Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “No.” The sergeant looked green around the gills. “I’ll—uh—I’ll go.”

  Ash sent him a glare over the top of the counter. “Good. I’ll wait here.”

  It didn’t take long for the sergeant to excuse himself from the desk and move off at top speed. He looked a bit like an alley cat trying to slink away from a fight when he knew he was overmatched. And little John Jack Torrance was overmatched indeed.

  “Ahem.”

  Ash turned and found himself looking into a set of washed out blue eyes that belonged to an equally washed out woman—girl—with ash blonde hair that straggled around her tired face as though even her hair was too tired to stay back in her thick ponytail. She had on a pair of plain khaki pants and a polo shirt that said House of Mirrors on the right breast pocket. She was maybe five-foot-five-inches tall and probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. Her cheeks were sunken and she looked like a waif. But there was fire beneath her exhaustion and she was staring up at him with more than just polite interest on her face.

  Of course, Ash wasn’t entirely sure what to do about this. He chose what he thought was a likely place to start. “Can I help you?”

  “Probably more than they’ve been able to.” She waved a nonchalant hand in the direction of John Jack Torrance’s desk. “He couldn’t even get anyone out here to take a report or talk to me.”

  “Okay.” Ash really wasn’t sure where to go with this now.

  She used her hands to push her straggly hair behind her ears. “I kept telling them I had information about a cop who was hanging out a Dino Golf with some of what I think might be the managers. I think they’ve been selling drugs.”

  “Excuse me?” Ash frowned and drew back a little. He wasn’t sure what to make of this woman and her bizarre requests. “You said there are police officers selling drugs at Dino Golf?”

  She bobbed her head. “More or less.”

  Ash pressed his lips into a tight line and wondered how to proceed. She sounded like a conspiracy theorist, yet Ash knew some things about the Branson Police Department. Most of the officers and the chain of command were good, upstanding, solid law enforcement personnel. They spent their time doing crowd control and dealing with traffic incidents on the very busy thoroughfares through the tourist packed city. But the detective portion of the department was a small segment and there was no doubt in Ash’s mind there were plenty of dirty cops. He had seen some of their handiwork for himself.

  “Which is it?” Ash murmured. “More or less?”

  “I know what I saw,” the woman told him firmly. “My brother is seventeen. I’m his guardian. He came home high last night. High on painkillers and it isn’t the first time.”

  This was starting to sound like something else. Something other than a story about dirty cops. “And how many times has he come home high from playing miniature golf or riding go-karts?”

  “Don’t be like that,” she said suddenly. She put her hands on her hips and looked up at him. Considering Ash was six-foot-three-inches tall, that was quite a distance for her to glare up at him. “Don’t act like I don’t know what I’m talking about. I do. My brother works at Dino Golf.”

  “So, he’s the one selling drugs?” Ash frowned. This was sounding like a very involved sort of job. “And you think his dealing involves a police officer?”

  “Ugh, no!” She rolled her eyes at him. “Would you stop thinking you know what I’m trying to tell you? My brother came home last night. He was high on painkillers. High enough that he got downright chatty. When I said his manager was going to get angry with him, he informed me his manager was the one dealing. Then he said his manager was irritated with him because I won’t let him go clubbing after he finishes work at midnight. I tell him he has to come home. School starts in a week or two. He’s going to be a senior this year. He needs to graduate from high school.”

  Ash didn’t say anything right away. He could tell this frustrated her. Evidently, her brain worked at about light speed and she likely figured everyone else’s should too. But for Ash, there were a lot more pieces than she likely realized.

  Ash tilted his head toward the desk sergeant’s counter. “And you tried to share your story with John Jack Torrance there?”

  “Yes, but he told me the guy I need to speak to isn’t in right now. So, I’m waiting.” She fidgeted and peeked around his arm as though she were looking for John Jack Torrance. “He said he was going to go and get the guy you wanted to talk to, right? So, I just wondered if you could maybe—I don’t know—help me get someone to actually listen to me?”

  Wow. That was maybe a little flattering that this woman thought Ash could somehow magically make the police department behave. Of course, her problem was that in Branson, there was no vice squad. The detectives handed all of the investigating whether it was simple theft or drugs and murder. Ash inhaled deeply and let out a sigh. He felt bad for this woman. Obviously, she’d just worked a really long shift at a popular Branson tourist attraction only to come over here and get shut down by the police department.

  “You said your brother is seventeen?” Ash murmured the question and then went silent again.

  Ash wondered if there was something in the juvenile code, but there probably wasn’t. Not that would help this young woman. Girl. She had to be a girl. She was responsible for a seventeen-year old brother? Where were the parents? That’s what Ash wanted to know.

  “Please help me, sir?” The young woman looked positively desperate.

  Ash felt his resistance crumbling. Dammit. Why did he always feel as though he had to get involved in everyone else’s crap? It never seemed to matter. He always seemed to get sucked into the strangest situations. And this certainly qualified as one of those.

  “Ash! Good Lord, I thought you had stopped to get a burger or something. Did you bring me anything?”

