Читать книгу Guarded Secrets - Leann Harris - Страница 11

S omething gnawed at his gut. Jon flexed his hands on the steering wheel of their police-issue sedan, trying to sort through the tension. He’d learned a long time ago not to ignore his instincts.

“What is it?” Dave asked.

Jon threw his partner a glance. “What?”

“You’ve got that look.”

He could try to deny it, but Dave and Jon had been partners long enough to read each other’s body language. “Something’s wrong.”

“Well, that clears things up.”

“You’ve followed hunches, and I’ve not complained,” Jon retorted.

“Yeah.”

“Before we pay Sunbelt a surprise visit, let’s run back to Peter’s apartment. Maybe we need to talk to the manager about that incident the neighbor mentioned. See if he has a tape of the incident.”

Dave didn’t hesitate or complain. “Let’s go.”

Jon turned the car around and headed toward Peter’s place. It was only a couple of streets away from their current position.

When they arrived at the apartment complex, Jon spotted Lilly’s car parked in the lot. Suddenly a man ran out of Peter’s second-story apartment and raced toward the stairs.

Jon slammed the car into Park, jerked the keys out of the ignition, and both men ran toward the stairs. The man spotted them, turned on the stairs and ran back up them. On the second floor, he darted in the opposite direction from Peter’s place.

“I’ve got him,” Dave yelled, reaching the second-floor landing.

Jon raced up the steps and to the open door of Peter’s apartment. “Lilly,” he yelled.

Inside the door, he saw Lilly sprawled on the floor. He knelt by her side and swept a glance over her body. She didn’t have any obvious wounds, and there was no blood. It was a good sign, but he’d encountered more than one murder victim who had died of internal injuries. Carefully, he ran his hands over her torso and limbs, searching for any hidden wounds. Finding nothing to cause him alarm, he ran his hands over her head. She wasn’t bleeding, but he noticed the red welt on her chin.

“Lilly, wake up.” He gently ran his hands through her hair.

She moaned. Jon welcomed the sound.

“C’mon, Lilly. Open your eyes.” He brushed away the hair from her face.

Her eyes fluttered open.

He let out the breath that he’d been holding. Thank You, Lord, he thought.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked in a quiet voice.

She tried to focus on his face. He saw her struggle to make sense of things. Finally, things snapped into place. “My jaw feels like an elephant sat on it.” She tried to smile, but winced instead.

She struggled to sit up. Jon helped her.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I came to finish packing up Pete’s clothes and things. When I opened the door and stepped into the living room, a man appeared behind me and punched. That’s the last thing I remember.” She tried to get up.

Jon caught her arm, helping her to stand. He directed her to a kitchen chair. “Take a moment to gather yourself.”

“How is she?” Dave asked from the doorway. Jon glanced at his partner. Dave shook his head, letting Jon know that the suspect had got away. He motioned to Lilly. “Is she okay?”

“I’m fine. I just got punched in the face,” Lilly answered. She moved her jaw and winced.

Jon went to the refrigerator and removed several ice cubes from the ice bin. He took a kitchen towel, wrapped the ice cubes in it and brought it over to Lilly. “Here. Put that on your chin.”

She took the towel and followed his suggestion. “What does the guy who did this to me want?” she asked after a minute.

That was the burning question that Jon was mulling. “Obviously, whoever he is, he’s looking for something he hasn’t yet found, and he came back to look for it again.”

“I don’t understand.” She put the towel on the table. “Pete doesn’t have anything worth taking.”

“You sure?” Dave asked. “He wasn’t into anything illegal?”

Lilly shook her head. “I don’t know. But it wouldn’t make sense given the fact that there were so many signs that he took his faith seriously. Penny commented recently that her daddy had started reading her children’s Bible to her when she spent the weekends.”

Jon pointed to the towel with the ice and pointed at her chin. “Keep it on your face. You don’t want Penny to see her mom with a huge bruise on her face.”

She obeyed and placed the towel on her chin again.

Jon sat down at the table. “Whoever was in here today, yesterday, and at your house yesterday is looking for something. We need to figure out what it is, because it looks like this guy isn’t going to quit until he gets what he wants. Do you have any idea what this person is looking for?”

Worry colored Lilly’s eyes, turning them deep chocolate. “I don’t know.”

Jon placed his hand over hers. The electricity that ran up his arm shocked him. He pulled his hand back. “Can you call someone to come and help you with things here at the apartment? I’d feel a lot better if someone was here with you. And I know Penny would appreciate it, too.”

He got the smile out of her that he wanted.

“Who can you call?” Jon asked, pressing the matter. They weren’t leaving until someone was here with Lilly.

“I can ask the pastor to come and help me. And he knows several people who would gladly help.”

“Then do that. Dave and I will stay here until someone arrives.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she protested.

“I do.” Jon’s tone made it clear that he would brook no argument. “Remember the condition of your house?”

He had a point. They didn’t know what was going on and until they did, there was danger.

“You got security cameras?” Jon asked Mark Rodgers, the owner and manager of the apartment complex.

“There are a couple in the parking lot, but the security tapes are erased after a couple of weeks.”

“Let us have what you’ve got,” said Jon.

Rodgers hesitated. “You going to bring them back?”

Jon glared at him.

Rodgers shrugged. “Hey, they’re expensive.”

“File it with the insurance company,” Dave told him.

Rodgers didn’t look happy, but he walked back into his office. He reappeared a few minutes later with seven tapes. “I use one a day and have one for each day of the week.”

