On the Prowl

by Matt Lincoln

  I decided to hang back and get the day’s paperwork out of the way before heading home. As tempting as it was to put it off, I knew that I’d come to regret it if we got busy later. After a quick stop to Gardner’s office to drop off the phone before I forgot, I settled in at my desk and began writing my report. A few minutes later, I waved goodbye to Castillo, Patel, and Gardner as they left the break room and headed off in the direction of the elevators. I liked them too and had been happy to discover that the majority of the agents who worked there seemed to be both capable but still friendly. It was a stark difference from my previous office, where although all the agents were good at their jobs, the atmosphere was much more suffocating. It was a cutthroat environment where every man was on his own, and there was no sense of camaraderie to speak of.

  After about an hour, I had finished everything and was ready to head out. I looked toward Wallace’s office, wondering whether I should say goodbye, but I noticed that Nelson and Wallace were both inside, seemingly deep in conversation. Deciding it would be better to just take my leave, I walked through the bullpen quietly, out toward the elevators, and then down to the lowest floor of the parking garage where I had left my car.

  My commute home wasn’t very long, as I’d been fortunate enough to find an affordable apartment on the strip itself. It was an extremely small studio at only about five-hundred square feet and had room for only a bed and a few pieces of furniture, but it was perfect for me.

  I shrugged off my coat and dropped my bag on the kitchen table by the door, kicking my shoes off as I made my way into the living room. I picked up the hand-held gaming console that I’d abandoned on the couch two nights ago, happy to see it still had some battery life left. Video games were the one thing I allowed myself to blow money on, as I found it incredibly soothing to be able to spend an hour or two clearing my mind and focusing on some repetitive action after a particularly trying day. It was still too early for bed, so I sank into the soft cushions of the couch and settled in for an evening of mindless gaming. I knew tomorrow we’d have to get started on the warehouse investigation, and I wanted my brain to be refreshed and ready to go before then.

  12

  Charlie

  I could hear voices again as I walked through the main doors of the office and past the glass dividers of the bullpen. I thought instantly of the previous morning when I’d walked in to find Junior being hassled by the other agents. He turned out to be the center of the commotion again today, although this time, it was because he was holding a large box of donuts.

  “Oh, hi, Agent Hills!” he said to me as I rounded the corner and entered the main bullpen area. It was kind of impressive how smiley and energetic he managed to be so early in the morning when I could barely function correctly without a strong cup of coffee. As if reading my mind, Junior turned toward his desk and picked up a styrofoam cup emblazoned with the logo of a famous coffee-chain, holding it out toward me.

  “Got some donuts for the whole office and some coffees for us,” Junior said, taking a sip of his own coffee. “I figured we might need them since we have to go stake out that industrial park.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it,” I said, taking the coffee. I really did, as I still didn’t have a coffee maker in my own apartment and hadn’t had my caffeine fix yet. The coffee was thick and sweet as I drank it, and it was clear to me that Junior took his with both cream and sugar. I preferred my own coffee black, but I thought it would be extremely rude to reject it, and in the end, it was still caffeine, so I took a donut and sat at my desk, drinking and eating as I did.

  “Hey, guys, now that you’re both here, I should tell you I didn’t find anything substantial on the victim’s phone.” I looked up from my coffee to where Gardner was speaking. She was leaning against Patel’s desk and holding the phone in question.

  “The only thing I could confirm is that there are definitely more animals being transported in, as there were texts from the supplier alluding to other shipments,” she said. “But we already suspected that, so it’s not really new information.” It sounded as though she was trying to keep her voice from wavering as she spoke and seemed determined to look at the floor as she did.

  “Alright, well, thank you anyway, Agent Gardner,” Junior said. “Every new piece of information helps.” His response seemed to make Gardner relax. She smiled and turned to say something quietly to Agent Patel, who was working her way through a chocolate eclair.

  “Ready to go?” I asked Junior, tossing my empty cup into the small trash bin by my desk and standing up.

  “Ready,” Junior said, the bright and happy attitude from before tempered down into a much more serious demeanor.

  I offered to drive again, and Junior accepted without protest.

  “I’m not the biggest fan of driving, to be honest, so be my guest,” he said. I was perfectly fine with this arrangement, as I didn’t really like being a passenger to other people’s driving. It made me feel as though I wasn’t in control and wouldn’t be able to do anything about it if the other person made a mistake. So, Junior continued to sip his coffee slowly even as we pulled into the industrial park that Gardner had traced the warehouse to. While I had chugged the sickeningly sweet concoction quickly in an attempt to get a boost of energy from the caffeine, Junior really seemed to be enjoying his own cup. To each his own, I guessed.

  The industrial park itself was unimpressive, with several rows of warehouses and shipping containers on one end, a couple of business fronts on the other, and a few large trucks parked here and there. We had decided to bring my pickup truck, as we both thought would blend into the area of the industrial park better than one of the sleek company cars would. We were right, as there was a similar truck parked by a warehouse just a few yards away.

