"This is different," Jo said, admiringly viewing her soundings. She and Janie sat on a park bench, both of them taking in the park's greenery, the sparkling pond, the blue skies, and other park goers enjoying themselves. She unwrapped her avocado and cream cheese sandwich and took a bite.
"Yeah, I decided that we should get out this time; out amongst the throng," Janie replied, grinning around a mouthful of her avocado, bacon and cream cheese sandwich. She wiped her mouth with the paper napkin provided and took a quick gulp of soda.
"Have any idea what that stuff does to your insides?" Jo asked as she disapprovingly eyed her companion and sipped her sparkling water. "They say it melts your insides."
"They. It's always 'they' saying or finding out something bad about something good," Janie scoffed, taking a bigger gulp of soda this time. "They-ey-ey shouldn't make this stuff taste so good, then!"
Jo shook her head, smiling. Nothing ever brought down the spirits of her ever-positive-thinking friend. The only time she'd not seen Sean's sister bubbly and effervescent was during his funeral and those dark days before and months after. Younger than Sean by a year, Jo regarded her more as a sister than an in-law. They'd hit it off almost immediately after he'd introduced them and had grown closer over the years, despite her urging Jo to 'give that Henry guy a chance' because he looked interesting. Interesting. Jo laughed to herself. If you only knew, Janie. But they both had jobs to get back to so she cleared her throat, suddenly unsure of how to broach the subject of Sean's phone calls to her shortly before his death. No easy way to do this, she realized, so just dive in.
"Um, Janie, um, Sean called you a couple of times shortly before he ... before he ... " her voice trailed off again, not wanting to actually say 'died', and kicking herself for not having planned this out better. For still being such a coward to openly discuss the fact that he was dead. It was out there now, though. Nothing else to do but wait and see what she says.
Janie was a bit taken aback at her blunt statement, seemingly out of the blue. "Uh, y-yes," she stammered. "Actually, he called me from the airport right before he boarded with a strange request. I thought he was joking at first, but when he didn't make it back ... " her voice caught in her throat. Then she drew in a long breath and held it, fighting against tears. After a few moments, she released a shuddering exhale and continued.
"He said for me to take care of you; look after you." She looked into Jo's confused frown and added, "I didn't know what he meant then, but he let me know that he was serious. Jo, it's as if he knew that, that he wasn't gonna come back." Janie's eyes glistened, tears threatening to roll down her cheeks. "I never mentioned it to you because ... well ... what good would it have done? Only confused you and caused you more pain," she explained.
Jo swallowed as her mind raced back to that time of their argument the night before he'd left for DC. Had she been so upset with him that she'd ignored any worry or fear that might have been in his voice? In his eyes? "Can you remember what he said to you?"
"He, he did mention something strange in a later phone call. Probably doesn't mean anything, though," Janie said with a slight shrug. "Someone had called his room the morning that he ... that he died. All they said was, 'Have you taken your vitamins today?' and hung up." Janie looked sorrowfully at Jo. "It kind of shook him up, he said, and he'd gotten the same funny call the night before he'd left. That's why he called to make me promise to look after you if, if anything ... " she sighed, not finishing her thought. "I told him that it was just a prank or a robocall misdial from a vitamin company."
The tiny lines between Jo's eyebrows pinched together as her eyes moved slowly from side to side. That phrase. What did it mean? It was obviously some kind of code, but code for what? "I remember now," Jo said. "He was packing and his phone rang. I reached for it to hand it to him but he jumped out of his skin to get to it. Knocked my hand out of the way. He didn't even say hello and ended the call after only a few seconds. When I asked him about the call, he insisted it was nothing. But I could see that it was. It wasn't like him to behave like that and when I pressed him for an explanation, he yelled at me to just drop it and to stop questioning him like he was a suspect in one of my cases."
"Sounds like something he might say but yelling at you?" Janie asked, eyes widened in surprise.
"He'd never raised his voice to me. Never," Jo said. Thinking back now, she recalled that he'd tried to apologize but she was too hurt and angry to have allowed him. "We argued some more; him trying to apologize, me rejecting it. I even accused him of stepping out on me and that's why he wouldn't tell me anything about that phone call. I just grabbed my coat and car keys and stormed out of the house. He called me several times but I refused to answer my phone. By the time I got back home sometime after 2:00 in the morning, he was gone. He'd taken an earlier flight just to ... get away from me and my ... stupid temper." She shook her head, closing her eyes.
"Sean would never have stepped out on you, Jo," Janie reassured her with a slight smile.
"Oh, I know that now, just ... me and this darn temper of mine!" Jo rasped. "But the phone records showed his last call was made to your number at 7:38 AM Eastern time." She looked Janie in the eyes and asked, "What was that call about?" Inwardly, her heart ached at the fact that Sean had not felt comfortable enough to have phoned her instead. Had he really still been that upset with her or ... had he not trusted himself to have kept the worry out of his voice?
