In Bed With the Badge (6 page)

She peered past the splendor, taking in, instead, the chaos. “This place looks like it was hit by a hurricane.”

“It was. Two of them, actually,” he said, referring to the fact that the victims had reported waking up to not one robber but two. “Thieves don’t usually have to worry about being invited back. That frees them up to make as big a mess as they want while looking for things that make their risk-taking worthwhile.”

She nodded, knowing that in this case, she was the
novice and he the experienced one. That meant she would have to follow his lead and, most likely, take orders from him—at least for the time being.

“How do you want to do this?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow at the question. “Solving the case comes to mind.”

“I mean, do you want to take the husband or the wife?”

Amused, knowing what she was after, he decided to yank her chain just a little. “They’re being given away?”

“To question.” She enunciated each syllable clearly, holding her exasperation in check.

“Why don’t we make it a joint effort?” he suggested, his tone marginally patronizing. “That way, they won’t feel as if they were being interrogated.”

“I had no intentions of conducting an interrogation,” she informed him. “I just thought we could compare stories after we finished, see if there’re any inconsistencies. If we keep them together, they could keep each other in check.”

He studied her for a long moment. What was going on in her head? he wondered. Despite his baiting her, he was aware that she was sharp. Had something occurred to her that he’d missed?

“You’re assuming they have something to hide?” he asked.

“Not exactly, but maybe the wife wanted to get away from the husband and this so-called robbery could be a way of funding her escape. Or maybe she found out he was having an affair and she wanted to get even with him by scaring him. Then again, he might have wanted—
what?” she finally asked, unable to handle the way Wyatt looked at her any longer. She got the feeling that she provided him with his morning’s entertainment.

“Homicide has certainly left its mark on you, hasn’t it?”

“Being a good cop has left its mark on me,” she informed him. “No stone unturned,” she elaborated.

He rolled her suggestion over in his head. “Okay, have it your way. I’ll take the husband, you take the wife—unless you’d rather have it the other way around. You get the guy and I take the woman.”

“No, the first way’s fine,” she said. “Mrs. Wilson will probably feel better talking to a woman about what happened than someone who looks like he’d just finished a photo shoot for
GQ
.”

“I could rub a little dirt on my sleeve if you think that’ll make me look more capable.”

“Now who’s being sarcastic?” she asked.

He held up his hand. “That would be me. C’mon, we’ll get this over with and let these people rest.”

“You really think they can sleep after what happened?” she asked.

This morning’s events had really shaken him up, Sam thought, annoyed with himself. He wasn’t thinking clearly. “I guess not,” he grudgingly admitted.

Directed by another officer on the scene, they walked into the living room where they found the couple, still in their nightclothes and frightened, like two people who had been through a nightmare. They sat on an expensive-looking, oversized yellow leather sofa, apparently unwilling or unable to move. Trapped in their own
world, they seemed oblivious to all the crime scene investigators and police personnel moving about the area.

At least there was no need for a medical examiner, Riley thought with relief.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wilson?” Wyatt addressed the tense couple respectfully. Two sets of frightened brown eyes turned toward him. “I’m Detective Wyatt and this is my partner, Detective McIntyre. We’ll be taking your statements.”

“We already gave statements,” Mr. Wilson protested, a mixture of weariness and indignation in his voice.

“We know,” Riley told them sympathetically, moving in front of Wyatt. Her eyes were on the husband the entire time. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to know he felt emasculated by what had happened. “You’re tired and angry and you just want to forget the whole thing ever happened. But it would really be very helpful if you both went over the events again. Maybe this time you might remember something that hadn’t occurred to you when you gave your statement earlier.”

The couple exchanged glances as if that helped them to decide their next course of action. And then the husband inclined his head, still not a hundred percent sold yet. “Well, if you think it’ll help—”

“We do,” Riley was quick to assure him.

Robert Wilson blew out a long breath. “I guess we can go through it one more time,” he said with resignation.

“We appreciate your cooperation,” Wyatt told him, feeling as if his words were coming after the fact. This new partner of his, he thought, was a regular little ball of fire.

