There was only one other person eating at dinner the following evening. An older man with a salt and pepper beard and tired eyes. He was at the bar, drinking cup after cup of black coffee and every once berating the waitress who was pouring over an argument they’d apparently had earlier regarding whether or not he could smoke inside.
Stella and Anna had arrived early and there was no sign of Noah, so they took a booth near the door and soon Vee came by to take their orders.
“Hello again,” he said, smiling at Anna. “How are you ladies doing tonight?”
“Fine, thanks,” said Anna.
“Great, Vee!” said Stella. “How are you doing? How’s Joey?”
Vee sighed. “Oh, Joey and I are no longer a thing.”
“What? No!” Stella clasped her hands together. “But you two seemed so good together.”
Vee laughed and glanced at Anna. “She says this like she met the guy. I never even met the guy. We’ve just been talking online for a few months.”
“Why’d you two break up?” asked Stella.
“Oh you know, the usual. We wanted different things. I wanted a boyfriend and he wanted somebody to flirt with when his husband was away on business.”
“He was married!” Stella gawked at Anna across the table, who tried to muster some sort of surprised face as well, even though she really didn’t have any stake in the matter. “Oh no Vee, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I learned my lesson. If you think it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”
“That’s no way to live your life. You have a lot to offer, Vee, and you are going to find the right person someday.”
“Whatever you say.” He shook his head and held up the pot of coffee in his hand. “Coffee?”
Anna nodded and pushed her mug over towards him. Stella said no but asked him to bring her some orange juice when he got a chance.
Noah walked in a few minutes later, after the women had already ordered their meals and Anna was on her second cup of coffee.
“Hey!” he waved and Stella made room for him on her side of the booth. “Sorry I’m late. I had to run an errand real quick before coming here.”
“That’s okay,” said Stella. “We haven’t been waiting too long.”
“So,” he said. “What did you guys find out?”
“Nothing much,” said Anna. “All the books on myths and creatures in the library were so absurd and what they said of vampires didn’t sound like what we’re looking for. We found some stuff on the internet, people having similar experiences as the one Ellie describes, but that doesn’t really help us.”
Noah shrugged. “At least we know we aren’t the first people to have this theory.”
“What about you?” said Anna. “Did you talk to your mother?”
“She said she’d call me back,” said Noah. “I must’ve caught her at a bad time, I could hear my dad having one of his famous tantrums in the background.”
“Tantrums?” Anna smirked. “Is your dad a toddler?”
“He can be.”
Anna couldn’t tell whether Noah was joking or not, but she knew now wasn’t the time to get into Noah’s family dynamics.
Stella frowned. “I guess that means, for now, we have nothing.”
“Well,” said Noah. “Not nothing.”
Anna and Stella eyed him, waiting for him to continue.
“Don’t be mad,” he began. “But I may have done something that I wasn’t exactly supposed to do, but the good news is it totally worked out and everything is fine.”
“What did you do?” asked Stella.
Noah was quite a moment, he looked down at his hands, but Anna knew exactly what he had done from the moment he started explaining.
“You have got to be kidding me.” she said. “I cannot believe you.”
“What?” asked Stella. “What is it?”
“He stole the evidence and sent it to his own lab.”
Stella scooted a few inches back from Noah in the booth. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Noah let out a small, nervous laugh. “You guys, hear me out, they are going to have the results for us tomorrow morning, and I already had the evidence put back exactly where it was. It’s fine.”
“We told you we didn’t want to do that,” said Anna. “We explicitly said that we thought it was too risky and that we didn’t want to put our jobs on the line.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I did it on my own. Even if someone did find out, which won’t happen, there is no way to connect this back to you guys.”
“That’s not the point!” said Stella.
“Then what is the point?” asked Noah. “I know you guys are irritated, but just think about it, by tomorrow morning we will know if the DNA on the shirt found in the gravel matches the blood found on the Valerie’s knife. If it does, then all we’ll have to do is bring Sam Cottons in for a quick mouth swab and bam! We have him.”
“You overstepped.” Anna stood up. “You are forgetting your place. You are a private contractor who the Sheriff Wells hired to help us on this case, he is in charge, and when he isn’t around, I am in charge.”
“Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous,” said Noah. “Mrs. Oliver hired me personally to solve her daughter’s murder. I owe it to her to get answers as soon as possible.”
“That’s fine!” Anna yelled, throwing her hands up in the air. “Any evidence you collect personally during your own investigation is yours to do with as you please.” She leaned over the table and lowered her voice. “But what I bagged out at the gravel was the official property of the Idle Waters Sheriff Department and you had no right to take it.”
“Anna, I—”
“You’re off my case,” she said. “I don’t want to see you anywhere near the Sheriff’s station again.” She looked at Stella. “Are you coming with me?”
