The Partnership

by Dustin Stevens

There he remained for nearly two full minutes, saying nothing, only vaguely aware as Grimes and Greene both lifted their attention to look at him, every person waiting to hear what he had to say.

  Ignoring them, he continued to retrace he and Billie’s steps, picking through the progression of the investigation, trying to remember back before the introduction of Tek-Yen sent everything down a side path.

  When finally that single piece of data he’d be grasping for, that one thing that had been eluding him, struck him it was so simple, so obvious, it took everything he could not to slap himself across the face.

  “Son of a...” he muttered, blinking several quick times, his focus coming back sharp.

  “What?” Gilchrist asked.

  Pushing himself up a little higher against the table, Reed folded his arms across his chest and said, “I’ve been sitting over here trying to figure out where the hole in my investigation was, and it just hit me.”

  Glancing to the men before him, he pushed on without waiting for anybody to prompt him.

  “The computer. Bethanee Ing was an investigative journalist working a story, yet there were no notes and no computer at her apartment, and I can’t imagine she was foolish enough to have left anything in the apartment they gave her.”

  “So you think they figured her out?” Gilchrist asked. “Went to her place and got everything she had?”

  Scrunching the right side of his face up slightly, Reed twisted his head in the same direction. “Possible, but unlikely. You guys saw what they did to her body, how they tossed her off the bridge to make an example of her.

  “When Billie and I visited her apartment, the only thing out of place was the spot on her desk where the laptop should be. No way they wouldn’t have tossed the place to really drive home the point.”

  With each word, he could feel adrenaline starting to move again, his body temperature and verbal cadence matching it in kind.

  “Makes sense,” Greene agreed. “So where do you think it is?”

  Pausing, his mouth still open, ready to continue unleashing his theory, Reed paused. Again he ran things back through his head, thinking of the places Ing had been, where she might feel safe leaving the trove of information.

  The obvious places – her residences and work office – were both already out of play. Ditto for things such as a safe deposit box, which would be a pain to access, or even leaving it with a friend, considering it sounded like she had precious few these days, and likely wouldn’t want to subject them to any danger.

  Of everything Reed could think of, that left only one logical conclusion.

  “I think we need to put out a second APB,” Reed said, glancing over to the captain, “this one being for Bethanee Ing’s car.”

  Meeting his glance, remaining motionless save the pads of his thumbs slowly tapping against each other, Grimes waited several moments, rolling over the information, processing in the same even manner Reed had always known him to.

  “You think that’s where she would have stored it?” he asked. “Even in this extreme cold?”

  Spreading his hands wide, Reed said, “Where else would she trust such a thing? And it’s not like she knew they were on to her, that her life was going to end.

  “The cold probably never even entered her mind. She just stowed it like she always did.”

  To this Grimes again went back to thinking, sitting and continuing to parse through the information.

  It was far from complete, even further from perfect, but as best Reed could tell, in the interim until something came back on Slade’s Caprice, they didn’t have a whole lot to work with.

  Nearly a full minute passed, the captain sorting things through, before he appeared to arrive at the same conclusion. Rotating back toward his keyboard, he extended both hands forward, proceeding to input the request. With the needed screen already on display, it was a quick process, no more than a handful of items needed to send the program on its way.

  “Okay,” he said, turning back to face forward, “let’s hope this one turns up a result faster than the one on Slade.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Grimes’s plea for a speedy turnaround turned out to be prophetic. Within ninety seconds of entering the APB into the system, a hit came back on the license plate, revealing it to be held by the Franklin County impound.

  The instant the information was made available, Reed and Billie bolted for the door, leaving Gilchrist and Greene behind in case anything came back on Slade.

  Grimes they left to continue playing air traffic controller, knowing that at some point in the very near future he would have the unenviable task of having to alert Tucker, Gott, and the other agencies of what was going on.

  Not a moment before definitive answers were in hand, but as he loaded Billie into the sedan and climbed behind the wheel, Reed couldn’t help but shake the feeling that something would soon break loose.

  Just as he had come to realize while standing in Grimes’s office, there was no way a reporter deep undercover would not have notes on what she was researching. The amount of access it sounded like she had been given made it unlikely she would leave everything to memory, knowing the importance of verifiable data to any story.

  There was the very real possibility that Ing had been more foolish with her notes than he realized, had left the computer in one of her dwellings, or even that Slade and whoever he was working with had gone against type and managed to extract the laptop without making a mess, but that seemed unlikely.

  Or, at the very least, Reed really wanted to believe otherwise.

  Given the hour, most of the traffic was gone from the city streets, Reed working his way directly into downtown and heading north within minutes of departure. Leaning forward behind the wheel, he grasped it with both hands, his heart rate continuing to hammer, barely noticing the frigid interior of the sedan as he drove.

  Behind him, Billie seemed to be going through the same thought process, no doubt spurred on by his own spike in physiology, the car shifting slightly as she paced back and forth, her silhouette visible as she prowled the back seat.

