Interference

by Danielle Girard

  Mei halted. A memory of Saturday night flashed in her mind.

  Blake noticed her in the doorway. “You need help, boss?”

  Mei said nothing as Blake crossed to her. He took the carrier. “They’re for everyone,” Mei told him.

  Teddy’s voice came from behind. “Awesome.”

  “Thanks, Mei.” Blake took a coffee without bothering to see what it was. When Blake walked back to his desk, Mei caught Amy looking at her. And she knew. She wasn’t wrong. It was Amy she’d seen in the club Saturday night.

  Chapter 34

  Amy had been in that crowd Saturday night. Was that even possible? Amy wasn’t gay. Amy had a boyfriend or she’d had a boyfriend until recently or had just gotten a new one. She was sure she’d heard Amy talking about a boy.

  Mei forced herself to look away from Amy. “I brought enough for everyone,” she said, pointing to the coffees. “I didn’t know what you guys wanted, so some are decaf or nonfat.”

  “Thanks, Mei.” Teddy came up and spun them around until he found one that was regular milk. “Hate that skim stuff,” he said. Then, as though remembering who he was talking to, he dropped his head toward her and said, “You doing okay?”

  Mei nodded. “Thanks.”

  Aaron came over and inspected the two remaining coffees and chose a low-fat with caffeine. “Thanks, boss,” he said, drawing the word out then chuckling as though the idea of someone being in charge of him was nothing short of hysterical.

  Amy did not come over.

  “Amy?”

  Amy looked up from her desk.

  “There’s one for you.” Mei carried the last coffee to Amy’s desk. She felt her pulse quicken as she got close. There was no way Amy was the one who had shot out her window or drugged her. Amy didn’t fit any violent criminal profile. Young, clueless Amy? Plus, why would she want to hurt Mei? Certainly she might not have been thrilled to have Mei as a boss, but that kind of violence was a very extreme solution. “There’s a low-fat left,” Mei told her.

  Amy forced a smile. “I don’t need it.”

  Mei stopped at her desk. “No. Please…”

  Amy’s hand trembled ever so slightly. “Um. Okay. Unless you want it.”

  Mei handed it to her. “All yours.” She glanced around to see that Aaron and Blake and Teddy were otherwise occupied.

  Amy sat frozen. If there had been any doubt about Amy’s presence Saturday night, it was gone now. Mei stood tall, cornering Amy at her desk. “Did you have fun at Blue on Saturday?”

  “What?” The tension in Amy’s shoulders hitched higher, the trembling worsened.

  “The club. Blue. I saw you there.”

  Amy glanced around the room, landing her gaze on Aaron. Mei followed it, but he was hunched over his laptop, his back to them.

  “You want to go somewhere else to talk?”

  Amy shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have a boyfriend.”

  “So you do know what Blue is.”

  Amy said nothing.

  “Why were you there?”

  “I wasn’t. You’re wrong.”

  “We both know I’m not,” Mei responded, feeling the tension cranking down in her jaw.

  “I thought someone slipped you a drug or something. You probably imagined you saw me.” Amy sat up straighter. “Which makes me really uncomfortable.”

  Mei grabbed hold of the arm of Amy’s chair. “Do you know something about how I was drugged?”

  Amy spun the chair and bolted, knocking against the desk and spilling her coffee. “God, no. Leave me alone.”

  Mei stepped away to avoid the coffee that poured off the desk.

  Her face crimson, Amy righted the coffee and stormed out the door.

  When Amy was gone, Mei felt the room staring at her. “I’d have thought she’d have been done with that search by now,” Mei announced. “I guess not.”

  Blake and Teddy exchanged looks. The two turned back to their work, but Mei felt the heat of Aaron’s gaze as she retrieved paper towels from her drawer and laid them across the puddle of spilled coffee.

  She considered going to Sergeant Lanier or even Captain Findlay. Certainly they needed to know. She wasn’t just remembering something from a drug-induced state. And if she was, then Amy was right to be uncomfortable because the idea that Mei might have dreamt Amy’s presence made her more than a little uneasy, too.

  Hailey would listen as would Ryaan Berry. But Jamie Vail seemed like she knew the most about this kind of thing. Mei sent Jamie Vail a text from her computer. I remembered something from Saturday.

  Waiting for a response, Mei glanced across the room. Aaron had moved into Amy’s chair and was cleaning her desk with wet towels. Was he involved somehow, too? And if so, how did they know Mei was going to the club? Mei thought about the tablet. She was surprised she hadn’t heard from Sydney about the fingerprinting.

  She had to know more before she decided what to do. Mei launched the human resources application. Since Amy was her employee, Mei had access to her personnel records. Mei worked with an eye on the room. If everyone was at his desk, no one could see her screen. Mei had guessed that Amy was young, but she hadn’t guessed twenty-three. This was her first job after graduating from Cal State Poly. There was a scanned copy of her application with some handwritten notes on her interview. Conducted by Aaron. Amy had been working for the department for sixteen months. She’d gotten a small raise last summer. Nothing especially large or small enough to be considered punitive. Average. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about Amy Warner’s record.

  Want to share it? came Jamie’s response.

