by A J Sherwood
“Me too,” Skylar lamented. She bounced right back on topic with a nearly indefatigable perkiness. “So what’s he like, this Donovan guy? You said awesome, but on a scale of one to ten, how awesome are we talking about?”
“Twenty.” Relieved she’d moved the conversation along, I put the salmon in to bake, then requested, “Google, set a timer for thirty minutes.”
“Timer set,” a canned female voice responded pleasantly.
“Twenty, really?” Skylar moved with me as we settled on the sectional in the living room. “What’s so amazing about him?”
“It’s not his looks, wipe that smirk off your face,” I ordered, pointing a finger at her. Folding one leg up under the other, I tried to put it into words. “He actually looks very intimidating. Very large, muscular, has this air that he won’t put up with any shit. I pity the fool who crosses him. But at heart, he’s very protective, very kind. He’s as patient as Natalie. When I’m around him, his aura is just so soothing that I want to curl into him and purr.”
She did that lecherous eyebrow thing again. “Why don’t you?”
“Sky,” I groaned. “I finally found a work partner that will protect my hide, I’m not scaring him off.” And I still wasn’t even sure that would last the week, let alone the month.
“Booo.” Crossing her legs up underneath herself, she requested, “When can I meet him?”
“Soon, I hope. I’m tentatively seeing how things go, but if he’s still with me by this time next week, I might throw him a welcome party.”
“Grandma will want to meet him if he does stay with you,” she said thoughtfully, head cocking as she thought things that she probably shouldn’t. “I’ll tell her.”
It was easier for her to text than me try to reach them on my old rotary phone. “If you talk to her about it, do not, for the love of heaven, make it sound like anything other than what it is.”
“Booo,” she responded again, wrinkling her nose up at me.
I just knew she’d been scheming something.
In my best zombie impersonation, I shuffled past the front desk and headed for my office to check if I had any messages. My coffee maker had died this morning, and even though I’d stopped at Starbucks on the way here, I’d only had a chance to drink a third of it. The caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet. Halfway there, I glanced in the direction of the boss’s office and Jim caught my eye before gesturing me in. I had a good idea of what he wanted to talk to me about, so I detoured into his office instead, shutting the door behind me.
“How is he?” Jim asked hopefully.
“Incredibly patient,” I answered, dropping into the chair in front of his desk. “He’s one of those delightful show-once people who don’t need repetition either. Or at least, I haven’t had to repeat myself yet. He’s remarkably protective of me, too. I think if his patience runs out, his protective instincts will keep him from killing me.”
Jim blew out a not so subtle breath of relief. “Good. That’s good. That’s a better start than the last two people we tried with you.”
I didn’t say anything. Mostly because it would have boiled down to ‘I told you so.’ I had not picked my last two work partners and that had shown. Quickly, and in all the wrong ways. “I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll at least last longer than everyone else has.”
“That’s not much of a yard stick,” Jim grumbled, sighing as he sat back in his chair. “Jon, I’m not trying to foist an anchor on you. I just don’t want you dead or in a hospital bed because we didn’t take precautions.”
“I know, Jim,” I answered softly, “And I appreciate it. Really.” It wasn’t his fault I was difficult to live with. “If nothing else, I’m safe for now. So far only one person has been stupid enough to take on Donovan. It’s like arguing with a mountain.”
“A sinister looking mountain,” Jim agreed, nodding along. “What did his parents feed him, anyway? Whole cows? He’s built like a linebacker.”
“It’s his Tongan blood. Makes him bigger than life.” I checked the clock on the wall, judged that if I stayed any longer it might threaten my boss’s computer, and stood again. Sho would murder me if he had to replace someone’s work computer. Again. “I’ll let you know how things go, but for now we’re alright.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear. Before you go, though, we had a case come in. Kid called it in himself. Marcy took down the intake, it’s on your desk.”
That was somewhat unusual. Most of our cases came from the police themselves, but sometimes a civilian in a tight spot would look us up online and hire us. “Okay. I’ll take a look.” With a salute of my coffee cup, I headed back out.
The file was indeed on my desk, or to be more precise, in my chair. Marcy always left things in my chair. She claimed it was the only safe way to make sure that something didn’t get lost on my desk. Which was ridiculous—I’m not that disorganized. It might look like World War III had struck, but there was method to my madness. I could lay hands on anything if I had a mind to.
Shifting the folder to the desk, I sat down, but my butt had barely hit the chair before the phone rang. Lifting the receiver, I tucked it between ear and shoulder before answering, “This is Jonathan Bane.”
“Bane, it’s Borrowman. Look, you remember that Marsha Brown case? We’ve got a suspect in hand for it, and I know he’s raped and killed two other women and dumped them in the same area, but he’s swearing he’s innocent on this one.”
“Don’t they always say that, though?”
“True, but he’s confessed to the other two. Why balk at the third?”
“That’s a good question,” I admitted slowly. “And the timing works out for this?”
“Yeah, we only picked him up this morning. He’s been running from us for a few days, we didn’t slap cuffs on him until a few hours ago.”
“Alright, want me to swing by and take a look?”
“If you can. I can’t get you in today, maybe tomorrow?”
