Megan
On Saturday afternoon, the fire chief presided over the graduation ceremony for the fire academy graduates. It was held in a large meeting room in the Forth Worth City Hall on Throckmorton Street. Seth, Blast, Brigit, and I sat in the audience, along with Frankie’s boyfriend Zach. Zach was a former paratrooper and a buddy of Seth’s from their army circles. Zach was tall, like Frankie, standing six feet two inches. Like Seth, he continued to wear his hair in a short, military-style cut, but where Seth’s hair was blond Zach’s was dark brown. He worked as a supervisor in the shipping department of the Miller Brewing Company in south Fort Worth.
Frankie’s parents were also in attendance, and sat in the third row with us. It was clear Frankie got her height from her father. Her mother, on the other hand, stood a mere five feet. But her mother didn’t let her short stature hold her back. When the fire chief called out the name “Francesca Kerrigan,” her mother leaped to her feet, pumped her fist, and let out a loud whoop! The rest of us applauded, and Zach added a whistle. Needless to say, we were happy for Frankie.
From the platform, Frankie turned and waved, beaming with pride at her accomplishment. She’d spent the last few years stocking groceries at night, not sure what she wanted to do with her life. It was Seth who’d first suggested the idea of firefighting to Frankie. I’d like to think that I was the magical kismet that had led her to discovering her life’s purpose. But maybe I was just trying to flatter myself, to think my life served some cosmic objective. It seemed preferable to accepting that life was merely a series of random events with no inherent goal.
After the ceremony, we gathered around Frankie to congratulate her.
“Good job, Francesca!” her father bellowed, enveloping her in a warm hug.
Her mother gave her a playful jab in the arm. “That’s my girl!”
Zach draped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her toward him to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Any word on the position at Seth’s station?”
“About that,” Seth said before Frankie could reply. “I was told I could give you the good news.”
Frankie’s blue eyes popped wide. “Good news? I got the job, then?”
Seth nodded. “You start Monday at seven A.M.”
“Hot damn!”
“Don’t get too excited.” He flashed a mischievous grin. “Rookies always get put on cleaning detail. Come prepared to scrub the floors.”
The six of us went out afterward for a celebratory dinner and drinks at a hibachi restaurant. In an ironic twist of fate, Frankie’s mother unintentionally set her cocktail napkin too close to the hot grill. When the napkin burst into flame across the table, I gestured wildly with my hand and shrieked. “Fire!”
In a quick, smooth motion, Frankie snatched up the napkin and dunked it into her glass of water, dousing the flames. Yep, looked like firefighting was her destiny.
When dinner was over, we returned to our house. I’d ordered a cake decorated to look like a fire truck and hung police cordon tape as improvised streamers around the kitchen. Thank you, taxpayers of Fort Worth. Zoe jumped up onto the table and licked at the frosting, but we caught her before she got too far.
“No cake for you, kitty,” I said, scooping her up and setting her back on the floor.
I gave Frankie a hug as I handed her the piece of cake I’d cut. “You’re going to do great.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so.” I also knew she was in for some very harrowing shifts and that she’d be faced with people and events, both good and bad, that would stay with her forever. Such is the life of a first responder. The job could take both a physical and emotional toll, but for those called to it, there was no other job that could bring the same sense of fulfillment.
* * *
On Sunday, I left Brigit at home while I went to mass with my family. My brothers Daniel and Connor had come home from college for the weekend, which meant they’d either run out of money and had come to beg for some funds, or they’d given in to my mother’s incessant guilt trips. Regardless of their reasons, I didn’t want to miss the chance to see them. It wasn’t often these days that all seven members of my family were in the same place at the same time, and no way was I going to be the party pooper who kept the family from being complete.
My parents sat at either end of their five children in the pew, a habit formed when we kids were young and sometimes acted up in church. They’d strategically kept all of us within arm’s reach, ready to smack us with the bulletin if we misbehaved. Though none of us had received a smack in years, traditions die hard.
After mass, we went to my parents’ house in the Arlington Heights neighborhood for lunch. The three-bedroom, two-bath, one-story house bore faded yellow paint and peeling trim. While there had been a row of bushes along the front of the house when I was young, several had succumbed to either the hard freezes over various winters or the severe heat and droughts of any number of summers. Three struggling bushes remained, positioned randomly, two on one side of the centered front porch, one on the other. Obviously, the Luz home had never been considered for a yard-of-the-month award.
Mom, who was as much a cook as she was a gardener, threw together a platter of simple sandwiches, augmented by store-bought macaroni salad, a bag of corn chips, and a jar of dill pickles.
My sister Gabby lived up to her name, rambling on about the driver’s ed course she was taking. Her sixteenth birthday was coming up and she couldn’t wait to get her license, even if the only vehicle she’d have access to was the 1993 Buick Regal my father had bought when he first began working at the GM plant in nearby Arlington over two decades ago. Gabby would have to share the car with Joey, who was a year older. But still, wheels are wheels, and the ancient car would get her from point A to point B. Not in style, maybe, but at least in comfort.
“The instructor had us drive on I-30 Thursday,” she told me as we took seats at the kitchen table. “We nearly got hit by a pickup. It was so scary! People drive crazy around here!”
I reached for the bowl of macaroni. “You don’t know the half of it. I wrote a woman a ticket this week for backing down an entrance ramp she’d entered by accident. People had to swerve around her. It was a wonder she didn’t kill someone.” I spooned a helping onto my plate and passed the bowl to Daniel. “How’s summer school going?”
“Good. I’m on target for As in both of my classes this semester.”
“That’s great.” My eyes moved to Connor, whose college aims tended less toward maintaining a good GPA and more toward having a good time. “What about you?”
His eyes darted to our parents before returning to me. “Don’t ask,” he muttered under his breath.
His response caused my mother’s Irish temper to flare and she cast Connor a pointed look. “You don’t get your act together soon, Dad and I will cut you off.”
My brother mumbled something under his breath, but she chose to ignore it. Irish tempers tend to flame out as easily and as quickly as they flare up.
One of my mother’s indistinguishable orange tabby cats leaped up onto the table as Joey reached for a sandwich. He grabbed the cat and set him back on the floor. “Did Mom tell you I got a new job?” he asked me.
