Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1) (16 page)

K
atie was
bent over Tiffany's shoulder. After another paragraph, Tiffany’s fingers stopped their motion and she looked up at Katie.

“What do you think?"

Katie read over the last bit again and nodded.

"That's better."

"See, if you move the intent of your last point to the end, it just delivers a more of a one, two, punch. And the reader retains the concept better."

Katie nodded her head. "You are in fact right. Is this what you want to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Write. You're clearly good at it."

Tiffany smiled. "Yes actually, I mean it would drive my parents nuts, but English has always been my biggest draw. Of course unless I promise to get like a masters in business they would never go for it."

"I think you should do it."

"We're only freshman."

Katie didn't respond right away, instead her attention was still on the page at hand.

"Will you email that to me? I want to use that as a jumping off point."

"Sure."

I
t had been
a little over two weeks since Stacy had cracked the thumb drive and so far there had been no further information gathered. The term “brotherhood” was found nowhere online in relation to the school. The screenshot of the drug was also of no help. Katie had gone so far as to use some of her father's resources to do a search of the known drugs the FDA had approved of, and a general search of barcodes on Google and had come up with nothing. Katie did a general search of barcode label designs and still nothing.

F
inals for fall
term were approaching quickly and for the most part were completely consuming Katie's time. This suited her just fine, considering she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to continue her independent investigation. As far as Katie was concerned, her best real option was to give the detectives the information she had, since Dan Reedman’s proclivity for having affairs with other woman included someone who was married to his coach. It also gave several people strong motive. The catch of course was not letting the detectives know how she had received the information.

Stacy had become extremely helpful at research, and while Katie found her tall friend to be a bit on the odd side, she was also smart and found studying with her in the library had increased her ability to work for a long period of time (not that that had been a huge problem in the past, but she could focus even longer now).

Between those long study sessions, Katie often found her mind wandering back to the case, and as hard as she tried the actual justification for Dan’s brutal murder just didn’t add up. What she would give to have an inside look at how the police investigation was going.

It would have bothered Katie more, but fifteen credits were still fifteen credits and schoolwork took a great deal of her time. Not to mention Katie’s extra-curricular activities of hanging out with Tiffany and Gideon and running. She had managed to avoid hanging out with Luke. Katie had found herself spending more and more time with Gideon, even if it was only a couple of times each week. To keep the spirit of things … casual, Katie had refused to stay over, though to his credit Gideon had offered multiple times.

Katie liked him a lot, but she was by no means ready for something serious.

She was beginning to wonder if he was though, since he did not have a problem cuddling afterwards and actually seemed to enjoy hearing about her day and just talking. It wasn’t like as soon as she arrived at his apartment he wanted to get into her pants, though of course that was naturally where things ended up ninety-five percent of the time. They also watched a lot of movies together, and mentally Katie enjoyed the break.

3
:45PM

Detective Brooke Levitt looked at her partner Lewis Powell and tossed a baseball at his head. His head was buried in a report, but he caught the white-red blur without looking up, and tossed it to himself. He threw it up again before setting it down on his desk and flipping to the next page of his report.

"This is bullshit," he said, finishing the report.

Levitt put her hands up in the air, as if to indicate that was all they had to work with. Which was true. It just didn't mean that what he said wasn't true too.

"We made the best meal we could with the ingredients we had."

Powell closed the folder and looked up at her. "I know that, but at least you didn't have to write such a crappy report."

Levitt raised an eyebrow. "Who has an English degree again?"

"So mine's in psychology. I had to write enough papers as it was, I didn't see a need to do that as a major."

"Well, when the other cook leaves the kitchen because he’s throwing a tantrum because he doesn't have better ingredients, I make do with what I have.”

"What's up with cooking metaphors?"

Levitt shrugged. "I think I'm hungry. You want a taco? I'm in the mood for a taco."

He grinned. "Oh, you know I'm always in the mood for a taco."

She groaned and pointed to the glass jar sitting in the middle of their two desks. On a yellow sticky it read
bad lines
.
Inside was about twenty dollars in ones. It wasn’t unusual for either detective to end a week by putting a few dollars in it, though the ratio was often in Levitt’s favor in terms of who kept the bank “green.”

Powell stood up, and fished his wallet out of his pocket before stuffing another dollar into the jar. He grabbed his navy blue sports coat off the back of his chair and slung it over his shoulder, ready to go.

