The Dangerous Edge of Things

CHAPTER 25

“What security system?” I said.

The Kennesaw officer looked perplexed. “The one rigged to the window. Nobody made it inside, though—the burglar bars did the job, and once the alarm started, your perpetrator fled the scene.”

I took another deep breath. In the shop, a second officer took notes, his shoes crunching on the glass shards that used to be the gun shop’s front window. Somewhere on my floor was a brick. And apparently none of this would have been discovered without the security system that alerted the Kennesaw cops.

Only one problem. Dexter didn’t have a security system. And I hadn’t installed one.

I explained this to the deputy. He scratched his forehead. “Well, there was one in there. A surveillance camera too, only it got busted. The perpetrator hit it with another brick. “

“If you’re talking about the thing mounted on the wall behind the register, it’s broken.”

He looked at me like I was slow. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—somebody hit it with a brick and broke it. He had good aim too, whoever it was. Took it out in one shot.”

I didn’t try to explain. The old camera was for show only, a prop. Not that anyone could tell from looking at it—hence its current bashed-in state—but my real concern was the inventory.

“Was anything missing?”

“There doesn’t seem to be. The alarm scared off the perpetrator, and the safe is untouched. But you’ll want to check, of course.”

He was right about that. There were a lot of things I planned to check out, just as soon as I got ahold of Eric, who still wasn’t returning my calls.

Luckily, there was another person who was.

Garrity saw me and made his way over. He carried two cups of coffee, one of which he handed to me wordlessly. It was scalding hot and loaded with cream and sugar.

“You’ve got to stop calling me in the middle of the night,” he said. “It never turns out well.” He was dressed casually, but I saw the holster under the tan jacket.

I shrugged. “What can I say? You’re my go-to guy these days.”

He pulled the lid off his coffee and a tendril of steam curled into the air. “You have any idea who did this?”

“Nope. You?”

“Maybe.”

He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. It was a photocopy of a BOLO on William Aloysius Perkins. I checked out the mug shot—it looked just like the sketch I remembered from my second interview. An ordinary face: dark buzz cut growing out, round eyes, small nose, soft chin.

“Bulldog,” I said.

Garrity’s eyebrows rose. “You know this guy?”

“Janie told me about him. She’s convinced he killed Eliza.” I handed the paper back. “Is he a suspect?”

“Right now he’s wanted for questioning, but once they get him in a chair, I’m sure he’ll spill. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, you know what I mean? The manager at Boomers said he was usually riding the squirrel train.”

“The what?”

Garrity looped a slow circle at his temple. “High, whacked out, hyped.”

“You think he has something to do with this?”

“Maybe. There’s been a lot of camera breakage going on—first Phoenix, now here. And this guy’s got a history of B and E.”

I hopped down and went to the back seat. “All of this is off the record, right?”

“For now.”

I dug inside my tote bag and pulled out the manila envelope with Rico’s illicit info inside. “Here. Have a look at this.”

Garrity pulled out the materials and read a couple of lines. “Where did you get this?”

“I forget.”

“You forget?”

“Yeah. I know that’s odd.”

“Not really. You wouldn’t believe the kind of things people forget once they start talking to a cop.” He shut the folder, but left it lying in his lap. “So Eliza was into B and E too. What do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t know. I promised Janie I’d keep it out of circulation, but now that it seems like Eliza’s old partner is working my turf, I want it put in the right hands.”

“Does this have anything to do with why you were at Boomer’s earlier?”

His eyes would have been really beautiful, I decided, if he hadn’t been forever narrowing them at me, like I was on the witness stand. “Is this still off the record?”

He agreed. So I told him the truth. Mostly. I left out the part where Nikki had been watching me, kind of de-emphasized the whole “meeting a creepy stranger at midnight” thing, but other than that, my version was right on the money.

He sipped his coffee. “That was borderline idiotic, you know, the kind of stupid thing—”

“You’re one to talk. Boomers is a little out of the way for something that’s not even your case.”

“So? I’m a cop. You’re a civilian. End of argument.”

“I’m a liaison now, Detective.”

He gave me the cop eye. “A what?”

So I told him everything about that—the ball-breaker of a morning meeting, my new position, Trey’s near-pummeling of Steve Simpson, the fact that Landon and Trey and Simpson were all “suspicious” now, the sighting of the mysterious Dylan Flint.

When I was done, he shook his head. “Jesus. Marisa’s got Trey on an investigation? He doesn’t do investigations.”

“His point exactly. She shot him down. I swear, you should have seen her, like you crossed Scarlett O’Hara and the Terminator.”

“That’s what they want, you know.”

“Who?”

“Her clientele. Ever since 9/11, every CEO in Fulton County wants to know how to kill somebody with a spork, and they want to know how to do it without messing up their suit. Phoenix draws ’em like catnip. But I’ll tell you one thing—I don’t like it in there. Maybe I’ve just been a cop too long, but I can’t shake the feeling that those walls have ears. And eyes. And who knows what else.”

He dropped his voice, narrowed his gaze. “I don’t even take a piss in there if I can help it.”

We sat on my hood while the Kennesaw officers finished their look-around. Some of them had known Dexter, had bought from him. They’d introduced themselves, told me how sorry they were for my loss. Every single one was polite, well-scrubbed and white as cream of wheat.

I rubbed my eyes until I could see straight. “So tell me, Detective—what were you doing at Boomer’s?”

“Off-duty curiosity. Bulldog used to sell in that parking lot. I wanted to see if he’d been around recently.”

“Had he?”

“Not that the manager knew of.” He made a serious face. “Have you told Trey about any of this?”

“I tried to tell him about the juvie records, but he went all stickler on me.”

“Then you need to tell him a different way.”

I was about to let him have it for that one—like Trey being Trey was my fault—when the Kennesaw officer tapped my shoulder. “Ma’am? I hate to interrupt, but does this mean anything to you? We found it behind some boxes under the window. Looks like your perpetrator dropped it through the burglar bars.”

He showed me the target, a picture of me in the center, the bull’s eye a blasted hole. I felt the blood drain from my face, and an involuntary tremor started in my hands. Tears sparked, blurring my vision. Garrity moved to stand in front of me. “Hey, hey.”

“Damn it, I hate crying.” I wiped my eyes. “But I’m running on two hours sleep, and now I’m being threatened—again—and I don’t even know why, and I’ve got a shop full of guns that I can’t even carry yet, and—”

“What do you mean, ‘threatened again?’”

The officer handed me a tissue. I blew my nose. And then I explained.

***

Once I calmed down, Garrity went off to ask the deputies some more questions. I huddled on my hood, arms wrapped around my knees. I felt empty, but it was a cathartic empty. No more secrets. I couldn’t handle this mess by myself.

I watched him talking with the other policemen, making a tight official knot with them. When he returned, he wore a strange expression. “You said you knew nothing about the security system?”

“Right.”

“And that the camera was just a decoy, hadn’t worked in years?”

“Right again.”

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “In that case, you really need to talk to Eric. And Trey. Because not only was that camera live, it was Phoenix issue.”