Despite the fact that he could have easily given me the information directly, it came as no surprise that my brother would run things through our mom. Like many mothers, she served as the family’s central communications center.
When I turned to her for the details, she made a circling motion with her hand, letting me know the information would be forthcoming once she had a chance to finish chewing. A few seconds later she swallowed the bite of food in her mouth and said, “He’s going to sack groceries at Central Market.” The tabby who’d attempted to summit the table a moment before jumped into her lap, where she treated him to a piece of her tuna sandwich.
I turned back to Joey. “Sacking groceries, huh? You giving up your lawn-mowing business, then?”
“Heck, no,” he replied. “You know how much people pay me so that they can stay inside in the air-conditioning?”
A pretty penny, apparently. No wonder the kid always seemed to be flush with cash.
“I could mow your lawn, too,” he offered. “I’ll give you a family discount. Twenty bucks.”
I was tempted to remind him of all the things I’d done for him over the years without a single cent in payment. I’d changed his diapers, driven him to his friends’ houses for sleepovers, helped him clean up untold numbers of spills and messes he’d created. He could mow my lawn gratis until the day I died and he’d still owe me. But no sense pointing this out. There’s no arguing with teenagers. They’re irrational creatures.
“Thanks,” I told him, “but no thanks. Seth takes care of my yard work.”
“How much do you pay him?”
“He does it for free,” I said. “Out of the goodness of his heart.”
A smirk played around Joey’s lips. “Yeah, right. That’s why he does it.” He elbowed Connor and the two of them shared a laugh.
I narrowed my eyes at them. “You know I’m trained to kill with my bare hands, right?” Actually, I wasn’t. But these two punks didn’t need to know that.
Joey raised his hands in surrender. “Okay! Okay!”
Luckily for me, Gabby changed the subject. “When are you going to take me to the Roller Derby, Megan?”
Gabby had enjoyed roller-skating as a girl, and I’d promised her I’d take her to see Frankie play derby sometime. It was always fun to watch the Fort Worth Whoop Ass clobber some lesser team.
I took a sip of my iced tea. “I’ll check the schedule and get back with you. I’m sure there’s a bout or two coming up soon.”
We continued to make small talk until everyone had eaten their fill and began to leave the table. I offered to drop Connor at the bus station for his return trip to college in San Marcos. Given that Daniel attended the University of Texas branch only a half hour away in Arlington, he planned to stick around a while longer.
Hugs were exchanged as we headed to the door. The cats had come around to see us off, too, and I gave each of them a scratch under the chin. “Behave,” I admonished them with a wagging finger. One of them swiped at my hand. Brat.
Out the door we went. It was nice not to have to wrestle with the darn thing anymore. After years of the door hanging askew, Seth had recently fixed it. Not only was he hunky and handsome, he was handy, too. Definitely a keeper.
* * *
The following week, I was back on the day shift. Thank God. Some cops dealt just fine with working in the dark. They must be part vampire or something. As for me, the night shift wreaked havoc on my biorhythms. Even in the brutally hot Texas summers, I much preferred working by daylight.
Monday was a typical day. Motor vehicle violations. Teens trying to sneak into the movie theater without paying for tickets. A hit-and-run on Colonial Parkway involving an S-class Mercedes sedan, a golf cart, and a motorized scooter. Okay, so maybe that last call wasn’t typical. According to the driver of the Mercedes, who was the only one left on the scene when I arrived, a kid on a scooter pulled onto the road right in front of him. When the driver hit his brakes, he was broadsided by a trio of adolescent boys in a golf cart who’d been racing the scooter. Fortunately uninjured, the kids had backed up, made a quick U-turn, and zipped away before the driver of the Mercedes could gather his wits and follow them. No doubt the kids had hidden the cart in a garage and were in the process of making up a story for their parents to explain the damage. The shelves fell over on it!
“Did you get a good look at any of the boys?” I asked.
“Not really,” the man said. “The only thing I can tell you is that the driver had blond hair and braces on his teeth. I saw them when he was screaming in surprise outside my car window. He had bright blue rubber bands. One of them broke when he was screaming and stuck on my window.” He gestured to a small broken rubber band on the glass. “As far as what they were wearing or anything else?” He shrugged to complete the sentence. In other words, not a clue.
“I’ll cruise the neighborhood,” I told the man. “Maybe I’ll spot the kids or the cart. In the meantime, see if your homeowner’s association will put out an e-mail alert. Somebody’s likely to know who the kids are. If you get a response, I’d be happy to go talk to them and their parents and see if we can’t set things straight.”
After snapping a photo of the rubber band on the window, I used tweezers to remove it and dropped it into an evidence bag. I took the man’s information and typed up a report on my computer. The administrative duties done, I cruised slowly up and down the streets of the neighborhood. I saw nothing. No boys. No scooter. No golf cart with a damaged front end. The kids had probably scattered and were hunkered down in their bedrooms, fingers crossed their parents wouldn’t find out they’d snuck out a golf cart without permission and proceeded to crash it into a car priced at over a hundred grand.
As I cruised by the fire station, I swung into the lot. Might as well see how things were going for Frankie on her first day.
Inside the station, I found Seth snoozing in one of the bunk beds, Blast in his bed on the floor. While Blast slipped out of the sleeping quarters to follow me and Brigit down the hall, I didn’t wake Seth. The guy needed his sleep and, given that I was on duty, I didn’t plan to stay long anyway.
The two dogs and I discovered Frankie pushing a bucket and mopping out the shower area. I leaned against the doorjamb. “Enjoying your first day, Cinderella?”
She cast a glance my way. “Not at all! Can you get me out of this? Isn’t there a law against hazing?”
“There is.” I stepped forward to shoo the dogs away from the mop bucket. “But it’s intended for athletic teams and fraternities, not government employees.”
“Darn.”
“If it’s any consolation,” I told her, “it looks like you’re doing a fine job. This tile is really gleaming.”
She leaned on the mop handle and admired her handiwork with a smile. “It does, doesn’t it?”
I left her with an encouraging pat on the back, returned Blast to his bed with a whispered order to “stay,” and set back out on patrol.
