The Morelville Mysteries Collection Page 4

  After a few minutes of trying to clear my own head, I realized that Cole might have a concussion, even though he seemed fine. I called him back to the kitchen. Relying on my limited First Aid training and 15 years of his bumps and spills, I was asking him questions and checking his eyes. We were standing near the sink. Through the window over it, movement out in the yard caught my eye. Someone was in the back yard.

  It might be my stalker out there or it might be one of Cole’s buddies coming back to retrieve something. I couldn’t be sure. For the safety of my family, I needed to find out.

  I called out to Beth and she came to the kitchen. “I’m worried that Cole may have a concussion. I think we might need to run him to the ER. I want you to sit with him in the living room for a few minutes while I run up the street to the gas station and tell your mom what’s happened.

  Cole made a face. He knew his mother would be first concerned and then, after that, upset with him. Her displeasure would turn to ire when she saw the damage to the deck. He slumped off to the living room with his sister trailing him.

  Chapter 5 – Mel and Dana Meet a 3rd Time

  Mel

  I was still in uniform. I unbuttoned my holster and stepped out the side door by the driveway. I moved quickly behind a shrub for cover. I kept low using first the house and shrubs to conceal me.

  We were living in the old family home. God Bless Nana, may she forever rest in peace. She had really loved gardening and landscaping.

  When I reached the back corner where the driveway side of the deck jutted off, I lost my shrubbery cover. I got as low as I could and crawled to the barrel and then to the tree the barrel was still, technically, tied to. I peered around the tree. There was someone standing up against the tool shed and she was looking right at me... Dana Rossi!

  What the f—-? Why is she here?

  Dana tapped her index finger against her lip, signaling me not to call out to her. Completely pissed off at her presence on my property, I scooted over to her quickly.

  “What are you doing here?” I shoved her back against the wall. “Do you have a death wish? You could have been shot!”

  She laughed, quietly, but she actually laughed. “You can’t shoot anyone with your gun in your holster Sheriff.” Sarcasm dripped with her words.

  There she went again, making me feel like an incompetent hick town cop. I caught her wrists and pinned her arms over her head.

  “I hate repeating myself. Why are you here?”

  “We're trying to catch whoever sent you those pictures. Someone doesn't want you working with us and we're trying to find out who.”

  “We're?” I asked. “Who else is here?”

  “I have a couple of teammates strategically placed to watch the house and the street.”

  “Look, if you're trying to scare me away from your case, it isn't going to work. Not if it intersects with mine, it isn't.”

  “Yeah, because we all know how easy you scare...”

  “You know, you're pretty sarcastic for a woman who's pinned against a wall. Obviously, you didn't learn your lesson the last time.”

  She was getting on my last nerve and I wanted her off my property but I couldn't bring myself to let go of the annoying woman just yet. There was just something about her that got under my skin. It wasn't just that she annoyed me. I just couldn't put my finger on it. She was small but not fragile, smart but not completely confident in her abilities. She was a mass of contradictions and a major distraction. Being this close to her, touching her, was creating havoc between my brain and my body.

  I need to quit thinking about her! Snap out of it! “You're trespassing, you know.”

  “Where are the pictures?”

  “What?”

  “The pictures the stalker sent you? I want them. Where are they?”

  “Those are evidence. They're in the evidence lock-up.”

  “Yeah, and I'm the Queen of England. You don't strike me as the type to have others take care of something so personal Sheriff. I want to see if we can get prints off of anything.”

  “That won't be necessary.”

  “Why not?” Dana looked puzzled. “Oh, wait. I get it. You think you know who took those, don't you? Are they even related to either of our cases?”

  I started to answer her but then Beth came out on the deck.

  “Aunt Mel!” she yelled.

  I dropped Dana's hands and she sank back into the shadows. I'd forgotten about Cole. Guilt washed over me.

  “Coming sweetie!”

  I used my cell to call the gas station before I re-entered the house. I let Kris know what happened and I told her I was going to take Cole over to the ER at Genesis Medical Center. When I entered the house, Beth was on me immediately.

  “He says his head hurts Aunt Mel and he wanted some ibuprofen but I didn't know if he should have any.”

  “We're going to run over to the ER and get him checked out. We'll let the doc decide what he can and can't have. If you're going with us, let's go.”

  Kris got her backup to come in and close for her and she met us at the hospital. Cole was shaken up but otherwise pronounced healthy. The docs prescribed a couple of days of rest and warned him away from any more crazy stunts they didn't have ICD-9 codes for. He promised to behave but we all knew his promise would be forgotten and he would be on to something else in a few days’ time. That was Cole.

  When we finally got home, Kris and the kids went on to bed. I was mentally drained and I needed to unwind. I grabbed a beer from my small stash at the back of the fridge. I started to close the door but then I paused and reached in for another.

  I hadn't been sitting on the deck contemplating the stars for more than a couple of minutes when my hunch proved right and Dana joined me.

  “How's the boy?” she asked as she pointed at the second beer.

