Power Struggle

by Carolyn Arnold

  “Like what feels like?”

  “Not knowing where you stand, not knowing if there’s even anything you can do or say to just make peace.” He looked away.

  She dropped onto the couch beside him, resisting the urge to run, to go take a shower and put space between them, to shelter her heart. She took his hand and moved her body to face him. “If it means that much to you, I’ll sublet my apartment.”

  Troy shook his head. “No. I don’t want you to.”

  She drew her hand back. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “I want you to do it because you’re ready, because you want to.”

  “Do you really think I’m not committed to this relationship?” she slapped back.

  Silence fell between them.

  “Troy?” she pressed.

  He briefly met her eyes with a blank stare. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “All this got stirred up because I didn’t tell you that an eyewitness spotted Constantine the night before Bates’s murder?” She was grasping, trying to make sense of his strong reaction.

  “If you were listening to me earlier today, I told you what this is about.” His jaw clenched. “But yes, that’s part of it.”

  “You know me better than anyone else,” she began, her heart fracturing with speaking the truth. “You see me for who I am.”

  Troy’s body relaxed; her words were working to melt his tough exterior.

  “I appreciate you so much,” she went on. “For believing in me, for being by my side, for being committed to us. For being you…”

  He turned to meet her gaze.

  “For taking your day off and working anyway. Who does that?” She grimaced. She received a partially formed smile, and she hated to risk removing it, but she had something else to say. “Just give me some more time, okay? With the apartment stuff.”

  “How much time?” He came across uncertain and still hurt.

  “I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “Just let me get through these two cases and get Constantine behind bars.”

  He let a moment pass in silence and then said, “We don’t know how long that will take.”

  She pinched her eyes shut for a second and steadied herself. “You’re right, but I need to know that he’s no longer a threat.”

  Troy touched her arm. “Just know that I’m here for you through all of this. I’ll do whatever I can to get this guy… And I’m just as pissed about being sent home as you are, by the way.”

  Madison grinned. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. And the guy’s not even my boss.”

  “It was a suggestion for you. You could have stayed.”

  “Nah. It was supposed to be my day off. Besides, as much as I hate to admit it, Winston had a point.”

  “You hate to admit it? How do you think I feel?” she grumbled.

  “You would have fought him on it if you truly wanted to stay.”

  Called out, she turned away and smiled.

  He tucked a strand of her hair behind an ear. “You do look whipped.”

  “I can’t deny that.” She went on to tell him how she’d met Chelsea for lunch and was quick to mention that Terry had followed her. She left out the part about intending to go solo. “She’s scared but hardheaded.”

  He raised an eyebrow at Madison. “Must run in the family.”

  She glowered and hit him in the shoulder. He grabbed her hand, and when she went to pull it back, he took one of her fingers and kissed the tip. Her heart fluttered, and her breath quickened. Before Troy, she had never thought of her fingertips as erogenous zones. But he had a way of remapping her body and making her experience pleasure all over.

  Focus, Maddy…

  “I called Mom and told her what was going on, too,” she told him.

  “Oh.” Troy winced. “How did that go?”

  “I’ve told you enough about her, so you should know that it didn’t go well at all. She threatened to come up here with Dad.”

  “Threatened? You make it sound almost as bad as the situation with Constantine.”

  “It pretty much is,” she said it seriously but laughed when he smirked at her, another finger almost to his lips. Less than a second later, he had put the tip in his mouth, and the magic he worked with his tongue had her whispering, “Sweet Jesus.” He took her hand, put it on his thigh, and then leaned across the couch toward her. He took her mouth with abandon, and it didn’t matter how tired she was, she let herself go.

  -

  CHAPTER

  25

  MADISON MET TERRY BACK AT the station the next morning at seven. Officers had worked all night combing through databases for people who were suspected to be affiliated with the Russian Mafia in Stiles. She suggested that they were searching for someone with enough power and backing that could justify their standing up to Dimitre and defying his authority.

  She stuffed the last bit of a chocolate muffin into her mouth and washed it down with a swig of coffee.

  “Sometimes I wonder if you only know two food groups: coffee and chocolate,” Terry chided her from his desk.

  “The world would be a glorious place if they were included in the food guide,” she tossed back with a smile and a show of licking her lips. “Mmm. Though, I suppose chocolate could be considered a vegetable.”

  “A vegetable?” Terry quirked his eyebrows.

  “Hey, look it up online. Cacao comes from a bean.”

  “I think you’re reaching here.”

  Madison shrugged. “Just saying.” She got up and motioned for Terry to come with her. “Let’s go see what they have for us in the lab.”

  Cynthia was sucking back coffee from a giant takeout cup when Madison and Terry walked into the lab. She was standing in front of the table, and there were pieces of evidence scattered on the surface. Madison’s eyes went right to the letter that Constantine had left on her windshield. It was in a proper evidence bag now.

  Madison pointed to the letter. “Did you find any prints?”

