Every last person in the room needed breakfast and a nap, Reed and Billie included.
“Detective,” Grimes said in greeting. “These gentlemen were just telling me about an unorthodox method you used for getting past a little turf issue last night.”
A Cheshire cat smile slowly crawled up Reed’s face. He glanced at Bishop and Iaconelli, both with similar expressions, and said, “If those guys had their way, we’d all still be standing around that car right now.”
Grimes raised his eyebrows in concession, though his face conveyed none of the mirth of the others. “You realize of course...”
“Yeah, I know,” Reed said, cutting him off with a raised hand. Right now there was too much attention on the bust for anybody to fuss over some bruised egos, but at some point in the future the topic would be addressed.
Grimes would probably catch flack, as would Reed. Maybe even an official reprimand.
At the moment, he wasn’t especially concerned with it.
“What’s the occasion?” Reed asked, nodding at Grimes.
For a moment Grimes said nothing, merely staring back at Reed, letting it be known that the previous discussion would be addressed again later, before letting it go. “Yasmin Leveritt. I have my third and final interview with her shortly.”
He rolled his eyes and added, “Has to be done in time for the morning news.”
Reed matched the eye-roll with one of his own. Working with the media was always a tricky proposition, something they had both known from the beginning. Involving them had worked in that it provided enough pressure to get things moving, but it now also came with the expectation of unfettered access on the back end.
“How are the Tudors?” Bishop asked.
After making the arrest, he and Iaconelli had delivered Morgan to jail for processing. Reed had been left behind to clean up the scene, an arrangement he was more than okay with.
Given that Billie occupied his entire backseat, transport of any kind would have been an ugly affair.
“As you’d expect,” Reed said. “The husband suffered a pretty bad concussion and his wife is shook up as hell, so right now they’re in a state of shock.”
They had all seen similar situations over the years, knowing the way most victims of domestic crimes took things. They began in shock, followed closely by a loss of security and extreme fear. They would respond by fortifying the place, only to later turn angry when they felt like they were bunkered in, hidden from the world. At some point far in the future they would emerge, maybe not quite as okay as they were before, but pretty close.
“I guess the husband stopped by Big Q just yesterday,” Reed said. “It was around lunchtime and Morgan waited on him. Paid with a credit card.”
“He’s lucky Morgan hit the people in the support group before getting to him,” Bishop said. “If not, we might have never figured things out.”
Reed nodded. “Eventually we would have caught the Big Q connection, but otherwise they were all over the map. I mean, who thinks to check on a victim’s organ donor status?”
Nobody said anything. The obvious response was that they all would in the future, but that was only through the benefit of hindsight.
“He say anything at all?” Reed asked, looking over to Iaconelli and Bishop.
“Naw,” Iaconelli said, shaking his head, his jowls bunching beneath his jawline. “Whimpered the whole time, but didn’t say anything.”
“Did you hear him there in the bedroom?” Bishop asked. “Any idea what he meant about it being his fault?”
“Actually,” Grimes said, pulling everyone’s attention back his direction, “I can answer that one. Last night as I was sitting here playing air traffic controller for everything, I made some calls and had someone at Franklinton Memorial look into Amber Morgan’s file.
“Apparently she contracted Hepatitis C shortly after Kyle’s birth. The records seemed to indicate there were some complications and she’d needed a blood transfusion.”
“And somebody’s blood was infected,” Reed finished.
“It would appear that way,” Grimes said. “They obviously tested her before birth and she was clean. Two years later, she came back for some routine blood work and the disease was present, but not in Kyle.”
“Damn,” Bishop muttered.
“And later on, when he tried to donate a portion of his liver to her,” Grimes added, “it was determined the two were incompatible.”
A low, shrill whistle passed over Reed’s lips.
“That’s one hell of a guilt complex to inflict on a kid,” Iaconelli added. “End up having him pick off a half dozen people.”
Reed nodded. Both men were right. It was a hell of a jump for Amber Morgan to blame him and for her son to go to such lengths, but he had seen worse things done for lesser reasons.
One of the few lessons he had learned with any certainty in his time as a detective was it didn’t matter if the motive made sense, it only mattered if the perpetrator believed it enough to act on it.
