The Kid: A Suspense Thriller (Reed & Billie Book 3)

by Stevens,Dustin

  “I’m sorry, you say something?” Cohn asked, leaning forward at the waist, incredulity that Reed dare interrupt him on his features.

  “Yes, agent,” Reed said, sliding his gaze from the crime scene crew to the man across from him. “She is a detective, and you will refer to her as such.”

  Somehow Cohn’s face managed to grow a shade deeper in color, his chest swelling as he drew in a breath of air, ready to push forward again.

  He didn’t get the chance.

  “We entered the house because, like Investigator Glenn said, we had rock solid evidence that the man was in danger. We warned your office and we tried to contact him. When neither worked, we showed the level of concern you should have and came to check on him.”

  With each word Reed seemed to gain steam, the shock of finding Gilmore’s body receding from within, replaced with growing acrimony for whoever it was that was targeting law enforcement agents.

  For the self-important prick that was now reading them the riot act for doing their job.

  It wasn’t hard to see where Gilmore took his cues from.

  “We got here and the Investigator saw signs of forced entry,” Reed said. “We entered, and my partner cleared the scene, alerting us to your agent’s body.”

  Five feet away, all three of the techs working the scene had stopped what they were doing, openly staring at Reed, listening to every word.

  “If we had done as your office instructed, he would still be hanging here right now and who knows how long it would be before you guys saw fit to get off your dead asses and come check on him.”

  Reed knew the remark was a bit foul, the kind of thing no commanding officer ever wanted or needed to hear, but he was far past caring. The man had insulted him, his cohort, and his partner. He was making a scene solely for the sake of doing so, leveling his emotions at the closest targets.

  It was unfortunate what had happened, but it damned sure wasn’t their fault.

  “And just to be clear,” Reed said, “if given the chance to go back half an hour and do it again, I’d do it again.”

  He thought about asking Glenn if she would as well, knowing there was strength in numbers, wanting to present a united front against the man. Just as fast he dismissed it though, wanting to preserve her position as the good cop in their duo, knowing he had done the work to put Cohn on his heels and Glenn could now pick through the wreckage for whatever they needed.

  She didn’t disappoint.

  “Agent Cohn, do you have access to Agent Gilmore’s informants?” Glenn asked.

  A moment passed as Cohn simply stared at Reed, his jaw hanging slack. His face passed through five different shades of color in order, receding from bright red to chalky white in record time.

  “No,” he finally managed, shifting his attention over to Glenn. “Dan had a pretty extensive network. We didn’t keep close tabs on them, trusting that he would take care of it.”

  After the last word he drew in a deep breath and pulled himself up an inch higher, rotating at the waist to look at the techs behind him. On cue they began to move again, abandoning their curiosity and falling back to the task at hand.

  “Not that I would be sharing them with you anyway,” he said, turning back to face forward. “This is an FBI agent; we will be conducting the investigation.”

  “So you’ve never heard the name Marco Sanz?” Glenn asked, ignoring the last statement from Cohn.

  “No, who is he?”

  “Was,” Reed said, keeping his voice even, just a bit of an edge present. “He died, a year ago today.”

  This time Cohn opted to completely ignore Reed, keeping his focus squarely on Glenn. “And you guys think this is related?”

  “You don’t?” Reed asked, raising his voice a bit, refusing to be ignored.

  “I don’t think I’m in any position to say what is related right now without doing a full investigation,” Cohn said, his attention still on Glenn.

  “Meanwhile, law enforcement personnel are falling under attack every single day,” Reed said. “Tell me something agent, what happens if Gilmore isn’t the last one?”

  This time it was too much for Cohn to keep his attention aimed forward. He clenched his teeth together and turned toward Reed, open hostility visible.

  “Like I said, I’m not going to speculate about anything until after we’ve done an investigation.”

  His voice resonated from deep in his diaphragm, dropping several octaves, a desk jockey’s best attempt at sounding tough.

  If not for the fact that he was entrenched in the role of bad cop, Reed would have laughed out loud.

  “Which, unfortunately for the three of you, starts right now,” Cohn said. “So, thank you for calling this in, we’ll take it from here.”

  Reed didn’t realize his hands were balled into fists until he felt his fingernails dig into his palms. He clenched them tight another moment, feeling Billie pressed into his thigh, an unspoken message that she was there, awaiting his word, ready to strike.

  “That’s it?” Glenn asked. “You have no interest in hearing what we’ve found, in seeing how your case and ours fit together?”

  Cohn kept his attention on Reed another moment before shifting over to Glenn. He held a hand toward her, his fingers outstretched wide, and said, “Look, I am sorry for what happened to the detectives and the warden, but they are not my concern. Agent Gilmore was my guy, that’s where my attention will be.

  “If in the course of our investigation I find something that connects these cases, I’ll be in touch.”

  Two distinct trains of thought fought for top billing in Reed’s mind, neither of them especially good. The first was to keep both hands balled into tight fists and use them to pummel Cohn into a bloody pulp. There might be a bit more spatter on the floor when he was done, but he would feel infinitely better and most likely be doing the world a great service in the process.

