by Diane Kelly
I thumbed through the document. Sherman M. Heidenheimer was the only tenant listed. The unit was a four-hundred square foot efficiency apartment, barely big enough for one person, let alone two.
I handed the lease back to her. “Sorry to have bothered you. I think I’m barking up the wrong tree.”
“No problem.”
Since I’d struck out at the apartments, I headed for Martin Heidenheimer’s place. His property consisted of six acres, give or take, surrounded by white pipe fence. The metal gate was locked. No cars were in the driveway.
In what was likely a violation of federal postal regulations, I opened the mailbox and pulled out a stack of envelopes. All but one were addressed to Martin Heidenheimer. The only other piece of mail was a JCPenney ad addressed to Cynthia Heidenheimer. Nothing addressed to a Taylor. I shoved the mail back in the box and closed it, sitting back on my bike to think.
I felt like I was on a wild goose chase, except I wasn’t even sure there was a wild goose. Was I so desperate for something interesting to happen that I was creating crimes in my mind? Or was I simply losing my mind, becoming paranoid like that psychologist had warned me might happen with the PTSD? If that were the case, my days as a cop could be numbered.
I forced the thought from my mind, started up my bike, and drove off.
***
First thing I did back at the office was call Martin Heidenheimer’s phone number and leave a message on the machine asking him to get in touch with me. I spent the better part of the afternoon wiping down my boots and using a nail file to pry the dried mud out of the grooves on the soles.
Later that afternoon, the non-emergency phone line rang and Selena picked it up. “Jacksburg Police. How can I help you?” She listened, then covered the mouthpiece with the palm of her hand. “It’s someone named Martin Heidenheimer. Says he’s returning your call. Want to take it?”
I nodded and grabbed my receiver once the call was transferred. After identifying myself, I asked Martin if someone named Taylor lived at his residence.
“Yes, ma’am. We have a Taylor here.”
Bingo!
I pulled a pen out of the chipped coffee mug on my desk and scrambled to find a pad of paper among the junk on my desk. Unable to find one, I settled for taking notes on the cover of my Harley-Davidson catalog. “I’d like to speak with Taylor, please.”
“Is there some trouble?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
He paused a moment. “Hang on just a second.”
After some muffled noises, a young girl’s voice came over the phone. “Hi. Thith ith Taylor.”
“How old are you, Taylor?”
“Thixth.”
I wrote the number six on the catalog.
“You missing some teeth, sweetie?”
“Bofe of my fwont teef.”
I sucked at detective work, but at least I’d put those clues together. “Can I talk to your daddy again?”
“Thure.”
When Martin Heidenheimer came back on the line, I explained that I’d found a credit card bill in Taylor’s name at the old Parker residence.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know exactly. Could be identity theft, could be some kind of mistake.” I took some information from him, including Taylor’s date of birth and social security number. “I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of this.”
“Thanks, Captain Muckleroy. Let me know what you find out.”
“Will do.”
I looked down at the catalog, noting my only clue. Six-years old. Taylor was a child. What did that tell me? It tells me I need to find some more clues.
I called the bank and spoke to a representative from the legal department.
“Taylor’s parents will have to file an official police report,” the paralegal told me. “Once you get a copy of the report to me, I can e-mail a copy of Taylor’s credit card application. It will take a few days to pull the file, though.”
I wasn’t sure if the identify thief would have applied for multiple cards with the same bank, but it was likely. After all, if a bogus application worked once, why bother trying a different bank? “There could be a second victim. A Logan Mott.”
“I’ll need a police report for that offense, too.”
“Thanks. I’ll get reports to you ASAP.”
I called Taylor’s father back and contacted Logan’s mother, too, asking them to come to the station to fill out a report. After, I sat back in my booth to think. I had no idea what was going on and felt totally out of my league with this. I was the best-trained officer on the Jacksburg police force and I didn’t have a clue what else to do. Speaking with Chief Moreno would be pointless. He was an old-school street officer with no detective training, either. As much as I hated to do it, I had to call Sheriff Dooley.
After my call was transferred through a series of gatekeepers, Dooley finally came on the line. “Make it quick, Muckleroy. I’ve got a meeting with a reporter from Channel Five in three minutes.”
Bully for you, jackass. “Something odd is going on here in Jacksburg and we need your department’s expertise.” I ran through the events of the past few days, detailed the delivery that had disappeared and the suspicious credit card bill. “It looks like some kind of fraud ring or identity theft.”