  Mei typed. I’m almost positive that one of my direct reports was at the club.

  You talk to him/her that night? Jamie replied.

  Her. No.

  But you’re sure.

  Mei nodded to herself. Pretty sure.

  You confront her?

  Yes. Denies.

  There was a moment’s pause then Jamie wrote. We can work with that. Could she have followed you?

  Mei thought about the wine bar. Amy would have had to be there or on that street somewhere. But Mei had come in Sophie’s car and left in Sabrina’s. Maybe, she wrote back. But would have been tricky.

  Any other reason she might have been at the club? Jamie wrote.

  She’s straight. Has a boyfriend.

  So no.

  Right, Mei agreed, Also, I think someone might have accessed my tablet. I gave it to Sydney to run prints. I might be going crazy but one of my guys supposedly found it lying out on Wednesday night. I never leave it out.

  How much detail do you keep in it? Schedule and stuff?

  Mei thought about it. A lot.

  Was the club on there? Jamie asked.

  Don’t think so. Hang on. Mei launched her calendar program and scanned the weekend. The calendars from her phone, her tablet, and her computer all synched, so if something had been on her tablet, it would be here, too. Mei was shocked to see an appointment for six p.m. Saturday. “Sophie pick up for Blue.” Why would she have put that in her calendar? She hadn’t even decided that she was going until Saturday after meeting with Sabrina. It was a matter of habit, she realized.

  She scrolled back through the last week and studied the colored blocks of time. Everything was on there: her meetings, dropping off Ayi’s gongbi print, ideal workout times, marked as tentative, because she rarely made them, a reminder to pick up the gongbi print this morning, which she’d missed.

  If someone had access to her calendar, they would have known where she was supposed to be ninety percent of the time. She scrolled back to last week and stopped on Wednesday. The evening hours of her calendar were empty. Thursday, she had “Dinner with S.” at six p.m. Similarly, Tuesday night’s calendar showed “Ayi” at six thirty. Wednesday, ther
e was nothing. She had stopped at the wine bar on the way home, but she hadn’t put that in her calendar. Was that why someone had chosen Wednesday night to shoot up Ayi’s front window? Had they assumed from the absence of a date on her calendar, that Mei would be home?

  Just then, Jamie pinged. Anything?

  Everything.

  Just called Blue. Bartenders show up at four. Meet in the lobby at 4:30?

  Mei glanced at her watch. It was already almost four. Yes. Thanks, J.

  Anytime.

  Mei thought again about her sergeant and Captain Findlay. Like Amy said, she was drugged. Maybe she did hallucinate Amy. She didn’t believe that. Something was definitely going on, but what was Captain Findlay going to do about it? She needed something more. She thought about her tablet and called down to the main lab.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sydney answered. “We had a homicide come in with a carload—literally—of potential evidence and got buried.”

  “I can check back later—”

  “No. I just printed it. Only your prints on the screen. A few smudges that could be someone else, but they aren’t clean enough to match.”

  “Did you print the cover?”

  “Yes. Yours and Edward Berger’s. A few of them. He’s in your department, right?”

  “Teddy, yes. That makes sense. He found it.” Mei tried to hide her disappointment. “I appreciate the help. Good luck with the homicide.”

  “Oh, God. Thanks. Hope to make it to dinner on Wednesday.”

  Rookie Club Dinner, Mei remembered. “Me, too,” she lied. She hadn’t even thought about it. “Thanks, Sydney.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Mei hung up her phone. She’d locked up her tablet. She never left it out. Never. In Chicago, colleagues teased her relentlessly about how fanatical she was. How suspicious. Yet, she didn’t remember putting the club date on her calendar. Very possibly, the stress was getting to her. The evidence certainly pointed in that direction.

  Mei shrugged off the self-doubt, pulled herself tall. No. She knew herself. She walked to the lab to retrieve the tablet. Thanked the receptionist who gave it to her. She held it a little tighter on the way back to her office. Something was wrong. Someone had taken her tablet. She was sure of it. At her desk, she slid the tablet carefully into her bag to take home.

  She would find out what they were looking for. And who was behind it.

  Chapter 35

  Lying on the ground that night, Ryaan swore she’d felt the bullet puncture her brain. Felt the heat and absence of pain. Felt herself lifted off the earth. Looked down on her own corpse. Since that moment, she felt removed from her life. It was as though some part of her was still above, watching the rest of her go through the motions. She felt like some part of her was dead.

  Ryaan hadn’t told her mother a thing about Saturday night. It was all over the news that a police officer had been held hostage by a gunman, but the officer remained unnamed. The department had put a temporary restraining order on news station helicopters, and the streets had been blocked off for several blocks. Ryaan had remained anonymous. This probably wouldn’t last. The news teams would be tireless about finding out who the officer was. It would have been smart to tell her mother before then, but Ryaan was banking on her mother’s adeptness at ignoring the news. Her mother watched old movies and the occasional sitcom. She watched National Geographic until they started to talk about natural disasters. There was a good chance her mother would never know. More than that, Ryaan didn’t want to relive it, let alone through her mother’s fear.

