“Whatever, bra. They’re both still fruit.”
That struck Had as strangely profound, but then he caught a whiff of something fried and his attention was diverted. “Hey, speaking of fruit… do you like cherry or strawberry topping on yours?” Had could almost taste the fried confection. It was one of his all-time favorite things to eat, from the first time he’d tasted one at the Michigan state fair back before his dad died.
“Nothing but powdered sugar for me. I’m a purist,” Preston said, his look pious.
As they weaved their way through the crowds outside Iowa 80, Had thought back over their conversation. There was something there that was tugging at his consciousness. It was like an itch that he couldn’t scratch. Some connection he wasn’t making.
“Hey, Preston,” Had asked his friend. “What were you thinking when I first told you I was a cop?”
“Aw, dude. I totally freaked out. Like wiggin’, you know?”
“Because of the pot, right?” he asked, looking to confirm a budding idea.
“Well, yeah. What else?” Preston sniffed, wiping a hand across his nose. “Why?”
“Just a thought I had.” Had was about to continue, when he saw Coop crossing the open space between the buildings and the convention fairway. Her face was tight and her stride was violent.
“Isn’t that your boss?” Preston asked, pointing her out.
“Yep.”
“She looks pissed.”
“Yep.”
He looked from one side of the field to the other, possibly searching for a place to hide. “I think I’m gonna bail. Sorry, dude.”
“Yep.” Had didn’t blame him. Not one bit.
As Agent Cooper approached, she called out to him. “What are you doing out here? Are you looking for someone?”
For a brief moment, Had considered lying, but not only was that not really him, he sucked at it. There was zero chance he could lie to this woman and get away with it.
“No. I was just taking a quick break. I needed something to eat.”
Had wasn’t sure how it was possible, but Coop’s face tightened down even further. A vein he had never noticed was standing out against the skin just above her temple, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. It was mesmerizing, and a little terrifying.
“You understand that we’ve got a kidnapped girl out there?”
“Yes, but I—”
“I would expect this kind of behavior out of Joshua, but from you? I’m beyond disappointed.”
Wow. Had would never have thought it possible, but Agent Cooper was almost channeling his mama. Now all she had to do was try to set him up with some girl. He tried again.
“I totally agree, I just—”
“We have to push past our discomfort. That woman’s life is hanging in the balance, and you’re out here chatting with the locals and grabbing a turkey leg.”
“Oh, I wasn’t getting a turkey leg. I just wanted a—”
“Had!” she barked. “I don’t want to hear it. I just want you to track down the information I asked for on Curtis Howse.”
This was not like the Agent Cooper that Had knew. Something was wrong. Really wrong. He reached out a hand and placed it on her shoulder.
“Coop, is everything okay?”
And just like that, she burst into tears.
Had could see that the strain of this case was getting to her. Heck, it was getting to him, too, and stress usually rolled off his back like water from a duck. Or whatever that phrase was. He patted her shoulder, wanting to give her a hug, but knowing it would embarrass her even more.
“I’m sorry, Had, I—”
“Hey,” he stopped her. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll grab a quick bite, then get back to it, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“And, Coop?”
“Uh huh?”
“It’s going to be okay,” he told her, and gave her shoulder one last pat.
She nodded and turned away, but not before Had saw new tears forming in her eyes. The poor woman was under a lot of pressure.
And he was going to do what he could to take some of it off.
* * *
“Dammit,” Joshua swore, staring at the screen in front of him. Bella perked up, barking at him and nipping at his fingers that were dangling down at his side. As she tried to latch onto his hand, he swatted playfully at her.
He’d been trying to track down some additional information on King’s Man’s known associates, when an email had come in. It was Had’s, but he’d left it open, knowing that information could come in that all of them would want to see.
It was good news. Sort of.
“What’s up?” Agent Cooper asked, crossing to his side of the workspace.
“The kidnapped girl? She wasn’t kidnapped.”
“What?”
“I know,” Joshua sighed. “Seems that she had just taken off to meet some of her friends in Vegas for a week and hadn’t said anything to anyone.”
“Well, that’s…” Coop’s voice trailed off.
“Good and bad. I know.”
“It does point back to Curtis Howse,” she said, her tone non-confrontational.
Joshua stretched, feeling his back crack in several places. “How do you figure?”
“Well, one of the things that seemed to exonerate him was that the girl was kidnapped while we had him in custody.”
They’d rehashed at least three different versions of this fight since Curtis had left the box. Guess they were due for their fourth.
“That was never my main concern.”
“Fine. Then explain to me what your main concern is.”
Joshua threw up his hands. “I have. Several times. But you don’t seem to want to hear it. Anything goes against your theory and you’re ready to chuck it out the window.”
“That is not true. The only reason I have for pushing forward with Howse is that the facts all point to him. I’m doing everything right here. You’re just going off of hunches and guesswork.”
“I’m not…” Joshua started, then stopped himself. “We’re going in circles here. Let’s just acknowledge that the heat is off as far as the girl goes, but that we’re back to square one in terms of having something physical to connect this to.”
