15: Accusations

 

 

Morales eyed the takeout bag I dropped next to his paperwork. “I expected better from you.”

“It wasn’t my choice.” I plopped back down into my seat wondering how exactly I’d gotten roped into helping Morales.

“How was it not your choice?” he asked.

Flipping through my scattered notes to find where I’d left off, I mumbled, “Puck’s mom cornered me and dragged me there.”

Morales blew out a breath and shook his head. “So she has bad taste in people and food.”

I chuckled at his assessment. “Find anything while I was gone?”

Around a mouthful of food, he said, “Only that these lists are useless if one person uses a keycard and lets twelve people in with them.”

I had noticed the same thing, unfortunately. My portion of the list had names scribbled next to each timecode to show who else came through the door at that time—the ones I could   recognize, anyway. Luckily, the two doors I had been watching—the door to the storefront and the rear exit of the store—had much less traffic than the main entrance and store entrance Morales was cataloguing. He was the actual cop, though, so it was fitting he got the more tedious half of the videos.

It was time to get back to it, either way. Hitting play on the video, I watched people shuffle around the door to the storefront at double speed. No one even approached it ninety percent of the time. I’d made it through footage all the way back to the previous morning before I perked up at the sight of someone making for the door with a tray of specialty cupcakes.

Her hands were full, so I didn’t think anything of her using her back to push the door open. It wasn’t until I went to my list to match the person and timecode that I realized what was wrong with the way she’d gotten into the storefront. “She knew she didn’t need a keycard.”

“What?” Morales asked.

“This lady, uh, Pamela…” I replayed the section of video, pointing at the black keycard sensor. “She didn’t even attempt to use her card, just pushed right on through like she knew it was broken.”

Frowning, Morales watched the section twice more. “Note the timecode, then go backward until you find someone who does use their keycard. Then we’ll have a timeframe for when the sensor was disabled.”

I kicked the speed up to three times normal and watched the sensor like it was hard candy syrup nearing its boiling point. Not until just before nine o’clock Friday night did one of the new decorators attempt to use the door. Attempt meaning he approached the door with his arms full of pink cake boxes and bags of powdered sugar and spent a full five minutes trying to balance his load against the wall while tugging at the keycard clipped to his belt. I thought he’d be there all day until he managed to drop everything he was carrying. At least he was able to reach his keycard at that point and put me out of my misery watching him struggle.

“Between eight forty-seven Friday night and ten thirteen Saturday morning,” I said.

Morales nodded and quickly flipped backward through a few pages of the list he’d been making notes on. He tallied up the timecodes and names. “I have everyone accounted for on Friday and Saturday. Nobody stayed behind, and only Alice came back Saturday night for…Gordy’s pretty sure she was looking for her fitness watch she’d stashed in the pantry when Mia yelled at her for wearing it in the kitchen because she thought it looked like product placement.”

I shook my head at Mia’s ridiculousness. “Could the keycard have been disabled remotely?”

Morales frowned. “I’m not sure. I don’t really know how these types of proximity cards and sensors work, but I can check into it.”

I knew I had seen something online about how easy it was to clone hotel keycards—which was why we were matching names and faces with timecodes—but I had no idea what could be done to a sensor to prevent it from locking. I supposed if there was some kind of wireless system it could be manipulated remotely, but if it had been done in person….

“What about a device?” I asked. “Like the one Cormack used in the zombie powder case to kill all the phones and wires I was wearing. Is that possible?”

Morales considered it for a moment before nodding. “I think it’s more likely than someone remotely sabotaging the sensor. I’ll find someone who knows about these systems and see if they can determine what fried it.” He grinned. “Nice work.”

I teased Morales about being a kid, but his praise actually made me feel pretty good about myself. It was a rare enough thing lately that I had to take it where I could. I turned back to the security footage, but my phone chirped with a notification. Seeing Gordy’s name flash on the screen kept me from ignoring it.

Meet me at my desk. Now.

Had he forgotten that I wasn’t actually one of his subordinates? I shook my head. “I’ll be back,” I told Morales. “Gordy demands my immediate presence.”

“For what?”

“Didn’t say.”

He shrugged. “Tell him about Pamela so he can bring her in for questioning.” He glanced up from the list he was making notes on. “If he’s busy, I can always question her.” The hope in his eyes was kind of cute.

I knew Gordy would never turn over a possible suspect to a greenie, but I smiled. “I’ll let him know.”

I’d been around the precinct building enough over the last few months that nobody tried to stop me from wandering around, and I even got a few waves from some of the friendlier officers. Mainly the younger ones. The majority of the cops in Spencer’s age group liked me about as much as he did. When I approached Gordy’s desk and only found Spencer, all I got was a scowl. He got one in return.

“Where’s Gordy? He told me to meet him here.”

Spencer’s scowl deepened as he fingered a manila envelope on his desk. “It’s bad enough you end up worming your way into normal cases, now you’re interfering with us doing our job.”

“What? I’m helping Morales go through security footage. How is that interfering?” I demanded. This was supposed to be my holiday break. So far the only break I’d had was my catastrophe of a dinner with Puck’s parents. I would have been happy to have worked through that, in retrospect.

“We’ve got enough to do without your past screw-ups throwing a wrench in our current investigations.” Spencer tossed the envelope at me. The open flap allowed its contents to slip out just enough that I could tell they were pictures.

My entire body went cold. I didn’t want to touch them. I didn’t want to see them. Avoiding it would only put the people I cared about in danger. My fingers didn’t shake as they reached for the envelope. I was too numb for that. I barely felt the paper against my skin. With purposeful movements, I slid the photos from the envelope and looked through them one at a time.

