Interference

by Danielle Girard

  “You do the police station first,” Rhonda called after him. “They in some big hurry.”

  Dwayne nodded.

  “Then, you got them three deliveries along Chavez and two others in the Mission and one in Bernal Heights. Do that one last. Come back straightaway, Dwayne. Jerry’s working on a bunch more that have to get out today.”

  Dwayne loaded the handcart one last time and checked his list to make sure he had all the right deliveries. With the boxes all loaded up, he folded the handcart closed and loaded it, too, before slamming the rear doors closed.

  Rhonda was moving at him again, faster now that she wasn’t busy eating. Something creepy about the way she walked. “You hear me, Dwayne?”

  “I hear you,” Dwayne promised. “I’ll be back for the others soon as I get these delivered.”

  “And no more double-parking. I ain’t paying for another ticket. You still owe sixty bucks from that last one.”

  Dwayne raised a hand at her in a mock salute and climbed into the van, and shut the door. “I heard you, bitch.” Damn Rhonda was annoying. Deliveries had been her deal until the diabetes made her ankles swell up like grapefruits. Now she couldn’t deliver. Couldn’t pack shit up neither, and she didn’t seem smart enough to handle the books. They had that nerdy guy Spencer for that. Rhonda was just around to drive him crazy was all, but damn if she wasn’t good at it.

  Dwayne put the key in the ignition and turned to glance out the window for traffic. Rhonda’s big face staring through the glass nearly scared the shit right out of him.

  He rolled down the window.

  “You gonna put that seatbelt on, right, Dwayne? Otherwise, you breaking the law and creating all sorts of liabilities for this company.”

  “Of course.” He reached across and pulled the seatbelt over his chest, giving her a big smile.

  “You watch that smart mouth a yours, Dwayne. Your mama might be Jerry’s cousin, but he ain’t the boss around here.”

  “I ain’t givin’ you mouth, Rhonda. I put my seatbelt on just like you said.”

  Rhonda stood and stared at him, like she was looking for some other thing to start bitchin’ about. She was quiet for nearly ten seconds which was a record.

  “Okay if I go now, Rhonda?”

  “’Course you should go, fool. I don’t know what you waiting for.”

  Dwayne blew his breath out nice and slow the way they’d taught him in that anger class in prison. “Okay, Rhonda. I’ll see you later.” Dwayne pulled out of the garage and turned toward the police department. He shouldn’t have been thinking about responding to that damn text message, but he was. Selling that gun could raise enough for a down payment on a place for him and Tamara.

  Chapter 6

  Mei was grateful to Ayi. Though Andy had offered to take them to dinner, Ayi had prepared fuqi feipian. Mei was sure her mother had told Ayi it was Andy’s favorite. She was grateful not to have to go out. She only knew a handful of places in town, and her favorite of them—the Blush Wine Bar—had come to feel like her own private spot. She didn’t want to take her husband there. There, she didn’t even want to remember she was married. Mei wasn’t a huge fan of the feipian, which was usually made with beef heart and tongue, but she rarely ate as little as she did tonight. Instead, she moved the food around on her plate and tried to make it look as though she’d eaten.

  After dinner, Andy offered to clean up. Ayi went to bed and Mei joined him in the kitchen. Andy found a bottle of Baijiu, a Chinese liquor similar to vodka, in Ayi’s cupboard and poured them each a couple fingers worth over ice to drink as they worked. Andy handed her a glass and touched his glass against hers. “To us,” he said.

  Mei took a long drink and set the glass down.

  In good spirits, Andy filled the sink with warm soapy water. She watched him roll up his sleeves, exposing strong, smooth forearms. This was as good a time as any. She would explain her mixed feelings, her confusion. She would ask for his patience and understanding. She went into the dining room and began to clear the dishes, trying to find the courage to start.

  “I hope you don’t mind the surprise,” Andy said as Mei set the stacked the dishes beside the sink. “I couldn’t wait another three weeks until your trip home.”