  We parked the car in a spot where we could easily monitor most of the rest of the industrial park, with Junior keeping an eye on one side while I watched the other. I leaned back in my chair, mentally preparing myself for a long wait when a large, eighteen-wheeled truck pulled off the main road and turned into the park. Just as it did, a pair of men walked out the door of one of the buildings at the edge of the park.

  “Is that him?” I heard Junior ask at the same moment I recognized him.

  “Yeah, that’s Andy Gilford,” I said, pulling out my phone and double-checking the photo Gardner had sent me just to be sure. His hair was a little longer now, but the orange shade and heavily freckled face were unmistakable.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Junior, pushing open the driver’s side door and hopping down out of the truck. The pair of men seemed to be waiting for the truck to finish backing up toward them, and we approached casually, not wanting to alarm them. Technically, we hadn’t witnessed anything illegal yet, so we couldn’t actually arrest Gilford. We needed to play this carefully.

  “Excuse me, are you Andy Gilford?” I called when we were still a few feet away, close enough to interact but still far enough to take cover if either of them happened to pull a gun, or otherwise react with hostility.

  Andy’s face drained of color the moment I asked that, and his freckles stood out in sharp contrast. It was actually the older man who answered, eyeing us with suspicion.

  “And who might you two gentlemen be?” he asked, his eyes flitting between me and Junior, who was only a few paces behind me.

  “We’re federal agents with-” was as far as I got before Andy bolted, throwing the clipboard he was holding at me before taking off toward the shipping yard full of warehouses.

  “Damn!” I yelled out of reflex as the clipboard glanced the side of my cheek hard enough that I knew it would bruise. I took off after him, trying my best not to lose him in the maze of warehouses and containers. It was a fairly well-organized yard, but all it would take would be for Andy to get just far enough to round a corner outside my view for me to lose sight of him.

  I had the stamina to follow him for a while, but he was turning corners too fast for me to keep up, and right when I feared I h
ad lost him, I heard a thud and a yell from the other side of a warehouse. I ran over to find Junior on the ground with Andy pinned beneath him, yelling obscenities and demands to for us to let him go.

  “Nicely done,” I said, patting Junior on the back and taking a moment to catch my breath now that the adrenaline was wearing off and the fatigue of chasing a teenager around an industrial park began to set in. Between us, we lifted Andy off the ground, and Junior pulled a set of handcuffs out of his bag to secure him.

  “I didn’t do anything! You can’t prove anything! You can’t arrest me!” he was still screaming, pulling hard against the handcuffs which were now secure behind his back.

  “Stop doing that, or you're going to hurt your wrists,” I said, pushing him toward the truck. “And yes, actually, we can arrest you since you just assaulted a federal agent.” I pointed to my sore cheek, where I could tell there was already a bruise forming. This seemed to scare Andy, who immediately began tearing up.

  “We’ll have to get a car out here to transport him back to the office. Can’t exactly throw him in the truck bed,” I said to Junior, who was already on his phone.

  “On it,” he said simply as he moved away to speak on the phone.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I looked up at the sound of a voice and saw the man who’d been standing next to Andy marching toward us.

  “Sir, stop right there,” I said. My hands were occupied holding on to Andy, so I wouldn’t be able to reach for my gun. Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed that Junior had stopped talking on the phone and was watching the man as he approached.

  “What are you doing with him?” The man asked angrily. “He hasn’t done anything! He’s been with me all day. You can’t just arrest people whenever you want!”

  “Sir, you need to stop, right now,” Junior said, stepping in front of me and training his gun on the man. He faltered before coming to a full stop.

  “You can’t point a gun at me!” he yelled.

  “We are federal agents with the Military Border Liaison Investigative Services,” Junior said as he pulled his ID from the inside of his jacket. “Mr. Gilford is being taken into custody on suspicion of being an accomplice to a crime. I am not at liberty, to say any more. If you want to know details, you’ll have to get in touch with the police or ask Andy yourself. If you keep approaching either my partner or me in an aggressive manner, it will force me to take defensive action.” Junior’s voice was cold and emotionless as he spoke. It was a striking juxtaposition to the way he’d spoken with Carmen earlier.

  “This is ridiculous!” the man proclaimed, but he didn’t attempt to get any closer. “Don’t say a word, okay, Andy? Not a word! I’ll call one of my buddies down at the repair shop. He knows a lawyer we can talk to. We’ll get this all sorted out, don’t you worry.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. This man had no idea what he was talking about. The kid had been helping one of their clients commit an international crime, possibly even using the company’s tools and equipment, and here he was defending him. The man started pacing back and forth as he made calls, ranting about how two people claiming to be federal agents had illegally detained his employee. He finally backed off once the police arrived to take Andy away, and I was extremely grateful that I could finally climb back into the truck and escape the man’s obnoxious rambling.

  In the end, this stakeout had been much more eventful than expected.

  13

  Junior

  Back at the office, we took Andy straight to the interrogation room as opposed to putting him in a cell first. We’d only spent a few hours on the stakeout, and by the time we’d gotten a car out to the industrial park and made it back to the office, it was still fairly early in the day. Because of that, we decided to conduct the interrogation right away.

  “I’ll let you handle the interrogation,” Hills had said to me once we’d gotten Andy situated in the interrogation room and could see him from the other side of the two-way glass.