  Cynthia lowered the cup, revealing the bags under her eyes. “That was my second cup of coffee. It’s just not working this morning. And I’m sure this is going to be another hell of a day. The letter from Constantine showed prints all over it. Yours and his.” She set her cup on the table.

  “The bastard’s not even afraid of getting caught,” Madison said, seething.

  “No, it doesn’t seem that way. But that shouldn’t surprise you.”

  “He did sign it C,” Terry pointed out.

  Madison glanced at Terry but didn’t say anything.

  “What?” Cynthia narrowed her eyes, splitting her attention between the two of them, skeptical.

  “We have reason to believe that Constantine is either acting rogue or carrying out someone else’s orders other than Dimitre’s,” Madison said.

  “What?” Cynthia spat. “Who? You think there’s a shift in power going on?”

  “Too early to say for sure, but something is going on.” Madison considered telling her friend about their conversation with McAlexandar. Maybe she’d leave his name out of it, though. “Another lead made us realize that Dimitre wouldn’t have taken out Bates.”

  “What lead?” Cynthia looked from Madison to Terry.

  He shook his head. “We don’t want to say yet.”

  Cynthia rubbed her hands together. “Ah, this is good, then.”

  “It could be, yeah,” Madison conceded. “So what do you have for us? Bates’s case? Yasmine’s? I’m not fussy.”

  “All right, so you know that we got Bates’s laptop but weren’t able to locate his phone. Nothing stands out on the laptop, and I put in a request to get his call history from his provider.” Cynthia went to the corner of the table, picked up a packet of paper that was stapled together, and handed it to Madison. “Tha
t is the report. Now, I compared it with Yasmine’s phone. There were a couple numbers that were the same between them—Sylvester Stein and Lyle Berger. Makes sense seeing as they both worked for the company. In fact, Stein called Bates several times the morning we worked his crime scene.”

  “He was trying to reach him for a meeting,” Madison said.

  “Okay, but there was another number… Go to page two. I’ve highlighted it.”

  Madison flipped to the appropriate page and immediately recognized the number that called Bates the afternoon before his murder. And less than a day later, it was out of service. “That’s the number Yasmine gave us for Kevin Jones.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And now we know that Kevin Jones and Constantine are the same person,” Madison said, thinking out loud.

  Cynthia’s jaw dropped. “We do? When did you find that out?”

  “Yasmine’s landlord ID’d a picture of Constantine as Kevin Jones,” Madison told her.

  “Okay, that makes sense in hindsight. Do you think Constantine killed Yasmine?” Cynthia asked.

  Madison glanced at Terry and shook her head.

  “It’s too early to say,” she offered.

  “Ah,” Cynthia said. “And you’re not going to tell me any more.”

  “I’m sorry, but not yet.”

  “Fine, then, maybe I should zip my lips.” Cynthia twisted them and pretended to throw away the key.

  “What about the prison visitor records? And, speaking of zip, anything useful come from the zip ties that bound Bates?” Madison pressed on. She wasn’t going to let her friend’s jest at keeping quiet deter her.

  Cynthia’s face turned serious. “Well, we’ve worked through both. The bad news is that nothing forensic came back on the ties.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised. Constantine is a professional hit man,” Terry interjected. “It’s one thing to leave trace on a threat, another at a murder scene.”

  “He has before,” Madison corrected him. “We had him, and he slipped away.”

  “Unfortunately, in this case, there’s nothing that forensically ties Constantine to Bates’s murder. The cameras we found were free of fingerprints. The out-of-house tech guy was S-O-L when it came to tracking down a location.”

  “Because of the IP scrambler?” Terry surmised.

  “That’s right.” Cynthia paused a moment. “But I do have some news for you. Bates wasn’t the one who signed himself in. As I told you before, the ID was Bates’s but we hadn’t checked the signature made to come into the prison. Now that we have, I can confirm that whoever signed in for Bates wasn’t Bates.”

  “Someone forged his signature,” Terry said.

  “And had access to his ID,” Madison added.

  Cynthia nodded. “Seems so.”

  “The warden,” Madison spat. “He’s the link in all this. He has to be. He’d have direct access to Dimitre, and he could get messages to Bates. He must have gotten a hold of Bates’s ID at some point in the past to be able to use it.”

  “So he let Bates into the prison or got messages to him without him signing in before, but signs him in the day before his murder,” Terry ruminated.

  Cynthia’s mouth opened to speak, but Madison rushed out, “They wanted Bates to appear guilty. But why? It would only fall back on the warden. His involvement with Dimitre and the Russians would stand out. Why would he risk that?”

  “At this point, he’s already got our attention, and he knows it,” Terry said.

  “Uh, guys,” Cynthia spoke up, breaking into the conversation again. “I compared the warden’s signature to the one used to sign Bates in, and they weren’t a match.”

  “Of course not.” Madison sighed. “He could have bribed someone else to do it. Keep digging into Bates’s phone records, though. See if you can find any communication between him and the warden.” She handed the phone report back to Cynthia.

