspect.

  “So who did he think was driving the car?” I had no idea where this was going.

  “There’s the rub. He doesn’t know. He just knows that he saw a cop. He was high at the time. He’s always high and doesn’t remember who it was, even if he knew at the time. Dud’s his name. He just knows that his cop radar went off when he saw the driver.”

  “Dud? Seriously, he’s having a good day when he’s not actually in a drug-induced coma. Can he even see more than ten feet in front of what’s left of his face?” I couldn’t believe that Matt was giving Dud any credibility as a witness. “Is there any other evidence?”

  “No.”

  “That’s it?” Matt must have been going crazy trying to maintain a double life. None of this made any sense. “Do you have any other witnesses?”

  “None that saw the murder or think they saw the killer. Just Dud.” Matt continued to look at me as though searching for some answer that I was sure I didn’t have.

  “The autopsy didn’t reveal anything?”

  “No, just that one of the nine-millimeter bullets passed through the victim’s chest and the other through his head. The second one killed him. From the angle that the bullets entered the victim, it looks like the killer stayed in his car.”

  “Motive?”

  “Martin Thomas owed a lot of people money and was heavily into heroin. It’s not a big stretch to think that he owed his drug connection money, or that he’d stolen money or drugs from the wrong person. Certainly no one tried to rob him since it would have been obvious to anyone that he was broke. And Mr. Thomas didn’t have any life other than drugs at that point, so all the love angle motives are non-starters.”

  “So it could have just been drug-related?”

  “Possibly.”

  I didn’t know what to say at that point. Matt was confusing the hell out of me. Why bring up the possibility of a cop being involved? It didn’t make sense.

  “So how can I help?�
�� I asked. The whole conversation felt surreal.

  “If there was a bad deputy in the department, who do you think it could be?” Matt asked flatly.

  Now I knew he was playing with me. “I can’t imagine,” I said.

  “Hard to envision, isn’t it?”

  We stared at each other for another moment. Then I realized that I should treat him like a suspect. When you’re interrogating a suspect you try to understand him, or at least try to make him believe that you’re trying to understand him. You sympathize. On TV you always see the cops yelling, screaming and threatening the suspect, but it doesn’t happen that way. Maybe a little tough talk, but honey does catch more flies than vinegar.

  “Matt, I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but we do work together. We even have to depend on each other. Let me take you to lunch. We can talk more about this then.” I said it like a friend would to another friend. I even managed a smile. I just had to see him as a suspect, someone to be tricked.

  “Okay.” He smiled back at me. “Maybe I’ve been a bit unfair to you.”

  “That’s the ticket. Winston’s Grill okay?”

  “That’ll work.”

  Once we were seated and placed our order, I had time to think about how best to get some useful information out of Matt. I realized I didn’t know much about him. He wasn’t the type to hang out with the other guys. Come to think of it, neither was I.

  “I just realized I don’t really know much about you.”

  “Wow, this is like our first date,” he shot back. If I liked him better, his sarcasm would have been funny.

  “Just trying to be… frenemies?” I shrugged.

  “I could throw it back to you. I know that your father’s the sheriff and that, when you want to be, you’re not a bad investigator. But beyond that…” He shrugged.

  “There’s not much to know. I grew up here in Adams County. Dad was a deputy for as far back as I can remember and then, when my mom died, Dad ran for sheriff and won. I joined the department because he asked me to.”

  “That’s odd. You became a deputy just because your dad asked you to?” He smirked.

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that. I wanted Dad to run for sheriff to jog him out of the depression he’d fallen into after Mom died. We kind of made a deal. He runs and, if he wins, I join the department.”

  “Still seems a bit strange.”

  “I guess we were both trying to help each other out. I thought he needed a reason for moving on with his life, and he thought I needed to focus on a career. Being a deputy had been a good life for him. I guess he thought it would be a good life for me.”

  “And has it been?” Matt asked, almost sounding like he gave a damn.

  “Jury is still out on that one. There’s good and bad. I don’t think it’s what I would have picked for myself.” How did I lose control of this conversation? I asked myself. I needed to take charge. “What about you? Why’d you become a deputy, and how the hell did you end up here?” I tried to make it sound light-hearted.

  “Good questions. I grew up in Orlando and I wanted to be a doctor. Or thought I did. I got through pre-med and then got into medical school down in Gainesville. But once I got in, I didn’t like the way doctors become slaves to the system. You’d think that they’d be the gods of the hospital, but in reality it’s the lawyers and the bean counters. So I dropped out and went to work as an EMT.”

  “EMT to cop isn’t too much of a leap.” I’d heard similar stories from more than one law enforcement officer.

  “Got tired of being the guy cleaning up the mess and thought maybe I could be the one who stops it from happening in the first place. Went to work for the Jacksonville Police Department. Got married for a while, but that didn’t work out so well.”

  That was a bit of an understatement. Everyone knew that Matt’s ex-wife had tried to commit suicide, then moved across country to California. Life with Matt may not have been the cause of her problems, but I doubt it helped.

  “So why here?”

