by Matt Lincoln
“I tell you what,” Harry said as he moved toward the kitchen, “it wasn’t nearly this cold last Halloween when I went trick-or-treating with little Junie. And it’s not even late October yet, and it’s cold as anything out there.” He’d been such a good sport for his granddaughter the year before, letting her dress him up as some character from a cartoon she liked and going all around the neighborhood with her. I still had pictures on my phone from that night.
“Amber was here earlier this week with little Junie,” Harry called from the kitchen. “She’s trying to get me to start eating healthier and all that, you know how she is. Anyway, some recipes she showed me actually looked pretty good, so I thought I’d give ‘em a try. And you get to be my first victim. So c’mon, sit down and try some of this. Tell me what you think.”
I followed him into the kitchen and sat at the table with trepidation, wondering what it was that Harry had concocted. I’d known him a long time, and we’d even been partners for a brief stint when I first became a police officer, and in that entire time, I’d never known Harry to cook much of anything. As far as I knew, he subsisted entirely off of fast food, things that could be microwaved, and steaks that he cooked by slapping on a grill for a few minutes on each side. Truthfully, it was no wonder his daughter, Amber, worried about his eating habits, but that didn’t make me any less confident about being his guinea pig.
“Voila,” he said as he placed a plate in front of me on the table. “Steak and vegetable kebabs.”
So, in the end, he hadn’t drifted too far from his three primary food groups, as this dish still contained grilled steak. At least he’d made an effort, though, and it did look really good. I picked one of the kebabs up by the thin wooden dowel he’d used to skewer them and took a bite. The vegetables were mushy on the outside and rock-hard on the inside, but the meat was good if a little under seasoned.
“It’s really good,” I lied after swallowing.
“Ah, you’re full of crap,” Harry said with a laugh, taking the plate away and replacing it with an unopened bottle of beer. “I can tell when you’re lying, Charlie. You should know that by now.” He rummaged through a drawer for a minute before pulling out a bottle opener, popping open his own beer before passing the bottle opener over to me.
“Speaking of which,” he continued, taking a swig of his beer. “I can tell there’s something on your mind, kid. Could tell the second you got out of the car. You wanna tell me what’s bothering you?” I sighed. It was impossible to get anything past Harry.
“I’ve just been feeling a little stressed out over the new job, I guess,” I answered, taking a sip of my own beer. I’d never been the biggest fan of beer, but Harry liked them, and I knew he liked to have important conversations over a beer.
“Too much to take in all at once?” Harry asked.
“No, it’s actually the opposite,” I replied, absentmindedly picking at the label on the bottle. “It feels like everything is moving so slowly. Like short bursts of action followed by huge lulls of waiting. It just feels like I’m sitting around wasting time when I could be out there doing something!” I raised my voice toward the end. I’d been feeling so pent up that finally speaking my thoughts aloud had felt good.
“Leave it up to you to get upset over having too little to do instead of too much,” Harry said, chuckling softly. “Listen to me, Charlie. You don’t have to be a superhero. You don’t have to do everything on your own or all at once. You have to learn to pace yourself. There’s a big difference between wasting time and lying in wait. Sometimes it’s better to wait for the perfect opportunity to strike instead of just rushing in headfirst. I know you don’t really understand the meaning of the word ‘wait,’ but now that you’re working for a big federal agency, you sure as hell better figure it out.”
He smiled to soften the bite of his words, but they still stung all the same. I knew he was right, and as usual, I could count on Harry to help me see reason.
“Besides,” he continued, “if you’re always so busy working, when are you gonna find the time to come visit? You don’t have any excuse now that you’re living less than an hour south, and you know little Junie’s been asking after you.”
I appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood.
“It’s been months since I’ve seen her,” I said, taking another drink of my beer. “I’m surprised she hasn’t forgotten about me.”
“Are you kidding?” He replied. “She’s always going on about you. You better bring her back a souvenir from Greece whenever you get back up here after your trip. Anyway, why don’t we order something? I think the kebabs are a wash, and I know for a fact your cooking skills are no better than mine.” Harry was already pulling his phone out of his pocket and looking up local delivery places.
The sun was already starting to set by the time we said our goodbyes several hours later. It was still early enough for me to make the drive back home and get a solid eight hours before I had to get up, and given my tendency to oversleep, I didn’t want to push my luck. As I was making my way back down the hill from Harry’s house, I wondered if this was what Wallace had meant when he’d told us to prepare for the mission. Being a federal agent was a dangerous job after all, and we’d already been shot at in our own backyard, nevermind what could happen while we were overseas. Looking at it like that, I was glad I’d gotten to spend the day with Harry before I went on my mission.
17
Miranda
I whipped my hair around as I danced in the privacy of one of the company cars down in the parking garage below the office building. There were never that many people around, to begin with, and as for the few that were, the slightly tinted windows of the car were dark enough that nothing could be seen in the low light of the parking garage. That being the case, I felt no qualms about having a moment to myself as I blasted my music through the car’s speakers.