Before anybody could comment further, a knock sounded at the door. Unexpected and extra loud in the quiet building, it jerked everybody’s attention over to find Lou, his uniform shirt seeming larger than usual, threatening to slide right down off his shoulders.
In his hands were a couple of sheets of paper, on his face a look that said he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
“Um, good morning,” he said, his jaw working twice as fast as the number of words coming out. “I’m sorry to bother you all, but we just got a call from the Lazy 8’s Motel. Looks like somebody broke in last night, officers on the scene have asked for a detective.”
Both Bishop and Iaconelli turned back to face front. Bishop simply stared while Iaconelli rocked his head back, a low groan rolling out.
Lou paused and stared down at the papers, his hands almost shaking. “I’m very sorry guys, but you’re up in the rotation.”
Every iota of Reed’s being wanted to go home. He wanted to stop somewhere along the way and grab a bag of nasty, greasy food, share it with his partner, and then climb into bed for the foreseeable future.
He also hated like hell the idea of walking out of the office owing Iaconelli and Bishop a favor, the events of the last two days eroding some of the still lingering animosity or not.
“Give it here, Lou,” Reed said, extending a hand. “We owe them this one.”
The sprinkler was something Reed had found in the bottom of a box in the old barn in the corner of the property, one of just a handful of items he had been able to salvage from the dilapidated structure. He had kept it in his garage for more than two months, completely forgetting it was there before stumbling across it the night before while searching for a flashlight. From there it was a simple matter of connecting it to the end of the garden hose coiled along the side of his house and dragging it into the middle of the backyard.
It had taken Billie a good five minutes to figure out what to make of the fan of water passing back and forth in even sweeps, standing on the edge of the deck, her head twisted to the side in puzzlement. Only after Reed peeled his shirt off and made a couple passes through did Billie get the gist of things, soon joining him in the water.
Thirty minutes later, long after he retired from the venture, she was still at it. Her tongue drooped from the side of her mouth as she bounded back and forth, stopping every so often to shake herself off before diving back in for more.
Sprawled across the cloth lawn chair on his deck, Reed watched with a sense of bemusement. His left elbow was propped up on the arm of the chair, a bottle of water in hand, the tips of his hair still damp. His wet footprints had already long since faded, his shorts now dry, but the jaunt through the water had been enough to keep the afternoon heat at bay, his skin free of sweat, drinking in the sunshine.
Sitting and watching his partner enjoy a moment of summer frivolity, Reed couldn’t help but think back. In his mind he could almost see Riley out there with Billie, the two of them bou
ncing back and forth, both flinging water from their hair.
The thought brought a smile to his face as he watched Billie, eventually setting his bottle down and reaching over to the small table beside him. From it he picked up his cell phone and thumbed through the directory, finding the number he was looking for and hitting send.
It rang just twice before being picked up, the voice on other end so loud and enthusiastic he had to pull the phone back an inch from his head.
“Hey, Mama. How are you?”
Thank You For Reading!
This letter comes to you with a double dose of gratitude. First, thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. I know I say it at the end of every novel, and that is because the appreciation is genuine for every reader each and every time you take a chance on something I’ve written.
Second, thank you so much for the enormous outpouring of comments and requests for a follow up to The Boat Man. As a longtime dog owner myself, I’ve always wanted to feature a canine as a major character, finally developing Billie as a direct result of that. Apparently many of you feel as strongly as I do about your animal friends, as the outpouring of support has been overwhelming and is the single greatest reason for this novel existing.
Once again, if you would be so inclined, I would love to hear your thoughts on this novel. I have heard everything that has been stated so far, having brought in a new editor to my team, a longtime reader and former English professor, and am currently working to begin shadowing the K-9 Unit with the Honolulu Police Department in hopes of providing as authentic a reading experience as possible.
As always, as a token of appreciation for your reading and reviews, please enjoy a free download of my novel Quarterback, available HERE.
Best,
Dustin Stevens
About the Author
Dustin Stevens is the author of the Reed & Billie series, The Zoo Crew series, the Hawk Tate novels, Going Viral, Quarterback, Be My Eyes, Scars and Stars, Just a Game, 21 Hours, Liberation Day, and Catastrophic. He is also the author of several short stories, appearing in various magazines and anthologies, and is an award-winning screenwriter.
Originally from Ohio/Tennessee, he currently resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The Good Son: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 2) Page 24
