The Chase

by Jesse J. Thoma

Holt was glad the dog hadn’t been in the house. He looked like he could do some damage if properly motivated. As if reading her mind, the dog stood and leapt off the porch, barking loudly as he rushed at the fence. Cell phone man yelled at the dog to shut up, snapped his phone closed, and glared at Holt.

  “What the fuck you looking at, kid?”

  She made the decision in a split second and, although risky, the chance to learn the man’s name was too enticing to pass up. This guy looked similar to the man in the picture from the ATM. Holt answered.

  “That Jimmy’s dog?

  “Jimmy? No, it’s not fucking Jimmy’s dog. I don’t know no Jimmy. Go away, kid.”

  “Looks like Jimmy’s dog. He used to live around here. Maybe you took him. What’s your name? I’m gonna ask him.”

  Anger blossomed in the young man’s eyes. Holt knew she was pushing it. Her voice was deep for a woman, but not so much that you couldn’t tell if you listened carefully. Luckily, this guy seemed preoccupied and wasn’t paying attention to much except his cell phone, which he was glancing at every few seconds.

  “I didn’t take no dog from no fuck named Jimmy. Dog’s mine. Now seriously, kid, go away.”

  While she was trying to figure out how to continue the conversation and learn the man’s name, she felt Moose slide up beside her. He put a possessive hand on her shoulder and gripped hard. She felt the silent message and stood quiet.

  “Bobby, where the hell have you been?” Moose was looking directly at her. “You’re an hour late, and I swear, I should kick your scrawny ass right here.” For effect, he slapped her across the side of the head, knocking the baseball hat askew.

  She fixed it defiantly but slumped her shoulders even more, silently giving in to the abuse.

  “Sorry ’bout him,” Moose said, turning to the stranger. “Always sticking his damn nose where it don’t belong.”

  The young man looked up from his vibrating cell phone and nodded to Moose.

  “I’m Mike Tate. If you need a paint job on this house, look me up. I got my own business, and it looks like you could use my services.”

  Moose held his hand out and looked at the man on the other side of the fence, daring him to not shake. Holt kept her head down, looking and acting like a chastised, sulking teen.

  “Diamond, like the jewel,” the man said, leaving out his last name, probably figuring either Diamond was a unique enough first name that he didn’t need it, or subtly telling Moose to go to hell. “I just rent here. Thanks for the offer though.”

  Moose nodded and replaced his hand on Holt’s shoulder, this time closer to the scruff of her neck. He got a good grip on her sweatshirt and jerked her violently away from the house. She stumbled and then fell in step just ahead of him, letting him lead and push her around all he needed.

  “If you change your mind, look me up. I’m listed,” Moose said as way of good-bye.

  The man with the phone didn’t look up again. He pressed send and looked worried as he listened briefly before going in the house, yelling for his dog, and slamming the front door.

  Holt stumbled along in front of Moose a while longer, keeping up the charade, even letting him shove her roughly into the passenger seat of the beat up, ancient Crown Vic he had borrowed from Jose.

  They waited until they were out of the neighborhood and headed back to the shop before they both started laughing.

  “Damn, H, you’re getting good at sullen teenager. It took me almost a full minute watching you walk up the block before I made you. With Isabelle back around, I wouldn’t expect you to look so angry.” He absorbed the playful punch to his arm with a smile.

  “Bobby? That’s the best you could do? Of all the names in the world, you had to go and assign me yours?” Not many people knew his real name.

  “Speaking of which, what the hell were you doing talking to that guy? He’s the one that almost busted your ass you know.”

  “Kinda figured,” Holt said. “We got his name, didn’t we? You getting soft in your old age? We used to do shit like that all the time.”

  Moose ignored Holt’s challenge. “I think I got the name actually, assuming he’s telling the truth. What the fuck were you going to do when you were done with accusing him of stealing someone else’s dog?”

  Holt faltered, but only for a second. “I hadn’t quite worked that part out yet.”

  Moose laughed. “Does Isabelle know what a pain in the ass you are to be around and care about?”

