by J W Becton
God, weren’t we a pair? Both of us wallowing in guilt over decisions we had made in the past, choices we had made because we were trying to do the right things for our families. And yet, we believed that we were to blame for all the problems that had arisen in their lives.
We always believed ourselves to be at fault.
I thought about sharing this insight with Vincent, but he was clearly not in any place to wax philosophical with me; nor was he ready to make a good decision about how to proceed with Justin. He needed time to return to logical thought.
“Listen to me,” I said, “Justin is safe, or you or his mother would have been contacted. He’s probably just holed up in a crappy apartment, living off his mother’s dime for as long as he can. You’ll find him and work things out.”
He nodded, eyes still wide and sad.
“Let’s have waffles,” I said, taking a page from my mother’s playbook. Distraction would be good right now. “And get to work on Mary Fallsworthy,” I added.
So we ate our brunch and did some basic background checks on Fallsworthy, whose record was pretty clean. She had no arrests, but we were betting that she did have some significant nursing school debt. We would get a warrant and check her financial records on Monday. But so far, she was as good a suspect as any.
Despite our suspicion of Fallsworthy, Vincent remained hunched over the laptop, working the backgrounds of the other employees who had been at the Accident Care Clinic when Dr. Keller left with the papers, and I looked deeper into the doctor himself. We had already gotten warrants to look at his financial records, and those documents alone told me why he had fallen into the temptation to defraud.
I thought of sharing the information with Vincent, but he seemed too focused to interrupt, so I kept working.
Later that afternoon, I received Keller’s email of the hire dates of each employee who had been on duty at the clinic on Friday.
“Interesting,” I said aloud. “Fallsworthy’s tenure at the clinic began a few months before Keller started his dealings with the fraud ring.”
Vincent sat up straighter. “Maybe she was sent in early to watch him, see if he was a good candidate. For all we know she could be in charge of the whole scam.”
I hadn’t considered it yet, but there had to be someone, a central figure, coordinating the fraud ring, someone with an in-depth knowledge of insurance who was able to organize such a far-reaching con. A nurse, especially one with financial issues, would certainly be a good candidate for the job. She would have both the practical knowledge and the contacts to run a big ring.
Was Mary Fallsworthy in charge of the fraud ring?
“It’s a possibility,” I agreed. “Fallsworthy’s employment start date definitely makes her a stronger suspect. We’ll check her financial records when we get the warrant, and I’ll feel her out when I go for my appointment at the clinic on Tuesday, see if I can’t get a better handle on the depth of her involvement.”
I closed the files I’d been reading, ready to call it a day. After all, there was nothing left to do on Fallsworthy until we got back to the DOI.
I glanced at Vincent, who had returned to the list he was making, and realized I didn’t want him to leave.
I checked my watch. We’d been working for hours, and it was after five.
“Dinner?” I said. “I’ve got leftover pizza.”
“Sounds good,” he said, keeping his eyes focused on the list. “I just want to finish up backgrounds on the rest of the employees. Just in case.”
“Sure,” I said, getting up to turn on the oven.
I wasn’t a fan of cold pizza.
As I pulled out the Downtown Pizza box, I looked over my shoulder at Vincent again. He looked so big and solid and reliable, and he was all of those things. But he was beating himself up about Justin, and I wondered if he felt this way when I talked about Tricia: unsure of how to help, or if help were even possible.
Nine
Vincent and I moved over to the couch to eat in comfort and relax a bit. Of course, neither of us relaxed. He worked on his list, and I took over the computer, though I had long since finished my official duties.
It was time to look up Marnie Jacobs.
Sometimes locating a person is easy. You go to any generic search engine, type in the name, and voila, there they are. But most of the time, it isn’t that simple. Some people are purposely hiding, like criminals skipping out on their bonds, and some are just difficult to track thanks to slow information updating. People move and neglect to change their driver’s license info. Some phone numbers belong to cell phones and can’t be traced back to physical addresses without a subpoena or warrant.
Honestly, given the trouble I’d experienced in finding any inkling of Slidell’s location, I expected to have equal difficulty finding his girlfriend, but I decided to begin with a generic search anyway. Start general and get specific. It’s a good technique.
As expected, generic Internet searches yielded nothing other than a few links to pages belonging to people who seemed far too young to be Slidell’s Marnie Jacobs. I guessed she’d be at least thirty years old.
I tried a few white page searches, but those produced no results at all.
“You see a bit fixated on that laptop,” Vincent said, interrupting my so-far fruitless endeavor. “You find something interesting?”
I looked up to see that Vincent had set down his list, and now Maxwell was curling his body around Vincent’s ankles. That was progress, I thought, in the male/feline relationship.
At least someone was making progress. I was no closer to Slidell than when I’d gotten out of bed that morning.
“Not on the fraud ring,” I said. “I’ve got a lead on Slidell, but it’s going nowhere fast.”
I told Vincent about Marnie Jacobs, and he listened with his chin tucked as he watched me through hooded eyes.
“No one can find Slidell, so you’re looking for his girl.”
I nodded, my eyes drifting back to the search.