Around four-thirty, I received a call from the owner of the Mercedes. My suggestion to contact the homeowner’s association had proven to be a good one. Three people had contacted the man with the name of the kid they suspected had been driving the golf cart. He’d been identified not only by his blue rubber bands, but also a chronic lack of supervision. Looked like he was teenager non grata around his neighborhood.
“I went by his house earlier,” the man said. “I could hear a television on inside, but nobody would come to the door.”
“I’d like to say that surprises me.” But it didn’t. Avoidance was a common technique used by lawbreakers. They seemed to think that if they ignored their troubles long enough, they’d go away. That’s not how things work.
“From what I hear,” the man added, “the kid’s an out-of-control brat.”
Wouldn’t be the first time I dealt with one of those. Kids could be a real pain in the butt sometimes, especially when their parents didn’t hold them accountable. “Got his name and address?”
Once I had the information, I headed straight to the house. It was a grand home, a soaring two-story contemporary model with rows of narrow plate-glass windows, a tile roof, and a three-car garage with an additional smaller door designed for a golf cart. As I pulled up, I realized Brigit was panting heavily. Time for a water break.
I parked in the shade of a Bradford pear tree, retrieved a cold bottle of water from the small cooler on the passenger seat floorboard, and opened the door to my partner’s enclosure to pour some into her bowl. She stood in the space and greedily lapped it up. Slup-slup-slup. I added a little more until she seemed satisfied. I poured the slimy dregs that remained in her bowl onto the grass and closed the door, leaving the windows down so she could get some air.
Feeling parched myself, I took a swig from the bottle and carried it to the door with me. On the porch was a large pot of purple petunias. Their dirt was dry, their leaves beginning to shrivel. Of course August was a month when people tended to neglect their outside plants and lawns. It was simply too dang hot to spend much time outside unless you were lounging in a swimming pool.
I poured a few ounces from the bottle onto the petunias. Given the godforsaken temperatures, I wasn’t sure whether the water would save them from an untimely death or merely prolong their agony, but I’d like to think it was the former.
I rang the bell. The sound reverberated through the house. After waiting thirty seconds or so, I tried again. DING-DONG-dong-dong-dong …
Still nothing.
Were the residents away from home? It was impossible to tell given that the garage doors were closed. Might as well give them the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. And I couldn’t much blame the kid for bolting. Young people tended to panic when things went wrong. Still, this wrong needed to be righted. I scrawled “Urgent—call me immediately” on one of my business cards and crammed it into the space between the door and the jamb. It was the best I could do for the time being.
* * *
Tuesday was a hot and unusually windy day, warm bursts kicking up sand and grit and small bits of debris that pinged when they impacted the side of the cruiser. When Brigit and I took a break in Forest Park, she quickly tired of playing Frisbee. I’d send the disc sailing in one direction, and just as she was ready to snatch it out of the air the wind would pick it up and send it off another way. I could sense her frustration. It was much more fun to catch the toy in the air. Any old dog could pick a Frisbee up from the ground. She eventually flopped down in the grass, panting, leaving me to retrieve the toy.
Though I’d been waiting for a call from the parents of the boy who’d crashed the golf cart into the Mercedes, my phone had remained silent. Evidently they’d ignored the message on my card. Blurgh.
I was rolling south down Hemphill when dispatch came on the radio. “We’ve got a report of a shoplifter at the gas station on the corner of Hemphill and West Allen.”
Had the Lollipop Bandit struck again? Only one way to find out. I grabbed my mic and squeezed the talk button. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.”
The store was a mere two blocks away. As I headed toward it, I passed both a medical office and a mental health clinic. I kept my eyes peeled for a medium-sized man in scrubs, but saw none outside the buildings.
The store’s manager, a trim, fortyish Latino man, was standing outside waiting for us when we arrived. I climbed out of the car and retrieved Brigit from her enclosure, snapping her leash onto her collar. I led her over to the man. “I hear you had a shoplifter?”
He nodded, but then shook his head, incredulous. “A man wearing green scrubs ran out with a handful of candy!”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Grape Tootsie Pops?”
His mouth gaped. “How did you know?”
“This wasn’t his first offense. He’s been hitting gas stations and convenience stores in the area for weeks.”
The man scoffed. “He’s obviously got a job. Why steal candy? It’s cheap.”
“Some people get a thrill out of taking things that aren’t theirs,” I told him. “They like to see what they can get away with. Any chance you saw which way he went?”
The man pointed at a parking lot across the side street. “He ran into that lot. That’s all I know.”
I looked in the direction he’d pointed. The parking lot was full of cars, many of them pickups and SUVs and minivans with high profiles. It was no wonder he’d lost sight of the thief.
I raised my hand to indicate Brigit’s leash. “I’ll see if my partner can trail him.”
I took Brigit inside to the candy aisle, stopped in front of the Tootsie Pop display, and issued the order for her to track. She put her nose to the floor. Snuffle-snuffle. Snuffle-snuffle. After snatching up an errant peanut someone had dropped on the floor, she set off toward the doors. We exited the store and I jogged along behind her as she headed toward the parking lot across the street.
With the trail relatively fresh, she moved quickly, darting up and down the rows and between cars. Clearly, the thief had done the same, making some evasive maneuvers to avoid detection. Eventually, we made our way out of the lot and across south Jennings, heading into another parking lot on the next block. The thief must have looked back and realized he wasn’t being followed, because he took a much more direct tack through this lot.
We approached John Peter Smith Hospital. JPS was a public facility, the place where officers took potential psychiatric cases for diagnosis and treatment, and home to the only Level 1 trauma center in Tarrant County. Not long ago, ER doctors here had saved the life of fellow FWPD officer Matt Pearce, who’d gotten into a gun battle in a wooded area with a father and his adult son. Pearce had taken five bullets, including one in the face. Another had nicked his heart. Add in a collapsed lung, shattered femur, punctured diaphragm, broken jaw, and damage to his liver and spleen, and he’d been given a mere four percent chance of survival. Luckily, he’d beaten the odds. He’d spent two weeks in a medically induced coma, awakening on his oldest daughter’s third birthday. He was still undergoing therapy nearly a year later, but the fact that he was alive and had fared as well as he had was nothing short of a miracle, as well as a testament to the great care provided at the hospital.
