Fifteen
From a distance, Sarah watched the constable in the bright red RCMP serge uniform explain the proper way to wear a bicycle helmet. When the little girl was satisfied she knew how to wear her nice new pink helmet, he demonstrated to a group of boys what could happen to a head upon impact with the street at varying speeds. The demonstration turned out to be quite graphic, with pumpkins substituted for the heads.
Next, he handed brochures to a couple of teen boys who didn’t appear to think it was very manly to wear helmets while on a bicycle. At the same time as they remarked on looking geeky, they kept glancing back to the mangled pumpkins that had started out with very realistic pictures of human faces.
Finally, when he was alone, Sarah approached the display booth.
“Good day, Constable Walker.”
He touched the wide brim of his hat and gave her a slight nod. “Ma’am.”
Sarah checked over her shoulder. Since no one was watching that she could tell, she shuffled up to a large map of the city park that highlighted a bike trail and rested one finger on what was described as a landmark. Matt stepped beside her.
“You sure look spiffy in your red serge,” she said in a whisper just loud enough for him to hear.
He stiffened and clasped his hands behind his back, his trim physique making the uniform look even better. “Yeah, well, that’s good, because it’s not the most comfortable thing to wear. This collar is so high and done up so tight I can’t turn my head properly. I’ve also gained a few pounds since I finished my training years ago, and it’s a little more snug than it used to be.”
Sarah tried not to giggle. He didn’t know half the battle women had to face with their clothes every day. She didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him. “Other than the uniform, how’s it going?”
“As expected, I guess.”
“It can’t be all that bad.”
He grinned from beneath the wide-brimmed hat. “Actually, it’s kind of fun smashing those pumpkins.”
“Men are just little boys who grew taller,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear that. What did you say?”
“Nothing worth repeating. Are you allowed to take a lunch break? Or am I not allowed to be seen out in public with you?”
“Quite honestly, I don’t think that’s such a good idea here in the middle of the mall on a Saturday afternoon. Even though this is my full-dress uniform, I’m still in uniform, and I am officially on duty.”
“Okay. Then tell me all about the bike trail at this park.”
“What do you want to know? Do you really want to go mountain-biking or do you just want to make me talk?”
“I own a bike. I’ve never gone on a trail with it, but I do have one. It’s packed in my storage closet in the underground parking. What about you?”
“Actually, I do a lot of biking.”
“Do you go for distance or rough terrain riding?”
Matt grinned so brightly his eyes twinkled. “Rough terrain. I used to do BMX racing too, but the most biking I’ve been doing lately is taking my bike down to the Half-Pipe to do some skateboarding.”
Sarah felt all the color drain from her face. “You mean those cement basins, where the kids go roaring up the sides, and do flips and stuff?”
Sarah wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his grin widened even more. “It’s okay. I always wear a helmet. And it’s not only kids who do that, you know. The bigger guys just need better skateboards. And we have to go faster to get the height, but our weight helps the velocity. Still, I don’t do it as much as I used to. Takes more out of me, I guess.”
She wouldn’t have taken him for a thrillseeker, but on second thought, it seemed to suit him. He had a dangerous job where he never knew what perils he would be facing from day-to-day, even hour-to-hour. At least with the extreme sports, the risks were obvious, and there were no surprises, although she knew there was always the possibility of injuries.
“I was right about men and little boys,” she muttered, then cleared her throat. “If you’re an avid biker, then maybe that’s why they chose you to do the booth.”
“Either that or everyone senior to me refused, and nobody junior to me is working this shift today.”
“You have a bad attitude, do you know that?”
“I have a realistic attitude.”
A mother and two boys stepped up to the display showing proper hand signals, so Sarah took that as her cue to leave.
Matt hadn’t given her any indication if he would be back at the booth tomorrow, or if he was going to be back on regular duty.
Regardless of where Matt would be, Sarah knew where she was going tomorrow, and that was to church.
❧
Matt pulled into the entrance to his townhouse complex and steered down the hill toward his carport. He’d never been so glad to have a rotation end. He was dead-dog-tired, and he’d never needed to go home more in his life. On top of being at the end of the last twelve-hour shift, an armed robbery at a drugstore had kept him on an hour of overtime, and then he’d gotten stuck in the tail end of a traffic jam that resulted from an accident during the morning rush hour. At times like this, he wished he could reach forward, turn on flashing lights and a siren in his own car, and make the traffic part before him like Moses parted the Red Sea. Unfortunately, wishing wouldn’t make it so.
The only thing that could possibly make him smile was knowing that in forty-eight hours, he would be buzzing Sarah’s apartment and taking her once again to a Bible study meeting.
As Matt rolled past the visitor parking, he blinked, slowed, and looked in the rear-view mirror.
Wishing hadn’t made his own car have lights and sirens, but unless he was going crazy, wishing had made Sarah appear. Her car was sitting in one of the visitor parking stalls.
