The Kid: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 3)

by Dustin Stevens

  A noticeable difference was palpable in the room though, apparent the moment the front doors opened, becoming more obvious with each step forward. Whereas three days ago there was nothing but concern and speculation, grim faces all around, there was now a bit of optimism. Another of their brethren had been attacked, but the perpetrator had been put down.

  Reed had seen such a shift in temperament before, the result of being on the backend of an investigation instead of the front.

  Coming straight from the crime scene, Reed and his makeshift team still wore obvious the effects of their day. Streaks of Dawkins blood was apparent on his forearms and across the front of his jeans, both knees stained in distorted circles where he had knelt down on the floor and tried to apply pressure to various wounds while waiting for the EMT’s to arrive.

  The markings were much harder to see against Greene and Gilchrist’s black uniforms, though Reed knew they were there, perhaps even heavier than his own. Every so often the light overhead would catch them the right way, making the dark smears obvious, the backs of their hands dotted with faint pink circles.

  For her part, the hair around Billie’s paws was matted with blood, the tips of her nails stained, from spending so much time with her focus on Wittek, oblivious to the ground beneath her.

  At a glance it appeared that Glenn was the cleanest of the bunch, a fact made so only because she was the one to sprint up from the basement in search of a cell phone signal. While the three others busied themselves with cutting down Dawkins, she had been the one to summon Baines, to call on the medics for immediate emergency transport.

  The crowd parted slightly as they entered, a few of the faces familiar, including those from the steps outside Vazquez’s house. Many of them nodded their approval at the group as they passed by, a couple going as far as to offer a thumbs up.

  For a moment Reed almost smirked at the situation, thinking if the scene were from a movie the crowd would break into a cheesy clap, starting slow and building momentum, hailing them as conquering heroes. In reality, there was no way such a thing would ever happen. Not because they might not deserve it, but because to do so would discount the injuries sustained by their fellow officers.

  As glad, or even relieved, as everyone in the room was about the apprehension, not one of them would ever lose sight of the fact that they were all targets whenever the wrong person decided on it.

  Standing at the back of the crowd, taking up the same exact position he had on Saturday night, was Captain Grimes. He stood with his arms across his chest, his usual glower in place, speaking in low tones with McMichaels and Jacobs, a couple of other uniforms from the day patrol Reed knew only in passing as well.

  As a group they fell silent as Reed and the others approached, the two sides coming together almost 10 strong.

  “Detectives,” Grimes said, “investigator, officers.”

  After each greeting he nodded slightly, receiving a nod or murmured hello in response.

  For a moment Grimes stood silent, appraising the group. His gaze swept over each of them, including Billie, seeing their disheveled appearance, the markings of their most recent battle.

  “Would you all excuse us for a moment,” he said, glancing to McMichaels and the others he had been speaking with. He raised a hand and curled a finger back toward himself, motioning for Reed and the new arrivals to follow him. “There’s something you all need to see.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Grimes hadn’t been specific about who he wanted to follow him, so the entire group moved as one mass down the hall, the clatter of their various utility belts, shoes, and toenails all making them sound like a veritable marching band as they walked the silent hospital halls.

  Just like it had been the previous time Reed was in the place, half of the overhead lights had been extinguished for the evening, the mood somber and subdued. As they walked past a nurse’s station, a pair of middle-aged women with heavy eyes and scattered hair looked up at them for only a moment before going back to their work, no doubt having seen a cavalcade of similar visitors in the preceding days.

  Keeping a steady pace, Grimes remained a full 10 feet in front of the group, his uniform coat discarded, his white dress shirt the brightest thing in the hall as he led them to an end unit and peered in through an open door, knocking twice on the metal frame.

  Reed could just barely hear a muffled response from inside the room before seeing Grimes turn to face them, standing on the far edge of the door and motioning for them to enter.

  Arriving first, Reed did as instructed, walking into a darkened patient room, a single bed dominating the space. The usual assortment of accompanying monitors and trays were all lined up behind it, a bevy of lights and numbers providing the only illumination.

  Lying on the bed, most of his body buried beneath heavy blankets, was Pete Iaconelli. Only his arms, shoulders, and head were visible above the coverings, his right arm in a sling, his left bandaged from his wrist to his elbow. A pair of IV lines hung from stainless steel poles beside him, Reed guessing one to be feeding him meds, the other fluids.

  The man’s face looked sallow under the green and yellow glow of the screen behind him, his thinning hair pressed back flat against his skull.

  To Reed’s surprise though, his eyes were open, tracking him as he entered.

  “Hey, there,” Reed said, keeping his voice low, walking around to the far side of the bed to allow room for the others behind him. “Good to see you awake.”

  Reed stopped just past the far bottom corner of the bed, less than a foot from Martin Bishop pulled up alongside his partner in a wheelchair. He extended a hand as he did so, “Glad to see you moving about now, too.”

  Bishop returned the handshake, squeezing a little tighter than Reed remembered him doing in the past. His gaze met Reed’s for a moment before nodding, the slightest bit of moisture settling along the bottom of his eyes.

