Stay All Night: Arizona Law 2 (Arizona Heat Book 6)

by Katie Douglas

  “I’m not making an exception for someone I’ve known for less than twenty-four hours. Anyway, don’t you want to come and investigate a crime with me?”

  Avery’s expression changed and she straightened up a little. “Well, when you put it that way, sure, I’d love to come along.”

  “Great, let’s leave.”

  We reached Mrs. Shaw’s place and I parked the squad car.

  “Don’t say anything when we get inside. Be silent and keep your eyes open for clues,” I told Avery. “I have to ask very specific questions.”

  “Okay.”

  We got out and I knocked on the door.

  I’d only seen Mrs. Shaw when she was dressed and made up. In her pajamas, her face greasy with night cream and hair in rollers, she looked a lot more vulnerable.

  “Thanks for coming, officer. Who is this?” Mrs. Shaw looked at Avery with a little apprehension.

  “This is my assistant, Avery. She’s taken over from Mavis.”

  As soon as I mentioned Mavis, Marybeth Shaw nodded with understanding.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said to Avery, who smiled and nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  “Mrs. Shaw, I need a statement from you. May we go inside?” I asked.

  She showed us in, obviously a little flustered, and insisted on making us coffee. Avery and I sat in an oppressively cluttered sitting room full of knick-knacks and tchotchkes.

  “I think I know why the dog ran away,” Avery muttered. I snorted with laughter then I frowned. This was the home of a citizen who was distraught that her dog was missing, and I needed to show some more respect.

  “We don’t know what happened to the dog, yet,” I reminded Avery.

  She shrugged. “What else could it be?”

  “Traffic collision, theft for resale, for fighting or for the fur trade...” I listed them off without really thinking about it. There were tons of reasons why dogs were one of the most stolen things in America. It irked me that the law didn’t distinguish between theft of a beloved pet and theft of a purse or a bicycle. Pets were more than property, and if I had my way, animal thieves would get much tougher sentences.

  But I didn’t make the law, I only upheld it, and it wasn’t my place to challenge the judicial system.

  “Here’s your coffees.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” I sipped the hot drink and got out my notebook. “Can you tell me when you last saw Gizmo?”

  Mrs. Shaw sat down opposite Avery and I, and she nodded emphatically.

  “I saw him before I went to work this morning. About eight a.m. I left the house, I dropped him a little treat and said, “bye bye little boo.””

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Avery’s face twitch. If she laughed, her ass was toast.

  “And where was that?” I asked.

  “In the mudroom. He stays in there all day.”

  “May I see it, please?”

  “Oh, sure.” She stood up and led the way through a house filled with far more belongings than there was space for. I guessed she was a collector of many things.

  The mudroom was on the other side of the kitchen, with a washing machine, a couple of dog bowls and a door leading to the yard.

  “Is the door locked?” I asked.

  “Always,” Mrs. Shaw said.

  I tried the handle. It opened immediately. I looked at the old lady waiting for an explanation.

  “It was locked this morning. I always check. The key is kept in the door, so no one could have gotten it from anywhere else.”

  I nodded. “May I look outside, please?”

  She nodded. “Take your time. The outdoor light is fantastic.”

  I stepped out and walked around. The yard was packed with shrubs, lawn ornaments arranged in clusters, wind chimes, birdhouses and big planters full of flowers. Mrs. Shaw obviously enjoyed gardening. The air con unit wasn’t humming or blowing warm air out of the house. The gate was bolted from this side. Walking around the yard, I didn’t see anything that suggested a thief had been here.

  I went back to the mudroom and scrutinized the door. There was a little flap which a chihuahua or a cat could get through, but not even a crawling baby could get through that.

  “Ma’am?” I began, but when I turned around, Mrs. Shaw wasn’t listening.

  “How long’s your air con been broke?” Avery asked.

  “Oh, uh, a couple days. We had a guy around to fix it today, but he said he’d need to order a spare part for it.”