He was ready to hammer on the brakes and back up, but a movement in his driveway caught his eye.
It was Sarah.
Suddenly, Matt was no longer sleepy.
He accelerated slightly, steered into the carport, hit the brakes, and killed the motor. She walked up to the car and was ready, standing beside the door as soon as he got out. “Sarah? What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
She smiled and held a small black rectangular object in the air at shoulder height. “No, something is very right! Look what I’ve got!”
She held the object out, and Matt accepted a small video cassette.
“What is this?”
“Have you got a camcorder you can hook up to your television? I hope so, because I don’t. I want to see what’s on this tape.”
Matt waited for Sarah to elaborate, but she didn’t. She merely stood behind him in silence as he unlocked his door and punched in the alarm code for his home security system. “It will take me a minute to hook everything up.”
“No problem.”
“Want to make us some tea or something?”
She turned toward the kitchen but didn’t move. “I don’t think so. Everything is so nice and clean, I hate to mess it up.”
“How much mess could you possibly make?” He told her where to find the tea, a kettle, and the mugs, since he didn’t own a teapot.
While Sarah remained in the kitchen to make the tea, Matt took his camcorder out of its case, removed the cables from the drawer, and began to connect the camcorder to the television. “By the way, why aren’t you in class?” he called out.
He almost didn’t want to hear the answer. If she was missing classes for the sake of the tape, it had to be something extremely important. The fact that she had the tape, yet didn’t own a camcorder, made him all the more curious as to what it was.
The kettle whistled.
Sarah called her answer from the kitchen as she filled the cups with water. “The professor had an accident on the way to school, and there wasn’t enough time to call in a substitute, so we got the morning off.”
“I think I got caught in the traffic for that one. If it makes you feel any better, the victim looks like she has an excellent chance of recovery.”
“That’s great to know. Tomorrow we’ll have a substitute, and we’ll have to work extra hard to catch up, so I have to take advantage of today. That’s why I’m here. I want a chance to see what’s on that tape.”
Matt’s hand froze as he plugged the cable into the A/V jack. “If you don’t know what’s on this tape, then why are we going to watch it?”
“In case it’s something good.”
He was afraid to ask.
He turned on the television and set the camcorder to play. A crooked shot of a warehouse door opening appeared. A truck backed up, the driver and someone in a smock the same as Sarah’s from Donnie’s Donuts unloaded a few boxes, the truck drove off, and the door closed. The screen went blank.
Matt hit the pause button. “Well. That was certainly very interesting.”
“I’m sure there’s more. Put it back on.”
The blank screen became alive again. Once more, the warehouse door opened, but a different truck backed in. The same man unloaded a few boxes with a different driver, the second truck drove off, the warehouse door closed, and the screen once more went blank.
“Okay. . .” Matt let his voice trail off. “I must be missing something. This isn’t going to win any awards for interesting home videos.”
“Be quiet and let’s keep watching.”
“If you don’t mind, this time I’m going to fast forward it.”
Two more trucks backed in, this time not taking so long to watch the process.
“That does it. What in the world is this?”
Sarah sipped the last of her tea and walked back into the kitchen for more hot water and a fresh tea bag. “It’s the back door at Donnie’s Donuts.”
“I can see that. This doesn’t appear to be an instructional video. The photography is quite bad, and it’s crooked too. Plus it’s in black and white. Where did you get this?”
“It’s from a spy camera. You told me to keep an eye on things going in and out the back door, but I haven’t seen anyone while I’m on night shift. So I put a hidden camera in the warehouse to watch what goes on at the back door during the daytime when I’m not there. It’s got a motion detector, so it only goes on when something is moving. That’s so it doesn’t run out of film. Pretty cool, huh?”
Matt jumped to his feet and strode into the kitchen.
“You’ve got a spy camera set up at Donnie’s Donuts?”
“Yes. Works pretty well, doesn’t it? Let’s keep watching until we see everything on the tape. I only have two tapes, so this one has to go back in the camera tonight. When can I give you the one that’s in there today? Or maybe I should go buy a package of tapes, so we can watch them a few at a time.”
Sarah lifted the mug and started to go around him on her way back to the living room. Matt blocked her path, removed the mug from her hand, and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Not so fast. I think you better go back to the beginning and explain this.”
“I already told you. You said to keep an eye on—”
“I know what I told you. Let’s have a little more detail.”
“I put a spy camera in the loading area to catch what goes in and out the back door. It’s really well hidden. It’s made to look like a cheap air freshener, so I put it near the door on top of a bunch of junk that no one has touched for the last year. No one will even notice it. At night it’s no problem for me to quickly switch tapes and the battery pack, and it’s good for another day.” One side of her mouth quirked down. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do about the weekends. Although with fewer deliveries, there would be less movement. So if there’s anything going through the back door, it would be bad guys, right?”
