by Pat White
That smile encouraged him to spill it all to this group. Scary thing, friendship.
Is that what this was?
“It started with scribblings on a check at the restaurant,” Jeremy started. “At first I thought it was for Mr. Weddle. It read abandoned, lost and betrayed. Next, I received a copy of an old newspaper clipping of a case I’d worked at Scotland Yard and I received a surprise gift, a mousetrap, with a note that read,
Abandoned by his own father. How does it feel?
Then, last night I got a call—”
“Wait,” Mercedes interrupted. “The guy almost ran him down in the street yesterday and we nearly got run off the road on our way to Mountain View.”
Max narrowed his eyes at Jeremy.
“We don’t know the vehicle incidents are related,” Jeremy said.
“Sure, we don’t,” she shot back.
“Who’s telling this story?”
“Fine, fine.” She put up her hand.
“Last night I got a phone call ordering me to meet at Carver’s Cove. I heard a child whimpering, went to investigate and tripped on something. The assailant jumped me from behind. After Agent Ramos chased him off, we found a tape recorder with the child’s voice and a skeleton.”
“Wearing a name tag that read, Jeremy Barnes,” she added.
He shot her another warning glare.
“When he pinned me to the ground, he said it was about eighteen years of vengeance. I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about.”
“Eddie,” Max said, without missing a beat. “Search through records of Agent Barnes’s arrests and convictions. See who was sentenced to an eighteen-year term.”
“On it, sir. What about the pedophile search?”
“Ramos, call Agent Sykes and see if he can follow up on the pedophile angle.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Next, I don’t want Barnes leaving this office,” Max said.
Jeremy’s heart sank. He’d be shackled to a desk when he needed to be out there, finding the boy.
“Unless he has a bodyguard,” Max added. “Ramos and Finn. You’re assigned to Barnes. You’ll be like the Three Musketeers.”
“I’d rather not put other agents in danger,” Jeremy said. Finn could take care of himself, but Jeremy did not want anything to happen to Mercedes because she was in the way.
Like last night? She’d taken care of herself and saved him, as well.
With his training he should have been able to save himself, but he’d been focused on a child’s cries for help. Blast, he was starting to lose his perspective, letting the emotion of his case get to him.
“Agents are trained to defend themselves,” Max said. “Where is the skeleton?”
“At Carver’s Cove. I took the note.” Barnes pulled out the note card with his name on it. “I also found a cigarette butt.”
“Spinelli, you make any friends yet?” Max asked.
“As in forensic friends? Actually, I have.”
“Good, you know what to do.” Max motioned for Jeremy to give the evidence to Spinelli.
“All right, two teams, two cases. Team A is Barnes, Ramos and Finn. Team B is Templeton, Clarke, Spinelli and Malone. Everyone has their assignments. We’ll meet back at four to get ready for the drop.”
Someone knocked on the office door. Being closest, Mercedes got up and opened it. Two uniformed police officers stepped inside.
“Jeremy Barnes?” one of the officers said.
“Yes?”
“You’ll need to come with us.”
Chapter Eight
Stunned, Jeremy didn’t know what to say. The police wanted to speak with him?
“I’m Max Templeton, Mr. Barnes’s employer.” Max took a few steps toward them, leaning on his cane. “What’s this about, officer?”
The man put up his hand. “Please, sir, we’ve been ordered to bring Mr. Barnes to the station.”
“What’s the charge?” Max pushed.
“He’s not being charged. The chief needs to ask him some questions.”
In a daze, Jeremy walked to the door. Mercedes stepped up beside him.
The lead officer blocked her path. “Only Mr. Barnes.”
“I’m his partner,” she said. “He doesn’t go anywhere without me.”
“Or me,” Bobby Finn stood.
“It’s okay,” Jeremy said, motioning for Bobby to sit back down.
“I’m going,” Mercedes said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” She pushed past them and opened the door. “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do and you’re using up our precious time.”
The lead officer’s lips set in a thin line. He was frustrated, but knew better than to argue. Jeremy actually welcomed her protective gesture.
One of the officers opened the back door to the squad car. Mercedes got in and Jeremy slid in beside her. He noticed she looked a little pale.
“You all right?” he queried.
“Sure, sure.” She waved him off.
“Officer?” Jeremy said. “Why the cloak and dagger routine? Can’t you tell me what this is about?”
“We were following up on a lead in the Weddle case and found some suspicious items.” He glanced at the driver, then over his shoulder at Jeremy. “You’ll see them when we get to the station. The chief wants to conduct the interview.”
“Have I been implicated in a crime?” He wondered if that was his stalker’s new strategy.
“No, sir. Not directly.”
Jeremy glanced at Mercedes, who was deep in concentration. Or was she having some kind of anxiety attack?
“Mercedes?”
She didn’t answer, just stared out the window.
She’d balled her hand into a fist between them. He placed his hand over it to comfort her. She didn’t look at him, didn’t seem to notice the touch.
They drove a few more blocks in silence, Jeremy trying to make sense of the latest development.
