COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) (30 page)

            Skip nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. “They had minimal coverage outside our offices Saturday and Kate’s building today, but they have two men go
in
to Rob’s office. They’re trying to neutralize the insurance policy before they come after us more aggressively.”

            “That’s my take on it.” Dolph opened the trunk. “I bought these when BCPD was getting rid of old gear. Bigger one should fit you. Hopefully your jacket will go over it.”

            Skip frowned at the clunky vest. Before he could voice an objection, Dolph said, “I got a bad feeling about this meet, son, with you sitting in a public place. But if you don’t show, Judith will be chasing you again. It’ll make me and Kate feel better if you’re wearing this.” He figured the desire to ease Kate’s worrying would probably do the trick.

            It did. Skip shrugged his surrender and took off his windbreaker to don the vest. The jacket was big enough to go over it. Skip deposited his snub-nose .38 in one pocket and a disposable cell in the other.

            They walked back over to Rose’s car. “We’re riding with Rob and Dolph,” Skip told Kate. “You’re staying outside in the car.”

            She began to protest. He raised a hand. “Darlin’, if this goes south, having to protect you would just make things more difficult. I’m wearing a bullet-proof vest Dolph gave me.”

            Rose handed Dolph a two-way radio. “I’m going in the back first and check things out. Then I’ll be in the back hall. Lilly will be in the alley. You need to get out quick, Skip, you come our way.”

            “I think I need to go in with you initially,” Dolph said to Skip. “Make sure Judith’s the only cop there.”

            At five after one, Dolph pulled up across the street from Mac’s Place. He and Skip waited for the all-clear from Rose, then they entered the front door of the restaurant. Both were scanning for familiar faces as they headed for the booth toward the back, where Judith sat talking on her cell phone. She disconnected as they approached.

            “Hey, Judith,” Dolph said. “I’m on a case so I can’t stay. Just wanted to stop by and say hi.”

            Judith narrowed her eyes at him.

            “Sue and I’d like you to come for dinner some time soon. I’ll give you a call to set it up.”

            “That’d be good, Dolph. I’ll look forward to it.” Her voice was neutral but her expression was still suspicious. She knew him too well.

            Back at the car, Dolph radioed Rose and Lilly. “Tall black guy in workman’s clothes at the bar is a homicide detective. He’s a bit of a ladies’ man. You want to go in and chat him up, Lilly? Be on hand if you’re needed.”

            “What does that mean?” Kate’s anxious voice came from the backseat. “Why would Judith have another detective there, and undercover?”

            “Not sure. Could just be a precaution.”

            “It’ll be fine,” Rob said. “Skip knows how to handle himself.”

