by Aaron, Celia
He stayed upright, and his clunky steps echoed behind me as I followed Arabella to the conference room.
She was already back at the board, the marker in her hand. I yanked my chair out and sat, the movement waking Porter from his nap.
“What’d I miss?” He stretched and yawned.
I didn’t respond. I was too busy unpacking what had just happened between Arabella and me. Just the memory of her on that desk had blood rushing to parts south. I shifted in my seat and tried to get a handle on the tangle of emotions inside me. Logic tried to have its say, reminding me that I was in the midst of a stressful and traumatic situation, which could be the reason for my unexpected feelings for Arabella. But that reasoning was hollow. There was something far deeper that resonated between us.
Logan limped in and collapsed in a chair next to Porter. He tried to cover his huffing and puffing with a cough, but he was clearly winded. Good. Maybe he would hold off on any more attacks.
“What’s that number?” Porter stared at the digits from the card in Letty’s hand.
“We don’t know.” Arabella backed up a step. “Could be the digits for an electronic safe, maybe some sort of code. Too many digits for coordinates, too many digits for an analog safe—it doesn’t fit anything we can find on the Internet.”
I had the urge to pull her into my lap.
She pointed at it. “It was written on the card Letty had in her hand when she was killed.”
“It’s familiar.” Porter leaned back and rubbed the stubble along his jaw.
Everyone in the room seemed to stop breathing and stare at him.
“Familiar how?” Arabella urged.
Porter stared for a few more moments. “It’ll come to me. Give me a minute.”
Charlotte shook her head and returned to her papers. “Typical.”
“Let me think.” Porter let his head loll on his shoulders, his eyes clenched shut in concentration.
Arabella hadn’t moved, her attention on Porter. I grabbed another file. More likely than not, Porter had no idea what the number was. I had faith in my brother, but not on subjects involving numbers, math, or clues in a murder investigation.
“Logan, how’s your leg?” Charlotte asked from her seat on the floor.
“Apparently well enough to start a stupid fight,” Arabella snapped.
“Huh?” Charlotte looked up from her papers.
“Nothing.” Arabella returned to the board.
Logan glowered and swung his leg up on the chair next to him. “It’s fine. I’ll heal up in no time. Thanks for asking. At least someone around here cares.”
Arabella whirled on him. “You’re being a baby. A jealous, stupid baby!”
“Yeah?” He leaned forward. “I can’t say what you’re being in mixed company.”
“That’s enough.” I stayed in my seat, my hands clasped in front of me. “You say another word to her like that and I will toss your sorry ass out of here.”
“You and what army, prick? I don’t care if my leg is fucked up, I can still kick your ass six ways from Sunday.”
“Try me.” I pushed my chair back and rose. His jealousy routine was going to come to a halt, and I couldn’t wait to be the one to end it.
“Knock it off, both of you.” Arabella stepped between us.
“If you’re going to fight, do it outside.” Charlotte motioned to various stacks of papers. “If you mess up my property research, I might just shoot the both of you.”
Logan struggled to his feet. “I’d be happy to take this piece of shit outside. Come—”
“Property research.” Porter rocketed to his feet, ignored the simmering tension, and walked to the board. He tapped the numbers from Letty Cline. “Property research!” His triumphant tone momentarily stunned the rest of us.
“The fuck is wrong with your brother?” Logan leaned back in his chair.
“Don’t you see?” Porter snatched the marker from Arabella and drew dashes between a few of the numbers. “I think that one goes there. I don’t remember all the way. Anyway, you get the idea, right?” He snapped the lid back on the marker.
“Porter, if you don’t explain what you’re on about, I may strangle you.” Charlotte rubbed her eyes.
“It’s a place.” He tossed the marker in the air and caught it.
“No, I told you, too many digits to be coordinates.” Arabella frowned.
“Not coordinates.” Porter walked to the table and pulled Charlotte’s laptop over to him. “When I was working as a process server, I had to find people on properties all over the state. There’s a county database with addresses and stuff for property taxes, crap like that, but those are county-specific.”
“So?” I scooted over to see what he was typing.
“So, when you have the correct credentials.” He grinned. “Sheriff and all. There’s another database that the state maintains on properties. It’s for taxes, too. But you can only get into it if you are a certain sort of state employee.”
“Like you?”
“Actually, no.” He pulled up a login screen and typed in his personal email address. “It has a listing of every property in Mississippi, and it uses its own number identification thing. Something to do with how the revenue department evaluates this or that or something or other. Not sure. But it’s an internal state system. The number on Letty’s card is from there.”
“If the system’s only available to a handful of state employees, how did you get into it?”
His grin grew even wider. “When I was a process server, there was this hot clerk in Jackson at the Secretary of State’s office—that’s who keeps the records. And let’s just say I took her out for a nice dinner, let her get some special treatment from the prince, and then—”
“The prince?” Arabella cocked her head to the side.
I winced as she fell right into his trap. He’d concocted this line when we were teens, and he’d used it on every unsuspecting female since then.