“Works for me,” Coop muttered. She stood there for a second, then groaned. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“Where’s Had? I need to apologize to him. Again.”
“I think he went in to the department building. Wanted to work out a few ideas with Reggie or something.”
She sighed. “I’ll just talk to him when he gets back.”
Joshua tuned her out. He was busy trying to find a needle in a proverbial haystack, and his allergies were killing him.
* * *
There was low, and there was lower than low. Had wasn’t even sure he could see where that was from here.
This was the job of his dreams, a thrill for him on every level, and he had almost screwed it up. He’d never seen Agent Cooper get that mad, at least not at him. And usually when she was mad at Joshua, she was at least trying to hide it.
There had been nothing secret about her feelings when she’d spoken to him. And sure, they’d worked it out, sort of. But it still had gotten under his skin.
Rather than go back to the workspace where Joshua and Coop were busy trying to pretend that the other one didn’t exist, and where the source of his recent humiliation was, Had made the decision to go into Walcott to work at the station.
It hadn’t helped any.
Reggie had been called away on some IT project within an hour of his arrival. So he was just there in a foreign environment, getting in people’s way, trying to find a space where he could hunker down and work. After another hour of that, the workspace back at Iowa 80 was looking better and better.
So, he’d hoofed it back, knowing that he was probably going to be in for another earful. It was fine. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it.
&
nbsp; But when he pulled into the parking lot, Preston was there waiting for him. He was holding a greasy paper plate, and looked pleased with himself.
“There you are, dude. I knew you’d be back eventually. The funnel cakes always bring ‘em back.” He grinned at Had, holding out the plate toward him. On its surface was a gorgeous confection liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Had grabbed the plate, grateful for both the pastry and the thought behind it. “Thanks, man.”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Preston pulled a tiny plastic condiment cup out of his pocket. It was filled with strawberry topping. “Didn’t know which one you’d like, but it’s strawberries, you know? Who doesn’t like strawberries?”
“You’re awesome, Preston.” Had took a huge bite, almost inhaling a pile of sugar in the process. “Not as filling as pasties, but wow, that’s good.”
“Pasties?” Preston asked
Had frowned. “Yeah. Pasties. How could you live in Michigan and not know what a pasty is? You know, the meat filled little pies?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, my mom got me one of those once when I was kid. Didn’t like it.”
Had nearly spit out his bite of funnel cake. How could anyone that had sampled pasties not love them? Just one more example of how Detroit wasn’t really part of Michigan. Preston couldn’t help it.
“So, what happened with your boss,” Preston asked. “She skin you alive or what?”
“Skinning alive would have been a cake walk next to what she did to me.”
“Kinky.”
Had sighed. “I wish.”
Preston chuckled. “Don’t worry, dude. She’ll get over it. Who could stay mad at you?” He looked over Had’s shoulder. “Whoa. It’s that hot cop. Man, you pigs sure like to smell each other’s bacon, don’t you?”
Had glanced back and saw Reggie walking toward them. Waving at her, he offered her a bite of his funnel cake, which she took. She ended up with powdered sugar all over her nose. It was cute, and once more Had found himself regretting her lack of Latin dancing ability.
“You find anything new?” she asked.
“No, not much,” Had admitted. “But there was something that I had totally forgotten about until I ran into Preston here a second ago.”
“Hold on. We’re not going to talk about my pot again, are we?”
“Will you relax?” Had urged his friend. “No, I was thinking about how you said you were scared when I talked to you that first time.”
“Right.”
“Maybe that’s what’s happening with the trucker.”
Reggie’s forehead wrinkled up. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when Agent Cooper started talking about going through his life, it’s like he crumpled. And we were thinking that it must be because he’s guilty.”
“It does sort of seem that way, bra,” Preston said.
“Yeah, but what if it’s about something completely different? Something that has nothing to do with the murders?”
“That’s a real possibility,” Reggie mused. “But what does it mean?”
Just at that moment, Had’s phone rang. Psycho. Had answered and said, “Mama? I’m right in the middle of something right now.”
“Oh, you’re always in the middle of somethin’,” she groused. “And what’s taking you so long out there? Haven’t you caught the guy already?”
“Mama, it takes time to catch a serial killer.”
“Come on. They do it on that CSI show in like an hour.”
“That’s it, Mama. I gotta go.”
Had hung up, trying to regain his train of thought. Train. That was it.
“We’ve been so busy looking at the train routes and the trucking manifests, trying to see if there was that specific lot of fertilizer that was used in the bombing.”
“Right,” Reggie encouraged him.
“But I haven’t checked with the warehouse where the shipment was dropped off. Someone could have just come in and bought it.” Now that Had was thinking about it, the idea was so obvious, he was stunned no one had thought of it. And that he had been the first.
“That’s kind of brilliant, Had,” Reggie gushed. “I’ll run and tell Joshua and Agent Cooper.”
“You do that,” he said, “I’m headed out to the warehouse.”
Just like that, Had’s day turned around. It may not end up yielding any results, but at least he wasn’t feeling useless any longer.
