Suspicious Behavior

by L. A. Witt

  “What can I get you?” the young man behind the register asked.

  “A large black coffee.”

  “A venti coffee, got it. Will that be the house roast, the blonde roast, or the dark roast?”

  “Whatever’s closest.”

  The kid paused a minute, like he was actually contemplating how many steps it would take him to get to the same line of percolators. “I guess . . . the dark roast, then?”

  I started to snicker. I couldn’t help it.

  “That’s fine,” Andreas said, then jerked a thumb at me. “Throw another one on my tab for this guy. He needs all the help he can get.”

  “Sure!” The kid turned my way. “Would you like the same thing, or can I interest you in a salted-caramel, white chocolate, honey-dusted—”

  “Just the coffee is fine,” I managed. The kid handed them over, Andreas paid, and we set up shop at a little round table in the back of the room, right by the fireplace. Which was on, for some stupid reason. “Aw, look. Ambiance.”

  “Just what we need.”

  No, we needed a damn break, was what we needed. For the case, and maybe for ourselves. And we needed both of them soon. “There’s almost nothing in Jim’s file,” I said quietly. “No priors at all. And it’s strange, it’s not like it was with Brian, who we couldn’t find much of anything on. There’s a history here. Jim’s lived in the city all his life, and he’s only ever gotten a few parking tickets to show for it. How is that possible if he’s done everything we think he has?”

  “We said the guy was careful. We said he was smart.” Andreas shrugged. “This rings truer in some ways than it did when we went after Brian. Brian’s got a system, he’s got a way of living that he thinks he needs to keep to, but Jim? He’s a chameleon. He becomes whatever and whoever is most likely to get him close to his victim, and then he plans their destruction around it. Some people really are good enough to get away with it, and I think Jim is one of those guys.”

  “Apart from his occasional losses of temper.”

  “Right.” Andreas swirled his coffee. “It would be pretty fucking nice if we could provoke one of those, actually.”

  Now that was an interesting idea. “How?”

  “I’m not sure, but if we could get something to give us cause to bring him in—anything, really—we might be able to get a warrant to search his place. He’s good, but if he’s as meticulous as he seems, then there’s a paper trail of some kind helping him keep track of it all.”

  “You could always tempt him into taking a swing at you,” I offered with a smile.

  “There’s a thought.”

  My smile vanished. “No, I was kidding. That’s not a thought. Bury it, forget I said anything.”

  “I bet I could do it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You could probably goad the Pope into taking a swing at you, but let’s not tempt a serial killer into putting you in his crosshairs.”

  Andreas opened his mouth to respond, but then his phone beeped. He checked the message and frowned. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “Lisa says she needs me to hang on to Emily for one more day.” He was already texting her back.

  “Well, it’s still the weekend.” I needed to see my folks. I needed to see my brother. I didn’t like to think about the countdown that was attached there, but now more than ever I needed to take advantage of whatever time was on offer. I felt like we had too much of it and not enough of it all at once.

  Hmm. “Actually . . .” How many days was it until the twenty-sixth? “How committed do you think Jim is to Brian?”

  Andreas set his phone aside with a frown. “As in, how committed to setting him up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Given that he’s probably done it multiple times before and has been working on this particular scenario for years?” He took a large sip of his coffee. “Extremely committed. The psych profile still fits, in a lot of ways. He put this current pattern together with Brian in mind, and he’s put a lot of work into it. I’d be surprised if he was willing to change it.”

  Andreas had a point. “He could have put Brian in jail earlier with Jenna’s testimony. Most people would take her word over someone like Brian’s without a second thought.”

  “Exactly. Jim didn’t, though, just got her to act suspicious enough to keep the heat on but not let things go up in flames.”

  Jim was a sick fuck. “He wants to wait for this set of murders to be over before we arrest Brian.”