"That last call," Janie replied, her mind recalling it. "It must have been one of those butt calls, as they say. But since I'd missed it, it went to voicemail. There are voices in the background but it didn't seem that anyone was speaking directly to me," she said with a quick shrug.
Voices in the background? "Janie, could you tell what were the voices saying? Did one of the voices belong to Sean? Did the other voice belong to another guy? Or to a female?" Jo asked the questions in rapid succession.
"Uh, no, no, couldn't make much out 'cause it was kind of muffled." Janie looked curiously at Jo and asked, "Does any of that matter?"
"I'm not sure," Jo replied. "Wish I could have heard it myself, though."
"Well, you're in luck," Janie told her, a smile finally breaking out on her face. "I saved it so I could tease him about it when he, when he got back," she finished, biting her lower lip. A mannerism that both women shared, stemming from worry, Sean had delighted in teasing them. Something they'd both denied, saying it was a mark of their superior intellect.
Fortunately, Jo knew how tech-savvy Janie was and asked her to forward the saved phone call to her partner, Det. Hanson. Janie pulled out her phone and searched through her phone and found it. While she forwarded a copy to Hanson's phone as an attachment to a text, she told Jo that she'd chosen not to delete it since it was her brother's last sort of message to her.
"Done," Janie said, closing down her phone.
"Thanks," Jo told her. Placing her nearly uneaten lunch back into its bag, she rose from the park bench and faced her friend. "Sorry to cut out on you like this, but I'd like to get back down to the precinct and explain to Mike what he's just received."
Janie abandoned her half-eaten lunch on the bench and stood up to face Jo. "Why would you and your partner even be interested in that voicemail?" When Jo failed to reply immediately, she pressed on. "You guys investigate murders." She searched Jo's eyes, waiting for her to confirm her suspicions. "You think Sean was murdered, don't you?" she whispered, then clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Janie," Jo began, drawing in a shaky breath and letting it out, realizing that the cat was fast escaping this bag. "I can't say anything about it other than we just want to make sure since what you've shared with me has to be looked at in order to rule out that possibility." Or confirm it, she grimly thought. The fact that she believed Henry's theory that Sean had indeed been murdered made her cringe at the half-truth she'd just told Janie. She reached out and squeezed Janie's hand. "I need for you to say nothing about this to anyone else, though." She pulled her car keys from her pocket and told her, "See, I'm not supposed to be on the case. It could jeopardize things down the line."
"Yeah, you and my big brother taught me well about that kind of stuff," Janie acknowledged with a pained smile. "We had lunch. We reminisced. Talked about which guy's got the tightest tush on TV." She and Jo smiled broadly at each other and hugged. "Well, go," she ordered her with a wave of her hand. "You guys do your thing." They exchanged another tight hug before Jo turned to head off to her assigned police vehicle.
vvvv
Mike Hanson's phone alerted him that he had new messages. He set his paper cup of coffee down and set to retrieving them. An eyebrow quirked up at an odd message from Jane Solari. Who was Jane - oh, Sean's sister and Jo's friend. He recalled having met her at the funeral. Nice lady but why would she be texting him? Only one thought came to mind: Jo. She had found something out and convinced her friend to pass it on to him. The veteran detective sighed before reviewing the message. It was always good to have clues that helped in a murder investigation. Disheartening, though, that the murder was that of Jo's husband, Sean. But he realized that he had to check it out like any other piece of possible evidence no matter what the outcome was.
Mike realized that the muffled talking on the voicemail would have to be cleaned up and isolated by the tech staff. He left his desk and walked the few feet over to where they labored, peering at their individual computer screens or hunched over other electronic devices. He walked up and stopped just behind the right shoulder of a techie named Cedric.
"What can I do for you, Detective?" the young man asked, his eyes fixed on the scan activity on his computer screen.
"Got a voicemail I'd like you to listen to," he replied. A smirk crossed his lips when Cedric's ears perked up and he swiveled around in his chair to look up at him.
"Anything's better than watching this boring disc scan/repair progress," Cedric sighed. He held out his hand and Mike gave him the phone. He swiveled back around to his computer but pushed himself over to the left, stopping in front of a computer with a larger monitor. "Meet Big Mamaaaa," he proudly announced to Mike. Mike shook his head, smiling, and sauntered closer to the enthusiastic techie. Cedric made quick work of waking up the computer and hooking the phone up to it. After a few mouse clicks and keystrokes, the computer recognized the phone and its contents were displayed on the screen. Scrolling down, he selected the voicemail in question and clicked it open. As they both listened to the muffled voice or voices, Cedric frowned and informed Mike that it was going to take a while so he'd let him know as soon as he got any results. Mike nodded and decided to get back to his now cold pizza and coffee on his desk. Just as he turned to leave Cedric to his task, the first computer Cedric was seated at ended its scan/repair progress and information began filling the screen.