The officer parked behind an old brick house. The second officer opened Mercedes’s door and she practically sprung from the car. Jeremy followed and they went into the back entrance of the police station.
“Please wait here,” the lead officer said, opening a door to a room with large table in the center.
Jeremy and Mercedes sat on the far side of the table.
“We’ll get the chief,” the officer said, and shut the door.
“Think they locked it?” he asked, half joking.
“Very funny,” she muttered. She paced the interrogation room.
“What happened to you in the squad car?”
Her gorgeous brown eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“Something was troubling you.”
“I don’t like police cars.”
“But you were a police officer for seven years.”
“Long story.” She sat down and faced him. “Do you think this is about your stalker?”
“Possibly.”
“Be careful how you answer them,” she advised. “They have ways to make you say things to incriminate yourself.”
“I know. I’m one of them remember?”
She sighed. “I don’t like this.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Neither have ninety percent of the criminals we’ve sent to prison, or so they say.”
The door opened and a rather husky man in a navy suit walked in. “I’m Chief Ivars,” he said.
“Jeremy Barnes.” He shook the chief’s hand. “This is my partner, Mercedes Ramos. We’re private investigators hired by the Weddles to help find their son.”
The chief motioned for them to sit and he positioned himself across the table. “I’ll be honest, Mr. Barnes. We don’t like people messing with our investigation, neither does the FBI.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
He narrowed his blue-gray eyes at Jeremy as if trying to make out his character. “We found something near Meyer�
��s Creek that’s puzzling, to say the least. We’d like to show it to you.”
“Of course.”
“Kyle?” the chief called.
An officer brought in an evidence bag. With gloved hands, he opened the bag and pulled out a beat-up nylon backpack.
“We’re not sure what it means, so we’d like your thoughts,” the chief said. He nodded to his officer.
The officer pulled a thick blue folder from the backpack. Opening it, he slipped out a piece of paper and placed it in front of Jeremy, then another and another. Jeremy’s heart slammed against his chest. They were photocopies of newspaper stories revolving around SCI or Blackwell and all with Jeremy’s name highlighted in yellow.
They were in sequential order, from a case dated six months ago, up until the Crimson Killer case in Chicago. Jeremy struggled with anger and rising panic. The officer pulled out the last article. The headline read, Billionaire’s Son Missing.
Jeremy pushed back in his chair and paced to the window overlooking the parking lot. God, did his stalker have something to do with the boy’s disappearance? A way to get Jeremy’s full attention? How could he know Blackwell would take the case?
“Mr. Barnes,” the chief said.
Six months ago. What case had Jeremy been working on six months ago? Had he screwed up? Sent someone to prison and a family member was out for revenge?
“Jeremy?”
He turned at the sound of Mercedes’s voice. She shot him a half smile. He could tell it was forced. He was in trouble, or had caused trouble and now he’d have to expose his personal problems to the local police.
“Last night,” he started, “I was lured out onto the beach and assaulted. I don’t know who he was or what I’ve done, but he made it clear he wants me dead.”
The officer looked at the chief.
“It’s true,” Mercedes said. “I followed him out there and saw the man try to strangle Jeremy. I scared him off.”
“And what about this?” The chief motioned to his officer who placed a small photograph to the table.
Phillip.
Jeremy’s blood ran cold.
He pulled out his wallet and rifled through it, but the photograph of Jeremy with his best friend, Phillip McDevish, was gone. It was staring back at him from the table.
“He took it from my wallet?” He looked at Mercedes. “Yesterday morning, when you came to get me, my room was ransacked and my wallet was open. It was him. The bastard drugged me and broke into my room. Some cash was missing, but I’d thought I’d lost track,” he hesitated. “I didn’t notice the photograph of Phillip and me had been taken.”
“He drugged you?” the police chief said.
“He was barely able to stand yesterday morning,” Mercedes confirmed. “We thought he had the flu.”
She no longer thought him a drunk. Something had definitely shifted in their partnership.
“Who would do this, Mr. Barnes?” the chief asked.
He shook his head, staring at the photograph. Phillip, his best friend. The boy who’d been truly lost.
“We’re working on that,” Mercedes offered. “Part of our team is looking into his old cases to figure out who’s been stalking Jeremy.”
“Do you have any leads on who owns the backpack?” Jeremy asked.
“We’ve dusted everything inside for prints, no matches yet,” the chief said. “In the meantime, we think it’s best if you keep your distance from the Weddle case. We don’t need the complications.”
Jeremy clenched his jaw and nodded. It was a reasonable request. But a boy was lost and needed him and he couldn’t do a thing about it. Just like—
“No problem, sir,” Mercedes said. “We’ve got plenty of other cases for Agent Barnes to work on.”
What in the queen’s name was she talking about?
“There’s something else.” Ivars pulled a diary from the backpack. “There are notes in here about the Weddle case. Is it yours?”
Jeremy eyed the leather-bound diary. “No.”
“Your name is scribbled in a few spots, along with itineraries, train schedules. Something about a tube.”
