Disclaimer: nothing has changed from the last time. I stole these characters from that Steve Franks dude.
Rating: T
Description: Established Lassiet. (Please read that again if you didn't get it the first time.) Carlton & Juliet get help from a mystery informant while trying to bring a murderer to justice.
This story is sort of a followup kinda thingy to my "Haunting of Lassiter & O'Hara" from last year. You don't need to read that to understand this one, but there are references to it, and it explains how they got together.
P.S. This story is dedicated to Dragonmactir, whose ongoing Lassiter-centric tales inspired me to dust off my own Lassiter-appreciation one more time. Oh, and howdy to NessD, who asked me awhile back if I would ever return. :-)
. . . .
. . .
The afternoon sun spiked its way through the bullpen, illuminating Juliet O'Hara in more than her usual golden glow as she rose from her desk. Carlton couldn't help but smile at her natural loveliness, and when she caught his gaze, she smiled back.
His phone buzzed, and Carlton picked it up off the stack of casefiles.
Blinking with momentary puzzlement at the display, he realized quickly it was probably a junk call, and connected only long enough to disconnect again.
Juliet brought him another folder as the phone began to ring once more. "Debt collector?" she teased.
Carlton scowled at the screen. "The spam bastards have learned all kinds of new tricks." He showed her the screen, which was the same as before.
She frowned. "But that's your number."
"I know." He pressed the talk and end-call buttons in quick succession. "The spammers think you'll be so curious about why your own name and number are on the screen that you won't be able to resist answering."
"Cool technology, though. Lot of trouble to go to just to sell siding or Viagra." She dropped her voice and added with a wicked smile, "Not that you'd need that."
He felt his cheeks flaming—damn woman could still do that to him even after the past year—and started to shoo her lascivious self away when the phone rang once more. "Son of a—" he began, but stopped.
"What is it?" When he didn't respond, she took the phone out of his hands. "Wow."
The screen read Talk To Me, Lassiter.
It wasn't a text; it was where the name and number of the caller would be. Where his own name and number had been a moment ago.
She handed it back at once. "I think you're supposed to answer."
Yeah, kinda hard to miss the hint. He said into the receiver, with more than his usual crispness, "I'm busy. What?"
Juliet leaned in close to listen to the melodious male voice on the other end say, "You wasted your time, not me. I have information about the Bates case."
"Which is?" He was trying not to be distracted by Juliet's fragrance.
"Meet me tonight. There's an abandoned building at 2613 Addams. It's safe to enter, and the door will be ajar. Come to the front left corner room at 9:15." The voice paused, but continued before Carlton could speak. "You don't want to pass this up, Detective. It'll help you put Bates behind bars."
The line went silent, and Carlton stared at the phone a moment.
Juliet straightened up. "I'm in."
"Just like that?"
"Informants help us every day. I thought you'd jump on anything to get cuffs on Bates."
"I will. I am. I just expected more caution from you. You're the sensible one, O'Hara," he reminded her.
She grinned. "Don't call me that, Carly."
He rolled his eyes, she laughed, and when she'd gone back to her own desk, he reviewed the Bates investigation for the eightieth time.
The man was suspected of murdering his wife and his girlfriend in the same night, the former because she wanted a divorce and the latter because she was threatening to tell his wife about their affair. Thing was—as if that wasn't quite bad enough—he'd somehow managed to frame each dead woman for the murder of the other. It was pretty slick but Carlton knew, like he knew the weight of each bullet in his service revolver, that Jason Bates had killed both women, and if talking to someone who could effortlessly jack up his cell phone display was one way to catch him, so be it.
He was curious about what the caller could possibly know. Bates, who dabbled in real estate, the stock market, questionable art acquisitions and gambling, was notoriously tight-lipped about everything, and kept all his affairs—business and otherwise—extremely private. He didn't have a true 'right hand man' because he trusted no one. The things he was suspected of doing, he was suspected of doing directly. His underlings never had more than a few bits of information each, and no matter how willing they might be (generally for legal reasons) to cooperate with the police, they never had much to whet the D.A.'s appetite.
