For You (The 'Burg Series) (11 page)

“Due respect, Jack, you think you saw what you wanted to see,” Colt told him.

“Due respect, Colt, I saw what everyone saw.
You
experienced what you had to experience to hold yourself back,” Jack returned.

That pissed him off.

“Not me holdin’ back.”

“You been holdin’ back for twenty years.”

“We aren’t havin’ this conversation,” Colt declared.

“We are, just not now. You and Morrie got a daughter-in-law of mine to protect. See to that, we’ll talk about this later.”

Colt bit back his response, Jack meant too much to him to say what he wanted to say. They still weren’t going to have this conversation, now, tomorrow, next week or ever.

Colt nodded anyway.

Jack nodded back.

“Let’s go,” Morrie was impatient.

Colt took another pull from his beer and slid off the barstool, repeating. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Three

Puck

“I’m Agent Warren, FBI.”

He was good-looking, Agent Warren, and he knew it.

He extended his hand to me and I took it. He probably had dozens of handshakes he’d practiced over the years. This one was firm but reassuring.

“This is Agent Rodman,” Agent Warren motioned to the man at his side, yin to Agent Warren’s yang.
 

Warren was mocha-skinned black, bald, his thick, long eyelashes declaring that he shaved his head rather than lost his hair, his tall frame was lean but not slight. Rodman was white, showing signs that he needed to lay off the donuts, was obviously balding and didn’t hide it and had the widest, most brilliantly gold wedding band I’d ever seen in my life.

Agent Rodman’s handshake was just as firm and just as reassuring.

They were not my enemy. They were here to help.

This was good to know.

I saw movement out the corner of my eye and Colt and Sully were walking up. It cost me but I caught the jaw tilt before it even began.

“Colt,” I said when he made it to me and Sully’s body jerked at my word.

Colt didn’t move, his expression revealed nothing. Even so, his eyes were locked on me in a weirdly intense way that made me fight back a squirm.

“Feb,” Colt said back.

“Sully,” I said to Sully, noting he looked a bit better and his voice, when it said my name, wasn’t near as nasally.

“Feb.”

Neither of them called me February which I was surprised about. I thought in front of the FBI they’d want to appear official.

Then I realized I was not February to them in front of the agents. I was Feb, they knew me. I was one of their own, a citizen of their town but more than just some unknown someone they’d sworn to protect.

That was good to know too.

“You should know, Ms. Owens, that Lieutenant Colton has bowed out of the investigation,” Agent Warren, clearly Speaker for the FBI, put in smoothly.

This surprised me too but I didn’t hide that surprise because underneath it was an irrational fear that was impossible to control.

Therefore I also didn’t catch my response.

“Why?” My tone held clear accusation. I meant it to and it was directed at the Speaker for the FBI.

I watched Warren’s dark brows draw together over his girlie eye-lashed eyes.
 
“Lieutenant Colton explained you two have history.”

I doubted Colt had explained that history thoroughly but I also didn’t care.

“He’s a good cop.”

“That’s not in question,” Warren stated.

“In fact, him stepping aside on his own proves your statement true,” Rodman spoke for the first time.

I wasn’t comprehending nor did I want to.

“He’s a good cop,” I repeated.

“Feb,” Colt said but I didn’t look at him.

“He could prejudice the case,” Warren told me.

“He wouldn’t do that,” I informed Warren.

“Maybe not but we can’t take that chance and he doesn’t want us to,” Warren replied.

It was then I realized what I was saying, what I was doing and that I had no clue what I was talking about.

So finally, I shut up.

“Lieutenant Sullivan is local primary,” Warren said. “Colton will be kept informed and will remain on the case in a consultative capacity.”

He was giving me FBI-speak, in other words, I had no fucking clue what he was talking about with his “consultative capacity” bullshit and I couldn’t ask him, not now, not in front of Colt and not ever to anyone because if they told someone else how much I wanted to know and what that said about how much I wanted Colt on this case, they might jump to conclusions that weren’t right.

I didn’t like it much but I kept quiet.

“There are a few more people I want you to meet,” Warren said. “Then I’m afraid we’ll have to take a fair bit of your time this morning.”

The FBI had taken over the conference room which was a glass walled room to the side of the bottom floor.

The Police Station in town used to be the town library before they built a bigger library that was modern and situated closer to the schools. The Station was an old, handsome brick building. They’d made the front of it look like an old time police department including two black light poles sitting on the wide cement railings at the bottom of the front steps on top of which were big, round, white lights with the word “Police” written on their fronts.

I’d taken Palmer and Tuesday on a tour years ago when I was home as they’d opened it to the public. I was curious as to where Colt worked even though I told myself I was doing it for Palmer who wanted to be like his Uncle Colt when he grew up.

