Alex POV
I took the call from Carolyn because I thought it was time to take a break.
Mary was throwing quite a bit of information at us, and I knew that not only did John need a moment, but also that Bobby would want to let the details swim around in his head for a minute.
So I excused myself and stepped out, knowing that Bobby would follow.
"It's Carolyn," I told him just before I answered.
I said hello to her as I watched him pace the hallway.
"What's new out there?" she asked me.
Very good question, I thought.
Because basically, everything was new.
But I couldn't exactly tell her that.
I mean, I could.
And eventually, I probably would.
Mike and Carolyn knowing the truth wasn't going to jeopardize anything. It's not like we knew Heidi's location, or even her new identity. So just knowing that she wasn't dead wouldn't compromise the program.
But it was probably a good idea to at least wait until this whole thing was over.
Until then, the fewer the people in the know, the better.
"We're getting close," I told her ambiguously. "A couple more days, and we should be able to wrap things up."
"Do you need some help?"
"Why?"
"We've had enough of fun and sun," she said on a laugh. "We're kind of itching to get back to work."
"Are you kidding me? You can't entertain yourselves for a whole week in Rio?" I asked her.
"Could you?"
"You forget that Bobby and I spent some time in Mexico last summer, and then we even took a few extra days off so that we could take our time driving home from Florida."
"Oh, I remember that," she teased. "Because then you had to stumble onto a drug-running business, and Bobby got arrested for murder, and…"
"Yeah, okay," I agreed. "So maybe it wasn't a completely relaxing vacation, but still…how are you guys, really?"
"Better," she assured me. "We've done a lot of talking. And I've gone two nights in a row now without bad dreams, so…"
"Okay," I replied. "And Mike?"
"I think that he's a lot better, too."
"Good," I said. And then because I couldn't resist joking with her, I added, "But what I meant is, how is his tan?"
She laughed out loud, and then to my surprise, she answered me.
"Not a tan line in sight," she said. "And believe me, I've checked him out. Thoroughly."
"I bet you have. So, tell me again why you guys are ready to come home?"
"Well, we figured that since we're trying to solve crimes that aren't actually happening…"
"Ah," I said knowingly. "You've been eyeballing the other guests, trying to figure out if they're on the most wanted list?"
"Exactly."
"Well, we'd love to have you, but I'm afraid that by the time you got here, we'd probably be done."
"Okay. Maybe we'll see if Lupo needs our help."
"You've been keeping up with him, haven't you?" I asked her, catching onto the sudden seriousness in her tone of voice.
"Mike called him the other night, but that's it. And hey, if he's got it under control, then we can always work on that backlog that you and Bobby were going to handle. Oh, have you talked to John lately? Mike left him a message, but he hasn't talked with him."
"He's actually in Denver, with us."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said innocently.
"Alex…"
"Nothing is wrong," I promised. "He interviewed some people himself and then decided that he needed to come out here, so we're letting him help. Sort of. But he's fine."
"You just sounded strange when you said that."
I don't know why I kept forgetting that she could read me almost as well as Bobby.
"We'll talk when we're all back in New York, okay?"
I hung up with Carolyn and found Bobby looking at me.
"She knows something is up, huh?"
"Doesn't she always?" I replied. "They're going home today. I imagine they'll jump into the case with Lupo."
"Good," Bobby said firmly.
"I really don't think that there's much of a case left there, do you?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But if there is, they'll figure it out."
"So what do you think of this mess?" I asked him as I gestured towards the conference room door.
"I'm wondering why they falsified an autopsy report and then left questions on it," he stated.
"You think Keyes added that information, knowing that it would be cause for curiosity?"
"Maybe," he agreed. "Or someone did. Liz said Stern was clueless, right?"
"Yeah. In fact, she wants to report him to the AMA."
"Well, maybe he didn't remember what happened with the evidence because evidence was never taken."
That made sense.