This approach had kept Bates out of jail so far, but Carlton wasn't giving up any time soon. The murders of two women who'd done nothing more than fall for a lying sociopath weren't going into any damned cold case file as long as he was still a cop.
. . . .
. . .
Juliet stopped him at the door to the condo and gave him a kiss. "For luck."
"I thought you were coming with me."
"Hell yeah I am." She holstered her weapon. "But we're not supposed to make out in the car."
"Silly Vick rules," he agreed, and pulled her close again, still marveling that he was even allowed to, that the smile on her lovely face was for him, and that the taste of her lips was one both familiar and wondrous every time.
"You'd think she'd make an exception since it's nearly our anniversary," Juliet said breathlessly.
Odd to think it was a full year ago they'd started this union, in a creepy mansion where a dark and dreadful painting lurked. That night, amid the terror, the two of them had acknowledged a lot of feelings and from then on, occasional bumps in the road aside, there had been no turning back.
Chief Vick, when they confessed to her, sighed and simply said, "Don't make me regret allowing you to stay partners," and they quietly and discreetly wrapped up in each other at home as well as at work. Still, he doubted he'd be asking Vick if it was okay to French-kiss his girlfriend in the Crown Vic.
He kissed her again, enjoyed her purr, and they went to do that thing they did so well. Buckled up and on the way, Juliet asked, "Any theories about the informant?"
He shrugged. "With as much surveillance as we've had on Bates, it's gotta be one of his known associates."
"I reviewed that list too and I didn't see anyone who was likely to know how to alter phone number displays. He doesn't let anyone smarter than he is close to him."
"Then it's an unknown associate of this unknown known associate."
She smirked. "Very helpful, Carlton. Almost a Shawnian thing to say."
He bristled automatically. "You take that back, woman."
"I take nothing back. Oh, there's Addams. Turn right."
The building at 2613 was three stories tall, dark and silent. The businesses on each side were equally dark and silent—an antiques shop, a hair salon, a used bookstore—but there was something even darker and more silent about 2613.
Juliet eyed the structure through her window. "I…"
"What?" Her hesitation sharpened his own unexpected sense of unease.
"I'm not letting you out of my sight," she said decisively, unbuckling her belt. "Your informant may be legit but this feels like a bad place."
It did, but he had to remind her: "He may not talk to me unless I'm alone."
"True. But I have a gun, so he'll have to suck it up." She got out of the car, and Carlton followed suit.
Quarter after nine wasn't exactly the dead of night, but even approaching the building—and the hell with his years of experience—Carlton couldn't help but think it felt more like three a.m.
Three a.m…. in a cemetery.
Where things moved which… shouldn't.
Yeah… last year's adventure with the late Cartavious Pumphrey had been a lesson in never being too sure about 'reality.' Several lessons, if he counted ending up with Juliet in his arms every night.
She stopped in front of the main entrance, which thanks to the streetlights they could both see was ajar a few inches just as promised. "Are you sure about this?" Her voice was low, her posture tense.
"I'm sure I want to take the chance. Check the perimeter, O'Hara." His use of her surname was deliberate: they were cops, on duty, and this was a job.
"Stuff it, Lassiter," was her prompt response. "We're going in together."
The heavy door creaked, not surprisingly, and their shadows slashed the small lobby beyond. Cracked tile floor had once been ornate, and the silence which enveloped the building from outside was even heavier inside.
It was creepy, but Carlton sensed no other presence. After last year's 'adventure,' he trusted his instincts on this point.
"This way." He touched her arm, gesturing to the left, where another door stood open an inch or so.
On the other side, they found a mustier and tinier anteroom which contained only a broken-down desk. He didn't bother looking for light switches; Juliet had her flashlight on already and was checking the place out.