And he’d gotten the idea by chatting with his friends.
CHAPTER 19
The last thing in the world that Sariah wanted to do was to let her prime suspect go. But that’s exactly what his public defender was asking for. The guy had come across as such a dufuss, and as much as it hurt to admit it, she hadn’t given him much credit.
Turned out, he might know what he was doing.
“If you don’t have enough to charge my client, it makes no sense to keep him in custody,” he said for the third time. This man had the broken record thing down to a science. Sariah was almost ready to give in just out of a desire to get him to shut up.
“You’ve seen the evidence we have against him. And he’s a trucker. He’s like the definition of a flight risk.”
“So let him go and keep an eye on him.”
Sariah sighed. “I don’t want to waste the manpower on keeping tabs on the person who more than likely did this.”
Once again the lawyer surprised her. “If you’re so positive he’s the guy, what do you need the manpower for?”
Well, there was that. But she wasn’t ready to give it up quite yet. “I can hold him for 48 hours.”
“Sure you can. But what’s a few hours more or less?” The public defender seemed to realize that he wasn’t going to make any headway with that argument, as he changed gears without warning. “What if he agrees to a monitor?”
That was a solution that would work for her. She just couldn’t imagine that anyone would be willing to take that option. What was she saying? She’d worn one for the past week, and with less reason than Curtis had. Her ankle, so recently liberated, itched with a phantom presence of a band of plastic circling her leg. She scratched at it, placing her attention back on the conversation.
“He agrees to a monitor, I agree to let him out,” she bargained. “Otherwise, it’s a no go, and you’ll just have to wait until the 48 hours run out.”
“Fine. I’ll have his answer in a few.”
Sariah hung up the phone, troubled. With each additional piece of information, she was more and more sure of Curtis Howse’s guilt. And yet…
Glancing back, she caught sight of Joshua, huddled up with Reggie, Bella playing at their feet. And yet, the man who knew Humpty Dumpty better than anyone else alive was having second thoughts. She shook her head. According to the former agent himself, he might start hallucinating when he wasn’t getting enough alcohol. And with the monitor now transferred to him, it was pretty clear he wasn’t drinking.
Reggie laughed, a hearty guffaw, and Sariah had to wonder what the two were talking about. Looking closer, she could see that Reggie was responding to Bella’s antics. The puppy was up on her hind legs, begging for one of the Cheetos Reggie was munching on.
The pair, or the trio if you included the dog, were tracking down more information on King’s Man. Sariah understood that the elegant hobo worked as well as Curtis from a profiling point of view, but there just wasn’t nearly enough hard evidence that linked him to the case. A historic perspective of the railways and bad luck in picking a handle didn’t make a suspect, as far as she was concerned. The fact that she couldn’t tell what Joshua was seeing in him bothered her.
Her phone buzzed, and Sariah snatched it up and glanced at the number, thinking it was the lawyer calling back with an answer. But it was Had’s number that showed up on the screen. What was he up to?
“Coop?” his voice scratched through the speaker of the cell with that background hum that said he was driving. “Just wanted to let you know where I am and what I’
m doing right now.”
Sariah flashed back to their last encounter. The sensitive young cop must still be reeling from the tongue-lashing she’d given him. Just because she might think they’d gotten to a good place by the end of the conversation, didn’t mean her momentary loss of temper wasn’t going to cause any future disconnect between Had and her. She needed to do better. Had was one of her best friends, and she didn’t have so many that she could afford to shed one here and there.
“Had, you don’t have to clock in with me. I know you’re out working the case.” She cleared her throat. “I really am sorry about what I said before.”
“Oh, I know,” his voice came back, as cheery as could be. “I’m just headed far enough out that I thought you should know. I called the company, and they said there wasn’t any cell reception out there. Didn’t want you thinking I’d gone off playing hooky.”
Sariah sighed. “Of course not. And once more, I’m sorry about earlier. Now, where are you going?”
“Up to Cedar Rapids,” he replied. “Thought I’d check out the warehouse where Curtis Howse dropped off his shipment of fertilizer, see if maybe there’s any additional leads that might come from it.”
So even Had thought that her focusing on Curtis Howse might be too narrow. She fought down feelings of defensive anger that surged up. He was just doing his job, following up on a lead that no one else had thought of.
“That’s a great idea,” she said, fighting to keep her tone normal. “Check in once you’re there; let me know if you find anything.”
“Will do.” There was a pause, enough so that Sariah thought that maybe he’d disconnected. Then he spoke again. “You okay?”
He must have heard it in her voice. She added some cheer this time, trying to smooth over the burrs in her speech caused by her disappointment.
“Fine. Just fine. Be careful out there, okay?”
“Sure thing, Coop.”
Just as she hung up with Had, the lawyer buzzed back in. An answer on whether or not his client was willing to accept a leash.
Sariah found that she was having trouble answering the call. Even with Joshua, Had, Reggie and the puppy, she felt like she was alone. Alone in her beliefs about their suspects. Alone in her responsibility for the case. Alone in her argument with the defense attorney. Just alone.
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