"Why do you think that Rollins didn't pick up on it?" I asked him.
Because Rollins had sent us the autopsy report.
Would he have really sent us information on his case without even glancing at it?
Without recognizing that something was different?
I had a few cases that had rolled over to the cold case files. Ones that I'd never been able to solve. And I knew every detail in each of those files because I'd read over it so many times.
If someone suddenly wanted to look over one of my old cases, wouldn't I look over the information first?
Well, maybe I'd just answered my own question.
Would I look over the file itself, or would I be able to see every detail so vividly in my mind that actually looking at the papers would be unnecessary?
"I wonder what happened to Rollins' old partner," I mused as I decided that maybe it wasn't so strange for Rollins not to have caught the discrepancies.
"I don't even remember the file referencing a partner," Bobby said.
And that was odd, because I didn't either. Detectives worked together, and both names were always somewhere in the file, even if only one did the bulk of the paperwork.
"Let's go check it out," I replied.
Bobby POV
I was secretly pleased that Mike and Carolyn were headed to New York to help out Lupo and Bernard.
Not that I'd wanted them to cut their vacation short. Obviously I didn't want that.
But since they were…
It would really help to ease my mind about the hit.
And it wasn't that I didn't trust Lupo.
I did.
But right now it was just him and Bernard, and the money was still nowhere to be found, so having extra hands would only help to speed up the process.
Alex and I went back into the conference room to find Mary and John talking amiably.
"Who was the original detective along with Rollins?" Alex asked Mary.
I crossed the room and reached for the evidence box while Mary answered after a moment of consideration.
"Detective Lovell. Eric Lovell. He should be in the file, right?"
"No," Alex answered, looking to me for confirmation. I had the reports from the investigating officers in my hand, and nowhere was Lovell's name mentioned.
Only Rollins.
"His name's been removed," I stated.
"What does that mean?" John asked.
"It could mean a lot of things," Mary said. "But we should probably ask Rollins about it."
"Why not just ask Lovell?"
"Well, his name was removed for a reason," Alex added. "We need to find out why. If it was so that we wouldn't know that he was involved in the investigation, and he's assuming that no one would remember him, then…he's not just going to cop to it. Rollins seems to be a stand-up guy though, don't you think? I mean, a little bit defensive, but all in all okay, right?"
She looked at Mary as she asked the question and received an answering nod.
"So Rollins isn't on your radar at all. What about Lovell?" I asked Mary. "Do you remember much about him?"
"I…yeah. I guess," she said. "Some. He played ball."
"Did he know the truth?"
"No, but he didn't question anything. Rollins questioned everything."
"To what end?" I asked her. "Did his captain make him quit the investigation?"
"Ultimately, yes. He kept pushing it, saying that the mugging theory didn't fit."
"That's what I said," John added.
"Right," Mary agreed. "He went to bat for you, John. He didn't like that answer, but his captain finally insisted that he let it go."
"So Rollins is a good guy. Okay, we need to separate him and Keyes."
"What do you think about Keyes?" Mary challenged.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But someone added those details to the autopsy report before sending it to us. Details that would spark our interest and inspire a full-on investigation."
"And you think it's him?"
"So do you," Alex retorted. "You tell us why we're right."
"We've got a notifier installed on Heidi's file. We know when people are looking. Keyes has been into it a few times recently," she admitted. "That's why we started taking a closer look at him. And he found that ballistics match, which never should've been found. After he made that connection, I ran a full report on him."
"And?"
"And he has too much money."
"What else?" I asked.
It had to be more than that. She'd been sure enough to follow Keyes from the police department last night.
"The bust that made his career, the one that got him detective. It was a drug bust. He logged in twenty-three pounds of mile high, and cuffed two major runners."
"How does that make him look suspicious?" Alex asked, echoing my exact thought.
If I'd known that before, it would've made me look in the other direction because that should've meant that he was in Valero's crosshairs, not on his payroll.
