9

The next day Reese took the morning off and came to the office late in the afternoon, acting as if nothing had happened. Lauren sweated for hours wondering if he was really going to come in or just blow her off until she left for the task force. She exhaled a silent breath of relief when he showed up after lunch, dumped his stuff on his desk, and started catching up on some paperwork. It’s emotional blackmail. Lauren watched him out of the corner of her eye as he casually pecked away at his computer keyboard. He knows the silent treatment drives me nuts.

Still reeling from the incident with David Spencer the night before, Lauren tried to make herself busy with some old files that needed to be reorganized before they were packed away, keeping one eye on her partner. David hadn’t called his uncle, Frank Violanti, or made a complaint to Internal Affairs. Not yet. If Reese knew what she’d done, that might be the final straw in their partnership. She decided to keep it to herself.

How she felt about what had happened with David was another matter. She’d been stupid, careless, and he’d caught her. Now he had leverage over her. She had no idea how that was going to play out, but eventually, she knew it would. David was too smart to let an opportunity like this pass.

“Let’s go check out this coffee shop,” Reese finally said, getting up with his coat, hovering in the doorway.

Lauren knew better than to question. Relieved, she gathered up her things, put her jacket on, and was in the car on the way to Chippewa Street without another word. Reese drove. She watched out the passenger side window and waited for him to say something. His avoidance of arguing drove her nuts. Just once she’d like to have it out with him, have him really tell her off. But he always exited, cooled off, and then acted like nothing was bothering him.

“Reese—”

He held up a hand to silence her. “Unless you’re about to say something about Brianna McIntyre’s disappearance or the way my new jacket really shows off my physique, I don’t want to hear it.”

She did her best to make peace. “Your jacket really hides your love handles.”

He turned the car onto Chippewa Street, slowing to look for a parking spot. “Something for the ladies to grab on to. As opposed to you, who has more of a greased pole thing going for her. The men just slide right off.”

She laughed, relieved that the tension was broken. “Meaning?”

He angled his way in between an old Chevy Malibu and a Buick Regal. “Ain’t no man going to try to get to the top if he has to work that hard.”

She let that pass. “I’d rather have Watson back. What are the chances I could have him this weekend?” Watson was Reese’s West Highland Terrier who had also come to live with her when she got stabbed. Lauren had tried everything she could to convince Reese to leave him with her, but the best she could get was occasional overnight visits.

“Pretty good, as a matter of fact.” He threw their unmarked car into park. Grabbing the OFFICIAL POLICE VEHICLE placard from between the seat and the console, he tossed it on the dash. “The chick I’m seeing is deathly afraid of dogs. It’s actually a little weird. But we’re supposed to go to Niagara-on-the-Lake on Saturday, and I don’t want him to be alone for that long.”

“Why in the world would you date a woman who’s afraid of dogs?” Lauren asked as she got out. The midday traffic was light, but Chippewa was so narrow she scrambled over the melting snow bank to the sidewalk. They both ignored the parking meter. Cop cars didn’t have to pay, but sometimes Lauren dumped a couple of quarters in just for show.

“Did I mention she’s a yoga instructor?”

Now Lauren laughed out loud. “Enough said.”

“I figured.” Reese looked up at the front façade of the coffee shop. What used to be The Snow Belt Bar was now Uncommon Blends Coffee Café. It was actually making more money as a coffee shop than it did selling alcohol. On a street overloaded with more than twenty bars and night clubs, a high-end coffee shop filled a niche that had long been ignored. While the rest of Chippewa slept during the day, Uncommon Blends had a line winding from the bar almost to the door and every seat was taken with business people, hipsters, and students. Reese and Lauren excused themselves past the people waiting in line and stood among the tables.

“You see this?” Lauren pointed to a flyer taped to the inside of the window. It was Brianna McIntyre’s missing person poster, probably put there by her mother or one of the volunteers she had recruited to help her when Brianna first disappeared.

