Secret Stalker

by LENA DIAZ,

  Dillon held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, I had to ask.”

  Max glanced at his watch. Almost shift change for the uniformed officers. He grabbed his cell phone out of its holder. “Did I see Jake Cantor outside earlier with the other uniforms?”

  “I think so, why?”

  “Can you ask him to meet me in the living room on your way out? I need to ask him something.”

  Dillon gave him a long look, then sighed. “All right. Keep your secrets. I’ll send him in. Make it quick though. I’ll meet you at my truck.” He headed down the hallway.

  Max did a quick internet search on his phone. When he found what he was looking for, he made a call, then went into the living room. When he spotted Officer Cantor standing by the fireplace looking impatient, he strode to him.

  “Hey, Jake.”

  “Max. What’s up? I was about to head back to the station to finish my reports for the shift change.”

  After a quick look around to make sure that Bex wasn’t within earshot, Max said, “If you don’t mind putting that off for a little while, I need your help. I’ve hired a bodyguard service to keep an eye on Miss Kane. But I need someone to watch over her until their guy gets here. I know you do security work on the side sometimes. I’ll pay your fee—”

  “No way, man. Keep your money. I can wait until your guy gets here. Not a problem. I take it Miss Kane doesn’t know about this?”

  “No. And I don’t want her to. She sort of has a phobia about the police. Or at least, Destiny police. She refused our protection. So I can’t ask the chief to assign anyone.”

  He looked confused over Bex’s distrust of the local police, probably because he wasn’t around back when Bobby Caldwell was killed—and the chief threw Bex in jail.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “This stays on the down-low. Like I said, not a problem. Give your bodyguard my cell number. I saw Miss Kane out on the lawn talking to one of the other detectives a few minutes ago. I’ll keep an eye on her until he gets here.”

  Max shook his hand. “Thanks, Jake. I owe you one. When you talk to this guy, stress again for me that he and his team need to make sure Bex, Miss Kane, doesn’t spot them. They need to be invisible.”

  “You got it.”

  Chapter Seven

  Max shifted in the uncomfortable plastic hospital chair that he’d slept in most of last night. Beside him, lying in bed with one hand cuffed to the railing, was grocery store shooter Lenny Stinsky.

  The all-nighter that Dillon had predicted had turned into all night and most of the next day. It was already nearing the dinner hour. But Max wasn’t going anywhere, not when his long wait was finally about to pay off. According to Lenny’s doctor, he was now healthy enough to talk and awake enough to understand his Miranda rights.

  To be absolutely certain of that, to reduce the possibility of Lenny’s statement being thrown out at trial, the chief had decided to be in on the interview. Which was why Max was sitting on one side of Lenny’s bed while the chief was on the other. But since neither of them was proficient at playing good cop, this was going to be a tag team of bad cop, bad cop. Meaning they were going to lie through their teeth to try to get as much information as they could out of the little tattoo-covered delinquent.

  As gangbangers went, Lenny Stinsky was the scrawniest, least tough-looking one that Max had ever seen. Not that he’d seen all that many in Destiny. Mostly he was going by what he’d seen on TV.

  The kid was eighteen, just barely. But he looked so small and scared that he could have passed for fifteen.

  Luck was definitely on Max and the chief’s side today. Because the other guy Max had shot, a guy with a temper as hot as his hair was red, appeared to be the leader of the gunmen. He was far more jaded and too experienced to talk to the cops. He’d asked for a lawyer the second he woke up from the anesthesia. He’d also demanded to see Lenny. To keep him from talking, of course. But no way was Max going to let him get within a hundred feet of their little squealer.

  Max scooted his chair closer to the bed and glanced at the chief sitting on the other side before asking his next question.

  “So far you haven’t told us much, Lenny. We need names. If you want a deal, you need to give us something worth dealing for. Now start over, and this time give us some details.”

  Lenny’s eyes were wide and uncertain as he glanced from Max to the chief and back again. “What kind of deal do I get?”

  “Nothing so far. You have to prove you’ve got something we want before we talk terms.” Max glanced at his watch. “I really don’t care which one of the five of you I deal with. The first guy to talk is the one we negotiate with. The rest of you can go to prison for the rest of your lives for all I care.”

  That wasn’t true, of course. Three of the five had suffered only mild concussions from being knocked out and were in county lockup, refusing to talk, just like the other guy who’d been shot and was still in the hospital. Lenny was Max’s only hope of getting any information anytime soon. But the little scumbag didn’t need to know that.

  Lenny’s Adam’s apple bobbed in this throat.

  Max checked his watch again. “Time’s up. I’m off to talk to one of the other guys.”

  “Wait.” His hand shot up then jerked short, the handcuff rattling against the bed rail. He winced and lowered his arm. “Okay, okay. I’ll start from the top. What do you want to know?”

  “Who hired you, for starters? All you’ve told us is some guy approached you and your homies on a corner in Knoxville. What was his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Max started to stand again.

  “Wait, wait. I’m not lying. I really don’t know.”

  The desperation in the kid’s voice told Max he was probably telling the truth. Which didn’t bode well for their investigation.

