Guardian Of The Grove (8 page)

D
amn
, he was back in town after almost a year of being missing. Why now? What did he hope to accomplish by coming back? As soon as I saw the post of his picture on social media, I called the uniforms to watch his best friend’s shop. That had to be where he was going so close to campus. If I was wrong, I’d take whatever punishment the lieutenant dreamed up for me this time. Having to put on a uniform and switch a stop light from green to red for a weekend wasn’t that bad, right?

My radio blared to life. “Detective Velasquez, we have the subject in custody.”

What in the hell were they thinking? Sending the uniforms in had been the wrong call. I should have gone and picked him up myself. “I asked you to pick him up for questioning, not to arrest him. Tell me I heard you wrong?”

The silence played out over the radio. “No, you heard correctly, Detective. The suspect is in custody.”

“Jesus, you think he is going to talk to us now? Who made the call to go in hard?” They better have a reason for doing so, or I was going to see someone get suspended for this kind of fuck up.

“Officer Bentley, Detective.” I could hear the hesitation in his voice.

Well, goddamned it, that it explained it all. That hard-ass Bentley was always trying to throw his weight around. If he did anything to hurt this kid, I was going to see him booted from the force. It was bad enough I had to start my interview by apologizing. Talk about a shift in power. At the least, flipping traffic switches was going to be a step up from where I was going to have him. I was thinking that maybe I could see him sitting in intersections with white gloves on, directing traffic. Better yet, I could make him go to schools with the fucking doll and give speeches about drugs. A few years of that and he would probably quit the force on his own. If that wasn’t a strong enough message, maybe I could have him cleaning guns on the weekends.

“Tell him he better be waiting for me outside of the station when I get there. He has some explaining to do.” Not that an explanation would do anything to calm me down. In fact, it would probably just make me angrier. This was the kind of cop we needed to cut loose and replace with someone who gave a damn.

“Will do, Detective.”

I tossed my jacket over my shoulder and ran out of the door. I needed to be at the station before they got there. I wanted Jackson out of cuffs as soon as possible. Maybe I could still turn this thing around. That fucking Bentley was going to get a piece of my mind.

* * *

W
hen I pulled
up to the station, Bentley was parading Jackson into the station, making sure that he turned him so the media could get pictures of him in handcuffs. The kid seemed to be taking it in stride, but I was pissed off for him. We didn’t parade suspects around to pander to the media. Bentley was about to have a real bad day. I rushed forward until I was in front of him. He tried to move Jackson around me, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He tried to shrug it off and keep going. I shoved him back a step; I had to give him an A for persistence, but he wasn’t going to walk past me. This kid shouldn’t even be in cuffs; that was over now.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing, Bentley?” I snarled.

“Just getting your prisoner inside, Detective,” he said with that same smug attitude of his I remembered from being on the street with Bentley as a rookie. His mouth ticked up in one corner almost in a smile, as if he was doing me a favor.

“Damn it, Bentley, he isn’t a prisoner. I asked you to bring him in for questioning, not to arrest him.” Jesus, what in the hell was he playing at?

“Too late for that now, Detective,” he said, glaring at me before casting a furtive glance at the cameras. “He is in custody and will be ready for questioning after we finish processing him.”

“It’s not too late for you to fix this mistake. Get those fucking cuffs off of him now!”

“As soon as we get inside, I’ll take them off.” He kept that same smug expression on his face as if he was daring me to take him to task in front of the cameras. If he wanted to push it, I had no problem taking it to the next level, cameras be damned.

He tried to shove past me again, and this time, I pulled him to a stop. “Get the goddamn cuffs off of him now!” I was tired of his shit. “After you’re done, go inside and wait for me with the duty sergeant. You’ve pushed it too far today.” He tried to swing around me one more time. I signaled to the officer he was with. “It seems your partner is having a hard time following instructions. Care to help me out?”

Bentley fixed me with a death stare, and I understood why. It was one thing to get dressed down in private. It was another when someone did it to you in front of ten news cameras. I had given him the chance to make it right, and he refused. So screw him. He put himself in this position by ignoring orders. His partner stepped forward and took the cuffs off of Jackson and then handed them to Bentley before stepping past him and heading inside. At least one person wanted to have a job when this was all over.

Bentley gave me one last hate-filled glare and stomped off to find his partner. Probably to ream him out for being such a pussy and following my orders. I grabbed another officer and pulled him over. “Take Mr. Fairfield into one of the interview rooms, not to holding. I’ll be right in.”

“Of course, Detective.”

“Mr. Fairfield, I’m sorry about the confusion, and the disrespect my officer showed you. I hope you won’t hold it against us.”

“I guess we will see how the rest of today goes, but personally, I’m not feeling all that inclined to be helpful.”

I nodded and turned back to the officer, indicating that he should go inside. That was about the best that I could hope for after officer Dipshit put him in cuffs for no reason. I let the rest of the officers step inside and then stepped in front of the media for a moment.

“I won’t be taking any questions at this time. I just wanted to say that as of right now, Jackson Fairfield is not considered a suspect. He was asked to come in to answer a few questions for us, which he kindly agreed to.” The media erupted in questions, doubting the likelihood of her statement. “I’ll let you know if we have any new information to share when it becomes available.”

When I walked away, I heard them continuing to shout questions, asking why he had been cuffed, what we hoped to learn, where had he been for the last year. All of them were good questions. I wondered if we would ever have the answer to the last one. Where had Jackson Fairfield been for the last year? It was a relief when the door to the station closed behind me, cutting off the barrage of questions being hurled at my back. I had one last task to do before I could try and find out the answer to why Jackson had returned home.