Three women in scrubs stood at the edge of the sidewalk, paper coffee cups in their hands as they chatted, apparently on break. A man in scrubs leaned back against the building, casually scrolling through screens on his cell phone. Could he be the Lollipop Bandit? He was average sized and thus fit what little description we had of the culprit. But the fact that he appeared relaxed, was paying little attention to what was going on around him, and wasn’t trying to hide told me he wasn’t the guy we were after.
Brigit continued to snuffle along, leading me around the perimeter of the building between the outpatient entrance and the parking garage. As we crossed south Main Street, I glanced up at the sky bridge that connected the main hospital and the patient care center that housed the ER. People dressed in scrubs and others in regular clothes made their way between the two buildings, moving to and fro behind the glass like fish in an aquarium. To the east, a freight train clickety-clacked its way down the tracks that separated the medical center from a narrow neighborhood that bordered Interstate 35. Colorful graffiti decorated many of the boxcars, carrying the names of taggers from far and wide.
I turned my attention back to my partner. Brigit trotted up to a pair of automatic doors and, once again, I found her leading me into an ER waiting room.
A man at the reception desk looked up as we came in. “Is there a problem, Officer?”
I ordered Brigit to stop trailing the scent and led her over to the desk. Speaking quietly, I said, “We’re tracking a suspect. He’s wearing green scrubs.”
“That doesn’t narrow things down much.” He gestured to the green scrubs he, himself, was wearing. A young woman and older man behind him were similarly outfitted.
“He’s average sized. Would’ve come in these doors just a few minutes ago.”
The guy slowly shook his head. “I wish I could help you but to be perfectly honest I pay much more attention to the patients coming in than I do the staff. People wearing scrubs are in and out of here constantly. Doctors. Nurses. Orderlies. Techs. We’re a big facility. I don’t even know all the faces of the staff, let alone their names.”
Given that this was the second time I’d tracked the Lollipop Bandit, I felt less inclined to let things slide. “Where’s your security office?” I asked.
The man gave me an office number and directions. With Brigit trotting along, I exited the ER and circled around to the main entrance of the hospital. Unfortunately, the two of us came back out the main entrance fifteen minutes later, none the wiser. While security cameras mounted outside the ER picked up a man in scrubs, a cap, and a mask entering the building, he’d been smart enough to keep his head down. He also apparently knew where the security cameras were—and weren’t—located in the building. While we’d managed to track him visually for a minute or two in the public areas, we’d eventually lost him. It was possible he’d removed the cap and mask, but we couldn’t definitively identify anyone on the screens as the bandit. We had no idea what his face looked like or his hair color, and frankly, everyone looked similar in the loose-fitting scrubs. It was even difficult to distinguish the men from the women in some cases.
Brigit and I returned to the gas station and informed the owner that we hadn’t been able to find the guy. “Sorry. He’s a slippery sucker.” I cringed at my unintentional pun.
“You gave it your best shot,” he said. “Thanks for trying.” Our business done, he turned back to the display of motor oil he was stacking.
Brigit and I set back out on patrol. Just after four o’clock, my cell phone buzzed with an incoming call. Finally.
It wasn’t the parents of the boy with the braces and blue bands, though. It was Ryan. He sounded pissed off and then some. “Adriana tried to get into my apartment today while I was at work. That woman is crazy!”
“Are you at home now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Stay put. I’m on my way.” Looked like Brigit and I might be putting in some overtime.
I circled through the lot and headed back out, aiming for Ryan’s place. When I arrived, he was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me.
I climbed out of the car, leaving the windows down for Brigit.
Before I even reached him, Ryan launched into a tirade. “Adriana showed up here today. She tried to get the maintenance guy to let her into my apartment. She had a bunch of balloons and told him she wanted to surprise me for my birthday.”
“Happy birthday,” I said.
He threw up his hands. “That’s the point! It’s not my birthday! She just said that to have a reason to try to get into my place.”
Well, then. Consider my birthday wish retracted. “How do you know all this?”
“He told me.” Ryan pointed across the lot to the mailbox area, where a burly man wielding a can of WD-40 was spraying hinges that had evidently become sticky. “That’s him right there.”
“I’ll go have a chat with him.” As I turned to go, Ryan began to come along with me. I held up a hand to stop him. “You wait here.”
“Why?” Ryan asked.
Because I want to ask the guy some questions he might not answer honestly if you’re standing there, that’s why. But I couldn’t say that to Ryan, so instead I went with, “Protocol.” You can’t argue with protocol, right?
Ryan stood at the curb behind me as I walked through the lot. When I passed by the cruiser, Brigit pawed at the metal mesh of her enclosure, letting me know she didn’t appreciate being left out of the action. “I’ll be right back, girl,” I promised her.
I continued across the lot and approached the man. He wore navy blue work pants, a light blue polo shirt, and a layer of sweat and grime that told me he’d had a busy day. “Good evening, sir.”
He turned his face my way. “Hello there, Officer.”
“Mr. Downey said someone approached you today about getting into his apartment?”
“That’s right.” A burst of wind blew past just as he went to spray another hinge. The greasy mist ended up all over the front of the mailboxes. “Cheese and grits! Would you look at that mess? This wind’s giving me fits today.” He used a dirty rag to wipe away the excess lubricant and knelt down to stuff both the rag and the can in a toolbox before standing again and turning fully to address me. “A woman came by with a bunch of red helium balloons and a big gift bag stuffed with tissue paper. She asked if I would let her into apartment 206. She said it was her brother’s birthday and she wanted to surprise him by leaving the present and balloons.”
“But you didn’t let her in.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “Could’ve gotten fired if I had. I told her to go the front office and talk to the people there, let them decide.”
“Did she do that?”
“Far as I know.” He shrugged. “She headed in that direction so I’m guessing she did. But I was busy replacing some broken sprinkler heads in the lawn so I didn’t pay much attention.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“She was wearing high heels and a tight black dress.”
“How tall was she?”
The man shrugged. “About average, I guess.”
Adriana was a little on the short side, but with heels on she’d appear taller, so his response didn’t rule her out.