Reese nodded, gazing around the room. The telltale brass bar fixtures were still in place. In fact, nothing had changed except bottles of flavored syrup had replaced bottles of liquor on the shelves behind the bar and espresso machines stood where the taps used to be. “I’ll get in line. Grab us a couple of coffees, get a feel for the place. If this is what it looks like on a weekday, it’s probably bedlam during their Friday night happy hour.”

Nodding, Lauren drifted through the customers toward the window seat Brianna McIntyre had been sitting in. Two young women in their twenties sat facing each other, but were shielded by the screens of their open laptops. Angling herself behind the one with the blunt-cut reverse bob, she tried to get a line of sight on what Brianna would have been looking out at.

Cars lining either side of the street. Parking meters. A sign declaring they were in the Chippewa Entertainment District. The fronts of the businesses across the street.

She looked at the corner of Chippewa and Pearl. The side patio
of a bar called Slattery’s had once been the home of her great-
grandparents’ corner store. Her grandfather used to tell her stories of working for his dad on Chippewa Street when it was the red-light district, of how he would hold on to the money of the prostitutes who lived in the rooming houses above the store. They’d pull a wad of bills out of their bra and he’d pocket it for them while they worked. They’d come back at the end of the day, collect their earnings, slip him a dollar, and tell him to be a good boy. He was twelve.

Her dad once asked her grandfather why he always gave the street walkers credit and he replied, “Because those working girls always pay their bills.” The store had been torn down long before she was born, but that corner always made her think of her Gramps, even now.

Her eyes wandered to the bar directly across the street, next to Slattery’s Pub, falling on its plate glass window. The Hot Spot had changed names at least a dozen times since she’d been on the job. It was a problem bar with a rich, out-of-town owner who, every time he lost his liquor license, “sold” it to an associate and reopened under a new name. The other bar owners on Chippewa Street hated the place because it allowed kids in under twenty-one. In the Hot Spot’s management’s thinking, a wrist band was a magical shield that prevented eighteen-year-olds from acquiring alcohol once they got inside the bar. And drunk eighteen-year-olds wandering around Chippewa Street were a turn-off for mature drinkers who spent more money.

Her gaze was still fixed on the place when Reese came back with their coffee in take-out cups. “Hey, Reese.” She took hers and motioned with the cup at the Hot Spot. “Did they ever talk to anyone over there?”

“They did a video canvass. Half the bars have cameras on the front door, but from the inside. There’s a city camera there.” He pointed out the white globe hanging from the pole at Chippewa and Franklin. “I don’t think its line of sight reaches this far. The next city camera is on Chip and Delaware.”

“No cameras in here, on this door?”

“No. All the cameras here are positioned for employee theft, not drunken brawls. I looked at the tapes. Nothing that could help us.”

“Let’s go across the street. I want to check on something.”

The Hot Spot was open, but only a few hard-core drinkers were sitting at the bar when they walked in. The place was dim and dank, like a dungeon in a medieval castle, and didn’t smell much better, Lauren guessed. The bartender looked up at them, the serpent tattoo that snaked around his neck crept up along his cheek until its open mouth, complete with dripping fangs, gaped under his right eye. He wore his long hair down and scraggly, not in a neat man bun like the baristas across the street. He was on the shorter side, but thick. Lauren could tell he made them for cops the second they walked in.

“Can I help you guys with something?” His deep voice wasn’t menacing, merely curious.

Lauren and Reese moved their coat flaps in unison to reveal the badges on their hips. The bartender leaned forward, propping himself up with both tattoo sleeved arms. “Something wrong, officers?”

“No.” Reese walked over and shook his hand, which was twice the size of his. “We’re following up on a case and just want to have a look around.”

Spreading his arms wide, he motioned to the empty space, “I’m experiencing a bit of a lull right now. Go right ahead.” A homeless-looking man with four or five dollars in change in front of him put his pint glass down and silently tapped the bar. The burly bartender simultaneously filled his glass with another draft beer and pulled four quarters from the pile. “It’s dollar drafts before five,” he said by way of explanation. “Can I get you officers anything?”

“I think we’re good. But thank you,” Reese said.

