Megan
Halfway through my class Thursday morning, my phone jiggled with an incoming text. It was from Detective Jackson. Call me.
Unfortunately, the interruption would cause me to miss the remaining discussion about polarization in American politics. But fortunately, the room was a large one with a back door that enabled me to quietly slip out without causing too much disturbance.
I held Brigit’s leash close as we stepped through the door, and closed it as quietly as possible behind me. Knowing my conversation with Jackson could be overheard in the hallway, I hurried down the corridor and three flights of stairs, dialing the detective as I exited the building.
She answered as I hurried over to a quiet place near a row of bushes.
“We worked out the immunity deal with Ashleigh White,” she said.
“Did she identify the dealer?”
“Unfortunately, no. She got her Molly the same way you are, by calling the number she found in the bathroom and having the drugs sent to a PO box. She said they came in a small padded envelope.”
“Does she have the envelope?” If so, it could be dusted for prints.
“She threw it out.”
Dammit! “What about the return address?”
“She doesn’t remember there being one on the envelope.”
“What about the postmark? Could she tell where the drugs had been mailed from?”
After all, for all we knew there could be more than one person involved here. One person could be handling the money pickups, while another could be handling the delivery of the drugs.
“She said she didn’t think to look. Kids these days don’t get much snail mail. They hardly know where to put a stamp, let alone know that they can tell where a package was mailed by the postmark.”
I exhaled in frustration. “So she gave you no new information?”
“A little. She said that her drop point for the cash was in the family bathroom at Chisholm Trail mall. She was told to tape the money underneath the countertop.”
I was familiar with the mall, which sat within the boundaries of the Fort Worth PD’s W1 Division. Brigit and I had nearly been blown to smithereens by a bomb there.
“The mall management is getting us a copy of the security-camera footage from the outer hallway. Of course there’s no footage from inside the room. It may take a few hours, but I’d like you to come take a look. I’ll text you when I’ve got it. You can review Hector’s dash cam video then, too. We weren’t able to identify anyone from it, but maybe you can.”
“It’s a plan. Any luck with the IP address on the dealer’s e-mail?”
“Our tech guy confirmed that your e-mail came from an IP address associated with the TCU library.”
“That means the dealer has to be a student or staff member. So we’re definitely on the right track, right?” Given that TCU was a private university, access to the library was only granted to those with a student or staff ID.
“It certainly looks that way,” the detective replied.
“What about the cell phone?”
“We’ve pinged it several times this morning. It hasn’t moved. I’m beginning to think that whoever it belongs to isn’t carrying it around with them.”
“You think they left it in the library?”
“Possibly.”
I thought that tidbit of information over. “That would point to a staff member, too, wouldn’t it? If a phone were just lying around in a public area, someone would probably pick it up and turn it in to lost and found or keep it. But a staff member could have a cell phone plugged in at their desk and nobody would think twice about it.”
“It would seem that way,” the detective said, “but I won’t be convinced until you’ve checked all the public areas. The phone could be plugged in behind a potted plant, or tucked behind a copy machine. Who knows?”
It was my job to know. Or at least to try to find out. “I’ll go back and take a close look around.”
“If you find the phone,” she said, “leave it in place for the time being. We don’t want to risk alerting the dealer if he comes to check on it.”
“Got it.”
“One more thing,” she said. “Ashleigh had a second pill in her purse. She’s turned it over to us. The lab is going to run it, see what else might have been in it besides MDMA. They can also compare it to the pills you found in the air vent and see if they appear to be from the same supplier.”
With that, we ended the call.
I made a beeline for the library. The building was even busier today than it had been the night before. I slunk around, surreptitiously checking out all of the outlets. While most were on the walls, a few of the beams contained outlets as well, while others had been installed in the floor and covered with flat plastic inserts to protect them.
When I reached the bank of copy machines on the first floor, I set my backpack down on the floor next to them and pretended to riffle through it while I leaned forward and glanced behind the copiers. The three plugs in the twin outlets were attached to cords that ran to the machines. Nothing unusual here.
I continued around the space. In a couple of spots, students studying had plugged their laptops and cell phone chargers into outlets near them. Nothing unusual about that, and given that they were being obvious about it, no red flags were raised.
