by Dave Daren
“I’m sure,” she said with narrowed eyes. “Well, his name is Jackson White. He’s been on the force for almost twenty years. Most of his jacket is pretty clean, though there were a few incidents when he was fresh out of the academy.”
“Perfect,” I said and then tilted my head in confusion when she refused to let the file go. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve known you for a long time, Hunter,” Alessia said. “And you always have a reason for everything. You asked about the car theft rings earlier this week, and now you’re asking about Officer White.”
“I am,” I said without answering her unasked question. I didn’t have enough on the car theft ring, yet, and until Dian brought me back the Ferrari, I had no intention of telling my district attorney friend anything more than she absolutely had to know.
“Hunter,” she sighed before she took a long swig of her cabernet. “Are they connected?”
“Well, there’s always the six degrees of connection,” I said with a smirk, but only received a frown from the gorgeous woman. “Alright, I can’t tell you much because I’m still looking into it. Just, keep Officer White in mind while you’re doing your investigations.”
“He has one of the cleanest records in the whole city,” the DA huffed and ran a hand through her thick curls. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that it’s all a cover?”
“Like I said, just keep an eye on him,” I said. “No one is ever that squeaky clean. At least not if they’ve been riding a patrol car for twenty years.”
“Not everyone is as ambitious as us,” Alessia said with a frown. “Alright, Hunter, I’ll let this slide for now. But if you find any solid evidence, you come to me first.”
“Sure,” I said with a grin. “That’s what friends are for.”
The waitress came back for our dessert order, and the beautiful district attorney let the subject drop for the moment. I told her all about my shopping trip to Nordstrom and the horrified saleswoman who found out that I didn’t know the difference between cashmere and wool. By the time the check came, Alessia was laughing and the stress she’d felt earlier seemed to melt away.
I walked her back out to her car and then gave her a goodnight kiss before I strolled over to my Mercedes. The taillight was still busted, but it was late enough that I thought I might be able to sneak back to Floral Park without being pulled over again. I doubted that Officer White would make a second traffic stop, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t send a friend to emphasize how much trouble I was in.
The entire drive back to my house I watched the rear-view mirror for any signs of a cop or a tail, but the roads were surprisingly empty, and soon I was pulling into my driveway. I parked in the garage and did my usual check through the security cameras before I stepped out of the car. Nothing moved in the shadows and none of the sensors went off, so I climbed out and headed into the house.
My raccoon nemesis must’ve decided to forage in a different trashcan for the night because he was nowhere to be found when I switched on the light to the backyard. I double-checked to make sure that the lids to the trashcans were on tight, and then reset the alarm so that if the striped bandit came back, I’d know immediately.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and turned on The Great British Baking Show as I settled in for a few hours of research. The file that Alessia had given me was full of praise from Officer White’s superiors, and I pulled up the file on my computer with all of the corrupt cops on the Serbians’ payroll just to compare names. I doubted that there would be too much overlap, but if someone was willing to take a bribe from one shady man, then they’d probably be willing to take another.
A few of the recommendations that I found were also on the Serbian payroll, but there wasn’t any obvious connection to Dian Pham or the Phoenix Import Company. Over all, it seemed like the Vietnamese man had no ties whatsoever with the NYPD except for a few donations that he’d made over the years. He didn’t even have citations or tickets.
Officer White was a little easier to work with since he’d been working the same beat for almost twenty years. It was a small neighborhood, mostly filled with people from various Asian backgrounds, but Dian lived on the upper east side. He probably had family in the area that connected him to the cop, but I was having a hard time putting them together.
I was sure that Dian had called Officer White the second that I left his office. That, or he’d called some middleman who sent the corrupt cop after my taillight. I just needed to find one piece of evidence that the two actually knew each other, but my brain was officially done for the night.
It was like someone had stuck a roll of cotton inside of my head where my mind was supposed to be, and no matter how many times I read the page in front of me, nothing was sticking in my memory. I gave up and saved all of the websites that I had open with the promise to myself that I’d look at them first thing in the morning.
My eyes had started to burn by the time I closed my laptop and set it down on the coffee table. The TV was still playing the cooking show, but I couldn't remember if it was still on the same season that I’d started with. The bakers all looked different, but I hadn’t been paying that much attention to them in the first place.
I turned everything off, brought my coffee cup into the kitchen, and then headed toward the bedroom as I turned off all the lights in the house. My bed called my name as I brushed my teeth, and I shuffled toward it with a tired yawn. I had every intention of sleeping late since Old Man Tony wouldn’t be around until the afternoon.
Gabriele had finally texted me with the time of my appointment about an hour earlier, and he’d included a list of all the equipment that the older man would bring with him so that I wouldn’t be shocked by how much he’d ordered. Old Man Tony was a little slower than the hacker, but he’d done a great job setting up the original stuff, and Anthony trusted him enough that he was in charge of the security system for everyone in the family. I was sure that the grouchy Italian would tell me that I was too paranoid, but Gabriele was right, I had a lot of enemies, and any one of them could pay a visit to the house.