"Still better than the purple prose in this report."

Levitt got up and they both headed out of the bullpen towards the elevator.

"Are you bitter because some English professor’s TA you tried to sleep with in college rejected you?"

“Who says she rejected me?"

Levitt rolled her eyes as she pressed the elevator button. The doors chimed and opened and she found herself staring at Katie Bell.

Bell had her arms crossed and a folder underneath her arm.

"Ah, Detective Levitt, just who I wanted to see."

"Hello, Miss Bell, what brings you to the department?”

"I may have some further information on Reedman's murder, but I need to discuss it in a more private location. Is there an interview room where we could talk?"

"Right now?"

Katie nodded. "There's no time like the present."

Levitt and Powell looked at each other.

He spoke up first. "I'll prep integration two, one's being used to interview that gangbanger."

"Right," Levitt said turning her attention back to Katie.

"You want some coffee? I think they just brewed a fresh pot in the break room."

"Sure."

“Follow me."

Levitt lead the way, and muttered under her breath as she went, "I really wanted tacos.”

L
evitt felt
her stomach growl as she sat across from Katie, who seemed strangely nervous as she twiddled her thumbs and waited.

"You want both of us in the room or something?" Levitt asked the younger woman.

"No. I came to talk to you."

"And what can I do for you?"

Katie hesitated again pushing the folder across the metal desk towards the detective.

Levitt glanced at the folder but didn't open it.

"What's in there?”

"Information concerning the case. Look it over for a moment, and I'll answer any questions as best I can."

Levitt watched Katie's face and realized she wasn't nervous about the detective, or even being in the interrogation room. No, whatever she was sharing made her nervous.

She opened the folder and found a half a dozen images. They were all screen grabs from a video. The most interesting one was Reedman with the coach’s wife.

"What are these?"

"Evidence that may be useful to you."

“Where did you find them?"

“It would appear that those are screen captures from a video. Not the best quality, but you can still make out what’s going on without leaving much to the imagination."

"So how did they manage to end up with you? You admitting to taking video surveillance of a murder victim?”

Katie spread the photos out on the table in the middle of the room. “I didn’t videotape Dan Reedman or take photo’s of him. These just sort of fell into my lap.”

Levitt didn’t respond right away. She took a moment, trying to read Katie’s face. For a teen she was doing a very good job of giving away basically no emotion. The detective was sure she could thank Katie’s father for that trait. There was no way Katie had grown up around an FBI profiler without learning a few tricks.

"So, why not just bring us the video? How did you get these Katie?”

Katie put up her hands.

"The envelope was slid under the door of my dorm room last night. I didn’t know what I was looking at till I opened it. You can dust for prints, but I have a feeling whoever did this isn’t a total idiot. I'm extending you an olive branch, I hope you guys don't act like a rabid dog and bite the hand that's feeding you.”

Levitt rubbed her eyes. “Look, if you’re withholding evidence you know that’s a crime right? And given what you’ve just shown us, I could get a court order to search your dorm room, your computer etc. I mean, that’s a lot of paperwork on our end and it’s a huge pain in the ass, but at the end of the day, we still get the video.”

“You want to go through all that trouble, go right ahead, Detective, but there isn’t anything on my laptop I’m afraid for you detectives to see. Well, minus some bad poetry I wrote a few years ago. Teenage angst, am I right? Seriously though, these photos fell into my lap. If I had more, I’d give them to you.”

Levitt stared at Katie. The detective’s eyes were moving a little, like she was doing some very quick mental calculations in her head.

Katie said, “You’re trying to decide if I’m involved in his death right now aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer tried to help the police in their own case. You were the first one on the scene.”

“Don’t you think if I killed him I’d be a bit smarter about it?”

Levitt sighed and tapped her fingers on the desk. “No, Miss Bell. I can’t discuss ongoing investigations with the public, but I think it’s fair to say we aren’t looking into your involvement with the case. I’m just wondering why you are showing me these pictures now and not before.”

“Like I said. They just fell into my lap.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is it okay if I ask you a question, Detective?”

Levitt leaned back in her chair.

“Sure. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer it, but go right ahead.”

“Why haven’t you arrested anybody?”

“Because real police work takes time. I will say we have a suspect. You, of all people, know that actually building a case takes careful time and consideration. It’s one thing to make a fast arrest. It’s another to build a strong enough case to convict, and like you said that Saturday night…”

“This one doesn’t look easy.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, Detective, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I hope those photos help with building your case.”

