Paper Bullets

by Reed, Annie

  “Twenty bucks is twenty bucks,” I said. “I know I’d want it back if I’d dropped it.”

  Twenty bucks was important money to the security guard, too. I could see it in his expression, and I wondered if I would have gotten an answer quicker if I’d just given him the money in exchange for the information.

  Finally, he shrugged. “That looks like the new banker. I don’t know his name, but I see him sitting at one of those desks in the back.”

  I gave the guard a brilliant smile. “Thank you!”

  He shook his head at me. “There are easier ways of getting a date, you know. You’re pretty good looking.”

  For a woman your age. He didn’t say it, but I heard it just the same.

  I decided to take the compliment and not react to the subtext.

  “Wish me luck!” I said, and headed off to the bank.

  ***

  The last thing I wanted was a date with Mr. Not So Subtle, even if I wasn’t already dating someone I liked a great deal.

  The guy in the picture was seated behind the last desk in a row of cookie-cutter cherry wood desks off to the left of the teller windows. The desks were large and meant to be impressive. It might have worked if the first three desks in the row weren’t obviously vacant.

  Banking had fallen on hard times, and like all businesses that needed to cut expenses, extraneous staff were the first to go. Mr. Not So Subtle had either survived the cuts by being good at his job or by accepting a new position at a different branch. I suspected the latter since he didn’t have a name plate on his desk.

  He did, however, have a stack of business cards on his desk. To get a name to go with the pictures on my camera, I’d have to actually talk to the guy. Ryan would have a fit if he found out.

  Well, that meant I’d just have to make sure Ryan never found out, even if I lost my twenty bucks in the process.

  Mr. Not So Subtle didn’t have anyone in the two clients chairs in front of his desk, so I put a pleasant smile on my face and walked up to him, all the while reminding myself that if he was the stalker, he could be a dangerous guy beneath his conservative suit and haircut.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He looked up at me from whatever he’d been doing on his computer and smiled his own version of a professional smile. “What can I help you with?” he said.

  His voice was pleasant, mid-range for a man and without any discernible accent. Up close, I could see fine lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, and I amended my earlier assessment of his age. He could be a well-preserved forty-five or a stressed-out thirty-five, but I’d bet he’d long since kissed his twenties goodbye.

  He didn’t have a wedding ring on his left hand. In fact, he wasn’t wearing any jewelry at all, and it didn’t look like either of his ears had ever been pierced.

  “You didn’t happen to drop a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk, did you?” I said, keeping to the story I’d told the security guard, just in case the guard decided to mention the crazy lady and her crazy story to anyone else.

  Plus, since I knew damn well he hadn’t, his response would give me an idea just how honest the guy was. I deliberately omitted the name of the street. I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him. Irony much?

  He raised one eyebrow. “A twenty dollar bill?”

  I pulled the twenty back out of my pocket. “Is it yours?”

  He actually pulled out his wallet to check.

  From where I was standing, I could see a small wad of cash in his billfold, along with bunch of credit cards.

  He rifled through the cash, and then shook his head. “Nope. Not me.” He flashed me a friendlier smile. “Are you sure you’re real? Most people would have just pocketed the money.”

  I did exactly that, stuffing my twenty dollars back in my jeans.

  “Frugal, but honest. That’s me.” I glanced down at a stack of brochures I’d noticed on his desk. “You don’t have any good deals on a checking account for a frugal but honest person, do you?”

  He handed me a brochure and started in on his banker spiel, rattling off minimum deposits, monthly fees, and premium services faster than I could have followed even if I wanted to open a new account at his bank, which I didn’t. All I wanted was his business card so I could get out of there.

  Inspiration struck. I held up a finger, the universal sign for “just a minute,” and fished my cell phone out of my purse. I kept the face of the phone turned towards me as I looked at it.

  “Damn,” I said, staring at the phone before I put it back in my purse. “Reminder,” I said to him. “I have an appointment in fifteen minutes, and if I don’t head out now, I’m going to be late.” I picked up one of the brochures off his desk. “Mind if I take this?”

  “Not a bit.” He handed me a business card. “Give me a call when you decide what account’s right for you, and I’ll get you all set up.”

  I glanced at the name on the card—Justin Sewell. No title beneath his name, just a slogan beneath the bank’s name: Let me be your personal banker!

  Not likely.

  I thanked him and left before he could ask for my name.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway to my car that I realized Justin worked for the same bank that Melody had visited that morning. Different branch, but it was the same bank.

  Reno was still a small town even with the growth spurt that had seen the town expand to fill the valley and creep into the foothills—growth that had slowed to a trickle with the housing bust—and I was used to running into people I hadn’t thought about in years, much less seen around town. Still, the fact that Justin Sewell, aka Mr. Not So Subtle, worked at the bank Melody frequented could have explained how he’d seen her in the first place. People didn’t always do their banking at the same branch. Sometimes they used whatever branch was more convenient at the time.

  Stalkers fixated on their prey for any number of reasons that made no sense to the rest of us. Melody could have been nice to Sewell one day, said a simple “thank you” that meant nothing to her but became the connection he wove an elaborate relationship around, like a spider creating a web.