  “I got accepted to grad school at Florida State, so I needed to find something closer to FSU. I knew Chief Maxwell from high school and contacted him. He didn’t have any openings on the police force at the time, but your dad did. So I was able to work here while getting my master’s in criminology.”

  “So it’s just a matter of time before you move on. FBI, DEA, ATF?”

  “Everyone here knows I’ve been putting in my applications for the last couple of years. And I’ve made it through most of the interview process with the FBI and the DEA. No luck with the ATF or the U.S. Marshals. Like you said, though, it’s just a matter of time.”

  “You don’t really like us much, do you?”

  “Who? You? Your father? The department? The county?”

  “Any of it.”

  “It’s been an okay place to do what I needed to do. But I’m ready to move on. I don’t think the Adams County Sheriff’s Office has done much to sweeten my CV or to make me a better law enforcement officer.”

  “Maybe you haven’t given it a chance. My dad’s a damn good sheriff.”

  “He hasn’t given me much of a chance. I’ve been doing mostly grunt work since I started.”

  “Are you kidding me? You became an investigator quicker than any deputy other than—” I broke off, knowing where this was going.

  “Yeah, other than you. He moved his own son off the street faster than me. You hadn’t put in your time. This place is full of nepotism and good ol’ boy handouts. That oaf you call a partner would have been fired from any real department for what he did, stuffing his face with his radio turned down while I was running for my life.” Matt spat the words out. The contempt that he had for us finally came shining through.

  “Pete was punished, and he’s a damn fine investigator. He was kept on because he’s an asset to the department and my father knows it. Pete made a mistake. It wasn’t out of malice or incompetence. All of us have made foolish mistakes. We’re human.”

  “That would have been some comfort to me if I’d been killed that night. Knowing that you are all just human, and you make mistakes. What about you? You aren’t a complete waste. Why don’t you go somewhere where your father won’t overshadow your accomplishments?”

  The words stung, but I didn’t hesitate with my answer. “Loyalty.”

  “Misplaced loyalty. He doesn’t need you. Maybe you’re afraid to make your own decisions,” he shot back at me.

  I never should have tried to engage with him. It was time to counter-attack. “Why did you need my help?”

  “When, today?”

  “Yes. We’ve been overworked in the past and you’ve always done more than keep up.”

  “Maybe I’ve gotten tired of doing your work and mine.”

  “But this was your work.”

  “I’ve been busy,” he said, but he’d become defensive. He was hiding something. Of course, I knew what he’d been doing, or at least where he’d been doing it. But I couldn’t ask him why he’d been hanging out with drug dealers.

  Mary brought our food, but we both ignored it, our eyes locked on each other.

  “Too busy to do your work doesn’t sound like someone headed for the big leagues.” I was enjoying regaining the upper hand. I could almost hear his teeth grinding.

  “I could have managed without you. It was Johnson’s idea.”

  “Two months ago you wouldn’t have gone along with it. You’d have been at the office until two in the morning if you had to.”

  “I realized it wasn’t appreciated.”

  We ate our food in silence. I paid the bill and we headed back to the office. I couldn’t decide if I’d learned anything or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Shantel called later that afternoon and told me that all the evidence we’d gathered yesterday was tagged, cataloged and on its way to the lab, but it would be weeks before we found out anything. The disadvantage of being a small county is that we rely heavily on other labs f
or almost all of our work. At least we could tell them whose DNA and fingerprints we were trying to match. That would help.

  At five I decided I’d had enough of my day of working with Matt. I spotted Pete coming into the building as I was on my way out.

  “I feel like crap,” were the first words out of his mouth. He looked like someone whose “Dear John” letter had shown up on the same day that his goldfish died.

  “I’m the one who had to spend all day with Matt Greene.” I wasn’t in a sympathetic mood.

  “I just got done re-interviewing all the rape victims,” he said heavily.

  Okay, his day was worse. “Find out anything?” I asked gently.

  “Nope. It ended up just being a matter of checking all the boxes. None of them could pull Conway out of a twenty-picture lineup. A couple of them thought that the objects found in Conway’s closet might be related to their cases, but they couldn’t be sure. Bottom line is, we’re going to have to count on the physical evidence to prove our point.”

  “Well, it’s not like we’re going to have to prove Conway’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We just have to clear Ayers’s name. We can do that by showing that Conway is a probable, even likely, suspect.”

  “True. Speaking of evidence, did you and Shantel find any smoking guns?”

  “We collected a lot of stuff and a fair number of fingerprints, but nothing that jumped out at us. It’s just going to take time.”

  “Because of Nichols’s poor performance at the interview, the bosses have decided to keep him off duty until further notice.”

  “And Dad said that he hired a lawyer. We’ll just have to see how it all turns out. I’m heading home,” I said.

  “I’m going to check-in and deal with some emails, then head for the range. I need to burn some powder.” Pete headed for his desk just as my phone went off. It was Dad.

  “You need to take Mac for another ride before next weekend,” he told me.

  Damn it! I’d forgotten about the parade. My mind went into overdrive trying to come up with a way to get out of it. “I’m not sure when I’ll have the time,” I equivocated.