The company cars were fairly discreet but were still nicer than what the average person would drive without being flashy. One unintended but pleasant side effect of having nice cars was that the stereo systems of both cars were awesome. Better than what I had in my own car and leagues better than my laptop speakers or the cheap headphones I usually used at my desk. So while I was waiting for Naomi to finish whatever she was doing upstairs and join me so we could go check out the address Fi had given us, I decided to take this rare opportunity alone in the company car with its excellent stereo system to jam out to some music.
Today’s choice was an alternative indie rock band whose music I’d first heard a few days ago in the background of a true-crime series. Crime shows were actually one of the main reasons I’d become a federal agent after being honorably discharged from the Marines, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that. I’d stopped caring what other people thought of me years ago, when I’d first made the decision to enlist, and I found that living with that attitude made my whole life better.
I was just getting into the third song when the passenger side door opened, and Naomi poked her head in, covering her ears and looking horrified at the volume of the music. I turned it down and flashed her a cheeky smile as she climbed into the car, looking like a disapproving mother as she did.
“You’re going to go deaf,” she said, turning the music down even further.
“I already am, slightly, in my left ear,” I said honestly, reveling in the look of alarm that came over her face at the admission. “Car bomb in Afghanistan.” I shrugged and put the car in reverse, looking over my shoulder as I pulled out of the spot.
“How are you so cavalier about everything all the time?” Naomi asked, her eyebrows raised at how casually I’d brought up my injury.
“Because I won’t gain anything by getting all mopey and sad about every little thing that happens to me,” I said cheerfully as we pulled out of the parking garage and onto the main street. “Better to just pick up the pieces and keep trucking along.” I glanced over at my phone, where I’d already inputted the address into a navigation app.
The neighborhood my phone led us to was cute and well-maintained. There were similar looking houses all in neat rows, most with gardens and fences. It looked more like something you’d see in New England than on the edge of Las Vegas, and it honestly surprised me that this was where our big, bad villain supposedly lived.
I parked the car in the driveway and climbed out of the car, with Naomi close behind me. There weren’t any other cars parked in the driveway or on the street in front of the house, so I assumed that meant Michaels wasn’t home. After a brief loop around the house, we determined the only other way in or out was through the back door, so after ensuring that Naomi was in position by the back door, I returned to the front of the house and knocked. However, my suspicion proved to be correct when no one answered, and I could hear absolutely no sound from the inside. After a few minutes, we retreated to the car.
I pulled out of the driveway and parked the car on the street behind another one, perpendicular to the suspect’s house in a way that allowed us to keep an eye on both exits. I hoped we wouldn’t stick out too much in this little neighborhood. A few houses down, I could see some children playing in one of the yards, and in the rearview, I could see a couple of middle-aged women holding small dumbbells, walking together, and chatting. Overall, there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, and until we had some reason to think otherwise, there wasn’t much we could do. I settled into my seat and pulled up a puzzle game on my phone, glancing up toward the house every few seconds. In the passenger seat beside me, Naomi was holding a pair of knitting needles and doing the same, alternating between looking up at the house and down at her hand every few seconds.
The first time I’d gone on a stakeout, it had surprised me to see that Naomi had brought an embroidery kit, a puzzle, and a few other things with her, thinking they’d only cause her to become distracted.
“They actually stop you from losing focus,” she’d told me. “Sitting here and staring at a house for hours, it is very easy to get bored, to let your mind wander, even to fall asleep. However, if you have something to keep your mind busy and sharp while you are waiting, you’re actually less likely to get distracted.”
The idea had honestly amazed me. I had to admit that it was tricky to strike the right balance between focusing on whatever it was you were staking out and whatever it was you were using to entertain yourself. If you got too into your puzzle or magazine or whatever else, it was easy to slip up and stop focusing on the actual mission. Once I got the hang of it, though, I found it worked wonders. I no longer got bored just sitting and staring, but I wasn’t so distracted that I forgot to watch my target entirely.
However, after five hours, even this method began to get tiring and repetitive.
“Hey, so, not that this hasn’t been really fun and all, but do you think maybe we should head back to the office?” I asked Naomi, pulling my arms over my head to stretch out the muscles in my back. Sitting in the same position for several hours was brutal, and I could feel my lower back and legs cramping up as I moved around. “Nothing’s happened all day. The guy clearly isn’t here, and considering he knows that Junior and Charlie were trailing him the other day, I have a feeling he’s probably not going to be back any time soon.”
“Yes, you’re probably right,” Naomi said, closing the puzzle game I’d installed on her phone a few hours earlier. “Although this does mean we’ve hit a roadblock. Despite our suspicion that Michaels is both Xander and the man who shot at Agents Chapman and Hills two days ago, we don’t actually have any solid proof, so we can’t investigate the house any further than this. I’d hate to go back to the office without anything new to report.” She sighed and turned to look at the house despondently.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “But sitting here moping about it isn’t going to get us anywhere. Let’s get back to HQ and regroup with Nelson and Wallace. Maybe we can come up with some other way to dig up dirt on Michaels.”