  Releasing his grip, Reed reached out and patted the man on the shoulder, remembering their earlier conversation, knowing exactly what the man was trying to say, even if he didn’t know how.

  He’d been there himself. In some ways, was still there.

  “They tell me you got the bastard,” Iaconelli said, his voice little more than a gasp, just barely audible over the sound of the heart rate monitor behind him.

  “Well, we did,” Reed said, motioning to the others beside him. “Ike, Bishop, this is Investigator Cassidy Glenn with the BCI, she’s been with us the last couple of days.

  “Of course you know Officers Greene and Gilchrist, both of who really went above and beyond to make sure your shooter was found.”

  Upon introduction all three nodded, Iaconelli doing his best to respond, Bishop offering the same in response.

  “And don’t forget Billie,” Glenn said, a few smiles appearing around the room as the dog’s tail began to move slightly, her dark brown eyes looking up at the sound of her name.

  “Oh no, we’d never forget Billie,” Bishop said, drawing an instantaneous laugh from Reed, much louder and sharper than intended. At the sound of it Bishop and Grimes both chuckled too, even Greene cracked a smile.

  A look of confusion passed over Glenn’s face as she looked over, Reed waving her off for the time being, not particularly wanting to get into 10 months of back story and side comments that had been made since he and his partner arrived.

  Not that it mattered much now anyway.

  After the events of the last couple days, it was a fairly safe assumption that any lingering distrust was long since gone.

  “Do we even want to know what it was all about?” Bishop asked. With his partner in such a state, he had taken on the speaking role for the group, a position he was clearly a bit uncomfortable with.

  For a moment, Reed pondered the question. After everything that had occurred over the last couple of days, trying to explain how a random traffic stop they had executed almost two years before had now landed them in the hospital was more than he wanted to get into.


  Was most likely a lot more than they wanted or needed to hear.

  “Right now? No,” Reed said, leaving it that, drawing a few mumbled comments of agreement from around the end of the bed.

  Once the room had quieted, Bishop looked to each person and said, “Really, all of you, thank you. I know catching the guy will never change what happened, will not suddenly make us better, but still...”

  “Thank you,” Iaconelli said, his voice a tiny bit stronger. “What you all did for us, for me, it won’t be forgotten.”

  A moment of silence settled in, falling somewhere between awkward and uncertain, Reed glancing over to the room. For much of the last day he had been acting in the role as leader, but that was due entirely to the fact that he was the lead on the case.

  Now that it was over, he had no desire to serve as the spokesman for the group, instead choosing to remain quiet, to wait out whatever might come next.

  To his surprise, it was Iaconelli who broke the silence to speak again.

  “Also, Captain,” he said, “my partner and I were having a discussion before you guys arrived.

  “In case it wasn’t already clear enough, as soon as we’re up and out of here, consider this our notice that we’ll be retiring a couple months earlier than expected.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  It was after 10:00 by the time Reed pulled into the parking lot of the 8th Precinct. He didn’t bother putting the sedan into a parking stall, instead easing to a stop in the middle of the driveway, the body of it sitting perpendicular to Glenn’s car still in the first visitor stall.

  “I guess maybe I should have parked out in the lot, huh?” she said, staring through the passenger window. In another couple of weeks there would already be a thin layer of frost clouding the windows, though for the time being the car looked to be in the same exact position it was when they left that morning.

  “Naw,” Reed said, “besides, after today, I imagine you can park any-damned-where you please around here and nobody will say a word.”

  An audible smirk rocked Glenn’s head back an inch as she rotated to look at Reed, her cheeks bunched slightly in a half smile. “Yeah. What a day, huh?”

  This time it was Reed’s turn to smirk, bringing both hands to his face and rubbing them over his cheeks. “That might be an understatement. Never thought when we left this morning we’d end up kicking down half the doors in central Ohio today, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Glenn said. Her gaze drifted out through the front windshield a moment, her vision glazing over as she stared at nothing in particular.

  She stayed that way a moment, saying nothing, before shaking her head, pulling herself back into the present.

  “What a day,” she repeated, thrusting a hand out toward Reed. “Detective, it was good working with you. You ever get the itch to work with a wider jurisdiction or bigger budget, let me know.”

  Reed’s eyebrows rose slightly as he returned the handshake. “Oh yeah? You have some pull over there with HR?”

  The right corner of Glenn’s mouth nudged upward as she said, “Well, considering I am the investigative division, I think I could carve out a little bit of the budget for another investigator.”

  She turned in the front seat and extended a hand back to Billie, running her fingers through the thick hair between her ears. “And his partner, of course.”

  “Of course,” Reed echoed. “And hey, you heard Ike in there earlier. If you ever get the hankering to come root around in the mud again, we’ve got some openings.

  “I’m sure Grimes wouldn’t turn you down.”

  “Ha!” Glenn spat, resting her right hand on the door handle. “You’ve got Greene and Gilchrist ready to ascend. You don’t need me around here.”

  Already Reed had considered both options, reasoning that the 8th could more than use all three, but for the time being he chose to hold that in.