A
t the last moment, because the woman looked so shaken, Riley decided not to separate the couple as initially planned. When Wyatt began to ask the husband to come with him, she laid a hand on her partner’s arm and minutely shook her head.

Confused, Wyatt took his cue, wondering if changing her mind was a common thing with her.

Still scowling, whether at them or the situation was unclear, Robert Wilson began talking, telling them the way the robbery went down.

“They came in while we were asleep—”

Unable to contain her nervous energy, his wife broke into the narrative with her own reaction to the events. “I thought I heard a noise. When I opened my eyes, they
were standing over us. On either side of the bed,” she added breathlessly. She covered the lower part of her face with trembling hands. She gave the impression that she was trying to smother a scream. “It was awful.”

“How many of them were there again?” Sam asked, looking at Mrs. Wilson now.

“Two.” Shirley Wilson blurted out the word as if she couldn’t keep it in her mouth a second longer.

“Two that we saw,” her husband corrected, giving her a condescending look. Shirley Wilson’s eyes widened with fear.

Sam’s attention shifted back to Wilson. “Do you think there were more?”

Wilson appeared to lose all semblance of patience. “How should I know?” he snapped.

“No, there were only two,” Shirley told them. “I’m sure of it.”

“Right. The expert,” Wilson grumbled darkly.

“What happened next?” Riley asked, trying to get the couple focused on the details of what had transpired during the robbery instead of arguing with each other.

It was obvious to her that Wilson and his wife were both scared in their own fashion. In addition, she was sure Robert Wilson felt more than a little humiliated because he couldn’t protect either his home or his wife. That had to shake a man up, mess with his self-image.

“They dragged us out of bed, tied us up,” Wilson recited through clenched teeth, obviously resenting having to go through this again. “Then they put duct tape across our mouths—”

Shirley grabbed onto Riley’s wrist, pulling the detective’s attention toward her. “I thought I was going to suffocate,” the woman cried in a whimpering, shaky voice.

“But you didn’t, did you?” her husband pointed out tersely, glaring at her. It wasn’t clear if he resented her interruption, or the fact that she was bringing further attention to the fact that he’d been helpless to come to her aid.

“No.” His wife stared down at the floor. Not, Riley thought, unlike a dog that had been beaten. Her own resentment immediately shot up. She was about to say something to the man when Wyatt spoke.

“Mr. Wilson, we realize that you’ve been through a lot, but so has your wife. There’s no need to keep snapping at her,” Sam told him. His voice was calm, but an underlying strength resonated in his words. “Now both of you take a deep breath and let’s go on.”

“Can I get you some water?” Riley asked the woman. Clasping her hands together in her lap, Shirley shook her head. Riley shifted her eyes toward the woman’s husband. “You?” she asked more formally.

“I’d like a scotch,” Wilson responded, frustrated. A huge sigh escaped his lips. “No, I’m okay,” he amended.

“What happened next?” Sam coaxed.

Wilson seemed to brace himself. “They made us sit in chairs and tied us to them. Then they emptied our house.”

“How long were they here?” Riley asked.

Wilson shrugged. There seemed to be no way to gauge time. “Maybe an hour at the most.”

“It felt like forever,” Shirley chimed in over his voice.
“And when they were finished, they put rags over our faces.” Hysteria reentered her voice as she said, “I thought they were going to kill us—”

“They used chloroform,” Wilson interrupted, talking over his wife. The disdain in his voice was impossible to miss. “Knocked us out so that we couldn’t try to stop them.”

“Like that could ever happen,” Shirley murmured under her breath. It was still loud enough for all of them to hear.

Rising in his seat, Wilson looked as if he was about to argue with his wife again. Sam put his hand firmly on the man’s shoulder, pressing him back down onto the sofa.

“You can tell it all to the marriage counselor later,” Sam told him sternly. “Right now, we need a detailed list of everything that’s missing.”

“I don’t know everything that’s missing,” Wilson snapped. “This is a big house, Officer—”

“Detective,” Riley corrected before Sam had a chance to.

