Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance (9 page)

I SIT AT MY desk, writing up a report on why I brought Lauren into the station in a police car. Lauren sits next to my desk with her head resting on her hand.

“I’m doing the right thing,” she says. “Why can’t you accept that?”

“Because I’m selfish,” I tell her.

“How much longer do I have to stay here?” she asks. “The killer could become spooked if I’m here too long.”

“I don’t consider that a bad thing,” I say. She crosses her arms.

“Maybe I should go ask the FBI,” she says.

“Maybe you should.”

She frowns. “Tobias…come on. Be reasonable. We need to catch this son-of-a-bitch. He’s interested in me. This is the quickest way, and quick is good because it means he doesn’t get to kill another person.”

“This is also the quickest way for you to die,” I hiss. “So don’t tell me to be reasonable because this is the least reasonable plan I’ve ever heard of.”

“Maybe you should trust me,” she says. “You should trust that I can take care of myself.”

“I do trust that you can take care of yourself,” I say. “I don’t trust that you can fight off a sociopath who kills people for fun.”

She stands up. “What if I leave right now?”

“Then you might be in trouble with a very angry mob of people,” I say. “Honestly, I should send you to the psych ward.”

“Why? So that the public thinks that you’ve taken care of the threat?” she asks.

“No, because I think you’re crazy,” I say. She scowls.

“I’m going to go get some coffee,” she says.

“Don’t write any terrorist threats on your way there,” I mutter. She smacks me on the back of the head as she passes by. The FBI agent Jacobs walks up to my desk and sits down in the chair she left.

“I found something weird,” he says. I ignore him, continuing to write about Lauren being taken into the police station. He clears his throat. “We were looking through Lauren’s history, so we could clear her name for the public, but…did you know both her parents died?”

“Yes,” I say. “In a car crash. It’s sad, but not weird.”

“Well, after they died, when she was thirteen, Lauren went to juvie for stabbing another young girl.”

I stop writing. I glance over my shoulder to see Lauren in the break room, stirring sugar into her coffee. “She stabbed someone?”

“With scissors,” Jacobs says.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Lauren Williams?”

“That’s the other thing,” he says. “Her name wasn’t originally Lauren Williams. She had her name legally changed when she was eighteen. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

I run my fingers through my hair. “No. I think she had a traumatic childhood, she lashed out, then she felt ashamed for lashing out, so she changed her last name to escape her reputation.”

“That seems like a lot of compensating you’re doing for her,” he says. “Are you two an item?”

“No,” I spit out. “I just think you’re reaching for something that’s not there. Plenty of people go to juvie. Drop it.”

He sees Lauren approaching and stands up. He gestures for her to sit down and she does. He turns to me.

“I just thought it was something interesting that you should know about,” he says. “You should know as a detective that there are no coincidences.”

“Well, I already wanted to hit you and, coincidentally, you’re in front of me,” I say. “What’s the chance that you go home with a bruised face?”

He glowers at me before turning on his heel and walking away. Lauren tilts her head.

“What was that about?” she asks. “You should be kinder to him. He’s really quite bright for an FBI agent.”

“It’s nothing,” I say. I glance up at her. I try to imagine her trying to kill someone, but her face distorts in my thoughts. The only way I can see her is how she looks right in front of me: beautiful, clever, naive, but most of all, innocent. Everyone in comparison to her seems criminal. Especially me.

~~~~~

After Officer Hamlin and I drop Lauren back off at her apartment, I return to find a folder on my desk. The tab clearly states Lauren Miller. Miller must be the last name that Lauren used to have. I pick it up, intending to throw it in the trash—FBI procedures be damned—but I set it back on my desk. I sit down and take out my notes on the PVP killer case. Even staring at the victim’s bodies can’t distract me from the folder. I flip it open.

Lauren was at a sleepover with four other girls when she stabbed a girl named Jessica Fritz near her clavicle. Lauren pled not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury didn’t believe her and they found her guilty of aggravated assault. She spent a year in a juvenile detention center in Austin, Texas. She was monitored by a parole officer for a year. She changed her name when she was eighteen years old, and there isn’t anything left on her record after that. She doesn’t even have any parking tickets.

Jacobs walks up to my desk. He taps his fingers on a stack of paper.

“I thought you should know,” he says. I shove the folder at him. He takes it.

“I didn’t need to know,” I say. “She’s my partner. I trust her.”

“That’s foolish,” he says. “You barely know her. You’ve only been working with her for a month. Do you trust everyone you meet after a month?”

“I don’t trust people I’ve known for decades,” I say. I stand up. “But I trust her.”

“Well, I’m going to keep looking into her,” he says. “You know she moved here a couple weeks before the killer murdered his or her first victim?”

I grab him and shove him. He falls back into a desk, then slides down to the floor. Another FBI agent walks toward us, his arms tense, ready to defend one of his own.

“You stay away from her,” I tell Jacobs. “Or you will learn how Detroit deals with pricks like you.”

I pick up the folder that fell from Jacobs’ hands and throw it into my trash can. I should always heed my instincts. The last time I ignored them, my partner ended up dead.