I led Brigit up to the second floor and we did the same. I looked around to make sure no one was watching me before checking behind the single copier on this floor. Nope. Nothing. More cell phones and laptops openly plugged into outlets, their owners working in close proximity.
Like last night, the third floor was significantly less populated than the others, only a random student here and there, types who looked less sociable and/or more stressed out and had come to this floor for the relative peace and quiet. I meandered around and checked every outlet. Nope. Nope. Nope.
I’d found nothing. How can that be?
A student bent down and removed a book from a bottom shelf in one of the stacks, making me realize that there could be more outlets on the walls behind the books. The other outlets were placed about a foot high on the wall, give or take an inch or so. That would put the outlet’s height just under the second shelf.
I cruised the room again, kneeling down at each row of books that was set against a wall. In the far back corner my eyes spotted something plugged into an outlet behind a tall, thick hardback. Paydirt.
I pulled out the book, an extensive treatise on the history of art in the Ottoman Empire, and peeked behind it. The thin cord ran down from the plug and disappeared under the bookshelf. I reached my hand behind the books and felt around. Sure enough, my fingers found something hard and rectangular that had to be a cell phone.
Rather than contaminate the evidence with my prints, I left the phone there and replaced the book, making a mental note of its location so I could return just before closing time to remove it.
I glanced up and around to see if there were any security cameras here that might have recorded the person plugging the phone in. Unfortunately, there were none. To be expected, I supposed. The dealer had taken pains to place the phone in a discreet place. He or she would have been smart enough to check for video cameras.
I stood and led Brigit down the stairs and outside. Despite the dark thunder clouds that had begun to gather in the sky, the heat was as bad as ever. Worse even, because it was moist and humid, smothering the city like a wet blanket. It took only a minute of walking for my skin to break out in sweat and Brigit’s tongue to loll out as she panted.
We returned to the dorm for lunch. I sat with Jasmine and another girl, today indulging in a pasta salad rather than a green salad for the sake of variety. As we ate and chatted, a loud crack of thunder came from outside. Brigit whimpered and attempted to climb onto my lap. It was hard to blame her. Last spring, she and I had been caught in a tornado that flipped our squad car over.
“It’s okay, Britney,” I reassured her. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Poor thing,” Jasmine said. “You think some pizza would make her feel better?”
As if she understood she’d been offered people food, Brigit’s ears perked up and she looked from Jasmine to me. “Okay,” I told Brigit. “But only a little bite.”
Jasmine offered Brigit a piece of crust with some sauce and cheese on it. The dog scarfed it down in three seconds flat.
Another crack of thunder told me the weather had gotten worse. It also told me I should round up my umbrella from my dorm room.
I slid my ID through the skimmer and went into the room to find Emily sitting on her bed, staring into space and looking dazed.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I feel a little dizzy.”
“Lie down,” I told her, worried she might keel forward off her bed.
She obeyed, lying down with her head on her pillow and closing her eyes.
I stepped over beside her bed. “Should I call someone? Take you to the clinic?” There was an on-campus medical office for minor issues.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
I stared at her for a moment. My concern led me to be blunt. “Did you take some kind of drugs, Emily? Like an ADHD med or speed or something?”
Her eyes flew open. “You think I’d do something like that?”
Her tone dripped with insult and moral outrage. I could only imagine how much more insulted and outraged she’d sound if she knew I suspected her not only of taking drugs, but also selling them to her fellow students.
“I’ve only known you for three days, Emily,” I said in my defense, “and during that time you haven’t exactly opened up much. How should I know what you would or wouldn’t do?”
She threw her arm back to cover her eyes and lay quietly for a moment. “I’ve been a bitch, haven’t I?”
Of epic proportions. Still, I’d seen glimpses of the vulnerable human under the prickly exterior. I’d soften things a bit. “A little,” I agreed. “Can you tell me why?”
Her arm still hiding her eyes, she began sobbing then. “I’m so tired! I’ve been working nonstop and I can barely keep up.” She gulped. “This is so hard!”