  “It seems like it. Now that we’re sniffing around, he’s getting ready to pull the trigger on the guy. But he wants to do it on his terms. Jim’s all about the control, that’s where he gets off on this.” Andreas sat back and crossed his arms. “He wants to control when and how things happen—for Brian, for the people he kills, but maybe most of all for us.”

  “What if we screwed with that control?”

  Andreas shook his head. “We can’t arrest Jim yet and hope to hold him, and the last thing we want—”

  “No, I know.” We didn’t want him slipping away. I wasn’t sure I could handle that again. “But maybe we could arrest Brian.”

  For a moment, he didn’t say anything, just looked at me. Then . . . “Break the pattern for him.”

  I nodded. “Arrest him for something innocuous. Keep him until the twenty-sixth, at which point Jim can’t kill anyone if he wants to frame Brian. In the meantime, we put a watch on Jim, so that if he decides to say ‘fuck it’ and kill someone anyway, we can get him before it goes too far.”

  “We’ll need Hamilton’s permission for this,” Andreas mused, but he was interested, I could tell. “If he’s going to allocate uniforms to follow someone, he’s gonna want to know why.”

  “I’m more than happy to get him involved. He’s the one who’s been keeping his distance from us.”

  “You get why, right?”

  Oh, I got it. Andreas and I were still persona non grata in the precinct, and Hamilton was dealing with a lot of heat, both from above and below. In order to keep the peace in the station, he couldn’t allow for any hint of favoritism, especially after so many cops had gone down. In reality, that meant he couldn’t see us at all if it wasn’t passing us in the hall, not for a while a least. It sucked, but I got why he was giving us the cold shoulder. Still. “If we need it, will he do it?”

  “It might take a day or two to arrange.”

  We still had a few days until the twenty-sixth. Time, but not much. “I think we can do that.”

  “Okay, then.” Having a plan suited Andreas. He got to his feet to throw his cup away, and I followed behind him just so I could watch him move. I wasn’t the only one. Back off, soccer moms. He’s taken.

  “Let’s go get Brian.”

  Arresting someone was never fun. Occasionally satisfying, often adrenalizing, but never fun. Arresting Brian in the middle of Reginald’s for something I knew he didn’t do, in front of all his coworkers, including the fucker who was framing him? One of the worst feelings I’d ever had in my life. I knew it was for a good cause, but that sure as hell didn’t make me feel better when I looked into Brian’s confused eyes and read him his rights.

  The only, only thing that made arresting Brian less awful was the fact that Jim was clearly pissed. Oh, he still played the part of concerned coworker, of a guy caught between a rock and a hard place, but his affect was as flat as paper now, his mask of caring so thin that anyone who was looking at the right angle could see through it. He’d been rocked back on his heels, and he obviously didn’t care for that. It was the only bright spot about the whole charade.

  I took Brian out to the car while Andreas dealt with his manager, who was pretty incensed on Brian’s behalf. He shuffled along, eyes on the ground, and my feeling of guilt intensified.

  Once I got him in the back of the car, I lowered my voice. “Mr. McIntosh, I know this must be hard for you. I’m sorry for that. I promise we’re going to do our best to get you out of this mess as soon as possible.” Ob
lique enough to cover my butt, but sincere enough that I figured he got it.

  Brian glanced at me with worried eyes. “I’m going to miss shifts.”

  “Deanna will keep everything going for you, don’t worry.”

  “I’m supposed to drive Lu to bingo on Monday.”

  “I can do that.” I might as well. “It’s going to be okay.” I couldn’t promise it, but I hoped it with all my might.

  Petty theft wasn’t much of a crime to hinge an entire operation on, but after the day we’d had, I was just happy to have it on the books and Brian in a holding cell. We wouldn’t be able to keep him long, in all likelihood, but we didn’t have to. Just long enough. Getting Hamilton to sign off on putting a watch on Jim took a lot more work.