Lauren was standing in front of the picture window, staring at the coffee shop across the street. Reese sidled up next to her. “What do you see?”

“I have a perfect view of the table Brianna was sitting at.” The two women were still there, both typing furiously into their laptops. “Someone could have watched her from this window.”

Reese reached out and dragged a finger down the glass. It left a clean streak and the tip of his finger grimy. “We know they don’t clean much in this place.”

“The big letters on the window would partially cover anyone watching.”

“Hey, boss.” Reese turned and pulled a picture of Brianna McIntyre out of his back pocket. “You ever see this girl?”

He reached a meaty arm across the bar and took the picture. “A couple of detectives came by, but that was months ago. They showed me this same picture. Is that the girl that’s missing?”

“That’s Brianna McIntyre.” Lauren walked over, leaned against the bar, realized it was sticky, and took a step back. “Did you ever see her in this bar?”

He shook his head and handed the picture back to Reese. “No. But she’s not really the type to frequent this kind of place, ya feel me?”

“Have you worked here long?” Lauren asked.

“About a year and a half. Two months ago, I got a battle-field promotion to manager when the last one went to jail.” He smiled, showing off strangely even, white teeth that made Lauren wonder if they were fake. Maybe knocked out in a brawl sometime. “It’s a shit show in here, but it pays the bills.”

Above the cloudy mirror behind him was a giant clock with a beer logo on its face, whose hands ticked the hour and minutes away. Something about the sound of the buzzing second hand brought the story of the hookers hiding their money back into her mind. The bartender noticed her noticing. “I’m a freak about time. I wear a watch, constantly look at my cell phone. My girl says it’s OCD. I love that clock. My name’s Galen, by the way.”

She nodded, thinking. When you don’t want to get caught with something, you hide it. In a place where no one would think to look.

“Do you have a bathroom here, Galen?”

He pointed down a dark hallway. “Ladies room on the left.” Then wrinkled his nose. “The cleaning lady hasn’t been in there in a while. You sure you can’t hold it?”

“I’m more interested in the men’s room.”

Galen’s face contorted even more. “Right next to the ladies’ room. But just to give you an idea of its current condition, I usually piss in the alley out back.”

“Good to know. Thank you.”

“I’m trying to get the owner to dump some money into this place, but it’s falling on deaf ears. He could care less about a clean shitter.”

Lauren nodded and headed in the direction of the washrooms.

Reese followed her as she walked down the dim, cramped hall, pausing before the men’s room door. “What are you doing?” he asked as she rapped her knuckles against the wood.

“Just a hunch.” When no one answered, she pushed the door opened and ventured in with Reese on her heels.

The smell hit her nostrils like a heavyweight MMA fighter’s fist. Her gag reflex wasn’t what it used to be, but still, the place reeked. A line of four urinals with matching yellowish-brown stains down the front lined the far wall. A single sink ringed in black mold sat dripping under a glass block window.

“Gotta go?” Lauren teased as she scanned the room.

“I think I can hold it,” Reese said, dumping his coffee cup into the plastic trash bin next to the sink.

Lauren kicked the door to the single stall open with the toe of her boot. An equally nasty looking commode sat next to a broken toilet paper dispenser. “Grab me some paper towels will you, please?”

He turned and cranked on the handle then ripped off a two-foot long brown piece of paper. Reaching back, she took it from him, tore it in two, and used it to lift the top off the toilet tank. There, sitting half an inch above the water line on the flush mechanism, was a cheap-looking black cell phone. Lauren carefully set the porcelain lid off to the side.

“Son of a bitch.” Reese bent forward to get a better look.

“I’m calling Evidence and Photography.” She pulled her portable radio out of her jacket pocket.

“How did you know?” he marveled as she was just about to key the mic.

“I didn’t. It might not be the burner phone used to call Brianna, but I’m betting it is.”

Reese gave a low whistle. “What am I going to tell poor Galen outside?”

“That he just got the night off.” She keyed the mic on her portable and said, “Cold Case 1271 to radio?”