  The second was, no matter what Cohn’s investigation found, even if it included a flashing neon sign pointing to someone with pictures of all three incidents stapled to their chest, there was no way they were ever getting a call from Cohn.

  “Okay,” Glenn said beside him, her voice relaying she had reached the exact same conclusion. “Just keep us posted.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Despite the enormous mass of human and canine crammed into the small interior of the car, nobody made a sound. All three sat quiet and brooding, those in the front seat both deep in thought, Billie behind them staring straight ahead, waiting for some cue on how to respond.

  From the moment they arrived at Gilmore’s to the point when they were unceremoniously punted from the case by Cohn just barely eclipsed an hour and a half, it still very much morning, landing squarely in the lull between rush hour and lunch time. The streets were largely barren as Reed angled them back toward the precinct, again avoiding the freeways for a couple of major boulevards, making only the occasional stop for changing lights.

  As he drove he kept his hands gripped tight at 10:00 and 2:00, not in any way related to driver safety but so he had something tangible to squeeze in his fists. He could feel the warmth passing through his palms into the rubber steering wheel cover, every few minutes rotating them back toward himself, small shards balling up and falling down. Several dozen covered the thighs of his jeans as he drove, though he didn’t bother brushing them away.

  “Back there,” Glenn said, her head aimed out the passenger window, her voice belying the demeanor they both seemed to have, “were you really as pissed off as you seemed, or was that just to clear the way for me?”

  “Yes,” Reed responded. He shot the word out quickly, reflexively, before pausing and lowering his voice. “I’ve seen a lot of men like him before, guys that think they can get their way by being a blowhard. I knew that if we were ever going to get anything useful, I had to take the wind out of his sails.”

  The answer caused Glenn to turn her head a few inches toward him, focus now aimed directly out thr
ough the front windshield. “You guys get a lot of crossover work with the FBI?”

  Another moment passed as Reed considered the best way to respond. He didn’t want to lie to her, had no reason to, but he didn’t want to put her on the defensive either.

  “My last partner was a woman,” Reed said quietly, hoping that would be enough.

  It took a few seconds for the point to be received, Reed knowing the moment it was, seeing her lips part, her jaw going slack in understanding.

  “All that blustery grandstanding, you just think he was trying to scare me?” she asked.

  The last thing Reed wanted to do was get into a deep philosophical discussion about women in the law enforcement field. It was something he had been forced to observe more times than he could count with Riley, something that she seemed to accept far better than he ever could.

  “Chivalry may be dead, but misogyny sure as hell isn’t.”

  He left it at that as they crossed over the border into Franklinton, a green sign pockmarked with bullet holes welcoming them to the suburb. Below it was a proclamation of the current population, though the numbers had been obscured by a heavy dusting of orange spray paint.

  “I’m a big girl, you know,” Glenn said. Her voice was quiet, but there was a clear challenge in the phrasing of the sentence, in the tone that underscored it. “Been doing this a long time.”

  Jabs of trepidation, of concern that he had overstepped, of annoyance that they were even having the conversation, all smacked Reed in the solar plexus. It tightened on his lungs, brought a renewed flush of warmth to his skin, as he drove forward.

  “I know all that,” Reed said. “That wasn’t me trying to ride in on a white horse, that was as much self-serving as anything. I was already pissed, and he wasn’t giving us much to work with.”

  He could feel her gaze on his skin, saw her hair swing past as she turned to stare at him. He kept his focus on the road ahead, only glancing over after a moment, meeting her gaze before shifting back to the road.

  Apparently, it was enough to quell whatever questions she had inside.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “Still a little pissed off myself.”

  She extended a hand toward the dash, just as she had on the drive over, her fingers trembling as she restrained herself from smacking the hard plastic again. After a moment she curled her hand into a fist and pulled it into her lap, cupping it with her opposite hand.

  “And it did work,” she whispered. “I just...I get so damn tired of this shit. All of it. Territorial pissing matches, assholes trying to slam their dicks on the table, the whole damn system tripping us up, like they’re trying to help the criminals instead of us.”

  A hint of déjà vu passed over Reed for a moment, this too a conversation he and Riley had had many times before.

  Sadly, just as they always had before, he knew this one too would end with no clear answers.

  “Just so we’re on the same page,” Reed said, bypassing her previous statement entirely, more pressing matter on his mind, “neither of us have any intention of handing this off to the FBI, right?”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Reed had to admit they made for an odd looking trio. Him out to one side, a 30-something man in running shoes and an unzipped hooded sweatshirt. Opposite him Investigator Cassidy Glenn, wearing a black pantsuit, a v-neck pullover under it, her long hair swinging free behind her. Between them Billie, her head and ears both erect, total height rising well past Glenn’s hip.

  The unique nature of the group didn’t seem to be lost on anybody else either, the few detectives that were present in the bullpen watching them as they passed, few making any attempt to hide their curiosity.

  When Reed had first moved over, he had endured the usual round of banter that accompanied new assignments. It had been a bit easier on him, Iaconelli and Bishop withstanding, once word got out about what had happened to Riley, though it still did nothing to stop the glances.