“What about her hair?” I asked.
“It was blond,” he said. “Hung down to about here.” He used his index finger to point to a spot along his bicep.
Blond hair, huh? Hmm. Was the woman who’d come by Ryan’s Beautiful Blond Boo? Or had it been Adriana in a wig? Maybe Adriana had seen the recent pics of Ryan and the blonde on his Facebook page and tried to make herself look like the woman.
“What about her eyes?” I asked.
“Couldn’t tell,” he said. “She was wearing a pair of great big sunglasses.” He formed circles with his index fingers and thumbs and held them up to his face.
The big glasses might have been her way of trying to hide her identity. Then again, the sun was out in full force today, hardly a cloud in the sky. Maybe the woman was simply protecting her eyes from glare.
“What about her skin tone?” I asked.
“From what I recall she seemed to have a nice tan.”
“Was it a tan?” I asked for clarification. “Or was she naturally brown?
“How do you tell the difference?”
“Good question.” Moving on, then. “How would you describe her build?”
He looked a little uncomfortable. “I know you want me to be honest, so I’ll just come out and say it even if it’s not polite in mixed company. She was stacked.”
“Stacked” definitely did not describe Adriana. With her thin build, she was probably an A cup at most. But all it would take is two sizable wads of tissue paper or a couple of the helium balloons to make a woman’s breasts appear much larger than reality.
“Anything else you remember?” I asked. “Did she have a distinctive voice, maybe, or any distinguishing characteristics?”
“She had a tattoo around her wrist,” he said. “A circle of red hearts.”
I’d noticed no such tattoo on Adriana. She didn’t seem like the type to get a tattoo. She was too uptight. Of course I hardly knew the woman and might be making incorrect assumptions. Could it have been a henna tattoo? Something she’d drawn on with a marker? Maybe a tight bracelet the maintenance worker had mistaken for a tattoo? These alternatives seemed less likely. “Any chance she gave you a name?”
“Not that I recall. I only remember her saying she was the sister of the guy in 206.”
I knew Ryan had a brother. He’d said so when he’d identified Toby as his brother’s son the first time I’d met him. But did he have a sister, too? “What time did this take place?” I asked.
“Around twelve-thirty, I’d say,” the man said. “I’d just come off my lunch break.”
“Have you seen the woman around here before?”
“Not that I remember,” he said. “If she’d come around here dressed like that, I think I’d remember.”
The guy was a hound, but at least he seemed to be telling the truth. I had to give him that. “Did you see what kind of car she was driving?”
“No. Once we were done talking I got back to work and didn’t see her again.”
I lowered my voice. “Have there been any other issues with Mr. Downey?”
“Issues?” His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
I raised a noncommittal shoulder. “Problems between him and another tenant. Coming and going at strange hours. Anything at all out of the ordinary.”
“I don’t know if this is what you’re going for,” he said, “but he has blown a fuse a time or two when he’s been fooling around with some type of electronics or another. He seems to like his gadgets. ’Course I can’t blame him. I enjoy tinkering with stuff, too. But other than that nothing’s caught my attention.”
I retrieved my notepad from my breast pocket, jotted down the information he’d given me, and took down his name and cell number in case I had further questions later. “Thanks for the information.”
He nodded, picked up his toolbox, and set off.
I returned to Ryan.
“What did he tell you?” he asked.
“Same thing he told you earlier,” I said. “Blond girl with red balloons and a gift bag.” My mind went back to what Adriana had alleged about Ryan’s sexual fetishes. I angled my head and eyed him. “Do you have a sister?”
“No,” he replied. “Just one brother.”
“Is there any chance the woman could’ve been someone other than Adriana? Maybe your sister-in-law, Toby’s mother?”
“My sister-in-law isn’t blond. Besides, she wouldn’t bring me balloons. She’s been mad at me since I slept with her cousin.”
Sheesh. “Could it have been the cousin?”
He shook his head. “She’s not blond, either.”
“Have you had any other bad breakups?” I asked. “Or maybe it was someone who wanted to surprise you in a good way and figured the birthday story would be the easiest way to get in.” Maybe one of those hookers Adriana had mentioned? Of course she’d admitted she had no evidence he was a john. It was mere speculation on her part. But I had to admit I could see it. This guy gave off an overtly sexual vibe. “Are you seeing anyone else?”
“I’ve been seeing a girl since Adriana.” He smirked. “She’s a blonde, but the carpet doesn’t match the drapes, if you know what I mean.”
Oh, I know what you mean, all right. No pun intended, but why beat around the bush? I was tired of Ryan’s innuendo. Let’s just get it out in the open, shall we? “You mean that you have engaged in a sexual activity with this woman which enabled you to observe the hair growing in her pubic area and that it was not the same color as the hair on her head.”
“Jeez!” His face contorted in disgust. “But yeah, that’s what I meant.”
If anyone should be disgusted here, it was me. I was the one being forced to deal with an oversexed man-child. “Do you think this woman with the mismatched drapes might have been the one who came by with the balloons?”
“I doubt it,” he replied.
I knew I shouldn’t, but I just couldn’t help myself. “So she didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about you afterward?”
“It’s not that!” he snapped. “It’s just that we’re keeping it casual. You know how it is.”
No, I didn’t know. I wasn’t frigid, but sex for me had never been a casual thing. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how someone could relax and enjoy themselves if they didn’t know their partner reasonably well. I’d be too afraid of undisclosed diseases or hidden cameras, of finding naked pics of myself scattered all over the Internet.
“Can I get her name and cell number?”
He frowned. “You really need to call her?”
“I need to rule out all the possibilities.”
“I could just ask her myself. Save you the trouble.”
Gee. How nice of you to think of me. “If she wanted to surprise you, she might not tell you the truth,” I said. Besides, unless I was party to that conversation, I wouldn’t trust Ryan to tell me the truth about her response, either. I wanted to hear things straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
He seemed hesitant, but gave me the information I asked for. “I guess she wouldn’t mind. Her name’s Danielle Griffin.” He pulled out his phone, accessed his contacts list, and rattled off a phone number. “I hope getting a call from the cops doesn’t scare her off.” His lips spread in a lecherous grin. “She’s a lot of fun, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “You mean you enjoy engaging in sexual relations with her.”
