“Eventually, I had to stop. I asked my old lieutenant for help, and he got me into a rehab joint. But withdrawal’s a bitch, no matter how nice the environment and how much support you have.
“I was an addict, Lucy. Like your mom. I had taken oxy the morning my partner got killed. If I hadn’t, my reaction time might have been faster. I might have realized what was about to happen. My old lieutenant helped me straighten myself out, then told me he’d recommend me for any job where I wouldn’t be around drugs or carry a gun, but he’d never give me a recommendation for a job on the force. When Dobbs’s job offer came through, I jumped at it. I’m not good at anything but being a cop.”
“I doubt that very much. But I’ve also known any number of cops who’ve been through AA and NA. What your lieutenant said wasn’t fair.”
“Yeah, it was. Because, even without the addiction, I couldn’t pass the physical, not every day. My shoulder hurts, my knee buckles at random times.”
“You forget how long I’ve spent around police. A whole lot of them can’t pass the physical once they’ve been on the job for a few years.”
“I wasn’t one of them. If I can’t do the job right, I don’t want to do it. I came here because I figured the position wouldn’t require as much physically or expose me to as much temptation. I was wrong. And now . . .I don’t know how involved Dobbs or Billy Pike are in what’s going on in this town, but they obviously don’t care for you, and it’s pretty clear Dobbs knew about my background before he hired me. He thinks he can use my past against me, force me to do what he wants.”
Finally, Ethan met Lucy’s gaze, and she barely recognized the man she knew in his bleak expression.
“He can’t. Ethan, whatever Dobbs thinks, he won’t be able to push you.”
“Are you sure? Are you certain you can trust me?”
“Of course I am.”
“God, Lucy, I’m so sorry for not telling you sooner. I was—” he shook his head, and Lucy felt the fist squeezing her heart ease a tiny bit. “I needed you to believe in me, and I wasn’t sure I could even believe in myself.”
She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath until she released it in a long, low whoosh. “It’s all right. I wouldn’t have understood then. Not with my mother’s history.”
“I swear to you. Whatever it takes to find Tim, we’ll do it.” His cell rang, and he snatched it from the holster on his belt.
“Donovan.”
He didn’t speak for several minutes, merely grunting occasionally. Lucy wanted to tear the phone from his hands and listen. Was it about Tim? About the raid they had planned? About Jed Martin or Eric Allenby? Ethan slid an arm around her shoulders and began to absently stroke her neck with his thumb. Her nerves jumped.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “See you in a bit.” He hung up and turned to Lucy. “That was TJ. She got Farmer’s approval for tonight. She’s going to go check on the mayor—she’s worried about him, hasn’t heard anything from him about Drew, and she’s used to him haranguing everyone within shouting distance every five minutes—and then she’ll be back. She’s going to check in with both Scott and Keith, too.”
“I’ll call Jake, tell him to come back.” She pulled out her phone, but Ethan took her hands before she could dial.
“Lucy, I—” Once again he shook his head rather than finishing. With a slight tug on her hands, he pulled her close, then wrapped his arms around her.
For the first time since Artie’s phone call, Lucy’s muscles unwound. Tim’s fate still consumed her mind, but her body recognized the security Ethan offered and sank into it. His lips brushed the top of her head, and she turned her face up for his kiss. He hesitated a moment before loosening his hold and running a calloused finger over her mouth. His eyes were still filled with grief and shadows, and Lucy’s heart wrenched. She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up to press her lips to his.
With a groan, Ethan slid his hand into her hair and returned the kiss, his lips warm, at once both soft and hard. His tongue, hot and spicy, laved hers, sending a cascade of sparks through her system. Digging her fingers into the taut muscles of his back, she practically sobbed with the need to be even closer. He was dragging her up and into his lap when a strident beep interrupted them. Ethan closed his eyes for a moment, then set Lucy away while he pulled out his phone once again and glared at the screen.
“It’s Keith,” he said. “Eric’s right where he should be. And he checked in with Scott. Jed’s at the dealership, too. Keith will trail Eric until he goes to work, and Scott is going to be sure Jed gets home, at which point Cal will take over. If either of them has Tim, they won’t have a chance to get to him without us knowing about it.”
He was back in work mode, so Lucy picked up her own phone and called Jake to tell him to come back to the apartment. Now they could do nothing but wait until the time came for the raid and hope that nothing happened in the meantime.
Chapter Sixteen
Blood cries out for blood, and I’ve always believed that if I caught my mother’s murderer I’d kill him on the spot. For years, that ambition alone kept me in weapons and self-defense classes.
from A Bad Day to Die by Lucy Sadler Caldwell [DRAFT]
WHATEVER ELSE HE might have been, Eric Allenby was a lousy security guard. At precisely six twenty-four in the morning, Ethan punched in the gate code he’d gotten from Jim Farmer. In the squad car, TJ and Keith followed him, Toby, and Beau in his truck up the drive to the factory. No one came out to meet them. Was Eric watching them on security monitors? Flushing drugs? Sleeping on the job? No way to tell.