I started the car and pulled into the street. It disappointed me that the stakeout hadn’t led to anything significant, but I was also a little relieved that we didn’t have to sit there any longer staring at an empty house. Investigative work wasn’t always action and excitement and solving mysteries. Sometimes it was just hours of pure boredom.
Back at the office, Naomi went to update Wallace on the results of our stakeout, though there really wasn’t much to say, and I decided to go look through the notes Junior had made on the interrogation with Andy. I went into the holding area where the notes were stored on a laptop, and it surprised me to see Andy still there, sitting in one of the cells. Normally, Nelson was pretty quick about getting suspects transferred over to the local jail system once we finished with our interrogation, so I thought it a little strange that he was still here today. Nevertheless, we were legally allowed to hold suspects for up to forty-eight hours, so I just assumed Nelson was handling it and went about my business.
I sat at the small desk and booted up the computer, groaning internally as it slowly turned on. Why was it that no matter which government agency or organization I worked for, the technology always seemed to be painfully outdated?
“Excuse me, ma’am?” I heard a small voice call out. I leaned over to peer around the computer monitor at Andy, who was sitting up in his cell, fidgeting with his hands and looking up at me nervously.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked. He looked down at his feet and was quiet for a little while as if he was trying to decide what he should say next. I waited patiently, hoping that whatever this kid said next would prove more useful than the morning’s stakeout.
“If I help you, will I get off lighter?” He finally said, looking up at me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, genuinely not understanding the meaning of his statement.
“If I tell you something that could help you with your case, will I get into less trouble?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But it might help. If you cooperate with the investigation, the judge may take that into consideration when deciding your punishment.”
“I know something else about Xander,” he said, looking around as if he were afraid someone would hear us talking. “Something that I didn’t tell the other agents.”
I stood up at that and walked toward him, pulling my chair along behind me. This could definitely be more useful than the stakeout, so I placed the chair directly in front of his cell and sat down.
“And what is that?” I asked him.
“I’ll only tell you if you swear I won’t go to jail,” he said, his voice trembling. “My mom will die if I end up in prison. Seriously, I honestly think she would die. She needs me at home to take care of her. Swear I won’t go to jail, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
I felt bad for the kid. Growing up in central New York, I had seen my fair share of good kids that had fallen in with the wrong crowd and ruined their lives as a result. Hell, I could have been one of those kids if I’d made just a few different choices.
“Listen, I can’t make this go away,” I told him. “I can’t promise you won’t go to jail. But if you help us, I’ll do everything I can to help you, okay? I’ll make sure the judge knows that you cooperated and did everything you could to help us stop this guy.” I really meant it. Andy had committed a crime, and he needed to pay the consequences for that, but I didn’t think those consequences should destroy his whole life.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
I was glad he seemed to understand. I worried he’d refuse to talk if I didn’t promise him he’d stay out of jail.
Andy looked down at his hands and continued. “Xander has a warehouse here in Las Vegas where he sometimes keeps the animals before we deliver them. There are a few animals in there now. It’s actually in the same industrial park where the other agents arrested me. He never lets me go in there, but I’ve seen it from the outside, and I’ve seen him taking shipments in and bringing them out.”
“Could you tell
me exactly where it is?” I asked, unable to keep the intensity out of my voice. This was huge. If we were able to locate a warehouse full of live cargo, we’d catch Xander red-handed.
“Yeah, I could show you on a map,” he said. I pulled out my phone and punched the address he gave me into a navigation app. I pulled up the destination area and widened the image, handing the phone over to Andy so he could point out the exact location of the warehouse.
“Thanks, kid,” I said as soon as he’d pointed the exact location out to me on the map. I rushed out of the room and headed straight to Wallace’s office.
“I have something!” I exclaimed as I entered, Wallace’s eyes going wide at my sudden appearance and unexpectedly loud voice. “The kid, Andy, told me that Xander has a warehouse where he stores the animals before delivering them. It’s right here in Vegas near where Charlie and Junior found him.” I showed him the location on my phone, where Andy had indicated the warehouse was.
“Alright,” Wallace said, recovering from his shock at my abrupt entrance rather quickly, “take Agent Patel and stake out the warehouse. Right now, all we have to go on right now is Mr. Gilford’s word, and that’s not enough for you to conduct a search of the warehouse itself. I need you and Patel to keep an eye on the warehouse and get back to me with absolutely any suspicious activity you observe. We need to find probable cause to get in there as quickly as possible. That being said, if he hasn’t been to his house, I have a feeling he’ll be showing up to the warehouse sooner rather than later. He knows we’re on to him now, and he’ll want to do something about the evidence.”