There were cells and lockdown in the basement. A vast open space on the first floor with files, a big counter facing the front door, some desks behind it, the conference room at the side, a few cubicles down the other side, offices at the back. In the back corner in a little, soundproof, windowed room was dispatch. Equipment down the middle of the room, two desks facing each other with an upright in between with knobs and dials. The dispatchers sat opposite each other with headphones on, like Connie McIntyre and Jo Frederick were doing now. The top floor was what I heard Colt refer to as the bullpen, but it was officially known as the Investigations Unit, where the few detectives had their desks and where the interrogation rooms were. They had lockers up there, a big bathroom with some showers and they had a supply room up there too where they kept guns and ammo, bulletproof vests, shit like that.

Sully came with the agents and me to the conference room but Colt didn’t glance my way as he headed toward the stairs.

I met the profilers and I spent some time repeating a lot of what I already told Colt. Their questions were more thorough and they went over stuff often, shit I’d already answered then I answered it again, and again. I tried to remain patient and managed it mainly because Doc had given me some sleeping pills and I’d slept from nine o’clock last night to just after eight this morning when Mom woke me in Jessie’s double bed (she’d spent the night on Jessie’s pull out couch) and told me that Colt had called and the FBI wanted me at the Station as soon as I could get there.

I hadn’t had that much sleep in years; so long it felt like I lost days, not hours. Still, I got up, shook off the sleep in the shower and had a mild argument with Jessie who thought I should dress up for the FBI and carted half of her burgeoning closet into the guest room in order to facilitate me doing this when I thought it was best, as always, to be just plain me.

I won.

The FBI asked about shit they didn’t need to know, in my opinion, but I told them anyway. I didn’t want them to think I had anything to hide and I didn’t want them to think Colt did either. So I told them Colt and I were high school sweethearts, that he’d always been and still was like a member of the family. I didn’t tell them why I ended it with Colt but I did tell them all about Pete, leaving it at the fact that Pete had done the right thing by skipping town but making it clear he came to this decision with a little help from family and friends.

On this point, I did not elaborate.

I also went through all my travels, where I worked, how long I stayed, as best as I could. Fifteen years was a lot to remember. There were parts of my life that were burned on my brain. The first half of it and the last two years. The fifteen years I was travelling, not so much.

I found it vaguely odd, in the spare moments I had to think about it during their questioning, that I’d lived those fifteen years in a kind of fog. I thought I’d been trying to rediscover me but it seemed I’d spent that time existing and not on a path of discovery at all.

We were going over (again) the possible psychopath who’d been in my life for a long time, keeping tabs on me and working himself up to a murdering frenzy when I saw Colt coming down the stairs, his manner urgent, his eyes on the front door and my eyes followed his.

Mom and Dad were walking in, Dad carrying something in a Ziploc bag, holding it between thumb and forefinger like it was putrid.

Automatically I got up as my voice trailed off in mid-explanation that I had no freaking clue who was hacking away at people who’d shared my life.

I didn’t notice all the agents and Sully’s heads turning to look out the windows mainly because I was walking to the closed conference room door.

“Ms. Owens,” Warren called but I ignored him and walked right out.

“What is it?” I asked across the room, Mom and Dad jumped and their heads swung to me.

Colt, who had his back to me, turned and he was now holding the bag.

The bag I saw would have been funny, say, in a TV show. The Ziploc bags I had at my house had big pink daises printed in a line across the front. But I knew the piece of paper wasn’t funny even if it was in a Ziploc bag with daisies on it. It was less funny because I knew it came in the mail at my house, that’s why it was in that bag. My parents had gone over to check my house; Mom told me they’d be doing it. And obviously they did.

I made it to them and Colt said, “Feb, go back in with the agents.”

“What is it?”

“Feb –” Colt started but I reached out fast and snatched the daisy bag out of his hand.

Then I retreated faster and turned my back to him.

I saw the words
I’m sorry I upset you about the dog…
before Colt reached around me and snatched the bag right back.

“I said, go back with the agents,” he demanded but I was looking at the note in his hand.

“Puck,” I whispered to the note.

I’d been around his dog. He’d had Puck for years and even though a lot of the time he made himself scarce when I came home for visits most of the times, since my family was the only family he had left and I came back for special occasions, he was around.

So was Puck.

When he wasn’t on duty Colt took that dog with him nearly everywhere.

The last two years, Morrie and Dee then just Morrie would look after Puck when Colt went skiing in Colorado with Sully and Lorraine.

I liked Puck so when Colt went on vacation, I went to visit Morrie so I could be around Puck.

Puck was a great dog.

And Morrie had told me about Puck dying last week, right in the bar. Obviously, Morrie didn’t know I liked Puck as much as I did because Morrie was shocked when I burst into tears right behind the bar, right for all to see before I realized what I was doing and walked back to the office to cry about Puck in belated private.

The psycho had seen me too.

“Does this have to do with the case?” I heard Warren ask.

“I’m guessin’, yeah,” I heard Colt answer.

“May I see?” Warren was being polite and I watched the note transfer hands.

But all I could think was that I killed Colt’s dog. Lost women drinking away their lives in bars; loser assholes probably tearing through women’s lives in St. Louis; and now German shepherds who didn’t do any living thing harm just gave unconditional love and cost a bit of money to keep in food and shots – all of them gone, because of me.