Delta Stevens 2: Storm Shelter (16 page)

Delta grit her teeth and stared darts through him. Somehow, she did not feel they were even in the same ballpark. “Admit it, Leonard. You’ve got nothing.”

Connie joined in. “And you know it. The D.A. wants a suspect and all you’ve got is a bunch of paperwork. Right now, Detective, you’re just farting in the wind.”

Leonard leaned back in his chair and studied them. “You think so?”

Connie nodded.

Leonard clasped his hands behind his head and said smugly, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but we have some very solid leads on the shooting.”

Delta pushed past Connie and towered over the desk. “And I’ve told you that murder is unrelated. Are you so pigheaded you can’t see that?”

Leonard smiled. “And I’ve told you, Stevie, that you’ve shown me absolutely no proof of that. Look, ladies, I’d love to sit here and trade `what ifs’ with you, but I have work to do. I’m not an unreasonable man, Delta. You know that. You have a theory and I’ve heard it. Why don’t you leave the disk, and I’ll take a look at it.”

Delta did not budge from her looming stance over the desk. She wanted to reach across the desk and pull his intestines out through his mouth. When she heard Connie rustling around in her purse for the disk, Delta whipped around and stared questioningly at her.

Connie looked into Delta’s face, but said nothing. Pulling the disk from her purse, Connie sighed. “It’s copy protected.”

“So?”

“So there’s an internal mechanism that will destroy the files if you try to copy it. I imagine the device is Elson’s own design. He’s taken precautions to make sure it can’t be duplicated. That would defeat the purpose of the game.”

“Which is him against you.”

Connie shrugged. “That’s an over-simplification, but close enough, so be careful.” Placing the disk on the desk, Connie averted her eyes from Delta’s penetrating gaze. “Lose it, and we’re screwed.”

Delta felt all of her energy drain away. Had Connie lost her senses? Tossing that disk on the table was like tossing her life away. Every muscle in Delta’s body cried out for her to take the disk and run, but she had to trust that Connie knew what she was doing.

Leonard looked at Delta as if he knew she was biting her tongue. “I’ll see that it gets some attention from Krispel. You know him, don’t you, Rivera?”

Connie nodded. “He’s usually swamped with work, but he’s a good guy. Maybe he’ll come up with something.”

Rising, Leonard stuck his hand out and shook Connie’s. “I know I sound like a tightass sometimes, Rivera, but it’s my job to question every detail. You can rest assured that I’ll do my best to see if there is really anything to it.” Leonard turned to Delta and grinned. “Contrary to your opinion, Stevie, I do follow up on every lead, no matter how bizarre. If this is a righteous lead, it’ll get the consideration it deserves.”

Delta grabbed his hand and pulled him to within inches of her face. “The only consideration I’m concerned with is Connie’s life. If anything happens to her because of your department’s dragging its feet, I’ll be coming after you personally.”

Leonard’s grin widened. “I believe that you would. Trust me, Stevie. I’ll do what I can, within reason.”

“Well, reason this . . . ,” Delta continued. But Connie took her by the arm and pulled her away from the desk. “Thank you, Sergeant,” Connie said, pushing Delta through the door. “I’ll expect to hear from you soon.”

When the door closed behind them, and they were down the hallway a bit, Delta turned on Connie.

“Are you crazy or loco or something? Did you hit your head in your sleep? How in hell could you just give away the only strand between you and Elson? Now we have nothing! Damn it, Con, I’ve never questioned decision-making before, but did you honestly believe he was going to do anything with that disk?”

“No.”

Delta stopped walking. “No? No? Then what in the hell are you thinking? Delta waved her hand in front of Connie’s face. ”Hello, hello, is anyone home?"

Connie smiled. “Yes.”

“Then why did you give it to him?” Delta’s voice rose, and several secretaries peeked out from behind their computers.

Connie looked hard at Delta for a moment, before a slow, tiny grin played around the corner of her lips. “I didn’t.”

Delta frowned. “You didn’t.”

“Nope.”

“But I saw—”

“You saw me toss a game disk on his desk.”

“A disk?”

Connie nodded. “It wasn’t our disk. God, Del, did you really think I would put my life on the line by giving our resident gumshoe the only real lead we have?”

“Well . . . ”

“Oh, come on, Storm. You know me better than that. I needed to feel him out first. But you were right. Leonard is of no use to us right now until we have some solid leads for him. He’s only willing to help if it’s a give-and-take situation. I gave him the disk, and I’ll take his data whether he wants me to or not. He’s a good detective, Del, but he’s of no use to us until he accepts what we’re offering him.”

Delta let a huge sigh release from her lungs. “You had me going, that’s for sure. Man, for a minute there, I thought you’d lost your mind.”

Connie’s smile deepened and her eyes softened. “That’s certainly possible, you know. The way I see it, we did what we’re supposed to do: we informed him of additional information. But now that that’s done, I’ll make a few calls to friends of mine who are a little better at this than I am and see if we can’t get a little more help on the computer end of things.”

“Well, we’ve faced worse odds.”

Connie nodded. “Indeed, we have.”

“But we still need what Leonard has.”

Connie grinned. “Yes, we do. And since we couldn’t get it going through proper channels, well . . . let’s just say that it’s time to warm Eddie and to call in a few markers. Believe me, there are more than a handful of investigators who owe me a favor or two.”

“Thank god for favors.” Opening the door for Connie, Delta asked, “There’s one more thing I’m curious about.”

“What’s that?”

“Farting in the wind?”

Against the early morning sky, both women threw their heads back and laughed.

The butcher paper was taped to the den walls, and different colored felt pens lay strewn across the table. Delta unfolded a map of her beat and continued enlarging it on her drawing. Gina had just walked in and poured a stack of library books on the floor, while Connie taught Megan how to play the game and move Dori from place to place. Tension hung ominously in the room like smoke from a burnt roast.