“Photos that could easily have been photoshopped and that we could have used a long time ago? They won’t really, but thanks for bringing them in anyway. You’re free to go.”

Katie stood up. She started to move towards the exit but stopped and turned back to the female detective. “Have the lab take a look at those. They aren’t photoshopped. At least, not that I’m aware of.”

Levitt started to laugh. “You think we have a fancy lab that can do that kind of analysis in a twenty-four-hour period? If we’re lucky, and I mean I should go out and buy a lottery ticket kind of lucky, if I sent these into the lab it would take two weeks to get back results of that nature. Hell, over half our interviews are still recorded on tape. We won’t have a budget to move everything to digital backups till the beginning of next year. This isn’t the city and this isn’t the FBI. This is Asheville, a freaking sleepy college town. Still though, thanks for the photos.”

Katie opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it and simply nodded, before exiting the interview room.

L
evitt left
the interview room and went back to her desk. Powell was at his desk and was watching Katie through the glass as she got on the elevator.

“You think she has the video?” he asked.

Levitt watched as the doors of the elevator closed in front of the red headed teen and grunted.

“Probably, but she’s not keeping it in her dorm.”

“Doesn’t really matter though. The photo’s do lead in the same direction as the rest of the evidence,” Powell said, tapping the photos Levitt had laid on her desk.

“It certainly appears that they do,” Levitt said.

K
atie looked
down at her homework but found re-reading the same chapter on personality disorders utterly mind numbing and borderline impossible to continue.

She considered the pint of Sailor's she had hidden next to her Red Bulls. Katie thought about the last paper she still had to write, but a gun to her head Katie felt she would have struggled to find the motivation to do it. She had plenty of time, and frankly, the last thing she wanted to do on a nice late fall Saturday afternoon was more studying.

T
iffany walked
in to find her sufficiently smashed, a bad romantic comedy streaming on Netflix while the redhead lay on her bed and Facebooked with various friends at the other universities. Tiffany took one look at her and picked up the pint of Jerry's, taking a long swig from the bottle

"Just what I need," the belle sang, plopping down on her own bed.

Katie dropped her phone and looked at her friend.

Tiffany's eyes were red and her face had been wiped clean of all her makeup.

"What happened," Katie asked, sitting up.

The room didn't spin when she sat up, but it did shake a little.

"Nothing, it's all good," Tiffany added taking another long drag on the Sailor Jerry's.

"You don't usually hit the rum when everything is awesome."

"Maybe I'm trying to change it up."

Katie cocked her head to the side. "Maybe."

Tiffany sighed and leaned back on her bed. “Duncan’s gay."

"Seriously?"

"Yep."

"But what about before…"

"Okay he's Bi, at least that's what he told me. The thing is…" she trailed off, looking off into the distance and shaking her head, before taking another sip of the amber liquid.

"The thing is there's a guy he's really into."

"Ouch."

I know. He was so much fun."

"So what are you going to do?"

"You mean like metaphorically or practically?"

"I mean is it really over? You seemed happy with him."

"We are freshman, Katie. This is the time for new things."

"So that's it."

"I guess. I mean, he sort of just told me and that was that. I don't know if I can casually see a guy who like's cock as much as I do."

Katie laughed, despite herself.

"I didn't think I'd ever sleep with multiple people within a month… yet here I am.”

Tiffany smiled. "Feeling like a skank?"

"Feeling empowered."

"Amen, darling.”

Tiffany said with a laugh before handing the bottle back to Katie.

She took a sip and looked at her roommate. "What can I do to help?"

Tiffany smiled and moved her face close to Katie's.

"Well," Tiffany murmured. "Dance party?"

They started the playlist with Bieber and went from there.

Later, when the rum was gone and the playlist was over, they collapsed on Katie's bed and looked at each other.

“Hey, I don’t know if you’re in the mood…” Tiffany said, her eyes twinkling.

“With you? Always,” Katie said, and her lips found her friend’s.

L
ater
, after they had finished and napped, they got ready for the night ahead of them.

Stacy's dance recital was that night, the last Saturday before dead week (which had politely been renamed quiet week though everyone Katie talked to still called it by it's former name).