  He relaxed back in his chair again, settling in for a long interview. “He never gave you a name?”

  Lenny shook his head. “No. I never really saw his face, either. It was at night. We were in an alley, goofing around, when he drives up and parks his car at the entrance, blocking us in. Chucky heads over to make him move, but the guy pulls a gun on him.”

  “Who’s Chucky?” Max asked.

  Lenny swallowed. “He...he’s our leader. Red hair, about six feet tall, freckles.”

  The other guy Max had shot.

  The chief tapped the bed railing to get the kid’s attention. “You saw a guy pull a gun but you can’t describe him?”

  “Didn’t say I couldn’t describe him, just not his face. The car’s headlights were shining toward us. All I could see was his outline, you know? And the gun. The guy was about six feet tall, average weight, not too skinny but not big, either.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “That describes half the guys I know. What about his hair color?”

  “Didn’t see it. Told you it was dark, and the headlights were on.”

  “What about the gun?”

  “That’s easy. It was just like the ones he gave us for holding up the grocery store.”

  “An M16?” Max asked.

  Lenny shrugged. “Guess so. Never saw one before that night.” He mouth curved. “Pretty badass gun.”

  A chill swept through Max at the delight on the kid’s face. For the first time since the interview had begun, he believed he was seeing the real Lenny Stinsky, the gangbanger who had little to no respect for the lives of others.

  “What about the car the guy drove?” Max asked. “What kind was it? Did it have a front license plate?”

  The kid shrugged again. “It was one of those SUV things, dark color. Didn’t see any plates. Like I said, the—”

  “Headlights were too bright, yeah, yeah. Did he make the deal with Chucky or all of you?”

  “All of us.”
r />   “How much?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  Max scoffed. “You risked years of prison time for a split of two thousand dollars?”

  Lenny shook his head. “Not a split. Each.”

  Max shot a look at the chief. “You’re saying this guy came out of nowhere and hired the five of you for fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Yep.” A gloating look crossed Lenny’s face, until he tried to cross his arms and couldn’t because of the handcuffs. He yanked them against the rail and frowned.

  “Did he pay up front?”

  “I ain’t sayin’.”

  Code words for he wasn’t going to tell the cops where his money was. Max didn’t bother going down that tangent. They’d follow the money trail later. What he needed right now was a name.

  “What were the exact terms of the deal? Did you hear him? Or did Chucky relay the information?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” He shook his head like he thought Max was an idiot. “No way was any of us getting near him with that wicked-looking gun. We hung back and waited for Chucky to tell us what the guy said. The guy talked to Chucky, then tossed a duffel bag on the ground and drove off.”

  Max’s stomach sank. The chief was already scrubbing his face and shaking his head. If everything Lenny had just told them was hearsay, they had the legal equivalent of zero in a court of law. And they couldn’t base any potential search warrants off hearsay, either. Lenny was looking more and more like a dead end.

  “Lenny, I’m going to ask you again. This is really important, so think hard before you answer. Did you personally hear anything the gunman said?”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

  Max gripped the arms of the chair. “Good, good. What exactly did you hear him say?”

  “When Chucky headed toward the guy’s car, the man said, ‘Hold it right there. I want to make you a deal.’ A couple of minutes later the guy was gone and we had the address to that store and a picture of the gal we were supposed to scare.” He grinned. “And those sweet M16 rifles.”

  Max shook his head in disgust. He pushed his chair back and stood. The chief was slower, but he stood, too.

  “I did good, right?” Lenny looked back and forth. “We got a deal? I don’t do no time?”

  Max wrapped his fingers around the foot rail and leaned toward him. “No, Lenny. We ain’t got no deal. All you’ve told me is that you have no direct knowledge of who hired you to storm the Piggly Wiggly and that you can’t even describe the guy or give us his name. In other words, you have nothing.”

  They headed toward the door.

  The handcuffs rattled against the bedrail. “Wait, I told you what I know. Where are you going?”

  Max let the door swing closed behind him and the chief.

  The chief put his hand on his hips. “Which one is Chucky? One of the ones over at county lockup?”

  “No. He’s the other guy I shot, the one who asked for a lawyer.”

  “Figures.” Thornton motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. “If this Lenny guy told us the truth, the other three gunmen won’t be able to help us any more than he did, even if they weren’t already asking for lawyers.”

  “That about sums it up,” Max said.

  The sound of footsteps coming down the polished tiled hallway had Max turning around, surprised to see Dillon striding toward them.

  When Dillon reached them, Max asked, “What are you still doing here? Didn’t you get Marcia’s statement yesterday? Or did something else happen?”

  “No, nothing else, thank goodness. But there was a delay with her statement. The doctors around here are a little too careful, if you ask me. They wouldn’t let me talk to her yesterday at all, even though she called us. I had to wait for them to clear her.”

  “They’re terrified of lawsuits these days,” the chief grumbled. “Is she ready to talk now?”