Stella grabbed her coat and purse. “Absolutely.” She gave Noah a dirty look as he got out of the booth so that she could exit.
“You can’t be serious.” He sounded like someone who thought himself the victim of a practical joke. “You guys are totally overreacting.”
But Anna and Stella were already on their way out the door, stopping only to tell Vee to cancel their orders and offer him their apologies for the inconvenience.
Professional Differences
The next week went by agonizingly slow.
It had snowed for two days straight and with the storm came a sort of quiet, somber solitude. There was not a single crime reported during the work week. Sheriff Wells was too anxious to send the evidence out for testing. He didn’t want to risk anything getting lost given that the bad weather had caused the postal service a major back up. This meant there was no new evidence coming in for the murder case and there were no new leads to chase down.
Twice, throughout the week, Anna thought of calling Noah’s work and seeing if there was any way to get the lab results sent to her without him finding out. She stopped herself both times however, by reminding herself that there was a reason she cut ties with him and that it was a bad idea to invite that kind of trouble back into her investigation.
Sheriff Wells was confused at first, when Anna fed him the half-baked story she and Stella had come up with for why Noah and his team had to be let go.
“They have their own agenda, Sheriff,” she said. “They only care about finding Valerie’s killer, since Mrs. Oliver is the one signing their paychecks.”
“Yes, but isn’t Valerie’s killer the same person who killed the others?” Wells asked.
“Maybe,” said Anna. “But you don’t get it. I’ve been in the field with them, they all only have one track minds. If the evidence helps them solve Valerie’s case, they are all for bagging and tagging it, but if it’s a piece of evidence that has nothing to do with Valerie’s case, they totally ignore it. They are narrow minded, which is affecting their judgement and makes it impossible for me to work with them.”
Anna felt bad for
throwing Noah’s people under the bus. They hadn’t done anything wrong. But she thought it best, seeing as she couldn’t tell Wells the truth, that her cover up story be something that makes the Sheriff heavily suspicious of Noah and his team. Stella had suggested they simply say that Noah quit and wanted to conduct his own investigation privately, but Anna worried that would appear to cordial and the Sheriff might still share sensitive information about the case with Noah.
“It’s just best that we don’t work with them anymore,” said Anna. “We don’t need them. I can handle this on my own. Trust me.”
Wells gave her look which didn’t exactly scream “I trust you,” but his gaze had softened and Anna could tell he believed her lie.
“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you think is best.”
That had been on Monday. Now, it was Sunday, and Anna could tell Sheriff Wells was starting to get a little antsy with nothing to do.
She hadn’t expected to see him in the office that day, especially after the extra six inches of snow they had gotten the night before, but he rolled in sometime after ten saying he had some paperwork that needed filing.
“They only just now accepted my request for the lab work on the evidence,” he informed Anna at around twelve o’clock, meandering out of his own office and hovering near her desk. “Can you believe that? I filed that on Monday, and they have two people, two who’s entire is to process those request forms, and it still takes them six days to look over a page and send an email back?”
“You were still waiting on approval?” asked Anna. “Then why were you complaining about not being able to send the evidence due to the weather.”
“I was going to send it in early, that way they had it the second they approved my request.” He went to the machine and poured himself a cup. “I know how important it is that we get this information fast. It might not seem like it, since I’ve been letting you take the reins the past two weeks, but this case is very important to me. I’d like to give the families of the victims some answers as soon as possible.”
Anna played with the pen in her hand, twisting it overtop her knuckles and back again. “Before we fired him, Noah had said something about using his own lab to process the evidence.”
Wells smirked. “That would have been great.” He took a sip and shook his head. “I’ll bet they have a pretty quick turnaround at that fancy shmancy lab he runs.”
“I think it’s like two days tops.”
He whistled. “Impressive.”
“Yeah but it would have meant handing the evidence over to a third party, I mean doesn’t that seem kinda risky to you?”
“It does now that you’ve told me about the issues you had working with Noah and his team.”
You mean the issues I made up?
“But before you said all that, I would have probably argued it was worth the risk.” He took a larger swig of coffee and winced. The pot had been sitting for a while, it was probably luke warm at best. “By the time I get these bags sent out to Madison and they get me my results, hell, it could be damn near a month.”
“Really? That long?”
“Yes, mam, and in the meantime somebody else could get killed.”
Anna put the pen down and sighed. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Should I be sitting down for this?”
“Noah already ran the evidence,” she stated plainly, finding easier just to get it all out on the table at once. “He had the idea to use his lab, behind your back, get the results quickly and put the evidence back before you could find out. Stella—” at the mention of her name, Well’s eyebrows arched. “Stella,” Anna backtracked. “Didn’t know anything about this. I told Noah it was too risky and that I didn’t want to get in trouble at my new job. He took it upon himself to do it anyway and that’s why I fired him.”