“The prince, Arabella. I’m the King, so the big bastard down below, he’s the prince.”
Arabella rolled her eyes.
“You’re an idiot.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “What’s the password?”
“Not sure.” He tried something.
Error.
Tried something else.
Error. And a little message popped up that he only had two more tries before he was locked out.
“Slow down.” Arabella’s voice kicked up an octave.
“Concentrate.” I clasped my fingers together.
“Let me try—” He typed deliberately, then hit enter.
Error.
“Think, Porter!” Nothing in the history of humankind could stress a person out more than a screen saying a lockout was imminent.
“I am! I tried all my usual ones. Prince69. BigPrince. MegaPrince.”
“I’ve never been happier that I wasn’t born with a dick than I am at this very second.” Charlotte stood and crowded behind Arabella and me.
“Shh.” Porter’s brow furrowed. “I’m trying to think.”
He typed a few letters, then erased them.
“Nothing comes to mind?” I wiped my sweat mustache.
“I’ve got one more I use sometimes, yeah. But I don’t know if I capitalize it or not on this one.”
“What happens if it locks us out?” Arabella peered around Porter.
“I don’t know. It just says contact tech support, but they won’t be open until the morning.”
“Fuck.” Logan winced as he shifted in his chair.
“You can do this, Porter.” I tried for a supportive tone.
“Right. I got this.” He took a deep breath and typed slowly. His finger hovered over the Enter button as we held our breath.
Hesitating for a moment, he swallowed audibly, then clicked the key. The screen began to redirect.
“I’m in!” Porter clenched his fist. “Yes!”
I clapped him on the back right when the words “Error! Con
tact technical support to reset your password” appeared onscreen.
30
Arabella
“Come on, baby. I need you.”
I stared at Porter as he sweet talked the clerk from the Secretary of State’s office.
“I know it’s late. I know, but I need your help.” His voice was low and smooth. It was likely the same voice he’d used to trick the clerk into helping him the first time. “I haven’t been in Jackson. That’s the only reason why—” He leaned back in his chair, balancing on the rear legs. “No, baby. I swear. If I had been in Jackson, I would have called you up first thing.”
Logan grunted as he tried to reposition his leg.
“Does it hurt bad?” I threw him a bone, even though I was still pissed at him for butting into whatever was going on between Benton and me.
“It’s been better. But at least I’ll have a story to tell about being shot in the line of duty.” A ghost of Logan’s cocky smile crossed his lips.
“Maybe you should go home. Get some rest.”
“No way. Not when we’re this close.”
Porter gripped the edge of the table as he held the phone away from his ear. “She’ll do it,” he mouthed with a wink.
“Doesn’t sound like it.” I eyed his phone, a voice still squawking from it.
He put it back to his ear. “You remember that thing I did? That thing with my tongue that had you making squirrel noises?” He paused for a reply. “That’s what you’re gonna get the next time I’m in Jackson.”
Charlotte rose. “If I have to hear any more of this, I will definitely barf.” She walked out and pushed through the doors to the lobby.
Benton sat quietly, his ears attuned to Porter’s conversation as his eyes followed me while I paced in front of the whiteboard.
Porter tapped a few keys. “Yeah. I’m there. Okay, I can wait.” He fell silent, and I pulled a chair over and sat beside him.
Ringing echoed through the squad room. Chief Garvey’s phone had been going off every hour or so. I finally asked dispatch who kept calling. It was the mayor and the DA, and I had zero interest in talking to either of them. I’d save that for Chief Garvey when he returned.
Porter tapped a few more keys. “That’s it. Thank you so much, baby. I’ll be seeing you soon. Keep it warm for me.”
Benton held up his hand and circled his finger in a “hurry up” motion. Porter said his goodbyes, then got down to business on the laptop, his thick fingers moving carefully.
“It was Prince69 all along. I should have known that one.” He clicked on a link to the property database, then clicked to search by unique identifier. “Okay, what’s the number?”
I read off the code from the board for him. When he hit enter, I held my breath.
“We got one hit.” He pointed to the sole search result.
“What is it?” Benton leaned closer.
Porter clicked on the tab. “It’s a piece of property here in the county. A big plot of land, mostly timber.”
Charlotte hurried back in. “Did you get it?”
“Yeah.” I scoured the property information until I came to a number that matched the local county plat designations. “Charlotte, see which property matches 658-342-33.”
She plopped on the floor and began searching through her records.
“It looks like this one stayed in the name of the original LLC.” Benton pulled the laptop closer to him. “Why didn’t they buy and sell this one like the others?”
I stood and began pacing in front of the board again. “Maybe to fly under the radar with this one? Maybe there’s something there that they didn’t want looked at.”
“I’ve got it.” Charlotte pulled a stapled packet of documents from one of her piles. “It looks like Dad bought it at a tax foreclosure sale a few years ago.”
My hackles rose as more puzzle pieces snapped into place. “Did it originally belong to Theodore Brand?”
She flipped the page. “That’s right. He was the previous owner. How did you know?”