  “I just finished interviewing her. She answered every question I asked and then some. She’s terrified of going to jail. But nothing she said ties into the grocery store holdup. Her going after Miss Kane with that rifle was apparently a spur-of-the-moment decision. Marcia fancies herself Bobby Caldwell’s girlfriend and blames Miss Kane for his death. She said when she saw her with you, Max, that all those old feelings of anger came back. She was furious that Max and Bex were back together and she could never be with Bobby again.”

  “We’re not back together,” Max gritted out.

  Dillon shrugged. “Just relaying what the witness—”

  “You mean suspect.”

  “Fair enough. I’m just telling you what she said. She was jealous and angry and grabbed the rifle out of the trunk of her car. She claims she was only trying to scare Miss Kane.”

  “Right. And she just happened to have a loaded rifle in her car when she came over.”

  The chief cleared his throat, drawing their attention. “Not that I want to give Miss Knolls an alibi or reasonable doubt, but she has won the shooting challenges at the county fair three years running. The fair is coming up soon. It’s likely she keeps her gun in the car to take back and forth to target practice these days.”

  Dillon grimaced. “You hit it on the head, Chief. That’s exactly what she told me, that she was going to do some target practice after bringing over a casserole her mom made her deliver to Miss Kane. She also insisted that if she’d really wanted to shoot anyone, she wouldn’t have missed.”

  The chief nodded.

  “Please don’t tell me you agree with that statement,” Max said.

  “Okay. I’ll just keep quiet, then.” The chief rolled his eyes.

  Max swore. “So we have her on, what, a misdemeanor? Assuming we believe her story?”

  “Well.” The chief scrubbed the stubble on his chin. “We could charge her with attempted murder if we wanted to go that route. But a jury of her peers would set her free so fast your head would spin. Trying to pin the grocery store thing on her won’t stick, either.”

  “Then you’re just going to let her go? I don’t care how proficient she is with a rifle. No one’s perfect. She could have hurt or killed Bex when she pulled that trigger.”

  “I ain’t gonna argue with you on that,” the chief agreed. “We’ll charge her with something, maybe reckless endangerment. Let her spend a few nights in jail to teach her a lesson. But unless Miss Kane wants to press more serious charges against her, she’ll be out in a few days.”

  Max whirled around and headed down the hallway.

  “Where are you going?” the chief called out.

  “To get Bex to press charges against Marcia Knolls.”

  Chapter Eight

  Bex parked her mom’s ancient Ford Taurus in front of her lawyer’s office and cut the engine. She would have much preferred to take her own, far newer SUV, but until she could get the windshield replaced, the Taurus would have to do. Hopefully she could get her car fixed soon and get out of town. It was as if the universe was against her, throwing obstacles in her path to keep her from leaving.

  Just this morning, she’d come across more of her mom’s things packed in the attic. And she’d spent most of the day sorting through them and figuring out where to take them. It wasn’t like she could throw away homemade quilts and other keepsakes her mom had collected over the years. But Bex didn’t have room in her condo to hoard everything, either. So she’d kept the more sentimental of the items and spent hours driving around Destiny delivering the rest of them to longtime friends of her mother.

  That had taken even more time, of course, since she couldn’t just walk up, leave her mom’s things, and not stay and visit. That kind of rudeness would have made her mother ashamed to call her daughter. So she’d done her duty, answering her mom’s friends’ questions about what she’d been doing all these years. Telling them about the antiq
ue store she ran with her best friend in Knoxville, building a comfortable life for herself, if not an exciting one.

  The close-knit group had known about her, of course. They’d known that her mother visited Bex several times a year. They also knew that her mom had forbidden Bex to come to Destiny because she was so worried about the shadow of her past hanging over her head.

  Her mom had been nothing if not protective. And her friends had served her well, keeping her secret until the very end. They were also steadfast in their support of Bex, flat out telling her they knew she was innocent, that she hadn’t killed that stalker-boy. Their support had Bex so close to tears she’d almost broken down in front of them.

  Now she was finally alone once again, back in town with another task to finish. But even though she was anxious to be done, she hesitated to get out of the car. Glancing in the rearview mirror at the grocery store across the street sent a chill of dread racing up her spine.

  She’d been so lucky to have escaped not one but two shootings without serious injury. But she couldn’t count on Max always being there to protect her. Bad things came in threes, didn’t they? Her mom’s death had been the first terrible blow. Hopefully the two shootings counted as the second and third bad things and nothing else would happen before she could escape this town again.

  She shoved the door open and headed into the two-story office building. The exterior door opened onto a short hall with a bench and another door at the end that she knew from previous visits was the bathroom. She stepped past the bench and through the open doorway into the reception area.

  Her attorney’s assistant looked up from some papers on her desk and gave Bex a brilliant smile, as she did with everyone.

  “Miss Kane, so nice to see you again. Are you here to make an appointment?”

  Bex smiled at the elderly woman who was just as perfectly put together as her dapper employer. Martha couldn’t be a day younger than seventy, but she got around just as well as women half her age and looked like she could have graced the pages of a fashion magazine. Bex had loved the kind woman the moment she’d met her and always felt lighter in spirit after talking to her.