Deadly Web (7 page)

Chapter Five

Detective Jacob Cooper was a brilliant investigator with sharp instincts, a nose for hidden information, and an uncanny ability to crack almost anyone in the interrogation room. All this was completely moot in front of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amy, who was apparently angry at him again, though he had no idea why.

“Honey, do you want some pancakes for breakfast?”

She glared at him. “I’ll eat some toast,” she snapped.

“Do you, uh… want me to make it?”

“Are you proposing to put a slice of bread in the toaster for me? Thanks Dad, what would I have done without you?” She put the slice of bread in the toaster herself, just in case he’d missed the dripping sarcasm.

Jacob tried to think. Had he missed an important date? This seemed unlikely. Her birthday was four months away. What other important dates were there? Perhaps he’d been supposed to buy her something and he forgot? Or maybe he’d missed some random school event he was supposed to show up at? Why was it that psychopathic murderers and rough drug dealers made perfect sense to him, while his daughter made none?

“Do you want a ride to school?” he asked in a desperate attempt to fix whatever this was.

Amy seemed to consider it, weighing the pros (no school bus, a short and comfortable ride) with the cons (will have to be moderately nice to Daddy, who is the devil incarnate).

“I’ll take the bus,” the relentless despot declared, sentencing Jacob to a long day of wondering what he had done wrong.

“Okay.” He sighed. He decided that drinking coffee at work would be better than drinking it here, with a vicious teenager glaring at him. “Have a nice day, honey.”

She did not wish him the same. Her stare clarified that, as far as she was concerned, his day would hopefully be an everlasting nightmare.

“Bye, Marissa!” he called to his wife, who was still in bed.

“Bye, sweetie!” she called back. At least she wasn’t upset with him. That was definitely something.

He decided to walk to work. The police station was not far from home, and he usually preferred, when the weather permitted, to get there on foot. He put on his coat and went outside, still trying to crack the case of the mysterious fuming daughter. Had he, perhaps, said the wrong thing? Not this morning. She’d been clearly pissed off since the moment she woke up. Perhaps last night? He definitely recalled saying “good night, Amy,” but that didn’t seem like grounds for hatred. He sighed.

He strode down Bifrost Avenue, breathing in the morning’s fresh, chilly air. Despite the cold, the sky was bright and blue, and he slowly cheered up. Amy’s mood was like a force of nature. You had to let it run its course. She never stayed angry for more than a few hours, and once she was done she was the sweetest daughter a man could wish for. By the time he’d passed by the college, he was already quite happy. Even seeing Mad Remington walking down the road, muttering to himself, pushing his supermarket cart, did not manage to dampen Jacob’s mood. It was one of those beautiful days that just made him relish being alive. He didn’t feel like a fifty-six-year-old goat at all. He wouldn’t have given himself a day over fifty-two.

He pulled his iconic hat a bit downward, to protect his eyes from the morning sun. Everyone knew Jacob by his hat. It was an old gray fedora, which he had received as a birthday gift from his wife a decade or so before. He wore it almost constantly, because he was completely bald underneath and did not want to get sunburned. He had lost his last strand of hair when he was twenty years old. He knew people often did things like “comb their hair” or “get a haircut,” but he didn’t even recall what that was like.

He tried to compose his thoughts and prepare for the day ahead. He had some paperwork to fill out. There was a report due regarding last week’s double homicide that, for some reason, had been rejected by the computer. The Glenmore Park police department used a cutting edge program, purchased only a few months earlier, to file their internal reports. It made Jacob’s life miserable.

The current problem, according to the error message he had received when submitting the report, was
Err-176 No Instance of Crime Found Searching
. This cryptic message, which was as mysterious as his daughter, would probably mess with his day. He could let Mitchell handle it—his young partner would fix the problem in a second—but Jacob wasn’t inclined to ask for his help. Mitchell already did most of the work when their cases involved computers. The least Jacob could do was file the goddamn paperwork.

He reached the police station. There was something very reassuring about this building, which represented a large part of his life for the past twenty-five years. Same old cracked stairs climbing up to the entrance. Same old doorway, with the sign
Glenmore Park City Police Department
. Same old security guard checking his ID, despite the fact that Jacob had walked through this security gate more than fifteen thousand times.