He did the same, and his light swept across one final door, this one with a cracked and murky stained-glass panel, which surely led to the room where his informant waited.
"I'm going in," he whispered. "You're not."
He knew she knew he wasn't protecting her. He knew she knew he had to go in alone.
"Don't you move one foot from the other side of that door," she whispered back fiercely.
A few seconds after turning off their flashlights, they both made out the dimmest of light from underneath that old door, no doubt from the streetlight shining through the front window. No motion disturbed this faint light.
Silence all around.
Carlton drew himself up, kept his hand on his weapon, and turned the knob.
As soon as he was inside, the voice from the phone commanded, "Give her your flashlight and close the door. Yes, I know she's here. Do as I say."
This was a demand he could meet, and as he turned to hand his light to Juliet, he saw—and drew power from—her steely and undeniably possessive gaze in the seconds before the light was gone and solid wood came between them.
He kept his back to the door, scanning the shadows of what had once been a study, or a small library, judging by the shelves lining every wall.
The man stood by the front window, but not in its light. He'd obviously watched their approach from the street—had seen Carlton was not alone—and yet he hadn't fled.
This was either good, because it meant he was legit, or bad, because it was some kind of trap. Carlton wished he'd told Juliet that she shouldn't move even one foot from the door either.
"Who are you?"
He heard a chuckle preceding the answer: "I can't tell you that yet."
"Then why I should trust you or the information you claim you want to give me?" He peered into the shadows, but couldn't make out the man's features.
"I can't tell you yet who I am," the man repeated patiently. "What I can tell you is how to bring Bates to justice, and to that end, you may be assured that my information is both verifiable and impeccable. And stop staring, Detective. You don't know me, and even if I came to stand right in front of you, it would mean nothing. I'm no one you've ever encountered."
There was something about his voice… something smooth and cultured without being in the least bit… false. He could have been forty or seventy. He was at least six feet tall, wearing a suit jacket, but his shirt was dark and if he wore a tie, Carlton couldn't see it.
But somehow, he knew the man was wearing a tie. Possibly a handkerchief in his front pocket.
"Okay, so what's the information?"
"Bates keeps a journal. The details of his life with which he doesn't trust others are all in this journal. Many journals, in fact. Sometimes in code, but sometimes simply plain English, particularly when he's proud of a specific evil act—and he is very proud of what he did to Lila and Carrie."
Dear God, Carlton wanted to believe this so badly. A journal… what it might hold, including the potential to get Bates for a myriad of other crimes.
But skepticism won out, as it usually did, because Carlton couldn't believe in this kind of miracle. "We've searched his house three times already. We have looked in every single—"
The man cut him off. "You obviously haven't looked everywhere. Would you like to know the right place to look?" It wasn't quite an insult.
"Yeah, dammit, I would," Carlton snapped. "But I need something I can get a judge to sign a warrant for. We're not getting back into that house without cause, not now. His lawyers practically have Bates in bubble-wrap."
The man sounded amused. "I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't fully intend to help you catch him."
"Then what's our in? What's our probable cause for another warrant?"
"Lila's diary," he answered simply. "You go back to her apartment. It's on the bookshelf, wearing the book jacket for Stephen King's The Shining."
This was either Christmas or the biggest football Lucy had ever held out for Charlie Brown to kick at.
"And what's in the diary? The location of his diaries? How would she know? The bastard was willing to murder her. I don't think he was likely to have trusted her with—"
Again, and calmly, the man interrupted. "Stop fighting. Her diary reveals that she found out about a secret room in his house. Once you have that information, a judge will indeed sign a fourth search warrant."
Carlton was exasperated with his seemingly casual dispensation of facts he couldn't possibly know. "Who are you? How do you know she kept a diary, and where it is, and what's in it? If you're a friend of hers, why didn't you come forward weeks ago when she was killed?"
"Just investigate, Detective. When we meet again, you'll get more."
He stepped into the shadows of the corner of the room.