  I handed her the drink. “Cole is fine. He's a little banged up but he didn't get any more sense knocked into him, poor kid.” I changed the subject. “I figured you would be back around. You don't seem to give up easy.”

  “I'm glad to hear that you're starting to see things my way.”

  “Now don't go getting carried away. That was a nice way of saying that you're a very predictable sort of woman.”

  Dana laughed. “And you're just a cranky old broad!”

  “Who are you calling old?” When no answer other than more laughter materialized I turned the conversation back to why she was staking my place out in the first place. “You can go home. I'm safe here.”

  “So you do know who took the photos then?”

  “Same person that always does. My stalker of many years, Sally.”

  “Sally?”

  “Yep. Sally.”

  Dana raised an inquiring eyebrow that I could see even in the darkness that engulfed us.

  “She's probably out there now fuming as she tries to photograph us sitting here, in the dark, drinking a beer together.”

  Dana's head was on a swivel.

  “Relax. She's harmless. She's been stalking me from afar for several years.”

  “Why, pray tell, or do I even need to ask?”

  “Oh she's not a scorned lover or anything like that. She's a wannabe.”

  “Wannabe what?”

  “Lover, scorned lover. Take your pick.”

  “Did you ever date her?”

  “I was friends with her sister. Didn't know her – she didn't live here. She came around for the holidays one year and never left... moved in with her sister. Deb though she could use a friend, so she had us meet. After meeting her, I asked her out.

  Long story short, it was the worst date of my life and I never asked her out again but she would come looking for me. She followed me around like a puppy for months afterward. She wanted us to be friends and on and on. Then, when she realized I was seeing other women, the stalking started. It was pretty intense for a while but she's toned it down over the last few years. Now she comes and goes.”

  “The pictures you go
t were of you alone, you with your sister and with your sister’s kids. You weren't with a woman or doing anything out of the ordinary. Don't you think those shots could have been from someone else, trying to send you a message?”

  “No. I really don't. This is the usual M.O. for her.”

  “You're pretty confident about that. You must have made quite an impression on that one date!”

  Her comment lightened the mood and I laughed. It felt good to laugh. “I guess you'll never know, will you?”

  “I'm not in the market for a date or for anything else anyway Ms. Crane. I'm a baggage loaded train wreck waiting to happen over here. Right now, my job is all consuming.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Now, I hate to keep coming back to beat the same dead horse but, speaking of my job, about those pictures?”

  “I just told you the whole sordid...”

  Dana interrupted. “I just want to send the whole mess to our lab and check for prints. If they all belong to your stalker, I'll be out of your hair. You can handle her as you see fit. If they don't belong to her, we've got a bigger problem on our hands.”

  I drew in a breath and let it out. She wasn’t going to give up. “Come on in. Let’s get this over with.”

  I led her from the deck on through the house to my den. I closed the door once we were in there. “Everyone else is in bed,” I said. “I don’t want to wake them.”

  Dana looked around. “This is quite a bit different from your office at the station.”

  “That’s because this is mine and that isn’t. I’m just occupying that office until a new Sheriff can be elected.”

  She inspected some family pictures on my wall. “Not planning to run for the position yourself?”

  “Nope. I like street work. You know, rounding up stray livestock and such.”

  “Listen, I apologize for that. I...”

  I waved her off.

  “The good old boy voters down here aren’t likely to elect somebody like me even if I did choose to run. I don’t apologize for the way I live my life to anyone.”

  “And you shouldn’t but, I think you’d be surprised at your popularity out there. You have a lot of respect from people in this county.”

  “And you know this how...”

  Arrrgh! What is that thing?” Dana, still looking around my office, had rounded my desk and spotted my full mount piebald deer in a lying position, head up, on the floor.

  “It’s a piebald.”

  “A what? It’s a, what do call them... a baby deer... it’s a fawn. Why do you have a stuffed fawn in here?”

  “It’s not a fawn. It’s a piebald. You’re not a P.E.T.A. freak are you?”

  “Pita freak?”

  “P.E.T.A.” I spelled it. “The organization; not the food.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Look, hunting is a way of life around here. I brought a date home one night that freaked out on me when she saw that... Started calling me an animal murderer...”

  “I don’t hunt but my dad and others in my family do. I don’t have a problem with it. I’m a carnivore.”

  “Good to know.”

  She sighed. “We’re getting off track here... again. The pictures?”

  I opened my desk drawer and pulled the envelope out by the edges of the corner. “I don’t know why I’m being careful now. You and I had our hands all over all of this the other day when we were picking everything up off the floor like two rookies.”

  “True that, but don’t think I’m not going to take them and get them checked out anyway.”

  “You know, we do have a perfectly competent lab here.”

  “Which we both know you won’t send them to hence why they’re in a desk drawer in your home.”

  I didn’t reply. She was right again. Damn her!

  Dana took the envelope. “It’s getting late. Since it seems you feel you don’t need any surveillance, I’m going to head back to Cleveland. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have results from these.”

  I walked her to the door... the front door this time. And then, just like that, she was gone.