  “And your windows have been open all day?” Avery asked.

  I was mildly irritated. There were real procedural questions I needed to ask and Avery was taking up the time when I needed to do my job. I gave her a look but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah, but only the upstairs ones. They’re locked with a mechanism that stops them opening too wide in case one of the grandkids leans out too far.”

  “How far do they open?” I asked, taking over this line of inquiry so I could shut it down. It was clear the dog hadn’t jumped out of a first floor window.

  “Three inches,” she said. I nodded and wrote it down but the whole thing was a dud.

  “Do any of your neighbors have a grudge against you, or have you disagreed with any of them?” I asked, returning to the script.

  “Not officially,” Mrs. Shaw replied. “I mean, Mrs. Vanderhosen is always complaining about my lawn ornaments. She thinks they’re too unsightly. Damn woman has the taste of a puritan.”

  “I’ll need to speak to her, although knowing Mrs. Vanderhosen, it’s unlikely she had anything to do with this.”

  Mrs. Shaw laughed out loud. “Could you imagine that battle ax taking my Gizmo? Ha! I’d pay money to see that.”

  “There’s no signs of a break-in, so it looks like Gizmo was taken from the yard,” I finished. “Could he have been lured away by someone he knew?”

  “I doubt it. My sons can’t stand my poor snookie. He’s got a face only a mother could love,” Mrs. Shaw replied. I tried not to laugh, instead nodding and keeping my face neutral.

  “Well, if you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to call. I’ll let the Sheriff and the boys know about the case. Rest assured, you’ll get our best attention on this, ma’am,” I told her, handing her a card with my direct line on it. It was largely unnecessary. There were only four of us at the precinct, but it reassured people in the small town to know they had a named contact whenever there was a case. Bob encouraged us all to be personally accountable to the people we served.

  After we had finished investigating the scene and establishing basic facts, I drove Avery back to the precinct in silence. I was marshaling my thoughts and wanted to be clear and concise when I had words with her shortly.

  Back in the precinct, I sat at my desk and decided I was ready to hold Avery accountable.

  “Avery? Come here, please.”

  She got up and stood in front of my desk.

  “’Sup?” she asked.

  I resisted the temptation to sigh.

  “Do you remember as we were about to knock on Mrs. Shaw’s door, I gave you an instruction?”

  “No.”

  “I told you not to talk to Mrs. Shaw, you were there to observe.”

  “But you didn’t ask—” she began. I held up a hand.

  “I am trained in how to investigate crime. You have no idea what any of the rules are. Anything that is said or done during an investigation has to be recorded and if it has been done incorrectly, there can be an inquiry later on. I could get fired over what you did out there.”

  “It was just a dog,” she replied.

  I shook my head. “If that’s what you think then you have no business being here.”

  There was a moment of silence while she stared at me. I guessed she was weighing up how serious I was. I was very serious.

  “What do you want from me?” she demanded.

  “Follow the rules. They’re there for a reason.”

  “Fine.
I’m sorry I messed up your dog investigation.”

  Her tone made it impossible to tell if she was being sincere or sarcastic.

  “I accept your apology. Next time, trust me when I give you an instruction.”

  She sighed, and I saw her front dissolve.

  “I find it hard to trust anyone,” she whispered.

  I felt bad. Maybe I should have approached this differently. Or maybe she needed this conversation.

  “I noticed,” I told her.

  There was another of those long silences.

  “Go back to your desk.”

  I turned back to my computer screen and wrote up the report on what had happened with Mrs. Shaw.

  Chapter 7

  Avery

  That jerk. What a dick. Jackass. I had found the only unusual thing about the entire house at the time when the dog had gone missing, and he was riding my butt about the fact I had broken procedure—whatever that even meant—and he’d totally disregarded what I’d found out!

  The windows had been opened when the dog had gone missing. It had something to do with the way the dog had disappeared. I was sure of it.