“Sure. Plan for it after lunch.”
“That works for me. Thanks. How’s your new partner working out?”
“Well enough, thanks.” Speaking of the devil, he’d just walked into the office with a very interesting look on his face that spoke of equal parts amusement and suspicion. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Alright, bye.”
Hanging up, I offered, “Good morning? What’s with that expression?”
“Whatever you told Marcy worked,” he informed me, brows arched a little in challenge. “She actually said good morning to me and offered a cup of coffee.”
Right. He was a military policeman and thereby trained not only to be observant but good at deduction. I needed to keep that in mind. “I want everyone to see you the way I see you. Problem?”
“Not one bit,” he denied, smile widening to show very white teeth, though slightly crooked. The smile was brilliant against the dusky skin, a perfect contrast. “So what was that phone call about?”
“Borrowman has another suspect for Marsha Brown’s murder. He doesn’t think the guy did it but wants a second opinion anyway. We’ll swing by tomorrow after lunch and take a gander.”
Donovan shrugged agreement. “Fine. What about today?”
“Today…hang on. We had an intake come in, which means a case from a civilian who’s in trouble and wants to hire us. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.” He waved me on, so I flipped over the front of the file and read through it, silently pursing my lips in a whistle as I did so. Intakes were usually a single page, sometimes two. This one was two, and a doozy at that. “We’ve got a case, alright. Exchange student named Chen Li got shot by another student on a college campus, but the girl claims he’s been trying to extort money from her and it was self-defense.”
Donovan paused in putting a folder on his desk, turning to look at me, eyebrows climbing. “Was it?”
“Chen claims not. But we’ll know for sure when we interview him.” I glanced at the clock on the wall, saw it was half past
eight, and did some quick mental calculations of traffic and hospital visiting times. “We don’t have anything on docket this morning, I vote we try and see him before lunch.”
“Sure,” Donovan agreed amiably. “Before we leave, though, I want to work something out with you.”
I cocked my head in question, not following. “What?”
“Look, you can read me like an Encyclopedia Britannica, but you’re a little harder for me to read. I want some kind of signal you can throw me when we’re facing a bad dude, so that I know trouble’s coming and I have time to make up a plan instead of just winging it.” Setting the coffee cup aside, he sat in his chair, whirling it to face me. “In the army, we had hand signals to use so we could communicate silently.”
Now I understood what he was getting at. He was the first partner to think ahead, anticipate problems, and come up with possible solutions. It took me aback for a moment, although it shouldn’t have. His protective instincts were at play here. “I don’t know those.”
“Didn’t think you did,” he assured me patiently. “But it’s standard practice for police these days to know the basic ASL alphabet and the emergency signs. Do you know any of those?”
Now that was smart. “Actually, I do. But they’re also kind of obvious, right?”
“Which is why I want to do a variation with them. Something that will look like you fidgeting or scratching an itch. We don’t have to get really elaborate this morning, but I want at least two basic signs down. You know the sign for T, right?”
I held up a fist with my thumb tucked under the forefinger.
“Do a T, hold it up under your chin in a thinking pose,” he suggested. “That way I know this one’s trouble.”
It was beautifully simplistic. “So, T for trouble. Is D for danger, or is that too weird of a thinking pose?”
“Won’t need it, I don’t think.” Donovan rubbed his fingertips idly together. He looked good today, again in a button-down shirt and nice jeans. I didn’t know who did his shopping, but I approved. The shirt was a soft copper color that did amazing things to his skin tone. “If I know they’re trouble, I’m assuming danger. But say something happens, I’m across the room from you, or we’ve got some kind of barrier between us. I want you to be able to signal for help. So do an H near your chest, double tap it. Make it look like a fidget.”
I attempted a very sloppy looking H near my chest with thumb spread and tapped twice. “Like this?”
“Sure, that I can pick up on.” Donovan relaxed a hair. “That should work for now. We’ll come up with others as we need ’em.”
I felt honestly touched that he’d thought about this, that he was proactively looking out for me. Still not close enough to be able to bear-hug the stuffing out of him, unfortunately. Ah well. That comfort level would come. “Sure. Shall we go interview our perhaps innocent client?”
Chen Li looked like a wreck. No surprise, the poor guy had been shot twice, once in the arm and once in the lungs. He lay propped up in a hospital bed, swathed in bandages, an oxygen mask over his mouth. Asian men never looked their real age, I knew that, but even still he looked like a teenager to me instead of the twenty-year-old I knew him to be. His very short haircut probably didn’t help on that end. At my knock on the door, he looked up, dark circles under his almond shaped eyes.
“I’m Jonathan Bane, with the Psy Investigative Agency,” I introduced myself. “This is Donovan Havili, my partner.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” he responded with a light Chinese accent, his words slightly muffled through the oxygen mask. “Please, come in.”
I did so, but stayed clear of the right side where all the equipment stood, which included the bed itself. In fact, I tried to hover somewhere near the wall, away from anything electronic. Donovan, sensing my caution, put himself in between me and the equipment. I relaxed a little at that point and took one of the visitor’s chairs. If Chen found it odd that I wore sunglasses indoors, he didn’t mention it or look at me funny, thankfully. Most people questioned me about it.