“Whatever,” Wilson huffed out, dismissing the difference in title at the same time. “I just know they took most of my wife’s jewelry.” That brought up another bone of contention as he glared at her. “I
told
you to leave it in the safety deposit box at the bank.”

“Then I’d have to go to the bank whenever I wanted to wear something,” Shirley complained. By the sound of her voice, this wasn’t a new argument. She turned to look at Riley, seeking an ally. “What’s the point of having jewelry if you can’t wear it?”

“Well, you certainly can’t wear it now, can you?”
Wilson jeered. “Because
they’ve
got it,” he emphasized heatedly.

This all had such a familiar ring to it, Riley thought, although her mother had never defended herself. For the sake of her children and hoping to cut the scene short, her mother had always let her father unload on her.

Riley hated the sound of an argument. “And the longer you bicker,” she said, addressing them both, “the less of a chance we have of recovering anything.”

“Who are you kidding?” Wilson demanded, turning on her. “You’re both just going through the motions, covering your tails as it were. We’re never going to see any of what those two made off with and you know it.”

Sam answered before she could. “That’s certainly true if you waste time arguing and don’t cooperate,” Sam told him coldly. Wilson shut his mouth. “Now is there anything else you remember?”

When Shirley looked at them blankly, Riley elaborated. “Did either of them have any kind of an accent? Or did either one of them slip up and call the other by a name?”

“They were just ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones,’” Shirley told them.

“Those are aliases,” Wilson shouted at her in disgust. Shirley looked at Riley, silently appealing to her to help.

Riley shook her head at Wilson. There was a smattering of sympathy in her expression. “Most likely,” she agreed. “Can you remember anything else? Anything at all?”

Clearly frustrated as well as contrite, Shirley shook her head. Then suddenly, the light seemed to dawn in
her eyes. “Wait a minute,” she said excitedly. “Garlic.” Looking from one to the other, she told them, “I remember garlic.”

“Garlic?” Sam repeated uncertainly. He exchanged glances with his partner.

“What the hell are you babbling about now, woman?” Wilson demanded angrily.

This time Riley clamped her hand on the man’s arm. “Mr. Wilson, don’t have me ask you again to refrain from belittling your wife.” She struggled to keep her voice level. “You’ve both been through an awful ordeal and you came out of it alive. That doesn’t always happen with victims of a robbery,” she emphasized. Turning toward the man’s wife, Riley said, “Now, you were saying, Mrs. Wilson?”

“One of them smelled of garlic,” she told Riley, then specified, “The one who tied me up. He seemed like the younger one.”

“Because his ski mask wasn’t as old as the other guy’s?” Wilson asked, mocking his wife’s assumption.

“Because his voice sounded younger,” she answered him defiantly with a toss of her head.

Good for you, lady,
Riley thought, keeping her expression deliberately blank.

“Anything else?” Sam coaxed, looking from one to the other. “Either of you?”

Not to be left out, Wilson repeated what had already been assessed. “They were thin, tall. And they seemed to know their way around.”

That led them to one possibility. “Have you had any workmen in the house in the last six months?” Sam asked.

It was obvious that Wilson started to say no, then changed his mind as he remembered. “We had our bathrooms remodeled.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, Wilson began to breathe more heavily, a bull pawing the ground, working himself up to attack. “Do you think someone from the crew could have—”

“We’re just covering all bases,” Riley interrupted him. “If you could give us the names of the people or the name of the company you hired to handle the remodeling, that would be a good start.”

“Sure, right away. I’ve got the file in my office,” Wilson said. “Lousy bastards,” he cursed as he led the way down the hall.

“We’re not saying they did it,” Sam emphasized. Wilson didn’t seem to accept anything unless he was shouted at. “But there was no sign of forced entry so unless you let them in yourselves or left a window on the ground floor opened…”

He let his voice trail off, waiting for a contradiction—or an admission of negligence. Some people still left their doors unlocked.

“Everything was closed tighter than a drum,” Wilson assured them.

Reaching his office, he walked in. The condition of the room was like all the others. It had been summarily tossed in the search for valuables. Grumbling about what he wanted to do to the robbers if he ever got his hands on them, Wilson went to his desk and opened one of the drawers. It took him several minutes to find the file he was looking for.