He muttered another “Jeez,” as if I were the one being uncouth here. Don’t start something you don’t want me to finish.
“Do you happen to have any pics of Danielle?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got a few.”
He fiddled with his phone for a moment, then held up the screen, showing me a photo of him and a pretty blonde. It was a selfie taken from above. She had her glossy lips pursed and her elbows crooked inward to plump up her cleavage, which was nearly falling out of her tight, low-cut red blouse. Again, I was hit with the thought that this girl, like Adriana, appeared out of Ryan’s league.
He scrolled through the pics, showing me some others clearly taken after they’d had their romp in the hay. In the latter photos, her makeup was smudgy and her hair was mussed. I figured she’d been more likely to look like she had in the selfie when she’d come by the complex, so I instructed him to text me the picture and gave him my phone number. A few seconds later my phone pinged as the picture arrived.
“Did you show this picture to the maintenance man?” I asked. “See if he could identify the woman with the balloons as Danielle?”
“No,” he said. “It didn’t occur to me to do that.”
“Okay. I’ll check with him. But before I do, we need to make sure we’ve covered all the bases. What about a neighbor or another acquaintance? Any other blondes you know of that might have come by?”
“I can’t think of anyone else,” he said. “I’ve talked to a few other girls at bars since I broke up with Adriana. Got their phone numbers. But none of them know where I live. Things haven’t gotten that far, if you know what I—”
“Have you spoken to anyone in the management office yet?” I’d cut him off, but I simply couldn’t take one more “if you know what I mean” or I’d whap the guy with my baton.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t been to the office. Why?”
“The maintenance man told me that after he refused to let the woman into your place, he suggested she try the office.”
“You going to talk to them, too?” Ryan asked.
“As soon as I round up my partner.” I let Brigit out of the car, leashed her, and instructed Ryan to wait for me there. Meanwhile, Brigit and I headed to the office at the front of the property, my partner’s nails click-click-clicking as we went along.
We caught a young woman with heavy makeup and short, ginger-colored hair as she was locking up for the day. She looked up as we approached. “Uh-oh. Is there a problem?”
“I have a few questions about the woman with the gift bag and balloons who came by today.”
The woman cocked her head, her brows forming a puzzled V. “A woman with balloons? I’m not sure who you’re talking about.”
I repeated what the maintenance man had told me. “He said she was here around twelve-thirty.”
“That explains it, then,” the woman said. “My lunch hour is from noon to one.”
“Was anyone else in the office then?”
“We have a part-time leasing agent who covers for me, but she only works from ten to two, so she’s already gone for the day.”
Darn. I handed the woman my card. “Could you ask her to call me tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
I took a quick look around at the eaves of the building but saw no security cameras. Of course it was possible they had hidden ones. “Any chance there are security cameras anywhere on the property?”
“No,” the woman said. “We have a security company that drives by a few times at night, but that’s it.”
I’d already spoken with the security patrolman earlier in the week and given him my card. So far, he hadn’t called. Like I’d done earlier with the maintenance worker, I lowered my voice. “Can you tell me if you’ve had any issues with the tenant in 206?”
“Two hundred six.” She looked up in thought, as if mentally reading a roster. “That’s Ryan Downey, right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s caused two or three late-night maintenance calls,” she said. “Blown a few fuses with all of his electronics. He repairs devices on the side and sometimes overloads the system. I’ve warned him he needs to be more careful. But as for his rent, he always pays on time and we’ve had no noise complaints on him or anything like that. Seems like a nice enough guy. I see him with his nephew now and then. The kid’s adorable.”
I had to agree with her there. Toby was a cute little tyke. “All right,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”
I returned to where Ryan stood waiting and told him the news. “I won’t know more until tomorrow. Until then, keep your doors and windows locked.”
“Is this all you can do? Can’t you go by Adriana’s and tell her to leave me alone?”
“I’ve already told her to stay away from you.”
He grunted. “Doesn’t seem like she listened.”
His words irritated me, mostly because they might be true. Why couldn’t people just leave each other alone? Why couldn’t they just do what they were told?
He stood taller. “Maybe I should go talk to her myself.”
“That’s a really bad idea,” I told him.
“Why?”
Why? Shouldn’t it be obvious? “Because she allegedly attacked you, remember? That was the basis for your protective order.” If he really considered her a threat, why would he have even suggested speaking to her himself? Had the attack never really happened? I’d had some doubts before, and they were stronger now.
“I can take care of myself,” he snapped.
Argh! Reflexively, my hand tightened around Brigit’s leash. “Look, Ryan. It’s possible the woman who came by today wasn’t Adriana and simply had the wrong apartment number. She didn’t fit Adriana’s description at all.”
“She could’ve put a wig on,” he insisted, “and stuffed some socks in her bra. Figures she’d dress up to get me in trouble, but wouldn’t do it when I asked her to.”
So we’re back to the crotchless tiger costume, huh? I’d hoped to never hear about that again. I tried to sound nonchalant when I asked, “Are you talking about the sexual role play?”
“Sexual role play?” He barked a laugh. “Ha! That would be the day. Adriana’s strictly old-school when it comes to sex. I’m talking about dressing up for the comic convention. I tried to get her to wear a cheetah costume but she wouldn’t do it.”
“Cheetah?”
“You know, Minerva from the Injustice League?”
No, I didn’t know. Comics weren’t my thing, not that I faulted anyone for enjoying them. We all need some form of escape. Mine was mystery novels. “I’m not familiar with the character.”
“DC Comics?”
I shook my head.
He pointed up to his apartment. “I have a poster of her on my wall. One of Killer Frost, too.”
I remembered seeing the posters the first time I came to his place. “So you’re saying you didn’t try to get Adriana to dress up for sexual role play?”
“Heck, no,” he said. “It’s too hard to get in and out of those costumes to get it on. I mean, if you want to do it, just do it already.”
Huh. Had Adriana been lying to me about Ryan’s unusual sexual proclivities? Or had she merely misunderstood his intentions?
He repeated his request. “You’ll go talk to her again? Tell her to leave me alone?”