Katie went with Gideon who met her outside of the performing art's building with a bouquet of roses. He was dressed in a Navy pea coat and black dress pants. She felt a lump in her throat when she saw the flowers. If they were for her, it was too much, and she couldn't have that. Though she liked them, they were beautiful and in late November in the dark they had a sort of dark elegance to them that made her for whatever reason slightly wet.

They weren't for her. They were for Stacy.

"She's helped me on some stuff for the paper," he said, and they both left it at that.

The performance was just as cerebral as Katie expected from Stacy, and was broken up into three acts. Instrumental pieces, songs with lyrics, and finally a mix. It was a total of an hour and a half, with a ten-minute break in the middle, but to Katie it felt about twice as long.

There were twelve dancers in all. Three men, and nine women. They flowed and pranced around the stage in a manner that was supposed to appear natural and organic, yet all of it was carefully rehearsed. It was more about the feeling rather than the moves, but those were important too. It was the intellectual verbal dance equivalent of an over-made cocktail. Too many ingredients in the glass to actually be interesting, but all there anyway to try and over stimulate their visual taste buds into tricking them into thinking it was something of unusual quality.

It was of an unusual quality all right. Unusually bad.

S
till
, as the lights came up and the audience (not sold out but surprisingly full) clapped, Katie couldn't help but smile at Stacy, who stood in the middle of the line of dancers, taller than everyone else, face slick with sweat and beaming from ear-to-ear.

G
ideon handed
Stacy the flowers and gave her a long hug while Katie stood back and looked at the rest of the crowd, noticing Duncan Stokes was in the audience, talking to one of the male dancers, a man who was built like a professional underwear model with wavy blond hair and chiseled features.

They were not touching, but the way the one was looking at the other Katie knew exactly that this was the other woman.

Katie knew it was in bad form and knew it wouldn't do any good but casually took a picture of them anyway. After a minute she found him on Facebook.

Her head was so wrapped up in her iPhone she didn't notice two long arms wrap around her and hug her tight.

"Thank you for coming," said the sing-song voice of Stacy.

"Of course."

"Sorry, I think I was sweating on you."

Katie glanced down at her school hoody and shrugged. "I was going to wash it anyway."

Stacy blushed, embarrassed by her own affectionate gesture.

One thing was for certain; whatever mysteries Stacy kept in that strange beautiful head of hers, where people stood with her was not a mystery. There was something almost old fashioned in that clarity. It was refreshing.

"So, I don't know if you two had any plans, but I was thinking of going out. You and Gideon are welcome to join me…"

For some reason Katie hesitated, but Gideon jumped right in. "I'd love to hang out."

"For sure. Where were you thinking?"

"It's not very far, but the bar's right down the street and I know the bouncer on duty, he'll let us in."

"I'm friends with the bartender too, it won't be a problem," Gideon added.

Katie shrugged. "Sounds fun."

W
ithin an hour
the three unusual friends were sufficiently smashed at the bar.

The bartender, Tim, was an attractive short man who was like the living incarnation of Bart Simpson. His arms were inked from the back of his hands all the way well past where his short-sleeve buttons ended.

He wore dark jeans and the grey button up shirt with too many pockets and zippers on it for any practical use. He also had on a leather bracelet and had short brown-black hair that was spiked and a five o’clock shadow that looked photoshopped in it's perfection of just-messy-enough to be attractive.

He greeted Gideon warmly, winked at Stacy, and promptly ignored Katie.

He made Stacy a dirty martini and Gideon had a beer blacker than the night sky on draft. Katie ordered a Sex On The Beach and received it in an upright martini glass.

Katie sipped while Stacy and Gideon chatted and laughed, moving back enough in their seats to welcome Katie into the conversation, but whatever they were talking about held little interest for Katie. Gideon started by complimenting the performance with such conviction he either really liked it or was much better at lying than Katie thought he would be capable of.

Either way she sat there and quickly sucked down her drink and as she finished the last drop another was in front of her, though she nor the other two had ordered it and Tim did not so much as glance at her as he worked. He never stopped moving as he worked, though even for a Saturday night it wasn't completely slammed yet. On the other hand it wasn't even ten yet.

Three more drinks and some bar fries in her later, Katie, and from the looks of things, Gideon and Stacy, were all, as Tim said with the least safe smile Katie had seen in quite some time, “utterly shitfaced.” He shook up another drink and poured three shot glasses filled with chilled green liquid.