"No. I need more now."
"Your partner is anxious for you," he said mildly, and Carlton became aware of the smallest of sounds behind him.
It was something like white noise, soft in the background. He turned to put his hand on the knob, and looked back toward the man, but there was nothing in the shadows now. No shape. No presence.
No way. Oh hell no, no way.
He was midway through one step in that direction when he heard, faint but clear, Juliet calling his name as if from a tremendous distance.
Instantly he turned back to the door and pulled it open, and Juliet—weapon drawn—grabbed at his arm and pulled him out into the anteroom.
She was wild-eyed, gasping. "Carlton! My God! What happened in there?"
He automatically steadied her and checked the room at the same time, then looked behind him into the shadowy study. He didn't have to go back in to know it was empty.
"Carlton!"
"Juliet, I'm fine. What happened out here?" He could see her near-panic was real, albeit receding, and she was still clutching his arm.
"Let's get outside," she commanded, and half-pulled him along, out into the main foyer and then through the front door onto the street, but she didn't stop there, moving him forcefully along.
"Aren't you like five foot three?" he grumbled, uncomfortable with being so easily herded by someone he towered over normally.
"Shut it. Get in the car."
It wasn't until she demanded the keys that he realized she was about to shove him into the passenger seat, and then he stood his ground and backed her against the Vic. "What. Is. Wrong?"
She took a breath. "What happened in that room?"
"Nothing. I closed the door, he talked, he said you were worried about me, I opened the door, you freaked."
Juliet took a very deep breath. He could feel her slight trembling and relaxed his grip on her arms.
"Tell me."
She let out that same deep breath. "It sounds ridiculous."
"Last year, Cartavious Pumphrey sounded ridiculous, but we went through that together. Tell me."
She blinked and finally braced herself; he let go of one arm but kept light hold of the other.
It came out in a rush. "I was listening and also looking around the room. There was light moving so I tried to see through the stained glass window in the door but I couldn't make anything out. The lights were… they were incredible, Carlton. Red and blue and purple and orange, through the glass and under the door. I could only hear this kind of rushing noise, not very loud. No voices. Just the lights and the rushing noise and then it got louder and brighter and I tried the knob and it wouldn't open, and I called to you and you didn't answer, and I couldn't hear anything and the door… the knob was freezing cold, and there was nothing passing in the street and it was like some kind of crazy disco ball thing going on in there and you weren't answering and I was about to shoot the lock and yeah, you know what, I was freaking out, because it was freaky, okay? It was freaky." She stared at him, a little out of breath. "And now you tell me nothing like that was happening in there? Nothing?"
He was floored. "Nothing, I swear."
"I heard words at the end. I heard a voice say 'anxious for you.'"
"That's… that's the last thing he said. He said 'your partner is anxious for you.'"
"Well he was right. I was."
Carlton pulled her into a quick hug. "Let's get home and think about this." On their own turf—exclusive of how well they worked at the police station—they could make sense of everything. There wasn't much they hadn't always been able to make sense of together, even before they were… together.
In the car, she asked him again, and much more calmly, "So what did he tell you?"
"He said Lila kept a diary and wrote about a secret room in Bates' house. Said Bates keeps his own journals there and we'll find what we need to convict him."
"That's fantastic. Who is he?"
"Wouldn't say, but he told me where to find Lila's diary."
"How does he know about it?"
"Wouldn't say," he repeated grimly. "He really didn't want me getting anything on him."
She mused, "Then… then maybe that's why I got the show and you didn't."
He glanced at her, but as he returned his gaze to the road ahead, he realized what she meant. It made sense. "Of course. Keeping you distracted meant you couldn't pick up anything about him that I might miss while I was preoccupied with what he was saying. He must have rigged that anteroom somehow."
"Controlled sound, lights you weren't going to be able to see because you were looking at him—yes! That must be it!"
Her relief was palpable, and he relaxed himself.
