Toby met her gaze and held it for a long moment. “What you’re saying is the Rats achieved their goal. It was assumed that there was a bad cop on the force, and so the force just shut the entire investigation down. Word was only until evidence was found that would reveal the bad cop. But if there really wasn’t a bad cop at all…”
“There would never be any evidence found. The bad guys got everything they wanted. The force closed the investigation. The Rats had already cleared the warehouse. Instead of scrubbing the place for clues, the force began, instead, to look inward. That gave the gang time to set up in another location.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Toby looked pissed at himself, and that hadn’t been what she’d intended at all. She caught the look on Anthony’s face. Clearly, he hadn’t been thinking along the same lines that Mary had, either.
Toby shook his head and then met her gaze once more.
Ah, there it is. That look tells me he’s stopped beating himself up. Mission accomplished.
“Tell me again why it is you’re not a cop yourself, sweetheart?”
Mary grinned and shrugged her shoulders. “Because I couldn’t pass the physical?”
Both men chuckled. Then Anthony tilted his head to the side. “Is that the reason those New York cops had their heads up their butts and didn’t take you seriously when you called them about your concerns?”
She sent him a sideways glance. “You think I know how their minds work?”
Toby grinned. “Of course, you do.” He turned back to making the sandwiches while Anthony passed around the cups of coffee. Within a few minutes, both men joined her at the table, food and beverages distributed.
“All right, maybe I do know how their minds work. Or I can at least make some educated guesses.” She picked up her sandwich and took a bite. Mary used the time she chewed to get her thoughts in order. “I think, bottom line, that they felt threatened by me. I tend to think outside the box. That’s a useful skill to have when you’re a writer trying to construct unique, and if I may say so myself, clever mystery plots.
“In the beginning, those same cops would share with me some of the cases they were working on, just you know, generally speaking. Between me and you, I think they were hoping I would write a book about them. Anyway, a few times when I’d make a suggestion—and it proved to be on the money—I could sense they were waiting for me to rub their noses in the fact that I had figured something out that they’d never thought of.” She knew that not just from intuition but from one detective who’d gone off on her, claiming she was just waiting for the right moment to do just that. “Which, of course, truly never even occurred to me.”
“You’re not that kind of person.” Anthony said.
“I’m not, no. And I guess they just couldn’t understand that.”
“It takes all kinds, I guess,” Toby said. “Cops and writers have one thing at least in common. We both can see human nature in action, and we take notes, as it were. What I’ve realized after more than a dozen years as a cop? There are too many people in this world who think everyone must be exactly like them. They lie, and so they figure everybody lies. They lash out, and so they think everybody lashes out. They act like assholes, and so they think everyone does.”
“I know.” Because she was a student of human nature, she couldn’t help but be frustrated by the great cultural divide that seemed to be consuming her country. This is America, damn it. The greatest nation that ever existed. We should be better than this. And yet there was a line down the middle, and it seemed to her the people Toby had just described were, for the most part, on one side of it. And they were interfering with the forward momentum of the human race in this country.
Mary pulled her attention back to the conversation at hand. “I do know that,” she repeated. “What I don’t know is how to change that. I don’t know how to reach people who are totally uninterested in the facts.”
“People conflate belief with truth,” Anthony said. “But in the end, I happen to believe that the truth will emerge and win. Eventually.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Toby said. He looked from Anthony to Mary. “Adam’s going to let us know what results he gets, looking at the security feed from last night. Maybe he’ll have a clue as to who was out there watching us.” He picked up his coffee and took a sip. “Were either of you as surprised as I was that there was a security feed for him to check in the first place?”
Anthony grinned. “I wasn’t. They changed the boundaries of the town to include the roadhouse several months ago, because so many of the family work there. Plus, of course, there are cameras at other places—the warehouse, the fitness complex, and on the main road at either end of town.”
“I’d say they were being paranoid,” Mary grinned. “Except for the fact that we apparently have, well, if not a stalker, at the very least a voyeur.”
“As have others in the past, apparently.” Toby said. “I said it last night, and I’ll say it again. You think this is a sleepy little town, until you get here. And then you realize it’s not.”
Toby’s assessment matched her own, perfectly. Verbal expressions become immortalized as adages for a reason. In Lusty, appearances not only could be deceiving—they often really were.
* * * *
“I really don’t have any objections to giving Mary the time she needs to write.” Anthony