  Reaching out, Reed called the automated GPS mounted to his dashboard to life, pausing at a red light just long enough to enter the name of his destination. A moment later, a map appeared on screen, a red pin in the middle of it, pointing him where to go.

  As the light turned green, Reed eased forward, committing the location to memory and turning off the device before the automated voice could begin telling him where to go.

  Already his nerves were wound tight enough without the grating sound of an automaton making it any worse.

  Leaning hard on the gas, Reed wove through the pair of northbound lanes, passing a handful of cars and driving through more than a few yellow lights, before making a left just south of Clintonville, no more than six blocks from the corner Basel had described, another half dozen from the coffee shop they had met in earlier that night.

  Glancing to the clock on the dash, Reed recalled the sit down, shaking his head at how a mere five hours had slipped by, the time since seeming like so much longer.

  Fourteen minutes after running from the office, Reed pulled up in front of a chain link gate standing closed, twin panels with dark material covering the front of them converging on a small guard shack, yellow light illuminating a single person inside. Easing up alongside it, Reed lowered his window, the outside air rushing in, pulling the breath from his lungs.

  Waiting until the last possible second, the guard inside the shack - an elderly man in thick winter attire and a fur-lined cap - slid aside the door to the shack, leaning only his top half out to address Reed.

  “Evening,” he said, his voice little more than a wheeze.

  “Evening,” Reed said, lifting his badge from his chest and wagging it before him. “Detective Reed Mattox, 8th, my partner Billie.”

  On the second part of the statement, he released the badge, using the same hand to hook a thumb back over his shoulder.

  “Oh,
yeah, the 8th,” the man said, his eyes closing as he lifted his face a few inches toward the sky. “Your captain called over just a few minutes ago, said you’d be by.”

  “Right,” Reed answered, unsure what else to say.

  For a moment the two stood looking at each other, neither responding, matching plumes of white mushrooming out with each breath.

  Finally, as the awkwardness managed to grow just short being unbearable, the man slapped at the side of the shack and said, “Welp, I’ll open this gate for you and let you have a look around. Not sure where the car you’re looking for might be in there, they just kind of park them wherever they have room.”

  “No worries,” Reed replied, “I’ve got the make, model, and license plate number. Shouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “Alright then,” the man said, his cheeks growing red from the cold as he retreated back into the booth and slid the door shut. As he did so, the gate began slowly pushing open to the side, sliding wide over rollers, the frozen metal letting out an angry wail as it went.

  From the backseat, Billie let out a low whine in response to the sound, Reed glancing into the rearview to see her ears standing up.

  “Yeah, me too,” he whispered, waiting just until the door was a few inches past the width of his car before idling through.

  As soon as he was inside, the same screeching sound could be heard again as the gate returned to its starting point.

  “Okay,” Reed said, sitting just inside the gate and slowly swinging his gaze from left to right in a slow arc.

  Before him there seemed to be more than two hundred cars, all arranged in even rows, the vehicles running the gamut from newer models that looked as if they had been out for the night downtown and simply parked in the wrong place, to rusted out derelicts that were likely to never be claimed.

  Touching the gas just slightly, Reed moved forward, shifting his gaze from side to side, rotating his head at the neck.

  Beginning with car color, he picked out every black automobile he could find, quickly checking each one for a Volkswagen. Remembering back to the scads of them he’d seen parked at the apartment complex the day before, he kept checking over everything he saw, nothing coming close to what he was looking for.

  Reaching the end of the row, he circled the sedan out to his right, swinging back up in the opposite direction, moving slow.

  Halfway down he found what we was looking for, palpitations rising in his chest as he spotted a black Jetta, growing more intense as he checked the plate, finding it to match the number he had committed to memory just hours before.

  “Bingo,” he said aloud, his voice much stronger than intended, pulling Billie forward between the front seats. Feeling her hot breath against his cheek, Reed pulled up directly behind the car and parked, leaving the engine idling. Lunging across the passenger seat, he reached into the well at the bottom of the door, shoving aside a handful of wadded maps before finding what he was after wedged into the bottom of the cold plastic.

  Pulling it out, he ignored the stray papers that flew onto the passenger seat, instead holding up the miniature pick gun.

  A cross between a small cordless drill and a hot glue gun, the bit he needed was still affixed to the end of it, the polished steel tip of it gleaming in the ambient light of the lot.

  “Let’s hope this works,” he whispered, stepping out quickly and closing the door in his wake, hearing Billie whine at being left behind, but not wanting to take the extra time to get her corralled back into place.

  Cold air grabbed at his body, filling his lungs and instantly drawing his nostrils tight, as he slid along the driver’s side of the car. Along the way, he checked the rear tire well and the gas tank in hopes that a spare key might be affixed to it.

  Finding nothing, he checked both driver’s side doors, finding each locked, before jamming the pointed tip of the pick gun into the mechanism beneath the handle.

  Ordinarily, what he was doing would be far beyond illegal, a search that was without warrant and based on nothing more than conjecture.