Identity theft had been a hot issue when I left the force in Dallas, but the big-city department had a specially trained team to handle the cases. Identity theft hadn’t been a problem in Jacksburg before. Apparently there wasn’t much of a market for the identities of those with low incomes and less-than-stellar credit scores. “Do you want to take over the investigation?”
Sheriff Dooley huffed into his mouthpiece, the sound painfully magnified at my end of the line. “You’ve got no victim raising a ruckus. Nobody in danger. Why the hell are you wasting my time?”
Anger shot through me like an emergency flare. “All right, Sheriff Dooley.” Sheriff Do-Nothing was more like it. “Don’t need you stealing credit for another one of our busts anyway.” I slammed the receiver down before he could argue with me. “Dumb ass.”
With the Sheriff’s department refusing to help, I was on my own. Dang. I had no idea what to do. But come hell or high water, I’d get to the bottom of this.
***
The Ninja passed me again on Wednesday afternoon and also on Thursday morning, but both times I was tied up with a traffic stop and couldn’t get away in time to follow him. Fate was yanking my chain again. But I wouldn’t let the bitch get to me. I’d force myself to be patient. It was just a matter of time before I’d get my man.
Trey picked up lunch to go and we ate at my booth at the DQHQ on Thursday. He’d brought an assortment of the video games he’d developed and loaded them on the department’s computer system to keep us entertained between calls. Selena and I spent the afternoon battling each other in a new game designed to imitate roller derby.
On Friday evening, Trey took me to a movie in Hockerville, nudging me into the back row as I started down the aisle with my extra-large bucket of buttered popcorn and small Diet Coke.
“Let’s sit back here,” he said. “If the movie gets boring, we can make out.”
We slid into two seats in the center of the row and Trey wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Can I interest you in a Hot Tamale?”
“Is that a euphemism or are you offering me candy?”
He smiled and rattled the red box.
I held out my palm and he shook a handful of red candies into it. I tipped my bucket toward him. “Popcorn?”
He scooped up a handful. “Watch this. I’ve got a very talented tongue.” He proceeded to toss a series of kernels into the air, deftly catching each of them on the tip of his tongue.
The theater began to fill up and we chatted until the lights dimmed. After what seemed like an eternity of previews, the movie began, an action-packed flick with a dubious plot and an excess of exposed cleavage, most of it store bought.
>
The main character, a CIA operative in pursuit of terrorists, leapt from a low-flying single-engine plane, performed a triple flip in the air, and landed on his feet and unhurt in the back of a dump truck hauling sand. I whistled through my teeth. “Wow. What realism.”
Trey shrugged. “What’s reality done for you lately?”
He had a point. Of course his commentary was just the kind of thing you’d expect from a video game programmer who spent his workdays constructing fantasy worlds. My workdays were at the opposite end of the spectrum. Too real sometimes.
We ended the night sitting on the wooden swing in front of my father’s house. Trey was so unassuming, so easy to talk to, I found myself letting down my guard, sharing things, intimate details about myself, my divorce, my childhood. He opened up, too, spilling embarrassing details about growing up as a nerd, about him and his other brainy friends getting hassled by the athletes at Hockerville High.
Trey paused a moment, his demeanor and tone turning serious. “Can I ask you something, Marnie?”
“That’s a loaded question.”
He leaned forward and turned to me, his gaze locked on mine. “What freaked you out at the bowling alley? I know it wasn’t asthma.”
Dang. He wasn’t as gullible as I’d thought. I looked at Trey and felt my defenses weaken. The look on his face told me he wanted to know what had upset me, that he wanted to connect with me emotionally. “I’ll tell you, Trey, but it’s not going to be pretty.”
“Didn’t think it would be.”
I looked down at my left wrist, at the Wonder Woman bracelet covering the scars. Should I do this? Spill my guts to this guy I’ve known only a short time? What’s more, could I do this? Reopen emotional wounds that hadn’t truly healed but had merely scarred over, like the physical ones?
I glanced back up at Trey. The concern in his eyes, the compassion there, told me I not only could but that I should. I’d held this inside long enough, ever since the police department psychologist started to look at me funny when I was still returning to his office weeks after the incident.
“I . . . I killed a man, Trey.” Warm tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, but I didn’t bother to wipe them away, knowing they were only the beginning of what was sure to be a deluge. I removed the bracelet, pulled back the cuff on my flannel shirt, and held out my wrist so he could see the physical scars. Then I showed him the scars he couldn’t see, unloading all of my emotional baggage on him as if he were an emotional bellhop.