"Well, looks like Lt. Reece's disc is finally displaying its hidden treasures," Cedric drooled. Mike casually glanced back at the screen as Cedric tilted his head from side to side, frowning. Interested, Mike drew closer, unconsciously mimicking the techie's behavior.
"Whaddaya think all that is?" Mike asked, chuckling.
The frown left Cedric's face and he replied, "I just gather the information, Detective. It's up to you guys to figure out what it is and how it pertains to any of your cases." He spoke as he ignored Mike's frown and he rose to retrieve a copy of the information from the printer. He then closed down the operation and popped the disc out of the computer, transferring it and the print copy into a sealed envelope. After signing off on the outside of the envelope, he presented it to Mike, who begrudgingly took it from him. "Please deliver this to the Lieutenant for me? And I'll get back to work on cleaning up your voicemail."
"Don't mind me, Detective," Cedric apologized wearily. "I've got a lot of stuff going on in here and sometimes I have a tendency to address people as if they were machines." Mike nodded in acceptance of his apology and promptly delivered the envelope and its contents to his boss.
vvvv
"Just a bunch of letters and numbers," Reece muttered, clutching the disc in one hand and holding the print copy of the disc's contents in the other. "Maybe we need to get Henry up here to look at all of this." She handed the items to Mike and reached for her phone's receiver.
Mike looked closer at the letters and numbers and he suddenly recognized something. "Uh, hold on a sec, Lieu." He walked quickly over to her at her desk and leaned down, pointing at one of the lines of information. "This looks like the serial number on a weapon." He straightened up as she took the paper from him and studied it again, frowning. "My dad was a gun collector. I've seen all kinds of weapons, old and new." She looked up at him, frowning more at the implications.
"Gunrunners?" she asked loudly.
"Yeah, probably people we're supposed to trust because they hide behind a uniform or a badge," he replied disdainfully.
"Under color of authority," Reece whispered. "Always hated that phrase. Means cops behaving badly," she added, fuming.
"Er, maybe not just any cops," Mike offered. Reece squinted at him under her tightened brow. "How 'bout alphabet cops?" he asked cryptically, almost drooling at the prospect of slapping cuffs on that slimeball, Fredrickson. "We run those numbers against the stolen firearms database and I'm willing to bet that each one comes up."
Reece's eyebrows flew up, then a smirky smile crossed her face as she also entertained the thought of the FBI's least-liked agent maybe being involved and being ensnared by the long arm of the law. Then she sighed. "This points to some kind of operation involving more than just one person." She sighed and shook her head again. "Other agencies and/or agents involved; ATF, DEA, Customs?" Neither of them spoke as they silently considered the unpleasant possibility that Sean Moore and Agent Trent might not be the only ones to have lost their lives in connection with this criminal activity.
Mike's cell phone buzzed and he quickly answered it. While he conversed with the calling party, he bobbed his head up and down and did his best to contain a big grin. He ended the call and pocketed his phone, turning a jubilant face to Reece.
"You'll never guess what those beautiful techies uncovered!" He quickly left her office and walked back into the tech center, Reece hot on his heels.
vvvv
Jo Martinez pulled into her assigned parking space and exited her vehicle. On the elevator ride up from the parking garage to her floor, she fleetingly thought of stopping off at the morgue to see Henry. Deciding that it was more urgent for her to connect face-to-face with her official partner, Mike Hanson, she resisted the urge to exit at the basement floor, confident that she would see him later. The elevator doors opened up at the fourth floor and she quickly strode out and headed for the bullpen. Her eyes roamed over the bullpen in search of Mike and found him in the tech center with the Lieutenant as a techie pointed to a computer screen and appeared to explain something to them. The disc! The techs were able to get some information off of it! Her first impulse was to join them but she stopped, reminding herself that she was not allowed to be an active part of the investigation into Sean's and Trent's murders. Instead, she sat down at her desk and fiddled with her neglected pile of paperwork that seemed to have doubled in size during her lunch hour. Try as she might, she couldn't forget Janie's words to her during their conversation earlier.
"He said for me to take care of you, Jo. It's as if he knew that he wasn't gonna come back."
She turned her head slightly and covertly viewed the Lieutenant and Mike conversing animatedly out of the corner of her eye. They then disappeared into her office but not before Mike shot her a concerned look and ducked into Reece's office. The look on his face told her that Sean was most likely at the center of their discussion. It felt so awful to watch events unfold from the sidelines during this important investigation, but she understood why it was necessary. Nothing and nobody must get in the way of them getting to the truth of what really happened to him and to Agent Trent. She said a silent prayer and made a silent vow to her late husband. 'I may not have been there for you when you needed me most, Sean, but I promise to do all that I can to help find the bastards who took you away from me.'