Police Protector

“Your car was in the garage overnight, right? Did you step outside to get a paper, anything like that?”

“Yes, my car was in the garage, and, no, when I got in it to head to the lab it was the first time I’d left my house. And let me save you some time, because I’ve heard you talk to witnesses before. I didn’t see anyone following me. Not yesterday, not in the past few weeks, not ever. And as far as I know, there’s no one who has a reason to come after me, not with the Jannis Crew shut down.”

“What about at work?” Luke asked. “Anything unusual there?”

Shaye frowned. “Like what?”

“Like anything. Coworkers acting strange around you, someone who’s shown an interest in you even though you’ve turned him down or made it clear you’re not interested?”

Shaye shook her head slowly. “No. There’s been a little turnover since I left a year ago, but most of my colleagues are the same. And the ones who are new all seem fine. It’s business as usual at the lab.”

Cole stared at her, wondering what that meant. He’d visited her in the lab a few times, and his presence had always surprised her. Not just because it was him and he didn’t tend to come over to the lab, but because she’d been so focused on whatever digital device she’d been analyzing that she hadn’t even noticed he was there until he’d told her.

Was she that oblivious all the time? Would she even realize if someone had been stalking her, waiting for the right moment to get her alone?

He wished he knew. But the truth was even though they talked in the course of their jobs, and they had an unofficial agreement to meet up before and after work each day, he’d rarely seen her outside investigations. Even last month, when he’d asked for her help, it had been an off-the-books case. The realization momentarily surprised him, because she’d become such an important part of his life. And yet she was almost totally separate from it.

He wasn’t sure if that said something about the strength of their friendship or just about his willingness to let people get close to him. Except he had plenty of friends, and to this day, he still tried to help kids coming out of the foster system because he knew how hard that transition was. So why? He wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling if he probed that too deeply, he wouldn’t like the answer.

“What about your job?” Cole asked when he realized the silence had dragged on a little too long. “What devices do you have right now?”

“I’m looking at computers from that corporate espionage case. And the girl who’s being stalked, to see if her computer was hacked. I’ve only been back for a week.” She shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

Neither were likely connections to today’s shootings, but he gave Luke a meaningful look, and his partner nodded. They’d check both out. The corporate espionage involved two local competing businesses, and both sides had been repeatedly fined for violating various laws, but he doubted they’d resort to violence. And the stalker was young; that kind of behavior always made him look twice, because it was often a gateway crime, but usually the ultimate target was the person being stalked, not someone connected to the investigation. Still, he planned to check every possibility.

“How about cases from last year?” Cole asked. “Anything you dealt with that’s still in the courts?”

“Yeah, probably. I know there are a few that haven’t gone to trial yet, but they’re cases I worked peripherally. Nothing where I’m a witness. At least not yet. I guess I could still get subpoenaed.”

Luke shook his head. “Probably not those. But let’s make a list of all these cases—especially where you took the stand or your name would appear in the court documents—where someone went to jail.”

Shaye glanced from him back to Cole. “Isn’t this a waste of time? Shouldn’t you be focused on witness statements or trying to track down this guy some other way?”

“We will,” Cole assured her. “But no reason not to attack it from both directions.”

She scooted her half-eaten bowl of cereal away from her and leaned on the counter. “But I’m not a direction at all, right? I’m just unlucky enough to have been shot at twice?”

Her words hung in the air. Cole wanted to nod, like he’d done last night, and tell her this had nothing to do with her. But the more he thought about it, the more he worried that Shaye was at the center of something dangerous. And he had no idea what it was.

Chapter Five (#u7ad02723-41b0-5f69-a36f-b1bc725b0b43)

“Let’s go.” Shaye unlocked the door to the lab and held the door for Cole and Luke, trying to calm her nerves. There had been hardly any cars outside the lab, but they didn’t work weekends unless a big case required a rush analysis. But across the parking lot, cops’ vehicles were lined up in what should have been a reminder of her safety.

She’d come so close this past week to feeling normal again. But maybe it wasn’t ever going to happen now. Maybe her parents and her four brothers and sisters were right. She wasn’t cut out for a job where bullets were involved.

Luke was gazing around curiously, but Cole stared back at her, like he could read her mind, and she ducked her head. If she wasn’t cut out for a lab job, she definitely wasn’t cut out for dating a detective. Not that a detective had asked her out. Just given her the best kiss of her life.

Pulling the door until it clicked shut behind her, she led the way through the sterile hallways. Past locked doors with the labels Biology/DNA, Firearms/Toolmarks, Latent Prints and Toxicology. Down to the end, where a shiny new label marked “Digital Forensics,” the most recent addition to the Jannis County Forensics Laboratory. Her territory.