  “Not yet, and don’t you dare tell her.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Good Lord, are my attackers middle schoolers?” Isabelle asked, lighthearted teasing in her eyes.

  “Someone here decided to go undercover and…” Moose trailed off when Holt turned away from Isabelle and glared at him.

  “Is it too domestic sounding if I ask you how your day at work was?” Holt asked, trying to redirect Isabelle’s attention.

  “I thought my coworkers were going to faint at the sight of Lola. Other than that? Business as usual.” Despite her smile, Isabelle sounded vulnerable and a bit anxious.

  “I’m going to change. All done with the school boy look. I need to meet with some of the crew and then we can get Superman and I’ll take you home. Is that okay?” Holt squeezed Isabelle’s hand as she moved off. She could see the strain of current events more and more clearly on Isabelle’s face. She had to find Caldwell soon.

  She was also sure she saw Isabelle’s gaze lingering on the crotch of her baggy shorts and the half smile on her face when Holt made eye contact. Had she just been checking to see if she was packing?

  She tripped once and had to shake her head to clear it three times in the fifteen feet to her office door. She realized the bad guys she tracked down every day were the least of her worries.

  When she flipped on the lights to her office, she was greeted by a field of land mines in the form of race cars, stuffed animals, an empty portacrib, and Superman sprawled, sound asleep, across the chest of an equally tired Max. They each had an arm thrown above their heads, Superman’s covering Max’s eyes. They were actually quite cute. If Holt had any idea what the hell was going on, she might have stopped longer to appreciate that fact.

  She backed out the door, flipped the lights off, closed the door, and turned around. Surprisingly, it was Isabelle who leapt forward.

  Holt held up her hand, not needing Isabelle to explain. “Clearly, Superman can get out of his crib, and I think perhaps Max and I need to have a chat.”

  Isabelle nodded. “You do, but I put her in your office. I forgot, sorry. I didn’t know about Superman.”

  “Never apologize for taking care of people I care about. She looked like hell earlier, although I was too busy yelling at her to really notice.”

  “You’re a public menace. Women as sexy as you, with a bleeding heart and a conscience shouldn’t exist,” Isabelle said. “It’s not good for my blood pressure when you look at me like that.”

  “I felt like this the first time I saw you, you know.”

  “I do know. You were looking at me with your big melty sex eyes then too. Don’t you have work to do? People are starting to stare.” Isabelle looked amused. They were talking too quietly to be overheard, but Holt figured the look on her face needed no explanation. A week on Isabelle’s couch was a long time.

  A short time later, Holt had cooled off and gathered those of her crew she either trusted unquestionably or had been working on keeping Isabelle safe from the beginning. Someone had woken Max so she was there as well, looking disheveled but less like she was on death’s doorstep than she had earlier. Against Holt’s better judgment, Isabelle was also present. She had insisted, and Holt couldn’t tell her no.

  These staff meetings weren’t unusual when they were tracking a particularly high profile or difficult bail jumper. It helped to have everyone on the same page, and despite how good she was at her job, Holt knew she couldn’t see or think of everything. They were a team in the truest sense of the word.
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  Besides that, most of the time, she didn’t lead the hunts. The smaller cases were farmed out to her crew, and they only met with her for a briefing and with questions as they arose. Since her business had grown, she had taken a more managerial role unless the case was particularly interesting. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t stay off the streets. She had been working them for ten years. It was a hard habit to break.

  “We’ve got a name to track now. Diamond. There can’t be too many of those in the state. I have no idea how he’s connected, if at all. His house was that of a user, not a criminal mastermind or big time dealer. He doesn’t have the resources to be coming after Isabelle, so there must be a reason we aren’t seeing for the address being on that envelope.”

  “How do you know?” Isabelle was focused and taking notes.

  “He had drug paraphernalia, rubber tubing, spoon, cotton, water.”

  Isabelle clearly still didn’t understand.