“No clue goes unnoticed, and nothing in the game is ever trivial,” Connie pointed out as Dori turned a rock over to reveal a key to the next level. “You must check everything out, no matter how stupid it may seem. That may mean talking to trees, eating rocks, or setting houses on fire. You have to think like Elson . . . this is a fantasy. Anything goes.”

Megan nodded. “Got it.” Suddenly, Megan reached over and paused the game. “Do you really think he expects you to work on this day and night?”

Connie shook her head. “No. So far, his pattern has been to strike every third night. I think he means to give me some respite. He wants to beat me at my best. The win wouldn’t taste as good to him if he did-n’t give me my best shot.”

Gina moved over to Connie and hugged her from behind. “He sounds so insane.”

Connie nodded. “ ‘there is no genius without a mixture of madness.’ Seneca, I think. You know, Jack the Ripper, who was never caught, had an incredible intellect.”

“Frightening,” Megan murmured, looking over at Delta for reassurance.

“And unpredictable,” Delta said from the kitchen.

“Exactly.”

“So, now what?”

Connie turned in Gina’s arms and hugged her. “We start at the beginning once more and take notes on everything. Delta will map out each level and see how it pertains to her beat. Meg will write down every name, every street, every beast, everything that appears in writing. Then, you and Gina will hit the books and research everything you find. If you come up with a Jones Street, you comb through every source we have until we find whether or not it has any significance.”

Delta and Megan nodded and glanced over at the growing pile of books on the floor. They had every almanac, every desk reference, every major dictionary ever printed. There was a complete set of encyclopedias, books on mythology, genealogy, history, biblical literature, and the like. Megan and Gina had been at the library all morning checking out the necessary material. The job of research appeared an impossible task.

“Don’t worry, Megan. It only appears insurmountable. You’ll get the hang of it. I’ve played his games before, and he’s a master at hiding clues right in front of your face. At least, that’s how he did it in college.”

“And my job is to write down every action Dori makes in order for something to happen,” Megan stated.

Connie nodded. “Right. Like when Dori read the boxes. You’d write ‘Read box, discovered Elson note,’so if we have to go back, we’ll remember what we’ve done.”

All three women nodded as they received their assignments.

“But Con, if we have to start at the beginning, won’t we waste time?”

Connie shook her head. “The way these games work has to do with the order in which you accomplish a set of goals. In other words, I couldn’t kill the fifty-headed beast until I acquired what was needed. The computer knows the sequence of events and can only move forward when those events are done in the right order. I wasn’t cautious going through the first time because I didn’t know what was at stake. I might have missed some important clues.”

A sick streak pierced Delta’s stomach. On the street, she knew the parameters to work by, as well as how her capabilities fit into those parameters. But this, this was altogether different than anything she’d been trained for. She felt like a blind person trapped in a maze.

“What do we do when we discover who his next target is?” Megan asked, uncapping a pen.

Connie’s eyes narrowed. “We set him up.”

Delta nodded. “And then we take him out.”

Jan was speechless.

Only when they had stopped for dinner did Jan put her thoughts to words.

“Delta, I think you’re looking for trouble if you go at this on your own. Especially if you’ve already spoken to Leonard about it. Or have you forgotten the warning given to you after the trial?”

Delta bowed her head and moved her food around her plate with her fork. How could she forget? She’d received not one, but two warnings after the trial of Miles’s murderers; both were the same: “Follow departmental rules from here on out, or you’re gone.”

“Warning or not, Connie’s in trouble. What would you do if she were
your
best friend?”

Jan took an apple out of her brown sack and took a small bite. “I’d go over Leonard’s head only
after
I gave him a chance to run with it on his own.”

“That would take too much time. While he was busy checking and re-checking, people would be murdered as Elson goes on his merry game-playing. You know how departmental bureaucracy is.”

“Yes, and I also know you aren’t one who goes through proper channels if you think there’s a faster route.”

This brought a grin to Delta’s face. She couldn’t deny shirking departmental rules, especially if she felt those rules hampered her from getting the job done. “I get results. And I’m not about to chance it with Connie involved. We got away with the disk swap once. I’m not going to get on my knees and beg for someone’s help. As far as I’m concerned, we did what was required. The rest is moot.”

“You slipped him a phony disk. I don’t call that `doing what was required.’I call that faking procedure. I don’t imagine that will go over very well once it’s discovered.”

Moving her tomato off her salad and to the side, Delta looked up at Jan. “If I can’t keep my best friend from harm, then this job really won’t be worth a damned thing to me anyway.”

Jan took another bite out of her apple but said nothing.

“And I’ll understand if you—”

“Don’t even say what I think you’re about to say, Delta Stevens. We’ve been partners long enough for you to know that I would never bail out on you, even if I thought you were out of line. I understand that sometimes you have to do what you have to do and to hell with the system. I’ll do whatever I can, short of losing my job.”

Delta grinned warmly at Jan. She had certainly lucked into getting a partner like Jan. Delta was more than surprised when she realized they had paired her up with another woman. Many departments still did not pair two women together because of some archaic idea that they would-n’t be as safe or as intimidating. Delta often wondered if they paired her with Jan because they thought another woman might tone her down a bit.

Well, if so, it was a nice idea.

In theory only, of course.

Looking at Jan, Delta nodded. “Thanks. I wasn’t sure you’d understand.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I won’t let you put our lives in danger, Del, but I sure won’t let anyone stop us from investigating murders happening on our beat. The last murder stayed with me all night. He’s sick, Del, and I want him off our beat just as much as you do. And if he’s after Connie, then it’s no holds barred. So, count me in.”