  “Oh, really? Why’s that?” I asked, genuinely curious. Up until now, Hills had been jumping into everything he did headfirst and with absolute confidence. He’d even gotten mad at the director for telling him to go home early the day before, so the fact that he was hanging back and letting me take the lead struck me as a little strange.

  “You’re better with the talking parts of the job than I am,” Hills said. “I’m not ashamed to admit that, and honestly, if I go in there, there’s a good chance I’ll end up scaring the kid silent. I get the feeling he’ll respond better to good cop than to bad cop, y’know?”

  I couldn’t argue with his reasoning, and I was actually pleased to realize that despite the standoffish attitude he’d had on our first day as partners, he had clearly been paying attention, after all.

  “That works for me,” I said, leaving the holding area and heading toward the break room to find a snack for Andy. I agreed with Hills’s opinion that Andy would respond better to kindness than to intimidation, and figured a peace offering of food and drink might work to sway him into speaking with us. He’d clammed up as soon as the man from the industrial park had come to his defense, and he hadn’t said a single word since.

  In the break room, I managed to find a bag of chocolate candies, as well as some sodas in the fridge. Silently apologizing for pilfering whoever’s food it was, I quickly scooped up the bag and a can and made my way back to the interrogation room, where Andy was still staring resolutely at a spot on the metal table in front of him.

  I placed the candy and soda on the table and slid them toward him slowly.

  “Are you thirsty?” I asked, nodding toward the drink sitting on the table between us. “There were a few other flavors in the fridge if you don’t like that one. I could get you something else if you want.” According to Andy’s driver’s license, he was seventeen and lived here in Las Vegas. Being so young, I felt that offering sugary snacks might be more successful than some interrogation tactics we typically used on older, more hardened suspects.

  Andy merely looked at the offered drink and candy and then up at me, absolute contempt burning in his green eyes, before looking away again.

  “Andrew Gilford, right?” I asked kindly. “You work for G&C Shipping Company? That’s pretty impressive for someone still in high school.” I tried going for flattery, thinking maybe that would yield better results. He just crossed his arms and lowered his head in response. He still wasn’t talking, but the way he was starting to fidget and close himself off with his body language made me think I was on the right track.

  “That guy who tried stood up for you. Was that your boss?” I asked. He froze at that for just a moment and resumed his anxious pouting so quickly that had I not been paying close attention, I might not have noticed. Finally, I had struck a nerve and decided to bluff to see if my hunch was right.

  “You know,” I said, “if we find out he was in any way involved, he’ll be in a lot more trouble if we have to go and get him too.” I had no evidence that he was involved, and I also really had no say in how much “trouble” anyone was in. My job was to investigate, but it would be up to the justice system to decide what someone’s punishment would be. Andy didn’t have to know that, though, and I had a feeling by the way he reacted when I’d brought up the man from the industrial park that he didn’t want him involved.

  “No! He didn’t do anything. He didn’t even know about-,” Andy began to fire off rapidly but quickly snapped his mouth shut as he realized what he was about to admit to.

  “He didn’t know about what, Andy?” I asked, keeping my voice soft and even. I didn’t want to lose the thread now that I’d caught onto something, so I tried my best not to intimidate or upset him.

  “Nothing. I don’t know. Just leave him alone, okay? He’s a really nice man, and he was just trying to defend me when he saw you pigs come up and start harassing me!” He seemed agitated now, but at least he was talking. I sighed and leaned back in my chair, trying to de
termine the best way to proceed now.

  “Why did you run when Agent Hills asked you your name?” I asked, and whatever weak bravado he was clinging to seemed to evaporate as he crumpled in on himself again. He just shrugged his shoulders, and I could see his eyes redden and become shiny. I honestly felt bad for this kid. He seemed to have gotten himself way in over his head by getting involved with whoever was importing the animals. That being said, I couldn’t let sympathy get the best of me now. I leaned closer and was about to try a different tactic when the door of the interrogation room creaked open behind me, and I turned to see Hills striding in.

  “We’ve found the kid’s address,” Hills said, looking straight at me and never once bothering to even glance at Andy. “He lives with his mom. Nelson’s gonna give her a call to get her up to speed with what’s going on.” My immediate reaction was to become annoyed at Hills for interrupting my interrogation when I was finally starting to get something out of the suspect until I actually looked over at Andy and realized he had gone stark white at Hills’s proclamation.

  “No! Don’t call my mom!” Andy burst out, eyes darting between Hills and me. “I’ll talk, okay? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just don’t tell my mom, okay? Please?” He began to shake, and I could see him bouncing his knee anxiously under the table.

  “Hold off on that phone call,” I said to Hills, keeping my eyes fixed on Andy as I did. He clapped me on the shoulder, and from the corner of my eyes, I could see what I would have sworn was a smirk on his face. I wondered if maybe Hills hadn’t just done a bit of bluffing of his own.

  “Why don’t you want us to tell your mom?” I asked him. The mention of his mother had resulted in the most vocal reaction yet, so I decided to follow that lead. Andy was silent for a long moment, although he no longer looked defiant like he had earlier. Now, he only looked resigned and a little sad.