~~~~~

I’M RESTLESS. I need to be doing something, not waiting for something to happen. It drove me insane in college when I wanted to be out in the field solving crimes and it’s even worse now. I turn the dial on my shower. As the mirror covers with light steam from the hot water, I slide my pants down to the bathroom floor and strip off my blouse.

When I get into the shower, the sound and sensation of water pounding on me allows me to clear all of my thoughts. My mind changes into a summer rainstorm. Somehow, Tobias slips into my head and I can imagine him with me. In the shower, in the rainstorm—it’s irrelevant, because I can feel only his lips against mine and his fingertips tracing the shape of my body.

Thunder crashes me out of my thoughts. Except it’s not thunder—something has fallen over in my apartment.

I push open the shower door, dripping water all over the floor, and grab my towel. I wrap it around my body and shove open the bathroom door.

I don’t see anything. My Glock is in the nightstand next to my bed. I dash to my bedroom. As I reach for the drawer, someone grabs me from behind. The man shoves me onto the bed and forces me onto my back. I try to hit him, but he grabs both of my wrists and pins them to the bed. I scream. He raises his hand high and slaps me across the face. I keep screaming until he grabs me by the throat. I hit him with my free hand, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. He shifts his body, so my towel unwraps between us.

As the man tries to unbutton his pants, I kick between his legs. He keels over, grabbing his crotch. I shove him off me and run out of my bedroom. I grab my jacket off my coat rack before escaping out the front door. I put it on before rushing outside. I stand outside of my apartment building, trying to figure out where the FBI would hide.

I don’t have to wonder long, as a black sedan drives up to the sidewalk. The FBI agent Swanson jumps out of the car as the man comes running out toward me. Swanson raises his gun and aims it at the man. The man raises his arms in surrender. His jeans are still unbuttoned.

“Hey,” the man says. “This isn’t what it looks like. Everything was consensual.”

Swanson takes out his cellphone and dials a number.

Tobias’ Taurus drives up in front of the black sedan. He jumps out of the car.

“What happened?” he asks. He gazes at me for a moment before looking away. “Lauren, why aren’t you dressed?”

I pull my jacket tighter around me. “I was taking a shower when he broke in.”

“Why wouldn’t you stay in the shower?” he asks. “Lock yourself in the bathroom?”

“This was our one chance to catch him!” I say.

“What?” the man asks. “What are you two talking about? I want my lawyer.”

Tobias takes off his coat and uses the sleeves to tie it around my waist. Without hesitation, he takes his gun and whips the man across the face with it. The man crumples to the sidewalk under a street lamp. I hadn’t realized it when I was fighting for my life, but I know I’ve seen his face before. Tobias seems to have the same moment of recognition.

“You’re the guy who was catcalling Lauren when I walked her home for the first time,” he says.

“Look, police guy, I can’t remember every women I compliment,” the man says, rubbing the cheek that Tobias’ Glock struck.

Tobias glances over his shoulder to look at me. We both seem to try to process the information—could the killer’s stalking have begun way back then?

Swanson gets off his cellphone.

“I can’t get ahold of Hudson,” he says. “He was supposed to be out here tonight too.”

“You should go find Hudson,” Tobias says. “I’ll take this guy into the station, and Lauren…please get back into your apartment, lock your doors, and put on some clothes.”

“Are you kidding me?” I ask. “I’m coming with you. This is the big break. I caused this to happen.”

He throws up his hands. “Fine. Get dressed, come back down, and we can leave.”

