“Hi, it’s me,” she said. “I’m just headed back in to DM, so it’ll be a while. Yeah. No, I’ll probably catch up at Ho Jo’s.” There was a pause, then, “Oh, yeah. See you then.” She terminated the call.
“How’d you manage to choose me?” she asked.
“You were recommended.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Need-to-know only. I just got tapped for the briefing part.”
“Oh.”
“Glad I did,” he said. “Nice to know you. Nice to have you on board.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Back in Des Moines, he let her off at the academy parking lot, where she’d left her car.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
“Yeah, okay.” As she reached her car, she turned and waved.
Still in the lot, George called Ben. “Done. Where you want to meet?”
George found Ben and Norma at the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery, just off University Avenue in West Des Moines.
“How’d it go?” asked Ben.
“Not bad,” said George. “Couple of surprises, but not bad overall. I think she’ll do.”
“Tell her anything she didn’t already know?”
“Twice, I think. I’m pretty damned sure she didn’t know we had captured one, and shipped him alive and well to CDC in Atlanta. Had to tell her that, to substantiate what we knew and how we got it. She asked about them being immortal. I told her about the one they blew away in Missouri. I think that surprised her.”
“What about her and the target?” asked Norma. “How’d she handle that?”
“Well,” said George, “about how you’d think. I’m not sure if she had any real idea what was going on with him, with the venom and that stuff. She almost blew her cover, though, I think. Just for a second. But,” he said, with some disappointment in his voice, “she seems like just about any other addict. Either denying the facts, or thinking she’s the one to beat it through willpower. Won’t get her, any way you cut it.” He shrugged. “What with that hypnotic crap, who knows? She probably won’t ever wake up to the real danger until she’s dead.” He reached for some Doritos. “Anyway . . . We did the general stuff, the case history, all that. Then I showed her that art supply store he runs, and she managed to be surprised. Said she’d handled a theft case there, ’bout two years ago.”
“That’s what her boss told us,” said Ben.
“Yeah. Sticking to the truth always helps. So, I asked her if she knew where his house was, she said she didn’t, so we went there, too. Drove by, then up to the end of the block, and parked so we could see the approach he’d take. She did just fine there, too.”
Norma nodded, took a sip of her drink, and said, “Cool one, huh.”
George nodded. “She’s good. But then he comes walkin’ his bike home, and he’s got this sweet young thing with him. She started to misfire right about then. Covered pretty good. Then him and the gal go on into the house, and she started to sound kind of pissy.”
“Really?” Norma leaned forward. “Like, how?”
“Well, Ernesto let the gal go up the porch stairs in front of him, Louise says something about how he was just checking out her backside.”
“That’s it?” asked Ben.
“Nope. Then she said the gal was pretty much beggin’ for it.” George took a sip of his beer. “Can women really tell that sort of thing?”
“Why do you ask?” Norma had a sly smile on her face.
“Be a handy thing to learn,” said George.
“We can discuss that later. What else did she say?”
“Well, we watched the place for a while, and she was right back to normal, and then the lovebirds show up naked in the kitchen window. At least topless. I mean,” he said, “as far down as we could see without gettin’ out of the car and standing on the roof.”
“No shit?” Ben laughed.
“Yeah. She got real upset about them being naked. The gal had a rose tattooed on her left breast, and that got Louise really testy.”
Ben nodded. “Sure.”
“Then, you know the surveillance we got goin’ on Ernesto next door? Damned if she didn’t spot our man upstairs, with binoculars. Better get that to him, and get his ass out of there. Ernesto finds that out, I wouldn’t want to be there.”
“Crap, we better do that tonight,” said Ben, and took out his cell phone.
“Already called it in,” said George. “I think I covered it pretty well, but I thought we shouldn’t take chances on this dude.”
The food arrived, and the conversation changed to the weather for a minute or two.
Alone again, Norma asked, “She made three cell calls, you want to know to who and when?”
George nodded.
“Around three ten,” said Norma, consulting her BlackBerry, “she called Ernesto at his store. Said she was in Iowa City, that she had a task force member with her, and that it looked like things were going well.”
“When she was in the john at Mondo’s,” said George. “I thought it might be something like that. Hated to stop there, but we were way too early for Ernesto to go home, and I wanted her to see him.”
“Then, about eight fifteen. You were outside Iowa City then.”
“She had to call her friends back at the Academy,” said George. “Tell ’em she was gonna be late. I was right there. Who was she really talking to? Ernesto?”
“You bet. He told her he needed to see her when she got back.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Then, about the time you called Ben, she was on the phone to Ernesto again. She said, and I quote, ‘I’m in.’ Then she called him an ‘asshole’ and asked if ‘the little slut with the tattoo on her boob’ was still there.”
“Pissed, like I said.”
“So,” said Ben. “What do we think?”
“I think we got our inside snitch with Ernesto,” said George. “She just don’t know it.”
“Now, we decide how to utilize her the best way,” said Norma.
They were silent again as they ate. Each was thinking about the fate of Detective Louise Dillman.
“She must have been turned just about the time she talked to Ernesto at that theft call a couple years back,” said Ben. “So we can confirm that all his victims don’t die within eighteen months.”
“The docs think that he just, you know, gets her about every two or three weeks. They say the venom substance is persistent, but seems to wear off a little with time, so he has to hit her again every once in a while to keep her under control.” Norma winced. “Unless she gets knocked up.”
“Her department health records say she’s on the pill,” interjected Ben.
“Let’s hope she stays on ’em. She must be willing, though. To keep the relationship active.”
“Trust me,” said George. “She is. The way she reacted when she saw the other girl. . . . I was kinda gettin’ to like her,” he said. “She’s not all bad, you know?”
“Bright, ambitious, and a good cop,” said Ben. “Until Ernesto got hold of her.”
“You tell her about that coed who died in her own bed? The unexplained death she covered?”
“Yep.”
“And . . . ?”
“Well, I’m just not sure,” announced George, after a moment. “She seemed genuinely surprised, okay? But, God, she had to at least suspect, after she got involved with Ernesto. Don’t you think?”
After another silence, George asked the question that had been bothering him all the way back from Iowa City. “You think, like, she got put in some sort of rehab unit, she might, you know . . . ?”
“Completely recover?”