  Fine. He didn’t want to know. Mr. Cop wanted to solve this mystery by himself and get all the credit for it. I mean, it was his job. Maybe they’d get him a cute badge that said “I solved a mystery” or something.

  I decided the only way to keep my cool was to let it go. It was his precinct. I was just here to do some typing and make some cash. Once I had enough, I could do whatever I wanted. In the meantime, I found my place with the report I’d been typing up and I went back to work.

  Around one in the morning, Rick called my name again.

  “What is it?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t in more trouble for something trivial. He reminded me of the teachers at my school. You didn’t underline the date so you can’t get an A. I wasn’t great with anally retentive people. Everything was a misdemeanor and it was impossible to know how to do the right thing for some people.

  He seemed to be one of them.

  “I’m gonna order takeout. You want pizza?” he asked.

  Pizza? I don’t know why it surprised me. We had been here for five hours and we hadn’t taken a break to eat anything. Was it still called a lunch break at this time of the night? I wasn’t sure.

  “Sure. I’ve never had takeout pizza,” I reminded him.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right, I was going to take you to an Italian restaurant today. Sorry, we kinda got caught up in shopping, didn’t we? Okay, so I’ll get us a pepperoni—you’re not a vegan, are you?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “I’ll eat anything.”

  “Noted.” He picked up the phone and dialed for a pizza place. I got back on with my work. Okay, he’d been a bit douchey earlier, but on the whole he had a lot of redeeming features. Well-toned, tanned redeeming features. I guessed he spent time working on them in the gym.

  He had let me stay with him. And he was paying me money to be here. Where would I be without him? Yeah, I definitely needed to give him less of a hard time and try and practice a little more gratitude. Even if I didn’t like the way he talked to me, sometimes. I guessed nobody was perfect.

  When the pizza arrived, he placed it on an empty table and opened the box. I stared inside it in amazement.

  “It looks just like the pizzas people have on T.V.!” I exclaimed. It was nothing like the crappy frozen things we’d eaten at home. The cheese was lightly browned and looked like a shining liquid. The pepperonis were big and round, and the crust was fluffy. The scent made my mouth water. I couldn’t wait to try it.

  “Ladies first,” Rick said. I glanced up at him in surprise.

  “Are you sure?” I checked. I didn’t want to accidentally break some social rule where I was supposed to say something like “gentlemen first” or whatever.

  “Yeah. You need feeding up.”

  Hesitantly, unsure which slice to pick since they all looked so good, I finally reached out and took one.

  I bit into the thin tip and moaned. My taste buds were fired up with a mixture of cheese, pepperoni and pizza sauce.

  “Someone’s easily pleased,” Rick remarked.

  “What? It’s the best pizza I’ve ever had!”

  “Last time I heard someone making noises like that was when we confiscated an illegal adult movie from a guy,” he said.

  I almost choked on my pizza and my cheeks flared with embarrassment.

  “No! What? No! I just... it’s just tasty is all.” I tripped over every word in that sentence.

  Real smooth, I mocked myself.

  I tried to stay quiet while I ate the rest of the pizza slice, but I couldn’t help it, the food tasted so good there was no way I could keep those emotions inside me.

  “Mmmm. This is so good,” I murmured as I bit into the crunchy crust, drizzled with a little melted cheese, and my mouth was treated to a new explosion of deliciousness. “How can you just eat this like it’s nothing? Like you do this every day and are a little bored of it?” I asked him.

  “Because I do and I am.”

  Wow. Just wow. Mr. Perfect Cop was hiding a jaded heart.

  “If you can’t appreciate how good this pizza is, you’re just dead inside,” I teased him.

  “Better call the undertaker, then,” he replied flatly, but there was a twinkle in his eye and I realized he was unleashing his seriously dry sense of humor. I giggled.