At the front door, Ethan pulled out the key—another present from Farmer—and let them into the building. None of them attempted silence. The rubber soles of TJ’s sneakers and Toby’s shoes squeaked, Ethan’s boots thudded, Keith’s hard-soled shoes slapped, and Beau’s nails clicked on the marble floor of the entryway as they approached the security desk, but still no sign of Eric. Ethan went around the desk and looked at the bank of monitors. On the screen showing some offices, he saw Eric rifling through a file cabinet. Perfect.
Ethan pulled his map of the plant’s campus out of his evidence kit and spread it out on the security desk. They stood in the atrium of the building that housed all the offices. The factory itself was housed in a separate building connected by two walkways. They’d be more apt to be successful searching the factory before the machines came to life at eight, but nothing in his experience led Ethan to believe Eric would hide his drugs on the factory floor.
No, he was far more likely to hide them, for example, in a filing cabinet inside the plush inner office of the plant manager. Ethan signaled for the others to follow, and they made their way to the office. The door stood open, and Ethan stepped inside. The security guard sat behind the manager’s desk, his feet up on the scarred oak, and Ethan was reminded of the day he’d found Billy Pike sitting in his own office.
“Eric.”
“Chief Donovan.” Eric dropped his feet, but didn’t stand. “What brings you out this way?”
Ethan stepped aside so Toby and Beau could edge by him into the room. As soon as Eric laid eyes on the dog, his expression shifted from casually confident to alert and secretive.
“What the hell is going on? You can’t have an animal in here!”
“That’s where you’re wrong. See, Jim Farmer is concerned that you might be up to no good here all alone in the wee hours of the morning.” Ethan nodded to Toby, who slipped off Beau’s lead and gave him the command to find.
The dog sniffed around a bit, then headed for Eric, who scrambled to his feet and backed away until he hit the wall.
“Get that creature away from me! I’ll hurt him if he so much as touches me!” But Beau was pointing, his nose aimed at Eric’s left pocket.
“Eric Allenby,” Ethan said, feeling a tight, triumphant smile stretch across his
face, “you are under arrest for the possession of methamphetamines.” He grabbed Eric’s shoulder and turned him to face the wall, then cuffed his hands behind his back before allowing him to face them again. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at government expense. Do you understand these rights?”
“Based on what? The word of a fucking dog?”
“Do you understand your rights, Eric?”
“Yes, I understand my fucking rights. My brother’s a cop for Christ’s sake.”
“So’s this dog,” said Toby. “And in the four years we’ve been partners, he’s never been wrong, not once, about a suspect.”
Ethan held Eric still by means of a forearm braced against his chest, restraining him without actually hurting him, while he reached into the pocket at which Beau had pointed. He pulled out three glassine packets.
“Yessir, yessir, three bags full,” he said with a grin, dropping the three packets into a brown paper evidence bag and handing it off to Keith. “Now, I wonder whether your customers come to you, or you go to them. I’ll say you have a spot out in the woods where you meet. Or at least, you don’t allow them near the plant. Maybe you meet them at Rosalita’s. Or at Belle Pointe, where Drew was murdered.”
“Fuck you. That’s for personal use.”
“Yeah? We’ll see what Beau says. When we search the rest of this place, I’m betting we find more than enough to put you away for distribution.”
“Yeah, especially after we go over your house with a fine-tooth comb.”
Eric’s face paled.
“Besides, Eric,” Ethan leaned in, “you don’t look like a tweaker to me. I’d lay odds you don’t use at all. I’m also betting we find more than just drugs when we start tearing your life apart.”
“You won’t find a damned thing.”
“No? Well, that’s good. Because maybe if we can’t find any evidence of your other activities, your partner won’t feel the need to get rid of you. You wouldn’t much enjoy being dressed the way poor Juan Ramirez was, would you?”
“I have no idea what you mean.” But Eric wouldn’t meet his eyes. He’d done it. Or at least he’d taken part.
“Of course you don’t.” Ethan turned to TJ. “You and Keith take Eric here down to the station and get him booked while Toby and I let Beau do his thing here. Make sure when you get him back to the
station you Mirandize him again. I don’t want anyone letting him off because he’s ignorant.”
“Gotcha.”
“And call the DA and let him know what’s going on. Tell him we’ll be amending the warrant soon enough. Distribution, possibly murder.”
“Murder! Fuck that! You can’t pin that spic’s murder on me!”
“Who said I meant Juan Ramirez? We’ve had a lot of murders around here lately, Eric. Drew Dobbs, Renee Josephs, Richie Mack . . .”
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do any of them!”
“We’ll see.” He stepped away and let TJ and Keith drag Eric, still screaming curses at him, from the room.
By seven fifteen, Beau had located Eric’s stash behind the kick plate beneath the cabinets in the break room. Toby and Ethan collected and catalogued it, then settled in to wait for Chuck Hemming.
When Hemming arrived a few minutes later, Ethan recognized him. He’d seen the man around town, at Maxie’s and Rosalita’s. Pudgy and pasty-faced, he didn’t present a threatening image, but Ethan wasn’t letting him off the hook. Hemming hung around with Eric Allenby, and he was about to pay for his choice of pals.