Matt shook his head. “Where in the world did you get surveillance equipment?”
She smiled so brightly her entire face lit up. “e-Bay! You wouldn’t believe what they’ve got on there. There was another surveillance system that was a teddy bear, but I think they would have noticed that, so I bought the air freshener one instead.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. . .”
“No, I’m not. It was really cheap too. The ad said some cables were missing and some kind of switch was broken. So I took it to the audio-video department at the university, and some really nice guys fixed it for me. They even gave me the missing wires for free!”
Matt squeezed his eyes shut. Detective Cunningham was very much on duty. Unfortunately.
“Sarah, you can’t do that.”
“Why not? I know you can’t use stuff like that in court, but at least you would be able to see the thugs Donnie is dealing with. Then you guys can do whatever it is you do to catch drug dealers.”
“What if someone finds it and discovers what it is?”
“If any of the staff found it, they would think Donnie put it there. They’d just put it back, behave really nice around it, and not admit to Donnie that they found it. If someone throws it out because the air freshener doesn’t work, that would be a shame, but I didn’t pay much for it, so I wouldn’t cry about it or anything. Although I doubt I’d ever find another one at such a good price.”
“For your information, we’ve already spotted some suspicious characters known to the police lurking around the back door of Donnie’s. We’re keeping tabs on them just fine, without you being a super-spy.”
“But they’re not watching the back door twenty-four/seven, are they?”
“No. We don’t have a budget for that yet, until we can determine something really big is going on. For now, all we have is suspicion and the fact that you’ve witnessed a few things go through. But compared to the big picture, what you’ve seen isn’t a lot. We’ve got to find more.”
“I know that. That’s why I got the spy camera.” She straightened, set her shoulders back, and smiled as if she was extremely proud of herself.
“Let’s sit down in the living room. We have to talk.”
He released her hand, allowing her to pick up her mug of tea. Matt escorted her back into the living room, where they sat side by side on the couch. “The drug trade is really serious business. If drug dealers think someone has crossed them, or even think someone is going to, they have no hesitation in bumping them off. To them, life is cheap. I don’t want you getting involved in this.”
“Don’t you see? If I can help the police find out the crook Donnie is dealing with, then this whole thing will be over so much faster, and then there will be less chance of anyone finding out anything about me. I don’t want this to go on for years. I want my life back.”
Matt couldn’t agree more. He wanted so much to get to know Sarah better, to involve her in all parts of his life, which meant taking her to church on Sunday and spending more time with her. He found it very encouraging that she’d borrowed his Bible. He didn’t know why she’d borrowed it, but he would do everything he could to help her discover Jesus for herself. When he couldn’t take her to church on Sunday, he was doing the next best thing by taking her to the meetings Wednesday nights. Then, if she had any questions that he didn’t know the answer to, she would be with people who would.
Having to restrict his contact with her hurt, especially now. He felt safe taking her to a small home group but not the public setting of church. On an occasional Sunday, he actually saw people he’d arrested for various offences. Going to church didn’t instantly erase dishonesty. In the big picture, it meant there were questionable characters in church sitting alongside the saints. The risk of someone seeing Sarah at church with a known cop was always present. Therefore, he would continue to go to church alone.
For now, it didn’t matter, anyway. With the rotation changing only by one day each week, he hadn’t been to church for the past two weeks, and he wouldn’t be able to go for two more.
He turned toward the television, which had been on pause for so long the tape had clicked off.
He’d experienced the evidence-gathering process for drug rings before. Sometimes they dragged on forever. Even though Sarah’s videos wouldn’t be admissible in court, it was perfectly fine and legal to post the potential perps on the bulletin board. That way, they could identify them as potential perps for real surveillance away from Donnie’s. If allowing Sarah to make the tapes would speed up the case, he had to trust her when she said she knew what she was doing and would be perfectly safe.
He took a deep sigh. “Okay, you win. Make your tapes. But remember, if there is any chance that someone might see you, even if it means missing a day or two, or even more, then skip those days. My only concern is your safety. The case can drag on all it wants, as long as you’re safe.”
Her bright smile nearly lit the room. “Deal. Now let’s watch the rest of this tape, and then I’ll go home and let you get some sleep. You look really tired.”
Matt picked up the remote and fast-forwarded through the tape as they watched. The same warehouse door went up and down more times than he wanted to count. Nothing of any note happened, so Sarah rewound the tape, and tucked it in her purse.
“I guess this means I’ll see you tomorrow. Is noonish okay?”
“Noonish?”
“If that doesn’t work, we can pick another time. It would be nice if we could just pick the same time every day, but your shifts don’t allow that.”
Her words rolled over in his head. Every day. Her little spy mission with the hidden camera meant that he would be seeing Sarah every day as they watched the back door together.
He couldn’t tamp down his smile. Perhaps Detective Cunningham was onto something after all.