The sensors and cameras in the attic would probably be a bit much, but the thought of someone hiding in my attic flashed across my mind, and I forced the fear and paranoia away until my heart went back to its regular rhythm. There wasn’t a boogeyman in the attic, just an asshole raccoon in the backyard.
I reached for the light next to my bed right as my phone started to buzz on the bedside table. It vibrated so hard that I had to lunge and catch it before it fell to the carpet. I stared at the screen for a few seconds with bleary eyes before I remembered to blink. The hieroglyphics on the screen resolved themselves into actual words, but they were not reassuring.
According to my phone, there was someone in my backyard.
Chapter 10
“What the fuck?” I whispered and forced myself up so that I could better look at the alert.
It took me a few seconds to put in my password and turn the alarm off, but I finally managed to blink away the tears from exhaustion and see what I was doing. I pulled up the video feed in my living room and on the back porch and watched to see if whoever set off the sensor was still there.
My heart raced as I navigated through the app that Gabriele had installed and made sure that I was watching the live feed. The only thing that I could see in the living room were shadows and the shapes of my furniture. I didn’t see anything out of place, but I still watched for a solid minute just to make sure that nothing moved.
I glanced at the backyard feed to see that everything was exactly how I’d left it, which proved to be the case, so I double-checked which sensor had been triggered. It was the one by the patio door, and I squinted at the screen to make sure I wasn’t missing anything when I went back over to the video and scanned through the last few minutes of footage. If someone had come into the backyard, then they’d managed to avoid the cameras.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and just listened to the noises of the
house. There were the usual creaks that always seemed to happen at night and made me think that there was something in the house with me. The ice machine kicked on so loud I nearly jumped out of my bed, but I didn’t hear the telltale sound of boots on tile. I forced myself to open my eyes back up, though my eyelids felt like sandpaper as another wave of exhaustion rolled over me.
It was probably just that damned striped bastard in my trashcans again, and if I didn’t stop him, then I’d have another disaster on the pool tarp when I woke up. The large plastic bins looked fine for the moment, and nothing seemed to be moving them, but I didn’t trust that furry little shit not to be in there digging around so I threw off my blankets and stood up right as my phone started to ring.
I slipped on a pair of gym shorts just in case there was an intruder that had stopped moving when they heard the alarm go off. The last thing I wanted was to be caught naked if I had to defend myself, and then I put in my earbuds before I answered the phone. I could hear loud rock music as soon as the line picked up, and I rushed to turn the volume down before my eardrums burst.
“Hey!” Gabriele chirped with his Monster-fueled energy. “I saw that the alarm went off. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said and slid my phone into the pocket of my shorts. “I’m about to go check. Pretty sure it’s nothing.”
“Just your burglar from earlier?” the hacker chuckled. “That thing is just asking to get shot.”
“It is,” I grabbed my Glock from the bedside table and then stumbled toward the living room while a yawn forced open my jaw.
I flipped on the overhead light and blinked in the sudden bright light that blinded me for a second. The living room was still completely empty, but I walked around anyway to make sure that no one had ducked down behind the kitchen counters or was hiding in the hallway to the garage. I’d lost the edge of fear that had pulsed through me when the alarm first went off and was irritated enough that if I saw the raccoon I might actually shoot it, neighborhood watch and the police be damned.
“Shit, dude,” the purple-haired man said, and I heard the squeak of his computer chair as he moved around. “You sound like you’re exhausted and it’s only midnight.”
“Most people are going to bed at that time,” I pointed out with another yawn.
“Right, right,” Gabriele said. “Well, from where I’m sitting, you’re in the all clear. The sensors that went off were by the back door and the fence. The windows and doors weren’t open, so I know for a fact that no one came in. But let me know if you see your raccoon. I think I’m going to call him Eddie. What do you think? He seems like an Eddie to me. Actually, I used to know a guy named Eddie. One of the best hackers that I ever knew. Had a bit of a caffeine addiction, though. I know, I know, pot calling the kettle black. But he got really into Bang energy drinks. He had one too many and just died. Right in his computer chair in the middle of a game. Tragic.”
“I think I’m going to call animal control first thing in the morning,” I responded when the hacker had finished his ramble.
The purple-haired man was definitely at least one Monster and a pack of Twizzlers into his night, and he was talking so fast that my tired mind was having trouble keeping up. I reached over to flick on the light to the back patio and scare off my intruder while Gabriele went on to talk about how the human Eddie had been found by the paramedics after they’d broken down his door. Apparently, one of his gamer friends called them after his avatar went still for over half an hour.
I stopped paying attention when I saw the folded white note that was taped to the sliding glass door. So I wasn’t so alone after all.
“Hunter?” the hacker said. “Bro, why does your face look like that? It’s just Eddie, right? What’s that on the window?”
“It’s a note,” I whispered and craned my neck to look around the vacant backyard. “It’s fine. I think whoever it was is gone.”
