Sendoff for a Snitch (21 page)

A few people with chainsaws were working on some of the downed trees in the street. Between their pickups and the trees, the street was almost impassable.

I went down an alley behind well-kept and picturesque old houses. Water pooled in low-lying spots. Some of the fencing around the yards was down, and trash cans littered the pavement. A few garages, their doors firmly shut and locked, faced the alley.

Some of the houses had lights shining through the windows, but most of the interiors were dark. A number of them had outdoor security lights, mostly motion activated. I saw no cars or people. None of the backyards contained dogs. Most residents seemed to have found someplace else to weather the emergency.

I set off a light with a motion detector as I passed a closed garage. I heard a car behind me and stepped to the side of the alley, hugging the garage door. Maybe the car would pass without splashing me too badly.

It was a patrol car, and it stopped in front of me, angling in so I couldn’t pass.

My throat swelled shut.

I could try to turn and go the other way, but they’d just chase me down. And charge me with fleeing and alluding.

Both front doors of the car opened, and two officers stepped out. It was Cunningham and Richards, the same team who’d stopped me in Aaron’s truck. They had wanted to haul me in, but the sergeant had nixed that idea. They hadn’t liked being overruled then, and I doubted they were any happier about it now. That kind of humiliation stuck.

In this emergency, they’d undoubtedly been working long overtime shifts. Add that to grudge they probably carried against me, and I could count on them being in a particularly unfriendly mood.

Maybe they wouldn’t recognize me.

Richards’s hand went to the flap on her holster, unsnapping it.

They recognized me.

“What are you doing here?” Cunningham asked.

I couldn’t think of anything that would sound anything like believable. “Just walking.”

“Just walking, huh? In the alley here behind all these nice houses?”

I shrugged.

“All these nice houses whose owners voluntarily evacuated when the mayor suggested it?”

I hadn’t heard of a call for a voluntary evacuation, but then, I had limited access to any media. Since I couldn’t think of a reasonable response to that, I didn’t say anything.

Cunningham poked me in the shoulder. “All these nice houses whose burglar alarms aren’t working because they need to be reset after the power came back on?”

I hadn’t thought of that, but of course that was true.

“And what’s in that bag you’re carrying?”

I glanced down it. “Just a few things I salvaged from my apartment.”

“Yeah? Where’s your apartment?”

“Over on Second Street. It got flooded out pretty bad.”

“So you decided to come over here and see what you could ‘salvage?’”

“No, sir.”

“How about you drop the bag and face that wall.” He indicated the garage wall next to the big overhead door.

Not too many options. I dropped the bag and turned to face the wall.

Richards stepped up, grabbed the bag, and backed up a few feet.

“Assume the position,” Cunningham said.

I leaned my hands against the wall and spread my feet. I glanced under my arm and saw Cunningham pulling on rubber gloves.

“You got anything I should know about? Anything dangerous or illegal?”

I closed my eyes. “No, sir.” Just a cat collar with possibly valuable jewels. But that wasn’t dangerous or illegal.

As soon she saw I was cooperating, Richards dropped the bag and went back to the car to pick up the radio. I wanted to tell her they didn’t need backup, but I didn’t think they’d believe me anyhow, so I didn’t.

Cunningham pulled my wallet, keychain, little flashlight, and the cat collar out of my pockets. I couldn’t see what he did with them.

Then he ran his hands over my clothes, under my jacket, and between my legs. He took off my watch cap and shook it, then perched it back on my head.

Grasping one of my hands, he pulled it behind me and turned the palm out, then snapped a cuff on it. He did the same with the other hand.

“Turn around.”

I did so.

Richards was holding the trash bag in one hand and the cat collar in the other.

“What’d you find?” Cunningham asked.

“Just a couple of pots and dishes, a few cans of food, and some silverware,” she answered.

“Real silverware? Like sterling silver?”

“I don’t think so. Just garden variety forks and spoons.”

“No drugs?”

“Nope.”

“And what do you think of the piece of jewelry?”

“I’m not sure.” She turned it over in her hands. “But it’s pretty heavy. And those gems might be real.”

“You think it comes from one of these houses?”

“Could be. Where else would he have gotten if from?”

No one asked me directly, and even if I told them the truth, they’d think I was lying. And I couldn’t blame them. The idea of a cat who was a goddess and lived in the church upstairs from my apartment was a pretty far-fetched notion to begin with. And then trying to explain that the cat had this collar, which got lost in my apartment…

It would even sound to me like I was lying.