Determined, I surfed to the Orr County Tax Assessor’s website on the slim chance that she had purchased property in the area. I typed in “Marnie Jacobs,” which gave me zero results.
Then I tried “Jacobs,” which gave me three pages.
Narrowing to “M. Jacobs” gave me only one name: Margaret Jacobs.
Marnie could be a nickname of Margaret, I thought, as butterflies arrived in full force, bouncing around my chest cavity. Could I have found Marnie?
I clicked on the link to the description of the property, which was purchased just over three months ago. That jived with the fact that she and Slidell had left the rental house around that time. It was a single-family home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms in a nice, but slightly older, residential neighborhood. Plenty of room for a live-in boyfriend.
I went back to the white page search engines and tried again, this time entering Margaret Jacobs. Still nothing, which I expected since she had moved Well, I had no phone number, but I did have an address.
“I think I found him,” I announced, feeling giddy.
“’Bout time,” Vincent said. “Let me see what you’ve got.”
I let him slide the computer from my lap and scooted across the couch to look over his shoulder.
He studied the display of Margaret Jacobs’s property information on the tax assessor’s website, and his eyebrows drew down in thought as he toggled between the property plat and the map of her new neighborhood.
Our shoulders brushed, and he turned his head, his blue eyes searching my face.
“Nothing is listed in Slidell’s name, at least not in the public records of the surrounding counties,” I said. “Even the address on his driver’s license is more than ninety days out of date.”
“He could be fined for that,” Vincent said, his voice tinged with amusement as he cocked his head sideways and smiled at me.
“We’ll take that matter up with him after he’s arrested for assault and rape,” I said in an overl
y agreeable tone. “Anyway, I’m starting to wonder if Slidell’s assets—car, house, credit cards—might be in Marnie’s—or Margaret’s—name instead.”
“Good thought. Have you confirmed that Slidell is still living with her?”
“No,” I admitted. “I can’t confirm that I’ve even found the right woman yet, but assuming I have, Slidell could still be living somewhere else or under an assumed name. But we know he has a history of cohabiting with Marnie Jacobs, so this is a good place to start. We can watch the house, see if he’s staying there, and even if he’s not, we might be able to learn his whereabouts from Marnie. Maybe they broke up, and she’s ready to turn him in.”
I stopped abruptly. I had been yipping like an excited puppy, while Vincent had gone very still, his head angled toward me, eyes watchful.
I had scooted so close to him that I was practically on his lap, and I flushed at the realization.
“I’m—” I began, thinking to apologize for invading his personal space, but when I felt his fingertips brush my chin, slide along my jawline, and descend into the fine hairs at the nape of my neck, it became clear that he didn’t mind my intrusion at all.
Slowly, Vincent pulled me toward him.
He held my face millimeters from his, and our bodies were now so close that I could sense the rise and fall of his chest, feel the fan on the laptop where it sat neglected on his thighs.
My fingers curled into his shirt, but I hardly noticed that I’d put them there.
We were so close, so painfully, wonderfully close, but neither of us seemed to be able to cross that last bit of space between us.
I felt a growl rumble through him, and I heard myself sigh.
Apparently, my subconscious knew what it wanted because my gaze, entirely of its own accord, alighted on Vincent’s lips, and then my eyelids fluttered shut like some damn Southern belle’s.
“Mark,” I whispered.
At that moment, I couldn’t make myself care that I was acting all feminine and had basically just issued the invitation for a kiss.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he growled, his voice ending on a groan, an almost vulnerable sound that issued from somewhere deep within him. My heart clenched and then accelerated in response.
“What?” I breathed, knowing full well what he meant.
“Ignore what’s between us,” Vincent said, causing pinpricks of joy and anticipation to skitter up my spine.
His usually stolid expression had disappeared, and now his blue eyes were hooded with desire. When his forehead came to rest against mine, I heard nothing but the sound of our breathing, saw nothing but Vincent’s blue eyes, felt nothing but his skin against mine, and between us, only the question remained: what would we be to each other?
I pulled back, suddenly fearful of the precipice we approached, but my action only drew him forward to me.
And finally, finally, I felt his lips fully on mine, where they lingered softly.
I released my hold on his lapels, sliding my palms to his tight abs and then encircling his waist.
Heat rushed through my core as Vincent deepened the kiss, but too soon, our lips parted.
Vincent straightened, and I don’t mind admitting that the whole thing left me feeling a bit bereft and breathless, just like that Southern belle. I let my arms fall into my lap and slowly opened my eyes, and the expression on his face confirmed what I already knew.
He was leaving the next move up to me.
It was up to me to answer the question he’d asked without words. Was this kiss the beginning or the end of our romance? Was this hello or goodbye?
My whole heart—not to mention my body—screamed at me to throw myself back into his arms and never let go, but then he reminded me of what had precipitated our kiss, what imperfect scenario we were living.
“Let’s go find him,” he said. “Slidell.”
Still in a haze, I watched him.
“You want to go now?” I asked. “Stake out the house?”
“Yes,” he said with a small chuckle, but his eyes darkened as they dropped to my lips. “And no.”
