Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (17 page)

Ten years before, Todd
Lindgren had been charged with theft. There weren’t many details about the case,
but the bond had been handled by Sideline. It was fairly small, so I guessed it
had been Lindgren’s first offense, given he would have been around twenty at
the time. There was nothing for him since.

Next, I Googled
everybody. It was about what I expected for the Burbanks and the McKinnons:
mentions in the society pages, attendance at this function, donation to that
charity, blurbs about their art collections. Andrea Hammond had been in the
paper fifteen years ago for leading Fort Collins High School to a soccer
championship. She also had a Facebook page, which she did not have set to
private. I signed on as Jill again and looked it over. It was all basic stuff,
and there was absolutely nothing about her job or employers. I found nothing
for Lindgren—no newspaper articles, no Facebook.

I opened dexknows.com
and did reverse address searches for Andrea and Lindgren. A Donald Hammond came
up for Andrea’s address, and I guessed this to be her husband. A quick search
of county records showed they were married and owned the house they lived in.
There were two other names for Lindgren’s address: Lyle Young and Andrew Dyer.
Property records indicated it was owned by Lyle Young. I’d added everything to
my notes and was about to run the new names through Sideline when I heard
Ellmann on the stairs.

I spun around in the
chair. Ellmann came in and leaned against the doorjamb. He looked exhausted,
and there wasn’t a single strand of hair that was not now standing straight up.

“Making any progress?”
he asked.

“Some. What about
you?”

“Some. There are still
a lot of questions right now.”

I got the distinct
impression he had made real progress on his case but wasn’t interested in
talking about it. To date, there has only been one case Ellmann has been
reluctant to discuss with me. That had been the case in which I was smack in
the middle and suspect
numero uno
. I wondered what was going on this
time.

“You look beat. You
should get some sleep.”

“I’d like to. I wanted
to get back to you about that security cam footage.”

“Oh, I don’t need that
anymore. I know what they were fighting about now.”

“Well, good. Because I
went and checked. There is no footage from those cameras.”

“The cops never
thought to pull it? What kind of investigating is that?”

“The case was pretty
cut and dried. They knew exactly who everyone was, they apprehended the suspect
fleeing the scene, and they had a dozen witnesses. There wasn’t anything to
investigate, in the true sense of the word.”

I scoffed. “Still, someone
should have bothered to collect the evidence. The woman is entitled to a
trial.”

“That’s true. Which is
why the arresting officer talked to the bank’s assistant manager about those
security cameras. The cameras never recorded that day.”

“You’ve got to be
kidding.”

“No. The cameras are
digital and automatically download to the server each day. When the assistant
manager went to check, there was no file for the day of the attack.”

“How lucky for Mr.
Vandreen.”

“Vandreen? He’s the
victim. It’s lucky for Dillon. Without objective evidence, it’s just everyone’s
word against everyone else’s.”

“You’re right,” I said
softly, thinking hard. “Without the footage, it’s just everyone’s word.”

“But I guess it
doesn’t matter. You figured it out anyway.”

“Well, I thought I
did. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Because there’s no
footage?”

“Because there’s no
such thing as coincidence.”

“No, but there are
such things as human error, technical failure, and bad luck.”

He was probably right;
this camera footage thing was probably a freak occurrence that no one would
have ever noticed had it not happened on the one day someone went looking for
it specifically.

“Hey, I had another
question for you,” I said. “There were a bunch of cops at Martha Porter’s house
this morning. She’s Dillon’s grandmother. I was wondering if you knew what that
was about.”

Something flashed in
his face behind the cop mask. Why was he keeping me out? What wasn’t he telling
me? Something was going on.

“Yeah, I heard about
it.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Okay,” I said after a
moment. “What did you hear?”

“She was found dead,
murdered.”

I’d tried to prepare
myself for that answer, but it still hurt. I’d just spoken to the woman the
night before she was killed. I felt a certain kinship with her since she and I
had done similar things in our pasts. I felt I understood her a little better
than I understood most people, better than most people probably understood her.
At the news of her death, what I felt was sadness.

“What happened?” I
asked. I noticed my mouth was now dry.

“You know I can’t
discuss open cases with you.” He was using his official cop voice.

Perhaps not, but it
had only stopped him once before.

I chose to let this
pass.

“All right,” I said,
logging off the computer and standing. “Let’s not be cops or bounty hunters for
the rest of the night. Let’s just be boyfriend and girlfriend.”

I gave Ellmann a hug,
then we went to bed. I put my arms around him, and he laid his head on my
chest. A minute later, he was asleep and tears rolled silently down my cheeks.

__________

I woke up screaming. I was panting,
out of breath, and dripping with sweat. My clothes and hair were stuck to my
skin. My heart was hammering against my sternum painfully. I must have been
thrashing, because Ellmann was awake beside me on the other side of the bed,
and my covers were gone. It was still dark outside, and Ellmann had turned on a
lamp.

I’d been twelve years
old again. My father had been standing over me with a bat. I was on the same
mud-covered hill off the side of the road in the mountains where the SUV I’d
been using to escape after being kidnapped had rolled. I’d run but wasn’t able
to get away. It was a variation of the same nightmare I’d had for weeks.

I swung my legs out
and sat on the edge of the bed for several minutes. I was aware my entire body
was trembling. Ellmann got up and walked around to sit beside me, but he didn’t
try to crowd or touch me.

“What can I do for
you?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine,” I
said. “You should go back to sleep.”