“Why do you think he hasn’t got more loot?”

“Maybe he’s just getting started. But my guess would be that he’s got a lot of stuff piled up near the back door of these houses to come back for with a car. But he could fit the bracelet in his pocket.”

Cunningham reached over to take the cat collar. “Backup coming?” he asked.

“Nah. Dispatch still isn’t working well. Didn’t think there was much point unless we’re gonna bring him in. And with the jail not having any power, we’d need something more than finding him walking down the alley with some jewelry in his pocket. Unless the jewelry was on a stolen property list.”

Which, I thought miserably, it might well be.

“You’d better call the stop in anyhow. Make sure there’s no warrants for him or anything.”

Richards had my wallet in her hand. She pulled my ID out and headed to the patrol car.

I stood still, my stomach clenched in a knot. For sure somebody’d want to talk to me about the body in my stairwell.

I knew how uncomfortable and dangerous a lockup with only emergency electricity would be. My only hope was that they wouldn’t want to be adding to the population.

She climbed out of the car again a few minutes later. “A BOLO. Be on the lookout. Wanted for questioning on a homicide,” she said. “And they said they always have room for looters. Especially during an emergency like this. They’re sending backup.”

I wanted to say I hadn’t been looting and they had no reason to think I had been, aside from the cat collar, but keeping my mouth shut seemed like the smartest move.

Another car pulled up, this one a black Lincoln I was pretty sure I recognized. And it meant more trouble. I closed my eyes and fought down the urge to try to dash off between the garages and through the yard.

For one thing, I wouldn’t get far. My hands were firmly cuffed behind my back. I had no place to go where I could expect anybody to help me. And I’d certainly be facing new fleeing and eluding charges that would violate my parole.

Detectives Belkins and Montgomery got out of the car and came over. As usual, Montgomery looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. Belkins looked like he’d slept in his clothes and just rolled out of bed.

“Well, well,” Belkins said, a nasty grin on his pasty white face. “What have we here?”

Cunningham hefted the cat collar. “Caught us a looter.”

Montgomery raised the chiseled eyebrows on his handsome dark face. “Looting. That doesn’t sound like you, Jesse.”

I took a deep breath. Good thing Montgomery was itching for a promotion. He was careful to handle situations so they wouldn’t blow up in his face. He would be reasonable. It was my best bet for getting out of this dilemma.

“No, sir,” I said.

Montgomery turned to Cunningham. “Did you actually see him in one of the houses?”

“No. But look at what he had in his pocket.” He presented the collar.

Montgomery took it. “Interesting. Jesse, where did this come from?”

He would listen. And he knew my history. He just might accept the story. “It belongs to that group that had the church upstairs from my place.”

He nodded. “The tabernacle cult or whatever it is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought they more or less disbanded when their leader got in so much trouble.”

“I haven’t seen them around lately.”

“So you couldn’t give them their bracelet—or whatever it is—back to them.” He was feeding me the correct answer to give, and I appreciated it.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “It’s a cat collar. For that cat they thought was a goddess. Truth be told, I’d forgotten about it. I just found it in my apartment.”

“And how is your apartment?” he asked.

“A total mess. Uninhabitable.”

He nodded. “I’ve been by.”

“I just went by to see if I could salvage anything. And I found the collar.”

Belkins took an unlit cigar out of his mouth and spit on the ground. “Could be that one on the stolen property list they circulated just before the flooding,” he said.

Montgomery looked at him with respect. “You read that?”

“Not really, but Carissa did.” Belkins eyes glowed. He had a thing for Carissa. “She said keep an eye out for it. There’s a big reward.”

“A reward for a cat collar?”

“Yeah. Before the storm, Carissa was gonna do a story on it. It disappeared from a jewelry shop where it had been taken for a repair. Belongs to some rich hotshot’s cutesy young wife. She’s got some kind of exotic cat.”

Montgomery shrugged and turned to Richards, who still held the black plastic trash bag as well as my wallet and keychain. “What else was in the bag?”

“A couple of cans of food and a frying pan and stuff,” she said.

He turned to me. “So where are you staying?”

If I stayed any length of time in Mandy’s carriage house, I’d have to register the change of address with the parole office. But I didn’t want to bring her into this right now if I could help it. I said, “A night here, a night there.”