"What the fuck is that," Gideon asked with one eye closed at the bar, eyeing the drink suspiciously.

"Applesauce shots," Tim said.

He pushed the shots towards the three of them and moved down the bar, taking the order of a Latino girl who looked possibly younger than Katie. The girl was wearing so much perfume Katie's nose wrinkled even though there were six people between her and the girl in lipstick-red high heels.

Katie was however, for just an instant, very jealous of the shoes. They looked tacky as shit on the girl, but she was convinced with every fiber of her being that she could in fact rock them.

"I should be wearing those," she said to no-one in particular.

Gideon turned to Katie.

"What did you say?"

"Those shoes. Don't you think I'd look great in them?"

"Who's shoes?"

Katie pointed. "Those shoes."

Stacy was paying attention at this point too, and turned her attention to where Katie was pointing. Gideon looked a second after Stacy did.

"You're right, those are pretty baller," Stacy said.

"Yeah, but they're so loud, would you really want to?"

Katie looked at Gideon like he was an idiot. "Fuck yeah."

"Then you should ask her to change with you," Tim said, his expression serious as he shook a cocktail with one hand and poured a beer with the other.

Katie looked at him suspiciously.

“Really?”

"Yes. But after you take your shot," he said setting the beer down on a drink tray before using the free hand to tap the base of Katie's shot glass.

None of the three friends had taken the shots yet.

"What do you guys think?"

Stacy nodded and Gideon shrugged.

"To the shots for sure, everything else? Your call."

“Damned straight it’s my call, and my call says shots!” she slapped the bar and downed the shot. She meant for the slap to be a sign for her friends, but Stacy and Gideon were still a second behind her to down their green-tinted shots.

The shot itself was delicious, and it was just the amount of liquid courage Katie needed to slide off of her bar stool and make her way, confident step after confident step, towards the girl.

The girl was chatting with her friend who looked a bit like a south-of-the-border version of a Smurf, and Katie partly thought that considering how much blue eyeliner she was wearing. The Latin Smurf was drinking a Corona while the girl who was wearing Katie's future pair of high heels was drinking a margarita with a lot of salt around the rim.

"Excuse me," Katie said, but the girl didn't turn around.

Katie waited a second, noticing that just standing there felt like the ground wasn't fully level, like she was standing on the deck of a sail boat in the middle of some lake, and she counted to ten in her head (or maybe it was five, it didn't really matter because the important thing was that she waited,) before she tapped the girl on the shoulder.

The girl gave her a once over and rolled her eyes.

"Excuse me," Katie said again, smiling her friendliest smile at the girl.

"What."

"I just wanted to say I love those shoes and wondered where you got them."

"Oh, thank you. I got them at a store," the girl said before turning back to her friend the Smurf, who snorted at what must have clearly been a second eye roll from the girl wearing the shoes and took a long guzzle from her beer.

"Yeah, but what store?"

The girl ignored her.

Katie suddenly felt a flash of anger, and she tapped the girl on the shoulder again, this time much harder.

"I said what store?”

"It's in the city, you probably wouldn't have heard of it."

"Try me."

"Look, chica, I'm just trying to hang out with my friends here and if you want, or should I say ... need wardrobe advice, my consulting hours are closed for the day. Now why don't you take a step back and hit on some other girl who's interested in the sweatshirt look."

"It's a school sweater, I go to the school."

"And it's such an impressive school to be proud to be going to. But I assume somebody like you who probably averaged D's and transferred in after a year at junior college from some backwater town in the eastern part of the state would be proud of it. So good for you. Now scram, basic bitch.”

Tim, who was watching the entire confrontation go down let out a low whistle and leaned against the POS system behind him.

The girl gave what she must have thought was an intimidating stare to Katie before turning her attention to her friend who was laughing and raised her drink to her lips.

That turned out to be her mistake since Katie moved without really thinking about it, slamming the bottom of her glass hard, the drink splashing all over the girl’s face and down the front of her shirt.

"Oops," Katie said as she took a step back.

The girl advanced on her and Katie continued to retreat. She had no desire to get in a tussle right now and the only way she saw a way around it would be to stay on defense.

"You basic bitch!" the girl yelled as she reached out with her free hand, the other still clutching the now empty drink glass.

Katie swatted the girl’s hand away like it was a fly that was bothering her.

Her friend lunged forward too, not with arms outstretched though but rather with two fists clinched, ready to fight.