The Sheriff breathed in a big breath of air and let it out slowly.
“Let me get this straight, Noah stole evidence from the station, sent it to his own lab without your or Stella’s knowledge, and now he is sitting on the results and we are sitting here like… well… like sitting ducks!?”
He was yelling, but he didn’t seem angry. More, excited.
“Yes,” said Anna. “But the important thing to remember is that I nor Stella were in on this plan. In fact, we told him not to do this exact thing.”
He waved her off. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, you guys followed the rules which is great and all, but what I really care about is the lab results. Did Noah not tell you what he found?”
Anna shrugged and lowered her voice a little in shame. “I may or may not have freaked out on him and told him to stay away from the case.”
Wells nodded, calming down slightly. “Right. Of course. No, that’s good. That was the right thing to do. He did steal from us after all.” Anna couldn’t tell who he was trying to convince, her or himself, but she let him ramble on. “We can’t let him think that’s okay… but on the other hand, is what he did really all that wrong? I mean, he used his own means to collect DNA samples. Means which, it’s worth noting, are much quicker than the ones at our disposal.”
“So what do you want to do then?”
Wells frowned. “First, we need to get our hands on those results. After that, we can decide what needs to be done about Noah and his misconduct.”
“How do you propose we get the results?”
“You’re going to have to call and ask for them.”
“Me?” Anna scoffed and stood from her chair. “Why me? You’re the Sheriff. They are going to take a request from you way more seriously than one from me.”
“Yes,” Wells agreed. “But I wasn’t the one who got us into this mess. You call over there and see what you can get, and if need be, have them put you through to Noah and apologize.”
“It’s Sunday,” she said. “He won’t be in the office.”
“Then leave a message.”
He stuck out his mug as if to underline the fact that the conversation was over, then turned and walked into his office, closing the door behind him.
“I’m sorry, may I ask again who’s calling?” The man on the other end of the line was being particularly snippy with Anna. He had already asked for her name and title once before, but when she started to say it, she could hear him talking to someone in the background an office coffee run.
“My name is Anna Arnold, I am the deputy of Idle Waters, Michigan. Noah Parker, your CEO, he and I have been working together on a case and I need to have some lab results sent to me as soon as possible.”
“Mr. Parker is out of the office today, can I take a message?”
“No, you’re not listening,” said Anna. “Is there any way you can transfer me to someone who works in the lab?”
“The lab is closed today.”
“So there’s no one who works in the lab there right now?”
The man sighed and repeated himself. “The lab is closed today.”
“Right, but I don’t need the lab to be open, I just need to speak with someone who can access results found in the lab from earlier this week.”
“And your reasons for wanting those results, miss?”
“I just told you!” said Anna. “I am working on the case to which these results pertain. I need to know what you guys found.”
“If you were working on this case, why don’t you have the number already with the lab assistant who was in charge of filing and sending out the results?”
Anna chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. “You know what, I’m just going to call Mr. Parker directly. Then he can call you and we can get this whole thing straightened out.”
“Sure, whatever,” said the guy. “If you have Noah Parker’s personal number then by all means, go ahead and call him.”
Clearly the man didn’t believe that Anna knew Noah or had any way to contact him directly. Which, to be fair, from his perspective it made sense that she didn’t, why else would she bother calling the main office phone and going through this wh
ole rigmarole.
“I will, but before I go, can I get your name again?” said Anna.
“It’s Zach.”
“Okay, great. Thank you Zach, you’ve been a huge help.” She half hung-up, half slammed the phone down on the receiver, before picking it up and holding it off the hook as she searched her case file for the page with Noah’s phone number on it. She dialed and he picked up after only two rings.
“Sheriff?” he said.
“It’s Anna.”
“Oh, hi.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, didn’t expect to hear from you. When I saw it was the station calling I just assumed Wells needed to talk to me. How, how are you?”
“I’m fine, listen, this is going to be difficult enough to say the first time and I really don’t want to have to repeat myself so focus. I need the results from the DNA tests.”
“Oh really?” Noah’s voice went up an octave as he teased her. “How the tables have turned.”
“Don’t be coy,” she said. “This request is coming from Wells, I’m just the messenger.”
“And how does Wells know I have these results?”
“I told him everything,” she said, then cupped her hand around the bottom part of the phone and spoke softer. “Although I lied and said Stella had no idea any of this was happening. I think it’s safer if the story has her not involved at all.”
“I see,” he said. “And what did the Sheriff have to say about my stealing the evidence?” Suddenly he didn’t sound quite so cocky, and Anna had to smile to herself.
“He said we would figure out discipline action later and that the priority know is getting the results. He wasn’t happy with the way you handled things, however, you should know that.” Now she was just rubbing it in, but she didn’t care.
“If I have the results sent over does that mean I’m back on the case?”
For Sale On Display Page 9