  “Of course not. I’m happy to see you.”

  Andy reached up with a wet hand and pushed a strand of hair from her face. “You seem tired. Are they working you too hard?”

  Mei smiled. “I really like it.” Quickly, she went to clear the remaining dishes from the table. Already, her stomach was in knots.

  “I’m glad,” he said, reaching to take the dishes from her hands. “They’re lucky to have you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said.

  Andy lifted her chin and kissed her. “I do.”

  Ignoring the guilt that seemed to rise from behind her lungs, Mei kissed her husband.

  She moved to the dishwasher to load the dinner plates.

  Andy grinned at her.

  “What?”

  He shut off the water. “I was going to wait to tell you.”

  Mei froze. “Tell me what?”

  “I put in for a transfer.”

  The dish slipped from Mei’s fingers and fell onto the linoleum floor, exploding at her feet.

  Quickly, she dropped for the pieces. She held the largest one in her hand, unable to make herself move as her heartbeat thundered at the base of her neck. “A transfer?”

  Andy closed the dishwasher and moving efficiently, began to collect the porcelain shards. “To the local office here.”

  Mei watched him, unable to answer. He was coming here. Moving here. While she planned to ask him for a break, he was planning to uproot his life to be with her. She stood quickly and started out of the room. “Let me get the broom.”

  She walked back to her bathroom without stopping and closed the door. Stared at her terrified face in the mirror. You can’t do this to him.

  “Mei?” Andy called from the hallway.

  Mei opened the door and found Andy holding a dustpan and broom. “Ah, there it is,” she said, taking it from him. “I thought it was in here.”

  He followed her back to the kitchen and Mei stooped to brush up the shards. “I thought you said a transfer would be taking a step backward for your career,” she said, broaching the subject again.

  Andy touched her hand.

  Mei looked up, trying to seem casual. “I mean, aren’t you worried about losing ground?”

  “We can’t go on like this. It’s been a month. I’m going nuts.” He set his drink down. “Is it that you’re afraid you won’t want to stay in this job?”

  “No. It’s not that,” she said quickly, still gripping the dustpan and broom like some sort of life raft. “I like it.” She stood and dumped the broken pieces into the trash can.

  Andy took the broom and pan from her hand and returned them to under the sink. “If you’re happy here then I need to make a change.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work out?” she blurted.

  “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll find another job or we’ll go back to the Bureau in Chicago. They’ll take us both back.” Andy pulled her closer. “It’s not life or death, babe. They’re just jobs.”

  Mei saw the drink on the counter and fought the urge to reach for it as she struggled with the wave of emotion. She might not want to be married to her husband but she loved him. Andy was her best friend. He was the one she went to when her mother was being especially crazy or when there was an issue at work. When her father had the heart attack scare, when she got the promotion at work, when she’d felt the first pains of appendicitis, Andy was always the first person she wanted to talk to. There was no one to replace him, but the warring emotions she felt, the dreams she’d been having about Jodi, or a woman at work or sometimes women she swore she’d never seen b
efore… the things she couldn’t say built up between them.

  She hated herself for these feelings, for the growing ambivalence she had about her marriage and her husband. He was a kind, honest man. An attractive man. A smart man. A caring man. He was a wonderful husband, would make a wonderful father. Why, then, couldn’t Mei be happy just to be married to him?

  Chapter 7

  Mei was called in just after six the next morning. Andy was already up, in the kitchen drinking coffee with Ayi. In a good mood, he had plans to meet with the local office of the FBI and was planning to go look around the city.

  He was going to find a place to take Mei to dinner that night. He would leave early the next morning for meetings in L.A. and be back to Chicago for the weekend for his mother’s birthday.

  “Maybe I can take you to lunch today?” he said. “I’d love to see where you work.”

  “I’d love that,” Mei lied. “Let me see what happens with this case. I may have to stay close to the station.”

