Her Cop Protector. Sharon Hartley

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      “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said.

      “You a cop?” she asked.

      “Good guess,” he said and displayed his badge.

      “Thought so. Someone got murdered, didn’t they?”

      “Why do you say that?”

      “Been out here since daybreak. Heard the shot, then saw the body come out. Don’t have to be a rocket scientist.”

      “You heard the shot?”

      “Sure did.” The woman pulled a tall can of beer from her cooler and took a long drink. Condensation rolled down onto her hands. She put the beer back in its nest of ice. “Was wondering when someone’d come talk to me.”

      Dean wondered how much she’d had to drink, hoping she hadn’t started with beer at seven thirty. “Could you tell where the shot came from?”

      She pointed toward the roof of the Night’s Inn. “I seen the tip of the rifle right there.”

      Dean felt a smile form. He’d been right to talk to this woman. “Did you see the shooter?”

      “Sure did.”

      Finally. Dean withdrew his notepad. “Male?”

      “Male, but couldn’t see his face, so don’t ask me to make no sketch. He had a hat pulled down low. Couldn’t even see the color of his hair.”

      “Age?”

      “Couldn’t tell. But he was tall and quick, like. Skedaddled out of there within a minute. Knew what he was doing.” The woman nodded. “Just like in the movies.”

      Dean hoped her report wasn’t a figment of the woman’s imagination, a result of too many Hollywood movies and too many swigs of beer. “Why didn’t you report seeing the gun?”

      “Yeah, right.” She shrugged. “No one believes an old lady.”

      “What’s your name, ma’am?” He talked to his witness a few more minutes, but got no further useful information. She lived in a local apartment, so he could contact her later, if necessary.

      Across the street, he spotted Sanchez reinterviewing the street peeps on the porch of the Sea Wave. Sweat ran down Dean’s back, and he envied his partner’s shade. With a sigh, Dean moved toward the woman with the beads, but a quick interview told him she’d set up her cart around 9:30 a.m. and hadn’t even been in the area when the shooting went down. Dean shut his notebook and walked back to the hotel.

      Ballard had the surveillance video ready to view in the small office, so Dean sat at the desk preparing himself for more eye strain. Jeez. What luck to have two cases in two days with video to sift through. But that was modern police work. Everything had gone digital and high-tech.

      “Any way to speed this up?” he asked the clerk as the video rolled.

      “The red button.”

      “Thanks. Say, you got any coffee left?” A shot of caffeine was just what he needed for the task ahead.

      When Ballard returned with lukewarm brew, Dean murmured his thanks and continued reviewing the video. Most of it was a static view that captured the front desk and entrance to the guest room area. When a figure entered the frame, Dean slowed the stream to real time to try to make an ID, look for anything suspicious. He wanted to find when Rocky had gone through that doorway to his death, see who the man had talked to.

      He’d been watching for over thirty minutes when Sanchez joined him. Dean paused the surveillance. “Anything?”

      “Nobody saw a thing.”

       Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t.

      Street people didn’t give up information without some cash motivation, which this case didn’t yet warrant. And when they did reveal details, frequently the intel was fiction, brought into existence via a painful past and too much booze. The homeless were seldom reliable witnesses, but you couldn’t discount their version of events immediately.

      Dean nodded and rolled his chair to give the rookie more room to watch.

      A quick blip on the left of the frame caught his attention. A man had entered and moved out of view toward the buffet table. Dean backed up and slowed the video down. All he could see was half a shoulder, but something about the man looked familiar.

      He stayed out of the frame for two minutes, but then reentered and stood by the entrance to the hallway in full view of the camera.

      Dean sat up straighter. Holy shit.

      “Hey,” Sanchez said in an excited voice. “That’s the guy from the pet shop, the bozo that released the birds. He’s even wearing the same ugly shirt.”

      Dean made a note of the time. Three thirty yesterday afternoon, three hours after the pet-shop incident.

      As he watched, Rocky, the dead vic, sidled up to the bird liberator. The two spoke for several minutes. Rocky rubbed his abdominal area as if saying he was hungry. Seemed friendly enough, but Dean made a mental note to get a lip reader to watch the conversation. He needed a translation.

      “Ballard,” Dean yelled toward the front desk, pausing the video. “Come in here.”

      The clerk entered the office, eyebrows raised.

      Dean indicated the monitor. “Who is this guy talking to Rocky?”

      Ballard focused on the frozen image. “That’s John Smith.”

      “The guy who rented the room?” Sanchez asked.

      Ballard nodded.

      “You’re sure?” Dean asked, a shot of adrenaline charging him up far better than any caffeine. The first break in a case was often the most important.

      “No question,” Ballard said.

      “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dean said. What were the odds?

      There had to be a connection between the delightful June Latham and John Smith. He needed to find what it was. Maybe Smith was another bird nut. Ms. Latham said she didn’t know him, but Dean now wondered about that.

      He needed to have another conversation with her.

      Dean checked the time. Just after three. He was almost done here. Should be no problem making it to the animal hospital where she worked before they closed at five.

      * * *

      JUNE STROKED HER palm across the velvety soft fur of a tiny black-and-white kitten in the cardboard box on a stainless-steel examining room table. The kitten arched his spine into her hand, obviously enjoying the attention. Three littermates, two more black-and-whites and one orange tabby, were extending their paws up the sides of the cardboard in a pitiful attempt at escape. They weren’t quite strong enough yet, but the undersize feral mama watched her babies nervously from inside a cage next СКАЧАТЬ