  I tucked Justin Sewell’s business card in my pocket next to my twenty dollars. I’d do a quick background check on him when I got home and had access to my computer again. Samantha told me I could do almost any kind of internet search on my smart phone, but my eyes liked looking at a bigger screen.

  Except for the way he’d gazed after Melody when she’d left the cafe, Justin Sewell didn’t strike me as a dangerous man, but what did a stalker look like? Certainly not like the bad guy in that TV show I’d seen years ago. He’d been creepy and sweaty and obviously unhinged. I doubted stalkers in real life were that easy to spot. But had I caught anything on camera other than a healthy—if in poor taste—interest by a single man for a good-looking woman?

  I didn’t know. That wasn’t my call, really. I’d give Ryan the man’s name, copies of the photos I’d taken, and a report that detailed what I saw and anything of interest I learned from the background check.

  In the meantime, I needed to catch up with Melody at the gym. My day of following her wasn’t over yet.

  My day, and maybe whoever was driving that white SUV.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’D JUST PASSED the intersection of California and Arlington, heading west on California, when the theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean interrupted my thoughts.

  Norton Greenburger had insisted I join the twenty-first century and get a smart phone, so I’d upgraded my old flip phone for a new model that had more apps than I’d ever use.

  My new cell also had programmable ringtones. Samantha had gone crazy uploading specialized ringtones for me. Kyle’s was the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean since the first time we’d met he’d been using a Pirates notepad his daughter had given him.

  I had to admit—every time I heard that ringtone, my heart gave a little extra beat.

  I grinned and fished my phone out of my purse. I answered
the call on speaker.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Are you breaking the law again?” Kyle Beacham asked.

  Driving and talking on the phone was illegal in Nevada now unless the driver used a hands-free device. I had a bluetooth gadget with an earpiece and a microphone, but the earpiece was sitting on my office desk with a dead battery since I’d lost the charger. I hadn’t been motivated enough to order a replacement. I’d never much liked the thing in the first place.

  “You’re on speaker, Detective,” I said, as if he couldn’t tell. “So watch what you say.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll try not to say anything scandalous.” I heard a chair scrape in the background. He must have been working at his desk. He wouldn’t say anything scandalous at work. One thing I’d learned early about Kyle Beacham—he’s a dedicated, no nonsense cop. The only reason he was calling me from work was because he had a minute between tasks. “So how goes the surveillance?”

  “Promising,” I said.

  I didn’t give him details and he didn’t ask. I’d told him about the basic job during dinner Saturday night.

  Over shredded-beef enchiladas that were to die for, we’d discussed stalkers in general. In Kyle’s opinion, the truly obsessed stalkers were only one step removed from rapists, and that made them dangerous, especially when crossed. Like Ryan, he’d advised me to keep my distance. If I inserted myself between Melody and whoever was stalking her, I’d be putting myself in harm’s way if the stalker felt threatened.

  When I’d mentioned that Ryan just wanted enough information to get a protective order against the guy, Ryan nodded. “With some guys, a TPO serves as a wake-up call that what they’re doing carries serious consequences. With other guys?” He shrugged. “It’s about as effective as a paper bullet. Words with no real sting.”

  Of course, as Kyle had explained to me, protective orders came in two flavors—temporary and extended. The penalty for violating an extended protective order did have a serious sting—a felony charge and jail time. I’d told Kyle I hoped it didn’t come down to that.

  Kyle had offered to talk to Melody, off the clock, or have a female officer talk to her. I’d told him I’d pass the offer along to Ryan. I still planned on doing just that, but since it had become clear that Ryan was keeping my surveillance job a secret, I doubted Ryan would mention the offer to Melody.

  As I talked to Kyle on the phone—legally—I took the gentle curve from California to Mayberry, heading toward McCarran Boulevard. The stately homes that bordered California Avenue gave way to middle class subdivisions that had a good thirty or forty years on them. McCarran marked the border between those middle class subdivisions and the high-end houses in Caughlin Ranch.

  Back when I’d been married to Ryan and we went to parties with other attorneys and their wives, Caughlin Ranch had been the place to live for young, upwardly-mobile professionals. As far as I was concerned, those upwardly-mobile professionals could keep their expensive, cookie-cutter homes. The houses were nestled in the low foothills to the west of town, but those foothills were covered with sagebrush and cheat grass and were magnets for summer wildfires.

  The gym where Melody worked catered to the middle and upper middle class residents of this part of town. Located in a little shopping center off West McCarran that also housed a dentist’s office, a gas station, and a pizza parlor, the gym boasted that it had the newest technology when it came to exercise equipment, as well as its own juice bar and spa.

  I wondered if the gym got any business from people who’d felt guilty about over-indulging in their favorite pizza, or if pizza was the reward for people who’d just sweated off five pounds of water weight in one of her spinning classes.

  Come to think of it, I wondered why Melody had gone to another juice bar that morning when she could have had a smoothie without leaving work. Maybe she’d wanted a hot pretzel smothered in cheese sauce to go along with her healthy drink and didn’t want anyone at the gym to know. That kind of sneaking around might almost make me like her.