  “I don’t have to,” Cynthia said. “There isn’t.”

  Madison tried to cool her frustration at the lack of evidence. “What about the ten-digit code? Any luck figuring that out?” Madison knew she was being relentless, but she needed answers.

  “Not yet,” Cynthia stamped out.

  Terry turned to Madison. “Do you think that we should pay a little visit to the warden again?”

  “Not yet,” she responded. “We dig into him first, find out for sure if Dimitre has him on his payroll, and determine what can be held over him.”

  “All right. Sounds like a plan,” Terry said.

  Madison addressed Cynthia. “Did Richards say when Yasmine’s autopsy is scheduled?”

  “This afternoon at three o’clock.”

  Madison looked at her watch.

  -

  CHAPTER

  26

  MADISON WAS ANALYZING THE BACKGROUND on the prison warden. “Jeremy Schultz has a wife and two young girls,” she told Terry.

  “Maybe he’s got a secret he wants to keep from his wife. Dimitre’s people could have found out and are using that against him,” Terry suggested.

  “Possible. Or he could just be threatening to hurt his family.”

  “Either way, the family could tie into how Dimitre gained power over Jeremy.” Terry tapped the bottom of his mug against the corner of her desk.

  Madison nodded. “I’d like to look into his financials to see what sort of a picture they give us.”

  “Where’s his house?”

  “It’s in a good area of town.” Madison rattled off the address.

  “That it is, and it doesn’t come cheap.”

  “More than a man could afford on a warden’s salary.”

  “What about the wife? Does she work?” Terry swiveled his chair.

  “What is wrong with you? You can’t sit still.”

  He jumped up. “I’m having a hard time, yeah.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s just…” He growled. “It’s Annabelle. All this with Constantine has her pretty upset. She’s usually supportive of my job, and maybe it wouldn’t bother her so much if—”

  “If it wasn’t for Danielle?” Madison guessed at what Terry was going to say.

  “Yeah.” He paced in a circle. “And I understand where she’s coming from. You know I do.” He paused, and she remembered that time in his life clearly. They had been on a case, and he’d pretty much left Madison to work a lot of it on her own. As far as she had known, their marriage had righted itself from the moment they were expecting, which also happened not long after that case had been solved.

  Madison nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  “You mean am I going to turn in my shield? No way.” Terry’s jaw tightened. “Being a cop is in my blood. Heck, I don’t know what else I’d do at this point in my life.”

  Now wasn’t the time to point out that he was only thirty-three and still had a lot of life ahead of him and plenty of years to change his vocation if he so chose.

  “We’ll get Constantine, Terry, and all this will be over soon.” It was said to reassure him, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was trying to convince herself just as much.

  He let out a deep breath. “Let’s hope it’s before my marriage falls apart. She hates having cops outside the house all the time, following her wherever she goes. She said that she feels like a criminal the way she’s being monitored. And I can’t blame her.”

  “I’m sure it will all work out. She knows that you love your job.”

  “I love it?” He laughed. “It’s who I am, but no one said anything about loving it.”

  Madison held up her hands.

  Terry dismissed her with a wave. “Never mind all this. You’re probably right and everything will be fine.” His complexion paled, though. “You don’t think that Constantine will be coming after me or t
hem do you?”

  “I have no reason to think he would. Not that you’re not a loved one,” she hurried to add.

  “Good catch.”

  “I think quick.” She smiled.

  “Well, Miss Think Quick, let’s get this guy so I can get back to my normal life.”

  “Hallelujah to that!”

  Terry sat back down. “So, the wife?”

  “Right.” Madison recalled Terry’s question about her occupation. “Let’s see.” She went to her computer and brought up a simple background on Melissa Schultz. “From the looks of it, she doesn’t have a day job.”

  “All right, so the good warden supplements his income with dirty funds,” Terry suggested.

  “Seems possible. I wonder when he started at Mitchell County…” She referred to the printouts she had on Jeremy. “He’s been there for ten years, so pretty much nine of them were before Dimitre got transferred there.”

  “And when did he buy the fancy house in the fancy neighborhood?”

  Madison skimmed the page. “Eight months ago.”

  “Interesting,” Terry began. “And Dimitre was moved to Mitchell County Prison around ten months ago.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “All right, but playing devil’s advocate here, he could have come into an inheritance of some sort.”

  “Leave it to you to come up with something that will take longer to figure out.”

  “What can I say? It’s a gift.” He smiled at her.

  “I really want to nail his ass to the wall, but my hands are tied. Our hands are tied. If we go to the warden before we have everything in place, we could upset something far worse,” she reasoned.

  “In regard to…?” Terry queried.

  “Well we’re already leaning toward the possibility there may be a shift in power. We don’t know what direction that’s coming from yet,” she said.

  “Yes, but—” Terry stopped with a gasp. “Oh, I can’t believe you didn’t think of this.”

  “What?”

  “Bates signed in the day before his death, and we assumed that he got the letterhead that day. Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure.”