“Sorry to bother you at work, Mr. Hemming,” Ethan said, gesturing to one of the chairs in the room, “but we need to have a little chat. See, this morning before you got here, we arrested your pal Eric Allenby for possession. By this afternoon, that charge will be updated, as we intend to include several other charges before he goes to trial.”
“Eric?” Hemming stared at him, then sank into the chair. “You arrested Eric?”
“I have to tell you up front, everyone I’ve asked has mentioned how close the two of you are, so I’d have a hard time believing he kept you in the dark about all his activities.”
“He did!” Hemming’s fair skin flushed. “I don’t know anything about his business. We’re not close at all!”
“Really? Because Eric’s name, along with yours and Jed Martin’s, keeps popping up everywhere I turn.”
“No! Those guys, they’re good buddies. I hang out with them sometimes, sure, but it’s a small town and we went to high school together. It’s nothing more than that. Like the other night. Jed called me and said we should get together for drinks at Rosalita’s. When I got there, Eric was already there. Jed must have called him first. Those two are tight as twins!”
“What night was that?”
“Friday. Night before last.”
The night of the truck crash. Ethan’s muscles tensed, but he locked the reaction inside, breathing slowly, refusing to give away his hand. “What time?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nine? Ten?”
Ethan felt frustration eat at his stomach. If it were nine, no way could Jed and Eric have been responsible for the truck. They couldn’t have gotten all the way to Rosalita’s in time. Ten, though, was a different story.
“Which one. Nine or ten? Whichever you tell me, I’ll check out with the bartender, so think hard about your answer.”
“Closer to ten, I guess. I was . . .ummm . . .thinking about going to bed.”
Oh, there was a lie. What had Hemming really been up to the night of the crash?
“So Jed called you at home?”
“Yeah.”
“And your phone records will bear that out?”
“Well, he called my cell number, but I was at home. Everyone uses my cell. It’s easier.”
“I see.” Ethan waited for three beats. “How much do you know about cell towers, Mr. Hemming?”
Not much, he hoped. Just as he hoped Hemming didn’t realize he’d need a warrant, for which he had no probable cause, to examine his phone records.
The man squirmed in his chair. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong!”
“No?”
“No. I had come into town, it’s true. But I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“So you said. Mind telling me what you were up to?”
Hemming’s eyes slid to the side. “There’s this woman. I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask her out. I was in front of her apartment complex when Jed called.”
An apartment complex? TJ’s complex? Where Lucy had spent the night? But how could Hemming have found out so quickly? If the man didn’t know, Ethan wasn’t about to enlighten him.
“You do know stalking is illegal?”
“I’m not stalking anyone! Shit! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to have to admit I can’t just walk up to a woman and ask her out?”
“Okay. So you’re sitting in front of this woman’s apartment and Jed calls and invites you for a drink. You get to Rosalita’s and find him and Eric Allenby already there. What kind of mood were they in?”
“I don’t know. Normal.” Hemming was practically crying. If Ethan hadn’t been so pissed off and so damn worried, he might almost have felt sorry for the guy. Almost.
“Is it normal for them to invite you out at ten o’clock on a night you have to be at work the next morning?”
“Actually, no.”
“Did they give you a clue as to why they should have done so this time?”
“No. And I didn’t ask. If Jed’s been dealing drugs with Eric, no one told me. And whatever else they did, I wasn’t part of it.”
“All right, then. Yo
u’re free to go for the moment, Mr. Hemming. But please keep yourself available in case any further questions arise.”
Hemming stared for a moment, then bolted like a rabbit.
“Hinky,” Toby commented.
“Yeah, but I doubt he had anything to do with Juan Ramirez’s murder. He’s too skittish to manage that kind of brutality. He’d vomit all over the place and have an ulcer the size of Texas.”
“True that. So what’s next?”
Ethan grinned. “Next, I get to go after Jed Martin. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. You want to stick around?”
“I’d love to, but I have to get back to Houston. Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“You don’t plan to stay here forever, really? Watching you today . . .you’re wasted here.”
“I’m not making friends here, so I doubt I’ll be reappointed. But the HPD sent me off with disability, and I don’t know how to do anything but police work.” Ethan shrugged. “Whatcha gonna do?”
“Hell if I know. I’m coming up on my twenty-five in two years. My wife wants me to retire. What the hell would I do all day?”
Ethan laughed bitterly. “You figure it out, you let me know.”
“Will do. Now, let’s get the hell out of here. Poor Beau can’t take the smell of dog food any longer and neither can I.”
• • •
KEITH AND TJ met Ethan outside the interrogation room at the station.
“How’s he doing?” Ethan asked.
“Sweating bullets and spitting mad,” said Keith. “He asked for his lawyer, so we called the man. Thing is, he takes long weekends in the summer. It’ll be another hour before he gets here from his lake house.”
“Damn shame.”
“Ain’t it just? How do you want to tackle this? We have nothing on him for the murder.”
Twisted Page 26