I felt like he was goading me into making a stop at Adriana’s, but I also felt like it couldn’t hurt to give her another warning in case she’d failed to heed the first one. “I’ll swing by her place,” I told him. “But you continue to stay away from her, okay?”
He scowled. “Why are you treating me like the bad guy? She’s the one causing problems.”
Is she? I wasn’t so certain. Nevertheless, I raised a conciliatory palm. “I don’t want to see either one of you get hurt.” At least that much was true.
He seemed to accept my explanation, thanked me for coming out, and turned to go back to his apartment.
Once he’d gone, I went in search of the maintenance man. I found him in the pool area kneeling down on the hot cement, changing a filter. As I walked up to him, Brigit seized the opportunity to cool off in the pool, doing a belly flop off the side. Splash! Water splashed up onto my shoes and the legs of my pants. “Bad dog!” I scolded.
She ignored me as she began to dog-paddle. I had no choice but to release her leash and let her swim to the steps to climb out. Once she was back on dry land, she gave herself a solid shake, sending up a tsunami of water.
“Sorry about that,” I told the maintenance man as I walked over to him.
“No worries,” he said. “Can’t say as I blame her. It’s hotter ’n hell out here today. Got more questions for me?”
“Just one.” I pulled out my phone and showed him the photo of Danielle. “Was this the girl who came by today?”
He stood to take a better look. His gaze went from her face to her cleavage and held there for a moment, as if he was trying to recollect the breasts he’d seen earlier today. When he looked back up at me, he wobbled his head. “Could be,” he said, “but I can’t say for sure. Like I said, she had sunglasses on and I only talked to her real quick.”
Darn. “All right. Thanks again for your time.”
I mulled things over as I rounded up Brigit and wrung the pool water from her leash. Was there any other evidence I could find here? Hmm. I decided it couldn’t hurt to take a peek in the Dumpsters, see if anyone tossed a gift bag into the garbage when their plan was foiled.
I led Brigit around to the back of the complex. Despite her earlier shake, she left a trail of water droplets in our wake, though they quickly evaporated in the sun. We found three large metal Dumpsters situated behind an eight-foot brick wall. The place smelled beyond foul. While I was tempted to plug my nose, Brigit was having a field day, sniffing the stray trash that had fallen on the ground, enjoying the odors. I glanced down at my partner. “You’re disgusting, you know that?”
She wagged her tail in response.
I pulled a pair of latex gloves from my pants pocket, slid them on, and lifted the lid of the first Dumpster. I had to stand on tiptoe to peek inside. A swarm of flies buzzed about, angry that I’d disturbed them. All I saw were black garbage bags and a few stray pieces of trash—ice cream wrappers and the like—that had been tossed into the bin separately. Ditto for the second Dumpster. The third Dumpster contained black garbage bags, but also a taupe couch cushion that had been soiled with what looked like red wine, spaghetti sauce, or blood. Yuck.
When I turned around, I found Brigit rolling on her back on some unidentifiable guck that had been spilled next to the garbage bin. What the heck is that? An empty white plastic container nearby told me it was rancid cottage cheese. “Brigit!” I shrieked. “No!”
While many people believed police dogs obey their handlers perfectly, such was simply not the case. Like their human partners, they had minds of their own and could sometimes be stubborn and insubordinate. Like now, with Brigit. My partner ignored my pleas, continuing to squirm on her back among the sour cheese curds as if having the time of her life. Dumb dog. She’d be getting a bath tonight.
Having found no evidence, Brigit and I returned to the cruiser. I did my best to wipe her sticky, stinky back down with an antibacterial hand wipe, but it wasn’t up to the task. The cheesy gunk was hopelessly stuck to her fur. Blurgh.
We climbed back into the car. The scent of sour milk filled the vehicle. “You’re smelling up the cruiser!” I scolded her, rolling down the windows. Still, while my K-9 partner stunk to high heaven, she had nothing on Derek Mackey. That guy’s body odor could be weaponized.
I placed a call to Danielle. When she answered, her voice was tentative. She probably didn’t recognize my number and assumed I was a telemarketer.
“Hello, Miss Griffin,” I said. “This is Officer Megan Luz with the Fort Worth Police Department. I need to speak with you about Ryan Downey. I understand the two of you have been dating?”
“We’ve been out a few times,” she said hesitantly. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“We’re not sure,” I said. “One of the staff at Ryan’s complex said a blond woman came by today with a gift and balloons and asked to be let into his apartment. We’re just trying to figure out who that might have been. Ryan mentioned that the two of you have been going out. If it was you who came by today, you’re not in trouble or anything. We’re just trying to determine who it was.”
She sounded peeved when she responded. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I really don’t appreciate him dragging me into this, either. I mean, he’s an okay guy, but…”
When she paused, I prodded her to continue. “But what?”
She exhaled sharply. “He’s been putting a lot of pressure on me. I’m not ready to get serious. I’ve told him that several times but he hasn’t backed off.”
Sounded to me like Ryan might not consider their relationship to be as casual as he’d claimed.
“Now this thing,” Danielle continued. “The balloons and whatever? It’s weird. I’m feeling very uncomfortable right now.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Is there any chance I could come talk to you in person?” Given what she’d told me, that Ryan was pressuring her, she might be able to shed some light on him, help me get closer to the truth. And given her discomfort, I figured I could get more from her in person than I might on the phone. I’d be willing to work late if I could get some answers.
“I’m double and triple-booked the rest of the day,” she said. “But early tomorrow morning would work.” She mentioned she worked as an aesthetician at a salon and gave me the address.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
We ended the call, and Brigit and I pulled out of the lot. We were halfway down the block when my eyes spotted something atop a tree up ahead. A bunch of red helium balloons. They were tangled in a branch at the pinnacle of the tree and bounced in the brisk breeze, the string pulling the branch up and down.
Could these be the red balloons the woman—Adriana?—had taken to the apartment? Had they gotten away from her earlier, pulled out of her hands by a gust of wind? Maybe she’d let them go when she couldn’t get into the apartment. Better than being caught with them if she was up to no good. What were the odds someone else in the area would have lost a bunch of red balloons today? Probably very small.