            “He’ll be fine,” Dolph echoed as he flipped the switch on his police scanner. His eyes were continuously moving up and down the street.

~~~~~~~

            After they had ordered their food, Judith said, “Looks like you’re wearing protection.”

            Skip had been expecting some comment about the vest. He told her the honest truth. “Dolph insisted. This case I’m working has gotten a bit dangerous.”

            “Looks weird, keeping your jacket on inside.”

            “It’d look weirder if I took it off. So any new leads on your case?”

            “Yes and no. Interviewed Browning. He denied he sent his wife any wine and he’s alibied for Friday afternoon. So it wasn’t him who met with Jamal Johnson. Of course, he could have hired somebody else to do it.”

            “That would be his style,” Skip said. “Whose prints were on the bottle?”

            “The boy’s, Janice Browning’s and the concierge’s.”

            Skip cocked an eyebrow. “Nobody else?”

            Judith shook her head. They both knew the significance of that. Someone had intentionally wiped their own prints off the bottle, and along with them the prints of all the personnel at the bottling plant, distributor, and wine store.

            “Janice Browning’s death has officially been ruled a homicide,” Judith said.

            Out of the corner of his eye, Skip saw Lilly come in and take a seat at the bar. She ordered something and then started talking to the black guy next to her. The man’s work clothes were a bit too clean and crisply ironed.

           
Undercover cop. What the hell does that mean?

            Their food arrived. Skip took a bite of his sandwich, then returned it to his plate, letting his right hand drop into his lap. “So you said, ‘yes and no’ regarding leads? Richard’s the no part. What’s the yes part?”

            “I’ll get to that in a minute. Tell me again about your meeting with the kid on Saturday.”

            Skip ran through it again while Judith poked at her salad.

            “And that’s the last time you saw him, shortly after eleven when he ran away from you?”

            “Yes.” Skip took another bite of his sandwich for form’s sake. Again he dropped his hand below the tabletop, letting it rest on his jacket pocket.

            “You didn’t go looking for him again later, maybe to see if you could get more information out of him?”

            “No.”

            “We had another witness come forward. Says he saw a guy meeting your description in that alley a little before one o’clock. Said the guy was shaking a black kid’s arm and yelling.”

            “Wasn’t me.” Skip slid his hand into his jacket pocket while trying not to move his upper arm.

            “Where were you around one that day?”

           
Crap!
That was the only window of time on Saturday that he’d been alone, headed for Westminster to dump the GPS device. “Don’t remember exactly, but I was with Dolph or one of my operatives most of the day. What was the time of death?”

            “M.E. says between eleven-thirty and two, but he also found a contusion on the back of the boy’s head that he says happened at least a half hour before the kid was killed. Too much swelling to have occurred just before the heart stopped.”

            Skip winced at the mental image of Jamal’s eager face turning to horror as someone struck him from behind. “So they knocked him out, and then came back later to finish him off.”

            “Yeah, but you’re the only person we got witnesses saying was there.” Judith sounded regretful.

            Skip’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out with his left hand and hit the button to answer it. “Get out of there, son. The BOLO’s on again, for murder now.”

            Judith’s hand was creeping toward her purse.

            “Don’t move, Judith. I’ve got a gun on you under the table.” Skip glanced over to the bar and caught Lilly’s eye. He gestured with his head. He flicked his eyes back to Judith, who was sitting very still across from him, her hands where he could see them.

            He glanced again at Lilly. She had stood up and had her hand in her own jacket pocket. The black man next to her suddenly sat up straighter, his eyes wide.

           
Shit!
Now his operative would be facing assault with a deadly against a police officer.

            He quickly brought his eyes back to Judith. “Thanks,” he said into the phone, then pocketed it.

            “Don’t do this, Canfield. I’m going to try to clear you, but I can’t help if you’ve got resisting arrest charges against you as well.”

            “Sorry, Judith. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Because of this other case I’m working, if you put me in a cage, even for a little while, I’m a dead man. They’ll get somebody inside to kill me.”

            “We’ll keep you separated from the other inmates. We would anyway since you’re a former cop.”

            Skip shook his head. “These guys are good enough, they’d get somebody in posing as a guard or janitor, food service. They’d find a way.”

            “You’re not going to shoot me, Skip. You’re a good guy. You couldn’t shoot an innocent person, a police officer at that.”

            Skip wasn’t about to let on that she was right. “You don’t want to bet your life on that, do you? Put both hands on the table and sit real still, and we’ll both live to talk another day about why I had to do this.”