  On the way to work, she worried about his meeting with the bureau. Andy’s focus was on money laundering and he was well-respected within the FBI. He was often loaned to other regional offices to assist in cases. If he pressed for a transfer, Mei imagined the bureau would grant it rather than risk losing him. She would ask him to wait. To give her another month or two before he made a move. Maybe she’d imply that she wasn’t sure about the department or say something about missing Chicago. Or maybe she could just tell him the truth. That would certainly be the right decision. He deserved that.

  Sitting at the interview table, Mei tried to push everything else from her mind. Computer Forensics was usually on the back end of investigations, so this was Mei’s first interrogation. Ryaan Berry had called her in. She thought Mei might be able to help suss out whether or not this kid, Jacob Monaghan, was lying. So far, he hadn’t said a single word, which ruled out lying.

  He had, however, told some cops that he lived with his grandmother, which wasn’t exactly true. His grandmother had died five days ago. A neighbor had called the police because of the smell, and they’d found her dead in her bed, no signs of foul play. There was no evidence that Jacob had been staying in the apartment since her death. Worse, his grandmother had been his only family. This was all new to Mei. Dealing with anything other than the machinery was usually outside her jurisdiction. She’d seen the occasional interview but usually on hacker cases when she was called in to interpret the tech language. This was her first accused killer.

  Mei glanced over at Ryaan Berry who shook her head. Mei’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she pushed the silence button. “Where did the gun come from?” Berry asked again.

  The epitome of teenage awkwardness, Jacob looked totally shell-shocked. The glasses he wore were too small for his face, which was red and covered in acne. The whole of him had a sheen of grease—face and hair and hands—that made it seem like he hadn’t washed in days. Perhaps he hadn’t.

  Jacob hadn’t informed anyone of his grandmother’s death, hadn’t been to school. According to the officers who found the grandmother, the smell was impossible to miss, so it was hard to imagine Jacob was still staying in the apartment.

  The school’s truancy office had called and left messages but hadn’t followed up. Until Jacob opened fire on a downtown San Francisco bank seven hours ago, killing two and wounding six others, no one could account for his whereabouts for the past five days.

  Mei hadn’t met many fourteen-year-old killers, but this one didn’t seem especially bright. She’d watched a fair number of interviews from behind glass. Even eye movement often betrayed intelligence. Computer teens were usually highly intelligent if not always socially adept or even good with common sense.

  Jacob didn’t seem bright enough to have built the cell phone jammer that lay on the table in front of him. Also, Jacob made no move to touch the device. He barely looked at it. The computer kids Mei had met loved their handiwork. Even when they were trying to pretend they’d had nothing to do with it, they couldn’t manage to keep their hands off.

  Jacob had already met with a public defender and gone through a detailed psych evaluation where he’d been deemed fit to stand trial, a disappointment to his attorney. As a flight risk, the court overturned the request that he be released without bail. Unable to come up with two hundred thousand dollars bail, he spent the night at juvenile hall. Overcrowding meant he’d been bunked in solitary, the only free room at the inn. At fourteen, there was a chance Jacob would be tried as an adult for the double homicide. Mei didn’t see that Jacob had any good options left.

  “Jacob, you’re going to have to start talking to us,” Ryaan told him.

  The kid picked at a bloody hangnail on his thumb with the opposite hand. He pulled a long thin strip of skin off and let it drop on the table.

  Ryaan slammed her palm on the table. “Where did the gun come from?”

  The kid jumped slightly. “It’s not mine.”

  Ryaan sat up in her chair. “Whose is it?”

  Jacob shrugged.

  Ryaan stood from the table, her chair screeching back across the linoleum floor. “Fine, Jacob. When you want to talk, you let me know.” Ryaan slapped the two way mirror and shouted, “Let’s get him booked over at juvie.”

  Mei started to stand when Jacob spoke up. “Juvie?”

  “Where did you think you’re going?” Ryaan said. “You killed two people.”