“I’m double-checking the video feeds,” the purple-haired man asked, and I vaguely recognized the sound of his mouse clicking as he zoomed in. “There’s nothing. Whoever was there must’ve seen the cameras. I really need to beef up your security. I can have Old Man Tony bring some of those tiny cameras that no one can see, that way if they avoid the bigger ones, then we’ll catch them on those.”
I unlocked the door and tugged it open to retrieve the folded piece of paper. The door squeaked when I closed it behind me, and I gripped my Glock a little tighter in my hand. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as I flipped open the note and tried to read the scratchy handwriting.
“Well, what the hell does it say?” Gabriele asked.“I can’t see from this angle. I really need to install a moving camera. I’ll add it to Big man Tony’s list.”
“How many cameras are you planning on having in my house?” I asked with a glance at the one in the corner of my living room.
“Enough to catch whoever snuck into your backyard,” the hacker retorted before he slurped his Monster loudly. “Now, stop stalling. What the hell does that note say?”
“It’s hard to make out,” I huffed and walked toward the kitchen where there was better lighting.
The message had been scribbled by someone with the worst handwriting that I’d ever seen, and I shifted the sheet of paper like looking at it from a different angle would help me read the illegible words.
“Of course, it is,” the purple-haired man huffed. “Leave it to a criminal to leave a note that you can’t read. Well, it’s gotta be a threat, right? Maybe that kid or the cop?”
“Give me a second,” I said. “Alright, I think I’ve got it.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense!” Gabriele shouted into my ears. “Should I call Hank? Am I about to witness a murder? I’ve never seen someone die… okay, not someone that I actually would mind seeing dead.”
“We’ll table that for later,” I muttered and shook my head at the implication that he’d seen other people die but just didn’t care enough to look away or do anything about it. “It says, ‘Mind your own business. Stop looking into the car theft ring, your boss has enough money to buy another Ferrari, and you don’t have enough lives to keep sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. You’re not a cat.’”
“Shit, shit, shit,” the hacker muttered. “Okay. I’m calling Hank. You call Anthony. Your gun is loaded, right? I’ll keep watching the feed to make sure that they don’t come back. I don’t see anyone on the front cameras. And there aren’t any cars on the street that look out of place. I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s a couple kids making out two houses down, but I doubt that they left the note. Although they could totally be the ones who left the note and are just using the makeout session as a cover to see your reaction.”
“Gabriele,” I said and ran a hand through my hair. “Take a deep breath. You’re rambling, and I need to think. Also, you are not going to be installing that many cameras in the house. Maybe a few extra on the outside, but I’m not a fan of being watched constantly. And you don’t want to check in and see my naked ass walking across the house. Because I will. Just out of spite.”
“Alright, alright,” the purple-haired man laughed so hard that he started coughing. “You’re right. Okay. I’ll just tell Old Man Tony about the break-in and the way they avoided the cameras. He’ll know what to do. He can make sure that there’s no bugs, too.”
“Perfect,” I muttered. “Sounds like a plan.”
I read the note over again. It had almost the same kind of language that Officer White had used when he’d threatened me, and it wouldn’t have been hard for the cop to find my address on the DMV database. I really wished that I’d held off submitting my change of address a little longer, but I didn’t want to give the NYPD any reason to pay more attention to me.
A loud bang came from the patio, and I spun around with my Glock ready to squeeze the trigger. I’d left the light on when I came to the kitchen, but I didn’t see anyone outside. The trashcan had been knocked over, and I padded closer to the glass door to see wh
at, or who, had knocked it over.
“What the fuck was that?” Gabriele shouted, and I heard him slurp more of his Monster down. “Man, this is like watching a real life horror movie.”
“Put the Monster down,” I huffed. “Do you see anything on the outside camera?”
“No,” the hacker said. “Wait! Oh, shit! It’s Eddie! I can see his fluffy little butt hanging out of the trashcan.”
I closed my eyes and laid my head against the cool glass. My heart was probably beating faster than the one that belonged to the caffeine-fueled hacker in my ear. I glared at the black trashcan as it rolled around a little, flicked off the light to the patio, and then strolled back over to the kitchen.
“I think I need a drink,” I said and yanked open my freezer door. “And I don’t have any alcohol.”
“You good, man?” the purple-haired man in my ear asked. “You look like a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” I said and shut the door. “Do you think it’s too late to order delivery?”
“It’s like two a.m., my dude,” Gabriele laughed. “You’re not in the city like you used to be. I don't think Floral Park has that kind of nightlife. Aren’t you going back to bed?”
“I don’t think I’m going to sleep until Old Man Tony’s finished putting in the upgrades,” I sighed. “I still need to call Anthony. Fuck yeah! I have leftover Chinese.”
“Always the perfect midnight snack,” the hacker said. “Especially if it’s low mein. You can toss that into a pan and fry it up so it’s got that crispiness.”
“You cook?” I asked and tugged the styrofoam container out.
“That’s the extent of my abilities,” the purple-haired man laughed. “I saw it on a Youtube video.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Do you ever go outside?”
“It’s overrated,” the purple-haired man replied like he’d heard that question before. “Do you think that I should call Hank? It seems like the intruder is gone. And he’s hella cranky when you wake him up.”