“Not at your girlfriend’s place?”

I shifted from one foot to the other. “She’s mad at me right now.”

He laughed. “Seems she’s usually mad at you. What’s the point?”

What, indeed. My throat closed up, and my eyes stung. I didn’t dare try to say anything.

“She get over that whole thing about that guy who raped her?” he asked.

“That’s not something a woman ever ‘gets over,’” I managed to say. “Scars like that don’t go away.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Montgomery said. “She still think you had something to do with it?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t, and she knows that. But I got to let her take her time with this. She wants me over there, I’ll be as supportive as I know how. She needs space, I’ll give it to her.”

“And if she don’t want you at all?”

I almost choked on the words, but I said, “Then I leave her alone.”

Richards was looking at me. A slight smile played on her lips, and she nodded approvingly. Maybe, since she was a woman, she’d understand a little better than the men did.

“So what’s she mad at you for now?” Montgomery asked.

Admitting I’d been drunk would be an invitation back to prison. I shrugged again.

Belkins had taken the collar and looked up from his examination of it. “Damon will never convince me that he didn’t have something to do with that rape. Just like his type to do something like that.”

“What ‘type’ is that?” Richards asked.

Uniformed patrol officers don’t usually question detectives. Belkins looked up at her and smirked. “Criminal types. Murderers. They should abolish parole. They let these guys out after they kill the first time, and next thing you know, some other woman’s been raped. And probably left for dead.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Montgomery said. “Jesse’s victim wasn’t even a woman. It was a male drug dealer.”

Belkins shrugged. “Violent criminals are violent criminals. They got no respect for anybody else. They take what they want, and given half a chance, they kill if they don’t get it. Leave ’em locked up, if you ask me. Unless you execute them. Probably a better solution.”

He was fingering the collar. “These real jewels?”

He answered himself. “I guess if there’s a big reward out for it, they are.”

Another car pulled up. This one was a puke-green electric hybrid.

I recognized that one, too. I closed my eyes and sighed. Carissa, the reporter for the
Rothsburg Register
. No doubt with a new camera. Once again, not good.

The thin blonde in a skimpy dress and high heels climbed out of the car. She was carrying a camera.

Belkins grinned. “Carissa! Good to see you. Where have you been?”

The woman tossed her head so her layered, highlighted hair flipped back from her face. Her lips pursed as she tilted her head at Belkins and simpered. “Working, Honeypot. You haven’t called me.”

Belkins and Carissa were an unlikely couple, but they’d connected somehow. Montgomery looked like he was going to say something about hotshots with cutesy young girlfriends, but he didn’t.

“Haven’t had a chance,” Belkins said. “Take a look at this.” He held out the collar. “Think it might be the one there’s a reward out for?”

Carissa lifted the camera and began snapping pictures.

“Hey!” Montgomery reached over and grabbed the collar. “That might be evidence. If anybody takes pictures of it, it ought to be over at the evidence room at the station. Not a reporter from the newspaper.”

Carissa sniffed and turned her camera on me. “Jesse Damon. What are you under arrest for this time?”

I wasn’t going to say anything. I tried to turn so she couldn’t get a good picture, but I didn’t dare make any sudden moves.

Belkins stepped between us, which I hoped would have the unintended effect of blocking her pictures. “Damon can’t talk to you now, Snookums. Besides, you know anything he says is likely to be a lie. How about after I get off, you let me take you out to dinner. Got to be someplace open. We can talk about it then.”

Richards, standing next to me, made a disgusted snorting noise. I glanced over at her. Her nose was wrinkled, like she’d smelled something rotten.

“Be careful,” Montgomery said. “Carissa’s a newspaper reporter, Belkins. She has to wait for a press release. Or call and ask the information officer. We can’t make a statement.”

Belkins reached out and took Carissa’s hand. “Oh, we know the rules. You wouldn’t take anything I said as an official statement, would you, Snookums?” He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it.

Carissa wiggled her shoulders, turned her head, and giggled. “Oooh, of course not! I wouldn’t want you get in trouble over little old me!”

Richards shook her head and walked back toward the patrol car.

Montgomery opened his hand to look at the collar. “This the only thing he had?” he asked Cunningham.

He gestured at the black plastic trash bag on the ground. “That and what’s in that bag.”

“Really?” Montgomery looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “What else do you have, Jesse?”