  “Hello? Funeral guys? I need one of those big cars full of flowers. Officer Rick’s sense of taste died and left him thinking this pizza was boring.” I mimed a phone with my hand.

  “Just for that, I’m going to let you pour your own soda,” he retorted.

  I laughed. “I thought it was supposed to be wine on a first date.”

  His face changed and he choked on his pizza. Immediately, I jumped up and thumped him on the back to help him stop coughing. His face turned purple, but he finally stopped. I opened the orange soda and poured some into a cheap paper cup then passed it to him.

  “Thanks.” His tone was more subdued, now.

  “That was scary. You sure you’re okay?” I asked him. He nodded and drank a big gulp of the soda. I realized this must have been how he felt when I had that asthma attack this morning. Scared. Out of control. Not sure if he was going to breathe again anytime soon.

  “Do you want the big slice?” I asked, indicating the wide one between two smaller ones. Whoever had cut this pizza hadn’t quite mastered turning it into equal slices.

  “No, you have it.” He was still drinking the orange soda.

  “Wow, thanks.” It seemed like I kept saying those two words tonight. Maybe they were pizza words.

  I picked up that big slice and bit into it, savoring the delicious cheese. No one had ever been so generous to me before, and it was hard to know how to react other than “wow” and “thanks”. Somehow, the two words didn’t quite seem like enough to convey how much I appreciated Officer Rick’s kindness. Even though sometimes he was a little bossy and overbearing, too.

  He had great taste in pizza. That had to count for something. And a killer sense of humor. I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone who made me laugh so much.

  Chapter 8

  Rick

  Three days after Avery had exploded into my life, I was already finding it weird to think of the time before she’d been here. It had seemed quiet and organized, but now I couldn’t imagine going to work without her.

  We had fallen into a bit of a routine. In the mornings, we went to bed together and slept until the afternoon. When we woke up, we had breakfast and took Duke for a walk. He loved that.

  When we arrived at work, everyone else was wrapping up.

  “Anything I need to know, Chief?” I asked the Sheriff.

  Bob nodded. “We got called out to the Clifton house.”

  A little shudder ran down my spine. I hated that old place. I wished some developer would buy it and turn it into apartments or something.

  “Find
anything?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No. I wonder if stray dogs have gotten inside there, maybe. Mrs. Ryan keeps hearing noises from the place.”

  “It’s the ghosts,” Sean laughed.

  I snorted. I knew there were no ghosts over there. All the same, something about the place just got to me.

  “What’s the Clifton place?” Avery asked once the guys had left for the day. We were sat side by side getting on with our respective jobs. She was sorting through papers and I was tidying my desk.

  “The old Clifton Schoolhouse,” I explained. “It was a sort of orphanage. About ten miles out of town. They shut it down in the seventies. It’s been empty ever since, but out here, the desert preserves old buildings. It’s real creepy. And it’s in our jurisdiction. An old couple live near it—Mr. and Mrs. Ryan—and they call to report strange occurrences from time to time. Sometimes drifters move in. We’ve had wild animals in there before, too.”

  Avery raised her brows. “Right. That sounds terrifying.”

  “It’s worst at night. The place has no electricity.”

  “This literally sounds like something out of Scooby Doo.”

  I laughed. The way she summed things up was pretty accurate. I decided my desk was tidy enough to work, so I got on with some follow-up paperwork.

  Avery was a fast learner. She might not have a high school diploma but she knew how to get those reports typed up. She was fast and accurate. Before she’d arrived, the precinct had been drowning in extra paperwork that we’d written down but never had time to put into the computer. Now, things were starting to look tidy again.

  I just needed to talk to Bob about who was paying her, because as it stood, I was losing $7 an hour and handing it straight to her. Worse, I was paying tax on that money before she got it, too.

  There was something even more important I needed to tell her, so I leaned across my desk and waved to get her attention.

  “Avery?”

  “Yeah?” Her keyboard fell silent and she turned her head to look at me.