"On the way to the station, he got jacked," she said.
"A cop got jacked?" John asked. "How does that work?"
"According to Keyes, two black SUVs cut him off, forcing him to stop on a lonely stretch of road. They held him and his partner at gunpoint, forced them to let the runners out of the back, and they took custody of the coke."
"And then what?" I asked incredulously.
"Keyes' partner was killed. Keyes was shot and left for dead."
"Okay, still..." Alex questioned. "Wouldn't that mean that they'd keep coming after him?"
"Left for dead was Keyes' description," Mary clarified. "His partner was shot in the head. Twice. Keyes was shot in the arm."
"So he sold out to Valero," I stated.
It was the only explanation. Keyes had begged for his life and then promised to be Valero's eyes and ears in the department.
"So Valero gets arrested for killing Cortez, and that's when he starts getting worried about his future in the drug business. He remembers Heidi as probably the only one who could or would testify against him, and he uses his favor with Keyes to see if he can find out whether she's alive or not. And if she is, then he's going to try to kill her for real this time. Does that about sum it up?" John asked.
"I think you've got a knack for this, John," Mary said with a wry smile. "That's exactly where we are. So what's next?"
She looked at me and Alex when she said this, and I appreciated the respect that she was offering us.
"We want to talk to Rollins without Keyes around," Alex said. "Which will be harder than it sounds."
"What if I help?" John asked.
"No," Mary said quickly.
"Don't say no until you hear my idea."
"I don't have to hear it," she fired back. "You're not law enforcement. You're not an investigator. You stay in the hotel."
"Okay, so I'm a civilian, which also means that you can't tell me where I can and cannot go," he retorted. "If I want to walk into the Denver Police Station and ask to speak to Detective Keyes, you aren't exactly authorized to stop me."
I caught Alex's eye over their heads as they continued to bicker. She smirked at me, and I bit back a grin.
We let them go at it for another couple of minutes, and then Alex cleared her throat.
"If you two are done arguing, we thought that maybe you'd like to hear our idea."
"What?" Mary asked crossly, clearly unused to not getting her way in this type of situation.
And I guess she did always get her way, because she usually dealt with people who were contracted to do as she told them.
"We'll go to the station with John," I said, picking up Alex's thread. "We'll work it out so that he's left alone with Keyes."
"And then you can tell him that we've got a lead," Alex said, looking at John. "And that we're pretty sure that Heidi's alive."
"Fine," Mary groused. "What the hell? Why don't you just let him tell Keyes that Heidi's living in Denver?"
"That's kind of what I was thinking," I said, even though I knew that she'd been being a smartass. "Let's keep it simple. And the theory that you guys would hide her here makes sense. It's like hiding in plain sight."
"No. No it doesn't make sense," she argued. "We would never ever do that."
"But they don't know that," Alex said. "And if it's John dropping the information, Keyes won't be suspicious."
"So you think Keyes will tell Valero, and get his orders, and then keep a tail on you two until you lead him to Heidi."
"It's worth a shot, don't you think?"
"I think…" Mary began slowly, and I was sure that she was going to dig in her heels. "That it just might work."
But then she turned to John and added, "But just because you win this one, doesn't mean that you'll win them all. And you stay in the police department."
"I got it," he said.
"I mean it," she continued. "If he wants to go for a ride, take you to buy ice cream, or show you a puppy that he says he has in the back of his van, I don't care. You don't leave that building."
"I got it," John said again.
She sat back in her chair and shook her head.
"I don't like this."
"What's the worst that could happen?" John asked innocently.
Alex and I looked at each other, and then at Mary, who appeared ready to spout off a long lists of possible scenarios.
"We'll be fine," I said quickly before she could speak. "We'll go to the police station, John will plant the seed, and while he's talking to him, Alex and I will get to Rollins. And you'll be outside listening to everything."
"Lord help us all," Mary mumbled.
TBC...