  Given that the owner was now deceased, her killer having another young girl in his possession, such concerns were rendered moot as Reed pushed the metal piece in as far as it would go and squeezed the trigger on the gun.

  Hunched over, feeling his ears begin to burn from the cold, Reed waited as gears could be heard turning inside the device, the gun slowly lining up the pins just so.

  Less than ten seconds later, an audible click sounded out, the last piece falling into place as it twisted to the side.

  The overhead light in the car came on the moment the door opened, illumination spilling out onto the ground, so bright it caused Reed to wince.

  Pausing just a moment, he extracted the pick from the lock and moved straight in, placing his knee in the center of the seat and rummaging quickly through the space.

  The interior of the car was much the same as Ing’s house had been, with nary a stray paper or wrapper to be found. In the air was the faint scent of lilacs and lavender, Reed barely registering it as he leaned into the back half of the car and slid his hands under each of the front seats.

  “Damn,” he muttered, pulling back out of the car and dropping his attention to the floorboard along the driver’s seat. Seeing the small lever he was looking for, a tiny decal depicting a raised trunk hatch on it, he jerked it back.

  Hearing the rear open up, he left the driver’s door open and jogged to the back, his last shot at finding what he was looking for before having to go back to the precinct and resume waiting for a hit on Slade.

  The mere thought made his stomach curl tight, again seeing Tek-Yen sitting and playing with Billie in the diner, the image just as fast replaced by the one of Ing lying under the tarp a few nights prior.

  Raising the trunk lid as far as it would go, Reed leaned forward. Reaching inside, he dropped the pick gun and grabbed at a blue fleece blanket, jerking it to the side, hoping for something to catch his eye.

  Instead, there was nothing but the latch to the spare tire, the trunk just as empty as the interior of the car.

  “Shit,” he whispered, pulling back to full height, drawing the word several syllables. Turning at the waist, he looked over to Billie, seeing the light from the Jetta flash across her eyes, every heavy breath plain as condensation shot out in front of him.

  “Shit,” he whispered again, bile rising along the back of his throat as he turned back to the car. Resting one hand on the lid of the trunk, he stared down into the space, wanting so badly for there to be something present that simply didn’t exist.

  Allowing his gaze to blur, he remained in that position, ignoring the prickly cold as it bit as his exposed scalp.

  After nearly a full minute in that position, he leaned down and grabbed for the pick gun, his numb fingers thumping against the floor of the trunk, a hollow sound finding his ears. Pulling his hand back, he curled it into a fist, tapping it along the bottom a few more times, again hearing some version of the same sound come back to him.

  “You don’t think...” he whispered, a realization coming to him as he reached out and tugged on the latch leading into the tire well.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  For as much as he wanted to, his acrimony growing over the course of the evening, The Muscle knew he could not resort to pure physical violence on the girls. That was something he had to save until it was absolutely certain that they were of no use or had crossed a line that could never be forgiven, just as Jun had.

  Up until that point, it was bad business to hurt the merchandise.

  Just as The Muscle had felt nothing personally for Jun, he was equally indifferent to the two girls before him. Whether they survived or not he could not care less, his only point of interest being whether or not they could earn.

  Given that neither had been especially blessed in the looks department, the only thing they had going for them was their youth, a fact he was not about to undermine by maiming them in any way.

  But that did
n’t mean he couldn’t hurt them just the same.

  Rocked back in his recliner in the front living room, The Muscle worked his way through the last couple of slices of a Meat Lover’s pizza, the smell of cheese and pork products heavy in the air. With his feet propped up on the leg rest of the chair, the box was balanced across the front of his thighs, warmth passing through it and into his corduroy slacks.

  Shoving the last few bites of a piece of thin crust into his mouth, he licked away the grease from his fingers before taking up the last slice. Holding it a few inches above his lap, he folded the top of the box closed before discarding it, flinging it sideways from his lap like an oversized Frisbee.

  Without watching where it went, he could hear the cardboard flapping in flight before landing on the floor, the sound of papers rumpling beneath it also finding his ears.

  “You girls have two minutes!” he called, lifting his chin upward and raising his voice, making sure it carried out loud enough to be heard, but not so much as to to alert the neighbors.

  Keeping his head tilted in the same position, he waited a few seconds before hearing two muffled knocks against the door, the response one he had outlined for them more than an hour before.

  “Hmm,” he grunted, nodding slightly as he leaned back in his chair. Lifting the final slice to his mouth, he began to work at it, his attention on the television in front of him, the Patriots and Broncos playing onscreen.

  With moderate detachment, he watched as New England scored again to extend their lead, finishing off the last of the pizza and shoving the recliner closed. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and turned off the television, the loss of light and sound making the room seem much larger around him.

  Just as he hoped it would.

  Rising from his chair, he walked across the living room floor and through the kitchen, stamping his feet down hard with each step, making sure his progress was heard. Not bothering to turn on the light in the kitchen or the one on the back porch, he went straight for the rear door to the house and jerked it open, standing so he blocked the entirety of the frame.