"We'll go back during the day and check it out."
"No need," she said more confidently. "Anything he set up he's already removed. We won't find a thing."
"We might find the door he went out. There must have been one in the room, one I couldn't see."
"No need for that either. This guy went to a lot of trouble, Carlton. He got you alone while he distracted me with—with smoke and mirrors, really; he masked his phone number, and you know as well as I do that even if we have it traced it'll just be a burn phone. We won't get anything out of it."
"He's long gone." Carlton knew it was true. "He did say we'd meet again."
"He'll find a new place for that. Some place he's scouted out ahead of time and rigged. But this time," Juliet said grimly, "I won't be so easily fooled."
Which meant, Carlton understood, that it wouldn't be as lowbrow as lights and white noise. It might actually be more dangerous… for both of them.
"Let's just get to Lila's tomorrow and find that diary."
"First thing." She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek, taking hold of his right hand as he drove. "We'll put Bates behind bars yet."
. . . .
. . .
The morning was bright; their moods were bright; Chief Vick was happy with the informant's little gift—and if they omitted to tell her about their respective heebie-jeebies during the delivery, well, oops—and by half past eight they were on their way to Lila Crane's apartment.
Juliet was choosing to discount the creepy feeling 2613 Addams had given her last night. She was choosing to believe that it felt creepy because it was abandoned, and because as a cop she knew late-night meetings with unknown informants were always a crapshoot. Stepping into the darkened past had merely conjured up memories of their night in the Pumphrey mansion, and there was no more time to waste dwelling on it.
She and Carlton were in sync, they had key intel to work with, and Mr. Mysterious and his crazy little disco could go to hell.
The late Ms. Crane had been a pretty, well-liked salon worker with questionable taste in men, and Bates had paid her to become his personal hair stylist after hours. A friend of hers said the relationship was tumultuous but Lila had been hooked and chose to ignore the very public presence of his wife.
Juliet had trouble with that kind of decision, but she knew all about loving the non-obvious choice, so she could cut Lila some slack. Glancing across at her tall lean man, she allowed the warmth of her feelings for him to seep through and soothe her. He was like good strong coffee: once she was fully addicted, every other man became just a packet of instant mixed in tepid water.
The search team took the time to look in all the books, not just The Shining, which as promised was merely a book jacket concealing a thick journal nearly filled with neat feminine handwriting.
Juliet stood with Carlton by the bedroom door, scanning the pages near the end.
"Her friend Carol Ann said they met on Valentine's Day." Carlton was flipping back to that point.
"There! 'His name is Jason Bates, almost like the actor, and he looks about that good too.'" She curled her lip. "Yeah, if you like sleazy killers."
"It's Bateman, right? Isn't his sister an actress?"
"Yeah, Justine. Never liked her after Family Ties. Let's get this back to the station. We can take turns reading all about their torrid love affair."
"I don't want to read about that at all," he retorted. "I want to read about secret rooms in Bates' house." He bagged the prize and headed out, leaving Dobson to handle finishing the search for other journals hidden among the jacketed books.
Since as usual Carlton didn't want to relinquish the steering wheel, she got to thumb through the diary first, enjoying his irritation a little.
Lila's last entry was the morning of the day she was killed. 'J asked me to meet him tonight. He says we'll work it out, but this is the last time. He has to leave his wife or I'll end it for good.'"
"Nothing about blackmail?"
She read further back. "No. Just that she loved him and wanted to be with him, even though it looks like they fought all the time. 'I don't know why he has this hold on me. I just know he's the one. I don't have anything against Carrie but she's just not right for him.'"
"What about the secret room?"
"I'm looking." She scanned the pages more quickly, almost hoping for more red lights so she could keep the diary in her clutches longer.
"And what about the informant? Any insight into who he is?"
"Carlton, I've only had it for seven minutes." She could feel his impatience radiating from his side of the car. "Chill."