I snapped off the top of the marker and wrote the property information beneath the state identifier. “I interviewed Mr. Brand as a possible suspect in the murders. I didn’t think he was our guy.”
“You should have let me play bad cop with him.” Logan shook his head.
“No. I still don’t think he’s our guy.” I tossed down the marker. “But I overlooked the importance of his property. He lost it in a tax foreclosure, and Randall King bought it out from under him. When I went out to speak to Brand about it, he said that he’d attempted to go out to the property once he’d gotten out of prison, but there was a new gate along the front road. That tipped him off to the change in ownership. When he found out about the tax sale, he went to Randall, who then got a restraining order against him from Judge Ingles. After that, Brand let it drop. He told me he couldn’t afford to go back to prison, especially when, at the time, he had a daughter on the way. So, Judge Ingles and Randall King got the property free and clear for a pittance and managed to shut Brand up while they were at it.” I walked into the main squad room and grabbed my jacket and gun from my desk.
“Hold up.” Benton followed at my heels. “We need some sort of plan.”
“The plan is to get out to that property, find the man with the light eyes and Judge Ingles, arrest them, and make sure no one else dies.” I shrugged on my jacket.
“I’m coming.” Logan limped from the conference room.
“No. You need to stay here. I want you to call all the guys we got—pull Brody and everyone else—and send them out to the property. Tell them to give me a half-hour head start to keep it quiet, then hang at the entrance and around the edges. Stop anyone they see leaving. I don’t want anyone getting away.”
“I’m your partner. I should be the one who—”
“You’ll just slow me down.” I pointed to his leg.
He winced, and I knew I was being an asshole, but it didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t take him with me.
“We got this.” Porter pressed his hat onto his head. “Looks like this is a county matter anyway.”
“Arabella, come on.” Logan’s tone turned pleading.
“Stay here with Charlotte and wait for the chief to come back. When he gets here, let him know what’s going on. I expect to be bringing someone in tonight, maybe light eyes, maybe the judge, hopefully both. Get this place ready.”
Charlotte leaned on the conference room door frame. “I’m cool with staying here. Guns and danger aren’t exactly my strong suit.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Benton. “But make sure the man who killed our father gets what he deserves.”
“I will.” He nodded.
I would have given a speech about how we weren’t going to engage in vigilante justice, but they wouldn’t listen, and I didn’t have the time. I’d deal with any issues as they arose. “Let’s roll.” I strode into the lobby, feeling Logan’s fiery gaze on my back the entire way.
The frigid night air hit me like a wall as I walked outside. A cloudless sky overhead was pricked with stars and a low moon.
“I’ll ride with you.” Benton strode to my cruiser as Porter climbed into his SUV.
I cranked up the car, the engine grumbling to life as I palmed the cold steering wheel. “This tract is out on route seven. About half an hour away. See if you can pull up some satellite images from Google as we go. The more information we have, the better.”
He got to work on his phone as I pulled out of the station parking lot. The streets were deserted, everyone warm in bed on this brisk night. My thoughts wandered to Vivi—the way she always slept with her arms above her head, her sweet breaths steady as she dreamed. She didn’t know what sort of night existed beyond the comforting confines of her fluffy blankets. I wanted to keep it that way, to keep her safe and warm and unafraid. Because once you see what lives in the darkness, sleep will never come as easily again.
“Arabella.” Benton reached over and took my hand in his. “Are
you all right?”
“What do you mean?” I focused on the pavement ahead of us.
“I don’t know, you just looked so…lost, there for a second. What were you thinking about?”
His fingers were warm, his gaze even warmer. I’d opened up more to him in a few short days that I had to anyone else in years. But I still couldn’t give him what he was asking for—unfettered access to my thoughts, my feelings, my trust. And it wasn’t just because of what had happened with Dale. It was more that I didn’t have only myself to worry about. Vivi would always be the number one concern in my life.
“Just about the case.” Despite my reasoning and my justifications, the lie still tasted sour on my tongue.
“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, but he didn’t push. “The land is mostly pulpwoods with a few marshy acres along the back. Main road is off Route 9. Looks like there’s another way over towards Jones Ferry where it hits Route 9 close to the old sawmill.”
I let go of his hand and reached for the radio. “Porter, you there?”
“Right behind you.” His headlights had followed me steadily out of town.
“Can you go up Jones Ferry Road to get to Route 9? It’ll take you a little longer, but you can get onto the property without using the main road.”
“Sure thing. I’ll creep up and meet y’all in the middle.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I hung up the mic and gripped the wheel. If I took Benton’s hand again, another layer would melt inside me, and I couldn’t let that happen. He was already too close.
“Hey.” When he said it like that—softly, like he was speaking to me as we lay in a warm bed on a cold night like this—I had to take a breath.
“Yep?” I responded, a little too loudly.
He smiled—even though he was worn out, had a hell of a week, and was on the way to confront his father’s killer, he still managed a smile for me. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“You can’t kill the guy, you know.” I let him take my hand again.
He brought it to his lips and blew warm arm between our palms.
“Did you hear me?”
“I did.” His lips brushed the back of my hand.
