by G. K. Lund
“It’s fine,” Hansen said after I asked, while he seemed to be reading text messages that had come in during the phone’s little hiatus.
At this point, I noticed a familiar face heading down the steps in front of the large brick building that constituted the station house. Eddie Hays was as usual dressed in scruffy clothes, but his hair was unusually slicked back and tidy. For a moment, it reminded me of his brother.
As Eddie saw me, he changed his direction, heading over toward us. I suddenly felt Hansen’s hand close around my elbow, texts all but forgotten at the moment. It was the kind of possessive gesture only men who are stupid enough to think of doing, although I expect there wasn’t much thinking involved. I looked at my elbow in surprise, and he jerked his hand back as if he hadn’t realized what he was doing.
What now? I thought and then realized as Eddie came closer that he looked more like his brother than usual. Hansen probably hadn’t recognized the usually shabby and scraggly looking guy. But why would that bother him? It took a moment for my brain to click into place. I had told them about Jacques, hadn’t I? When McAllen and Hansen came to get me at the harbor. It had only been a few days, but it seemed so long ago.
“Hey, Maggie,” Eddie said, looking with uncertainty in Hansen’s direction, but nodding politely enough.
“Made an effort today, Eddie?” I said, smiling. The two brothers were, despite their stunning and similar looks, very different with Eddie not caring much about how he came off to others. At least, not usually, it turned out.
He shrugged. “Officer Leland wanted a chat,” he said. “thought a little charm wasn’t to be wasted on her.” He gave a dazzling smile. Hansen scoffed at the comment but said nothing.
“Anyway,” Eddie said, a short glance in the detective’s direction, but he made no move to step away. “I’ve got a message for you.” Eddie continued on, though I knew those words were for show. Knew what he wanted to tell me about and whatever message it was, it was from him.
“One day,” he said.
I nodded my understanding and actually felt my shoulders sag a little.
“And what was that about?” Hansen asked as Eddie went on his way.
“Nothing that requires me to answer you,” I said and headed up the stairs. “Keep your questions general, Detective.”
“Sure,” he said as he followed me. “Are were-animals and ghosts real?” His tone was sarcastic; no answer expected or wanted, for that matter.
“Not really,” I said. “And there are surprisingly few ghosts about. When people die, they seem to move on.”
Hansen stopped with his hand on the door and looked at me like he didn’t know whether to take me seriously or not.
“Come on,” I said and pushed open the door.
“Wait, what kind of answer is not really?”
I never got to tell him as a smiling Maureen greeted us in what was an unusually empty reception area.
“Oh, Nate. There you are,” she said. “Wait a sec.” She almost ducked behind her large desk, coming up with a stack of papers. “Need you to sign these. And you,” she said and turned to me, her dark curls swinging around her plump and friendly face, “need to sign in.”
I did as told, realizing she thought I was there to help with an interview as usual.
“How’s Bill?” she asked Hansen as he went through whatever papers they were and signed them.
“Better,” he said, surprising me a little. This must have been what the texts were about. “Seems to be over the worst, but keeps going in and out of unconsciousness.”
“That’s good,” she said with genuine relief in her voice. They were a small police department and everyone knew each other. “Rosita and the kids?”
“She’s kept the kids away for the worst of it,” he said, finishing the last of the papers and handing them back.
“Thanks,” she said, and then looked a little surprised. “That was unusually complaint free from you,” she said as she put the papers down behind her desk again. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you got—”
She stopped herself way too late, her cheeks turning red immediately as Hansen stared at her with those damn narrowed eyes. I couldn’t help myself as I started laughing at the sight. Yep, his being disconcerted was the best distraction from my own problems.
“Stop that,” he told me, which didn’t help in the least. I actually doubled over a moment, before straightening up and seeing Maureen’s shocked face as realization dawned on her.
“You two?” she said pointing a finger back and forth between us.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Hansen exclaimed and walked away from us.
“Twice,” I said, holding up an equal amount of fingers, simply to piss him off. It worked like a charm.
“Evans,” he yelled back at me as Maureen broke into a smile as well.
“Gotta go,” I said to her. “That’s how he flirts.”
Her laughter followed me into the station as I ran to catch up with him. He went straight to his desk and told me to sit down. I did, sitting down in one of the chairs next to his and McAllen’s desks as Hansen logged onto his computer.
“Will you stop that?” he said without looking at me. I sat with my hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking as I tried my best to suppress the laughter.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
I shook my head. He was right.
The smile was wiped from my face a few moments later, though, as he found what he was looking for, and turned the computer screen in my direction for me to see.
Freddy.
His picture unmistakable, as part of the file the police had on him. Still marked as a fugitive.
I was suddenly aware of Hansen studying my face for any information he could obtain. My silence spoke volumes. He’d caught me completely off guard.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.
“You know why.”
“No. Can’t say that I do.”
He didn’t say anything a moment. Only looked at me, eyes narrowed, brows creased. “You know,” he said after a little while. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you people during the last few days, it’s that you watch out for each other.”