A cup of coffee with his name on it would make this morning perfect. “Good morning,” he said as he walked into the squad room.

Hannah was there, hunched over a mobile phone, and she did not seem to think it was a good morning at all. “If you’re making coffee, get me a cup,” she muttered. “Better yet, get me a bucket.”

“Weren’t you on a stakeout last night?” Jacob asked, approaching the coffee machine. “What are you doing here?”

“Murder,” Hannah said curtly.

“During your stakeout?”

“No,” she said. “After. The captain didn’t want to disturb your beauty sleep.”

“That’s a shame,” Jacob said, blessing the captain in his heart. “Really, I wouldn’t have minded being woken up.”

“Well, then, I’ll be sure to do that next time,” Hannah said.

“Where’s Bernard?”

“Gone home. Had to sleep.”

“You should go ahead and get some sleep too. I don’t think you’re doing any good in your state.”

Hannah grunted in response.

Jacob handed Hannah a cup of coffee and sat down in his cubicle with his own cup. He opened his mailbox and stared morosely at the rejected report. He tried resubmitting it, and the computer vehemently spat it out again with the message
Err-176 No Instance of Crime Found Searching
. He tried fiddling with the report—changed the headline a bit, reversed the order of the detectives on it—and resubmitted it. The report was rejected once again, this time due to
Err-239 Invalid Detective
. Well, that was just rude.

He groaned and turned around. “So,” he said. “Tell me about that murder you’re investigating.”

Hannah was having trouble concentrating. She’d been awake for twenty-four hours, and even a river of coffee could barely stave off sleep by this point. She was trying to detail the facts of the case to Jacob, but she kept mixing up the names, times, and facts. Jacob’s blue eyes were full of confusion as he tried to untangle the mess.

“No,” she said. “Fizz was just the bartender’s nickname. His real name is, uh… Theodore.”

“And who is Damion Cosmatos again?” Jacob asked.

“He’s the victim’s… Hang on,” Hannah blinked and rubbed her eyes as she checked her notes. “Damion? Uh… Oh! He’s the taxi driver.”

“The one you called for Fizz?”

“No, the one who witnessed the suspect escaping.” Her voice was on edge. She knew she was explaining it badly, but she still felt irritated that Jacob wasn’t even trying to telepathically understand what she was trying to say.

“Good morning,” Mitchell Lonnie said, walking into the squad.

“Hey, Mitchell,” Hannah said, her heart jumping, or plunging. Perhaps both. She forced herself to meet his eyes and smile calmly as she said, “I’m just filling Jacob in about a murder case we caught last night.”

Mitchell and Hannah had joined the force together. She’d been promoted to detective before him, but he’d followed her only two months later. They’d gotten along nicely until her screwup in the Jovan Stokes case. Mitchell had reacted badly, snapping at her, and they’d hardly talked for weeks afterward, even though he had apologized several times. Though she had forgiven him, it was harder to forgive herself, and she was never entirely comfortable when he was around.

Mitchell had thick, wavy black hair, tanned skin, and wide shoulders. Like his sister Tanessa, Mitchell turned heads wherever he went, and Hannah had seen women act like fools in front of him more than once. His green eyes always seemed full of sorrow, giving him the aura of a man who understood people’s pain.

“Okay,” Mitchell said. He joined them, bending over her notes, his head nearly touching hers. “What do we have?”

His aftershave reminded Hannah of freshly cut wood and cloves. There was a note to it she couldn’t quite place. Sandalwood, maybe.

She tried to ignore his close proximity as she once again detailed the murder of Frank Gulliepe. “We have patrol officers watching Chad Grimes’s house in case he gets back,” she said. “He seems to be the primary suspect right now.”

“What about his family?” Mitchell asked.

“Haven’t talked to them yet,” Hannah said. “His sister is autistic. She’s hospitalized in a place called the Wexler Center.” She rubbed her eyes again.

“You should go home and rest,” Mitchell said.

“Like hell,” Hannah said, snapping her eyes open. “I need to talk to the sister. And I think there’s a girlfriend—”

“You need to sleep, Hannah,” Jacob said, touching her shoulder gently. “We’ll notify next of kin.”

She could feel her resolve draining as her shoulders sagged. Jacob didn’t seem to put her on edge like Mitchell did.