  Almost.

  “So tell me,” Kyle said. “Do you like saxophone music?”

  Uh oh.

  Kyle’s daughter Lauren had turned twelve in June. She was smart as a whip and had the same kind of single-minded determination that made her dad an outstanding cop.

  The year before, her mother had enrolled Lauren in a band program where she learned how to play clarinet. She’d enjoyed it so much she wanted to learn as many woodwind instruments as she could. She’d signed up for the band program at the middle school where she’d be starting—a week from today—but she also wanted to play in jazz band. Not clarinet. She wanted to play saxophone, and she’d taught herself the basics.

  Kyle had signed her up for three summer school classes: a beginning class where she played saxophone, an intermediate class where she played clarinet with kids a couple years older than she was, and a jazz band class where she was the lowest chair in the saxophone section. Kyle had to get special permission to enroll her in the intermediate and jazz band classes, but Lauren had passed both auditions with flying colors.

  Of course, that didn’t mean she thought she was prepared enough for the audition she’d have to pass to get on jazz band as a new seventh grader. According to Kyle, she’d been practicing almost constantly.

  “I love her, but she’s driving me nuts.” Even though his voice was distorted by the cell phone’s speaker, I could hear the sharp edge frustration put on his words. “How do you handle it when Samantha plays the same section of music over and over again?”

  Ryan and I had started Samantha on piano lessons when she’d been little. She wasn’t a prodigy by any means, but she enjoyed it enough that practicing wasn’t a chore.

  These days she played mostly classical tunes. She was an excellent sight reader, and unless the sheet music was too complex, she could play pretty much anything just by reading the music. She still practiced though, playing the same few bars over and over, especially if the fingering was tricky, so I knew exactly what Kyle meant.

  “I learned to tune it out,” I said. “Bury my nose in a book. Put on a set of headphones, the kind that cover my ears, not those little ear buds.”

  “And that works?”

  “Most of the time. Unless she’s angry, then she really pounds the keys.” Samanatha’s anger music was a difficult classical piece with a lot of bass notes. I could hear that stuff through walls. It was a wonder the neighbors didn’t complain. “I have noise canceling headphones.”

  “Noise canceling headphones.” Kyle repeated the words slowly, like he was writing the information down in a notebook. He’d filled up the little Pirates of the Caribbean notebook he’d had when we first met long ago. The last notebook I’d seen him pull out of his pocket had Katniss from The Hunger Games on the cover.

  By the time I pulled into the parking lot for Melody’s gym, we’d progressed from talking about our kids to discussing current movies and which ones I might like to see. Kyle had pretty eclectic tastes in movies, although most cop movies made him cringe, they were so unrealistic.

  I spotted Melody’s car parked off to the side of the gym near one of the spindly trees that dotted the shopping center’s parking lot.

  At least she was where she was supposed to be. Now I needed to check for white SUVs.

  I counted no less than five of the things in the parking lot. Three of them had no tinting on the windows, so I could rule them out. Of the two with tinted windows, one had a crease in the front bumper on the driver’s side. I didn’t remember seeing anything like that on the SUV that had followed Melody from the cafe.

  I parked a row away from the remaining white SUV. It had Nevada plates. I jotted down the number.

  Kyle was still on the phone, which surprised me. We must have been talking for nearly fifteen minutes. “Slow day?” I asked.

  “I am currently without a major crime wave, thank god, and hanging around the station waiting to conduct an interview
. My witness is late.”

  I felt bad for the witness. Kyle was a punctual man. He didn’t appreciate tardiness in others. I’d been late for a date only once, and it had put a strain on the evening. Whenever Kyle was running late, it always had something to do with his job, and he always called.

  “Think you can run a plate for me?” I asked.

  “Part of your surveillance?”

  “Yeah.” I gave him the make and model of the SUV and the license plate number. “I caught this car following Melody. Tinted windows, so I can’t see inside.”

  I heard him clicking keys. I didn’t ask him very often to get information for me that I couldn’t get myself, or that I couldn’t get as quickly as he could.

  While I sat waiting for the information from Kyle, I got a funny feeling down my spine. It almost felt like I was being watched. Which I might have been if someone was sitting inside the white SUV studying me like I was studying him. Or her.

  “White SUV, you say?” Kyle asked.

  I confirmed the color, and gave Kyle the make and model. “Don’t ask me what year,” I said. “All I can tell is that it’s newer, not new, but not real old either.”

  He was quiet for a moment, probably studying the readout on his screen.

  “Something odd’s going on,” he finally said. “I know you’re doing this as a favor for your ex, but I’d feel better if you turned the case over to someone else. The sooner the better.”

  I blinked. “I’m not going to get in a confrontation with the guy. I just need a name to give Ryan, and he can take it from there. The last thing I want is to put myself on some crazy’s radar.”

  “You might already be in over your head.”

  What?

  “That white SUV,” Kyle said. “It belongs to a cop.”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE LAST THING I EXPECTED to hear was that the white SUV that had followed Melody from the cafe on California Avenue to her gym on West McCarran belonged to an undercover cop.