I shrugged, feeling I may as well have been in the interrogation room.
“Watch out for each other to an insane degree, I think.” He sat back a little in his chair. “It struck me as odd at the time,” he continued. “Mr. Miller seemed like a regular man. Some run-ins with a few of the officers now and then, but nothing on him, really. And then he’s caught for a B&E and for assaulting a woman in her home.” He paused giving me a chance to add something if I chose to, I supposed. I kept my mouth shut.
“And then this elaborate escape from the transport to Ashdale, just before they arrived in the city.”
I looked at him, trying to keep my face in check. That woman had not been assaulted by Freddy, but by her boyfriend, who had terrible problems controlling his ability. She’d never seen it coming. She’d actually thought it was Freddy, and he’d protected the guilty party who we’d managed to get help after that. He’d gotten better. Why would I wreck that by saying something? And Freddy was safe. Not here, unfortunately, but safe.
“You misspoke,” Hansen continued. “You and Liz. You both knew him. Knew about this. Didn’t you?”
Hansen didn’t even sound angry now. That was almost worse. At least you knew where you had him when he was angry. He was right, though. I’m not denying that. He had a knack for collecting odd pieces of information and connecting them. But I couldn’t tell him anything. It would put others in jeopardy. Those who had helped Freddy escape.
“I can tell you this,” I said, keeping my voice level. “If I go across the street and rob the deli…I will have to face that.” No one would help me out if I committed a crime like that. The Community would be okay with the police dealing with it. “But if…say…little Eloise kills someone by literally scaring t
hem to death because she can’t control herself…well, that’s a different matter altogether.” We would do everything we could to help her. If she was an adult and did it on purpose? Not so much. We might actually have to stop her ourselves. Not a type of job I appreciated.
Hansen sat still, drumming his fingers on the desk while thinking. He did not look happy. Seemed he couldn’t get the answers he most wanted about us. It dawned on me that if it turned out we couldn’t trust him, then he might become a job like that himself. I also realized that I didn’t want that to happen. Nothing so asinine as my attraction to him being the reason. No. He wasn’t a bad person despite us all hating his job. He was trying to help. It was only that he went about it in a different way.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m trying to make some sense of this. And Mr. Miller here”—he indicated Freddy’s photo with his thumb—“he was like you, wasn’t he?”
I kinda saw where he was going. At least, I thought I did. It didn’t seem like he was out to gather evidence, more like he wanted to understand. But I couldn’t know that for sure.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said instead of giving a proper answer. I got a bad feeling in my gut, but I’d said it now. Him looking let down didn’t sway me. He shook his head, then glanced to my right and pressed the escape key, Freddy’s file and photo vanished from the screen.
I turned to see Chief Mulligan descending on us, her long dark hair gathered in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, making her look more severe than she was. Still, the look on her face didn’t exactly radiate daffodils and bunnies.
“Good to see I’m not two detectives down,” she said by way of greeting Hansen. “Routledge found your car parked in a random street last night…oh, and no phone.” She folded her arms and looked expectantly at him. Apparently, they’d tried calling him.
“Well, you told me to go investigate her,” he said and pointed at me as if she didn’t see me sitting right next to her. “Didn’t turn out like expected.”
I looked up at her, which made us both uncomfortable, and smiled. “I broke his phone,” I lied. “Dropped it in my coffee.”
For some reason, she could believe that. “Okay,” she said. Hansen did not contradict me. That was something after our interrupted conversation. Or interrogation. Whatever that had been.
“Well,” she continued, “since she’s sitting here I guess I was right and you were wrong?”
An almost invisible twitch fluttered across his mouth. “She wasn’t involved, no…she was the intended target.”
Mulligan looked down at me and then averted her eyes. Like Hansen, she had assumed I listened in all the time. I had never corrected her. I had helped with her kid, and to do that I’d had to convince her I could. After that, she had managed what the FBI could not–make use of me.
Still, she didn’t trust me, nor I her, for that matter. She was a cop after all. I wasn’t surprised that she had told Hansen to investigate my involvement in the kidnapping. What had surprised me was that she’d kept this away from the detectives who were actually on Andrea’s case.
“Why was she the target?” the chief asked.
Hansen looked at me, and I shrugged. “She knows.”
“Because of the…thought thing,” he told Mulligan, looking like he couldn’t believe he was saying those words to his boss, let alone to any other human being.
“Oh,” was Mulligan’s answer. Very eloquent. Funny the effect you have on people sometimes. Making the police uncomfortable has to be considered a bonus, though.
“Okay,” I said, impatient to be out of the station. This conversation was going too slow. “They’re after me because they want to use me.” I deliberately looked at Mulligan at that. She was, after all, doing the same thing. “They took Andrea by mistake.”
“How are Mel and Rick getting on with the case?” Hansen asked.
Mulligan shook her head. “They’re not. No traces other than what was found on the farm. Nothing. It’s like they disappeared from the face of the earth. And that FBI agent doesn’t seem very invested in the case, either.” She sighed at this, lowering her eyes a moment. “We may have to face facts soon. It could be that we won’t find her.”