“Fine,” she said. “But if Grimes shows up, you call me and wake me up, okay?”

Jacob nodded.

Satisfied, Hannah stood up and turned toward the door, only to suddenly halt in place. Damn, she had totally forgotten about Mikey, the Devin Derkins wannabe. She muttered curses as she sat down, dialing the Sheriff’s office, ignoring Jacob and Mitchell’s stares.

The cheery voice of someone who’d had a good night’s sleep answered. “Sheriff’s office, this is Yvonne.”

“Yvonne, this is Detective Hannah Shor,” Hannah said, “Listen, we arrested a drug dealer last night, and put him in our holding cells. Can you send someone to pick him up?”

“Why didn’t you take him to jail when you arrested him?” Yvonne asked in a testy voice.

Hannah gritted her teeth, and tried to remind herself that Yvonne was just doing her job, and wasn’t inherently evil. Probably. “We had some issues that needed addressing first,” she said, knowing she had just said a meaningless, unhelpful jumble of words. “Everything is now resolved. Can you pick him up?”

“What’s the prisoner’s name?” Yvonne asked.

“Devin Derkins,” Hannah said, thinking about her soft bed.

“Okay, we’ll send someone over soon.”

“Thanks, Yvonne,” Hannah said, relieved. She hung up the phone, stood up, and stumbled outside.

Mitchell was reading his e-mails, trying to avoid thinking about Pauline, and the fact that today was her birthday. She had left him two months before, right in the middle of the Jovan Stokes case, and he was far from over her. She had been the love of his life, and he was still struggling to figure out what went wrong.

A brief fling he had with an FBI consultant called Zoe helped to ease the pain, but she had left to Boston when the case ended. They had two brief chats on the phone, but neither of them pushed it further, and he hadn’t heard from her for over a month.

Despite his valiant efforts, memories from her last birthday kept popping into his mind. It had been a rainy day a year ago. He had taken the day off, and they’d spent the entire day snuggling in bed, watching movies and having sex.

He sighed. Maybe work would keep his mind busy; a murder investigation ought to get the job done. This was technically Hannah and Bernard’s case, but no one expected them both to work on it without any sleep. The first few days of a murder investigation, when the trail was still warm, were crucial; they all usually worked together to solve it. Mitchell and Jacob would naturally pick up the slack.

Mitchell grabbed Frank Gulliepe’s phone from Hannah’s desk and started methodically extracting information from it.

To a detective, a phone was a treasure trove. It was amazing how many details about a person’s life one could learn from such a small device. The navigation application gave him Frank’s work address, a place named Yorrick & Rodrick Co. From the call log, Mitchell learned that Frank placed a daily call to the Wexler Center, where his sister was staying. Additionally, he’d spoken with a woman named Lyla several times.

Frank’s Instagram account had pictures with a woman named Lyla, and Mitchell assumed it was the same one. She was beautiful, with golden-tanned skin and smooth, jet-black hair. She reminded Mitchell of an actress, but he couldn’t remember which one, or point out any movie she’d played in. By browsing Lyla’s own Instagram profile for several minutes, Mitchell determined that her full name was Lyla Harper, and she worked as a waitress at Bill’s Pizzushi Place, whatever that was.

As Hannah had figured out, Frank had maintained a lot of Twitter accounts which he used to harass several women. Mitchell managed to find some fake Facebook accounts used for similar purposes, as well as seven different e-mail accounts. The amount of hate and venom in the messages of those accounts made Mitchell want to take a shower. He made a list of all the Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, and e-mail addresses of the harassed women. About half of the harassing accounts were suspended, and he assumed they’d been reported to Twitter.

The browser history didn’t reveal much. Frank had periodically visited some blogs from his phone, as well as cnn.com. There was nothing else there, but this wasn’t surprising. Many people did most of their browsing from their laptop, tablet, or desktop computer.

It was a well-known fact in the squad that if anyone knew how to sniff out relevant information from that enormous entity called the internet, it was Mitchell. He would open dozens of tabs on his browsers, scanning multiple profiles, searching for parts that clicked, or digital references that overlapped. Captain Bailey had recently procured him a second monitor for his computer. Now, when he was fishing for information, dragging browser windows across the two monitors, he looked like a criminal mastermind, monitoring the secret agent bumbling around in his evil lair.