Before she’d started—and last year when she’d taken the other job—digital devices had been sent off to the state lab. But it was one of the fastest-growing areas of forensics in Jannis, and Shaye was still surprised the job had been open a year later for her.

She used her key card to get into the room as Luke remarked, “Good security.”

“Yeah, well, we take chain of command pretty seriously. And that includes making sure no one can access anything they shouldn’t while it’s in our possession. Everything gets logged. Even what I’m going to pull up for you will have a digital log that I accessed it, at what time and for how long.” She’d helped set up some of those extra precautions last year as one of her first assignments on the job.

She glanced around her tiny space, jammed full of equipment—mostly computers. Her office was in the back with no windows, which often made her feel penned in, but today she appreciated it. And she was happy to have something to do besides sit around her house while Cole and Luke drove her crazy. They’d installed new locks on all her doors, exercised in her living room and called the station repeatedly for updates and to assign leads. And that had all been before 10:00 a.m. So when they’d wanted to go through suspects, she’d suggested they come here.

“Let’s get started,” Cole said, dragging her empty whiteboard to the center of the room.

He was wearing the same jeans and button-down from yesterday, just a little more rumpled. The short beard he always had was a tiny bit longer, too, and she fixated on it, remembering it scraping against her chin. She could almost feel his arms going around her again, the breadth of his chest pressed against her, big enough to make her feel surrounded by him. She shook off the memories, hoping her thoughts weren’t broadcast across her face. But Cole was focused, his detective face on.

He jotted the words Possible Suspects, Unlikely and Ruled Out, then carefully underlined each one. “Any case you testified in or were involved in, now or last year. Pull them up, and let’s get to work.”

He sounded determined, almost enthusiastic, and she supposed that was the kind of attitude you needed to be a detective, to slog through hours and hours of clues until you found the right answer.

She understood it because she could do the same with a digital device, dig and dig until it revealed all of its secrets. But hers was a totally different kind of quest, one fueled by years of shyness and feeling overlooked in her big, noisy family. Being the middle child in a family of seven meant you either had to demand attention or be content without it.

She loved her family. She missed her family, living so far away, when the rest of them had stayed in Michigan. But she’d needed to break out, make something of herself as Shaye, not just one of the Mallory siblings.

She settled into her well-worn chair. Time to see if the skill that had moved her past her sheltered, invisible life was threatening to destroy it, too.

“Let’s start with the most obvious first,” Luke suggested, snagging the only other chair in the room while Cole stood in the center of the small space, marker raised and ready.

“The Jannis Crew.” Just saying the name made her feel a little ill. Shaye nodded and opened a file. Because she’d been in the line of fire, her boss had sent the digital devices they’d recovered after the shooting—computers, phones and tablets—to the state lab, so there’d be no conflict of interest. But she’d been on the stand, because she’d found the original trail to the leadership. And she was the only living witness able to identify the shooter.

The three officers who might have seen him had died on the scene. Cole and Luke had run out the station doors as the car was driving past. Forensics later discovered that their bullets had killed the two men in the backseat, but not the shooter. So Shaye had gotten on the stand, ignored her thundering heart and pointed directly at him, sending him to prison for the rest of his life.

“Well, we know it’s not Ed Bukowski,” Cole said, writing his name under “Ruled Out.” “He was killed in prison last week.”

Shaye jerked, spinning her chair to face him as an instant picture of the driver, one tattoo-covered hand draped over the wheel and the other aiming a gold-plated pistol out the window, formed in her head. “He was?”

“Crazy Ed found someone who wasn’t impressed with his crazy,” Luke said, using his gang name. “But put relatives on the Suspect list. The timing could fit. Maybe someone wants revenge for Ed’s death. They can’t go after the drug lord who shanked him, so they’re going after the woman who fingered him, put him behind bars in the first place.”

A violent shudder passed through her, and Shaye knew they’d both seen it. She spun to face her computer, sensing Luke and Cole sharing a look behind her back.

“Maybe we should do this part at the station,” Cole said. “You provide us with the list, and we’ll go through it.”

“No. I want to help.”

“There’s no reason for you to relive—”

“I said I want to help.” Shaye turned back, staring hard at Cole. “You don’t need to protect me from this.”

“That’s my job, Shaye.”

His job. Of course it was. It wasn’t personal to him. But it was personal to her. “It’s my job, too. So let’s do this.” She didn’t give him more time to argue, just looked at her screen again and read off the next case.

Three hours later, the whiteboard was full. Most of the names were listed under “Unlikely” or “Ruled Out,” but they had a handful of possible suspects that Cole and Luke were going to check out.