            When she’d complied, he reached over with his left hand and scooped up her purse. Without taking his eyes off her, he made a come-here gesture with his head toward Lilly. He slid out of the booth, his gun now back in his pocket with his hand firmly attached to it.

            Lilly had taken the other detective by his arm, as if she were walking him over to introduce him to a friend.

            “Have a seat, detective. Hands on the table, please,” Skip said quietly. “You got his piece, Lilly?”

            “Both of them.”

            “We got more eyes in here,” Skip bluffed in a low voice. “You two stay put for ten minutes. Our people see you move or hear sirens before then and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Your purse and weapons will be where you can find them, once we’re away from here.” In a normal voice, he said, “Enjoy your lunch, folks.”

            He motioned toward the doorway to the back hall, then followed Lilly out, walking backward facing the room. In the hall, he grabbed Judith’s gun out of her purse and tossed the purse to Rose. Then he and Lilly ran for the back door.

            He heard Rose call out across the restaurant, “Somebody drop their purse in the hall?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

            Kate’s heart was in her throat. It just barely registered when Rob took her hand in his. Leaning around him, she stared out the car’s window at the front of the restaurant.

            Rose came out and walked briskly down the street toward her car. Sirens wailed in the distance.

            Dolph’s two-way radio, sitting on the passenger’s seat, made a crackling noise. Rose’s voice, a bit tinny, came out of it. “Skip got out clean. Take off, Dolph. Judith sees you, she may decide to arrest you for obstructing justice.”

            He pulled away from the curb. Two police cruisers, sirens blaring, lights flashing, raced toward them from three blocks away. Dolph turned onto the next cross street. The cruisers blasted through the intersection behind them.

            “Keep quiet. I’m going to call Judith,” he said. After punching in her cell number, he put the phone on speaker and dropped it in his lap.

            “Hey, Judith. How’d your meet with Skip go? Was he able to help–”

            “Your boy pulled a gun on me,” Judith yelled over the blare of a siren.

            “He did?” A corner of Kate’s anxious brain registered that Dolph was a good actor. He’d sounded genuinely surprised.

            “What part of the day were you with him last Saturday?”Judith yelled.

            Dolph paused, then said, “All day, from ten-thirty on.”

            “I don’t believe you, Dolph. You said before most of the day, not all. Canfield killed that kid.”

            Kate gasped. Rob squeezed her hand.

            “Maybe didn’t mean to,” Judith yelled over the background noise on her end. “Maybe he was just trying to scare the kid and something went wrong. But now he’s making the whole mess worse. Resisting arrest, assault of a police officer. The charges are stacking up. You gotta convince him to turn himself in, Dolph, before he gets himself killed.”

            Kate was biting her lower lip. She saw Dolph looking intently into the rearview mirror as he made another turn. She realized he was watching for tails.

            “I’ll try to catch up with him and convey the message. I’m in the middle of something right now but I can meet up with you in about an hour. I might be able to shed some light on all this for you.”

            The sirens stopped, leaving an eerie silence. Judith sighed loud enough Kate and Rob could hear her in the backseat. “Come to the station in an hour. I’ll be waiting.”

            Dolph disconnected. “I think they must’ve lost him. Give him a call.”

            Kate rummaged through her purse for a phone she hadn’t used yet, to be sure it was untraceable. She called the number of the throwaway Skip was using that day, then put her phone on speaker and held it out between the front seats. She almost burst into tears when Skip answered.

            “You need to ditch Lilly’s truck,” Dolph said. “They’ve got a BOLO on it now.”

            Kate was surprised he could make out the rumblings coming from the police band radio.

            “We’re walking away from it now,” Skip said. “The detectives’ guns are under the seat. I called Rose to pick us up.”

            “What’d Judith say, son? Why are you a prime suspect again?”

            “They’ve got another wit who’s saying I was in that alley with Jamal at one o’clock, in the middle of the TOD window.”

            Dolph muttered a curse under his breath. “I’ve got a meeting with her in an hour. I’ll see what I can do to keep her off our tail.”

            “Be careful. You can’t afford to be in a cage either.”

            “It’s gonna be a bit crowded in Rose’s car but I need you all to take my passengers from me before I go meet her.”

            “Take them to the other safe house for the time being. We’ll all meet back at the shack later. I’d just as soon get out of town now. They may put a BOLO on Rose’s car too.”

            “Good point,” Dolph said.

            “I love you, Skip,” Kate said.

            “Love you too, darlin’. Try not to worry.”

            She snorted as she disconnected. “Yeah, right.”

~~~~~~~

            Dolph dropped Rob off behind the new safe house in Catonsville, so he could go through the backyard and wait for Kate to let him in once she’d fetched the key. Best not to let the neighbors see a whole slew of people coming and going, Dolph had pointed out.