  Ash turned to find Detective Lowell near the sergeant’s desk with a very chagrined John Jack Torrance climbing back up onto his stool. Torrance looked miffed and maybe a little bit like a whipped puppy. But Lowell was smiling. That was good news.

  “Lowell,” Ash began, trying to figure out how he’d gotten sucked into this right now even when he was right in the middle of saying it. “This young woman has a brother who works a Dino Golf. Apparently, the brother has been asked to deal prescription drugs right out of the family fun center. Do you know anything about that? Because our friend John Jack Torrance here told the lady the person she needs to talk to is out of the office at the moment.”

  Detective Lowell was a man in his late thirties with thick dark hair and sharp dark eyes and a tanned complexion. He was a shade over six feet tall, broad shouldered like an athlete, and now frowning as though he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this situation.

  “The person you need to speak with is out of the office?” Lowell turned around and glared at Torrance. “Seriously, Torrance! Is that what Sellers ordered you to tell everyone today? How many other potential leads or reports or just general police business has been pushed off just because you decided to follow a shit order like that? Huh?” Lowell pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know what? Come on back. Right now. With Ash and me.”

  “Ash?” She looked confused. Turning back toward Ash, she raised an eyebrow. “That’s your name?”

  Ash could have killed Detective Lowell for the smirk on his face. “Well, you could call him Mr. Forbes I suppose. I’m sure he would answer to that.”

  “Mr. Forbes,” she muttered. “Right.”

  Ash nearly told Lowell they could meet again some other time. He couldn’t say why, but he felt a strong desire to be done with this interview and this moment in time. For good. The crazy woman who worked at the mirror maze place with the drug dealing brother who worked at Dino Golf were not his problem. Not at all.

  But instead of leaving, Ash found himself following along behind the young woman—whose name he still didn’t know—and Detective Lowell as they all moved toward Lowell’s office in another p
art of the sprawling former shopping mall complex that made up the Branson Police Department. The entire time they walked, the young woman was quizzing Detective Lowell about just about anything that seemed to cross her mind.

  Her name was Mindy Hall. That much Ash gleaned after they had made two right turns and a left into what had probably once been a food court. Now it was a common cafeteria filled with food lines, tables, and unfortunately, Ash’s least favorite law enforcement officer on the planet.

  “Who the hell let you in here?” Sergeant Mathias Caprico stood up and pointed above all the other heads in the room. “You don’t have a reason to be here, Forbes. You and your cronies over at the rent-a-cop agency need to stand down before someone gets killed.”

  “I know, right?” Ash said a mockingly serious tone of voice. In front of him, both Mindy Hall and Detective Lowell had slowed their walk. Ash gave Caprico a sarcastic salute next. “We should just leave all of the cases in town for you and your buddy Sellers because we know you guys can solve every case that comes across your desk.”

  Caprico’s eyes narrowed and his expression turned mulish. “Our record is spotless and you know it.”

  “Yeah, because you send all of the strange, hard, or otherwise not a walk in the park cases right to us.” Ash deliberately turned his back on the little jackass and motioned for Lowell to keep walking.

  There was a round of laughter there in the cafeteria before Ash and his companions disappeared far enough down a hallway in order to be out of the way. It was like traveling to the other end of the earth, which, in fact, it was. From the window, Ash could see his truck he deliberately parked on the far side of the building and away from the front door so nobody would notice he was there.

  “Now.” Detective Lowell opened up his office doorway and ushered them inside. “Ash, I want you to have a seat right there,” Lowell pointed to a chair in the corner, “and Ms. Hall, you take the chair in front of my desk here. I have a feeling we are all here for the same reason.”

  Ash was pretty sure Detective Lowell was wrong but he didn’t say that because it would have been unforgivably rude given the circumstances. So, Ash simply took a seat in the corner of the room and gave Lowell his full attention. Or rather, he gave Mindy Hall his full attention because she seemed to need all of the attention in the room.

  “Detective Lowell, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to see me this afternoon and to talk with me,” Mindy said in a rush. “But I have to tell you that whoever that guy was—the guy that Ash talked to just now? That was the voice I heard last night at Dino Golf! That was the cop who was hanging out behind the maintenance shed with whoever else was selling the drugs.”

  Detective Lowell sat behind his desk and folded his hands in front of him. He looked very serious. Not just serious, but like he was taking her words seriously. “Pardon me, Ms. Hall, but I have to ask, how do you know they were selling drugs?”

  “My brother told me. They’re trying to get him to sell them, too. And me. He said that.” She seemed to think of this at the last second. “He said that even I could sell drugs to make some extra money.”

  “Ah, I see.” Detective Lowell glanced at Ash. “And this is where we can all help each other I think.”

  “Excuse me?” Ash was now totally sure he had entered an alternate universe. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Lowell.”

  Chapter Four

  Mindy Hall was no stranger to feeling out of place. She’d spent most of her life feeling awkward. Whether it was because she’d never really quite fit into the trendy crowd in high school or because she hadn’t been able to attend college like a lot of her friends in spite of her good grades, Mindy was just used to feeling left out.

  But this was different. Who was this Ash Forbes guy anyway? He looked like one of those commandos from an action movie starring one of those hot male actors. One of those guys that was so impossibly good-looking he didn’t actually look like he could realistically portray a commando in the first place.