Drama. One of the things I’d detested about college. Yet, I felt for Emily. She’d been putting forth way more effort than anyone else I’d seen.
“Give yourself a break,” I told her softly. “You can only do so much.”
A few seconds later she calmed. “Maybe I just need a nap.”
“Good idea.”
My phone pinged with an incoming text from Detective Jackson. Got the footage. Come on over.
“I have to go,” I told Emily as I slid the phone into my pocket. “But promise me you’ll contact the advisor or the front desk if you need help getting to health services.”
“I promise,” she said.
Rounding up both my umbrella and my partner, I stepped out of the room and hurried down the hall, eager to see who I might recognize from the mall security recording and Detective Bustamente’s dash cam footage.
One look out of the glass doors of the lobby told me it was raining cats and dogs outside. I opened my umbrella—shnap!—and wrapped Brigit’s leash around my hand, pulling her close to my leg. I led her out onto the covered steps at the front of the dorm. Another crack of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a loud rumble of thunder, followed by Brigit plunking her butt down on the concrete and refusing to budge.
“Come on, girl!” I called cheerfully, patting my leg with the hand that held the leash.
She gave me a look that said I must be crazy if I thought she’d “come on” in that weather.
“Be a good girl,” I told her.
The look of disdain remained. She had no interest in being a good girl if it meant she’d have to venture forth in this monsoon.
I played the only card I had left. “Treat?”
Even that didn’t seem to motivate her. I finally had to use both hands to pry her rear end up from the cement and use my mean voice to get her to come along.
I jogged as fast as I could to the parking lot and loaded my partner into my Jeep, feeding her three liver treats before climbing in myself. Great. The car smelled like wet dog. Yick.
I drove to the W1 station, once again parking a half block down and circling behind the businesses to enter the building. By the time I reached the door, my feet were soaking wet, my shoes sklurch-sklurch-sklurching as I made my way down the hallway.
Jackson looked up as I stopped in her doorway. “Heard you coming.” Her gaze moved down to my furry counterpart. “Smelled you, too.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Not much I can do about it.”
“Heads up,” Jackson called.
When I looked up, she tossed me a thumb drive. When I failed to catch it, Brigit tossed me a look of disgust that said I could’ve caught that. I fished the drive from the floor under the wing chair where it had landed.
“That drive has both the dash cam and mall footage on it,” Jackson said. “Take it with you and have a look-see.”
“How many hours of footage are there?”
“Ten hours of dash cam,” she said. “Bustamente rolled from the time Tio’s opened at eleven in the morning until it closed at nine last night. He checked the restroom right before closing last night and the money was gone.”
In other words, the dealer had picked up the funds some time yesterday.
“We’ve got three full days of footage from the mall,” Jackson added. “Chances are the money was picked up the first day. The dealer probably wouldn’t want to risk someone else finding it and taking it. But I had the mall management give us the additional footage just in case.”
Even at four times the usual speed it would take me two and a half hours to review the entire dash cam footage. Chisholm Trail Mall was open from ten A.M. to nine P.M., providing eleven hours of footage each day, thirty-three total, over eight hours’ worth at quadruple speed. Blurgh. While the other kids in my dorm would be binge-watching their favorite television shows on Netflix, I’d be scouring footage of a parking lot and a hallway outside a restroom. But if I did the work without complaint, showed my dedication to the job, it could only help my career. So I’d suck it up like the dutiful police officer I was.
“By the way,” Jackson said, “I made a call to the cell phone and sent an e-mail to funtimemolly this morning. The response told me to leave my cash under a trash can at a Texaco gas station on Berry Street. The one that’s just a couple of blocks from the university. I’m sending one of the rookies over there in plainclothes to make the drop this afternoon. The station has both interior and exterior cameras, and I’m going to put eyes on the place, as well.”
“Another dash cam?”
She nodded. “I put it in a beater car that’s been left in the impound lot for three months. We left the car at the back of the gas station’s lot. It looks nothing like a law enforcement vehicle, and the station’s got an attached repair shop so it shouldn’t raise any suspicions being parked there all day.” As she turned back to her paperwork, dismissing me, she said, “Let me know if you recognize anyone.”
“Will do.”