Puck pulling me off my bike and into a hug when I arrived at his building last night—before I’d had a chance to pull my skirt back down. Us getting into his parents’ SUV. Going into the restaurant. Leaving. Puck following me back to my apartment. Our argument at the door.

I turned to the last photo and dropped the whole stack as a gasp burst from my lips. The image of me leaning against Baxter as we sat on my couch, his arm around my shoulders, shocked away the numbness and I started trembling. I don’t know how long I stared at it before I noticed the awkward angle, the blurred lines of the crosspiece of a window frame across the top, the smudges and dingy quality of the photos because I never cleaned my apartment windows.

“He took this from the building across the street. Through my window,” I said, a shiver running down my spine as I wondered what else he had seen and how long he had been watching.

Spencer picked up the photo of me and Baxter and shoved it in my face. “Three people have already been murdered on the cupcake case. You want more people to die because we’ve got to pull resources to deal with your never-ending messes?”

“Spencer!” Gordy barked. “Could you attempt to be professional for once in your career?” He ripped the photo out of his hands and glared at him. “Get a hold of your personal issues with Baxter’s past and do your goddamn job when it comes to protecting Eliza from hers!” Stepping in front of me, he stared down his partner. “You have a witness in three that needs questioning. Get out of here.”

Despite being older and more experienced, Spencer shoved his chair back and nodded curtly. He was storming across the bullpen a moment later. Stunned and curious gazes followed him until he disappeared. Then they all refocused on Gordy. He ignored them.

“Eliza…” He collapsed into his chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead. “I’m sorry about Spencer. He can’t let go of what happened. His problem with you really has very little to do with you.”

It took me a few seconds to recover from both Spencer’s accusations and Gordy’s outburst. “What…what did happen?”

Indecision clouded his features. I wasn’t privy to his internal battle, but I could tell it wasn’t an easy one. Finally, he shook his head and huffed irritably. “Look, I’ll tell you if I have to, but try asking Baxter, okay? It should come from him. I’ve respected his wishes, but I can only do that for so long without it causing more problems than I can fix.”

“I…okay,” I said slowly, not sure how to interpret everything he’d just said.

Gordy took a deep breath before getting back to the photos. “The pictures were emailed to me again, and I had someone take a look at the files this morning to see what they could learn. It’s a professional camera, telephoto lens, which will make him harder for you to spot, unfortunately. Nothing’s been altered on the images as far as they could tell. The email address they came from is already gone, and didn’t have any usable information anyway. We know he’s in the city, based on the pictures, but the email was sent from a coffee shop over a public Wi-Fi network.”

“So there’s no way to track him,” I said quietly.

The slow shake of his head was apologetic, but it wasn’t his fault. “This one,” I said, pointing to the one of me and Baxter, “it had to have been taken from inside the apartment across from mine. The gap between the buildings is too small for him to get that angle from the roof.” I looked up at him and tried to hide how terrified I was. “Maybe someone in the building saw him.”

Gordy nodded. “I was planning to send someone out this evening to canvass the building. I just hadn’t had time to assign someone with all the Sweet Life interviews.”

Spencer’s words echoed back to me and I cringed. “I’m sorry. This shouldn’t be your problem.” My head started shaking back and forth, hating the complications I was causing but not knowing how to make it better. Tears welled in my eyes, but I stubbornly held them back.

At least until Gordy pulled me into a hug. “Hey, it’s okay. We can handle both. Do you know how many times I’ve only had one case at a time? Maybe my first one. That’s it. Aside from Spencer acting like an ass about the situation, there are a lot of people here who want to help both you and Baxter. We can handle this, okay?”

I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I forced myself to nod anyway. He’d already done so much for me. It wasn’t fair that my problems had dropped into his lap. He, at least, cared enough to not throw me out because I was too much trouble.

“Have you and Morales made any progress on the security footage?” He didn’t seem hopeful, which I took to mean he was changing the subject as a distraction for me.

I was happy to surprise him with some useful information. After telling him about the timeframe for the broken sensor and Pamela going through without even attempting to use her card, I told him Morales planned to look into how the sensors worked and how it might have been tampered with. He nodded, seeming pleased we had actually accomplished something, especially since it didn’t seem like the interviews with the cast and crew were turning up much useful information.

“I told Morales I’d come back to help him,” I said when we finished our discussion. My gaze drifted back to the photos. “Can I take those? I mean, are they evidence?”

Gordy considered my question. “They are, but I have the files and can print more. Why do you want them?”

“Incentive,” I said, “for Baxter. Maybe he’ll explain a few things if he realizes he’s a target.”

Slowly, Gordy nodded. “Knowing you’re a target is more of an incentive for him than protecting himself, but maybe you’re right. Take them. He needs to be honest with you if…” Gordy coughed and looked away.

“If what?” I asked. I knew he could feel my stare even without risking a glance at me.

Slumping back in his chair, he met my gaze. “You don’t really need me to spell it out for you, do you?”

While I’d had a moment of fear that there was something in the works I didn’t know about, his answer didn’t actually surprise me. Standing, I said, “Thanks for the pictures.”

“If you see anything, call immediately, okay? Forget Spencer. This is just as important as the cupcake murders.”

I shook my head. “You’ve really got to come up with a new nickname for this case.”

“Oh, like the zombie powder case was any better?” He gave a tired chuckle and shook his head. “Go help Morales. I’ll let you know when I question Pamela.”

I nodded and took the pictures back to the A/V room. As I settled in to watch bakery employees scurry around like ants, I debated telling Morales about Simon’s stalking. He was one of the ones Gordy was talking about when he said plenty of cops cared and wanted to help. Despite knowing that was true, I couldn’t get Spencer’s words out of my head. The more people trying to watch out for me right now, the higher the chances were that someone else from the bakery would end up dead. Ben’s blood on my hands was already almost more than I could handle. I couldn’t add any more.