“This is witness statement,” Chen informed me, pointing to the document he had up on his laptop. “How should I send it?”
“Send it to me,” Donovan requested with a smile. “Here, I’ll type in my email at the bottom.”
“Ah, thank you very much.”
I noted the page length and was vaguely impressed Chen had managed to type three full pages with just one hand. That spoke of frustration or boredom, perhaps both. “I know you typed all of that out, and I’ll certainly read it carefully, but do you mind going over with us what happened?”
“Not at all,” he assured us firmly. Frustrated by the mask, he slipped it down to rest below his chin so he could speak, and his next words were much clearer. “Have you heard story of Alice Thompson in the newspapers?”
The newspaper remained one of the few ways I could keep track of news without resorting to something electronic, so I nodded immediately. “I have. She’s supposedly been on the receiving end of extortion letters, but the person sending her the letters never shows up at the drop to claim the money. Police thought it was a hoax, right?”
“Yes, this is so. We all thought it hoax. Ms. Thompson and I go to same college, although not same classes. All of school has heard story by now. Letters started some months ago, last semester. We thought it hoax, too, but she keep getting letters and asking who send them. Then last week, she come to me outside of library and ask to talk. I see no harm, I say sure, so we sit on stairs outside library to talk. She ask if I knew of letters, I say I do, but don’t know who sends them. She ask a few more questions, but I tell her I don’t know anything. I express wish that she find person soon, so it won’t trouble her anymore. She smile at me, thank me. I think we done, so I stand and give her bow, ready to leave. I look up and find gun in her hand.”
Donovan let out a sound, something of a cross between a cut off curse and exclamation of surprise. Pointing to the injuries, he demanded, “Wait, you weren’t even arguing with her? She just pulled out a gun and shot you cold?”
“Twice, as you see,” Chen confirmed darkly. “When I see gun, I get scared. I run. She shoot five times, but hit me twice. Everyone screaming around me, but some chase after us. I get off campus and to a garage nearby, hide in car. She get caught by campus security, they take gun from her and call police. They call ambulance for me. I don’t know what happen next, but three days ago, police come here. They accuse me of writing letters, of threatening her. But I didn’t!” Chen stopped to cough, grimaced, and slipped the oxygen mask back into place as his lungs no doubt protested him yelling.
This whole story made my head ache. I could tell from his aura he spoke complete truth and that he was a good guy. He hadn’t done anything wrong, ever. Certainly nothing serious enough to warrant being shot. “I believe you.”
Chen looked at me with abject relief. “No one believe me. They think I must do something to scare her, that’s why she shoot. I contact your agency, hoping psychic can see I not lie.”
“You’re being one hundred percent truthful and haven’t done any wrong doing,” I assured him patiently. “I can see that. You don’t have to convince me. I understand now what happened. Tell me what you want from us.”
“I want you to prove me innocent. Police not believe me. You find real culprit, prove she is wrong.”
I looked at Chen, an obvious exchange student, far away from home, trapped in a hospital bed with foreign policemen angry with him. It had to be terrifying, and he certainly looked scared, but mostly he was outraged. He hadn’t done anything to deserve this, which rankled, and I didn’t blame him for feeling that way. “We will do exactly that. Now, I’m going to have my partner give you his number. You call us if the police want to talk to you again, or if you feel threatened. Donovan was a military policeman; trust me, nothing’s getting past him.”
Chen looked to Donovan, sizing him up with his eyes, and grinned. “I see that.”
Donovan grin
ned back. “Here, give me your phone, I’ll type it in. I’ll text you with updates as we find stuff out, too, okay?”
“I like that very much. Thank you.”
I watched as Donovan typed everything into Chen’s phone and asked seriously, “How long are you in the hospital? Do you have a safe place to go after you leave here?”
“My mother coming to stay with me,” he answered. “She arrives today at airport. Doctors want me to stay for another few weeks, then I get released.”
I felt better at hearing that, as I didn’t want him on his own. “Good. If you need help, you call us. We’ll escort you out of the hospital, alright? I don’t want to give this girl any openings. I think she’s wacko.”
Chen’s expression screwed up in confusion. “Wacko?”
“Crazy,” Donovan translated.
“Ah. Yes, crazy, wacko,” Chen agreed promptly. “I don’t trust her.”
“Neither do we. Chen, last question, then I’ll let you rest. The policeman who came to question you, do you know who?”
“Yes, they leave business card.” He fished it out from underneath the laptop and handed it over.
I took it with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Of course it was him. I kept the reaction from my face, giving Chen a tight-lipped smile. “I know this detective. It’s a good thing you called us, he’s known for being a little…bull-headed. Alright, I’ll call him and tell him I’m working the case. Thank you. We’ll be in touch soon, alright?”
“Thank you, Mr. Bane, Mr. Havili,” Chen responded, words polite, tone relieved.
We exited the room and I managed to make the end of the hallway before swearing vilely.
“I was waiting for that.” Donovan eyed me, brow quirked a little. “I could tell from your face you didn’t like the name on that card. One of those detectives you don’t like?”
