Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (13 page)

"I hope Terry and Michelle are having a good time," she said, stabbing the last bite. "It's not easy being involved with a cop. If your generic civilian guy is good at not talking about things, you cops have raised it to a fine art. As solid and opaque as a wall."

"Hey," he said. "I thought we weren't going to talk about the bad stuff tonight."

"It just slipped out." She looked away.

His phone vibrated again. Had to check it. Stan's number. "Excuse me. I should take this." He cupped his hand over the phone. "Burgess."

Stan's voice, shaky and desperate, exploded in his ear. "Jesus, Joe, it's hit the fan. You've gotta help me."

"Hold on." Burgess looked at Chris. "Stan's in trouble. I'll take it outside." He tossed his credit card on the table and hurried out into the parking lot. "Okay. I can talk. What's up?"

"Long story," Stan said. "Short version is that wild woman I told you about's accusing me of breaking and entering and attempted rape and I got two Westbrook cops here with plans to haul my ass to jail."

"Where are you now?"

"Outside her house. Sitting in a patrol car."

Burgess fumbled out his notebook and opened it on the hood of the car. The air had a distinct chill now and the hood was damp. He clicked his pen. "What's her name and address?" Stan gave them in a shaky voice. "You alone or are they sitting on you?"

"Alone. Jesus, Joe. This is so fucked up. She invites me over, then pulls this. Can you come?"

"I'm out to dinner with Chris. I'll take her home and head on over. Can you stall them for a while?"

"Hey," Stan said, "they're pretty good guys. Just doing what they gotta do."

"Gimme the short version."

"Her husband, goddammit! Fuckin' gorilla came at me with fists like hams." Stan's voice was strangled and incoherent.

So Stan's wild woman was married. Stan had that kind of luck, especially when he was thinking with the one-eyed guy. Burgess cut him off, "Control it, Stan. Take a breath. Get your head straight and try again, okay. You don't sound like a cop, you sound like an idiot."

There was a long pause, then Stan said, "Thanks, Dad. I forgot."

"Quit screwing around, and give me the story."

"Okay. This girl. Lorraine Barton, the one I was with on Friday night, she calls me up, okay? Says we had such a great time the other night, can I come over, let's do it again. I'm no fool, at least, that's what I was thinking then, so I say sure. She says maybe she'll be in the shower, so if she doesn't answer the door, I should just let myself in. When I get over there, I knock, and she doesn't answer. I try the door. It's locked. She's said let myself in, so I figure she's just forgotten. Her apartment's on the first floor, so I go around back. The slider's unlocked."

Stan grabbed a breath. "Easy, Stan. Easy," he said. Stan was a sharp detective, but it was hard for anyone, finding himself on the other side of the table. This was one time when Stan's impulsive nature wouldn't serve him well. Better rein him in before he did something stupid. "Remember, you got cops there wondering did you do what she said. Their job is to take her at her word until they have reason to think otherwise. So be sure of what you're saying, okay. Don't shoot from the hip. Be sure. Be slow. Be careful. I know you want to explain it all to them, make them see how it was all a misunderstanding, right?"

"Right." Stan's breathing was still ragged.

"Don't do it." Burgess said. "Okay, give me the rest." He was already thinking who he knew in Westbrook PD that he could call. Had come up with a name.

"I hear the shower running, like she said, so I go into the bathroom, tell her it's me, so she won't be scared. She pulls back the curtain. Man, she's wet and naked and smiling and she is so hot." Stan's words tumbled over each other in his haste. "I'm working on my belt when the goddamned apartment door opens and some guy yells, 'Lorraine, honey? You here?' Suddenly she's screaming, 'In here, Wes. In the bathroom. There's a man in here.' This big gorilla charges into the bathroom and takes a swing at me. I hit back and the next fuckin' thing I know, she's calling 9-1-1, telling fuckin' dispatch I've broken into her apartment and attacked her."

This was bad. "Stan, tell Westbrook patrol to take you down to the PD, put you in the conference room. That's all you say, Stanley, understand. Don't try to explain or talk your way out of this. Just wait 'til I get there. You got that? I'll call Timmy Collins, give him a heads up."

Stan didn't say anything.

"I'm on my way, Stan. Okay?"

"But Joe, I think maybe, if I can just explain this—"

Burgess cut him off. "Have you got that, Stanley?"

The words went home. "Yes, Sergeant. I got that. Sir."

"Good. Hang on to it. One more thing. The guy who came through the door. You know who he is?"

"I do now. Her effing husband. Wesley Barton."

"You
knew
she was married?"

"She said she was divorced. She wasn't wearing a ring."

"And you met her where?"

"Bar in the Old Port."

"Alone or with friends."

"Alone."

"Okay. Sit tight. I'm on my way."

He made a quick call to Sergeant Tim Collins, out in Westbrook, who said he was on it, then he called Lieutenant Melia. Stan would be mad that he did, but if they couldn't fix this and Stan got arrested, Melia would be beyond pissed if he was left out of the loop. He was a good lieutenant who backed his men when he could. But he was also seriously by-the-book. If they handled this right, Melia might be okay with it. Put egg on Melia's face or Cote on his ass, and young Stanley would be back on patrol and Burgess short a good detective.

Melia went from sleepy "Hello" to staccato questions in less than two seconds. A CID lieutenant got used to being interrupted. "Keep me up on this, Joe," he said, and was gone. Back to grab some sleep before the next interruption.

Returning to the table, he told Chris, "Stan's in trouble. I've got to go bail him out."

"Woman trouble?" she said.

"What else? Woman trouble that's just gotten him arrested."