  “Heroin users cook the heroin in a spoon to melt it, and then pull it up through the cotton to filter it. The water is for rinsing and dissolving the heroin, usually before cooking, but sometimes cooking isn’t even needed. The tube is to tie off to get a good vein. This guy also had baby formula and copper shreds, both of which can be sold on the street for a bit of extra money. My guess is he’s breaking into houses, busting up the walls, stripping the copper, and selling it to make ends meet.” Holt felt in her gut that Diamond was connected, even if she didn’t know how.

  “Oh.”

  Holt guessed this was a world far outside the realm of anything Isabelle could imagine.

  “I also saw a lockbox, like a kid’s cashbox, bright red, under the coffee table in the living room. The kitchen was the strangest part. Table was covered with little plastic bottles, about this tall.” She held her thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. “There were probably fifty of them, all empty, screw caps sitting next to the bottles. It was the neatest thing about the house. Here’s the picture I got.”

  “They look like the bottles the methadone clinic hands out. Makes sense with the IV works and the lockbox. To get a take-home dose at a clinic, you have to have a container that locks. Lots of people use those red cash boxes,” Moose said.

  Holt looked at him. She was the only one at the table who knew what sharing that information meant to him. Although the rest of the people sitting at the meeting probably wouldn’t realize how he came by the information, she knew that his recovery from an almost fatal addiction wasn’t something he shared lightly. He wasn’t ashamed of what he went through, but it was still something difficult to make public. She knew his love for her and her desire to keep Isabelle safe trumped his own desire for privacy, and he would stand on the rooftop yelling about his heroin addiction if it would help.

  “Is it possible all those bottles were for him?” Lola asked.

  “Nope. First of all, there weren’t labels on them. They’re labeled like prescriptions when they leave the clinic. Second, you can’t get more than fourteen doses at a time. I’ve heard of clinics that give take-homes for longer, but they don’t tend to stay in business. The state isn’t fond of unregulated narcotics.”

  “Could he be a dealer? Maybe selling to Caldwell and that’s why the address was on the envelope?” Lola asked.

  “He probably is dealing, given the number of empty bottles around. He may even be dealing to Caldwell, but it’s got to be more complicated than that. A simple drug user-dealer relationship doesn’t explain the first red note, why Caldwell thinks Isabelle isn’t safe, and where the hell he is.” Holt ran a hand through her hair.

  “First note?” Isabelle said.

  “Someone tried to scare me away from you when we first met,” Holt said. “I probably should have told you about it, but you were already mad at me for not being the one getting shot at. I didn’t think hard evidence was the way to win you over.”

  Isabelle looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to take issue with Holt never mentioning the first note.

  “Seems like it would be helpful to talk to Diamond. He might have information we want,” Moose said. “Maybe we can run some kind of scam to get him to talk? We know where he lives, but it might be more useful to see what he’s up to with those bottles. We could try to find his clinic.”

  “Isabelle, you said one of your clients owns a methadone clinic, right? We could start there. Moose, you could get me looking like a heroin addict in withdrawal, right? I could learn more if I was inside,” Holt said. She was in planning mode, thinking only of keeping Isabelle safe. Diamond had seen her, but as a teenage boy, and she doubted he would remember.

  “Aren’t there other people at the clinics?” Isabelle asked. “If I were them, I wouldn’t want you tromping all over my privacy just to talk to some dude you could just as well confront in the parking lot.”

  “I think we could get Holt looking like a heroin user pretty easily,” Moose said with a wink. “Problem is, there are a lot of clinics in the state. We don’t know where he goes, and we don’t want to blow this by guessing wrong. Methadone patients are a chatty group. If we start asking around, we’ll probably spook him. Plus, if he has his works at his house, he’s probably relapsed so he might not be in treatment any more, or he could have switched to Suboxone. If we want to take a guess, we should start with a clinic closest to his house, or Isabelle’s client’s place. There are two in Pawtucket. I’ll ask a buddy of mine if he knows Diamond. He’s been to just about all the clinics in the past few years. If that doesn’t work, we can put a car on him, but we gotta be subtle. I bet he’s on a pretty short leash by whoever he’s working for, especially if he’s using. We might want to explore other options for getting to know Diamond.”

