Chapter 4 #2
“What do they want with me? I had nothing to do with anything that’s going on.” He said that McGee had put a burr up their asses and that’s what had them looking. “I’ve been hiding out in the open.”
“Probably the smartest thing you could do. I hope you don’t mind, but a friend of mine is coming here to talk to you.
Now, don’t get upset, but he’s with the FBI.
He wants to talk to you about what you know about what happened.
I told him that you didn’t know all that much, but he said you probably know more than you think. ”
“I only know what I’ve gotten from other people.
” He said she’d been there the morning that it had happened, and that would help them a great deal.
“I’ll tell them what I know for sure and let them decide if I’m going to be arrested or not.
I think I stand a better chance with them than I do McGee. ”
“I’m sure you would. I’m working to get his little ass out of that office as we speak.
He’s done nothing but cause trouble since he was voted in.
I don’t care for him.” She said that she didn’t have a lot of love for him either.
That made David, as he insisted that she call him, laugh.
“I like you, young lady. You don’t pull any punches.
Rocky should be here in an hour, so we’ll eat before he gets here.
He’s been trying to get dirt on McGee for me since the beginning.
So far, he’s found a great deal more than I ever dreamed possible for an elected official.
I wonder if anyone did a deep dive into his life before he was put in the running for chief of police? ”
“Rosie did, but she wouldn’t have had access to one as deep as the Feds would.
I don’t know why, but she said that was all she could do.
I don’t think she liked him from the beginning either.
Nor did the mayor. But the people voted him in, and that’s what they ended up with.
I’ve heard that he leaves the office at eight sharp and doesn’t return until the next morning.
There are no assignments made, nor does anyone in the department go out on patrols anymore.
The entire staff had gone to shit.” Gleason apologized to her about his language.
She snorted at him and told him to grow up.
“I just like you and don’t want you to think that I’m like this all the time. ”
“I don’t care. It’s not like we’re dating or anything. You’re just a nice man with lots of money, who I happen to be living in his greenhouse. Nothing more. As soon as this is all finished up, I’ll be moving on, and you’re going to find yourself a nice wife and have fifty babies.”
“I hope the fuck not.” He looked so shocked that she had to laugh, too.
It was fun teasing Gleason. He would embarrass easily, and his cheeks would turn a nice shade of pink.
“I wouldn’t mind a couple of kids, but not fifty.
And I’d love to find myself a wife first who would put up with me. I’m not easy to live with.”
“I think you’re just fine.” He kissed her on the cheek, and she was the one who turned pink this time.
No one had kissed her any place in years, and it felt kind of nice.
When they were sitting down to dinner, steak and baked potatoes, she had to breathe several times in and out to make herself not gobble it all up in one bite.
The dinner couldn’t have been any better, and she thought it had a great deal to do with the company she was with.
David and Alice were the perfect hosts, and Gleason was just about the sweetest person that she could have met.
Rocky showed up as they were having dessert, and he joined them.
He didn’t talk business at the table, and she realized that nothing was businesslike while they’d been eating.
It was mostly about their day and how they were getting things done with their house.
Gleason was happy to have his finished, and so were the Winchesters.
She didn’t know the entire story behind the Pennington farm being sold to David, but she thought that it sounded like it might have been a good story and was looking forward to hearing it someday soon.
~*~
Rocky couldn’t believe his luck in finding the girl.
Well, he’d not found her, but here she was in the flesh.
He liked her, too. She was a no-nonsense kind of person, and if you asked her a question, you’d better be expecting the truth.
He thought that he could get a great deal of information from her, too. Like what she was telling them now.
“The bodies had been moved. Not Mr. Shadows but the others.” He asked her how she knew that.
“When I was rushed in through the front door, the bodies were lying about where you’d think they were when they’d been shot.
But when I was leaving the place, they’d been moved to the floor and had tablecloths over them.
Also, Jamie, he and I did dishes together, had been shot in the dishwashing area, and his body was in the middle of the kitchen where they had us line up. ”
“McGee said that they hadn’t touched a thing but called us first thing.” She shook her head and said that the waitstaff who had been in the kitchen had been moved as well. “The little cocksucker lied to us.”
“I don’t know how you’re supposed to get any evidence around the place either.
They were walking around picking things up and putting them away, like the salad bar.
It was open when I first got there, and the others were eating from it like it was a buffet.
They were eating the things that the cook had been getting ready for the day, too.
” Rocky wasn’t pleased, and he was trying his best not to take it out on the young woman.
She was giving him information that he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
McGee had been lying to them the whole time.
“Also, you should know that we were never allowed to go in the back door to come into work. It was the front door or nothing. Since some of the food had been burnt in the kitchen, they opened the back door to air things out. The officers were going back there to smoke.”
He was getting things from Hailey that he should have gotten from McGee. And the very fact that the man had kept the girl there for over two hours and told him nothing about her was something he was going to get to the bottom of the next time he saw him.
“I gave them fake information when I was leaving. They let me and one other person leave, but told us not to leave town. I don’t know what they expected us to do for them.
They’d already messed up the crime scene by having us all sitting in the kitchen with the dead bodies.
The cops were no better.” He asked her what she meant.
“When I gave them the fake information, they used the pedestal that Mrs. Shadow had been lying against when I first came in. That’s why I’m so sure that her body was moved.
They couldn’t have gotten to that thing without moving her.
She and her daughter had been laid out in the middle of the main hall and covered up with tablecloths. ”
“He said that was the way that he’d found them.
That’s why he didn’t think it was a mob hit.
That they took the time to cover the dead.
And as far as you giving them your information, he said that no one else had been alive when they showed up.
There were only the three of you, from what you’re telling me.
” She told him about someone she’d dubbed as winker.
“Do you think she was trying to tell you something? What do you think it might have been?”
“I’d never seen her before. She might have worked the back line, the kitchen area where the prep was made, but I’d never seen her.
She looked like she was a drug addict, the way she looked like she could use a good meal and a bath.
” Rocky wondered aloud if she might have been from the lower levels.
“I don’t know anything about that other than what Jamie told me.
He told me that the shit was going to hit the fan in the place and that I was to get out and never return.
He even helped me get the fake identification I used when I left.
Not to mention how to stay off the grid.
We had a lot of time to talk about stuff since we were never busy there.
I could have washed the dishes all in one rack from the entire night, that’s how unbusy we were. ”
They talked for over three hours. He was beginning to see that McGee had been hanging around the site to throw them off track.
The man had done enough damage to the crime scene that there would be no way they’d be able to make an arrest without arresting him first. He and the entire police department needed to be fired and put in prison.
Every person around the world knows about crime scene integrity, even if they’d only watched one or two cop shows on television.
He was going to have McGee arrested as soon as possible and find out what his excuses were about how he’d messed things up with the scene.
He’d not realized that it was so late until Alice said she was headed to bed. Apologizing to the couple, he said that he got caught up in the story that she was telling them, and he lost track of time.
“You say you’re going to call in McGee?” He said he was going to do that first thing in the morning.
“Then it was well worth it to be up late. I want the shit gone and the sooner the better. Did I tell you that he’s not been in the office since this thing started? What kind of department is he running?”