While obtaining fingerprints from the string would be impossible, the balloons themselves might have retained a print if the person who’d carried them had touched them, too. If the woman had come in a car, she would have had to push the balloons into the vehicle, right? Sure. Helium balloons tended to want to drift out and up. I remembered fighting a trio of them I’d bought for my brother’s high school graduation. If our technicians could lift a print from the balloons, I could see about getting one from Adriana and determine whether they matched. If they did, we’d have a much stronger case against her for trying to get into Ryan’s apartment.
But first, there was the matter of getting the balloons down from the top of the tree. Unfortunately, the tree wasn’t some small, decorative variety, like a crepe myrtle. It was a tall, stately oak that appeared to have been standing since Texas had still been part of Mexico. ¡Ay caramba! How could the balloons be retrieved?
The crime scene teams carried extension ladders in their vans, but I wasn’t sure an extension ladder would be of much use trying to get to the middle of the top of a tree. There’d be too many limbs in the way. I sure as heck wasn’t going to try to climb the thing, either. A gust of wind could blow me down and break my back, putting me out of commission. What would become of Brigit if that happened? I couldn’t bear the thought of her being reassigned to another officer.
This is where it paid to have friends in high places. Or, rather, a friend who could get to high places. Why not call Frankie? After all, she had access to a ladder truck that was specifically designed for this type of thing.
I pulled into the parking lot of a bagel shop near the tree and placed a call to her. “Want to get something out of a tree for me?”
“Is it a kitten?”
“Nope. It’s balloons.”
“If you want balloons, I can buy some for you.”
“You could also buy me a kitten.”
“Yeah, but then the reporters wouldn’t come out and put the rescue on the news. How cool would it be for me to be on the news my second day on the job?”
“Pretty cool,” I agreed. “So can you come or not?”
“Hold on a second. Let me check.” There was muffled discussion as she checked with one of the higher-ranking firefighters to see whether they could come by and help. She returned in a few seconds. “We’re on our way.”
I gave Frankie the address. In minutes, the ladder truck pulled into the lot with one of her coworkers at the wheel.
“I can’t thank you two enough,” I told them.
The guy at the wheel raised a shoulder. “Eh. It’s a slow day.”
After a minute or two of expert maneuvering, the ladder was angled so that the end was within reach of the balloons. Frankie ascended the ladder, reached out, and worked on untangling the balloons from the tree. Respect. I would’ve been chicken to go up that high without some type of harness as a safeguard.
She held the bunch up by the string. “Got ’em!” she called down to me.
“Great!”
She’d just started to descend the ladder when WHOOSH! Mother Nature sent forth a gust of wind so strong it rocked me back on my heels and parted Brigit’s fur down to her skin. Unfortunately, the gust was also strong enough to yank the string from Frankie’s hand.
“Oh, no!” She reached up, desperately trying to snatch the string out of the air.
“Don’t fall!” I yelled in panic. I’d feel terrible if she got hurt trying to help me out.
The two of us watched with alternating hope and dismay as the balloons swirled around in the air. They’d swirl close, nearly close enough for her to grab them again, and then twirl out of reach as if they were teasing her. Maybe we’d get lucky and they’d catch on something else, something lower even, where I could reach them unassisted.
We didn’t get lucky.
When another gust of wind came, the balloons spiraled upward, bumping and bouncing off each other, growing smaller and smaller as they headed toward the stratosphere. Dang it.
Frankie climbed down the ladder. “I’m so sorry. Were the balloons important?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not.” At this point they were halfway to Mars, rendering the issue of their importance moot.
I thanked the two again, saw them off, and drove to Adriana’s place. She and I spoke briefly on the porch, while Brigit snuffled around the steps, probably looking for the possum.
“Were you at work today?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “Why?”
That’s for me to know and you to find out. “What did you do for lunch?”
“I came home, like usual,” she said. “It gives me a break from the center and that way I can do a chore or two.”
“Were you alone?”
“Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
“Someone tried to get into Ryan’s apartment today.”
“Why would anyone want to get into that pigsty?” She rolled her eyes. “What did they do? Try to pick the lock or pry the door open?”
“No.”
“No? Then how did they try to get in?”
I decided not to give her any detailed information. That way, if she slipped up, maybe I could catch her revealing something she’d only know if she’d been the one with the balloons. I merely said, “False pretenses. Do you know anything about that?”
She jerked her head back as if I’d slapped her. “Why would I know anything about it?”
I raised conciliatory palms. Seemed like I’d been doing a lot of that lately. “I’m just asking, trying to figure out what’s going on here.”
“What’s going on,” she snapped, “probably has something to do with one of Ryan’s girlfriends. I’ll bet he’s got two or three.”
Two or three? Heck, I’d been surprised he’d had one. Even if he was handy at troubleshooting computer and Wi-Fi and other technology issues, that kazoo voice wasn’t exactly a turn-on. “What makes you think that?” I asked.
“I saw pictures on his phone once,” she said. “He claimed they were old photos from before he met me, but I didn’t buy it.”
“Why not?”
“He was late for our dates a lot,” she said. “He canceled a few times, too. He’d say he had a headache or that he had to work overtime. I’m pretty sure he was seeing someone else while we were dating. That’s another reason I broke up with him. I couldn’t trust him.”
She didn’t trust him, but could I trust her? Was there any truth to what she was saying? I glanced at her wrists, but she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. Odd, given the high August temperatures. Then again, some offices were cold, and hospitals were notorious for keeping temperatures low. Should I ask to see her wrists? On one hand, I didn’t want to unnecessarily antagonize her, especially if she was innocent. On the other hand, I wanted to get to the bottom of things as soon as possible. After a quick mental debate, I decided to go for it. “May I see your wrists?”
“My wrists?” she repeated, her forehead furrowing in question.
“Yes.”
“I guess so.”
She pushed her sleeves back and showed me her wrists, turning them so I could see all sides. Not only were her wrists bare, they did not appear to have been recently scrubbed, either. There was no telltale pink tinge to her skin.
She pushed her sleeves back down. “I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but if you think I’m behind anything at Ryan’s place, you’re mistaken. I’m done with that loser and I hope he’s done with me.”
“I hope so, too.”
With that, I wished her a good evening and left, my mind swirling in confusion like that bunch of balloons.