She found the reference at last, just as he was parking the car, and they sat there while she read to him. A few weeks prior to her death, Lila and her future murderer had been to dinner and then went back to his house, since Carrie was out of town.
He'd tried to entice her to make love in the master bedroom, but she refused to insult Carrie to that degree (so the infidelity was okay, Juliet reflected, as long as it wasn't directly on Carrie's turf?). Instead Lila asked for a tour of the large mansion, and in a moment of uncharacteristic lust-fueled weakness, he revealed that behind his study lay a secret study, one Carrie didn't know about. One nobody knew about.
Lila wrote, with a happy face, that he'd 'teasingly' said he'd have to kill her if he told her more, but she wasn't worried because she knew he really loved her and trusted her more than most anyone else. She knew this 'because he told me he doesn't lie to me, ever.'
"Yeah," Carlton said. "Bates has a real reputation for his honesty."
"The point is, we have a starting place."
"Maybe. Knowing there's a secret room—correction, that he said there was a secret room—doesn't mean a judge is going to sign a warrant to let us go breaking down walls."
"Well, maybe there's something else." She hopped out of the car and glanced at her watch. "You have to be in court in forty-five minutes."
"Dammit!"
Juliet hid her smile. He didn't mind court per se; he just didn't want to leave without a good look at the diary with his own eyes.
"I see you smirking, O'Hara."
Laughing openly, she handed him the re-bagged book. "It's all yours for at least half an hour, but if you're late for the trial I'm not backing you up."
Carlton scowled at her—without any heat—and got it out of the bag.
She was admiring his blue eyes (again) when her phone rang, but before she answered, she reminded him, "A judge will want that authenticated, you know."
He was way ahead of her: "I told Dobson to bring in other handwriting samples."
Juliet glanced at her phone screen, and went cold, and then felt stupid for going cold, because it was just a trick of technology: her own name and number were on display.
Instead of 'hello,' she said, "We found the diary, thanks. Anything else?" This got Carlton's immediate attention, and he stood close to listen.
The voice laughed, once again as melodious a sound as she'd ever heard. "Not at present, Detective."
"What's your connection to Lila Crane?"
"Private," he said without rancor. "When you need to know, I'll tell you, but it's truly not germane to your investigation."
Carlton was very still at her side.
"Everything is germane to our investigation. It's how we make sure cases stand up in court."
"You've made cases stand up in court despite the involvement of a flagrant charlatan for years. I doubt my present reticence will be an issue."
She wasn't about to defend Shawn, because that wasn't the point. The D.A. had learned to work around him, and she and Carlton always made damned sure their casework was supported by the actual facts which underlay Shawn's public antics.
The man laughed lightly again, as if he was somehow reading her mind. "Please relay to Detective Lassiter that I'll be touch when the judge signs the warrant."
He was gone a moment later, and she pocketed her phone while meeting Carlton's blue, blue gaze.
"Guy's good," he said. "I don't like it, but he's good. You still think it's not worth tracing the call?"
"More than ever. But don't you think I won't be looking at a list of Bates' known associates again to figure out who he is."
He grinned. "That's my girl."
She knew she was, and together they could kick everyone's ass.
. . . .
. . .
Chief Vick authorized a rush on the authentication of Lila's diary, and by the time Carlton returned from giving testimony, it was back in Juliet's capable hands and she was scribbling notes about her findings.
"This is gold, Carlton." She hurried to his desk and took the seat beside it, referring to the diary in one hand and her notes in the other. "There's nothing else about the secret room, but shortly after they became lovers she told him she kept this, and he told her he wrote in a journal too. Said he'd done it for years. She thought it was a sign he was thoughtful and romantic. I don't think she ever considered he was writing about con jobs and embezzlement and murder."
He honed in on a troubling aspect of this. "But if he knew about her diary, why didn't he take it out of her place? He had a key, and he wouldn't have left anything to chance."