  Chapter 6 – Dana

  After leaving Mel standing at her front door, I wasn’t in the car two minutes when my cell rang, scaring me out of the reverie, thinking about her, that I found myself in.

  “Hello?”

  “Yo. It’s Antoine.”

  Ah, Freestyle.. He’s using his real name instead of his gang name. Maybe he’s going to give up the goods...

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  “Yeah. I got something for you but I need protection. I tell you this shit, I got to get out of here man.”

  “Are you in the same place as before?”

  “No man. I hadta git outa there fo’ sure. I’m okay for now but once I start talkin’ I need to be walkin’, you catch me?”

  “Got it. We’re going to have to set up a meet. I’m in the middle of nowhere right now. Can you get somewhere tomorrow night where we can talk?”

  “I’ll work it out. Lem’me buzz you back tomorrow ‘bout the meet.” He hung up.

  I was glad that he called but fearful that his former gang would get to him before I could. I pulled off the road and sent Gene a quick message. I would need a flight to Chicago in the late AM and I would need a contact with the U.S. Marshall’s Service to work out a witness protection deal for Freestyle. First I needed to get back to Cleveland and get whatever sleep I could manage.

  I dreamed I was driving. I dreamt that I drove from Mel’s home, all the way to Chicago. I searched and searched, but I never found Freestyle. I woke up in that state where you’re just not sure what is real and what was just a dream. I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

  I took a cold shower, dressed and packed a small duffle. I took the envelope with Mel’s pictures out of my go bag and put them in the duffle too. Then, I wrote out a quick check to my roommate Cheryl for my half of the rent. Tomorrow was the 1st. It was roughly two weeks to shipment day. I crossed my fingers that whatever Freestyle knew, it would lead me where I needed to go.

  I left the check on the breakfast bar for Cheryl. I tried to remember the last time she and I had crossed paths. I couldn’t. She worked a traditional day shift in the same place every day. I was on the move at all hours. I had once thought a position like hers would be boring. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  Ninety minutes later I was winging my way from Hopkins to Midway. I was embarrassed that I was so drained; I fell asleep on an hour long afternoon flight. I really needed to snap out of it and get my wits about me.

  When I reached my desk in my little cubicle at the Chicago field office, I felt like a stranger. I was out in the actual field so much that I didn’t feel any connection to the place at all. Calls forwarded to my cell. Mail went to Cleveland and official messages went through Gene. Being here today – or anywhere – officially wasn’t a necessity. I just needed a place to sit my butt down and wait on Freestyle’s call so I could move into action.

  After a couple of minutes of waiting for my long dormant computer to boot up, I got antsy and decided to take the photos down to the lab. Agents and other co-workers nodded as I passed. I knew a few but not most. Most of the ones I did know, I hadn’t had contact with in so long, I couldn’t fathom what assignments they were working.

  Chicago had been home for a while. I had been living with Terri, when I finally left it. We had a very stormy four year relationship that I only managed to extricate myself completely from after she nearly destroyed me financially and after she’d cost me a job. Our relationship had been a mistake from the start but only a few years of distance and a little hindsight had shown me that.

  I had started out my adult life trying to be straight. It took several years of marriage to a man to show me that I wasn’t fooling anyone, especially myself. My ex-husband and I parted amicably enough but I struggled mightily after that with my sexual orientation.

  Ter
ri was the first woman I had a real – if you could call it that – relationship with. Oh, I’d been on dates and I had other lesbian friends but no one I had connected with romantically until she came into my life. Once we became an “official” couple, she instantly took charge of everything that centered around ‘us’ as a couple and she began to monitor my every move. Terri was the epitome of a control freak.

  Getting away from Terri meant giving up most of my friends and giving up “our” home and all of its contents. I’d fared better in my actual divorce.

  To add insult to injury, I was fired from a security job that I loved because of her venomous attacks to get some sort of revenge on me. Upper management just didn’t want to deal with the antics of a scorned lover gone certifiable and I didn’t blame them.

  I retreated for a while and licked my wounds. During a trip home to see my folks in Western PA, I ran into an old high school friend who was working for Customs. After talking with him, I applied and, after several go rounds of questions about why I was let go from my former employer, I was finally hired. The rest, as they say, is history.

  It was only an ironic twist of fate that got me assigned to the Chicago Field Office but, frankly, I spent little time in the actual office and I didn’t venture into any of my old haunts from life with either of my exes when I did.

  The lab was backlogged but not badly. I was told my print analysis would take a couple of days. It wasn’t ideal but, every case is a “rush” case for the agent that needs something and I was starting to believe Mel that the prints they would find would belong to the mysterious “Sally” and not to a currently unknown suspect. I filled out the required forms and then retreated back to my little cube to wait for word from Freestyle.

  My wait wasn’t too long. By 3:00 I had the meeting site set up with him for 10:30 PM – after dark - at an old warehouse in a west suburb. It was well outside of the area controlled by his former gang. I requested and got back-up assistance from a local team. One agent would go in with me. The others would be nearby and ready to go.