  Patrick was already at his desk when she arrived. She could tell he’d been there for a while. His coffee cup was empty, and he was drumming his fingers the way he did when he was puzzling a problem. It was only eight o’clock.

  “Morning.”

  Patrick spun in his chair. “Hey.”

  “Why so early?”

  “New lead.”

  Ryaan set her bag down on her desk.

  “We got a print off one of the guns in the warehouse fire. New guy by the name of Dwayne Henderson.”

  Ryaan remained standing. She was ready to go pick up Henderson. “Priors?”

  “Twenty-two months on a weapons charge.”

  “He lives down on Larkin. Patrol went over there about a half hour ago. If he’s there, they’ll bring him in.”

  “Why don’t we go?”

  “Because I’m also waiting to hear back on the history of those two cell phones so we can triangulate our main guy.”

  “Is Henderson our main guy?”

  “No way,” Patrick said. “He’s too small time. There has to be someone else.”

  “Maybe he’s graduating.”

  Patrick waved to the break room. “Get some coffee, Berry.”

  She didn’t want to wait around, but she knew Patrick was right. It made sense to have patrol pick up Henderson. Plus, she still had the report on Saturday night to finish writing. That was why she wanted to leave. She’d been avoiding it. There was no way to write up being taken over from behind by an armed gunman that didn’t make her look incompetent.

  Yes, they had already apprehended their target. No, they had no reason to believe Sawicki would be at Penn’s residence. Yes, he’d clearly been lying in wait for some time, and the environment was not an easy one to survey with all the old cars. But, Ryaan would have seen him coming if she’d been paying attention. If she hadn’t been lazy and half-asleep from being up late two nights in a row. If she hadn’t been checking text messages or thinking about a date with Hal Harris and whatever else she had been doing.

  Now, Sawicki was dead. Their best lead gone. Cameron Cruz had saved her life. Ryaan had yet to call her. When a cop saves your life, it was customary to go out and celebrate, buy a round of drinks, hoist him (or her) up on your shoulders, prance around one of the police bars like you’d won the lottery. No one had asked Ryaan if she wanted a drink Saturday night. She’d been checked over by an EMT, and Patrick had driven her home where her mother was waiting. Ryaan made up a story about a little fender bender and retreated to her bedroom where she lay and stared at the ceiling for half the night. Frozen. She’d tried to explain it to Patrick.

  “You got a nasty bump on the head, Berry.” That was his answer. And what else could it be? She was alive. She hadn’t been shot. She hadn’t seen her body. The body she’d been looking over at—not down on—was Justin Sawicki’s. She knew that and yet she still couldn’t shake the feeling that something more had happened in those moments.

  “Drink this.”

  She looked up and saw Patrick, standing with a cup of coffee. She took it and turned to her desk, sat in her chair and booted her computer to show that she was fine. Everything was normal. She put away the lunch she’d brought and replenished her store of Diet Cokes in the bottom drawer, folded her bag and placed it on top. She was just opening her email when the phone on Patrick’s desk rang.

  She stopped and watched.

  “O’Hanlan.”

  A moment passed and Patrick turned to her. He gave her a smile and a thumbs-up. Ryaan stood from her chair. “Perfect,” Patrick said. “Bring him to booking and we’ll meet you there in twenty.”

  Twenty minutes. Ryaan sat again. Patrick hung up. “We got him. Patrol picked him up coming out of his house. Said he was going to school.” Patrick laughed and shook his head. That wasn’t even close to the best story they’d heard.

  Ryaan could have spent the time going through emails or starting her report or any of a dozen other ways, but she couldn’t sit still. “I’ll meet you at the jail in twenty,” she said, pulling her jacket off the back of her chair.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Stop by the lab. See how Mei’s doing.”

  “The roofies, right. I heard.” Patrick turned back to his desk.

  “I’ll meet you over
there.”

  Patrick nodded. “Got it.”

  She wasn’t going to see Mei. She was going to the jail to wait because she wanted to see this Dwayne Henderson the moment he walked in the door, and she didn’t want company. She wanted someone she could beat the shit out of for putting a weapon in Justin Sawicki’s hands and almost getting her killed, and she hoped to God that Dwayne Henderson was that guy.

  Ryaan wasted the time walking circles in front of the jail, crossing over the star-shaped badges set into the tiles and staring up at the shiny brass Sheriff’s star above the door. Twenty-five minutes passed and still no Henderson. It was Patrick who came out the front door of the jail.

  “How’d you get in there?” Ryaan asked.

  “Back door. Same way Henderson came in.”

  “Henderson?”

  Patrick aimed his thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve got him set up in interview three.”

  Ryaan halted. “He’s here.”

  Patrick nodded. “I had them bring him in through the back.”

  “Why?”

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Because you and I have been partners a long time, Berry, and I know when you’re hot under the collar.”

  “Hot under the collar? This guy almost got me killed!” Ryaan barked.

  Patrick nodded. “So I was right to bring him in the back.”

  Ryaan stalked past him toward the interview room.

  Patrick chuckled which only made her angrier. But he knew that, too. He followed close behind until they were at the door. Before she could open it, he reached around her and took hold of the knob. “We going to do good cop/bad cop because I’m usually the bad one.”