“If you keep two weeks worth of tape, how come you only have seven tapes?” Jon asked.

“Because, the tapes are not on all the time. I have the tapes running only when the tenants go to work and come home,” Rodgers explained.

It wasn’t an uncommon practice. They’d be lucky if the argument Peter had in the parking lot was caught on tape, but miracles still did happen.

“Hey, do I get a receipt for those tapes?” Rodgers asked.

Jon stepped into Rodger’s office, looked around the man’s desk, saw an envelope, turned it on its back and wrote a receipt.

“That’s my electric bill,” Rogers complained from the doorway.

“It’s also your receipt. Don’t lose it.” Jon slapped it down on the desk.

Jon and Dave headed for the patrol car.

“You’ve got to work on your technique,” Dave muttered, trying to hide his smile.

Jon threw him a look. “He wants his tapes back?”

“We’ve heard stranger things.”

Jon tried to fit the pieces of this case together as he sat behind the wheel without turning the key. “The more we look into Burkstrom’s murder, the more sense Lilly’s words make. I mean about her husband warning her about his death.” Jon glanced at his partner, wondering if they were on the same page.

“You’re right. There seem to be red flags popping up everywhere.”

“Let’s go to Sunbelt and see if anyone knows a reason why Burkstrom was murdered.”

It took only ten minutes to drive to the offices of Sunbelt Securities. One of the managers, Bryon Sands, whom they’d talked to earlier, looked up from his desk.

“Detectives? Aren’t you early?” He glanced at his watch. “The guys are still out on their run.”

“We thought we might stop by and see if the team might’ve finished earlier,” Jon explained.

Bryon Sands stood and walked to the counter separating the desks from the lobby. “Car fourteen isn’t back yet. They’re still out doing their morning run.”

“Aren’t they running a little late?” Jon asked. “One-thirty is late for a lunch break.”

Sands glanced down at his watch again. “It is, but sometimes our customers run late or change their mind. The team radioed in and told us they were about a half hour behind their normal schedule. I’ve radioed their morning clients about the delay.”

“Since that team is going to be late, we’d like to interview some of the other teams and see if they can tell us anything,” Jon announced.

Sands didn’t look happy. “Sure. Drive around back and talk to whomever you need to.”

The detectives walked back to their car.

Dave met Jon’s gaze over the roof of the car. “We have a reluctant boss. Why?”

“I wonder if we’ll get to talk to all the team members,” Jon replied. They glanced around the lot. An armored car drove in and pulled into the garage. “Maybe we should check out who is on that team.”

“I like your thinking.”

The detectives walked around the building to the garage. Several armored cars were parked at the loading dock and inside the garage. They could hear the men joking with each other. Jon and Dave walked up the concrete steps to the loading dock. One of the men looked up and his hand went to his sidearm.

“We’re Albuquerque police detectives,” Jon offered to disarm the situation. He pulled out his police ID and showed it to the man.

The man let his arm drop.

Jon said, “We’re here to ask a few questions about Peter Burkstrom.”

“He worked here only a couple of months,” the man offered.

“And he wasn’t on our team,” another man replied. He sat on a wooden box. Several other boxes had been pulled up to an old table. Three other men sat around the table. A couple of men stood behind it.

“We realize that,” said Dave. “But we wanted to see if any of you might recall some incident where Peter might have had a problem with someone?”

Jon stood back and carefully watched the reactions of the men. Most of the men shook their heads, but one man in the back shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t offer any explanation, but Jon wanted to talk to him.

Jon and Dave pulled each of the men aside to talk to them privately. The third man Jon interviewed was the man who had aroused his suspicions.

“Do you know anyone who might’ve had something against Burkstrom?” Jon asked.

The man hesitated.

“If you know anything, no matter how insignificant, tell me. It might be the key to Pete’s death.”

“About a month ago, Pete had a bad argument with one of his team members.”

“Who was that?”

“His name is Jimmy Hughes. When they got back from a run, Jimmy jumped all over Pete, calling him stupid and saying that if ‘that’ happened again, he would report Pete to the office.”

“You don’t know what the argument was about?” Jon asked, pressing.

“No, and when I tried to talk to Pete about it, he told me it was nothing and not to worry about it.”

“Did anything else happen?”

The man shook his head. “No. I watched Pete and Jimmy after that, but whatever their differences were, they seemed to patch it up.”

“Thanks.”

The man shrugged and walked away.

Before Jon could talk to Dave, the armored car they’d been waiting for drove up. The team of four men piled out of the vehicle.

“I could eat your and my lunch,” one of the men on the team commented.

They walked up the steps and greeted the other men.

“It looks like a funeral in here. What’s wrong?” the hungry man commented.

Jon stepped forward. “Detective Sandoval and I are here to talk to you about Pete Burkstrom.”

None of the team members who’d just arrived looked happy or willing to talk.

Jon and Dave each took an employee aside and started questioning them.

A few minutes later, Jon studied Jimmy Hughes. “Did you like Peter Burkstrom?”

Jimmy glanced at one of his teammates, who was talking to Dave.

Jon didn’t push him. The man had something to say, and he needed the space to say it.

“No.” Jimmy looked down at his hands.

“You wanted him dead?”

Jimmy’s head jerked up. “No. He was killed in a robbery gone bad.”

“Maybe not.”

The color drained from Jimmy’s face. “You blowing smoke?”