  “If she does this will she be safe? If she gets into the clinic, or greets him in the parking lot I mean?” Isabelle asked, concern distorting her delicate features. “I don’t want you doing this if you might get hurt. We’ll get him some other way.”

  “Oh, now you’re worried about my safety? You weren’t too concerned when you were getting me all hot and bothered,” Holt said so only Isabelle could hear.

  Not to be deterred, Isabelle persisted. “So? Danger?”

  “Some,” Holt said. “We track criminals. It’s part of it.” She shrugged and looked away.

  “The clinics have security guards, but there are a lot of people moving through a small space in a short amount of time, and most of them are in some stage of withdrawal until they get dosed. There’s a lot of waiting in line until you reach the dosing window. Tempers can flare. Most of the clinics limit the amount of time you can spend milling around the lobby and have pretty strict rules about entering and leaving the line,” Moose said.

  “You’ll be careful?”

  “Always,” Holt said.

  “Okay, good by me. Let’s catch the bastard.”

  “Diamond doesn’t own that house, boss.” Max had been tapping away at her computer while the others talked. “It’s owned by a guy by the name of Gary Cappelletti. No record that I can find. He’s owned it since two thousand and four.”

  “Cappelletti?” Isabelle stared at Max.

  “You know him?”

  “The name sounds familiar, but I can’t pinpoint why. Damn it! I made a list of my clients with any ties to Representative Caldwell, so maybe that’s why it sounds familiar. If they are after me, my business is the only reason I can think of.” Isabelle handed the list to Max, who went to work on her laptop, typing in the names and cross-checking the results. “I also got a strange file from Decker Pence’s secretary. It’s all on the list.”

  “Speaking of Caldwell, we need to find him before he comes and visits Isabelle. We’ve been looking for three weeks. Where the fuck is he?” Holt asked.

  The meeting ended without an answer.

  When the rest of the group dispersed, Holt loitered at the table to talk to Moose. It was completely out of character for her to suggest infiltrating a methadone clinic. It f
elt wrong coming out of her mouth. Perhaps there were one or two less than upstanding citizens seeking treatment, but she didn’t feel it justified breaching the confidentiality of the rest of the patients. Most bounty hunters wouldn’t think twice about lying their way into any situation that was beneficial to finding the bad guys. She understood the sentiment since it was her job to get the criminals off the streets. On the other hand, innocent bystanders should have their privacy respected and their lives uninterrupted. She had always felt that way and done her best to run her business by those principles. Protecting Isabelle was making her crazy, or maybe it was the job finally wearing her down. She wondered how many other times she had stuck a toe over the line and not even noticed.

  “How do you guys know so much about the streets and live so comfortably in this world?” Isabelle asked, interrupting Holt’s chance to talk to Moose privately.

  “You never get used to it,” Moose said. “But I lived in the gutter as a young man, so the street seems like an upgrade.”

  “The gutter?” Holt said, not sure that was an accurate description. “And had you even started getting facial hair yet? I don’t think you were any kind of man.” Holt had trouble remembering the creature Moose had been when she had bailed him out of the intake center in the state prison ten years earlier. He was like family to her, and remembering him in so much pain made her heart ache.

  “Gutter, jail, whatever. You bailed me out, and that’s all the detail I need to remember. Although I would rather have stayed in jail for the torture you put me through. She handcuffed me to a radiator for three days in the dirtiest apartment I’ve ever spent a night in.” Moose was laughing, nothing but devotion and love on his face.

  Holt searched Moose’s face, willing to change the subject if he didn’t want to disclose his past to Isabelle. He smiled and nodded so she defended herself.

  “Hey, I stayed with you through all of it. I fed you, when you would eat, and I listened to you call me every name you could think of the whole time. It was good practice for the creeps we pull in since they can’t come up with anything he hasn’t already called me. Besides, I used all my money bailing him out. I was a kid too. That shit hole was the only place I could afford. He was delirious. I was the one that had to deal, in a completely lucid state of mind, with the rats and cockroaches.”