Yeah, right. Who could
sleep after that? This was why I didn’t want Ellmann sleeping here.

I got up, my legs
slightly wobbly, and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I
stood leaning on the sink, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My skin was
flushed and covered in sweat, and my hair was a mess from thrashing around in
bed, pieces of it stuck to my face and neck. I was glad to see the redness
around my eyes from the pepper spray had cleared and that the swelling had gone
down significantly. Even the bruising on my neck looked better. But I couldn’t
mistake the lingering fear I saw in my eyes. I hadn’t seen fear in my eyes like
that for more than a decade. I didn’t like seeing it now. It was something I never
wanted to see there again.

I twisted on the cold
water and splashed several handfuls onto my face. I tried to pull myself
together. If Ellmann wasn’t here, I would have gone back to bed and cried. I’m
typically not a crier, but I find under circumstances like this it makes me
feel better. It seems to relieve some of the pressure, I think. And apparently
that pressure was too high now. The harder I tried to get it together, the
greater the urge was to burst into tears. Finally, when I was drying my face
with a towel, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

The sobs came, and tears
streamed down my cheeks. I sank down onto the toilet and cried. I just cried. I
was there for several minutes before there was a knock on the door. I stood,
trying to get a grip, and turned off the water I’d left running.

“I need another
minute,” I called.

But the tears kept
coming.

A minute later,
Ellmann had waited as long as he was going to. The bathroom door opened.

I tried to be angry,
tried to scrounge up some indignation at his presumptiveness and intrusion, but
I couldn’t. All I really felt was relief. Relief that I wasn’t alone.

Ellmann led me back to
bed, and he lay with me while I cried, stroking my hair and my back, mumbling
comforts. After a while, the trembling subsided. A while later, the sobs
quieted. When it was over, I did feel better, aside from the headache a good
cry always brings with it.

“Did you have any
dreams last night?” he asked.

“No.”

“Is it always random?”

“It can be. Tonight I
think the thing with Vandreen triggered it. Learning Martha Porter had been
murdered didn’t help.”

“The Vandreen part I
understand. How does Martha Porter fit in?”

I told him what Martha
Porter had done sixteen years before.

“She was protecting
her granddaughters, and she killed someone to do it. Like you.”

“I didn’t even have a
chance to talk to her.”

“What would you have
said?”

“I would have told her
I understand. I understand what she did, and why, and what it’s like to be
surrounded by people who don’t.”

“I’m really sorry.”

We lay together after
that. Ellmann’s breathing changed, and I knew he’d dozed off. I tried to go
back to sleep, but not with much effort. I was afraid of what I might see. At
six o’clock, I couldn’t stand it any longer; I had to get up. I scooted out
from under Ellmann’s arm and went to take a shower.

When I emerged from
the bathroom, the bed was empty, the sheets stripped, and I could smell coffee.
Downstairs, Ellmann was working at the stove. The coffee pot on the counter was
full.

Apparently it was a pancake
kind of morning. I had forgotten I even had pancake mix, and when I found syrup
in the fridge, I thought it would surely be a good day. I made myself a cup of
coffee then leaned against the counter as Ellmann flipped pancakes.

Instead of sleeping,
I’d been doing a lot of thinking. I probably wouldn’t admit it out loud, but
I’d considered the possibility Dr. Hobbs was right about a couple of things
regarding my interactions with Ellmann. I still wasn’t convinced, but if she
was right, then I had a problem. And I wanted to fix it.

“I know I don’t make
it easy to be with me,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”

Ellmann turned to look
at me, spatula in hand. “I told you, Zoe, I’m not looking for easy.”

“I know.” I put my
coffee cup on the counter and crossed my arms. “But it shouldn’t be hard,
either. At least not as hard as I make it.”

He watched me for a
beat then set the spatula down and leaned against the counter. “I wish you’d
let me in more. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get close to you.”

That stung. I’d heard
these words before, from others, but it had never hurt. It did hurt hearing
them now, from Ellmann. I didn’t need further confirmation that Ellmann was
different, but this was it. Which is why it terrified me to think I might lose
him.

“I’m not trying to
keep you out. I just don’t know how to do anything else. And, I never wanted to
do anything else. Not until I met you.”

“I know you’re
trying.”

“You should know, only
one person is closer to me than you are, and I’ve known her my entire life.
I’ve only known you two months.”

He stopped to flip the
pancakes then turned back to me. “Sometimes I forget it’s only been two months.
I feel like I’ve known you a lot longer. I know we’re close, but sometimes I
feel like I run up against a wall.”

“I can’t break down
all those walls overnight. I don’t know how.”

“You’re right. And
that’s not a fair expectation. It’ll take time.”

“Will you give me
that?” I asked, getting to the real heart of my fear. “I want to figure it out,
to keep trying, but I don’t know how long it will take or if I’ll ever be very
good at it. Will you give me the time it takes?”

He looked surprised
then shook his head as realization dawned, and he walked over to me. “Zoe, I’m
not going anywhere. I told you, I know what I’m doing.”

That was probably
true. Ellmann always knew what he was doing. And he probably wasn’t going
anywhere. What I’d told Amy was a fact; Ellmann
had
showed up one day
and never left. But I didn’t want to take for granted that he’d always hang
around. Ellmann does care about me, and he’s pretty patient, but he isn’t
stupid. And I didn’t want to take any chances of him leaving, because I more
than cared about him.

“I’d like to go to the
wedding with you,” I said, “if you decide to go.”

He smiled at me and
cupped my face, bending down to kiss me. “Thank you.”