“Nothing more romantic than a cramped, cold surveillance vehicle,” I said, trying to lighten the mood as I scooted back to my side of the couch and accepted the laptop.
After another small laugh that managed to contain both frustration and humor, Vincent said, “My thoughts exactly.”
Before leaving the house, I grabbed a few extra layers of clothing, none of which would actually fit Vincent, so I took the throw blanket from the sofa. Maxwell might not appreciate his blanket disappearing, but he’d have to deal with it.
By the time Vincent and I were parked across from Margaret/Marnie Jacobs’s cute Cape Cod-style house, the evening light was already starting to shift and wane. It would be full dark in an hour, but I was feeling as energized as if my day had only just begun.
That was probably good because Vincent and I might have a long night ahead of us.
As far as surveillance went, this was a good setup. Vincent had driven around the block once so we could take in the surroundings, and we decided to turn onto the closest cross street and parallel park the truck in front of the corner playground. We were close, and our scenario couldn’t have been more ideal unless Clayton Slidell were standing in the driveway with his name tattooed across his forehead.
Vincent cut the engine, and we were plunged into velvety silence.
Before I realized what was happening, I felt Vincent reach across the cab, his hand coming within inches of my knees, and anticipation of renewed intimacy warred with my realization that now was not the time for us to act like teenagers at a make-out point.
“What are you—?” I began, my voice high and almost panicky.
I felt his head turn toward me, close, as his fingers moved past my knees and reached for the glove box. He opened it with a click and extracted a set of binoculars.
“Here,” he said, sounding almost amused. “Want you to have a good view of Slidell when he shows.”
“Oh,” I said, taking the binoculars and feigning a serious interest in them to cover my embarrassment. “Thanks.”
Vincent righted himself, and I ventured a look at his face. He grinned, and the expression turned sensual the longer I allowed myself to watch.
I shook myself. Pay attention to business.
Here I was, perhaps just a couple hundred yards away from the man who had raped my sister, and what was I looking at?
Determined to focus, I raised the binoculars to my eyes and studied the house. I had good visibility and would likely be able to read the tags on a suspect’s t-shirt from a mile away.
I checked each of the house’s white-rimmed windows for signs of movement or the flicker of a TV. I saw nothing.
No one appeared to be home, so I panned across the neat landscaping of trimmed boxwood bushes and ornamental grasses.
The place was not what I expected.
I’d envisioned everything from arresting Slidell in a crack house to unearthing him in some two-bit apartment with cement blocks for furniture and ramen noodles heating in the microwave.
I’d never imagined I’d find him in such an average neighborhood, one that housed families with kids and pets looking for scraps under the kitchen table.
I looked at the vacant swings in the adjacent park, suddenly feeling horrified at the idea that the man who had raped my sister was living happily in suburbia, maybe plotting which little girl would grow up to be his next teenage conquest.
I trembled at the thought.
“Cold?” Vincent asked.
“No,” I said as I gestured at the hoodie I had donned in defense of the growing chill. “I’m fine.”
I tucked my legs under me.
“I was just thinking that I may have found Marnie, but that doesn’t mean Slidell is still with her.”
“No,” he agreed, turning to study the house, “it doesn’t, but at least now we have somewhere to start.”
I nodded, but
uncertainty flooded me.
“I don’t want you to think you have to be here,” I said, feeling awkward about bringing up the subject but also compelled to offer an escape hatch if Vincent wanted to take it. “I mean, what we’re doing—sitting in a public place, observing—is entirely legal, but you can still distance yourself from the investigation if you want.”
I could feel Vincent studying me in the growing dimness of the cab.
“Well, this is a fine time to develop a conscience,” he said finally.
“Hey,” I objected, “I have a conscience. I know because I’ve been working pretty hard over the past decade or two to ignore it. Well, for the most part anyway. Besides, I’m thinking about you here. I don’t want you to get dragged into my potential mess.”
Somewhere in the midst of my last sentence, my tone turned defensive.
“Too late,” he said, smiling at me as he slid an arm across the back of the seat. “I’m already knee-deep of my own volition. Nothing you can do about it. And I haven’t taken any actions I regret. I’ve done nothing illegal so far.”
His addition of “so far” worried me.
“You could lose your job just helping me, you know. I did take evidence, and I could lose my rep as a LEO for that.”
“Yeah, that’s a possibility,” Vincent said, with sarcasm in his voice. “But you forget one fairly important fact: I don’t care about my job.”
I turned toward him.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” I scoffed. “You are the job. The consummate professional.”
“And that’s a bunch of crap,” Vincent said. “Do you think I dreamed of being an insurance fraud investigator as a boy? Hell, no. I was leading my ideal life in the Navy, and the only reason I’m at the DOI is because it was located near Justin. I would have taken a job in mall security if I’d had to. Turns out the DOI has better benefits.”
His voice quieted, and I figured he was thinking about the situation with Justin.
He looked away, and I wished I could read his thoughts. Was he thinking of how he had given up so much and was actually further from his son now than when he’d first arrived?