"Because it was the one thing she was smart about. She let him think she was keeping it online. She said having a diary had always been her one real secret and as much as she loved him, she knew he'd want to read it, so she told him it was password-protected through an online service."
"But wouldn't he still badger her about it?"
"He did!" Juliet was beaming. "He put a tracking device on her laptop!"
"Wait. We have her laptop, and there was nothing—"
"For every smart thing she did, Carlton, there were ten dumb things, all fueled by stupid love. She found the software in a routine security update, knew he'd put it there, thought it was charming that he wanted to know about her, and forgave him!"
"Son of a banana eater," he breathed. "There's stupid and there's stupid."
"I know a woman whose boyfriend worked at her bank. He would call her every day and make little comments about what she spent her money on, because he was nosing around in her account. She married him anyway!"
"Deliberately?"
"Deliberately! They were divorced within three months. Anyway, from what I can tell, Lila managed to stall Bates until the end. He seemed to believe her diary was only online, and never suspected she was lying to him."
"Because who would dare," he mused. "Maybe now he thinks if it were findable at all, we'd already have it. Works for me. All right, so we know it's really her diary, we know he told her there's a secret room, and we know he told her there's journals. Let's go talk to Vick. I think this might actually do the trick for the judge."
. . . .
. . .
It nearly did.
They stood shoulder to shoulder with D.A. Ripley before the canny Judge Torrance, who listened to what they had to say, read the concise and eloquent document set before him by Ripley, and then leaned back in his chair.
"I'll have to think about this."
"Judge Torrance, this is an easy decision," Ripley said, perhaps unwisely. "You know Jason Bates killed this young woman and his wife. This is the first conclusive proof we have that—"
"It's not proof at all," Torrance interrupted. "It's questionably simply hearsay. I don't know that Bates committed these murders, but I do know he's a liar, and a man who's cheating on his wife is damned likely to be lying to his mistress."
Ripley twitched. "Judge, what else can we bring to the table?"
"A roast beef sandwich with a side of fries would be nice, but instead I'll take the night. Come back tomorrow morning and I'll give you my decision." He shooed them out, and Carlton and Juliet left the frustrated Ripley to go back to the station and curse the wheels of justice for being careful and prudent and all the other things justice should be… but which meant they were stonewalled for now.
. . . .
. . .
They didn't hear from their informant.
But just past three a.m., as he lay holding Juliet, her back to him as she slept peacefully, they both woke to the sound of his phone, unusually strident in the cool dark.
He didn't recognize the number, and managed a reasonably brisk greeting.
"Detective." The voice was a bit breathless, a bit heavy. "This is Judge Torrance."
"Judge? Are you all right?" He sat up, feeling Juliet next to him, alert now. If that bastard Bates got to him somehow…
"Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Yes, I'm fine. I just wanted to let you know I'll be signing that warrant in the morning. You can stop by as early as seven to pick it up."
Carlton hesitated only a moment. "I won't be later than that. May I ask what tipped the scales, sir?" He could be polite, even at three a.m., to anyone who was helping him arrest Jason Bates.
But Torrance hesitated longer, until a female voice behind him—most likely his wife Clarice—said something which sounded urgent and insistent.
"Sir?"
Torrance sighed. "Truthfully, Detective, it was a hell of a bad dream. And I know how to take a hint from my subconscious—if not my wife—so you'll get your warrant. Sorry to disturb you, but I knew you wouldn't want any more time wasted. Goodnight, Lassiter."
Carlton put down the phone and stared at Juliet. "Did you hear that?"
She stared back. "Yes."
"We got our warrant because of a bad dream?"
Juliet slowly smiled.
His phone rang again, but only once. Her smile was gone the instant he showed her the display.
You're welcome.
. . . . . .
. . . . .
. . . .
. . .
A/N: I honestly doubt I can finish this before Halloween. I'm going out of town Thursday morning and will have almost no proper Internet access for the following five days. I do have most of the next chapter done and I WILL finish this, but no promises as to how fast!