“Here,” he said, handing the file to Sam.

It was a rather thick file, Sam noted. He didn’t feel like having to root around through the victim’s personal papers.

“Just a business card’ll do,” Sam told him, handing the file back to Wilson.

Muttering under his breath, a man on his last nerve, Wilson rummaged through the file.

In the interim, Riley started to hand Shirley Wilson her card, only to stop and realize her business cards still had her old number from the homicide division. She would have to get new ones, she thought. Frustrated, she turned toward Wyatt.

“You have a card, Wyatt?” she asked, holding out her hand.

He paused to take one out of his wallet and gave it to her. She in turn handed the card to Mrs. Wilson. “If you think of anything, anything at all,” she underscored, “please give us a call. Day or night.” She pointed to the last line on the card. “That’s my partner’s number.”

“Don’t you have a number?” Shirley asked. She looked sheepishly at Sam, then said, “I’d rather, you know, talk to you if there’s anything that comes up.”

“Dial that number and ask for me,” Riley told her. “My partner will transfer the call,” she assured her, then added, “I don’t have my cards yet.”

“Oh.” Shirley cast a quick, covert side glance at her husband who rifled through the file and had reached the end of his patience. “I know how that is,” she said in a lowered voice.

Riley wasn’t sure exactly what the woman was driving at, but she thought it best not to ask.

“Here,” Wilson announced, thrusting a silver-faced business card at Wyatt. “Here’s their card.”

Sam glanced at it before slipping it into his pocket. “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll return this to you.”

“Just get our things back,” Wilson growled.

They remained a few more minutes, examining other rooms and trying not to get in the way of several crime scene investigators who were still there, cataloguing evidence.

When they finally left, Riley saw Sam shaking his head as they walked to his car.

“What?” she pressed. There was no way she wanted him to keep quiet when it came to the robbery. This was
their
case, not just his case. If she was going to be his partner, then she needed to know what was going on in his head.

But when he spoke, it had nothing to do with the case. “There’s just another example of why I’m not married,” he told her.

It had gotten pretty intense in there, but nothing she hadn’t witnessed before. She’d lost count how many times she’d offered up thanks that her mother had wound up with Brian Cavanaugh and not, instead, a victim of domestic violence the way she’d been heading years ago. Granted she was a policewoman, trained to defend herself, but her father was a cop and ultimately, it came down to him being stronger.

“Not every couple bickers like that,” she told Wyatt as they reached his vehicle.

“I dunno.” Things, he reasoned, had a way of deteriorating and familiarity often bred contempt, not contentment. “I bet when they first got married, those two probably thought that the sun rose and set around each other.”

“At least Wilson was pretty certain it did that around him,” Riley couldn’t help interjecting. She got into the car. When Wyatt sat behind the steering wheel, she continued. “People don’t change
that
much,” she maintained. “Cute little traits become annoying habits, but other than that…” Her voice trailed off and then she shrugged, thinking of what she’d just witnessed. “A jerk by any other name is still a jerk.”

Sam laughed as he started up his car. “I take it you’re referring to Mr. Wilson.”

“He was the only jerk in the room.”

He hadn’t liked Wilson either, but he cut the man a little slack because of circumstances. “He’d just gotten his house robbed and had his manhood handed to him. It had to have stung his ego.”

“Still no reason to take it out on his wife.”

Pressing down on the accelerator, Sam made it through a yellow light. “No argument.”

Riley sank into her seat, glaring straight ahead, memories crowding in her brain. She struggled to shut them out.

“My dad was like that,” she said without any preamble as they flew through another yellow light. She
felt Sam looking at her, but she kept her eyes front. “Always finding a reason to pick a fight.” Like someone waking up from a trance, her words played themselves back to her and she glanced in Wyatt’s direction, not knowing what to expect. She couldn’t read his expression. He was someone she wouldn’t have invited to a poker game. “We didn’t have this conversation,” she told him tersely.

He could respect privacy, even if it aroused his curiosity.

“What conversation?” Sam asked innocently.