  Jacob looked alarmed. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know the gun was loaded.”

  “You walked into a bank, pointing it.”

  “I barely touched the trigger. I’m not even sure I touched it. It was like it just went off.” Jacob scratched his head. “I just needed some money. Not even that much,” he added then looked up, wide-eyed. “Why did they leave a loaded gun?”

  Ryaan crossed her arms. “Who?”

  Jacob’s fingers worked frantically on the bleeding thumb. “If I tell you, what will happen?”

  Ryaan leaned back against the two-way mirror in the tiny room. “We’ll try to help you, Jacob, but you’d better start talking.”

  Jacob put his hands under his legs and sat on them as though to stop himself from picking at the bleeding thumb. Mei, for one, was thankful.

  “Tell us where you’ve been since your grandma died.”

  Jacob glanced at Mei then back at Ryaan.

  “The first night I stayed at home. Then I slept in the school gym a few nights.”

  “But you haven’t been going to school.”

  He shrugged. “It’s dry and warm, and I can sleep behind the bleachers. I usually wake up when Mr. Matthews comes in.”

  “Who is Mr. Matthews?”

  “The 9th grade gym teacher. He’s also the coach of the tennis team. He gets in real early.”

  “Where have you been going during the day?”

  “The park usually or one time to the library, but the lady there kind of gave me a dirty look so I left.”

  Mei stared at the kid. He had just shot eight people, and he was sitting there talking about getting a dirty look from a librarian.

  Ryaan moved to the table and leaned across it. “Where did the gun come from?”

  “It was in a box by the dumpster.”

  “What dumpster?”

  “The one at school.”

  “At the high school?”

  Jacob nodded. “I stop there on the way out of the school.”

  “Why?”

  Jacob stared at his lap. “The school throws out bagels and stuff from the day before.”

  “Where’s the box?”

  “I threw it away in the dumpster around the corner from the bank.”

  Ryaan looked at Mei who nodded and sent a text to the lab to get over to the dumpster and find the box.

  “You didn’t load the gun?”

  Jacob sho
ok his head. “I wouldn’t even know how. I’ve never touched a gun before.”

  “Do you know what this is?” Mei asked him.

  He seemed startled that she had spoken, like he’d just then noticed that she was in the room.

  He glanced at the silver box and shook his head.

  “You’re sure?” Mei asked.

  He nodded.

  “You’ve never seen one of these?” Ryaan asked. She pushed it toward him, but he didn’t touch it.

  He shook his head again. Mei watched him. She wasn’t qualified to judge whether or not he was telling the truth, but it seemed highly unlikely to her that he’d made it.

  Just then, the door cracked open, and Sydney Blanchard stepped into the room. “Ling, can you come take a look at this? You may want to see it, too, Berry.”

  Mei rose from the table and stepped into the hallway, Ryaan just behind. Ryaan closed the door on Jacob. He was already starting to pick at his thumb again. Sydney handed Mei an iPad. On the screen was an image of a laptop computer. It was a relatively cheap brand, maybe a couple hundred dollars, easy to pick up anywhere. The only thing unusual about it was the two strips of Hello Kitty duct tape that ran across its length and width.

  Sydney reached over and swiped the screen to show another image. In this one, Mei saw the top of the laptop. The duct tape held a cell phone and a battery pack in place. “Where did you find this?”

  “It was in one of the boxes at the warehouse. A case from ‘93.”

  “And it’s not from the old case?” Ryaan asked.

  Mei shook her head. “No way. This kind of technology didn’t exist in 1993.”

  “Plus, the battery is still running,” Sydney added.

  “What is it?” Ryaan asked.

  “That’s why I brought it to Mei,” Sydney said.

  “It looks like a device for breaking into a network,” Mei told them. “Is there case information on a server at the warehouse?”

  Sydney shook her head. “We don’t have a network there.”

  Mei paused and looked at the picture again. “We must.”