I glare at him for a second. “If you leave without me…”

“You’ll kill me,” he finishes. A look I can’t decipher crosses his face—anguish and doubt, possibly. “I know.”

~~~~~

THE MAN WHO BROKE into Lauren’s house is Cody Moore. He is a convicted rapist and he had been accused of aggravated assault, but the case was dropped when the victim chose not to press charges.

“Cody Moore,” I say, sitting across from the man who assaulted Lauren. It takes all of my self-restraint and the fact that the interrogation room has a videocamera in it to not reach over the table and shove my pen through his throat. “You have quite a record. Convicted rapist. Aggravated assault.”

“That aggravated assault charge was dropped,” he says.

“Yes, I see that,” I say, flipping through his folder. “How did you get the victim to do that? Did you threaten him? Should we add death threats and witness tampering to your charges?”

“Look, man, you saw the way that lady looked at me,” he says. “She wanted it. She invited me over and told me she would be in the shower. She said I should come straight in and, ah, surprise her.”

I grit my teeth. “You must be truly psychotic to not understand the gravity of your situation. But maybe that’s what you want. It’s going to be hard to get away with multiple homicides.”

He stares at me blankly. “What? What are you talking about? Nobody died. I thought we were talking about attempted rape charges. Why are you talking about homicide?”

“Because I’m a homicide detective,” I say. “And you attacked another homicide detective, who happens to be my partner. And my partner also happened to be doing something undercover in the attempt to catch a serial killer. Then, you show up.”

“And what?” Cody blurts. “You think I’m a serial killer? No way. I don’t do that shit, man. Do I look like a serial killer to you?”

“No, you look like an asshole that couldn’t plan their own day, much less multiple murders,” I say. “But the BTK killer looked like he wouldn’t be able to figure out how to light a grill and he killed ten people.”

The door swings open. Lauren stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Her hair is still wet and it clings around her neck.

“You left without me,” she says.

“You took too long,” I say.

“I came back down five minutes later!” she says.

“He left without you,” Cody interjects.

“Shut up,” I tell Cody. I turn back to Lauren. “You still got here, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. Swanson drove me here after he found Hudson,” she says. She looks over at Cody. “…with a bullet in his neck.”

“Hudson is dead?” I ask.

“Yeah, and the killer apparently has pretty good accuracy,” Lauren says. Her lower lip stiffens and I can almost feel her guilt over his death seep into the room. “It wasn’t quite sniper range, but the medical examiner thinks that the shooter was at least sixty yards away.”

“So, he shot from a nearby building?” I ask. She nods. I turn back to Cody. “How good are you with guns?”

“I…I hunt sometimes,” he says.

“In Detroit?” I ask. “Because we call hunting humans murder.”

“No, no!” he says. “I go into the country and hunt deer.”

“That would still give you enough practice to be able to shoot long distance,” I say. I stand up. “Stay here.”

I put my hand on Lauren’s elbow and lead her out of the room.

“Do you think it’s him?” she asks as soon as I close the door.

“I can’t tell if he’s really as stupid as he seems or if he’s just acting that way,” I say. “I can’t believe that anyone would be as stupid as him, but he would have to be an extraordinary actor to be faking it. What happened to Hudson?”

“He was shot in his car. He didn’t even see it coming,” she says.

“So, why would the PVP killer murder Hudson if it wasn’t Cody Moore?” I ask. She shrugs.

“Maybe he was planning to come by. Maybe he just didn’t like the FBI being around,” she says. “If he begins to think that I set him up…”

“He won’t,” I say. “We’ll make it seem like the FBI was watching you for suspicious activity. Maybe that’s why he killed Hudson. He thought he was protecting you.”

“The question is if it was Moore who killed him and if Moore is the PVP killer.”

I nod. “We have to find evidence that will either show that he’s the killer or prove that he’s not.”

“Where are we going to get that?”

“The FBI will be investigating where the killer shot from to kill Hudson,” I say. “We shouldn’t interfere with that…it’s one of their own. I think we should go back to Jasmine’s apartment. The killer had to have spent a lot of time there. He must have left more behind than one contact lens that the forensic analysts missed.”

Lauren begins to smile.

“What?” I ask.

“You said we,” she says.

“You’ll have to sneak in,” I say. “In case he’s watching.”

“You said we,” she repeats. “Does that mean you’ll let me be your partner again?”

“The damage is already done,” I say. “I can’t stay mad at you.”

“Because there’s a killer on the loose?” she asks.

“Because once you’re my partner, you’re always my partner,” I say. “Nothing is going to change that.”

She takes my hand and squeezes it. I give her a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Let’s go.”

~~~~~