He listened, quietly and intently, as I detailed my worst days on the job. The day I’d been first on the scene of a horrific drunk driving accident, the dead driver like a human shish-ka-bob, impaled on his steering wheel. The day I’d attended a funeral for a fellow officer gunned down by drug dealers, his wife falling to pieces during the eulogy, the children old enough to understand what was going on, yet still young enough to need the father who’d been so senselessly taken from them.
Finally, I told him how I’d been dispatched to a neighborhood park after concerned mothers had reported a homeless man digging through trash cans near the playground. I’d been as calm as possible, approaching the man slowly, talking softly, displaying no weapons, but the delusional man still saw me as a threat. Before I knew what was happening, he’d pulled a knife from his pocket and attacked, slashing at the hand I’d thrown up to protect myself. Mothers were screaming, children were screaming, I was screaming. Before I could finish, I broke down in shoulder-shaking sobs. But the anguished look on my face told Trey the rest of the story.
Trey put a warm hand on my cheek, forcing me to look at him. “Marnie, you had no choice.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t the point. Internal Affairs had thoroughly investigated the shooting, interviewed dozens of witnesses, cleared me of any wrongdoing. Hell, even the ACLU hadn’t been interested in the case. I did what I had to do, I knew that on a logical level. But this wasn’t a logical problem. My brain had no problem working through it. It was my heart that couldn’t take it, my soul that had yet to recover.
I clenched my fists in my lap and fought to control my tears of frustration. Nobody seemed to understand. Not Chet. Not Dad. Not Savannah. And now, not even Trey.
“Whether I had to shoot or not isn’t the issue.” I took a deep, ragged breath. “I killed a man, Trey. I ended a life. And I haven’t made up for that.”
Trey paused a moment, his face intent as he considered my words. A moment later, he encircled my clenched fists in his hands and pulled them to his chest, looking deep into my eyes as if he’d find the answers there. “You’ve got a karmic debt to settle. You need to even the score.”
Oh, my God. He gets it. He understands.
Trey was the first person to comprehend where I was coming from, to accept that, logical or not, I couldn’t be satisfied with simply knowing that what I’d done had been justified, unavoidable. I gazed back into his intelligent, compassionate eyes, and nodded. We connected emotionally in that moment like I’d never connected with anyone before. What an incredible, powerful feeling.
If Fate tries to take this from me, she’ll be in for the fight of her life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FIRED UP
I wiped my face with my sleeve, and Trey and I moved on to more pleasant subjects, talking about everything and nothing until the wee hours of the morning, not once running out of conversation. He left only after I promised to spend the next evening with him, too. My emotional meltdown hadn’t scared him off. That said a lot about him. So did the fact that he spent Saturday morning helping his mother and father around their house. He drove over to Jacksburg in the late afternoon.
Dad and Angus headed out to the backyard, fired up the grill for supper, and slapped on a rack of ribs. Beer in hand, Angus tended to the meat, brushing it lovingly with his homemade whiskey-infused barbecue sauce. Dad, Trey, and I relaxed in lawn chairs in the shade of a misshapen live oak tree, Bluebonnet lying at our feet, patiently waiting for the scraps sure to come later.
When Dad asked Trey about his work, Trey stepped over to the Lincoln, bringing out his state-of-the-art laptop and showing Dad some of the websites he’d designed while he’d been back in the area. I pulled my chair closer to look over Dad’s shoulder. Trey had constructed a fantastic new website for the Jacksburg school district, complete with a holiday calendar, a list of upcoming events, and photos of key staff. An animated Jackrabbit, the mascot, hopped across the bottom of the screen. He’d created one for Lorene’s, too, making it easy for people to place to-go orders online.
“Do you have a website for your tree-trimming business?” Trey asked Dad.
Dad chuckled. “I don’t even have a computer. I check e-mails and search the internet on my phone.”
“Want a site? It’s a great way to attract clients.”
Things had been a bit slow for Dad’s tree-trimming business lately. Not that it really mattered. The mobile home had long since been paid off, and with me chipping in for groceries and utilities, Dad didn’t have many bills. But who couldn’t use a little more cash?
Dad took a sip from his beer bottle, considering. “What’ll it cost me?”
“No charge for the design,” Trey said. “I’ve got tons of clip art loaded on my computer. I can whip something up in no time and hook you up with hosting for under twenty bucks a month.”
“Guess it’s long past time for me to climb out of my cave and join the electronic age, huh?” Dad raised his beer in salute. “What the hell. Let’s give it a go.”