“The public transport system in London,” Jeremy said. “He’s definitely British, in which case you’ll want to connect with Scotland Yard to match fingerprints. I’ve got contacts there if you need them.”
“Good. Kyle, get him a pair of gloves,” the chief ordered, then addressed Jeremy. “Why don’t you look through the journal, see if you can make sense of it.”
They shook hands. “Take your time. My deputy will ask a few more questions, take an official statement and then you’re free to go.”
“Thank-you,” Jeremy said.
Ivars left the diary, but packed up the rest of the evidence, including the photograph of Jeremy and Phillip. Jeremy started to object, wanting it back. But it was evidence that might lead to the stalker or the kidnapper. Could he be one in the same? Jeremy couldn’t stand the fact he might be responsible for the boy’s kidnapping.
“I will not let him ruin my case,” he muttered.
“It’s not just your case,” Mercedes said. “And you should be more worried about saving your butt, don’t you think?”
“Why do you care about my butt all of the sudden?” he asked.
The officer returned with a pair of gloves and left them alone. Jeremy paged through the diary, Mercedes looking over his shoulder.
“Look at this.” He pointed to a page about the Crimson Killer. “It’s as if he were trying to solve the case.”
“Or he’s the killer.”
Jeremy glanced into her brown eyes. “The killer was a woman.”
“Your stalker could be a woman.”
“What, the bloke that pinned me to the sand?”
“Good point.” She studied the diary. “So, he’s stalking you and trying to solve your cases, like he’s trying to prove something.”
“I thought he simply hated me and wanted me dead.”
“No, not dead. He wants something more than that.”
“What?”
“He wants to make you squirm.”
THEY SPENT THE MORNING going through the journal, answering questions and making an official statement.
Mercedes should be resentful that she’d lost four hours at the police department with Jeremy, but she wasn’t. Jeremy’s situation was serious and she knew the rest of the Blackwell team had to be focused on finding Lucas.
When they returned to the Command Center, they updated Max on the materials found by police. He assigned Jeremy and Mercedes the chore of going through Barnes’s old case files to uncover leads to the stalker’s identity.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” Jeremy said across the desk from her.
She glanced up from the file in her hand. She noticed an edge to his usually controlled demeanor.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Besides, I want to help.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I mean, why are you always so defensive?”
“Look who’s talking,” he said.
“Yeah, so I’m an expert on being defensive so I know when you’re being defensive.”
“I’m not used to relying on people,” he admitted.
“Me, neither.”
“We have something in common.”
“Seems like it.” It suddenly struck her that they were very alike in some ways—independent and stubborn. But that’s where it ended. This man worked from a place of extreme control and detachment.
In her early twenties Mercedes realized that if you were detached, you didn’t feel anything at all, including the good stuff. You might as well be dead.
Although a reserved man, Jeremy had opened up last night after the attack and again this morning when he’d eyed the photograph of the two boys. Yet he hadn’t shown much emotion when she’d accidentally kissed him last night. That whole episode had been freakin’ weird. It was as if her head had moved against her will.
Dios mio! M
aybe Mami was right. Maybe Mercedes’s clock was ticking and she needed a man. But work wasn’t the place to find one.
She glanced at Jeremy who studied a document in his hand. For someone in such control, she’d seen incredible sadness in his eyes when he’d looked at the photograph of the two boys.
“Who was that boy in the photograph?” she asked.
“What, you didn’t recognize me?”
“I did, although you’ve changed.” Boy had he. The kid in the photo was skinny and goofy looking. Nothing like the handsome, refined man who sat across the desk from her.
“Who was the other boy?”
Jeremy took a deep breath. “His name was Phillip.”
“Was?”
“We were best friends in grade school.”
“And?”
“And nothing. We lost touch.”
She sensed there was more to it. “If I’m going to help you I need to know things, like why the stalker would steal that photograph from your wallet. Why not your credit cards?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me about Phillip. Maybe there’s a connection.”
“There isn’t.”
“You sure?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he glanced through some papers.
She wasn’t going to push, but it really would help her to know as much as possible about his life, his career…his loves.
Well, maybe not his loves.
“It was eighth grade,” he started. “We were in the park playing football. Mum didn’t like me playing football because she thought I’d get all bloody.”
“Aw, she was worried about you, how sweet.”
“She was afraid I’d bleed on her carpet.”
He’d said it so matter-of-factly. Yet he had to be hurt by his mother caring more about carpeting than her son.
She studied his profile but couldn’t get a read on what he was feeling.
“Phillip and I were kicking around a football when these older boys came by wanting to join in. Phillip and I weren’t easy with people, more the awkward types,” he glanced at her. “I know you find that hard to believe.”
She smiled.
“Anyway, the other boys started playing rough. I couldn’t come home all bloody, so I told Phillip we should leave. But he liked the attention from the older boys. I begged Phillip to leave with me. They started calling me names, Phillip joined in, so I left. About seven that evening his mum rang our house wanting to know where he was. I told her he’d stayed at the park with some friends. She asked why I’d left him. I said I’d had homework.”