I couldn’t help folding my arms and looking down myself at that. Her words stung me more than I liked. I had failed Andrea so badly.
“Unless you two have something to share?” Mulligan continued. “If they were after you?” She glanced at me.
I shook my head before Hansen could say anything. We couldn’t start talking about the Community and what they were doing. Or Yorov’s involvement. She didn’t know anything about that, and it wouldn’t help the police anyway. It certainly didn’t seem to be helping us.
“You must at least know who’s behind it?” she pressed. “How else would you know they’re after you?”
Damn cops, using their thinking boxes.
“A foreign company looking to further their business with corporate espionage,” Hansen said as he decided to give her something. “Wouldn’t you use her for that, too?”
“She already is, in a way,” I volunteered.
“I need to know whether or not to take this to Kaye and Bowman,” Mulligan continued, ignoring me. Maybe that wasn’t just Hansen? Maybe it was a police thing?
“If you do that, they’ll have to know everything,” Hansen said, glancing over at said detectives’ empty desks. “God knows I’ve been spending too much time running around blind.” He looked at me but said nothing more. The underlying jab about my secrecy was not lost on me.
“Please don’t do that,” I said and turned to look at her. “It has led us nowhere and won’t help them, either.”
Man, was she uncomfortable under my direct stare. I couldn’t blame her. But I didn’t want to be exposed to any more people, let alone cops.
Mulligan looked at me with clear skepticism, lips pursed sideways a little as she considered my plea. Finally, she turned to Hansen. “What do you think?”
Apparently, I was not to have a say in this. I could try and run away, of course. I turned back in my seat.
“Let them live in ignorant bliss if you ask me,” Hansen said to my utter surprise. He’d wanted to involve his colleagues the whole time. “She’s right. Knowing she’s the intended target won’t help them any, and they will want to know why.”
“We can convince them easily enough,” Mulligan said. “That is…you can,” she told me.
Hansen suddenly tried hard not to smile. “I bet you she’s already thinking of escape routes out of here to avoid that.”
I didn’t deny it. Only sat in silence, pondering how the hell Hansen had known that, while hearing the chief exhale. She couldn’t force me to prove I could listen in. If I didn’t cooperate, she would look like a fool. Worse, actually. She would seem like she’d lost her marbles. Not a good way to keep your job. At that point, I couldn’t help but smile a little, noticing Hansen giving me a sideways stare. Only because he’d helped, didn’t mean he agreed with me.
“Fine,” I heard Mulligan say, though I had lost interest by now. “But if you find out anything—”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Hansen agreed before she took her leave of us and headed for her office.
So, he’d helped me. But why? Because he knew I was his way to find Andrea? It had to be. He knew I wouldn’t cooperate with any more cops. This was the only way to keep tabs on me. Well, judging by Eddie’s time estimate, no cop in Ashport would be keeping tabs on me for much longer.
“So?” he asked, interrupting my train of thought. I looked at him, raising my eyebrows.
“You sure you have nothing to share regarding Freddy Miller?”
Oh, so we were back there again. Not one to let things go, this one. Nope. He was like a dog with a bone when on to something.
“You might have given me a hand with Mulligan,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll start sharing information I didn’t have before.”
He gave me
an absolute blank stare for a moment before he logged off his computer and stood up. “Come on,” he said. “School’s almost out.”
I practically jumped out of the chair, having momentarily forgotten the little girl we were supposed to look out for. Normally, that would have made me feel guilty, but my head was wrapped up in too many problems at that time. One of them showing its smug face a couple of seconds later.
Chapter 14
As I followed Hansen toward the entrance, our way was blocked by an impeccable dark suit, with a seemingly unhurt agent inside it.
“Going somewhere?” Agent Larkin asked as we were forced to stop.
“Agent Larkin,” I said, smiling wide. “How're your balls? Come down again yet?”
I wondered how it must have been waking up on Highfield Ridge in the middle of the night, hurting and confused. The agent’s eyes did not look kindly at me.
“A word?” he simply said and indicated the closest interrogation room with a nod of his head. The tone of his voice told us we didn’t have much of a choice. Not if we wanted to avoid any attention.
“Sure,” Hansen said and headed in. I followed him and stepped into what felt like a well-known stage for me. I’d been in these rooms enough times by now, always playing a role that wasn’t quite true to what I could really do.
In silent agreement, Hansen and I stepped over to the table, taking the cops’ side of it, leaving Larkin with the other side. I saw an amused smile on his face as he simply sat down there, making no fuss about it. No handcuffs for him, though.
Now that I saw him in a lighted room, and not the darkness of night, I could see the muscled body hiding under that suit. He was strong, I’d experienced that myself, but he was quicker than he looked as well. I was suddenly aware of the bruises from my second meeting with the man. They still hurt, a dull ache in my shoulder and back, and had to be starting to show by now.
Larkin didn’t seem in a hurry to say anything, which bothered me. We had an hour until Eloise would leave the school. The plan had been to be there well in advance of that. Now, of course, that might all go down the drain.