  Six weeks later it had all begun in earnest again when he became the entirety of the K-9 Unit for the 8th. Not only was he down a partner, he was choosing to replace her with what appeared to be a solid black wolf.

  Never had he even paused to consider the comments that must have been made around the water cooler, though it wasn’t hard to figure there were plenty lobbed his direction.

  Even though a total of 10 months had now passed, he was still the new guy in the unit. The sudden appearance of a woman, in addition to Billie, would surely have the gossip mill working overtime in a matter of minutes.

  Not that he gave a damn about that either.

  Still riding his anger spike from the encounter with Cohn, the pre-existing adrenaline surge from seeing Gilmore strung up in his own home, Reed had tunnel vision. His hands clenched and released by his side as he moved a step ahead of the others and led them back through the maze of desks to his in the corner, dropping himself unceremoniously into the seat.

  Still piled in a loose stack were the printouts Deek had made for them that morning, Marco Sanz sitting right on top. Reaching out, Reed slid it over in front of the keyboard, glancing at the thin information on the page, his own handmade notes in the margin.

  Glenn and Billie both took up spots beside him, all three arranged in the same positions as before, while Reed called his computer to life, the CPD database already open on screen and staring back at them.

  Alternating his gaze between the page and the keyboard, Reed entered the file number for Sanz and put the engine to searching, twisting the monitor to the side so Glenn would have a better view.

  The legs of her chair scraped against the tile floor, bumping into Billie’s shoulder, causing the massive animal to scramble up onto her feet as Glenn moved in a bit closer.

  “Sorry, Billie,” she mumbled, her focus on the screen. Lines formed around her eyes as she squinted, her face illuminated by the monitor.

  “Alright,” Reed said, reading aloud, “Marco Sanz, born July 13, 1986, died one year ago today, making him 28-years-old.”

  Using the mouse, he scrolled down lower in the file, a chronology appearing in bullet point form, the screen a sea of black and white entries.

  “Wow, this guy got started early,” Reed said, a sardonic lilt to his voice. “First brush with authorities came at age 11 for vagrancy. Soon thereafter came vandalism, petty theft, trespassing. That was all before high school.”

  He paused there for a moment to make sure Glenn had caught up before pushing further down the screen.

  “Then he really picked things up,” Glenn said. “Did his first stint in juvie for assaulting a teacher, six months later was back for breaking into a house and trying to steal a pair of sneakers.”

  “Smart,” Reed said, shaking his head as he moved the mouse a bit lower.

  “And finally at age 27 he did eight months of a three year sentence for grand theft auto,” Glenn said.

  A small grunt was Reed’s only response as he continued moving downward, past the official cover sheet and into the associated files. He buzzed quickly past all of the juvenile offenses, pausing at each new header to make sure it wasn’t the case he was looking for before moving on.

  Resting her forearms on the edge of the desk, Glenn watched the pages scroll by, her attention on the screen. “It seem odd to you that somebody that amassed that kind of sheet by 17 suddenly went clean for 10 years before getting nailed for boosting cars?”

  It was not the first such file Reed had looked through, though even he had to admit the gap in offenses seemed especially long.

  “Two things,” he said, continuing to move through the sheets. Most of them looked like they had been scanned and entered manually, the fonts and handwriting on almost all a little different, the clarity at varying levels.

  “Either he went away and got an education, became better at his craft.”

  “Ah,” Glenn said, “the old prison-as-higher-learning argument.”

  To that Reed nodded, having heard the theory rehashed so man
y times it was almost cliché in law enforcement circles. It was a train of thought especially popular with politicians and newspapers, people that had a vested interest in trying to cut funding or tell a compelling human interest story.

  In Reed’s own mind, if someone truly wanted the information, the world today could provide it whether they went to prison or not. The internet, and a hundred other resources, was out there detailing everything from hotwiring an engine to assembling an IED using household cleaning products.

  To him, the biggest thing prison did was harden people. It took the most extreme tendencies within them, the jagged edges, the parts that society wasn’t supposed to see, and it amplified them. It caused people to become meaner, angrier, more resentful.

  Once that happened to a person, the fact that they might have gotten a few extra tips in their trade was largely irrelevant.

  “That,” Reed said, “or someone took him under their wing, started running interference for him.”

  Silence fell for a moment as Glenn considered the idea, eventually pushing her lips out slightly and nodding. “Could explain why Gilmore wanted him as an informant, using a small fish as bait for the bigger prize.”

  Again Reed grunted in agreement, finally finding the most recent of the arrest records. On sight he recognized the slanted writing of Martin Bishop, the transcript detailing a pretty non-descript traffic stop for driving with a busted taillight. When they ran the plate on him they discovered a warrant for questioning in connection with a string of automobile thefts in the area, all targeting high-end rides, the total value at nearly half a million dollars.

  Once he was finished reading through, Reed paused an extra moment to make sure Glenn was caught up before pushing down again, the next item in order a copy of the warrant that had been issued and over five pages of supporting documentation.

  “You see what I’m seeing there?” Reed asked, bypassing the dense paragraphs of text and instead focusing on the half dozen thick black bars stretched horizontally in various places across the screen.