  There would be time for such discussions in the future.

  “Home to bed?” Reed asked, not making much of an effort to hide the change of direction. He could see Glenn recognize the move, a quick hint of a smile crossing her features, before disappearing, deciding to give him a pass on it for the night.

  “Absolutely,” Glenn said. “You?”

  Glancing over to the clock again, Reed shook his head slightly. “Got a couple more quick stops to make, then hopefully doing the same.” He looked up from the clock to Glenn and added, “My computer savant is good, but he doesn’t work for free.”

  “Ahh,” Glenn said, cracking the door just slightly. “Tell him I said thanks, too.”

  “Will do,” Reed said, raising two fingers to his brow in a faux salute. “And thank you as well.”

  Glenn lingered just another moment, the same faint smile on her face, before dropping a foot to the ground. “Likewise.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Deek said, holding up a hand from behind his bank of computer monitors. “Before I see whatever you have in that sack there, I have a few things to share.”

  Reed’s eyebrows came together slightly, a crease forming between them, as he glanced to Billie. Never in the years he had known Deek, either on the periphery through Riley or even now in his own right, had he ever known the man to put work before anything.

  “Okay, shoot,” Reed said.

  At just after 11:00 p.m., he could feel the exhaustion of the last few days taking a toll. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he was home watching the Sooners play, being summoned to the hospital to sit vigil for one of their own. In the time since he had barely slept, ate less, working under the singular focus of finding the man that was targeting law enforcement all over town.

  “So, after you guys ran off to save the day,” Deek said, “I stuck around and spent a little time digging through Anthony Wittek’s computer.”

  In the haste of the moment Reed had completely forgotten that Deek was online, the computer fleeing his consciousness as he ran off to help Kyle Dawkins.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Oh yeah,” Deek said, no small amount of enthusiasm present. “That guy was a whack-a-doodle, for sure.”

  Reed paused a moment, waiting for an explanation, before prompting, “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the guy took the term committed to a whole new level. He had no less than a half dozen hidden cameras planted in various places, hours and hours of footage from all of them stored on his computer.”

  Five hours earlier, this information would have been golden. Even now, had Wittek not met his end, it would have been priceless for the prosecution to build a case.

  As it was, Reed would be sure to relay the message to the 19th to collect it as evidence for the file, to be sure and grab the various cameras from the crime scenes.

  “Every one of them had spreadsheets and documents that corresponded to them, too,” Deek said. “What people came and went when, what they drove, everything.”

  Reed nodded, thinking back to the murders and attempted murders that had occurred over the preceding days. It had been apparent that to pull off any one of them took planning, though what Deek was saying spoke to a new level entirely.

  “No wonder if took him a whole year to act,” Reed said.

  “And another thing,” Deek said. “Since I was inside the guy’s virtual world, I did a little digging on what you had asked me before, about seeing that woman’s Facebook page.”

  It took a moment for Reed to place what he was saying, a flicker of recognition hitting him, his eyes opening wide. “Amy Hendrix?”

  “Right, her,” Deek said. “I couldn’t remember her name, so I didn’t look at her page specifically, but this guy had three different Facebook pages, was very active in local groups. Hundreds of hits every day to various things.”

  “Local groups, such as?”

  “Churches, schools, things like that,” Deek said. “Fantastically creepy, even just looking through his history.”

  “He was scouting,” Reed said, h
is voice distant as he stared off, connecting dots. “Somewhere he saw her mention they were going out of town and just like that, he had himself a getaway car.”

  Considering his background with Sanz and Vazquez, stealing it was no problem, the same with disposal.

  “I’ll be damned,” he whispered, walking forward and extending the brown paper bag in his hand toward Deek.

  “Here, you’ve more than earned this. Excellent job, from start to finish.”

  For a moment Deek’s mouth hung open at the rare praise, his hand rising upward to accept the package. The impromptu wrapping crinkled softly as he peeled it back, the neck of a bottle coming clear before giving way to another handle of whiskey.

  “Jim Beam’s Devil Cut,” Deek said. “Nice. I might even have to start on this before the Johnny Walker.”

  Reed’s eyebrows again rose in surprise at the fact that Deek wasn’t already halfway through the first bottle, though he remained silent.

  The man had done him a number of solids in the last couple of days. There was no need to insult him.

  “You know,” Reed said, “this is becoming a semi-regular thing, you lending a hand. I’m sure I could arrange something with Grimes, get you in the payroll system as a special consultant.”

  His attention still aimed down on the bottle, Deek waved a hand at him, dismissing the notion, before looking up. “Do you have any idea how much money I make doing what I do?”

  To this day Reed only had a passing acquaintance with exactly what it was Deek did, no idea how much such skills brought on the open market.

  “No clue.”

  “Well, take what you make and multiple it by about...” Deek said, one eye scrunching tight as he considered the numbers, “10.”

  He watched as Reed’s face relayed pure surprise, bordering into shock, a smile crossing his features. “Exactly. I’m more than happy with the bottles here.”