  Ash—Mr. Forbes—had on black military-style cargo pants that had to be baking hot in the late August heat. His dark green T-shirt stretched across a set of impressive chest muscles. Honestly, you could have bounced a quarter off the guy’s pectoral muscles. His arms were folded over his chest at the moment and they looked very bulgy and enormous. Yet, he didn’t look like a blown-up steroid-using freak either.

  His face was rather elegant. He had dark hair and dark eyes, but his hair was close cropped and curly. Mindy could have sworn Ash Forbes was attempting to corral what was probably a fantastic set of curls that any girl would die for by just chopping them off as short as possible. There were pale streaks in his dark hair from spending time in the sun and his skin was tanned a healthy bronze that some people paid big bucks for. His nose was aquiline and his jaw was sharply-defined. He had high cheekbones and a profile that would have looked particularly good on an old coin.

  So, why did he look like he was about to get up and throw a tantrum sitting in the corner of Detective Lowell’s office?

  “Come on, Ash,” Lowell coaxed.

  Lowell was a good looking guy, also tall, dark, and handsome. But when you put him next to Ash he looked kind of plain.

  “You and Titus are investigating dirty cops on the Branson Police Force, right? You guys are running in circles trying to figure out whether or not the corruption goes beyond the few detectives who are known abusers of power to the lower ranks.”

  Ash’s arms tightened briefly and a smile touched his lips. “You mean like John Jack Torrance out there?”

  “Yes, just like him.” Lowell bobbed his head in the affirmative. “And this is a good opportunity to get information right from the source of the corruption.”

  Mindy frowned. She wasn’t a law enforcement connoisseur. She didn’t even watch that stuff on television. She preferred romantic comedies or game shows to crime drama. But she was pretty sure Detective Lowell had just suggested Mindy was part of the “source of the corruption.”

  She raised her hand. She wasn’t sure why that felt appropriate as she wasn’t in school of course, but it seemed to work at least. They both turned to stare at her. She cleared her throat and wished she had a better way of putting things that did not require so many words. “I don’t think you’re clear on the fact that I’m not selling drugs. I don’t think my brother is either. I think he has been approached to do it, but I don’t know that for sure. So, I’m not part of the corruption thingy. You know, what you were talking about just now.”

  Detective Lowell’s eyes danced with mirth as Ash Forbes rolled his. Mindy wasn’t sure what was so amusing, but obviously she had once again made a fool of herself without much effort. She pursed her lips and sighed as she clenched her hands in her lap and resigned herself to silence.

  “I realize you haven’t sold any drugs, Ms. Hall,” Detective Lowell told her with what appeared to be a friendly smile. He didn’t look fake anyway. “I was simply making the point that you have an inside track that we don’t into this whole drug ring business.”

  “So, it is a thing,” Mindy said quickly, probably interrupting him. “Like, there are really people selling drugs out behind the maintenance shed at Dino Golf and this is an acknowledged problem?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t you just tell me?” Mindy half stood up. “I wouldn’t have wasted your time or bothered coming back here if I knew that someone was on top of it.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say we’re on top of it,” Lowell’s voice was low and rumbly. His smile disappeared and he looked grim. “There are a lot of things in this department that don’t quite make sense.”

  Mindy wasn’t exactly sure she should be talking to him about this stuff. It really wasn’t any of her business. But he was sitting there as though it were. So, she played along because what else could she do? “Such as?”

  “There is a certain reporter here in Branson who seems to be calling the investigative shots. She writes st
ories and chooses what she wants to blow out of proportion with absolutely no regard to things that should and shouldn’t be shared with the public, or even the truth of them. Most of her stuff is just plain muckraking, and the detectives here in the department are all too happy to let her decide what we think of as crime and what gets put on the back burner. Half the crimes never even get investigated because that would mean they had to be reported on and acknowledged and then it would make the city look bad.”

  Mindy frowned. That didn’t make any sense. “I’m sorry, but if the stuff is happening and nobody does anything about it, doesn’t that make us look worse?”

  “Not statistically,” Detective Lowell told her slowly. “Not in all of the reports used by magazines and things to compile lists of the best places to visit.”

  Mindy sat back in her seat for a moment and felt as though her mind was whirling around and around in pointless circles. “But that’s stupid! It’s not like this place is some kind of cesspool! It’s a really good town. There are good people here and in the surrounding communities and there really isn’t that much crime. You could surely investigate whatever you wanted and brag that you cracked down on shoplifting or something, right?”

  “You would think,” Detective Lowell agreed. His gaze seemed to be cutting toward Ash Forbes every other second. “But what we’ve noticed is that it doesn’t work that way. There was a murder a few weeks ago…”

  “A murder?” Mindy sucked back a breath and thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head. “How was there a murder? I didn’t hear about a murder!”

  “Exactly, because it never actually appeared in the paper even though the Branson Register sent a local reporter to check it out. And of course, she should have been sending those stories on to other news outlets. But instead, she and the police choked down on the entire story in hopes of suppressing it almost entirely. And it worked.” Detective Lowell spread his hands and Mindy could not help but think he looked grim.