Bentley charged toward me. “What in the hell was that, Velasquez? You trying to ruin me?”

“No, Officer, you’re doing a good enough job of that yourself.”

“Screw you.”

“Jimmy, find this asshole a place to sit while I talk to the lieutenant about how his behavior today ruined any shot of us having a chance to solve a case. Not to mention put us at risk of being sued. Every news station in the city just had you on camera parading a kid around in cuffs who wasn’t even under arrest.”

The desk sergeant nodded to me and motioned for Bentley to follow him. Part of me wanted to be happy that we might finally get him off the streets. Another part of me wondered how bad he had hurt my chances of getting anything useful from the kid. I knew that if I had been cuffed and dragged down to the station in the back of a car, my goodwill would be stretched a little thin. The chance of him talking to us openly now was pretty much shot. All I could do was hope that he didn’t tell me to piss off before I got to ask him any questions.

The door to the lieutenant’s office was open. I walked in and closed the door behind me.

He looked up at me. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

“I need you to bench Bentley, sir. Today he took it too far, and it could cost the department.”

“My god, what did he do now?” I could sense the exasperation the lieutenant felt. He had tried to have Bentley removed before but hadn’t been able to get it done.

“I asked him to bring in a person of interest for questioning. He took him at gunpoint and brought him into the station in cuffs. Not only that, but he proceeded to parade the kid in front of the media.”

“Jesus, how long do you think before I get a phone call about that? As if we aren’t under enough scrutiny from the public already.”

I pulled the remote control off his desk and flicked on the news station. It showed the incident from outside of the station. The lieutenant swore and then picked up the phone. Before he dialed, he spared me a glance. “Get out of here, Detective, and do whatever you can to make this right.”

“I’ll do my best, sir. Make sure that jackass doesn’t get another chance to screw up someone else’s case.”

He motioned for me to leave. I closed the door behind me and headed to the interview room. The last thing I wanted to do was keep him waiting. As far as I was concerned, the kid had been through enough. As time had gone on, it seemed less and less likely that he had anything to do with his parents’ deaths. Depending on what he shared with us now, we might be able to find the real killers, or the case would stay in cold storage.

When I walked into the interview room, Jackson was sitting in the chair, rubbing his wrists. I cursed Bentley under my breath and the fact that this case landed on my desk in the first place. He looked like your average college kid, and working the beat in Tucson, I had seen a lot of them. I would have picked him out as a football player, probably. Slightly too muscular for baseball or basketball; he looked as if he spent about four hours a day at the gym. He was dressed in a simple T-shirt with some baggy cargo shorts and sneakers. He really wouldn’t have looked too out of place anywhere.

His hair was a light brown that had blond streaks in it, although these streaks looked more like they were natural from being outside instead of having his hair dyed. He looked up at me, and his hazel eyes seemed to find this entire situation amusing, as if he was humoring us by being here. They radiated intelligence and maybe something that bordered on cocky but was mostly just confidence. He was a good-looking kid, and part of me hoped that I was right, that he wasn’t a killer.

I was about to say something when a knock sounded at the door. I was surprised that anyone would knock during an active interview, but I hadn’t started yet, so I was willing to let it slide. I walked to the door and popped it open just enough to see the officer I had asked to bring Jackson into the interview room. “What can I do for you, Officer?”

“I’ve got the suspect’s personal effects.”

“He’s not a suspect, but thank you for bringing these. This is all of it, right? Nothing is missing?”

“Nope, it’s all there, Detective. We searched the bag for weapons and contraband, so it’s safe to have in the room. We didn’t get a chance to get the lab on the computer, though. Also, we found this on him.” He held out a cell phone and a wallet filled with cash. Nestled in the bottom of the bag was a hotel keycard.

I stepped into the hallway for a moment. I watched as the officer’s eyes widened when he looked at my face. “What part of he isn’t a suspect did your partner not understand? If we would have gone into his computer, it would be useless at trial. Shit, it might be useless now because they could argue that we had time to examine it or tamper with it before we brought it back. If I was trying to build a case against this kid, we would be screwed. Anything in that bag would be tossed out in a second, and any lead that came from that bag would be fruit of the poisonous tree.”

“Trying to build a case, Detective—don’t you already have one? Isn’t this the kid who burned down his house and murdered his parents?”

“Is that what Bentley told you? I’m going to say this one time, so listen to what comes out of my mouth next. Bentley is a shit cop who might not be around much longer. When you hear a call go out to pick up someone for questioning, you don’t go in guns drawn. You knock at the door and ask them to come. If they refuse, you let us know so we can go. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t hear the call. I was out of the car at the time. When I got in, he was all excited about it. Said we were going to make the 5 o’clock, and everyone else was going to be jealous. All of the other officers just followed his lead; he was the senior on the scene.”

“Just remember what happened today. There will be an investigation, and if you tie your ship to his, you might not make it out with a job.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, Detective.” He held out the bag and Jackson’s personal effects to me.

“Officer, you did well out there, taking charge when I asked you to get the kid inside. I’ll remember what you did for me today, and you’ll be fine.”

I didn’t wait for a response before heading back into the room. I handed Jackson his bag and personal effects before sitting down across from him. He didn’t so much as look at the backpack before placing it on the ground next to him. He did count the cash, and I silently hoped all of it had made it back to him. He put the cash and room card back into his pocket and glanced at the phone before doing the same with it.