  “We’re short-staffed,” he huffed. He looked like a man who hadn’t seen the soft side of a pillow in weeks. “If you think I’ve got the resources to put a twenty-four-hour watch on a man who isn’t even formally charged with anything, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  “What about during his off hours?” Andreas pressed. He didn’t get sidetracked from his goals the way I was occasionally prone to. “I’ve got a copy of his work schedule. If we could get someone on him the rest of the time—”

  “Sixteen-hour days aren’t much better than twenty-four, Ruffner.”

  “Then split the shifts. We’re only gonna need them until the twenty-seventh.”

  “The day after your supposed serial killer is supposed to strike next.”

  “Nothing supposed about it, Chief.” Andreas’s voice was so cool it was almost chilly. “Or are you listening to the bullshit people like Ross and Schneidmiller are spouting instead of taking a look at the actual evidence? We’ve got a strong case here.”

  “A strongly circumstantial case.”

  “So it requires a little more brainpower to make it stick, so what? Just because Ross has all the deductive reasoning of a fucking fruit fly—”

  “Ruffner, shut up.” Chief Hamilton squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “All right. I’ll see if I can work out a split shift, half with officers from here, half from the Thirty-Second.”

  Oh, hell no. “Sir, are you sure—”

  “This was their case before it was ours,” he told me firmly. “If Chief Singh wants to use my best detectives to clean up Newberry’s mess, then she can pony up some of the leg time to watch a suspect. I’ll work it out.”

  “Thank you.” Andreas could be gracious when he won. Not often, but it happened occasionally.

  “Yeah, yeah. Get out of here before I have to start paying you overtime.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. Shit, had we really been up since before dawn? “How’re the girls?” I asked as we headed down to the garage.

  “Good. Erin took Emily to the playground after lunch today.”

  It didn’t take a genius to see that Andreas was kind of bothered by that. “And I bet they both loved it.”

  “It should have been me. I didn’t mean to turn Erin into my babysitter this weekend.”

  “If any of your kids understands the tediousness of police work, it’s Erin,” I said.

  “I know. That’s not the point.”

  I couldn’t out-stubborn Andreas, not when he was like this. I could only try to redirect him. “It’s not even seven yet. You can still do something with both of them at home.”

  “Oh yeah?” He glanced at me as we walked to his car. “Where are you going to be?”

  Ah, caught that. “I thought if you dropped me off at my place, I’d grab my car and go see Asher. The last visit was under kind of . . .” horrendous, “rough circumstances.”

  “Right.”

  “You should come with me sometime.” The offer slipped out of my mouth before I really had a chance to think about it. Andreas and Asher had never met; there hadn’t really been time before I was stabbed, and after that, life had turned into a circus. Plus . . . for a while there, I honestly hadn’t thought it was worth it. Asher wasn’t going to remember meeting Andreas, no matter how many times I brought him by at this point, and Andreas—well. Why put him through that?

  Because you might put him through that anyway someday. He should know what he’s getting into. I blinked, then took a deep breath. “I mean it. Sometime when we’re not so busy, and if he’s having a good day. I’d like for you to meet him at least once.”

  “Yeah?” He looked intrigued, actually. “I’d like that too. See how you stack up in comparison.”

  “I stack up awesome. I stack up to the very tippy top, I’m so stackable.”

  He smirked. “You are pretty toppy, I’ll give you that.”

  “You have no fucking clue.” But he would.

  My apartment was on the way to Andreas’s, so dropping me off wasn’t inconvenient. I didn’t know how late I’d be, so I offered to spend the night at home, but he shut that down. “I don’t care how late it is, come back to my place whenever you’re done. I’ll be up.” Waiting for you, he didn’t say, but I heard it anyway.

  “Thanks.”

  It was movie hour by the time I got to the facility. I signed in at the front, punched the code into the memory care area, and found my brother sitting in the tiny theater watching Die Hard with my mother. They were the only ones there. Mom looked happy to see me, at least.

  “Darren!” She held out a hand toward me, and I went to her and took it. “Hey, baby, how are you doing?”

  “Good.”

