Becoming Quinn

11

“How much does he know?” Peter asked, obviously not happy.

“No way to know for sure,” Durrie told him. He was in his car, trailing Oliver and a woman cop in a Dodge Charger. For the past several hours, the two police officers had been making the rounds of businesses near the crime scene.

“He must know something,” Peter said.

“He has a matchbook, that’s all.”

“And the security footage at the hotel.”

“He looked at the footage, but what are the possibilities he could have picked us out?”

“A pro could have picked you out.”

“Might have picked us out,” Durrie corrected him. “But this guy’s not a pro. He’s a twenty-two-year-old rookie cop. My guess is, when he couldn’t find out anything at the hotel, he decided to check closer to the crime scene. He’s just playing out some hunches. In another day or so, he’ll forget about the whole thing.”

Ahead, the Charger turned off the road into a strip-mall parking lot, and pulled into a slot in front of a coffee shop.

“I have a lot of other things that need my attention now,” Peter said, his tone heavily underlined with anger. “I don’t need some punk cop distracting me.” He paused for a moment. “This can’t become a major headache. Do you understand?”

“Don’t worry, Peter. It won’t be.”

“I want to make sure it isn’t. I’m sending someone to help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“I don’t care. Larson should be able to get there in a few hours.”

“What?” Durrie couldn’t help sounding surprised. “I don’t need that asshole messing things up.”

“I want to be prepared if a termination is necessary. Are you telling me that’s something you’d like to do yourself?”

“If there has to be a termination, we can make the call later,” Durrie said, slowing his car and pulling into the lot.

“Either work with him, or go home and I’ll send in another cleaner to finish the job. Your call.”

Through gritted teeth, Durrie said the only thing he could, “Fine. I’ll work with him.”

“I though you would.”

The cleaner found a parking spot at the far end of the lot with a view of the coffee shop’s entrance.

“Anything else to report?” Peter asked.

Durrie hesitated a moment. He had yet to mention the fact Oliver had taken on a partner. “Nothing yet,” he said.

“Report in if something changes.”

Peter hung up.

Durrie allowed himself a few moments just to steam. The last thing he needed was someone else meddling with his operation, especially Larson. The guy had screwed up massively at the barn. People made mistakes all the time in the business, and when it didn’t get them killed, they usually learned from it. But Durrie got a sense Larson was not someone who learned much from anything. His arrogance would get him killed soon enough. Durrie just didn’t want to be around to get caught in the crossfire when it happened.

As his anger began to ebb, he focused on the coffee shop. For a second he wondered if he’d been there before. There was something definitely familiar about it. But there was no way he could have been, so he shook the feeling off and kept his eyes on the door.

He wished he knew exactly what Oliver and his woman friend were looking for. At some of the places they stopped, they were only inside for less than a minute. At others, it was sometimes a quarter hour before they reappeared. The coffee shop was turning out to be one of the latter.

Finally, the door opened and the two cops came back outside. Gone was the frustrated look he’d seen on their faces as they’d left the other establishments. Instead they both looked deep in thought.

As they walked to their car, they momentarily covered up the logo painted on the window of the shop. Durrie’s gaze stopped on it once they’d moved out of the way. He suddenly remembered.

That’s what he’d seen before. The logo.

It had been on the coffee cup that Larson had carelessly left in the barn.

Durrie’s eyes shifted to the Charger.

It wasn’t possible, was it? Could Oliver have traced Larson from the hotel to here?

Who the hell was this kid?

12

Jake got to work an hour and a half before his shift, and spent the time looking through mug shots in the various databases the department had access to. But none of the pictures matched the faces of the men from the hotel—and the coffee shop.

He finally gave up and headed out to find Haywood and get ready for another night on patrol.

“Jake!”

He looked back. Berit was at the other end of the corridor, heading in his direction, so he met her halfway.

“I had an idea about your friends from the hotel,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“What?”

“Their car.”

“They didn’t have a car,” he said, reminding her of what he’d found out from the doorman at the Lawrence.

“We don’t know that for sure. But I might know a way of finding out.”

Looking skeptical, he said, “How?”

“I started thinking about the security footage we were looking at today. Then I remembered — the route they would have taken goes right through a few road expansion surveys. The company hired to do the assessment uses a combination of automated car counting and video. Cameras have been up for months.”

“Where are they?”

She listed off several streets, then said, “I called a friend of mine who works at the planning department. That’s how I found out where some of the cameras are set up and who’s running them.”

He thought for a moment. “This is great. If they drove by one, we can at least tell what kind of car they were in.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“When can we look?”

“My friend’s trying to hook us up. I’ll let you know when I hear back from her.”

“Hey, Snowbird! We taking it half-speed today?”

Jake looked back and saw Haywood standing in the corridor, just outside the locker room.

“I’m coming,” Jake told him. He looked back at Berit. “Thanks.”

“Hope it works.”

“Me, too.”

* * *

The first part of patrol was taken up with a traffic stop, a call for a possible domestic disturbance that turned out to be a couple of college drama students practicing lines for a play, and the inevitable stop at Di’s Diner for a