"I guess I shouldn't say he deserves it, because I don't know. But Stan's an idiot about women."

"Thinks with his... uh..." Burgess found himself embarrassed.

"Pecker," she suggested. "Dick. Cock. Prick. Johnson. I'm not a virgin, Joe. I'm a nurse. There isn't much I haven't heard."

He signed the check and helped her into her coat. She slipped an arm through his. "I like it that you try to protect me. That there's still a lot of old-fashioned gentleman about you." She rested her head on his shoulder. "Our timing might have been a little off, but now I'm seeing that it was a good thing we went to bed first and then went out to dinner. Think how disappointed I'd be if I was counting on a romantic encounter when we got home?"

"Sorry about this," he said. "I was kind of hoping for
another
romantic encounter when we got home. But I need Stan at work, not in jail. And it doesn't look good for the department."

"Meaning a load of manure from Captain Cote?"

"Exactly."

He opened the car door and watched her do that cool thing women in dresses did, where they sat, then lifted their legs and swiveled. Chris told him she'd learned it from her mother. It was supposed to let you get into a car gracefully without showing your slip. Until he'd noticed her putting on the blue one tonight, he hadn't thought women wore slips anymore. Cops dealt with populations more likely to be confused about wearing clothes at all than on choosing proper and elegant undergarments. But it was graceful, something about that moment when Chris's feet in their sexy shoes sat together on the pavement, and then her legs lifted and rose, and her skirt slipped up just a tad, giving a quick peek at her thighs, and he closed her into his car. How could such a minor thing be both erotic and familiar and domestic?

He shook his head, then walked around and started the engine. She put a hand on his thigh, warm through the cloth. They'd driven halfway home in silence before she said, "Maybe you can wake me when you get home."

Chapter 9

Burgess stopped to talk with Sergeant Collins before going to see Stan. Collins, albino pale with rusty hair and rusty freckles, grinned and shook his head. "Your boy fell right into the honey trap, Joe."

Burgess dropped into a chair. "That's how it sounds. Bring me up on it, Timmy."

Collins shook his head. "Sorry to get you messed up in this. Perry had panicked and called you before we could get him out of there and tell him the straight story. Then I couldn't get him to shut up and keep his head down. He kept telling me he was a cop. Like once wasn't enough. Like we don't try and look after each other. My guys had already called, given me the heads up. I was on my way out there when you called. I figured we'd let him cool off a little before we cut him loose. Seems like the kid could use a lesson in judgment."

A little harsh, but Collins was probably right. Stan's good judgment about bad guys, strong interview skills, and great cop's instincts for things that didn't seem right were noticeably absent in his personal life. Funny, too, how he and Collins could think of Stan, now in his thirties, as a kid. It showed how old they were getting. Collins didn't seem to age, though. He'd looked pretty much the same for a decade. He just got a little more dried out, wrinkling like a forgotten apple in a fruit bowl. He'd kept his sense of humor, which was important. It was too easy to get sour on the job.

"So you know the lady?"

"Oh, man," Collins laughed. "That is no lady. She's a hot little piece of trouble. She and her husband Wes have a kinky sex thing going where they stimulate their appetites by bringing other people into the mix. Wes is a long-distance truck driver. When he's on the road, he nails whatever he can while Lorraine goes out and picks up other guys. She brings them home, they have sex, and she videotapes the whole thing. When he gets back from a trip, Wes tells her what he's done, then she and Wes watch the tape. That gets them all worked up and they go at it like raccoons in heat, hitting and thumping, screaming and smashing things. Leave a recorder under the window when Wes is home, you could get the soundtrack for a porn flick."

Collins shook his head, his expression half wonder, half disgust. "We can usually tell when Wes is home by the number of complaints from the neighbors. They don't give a shit who sees them, either. Once she ran out buck naked into the parking lot and he fucked her up against a parked car while three little kids on tricycles watched. That didn't go down too well with the neighborhood, though the lady who reported it took the time to tell me Wes had a ding dong came near to his knees."

Collins rolled his eyes. "Next time they started up outside, the old guy next door turned his hose on 'em."

"Stan likes them hot," Burgess said, "but maybe, getting burned a little, he'll be more careful next time. You get the video?"

"We weren't going to leave that behind, not with a cop involved," Collins said. "Perry's been watching it in the interview room. Last I checked, he was looking a little sick. I guess what happened tonight was Wes told Lorraine he was back tomorrow, and neglected to update her when things changed."

Collins flipped a photo out of a file. The husband was huge, six-foot-five easy, and built like a refrigerator with tattoos. "He may not think so, but Perry's lucky Lorraine called 9-1-1 and we had a guy in the neighborhood. Otherwise, you'd be over at the ER watching your boy get put back together, unless it was the morgue."

He put the photo away, flipped out another. The woman was wearing a tank top cut just a whisper above her nipples, cleavage like a mail slot, and cut-offs that left no doubt she'd had a Brazilian. She had full, dark, country singer hair and half a pot of gloss on puffy, collagened lips. It looked like Tammy Faye had donated the eyelashes.

"Seems like Wes doesn't mind what she does when he's away, but he goes ape shit if he finds someone with her when he gets home. He's put one or two guys in the hospital. She was probably just making trouble with that call, but she might have been trying to save your boy's life. He's a scrapper but he's pretty beat up."

He shook his head. "Whatever happened to the good family man? Seems like too many cops getting into trouble these days." Collins pushed back his chair, stood, and handed Burgess some keys. "I had the guys drop his car at his house, figured you'd want to drive him home, maybe give him a piece of your mind."