  She gracefully took it for the evasion it was. “I came over for dinner, and then Asher and I thought it would be nice to catch a movie.”

  “So you chose this one.”

  “Oh my goodness, yes.” She grinned. “This is the first movie your dad ever took me to see in the theaters. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but I didn’t count on how sexy Bruce Willis was back then.” She mock-fanned herself. “It certainly made me reconsider dating a cop. Up until then, I’d basically said yes just to be nice.”

  “Shhh,” Asher whispered, not looking at either of us. He was dressed normally, his hair combed down, but there was a glazed look in his eyes that I didn’t like.

  “Sorry,” I said. He didn’t glance up.

  “Here, let’s talk in the hall.” My mother kissed Asher’s cheek, then led the way out into the bright, sterile hallway and shut the door. “How are you really, honey?”

  I shrugged. “Getting by. We’re making some headway in the case.” I hoped.

  “Good, that’s great! How’s your shoulder? Is that partner of yours treating you right?”

  “I’m fine, he’s fine.” I grinned. “A couple of his kids are in town. He’s ridiculous with them, Mom. It’s the cutest thing ever.”

  “I bet it is. Men and babies, kryptonite if I ever saw it.” She sighed. “You boys would have made beautiful babies.”

  Run that up to the top of the list of things that would never happen. “Is Melissa still here?”

  “Mm-hmm. She’s staying to the end of next week. There’s a lot of stuff of Asher’s to go through, so she can help at the house, even if she’s not coming here.” I opened my mouth, but my mother shook her head. “I know why you did it, honey. I look at him now and it’s not . . . it’s . . .” She wrung her hands together. “I understand,” she said at last. “I just feel bad for her. I do. She was like my daughter once, and I love her. And I know that once upon a time, your brother did too. Maybe before she leaves, you could . . . talk to her? Just talk?”

  “Yeah,” I found myself saying. “If I get the chance, I will.”

  “That’s all I want, baby.” She patted my cheek. “Now, let’s go watch John McClane kick some ass.”

  It was late by the time I got back to Andreas’s apartment, after finishing the movie, helping to put Asher to bed, and going through a rundown of his new routine with my mom, including all the medications they had him on now. They were the only way he’d settle—without them, he was too combative to stay in the facility. I hated it, but there was nothing I coul
d do for him short of moving him back home and then moving in myself, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  The apartment was dark when I got back, but I could smell freshly baked, slightly burnt cookies. The only light on was in the living room, and when I peeked in, I saw Andreas sitting back against the couch, a file in his lap, Emily curled in against his thigh as she clutched a stuffed tiger. He looked up and saw me. “Hey. You good?” he murmured.

  “Yeah.” With this view? “Yeah, I’m good.”

  Having Brian on ice wasn’t the solution, but it bought us time. With a few patrols grudgingly trailing Jim, and the man he was trying to pin his murders on safely in a cell downtown, we had time to comb through evidence and files and everything we’d already been through a million times. There had to be something here. A needle in this godforsaken haystack that we could use to put Jim away.

  As we sat on my couch and pored over files with Emily snoozing against my side, I relaxed more than I had recently, but I was still on edge. Jim was smart. He wouldn’t have gotten away with this many murders if he wasn’t. We were playing his game—putting Brian where he couldn’t “kill” anyone on the twenty-sixth—but it was still his game.

  Darren’s phone buzzed with a text. He glanced at it, then put it back down on the end table. “Brian’s arraignment is at ten on Monday.”

  I nodded. “I put in a call to the DA, letting them know this is an unusual circumstance. They don’t like keeping a thief without bail, but given the situation . . .”

  “Good.” Darren sipped his coffee. “I still feel bad not telling Brian what we’re doing.”

  “I know, but briefing him now could blow up in our faces.” I closed a file folder and leaned forward to add it to the stack on the coffee table, careful not to wake Emily. “Jim’s a manipulative guy, and I’m worried he could get the details out of Brian.”