Chapter Eleven
Chapter
Eleven
I Hit the Mother Lode
Mo
“Fuck, Mo. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
Lawson hit him with that the second his foot hit the ground
floor after he left Lottie in bed with her mother and sister.
Mo looked to the man.
He looked wrecked.
Mitch Lawson was about doing what he could to make things
right, not the other way around.
Freaking Lottie like that wasn’t in his DNA and knowing he
did gutted him.
But that was on Mo.
She’d shown her level of fear that first night.
He should have known something like this would happen and
the second Mitch and Slim showed, he should have been on that.
“I know you didn’t,” Mo replied. “She knows you didn’t.
She’s a together woman. Puts on a tough front. Even I didn’t know she wasn’t hangin’ in there, Mitch. And you couldn’t know, Lottie bein’ how she is, that we hadn’t kept her up to date.
That’s on me. I should have warned you. But like I told you outside, she
doesn’t know anything. The first letter, that’s it.”
Lawson nodded.
“Right. Let’s just get this done,” Mo said, moving into the
living room.
He was shocked as shit when they settled in, the Nightingale
brothers (Lee and Hank), the Chavez brothers (Eddie and Hector), Tex, Vance,
Luke and Ren all stood at his back.
Guess his approval rating went up.
In that moment, he couldn’t care less. He needed to focus on
getting this done so he could get back to his girl.
He leveled his eyes to Lawson and Lucas who sat next to each
other at the dining room table after Mo sat in the chair at the head, where
Lottie had been.
Lawson had dealt with it (for now) and had his game face on.
And Lawson started it, taking point as bad cop, though Mo
suspected Lucas might not take the role of good.
“Axl reports he locked this guy down because you called him
in the crowd.”
Axl would not report that.
Fuck, this wasn’t going to go easy.
But it couldn’t.
If they appeared to be sweeping shit under the rug, this whackjob could walk.
“I didn’t get a good vibe from him, but he wasn’t notable,
which is why I didn’t clock him at King Soopers where I saw him first,” Mo
somewhat confirmed. “But I made the call and Axl said he was on him. I don’t
know anything about locking him down and that wasn’t our remit, so I can’t
confirm if he locked him down. But I’d be surprised Axl would do that unless
the man gave Axl a reason to lock him down.”
“The suspect reports, when he was approached, he tried to
leave and wasn’t allowed. Were you a witness to that?” Lucas asked.
“I was on Lottie in the dressing room. So no.”
“You just tagged him as a person of interest and then you
took care of Lottie,” Lawson said.
Mo nodded.
“You need to make a statement on the record of that and the
King Soopers sighting,” Lucas remarked. “You sure it was him at the store?”
“A hundred percent, honestly, no. But gut, the second I saw
him in the club, I’d bet all I had on the fact it was him checkin’
out cucumbers.”
Lawson and Lucas looked at each other.
“Receipt,” Lawson muttered.
“Noted,” Lucas muttered back.
That meant they’d search through the guy’s stuff and try to
find a receipt to place him at the store, verifying Mo’s statement so Mo didn’t
have to be a hundred percent on placing him there.
And Mo hoped that guy bought something and kept the receipt.
“I’ll go on the record about it,” Mo added. “When I clocked
him at the club, he wasn’t watching Lottie. He had eyes on me.”
“He threatened your life in the last letter,” Lucas noted.
Mo felt the men behind him shift and wondered if they knew
that part.
“Yup.”
“And you didn’t want the police called in?”
“Smithie’s call. Letters addressed to him.”
Neither Lucas nor Lawson looked happy about that.
“But you were directly threatened,” Lawson reminded him.
“I look like a guy who can’t take care of myself?” Mo asked.
“No,” Lawson replied. “The man states his wallet was
forcibly taken from him in Smithie’s office and he was detained against his
will.”
Well, hell.
No, this wasn’t gonna go easy.
“I was on Lottie,” he reiterated.
“You don’t know about that?” Lucas asked, watching him
closely.
He did.
“I was on Lottie.”
“You don’t know about that,” Lucas repeated, not in question
form this time, but it was still a question.
“Asked and answered,” Lee declared. “Move on, Slim.”
“Lee, let them do their jobs,” Hank said quietly.
Hank, also a cop, knew the game and he knew it had to be
played.
Lee just wanted them out of the house so it could quiet down
for Lottie.
There was a knock on the door.
Seemed things weren’t going to quiet down for Lottie.
Fuck.
“On it,” Hector said, and he moved.
“I’m sorry, but it wasn’t actually answered, Lee,” Lawson
pointed out.
“Tagged the guy. Waited until the lights went down seein’ as I figured he knew me, and that I might know about
him, I didn’t want to tweak him by talking into my radio,” Mo put in and Lawson
and Lucas’s attention came back to him. “The lights went down after Lottie’s
set. I informed the team. Axl stated he was on him. I got Lottie to the
dressing room, she locked herself in. I called it into Hawk. I told him the
level of my certainty this was our guy, which was high. Hawk made the call.”
“And that call was?” Lawson asked.
“I told you that call, Mitch,” Hawk said, striding toward
them in front of Hector. “Now, Mo doesn’t need an attorney, but I’m fuckin’ gonna get him one just to fuck your day up if this shit
goes on longer.”
Hawk knew the game.
It just got under his skin when his men were forced to play
it.
“Smithie, nor you, nor any member of your team, nor any
employee of the club can detain a man, Hawk,” Lawson retorted.
“Yes we can as hired security for that club,” Hawk returned.
Lawson knew that to be true, so he let it go and switched
subjects. “He reports his wallet was forcibly removed from his person.”
“I’m not surprised he’s offering false testimony, Mitch,
considering what was found in his house,” Hawk clipped. “But at the time, when
we shared our concerns, he shared he had nothing to hide, was happy for us to
enter his house and do a search, something we did. He thought we were bluffing,
didn’t understand the scope of our security remit with Smithie or thought this
right here would get what was in his house made inadmissible after what he’ll
claim is an illegal search. Now he’s falsifying his story, deciding this will
be his defense when his shit got hot.”
Mo remained silent.
The shifting behind him ceased.
“But we got witnesses to the effect of our story,” Hawk
carried on. “And he’s got a basement fitted with soundproofing and other things
I don’t need to describe since you saw it. He got agitated during the time he
chose not to leave Smithie’s office, probably cottoning onto the fact we
weren’t bluffing. He was cocky at first, and if you read his letters, you’ll
get why. He thought he was on his way, his confidence growing.”
They definitely knew that last.
“So we did detain him,” Hawk went on. “Just not
forcibly. But we were adamant about it once Jorge found what was in his house
and I called you. I made that order. So that’s on me. But Mo wasn’t around for
any of that. So how about Mo comes down to make a statement when his woman
isn’t upstairs, workin’ off a week’s worth of tension
caused by the likes of this man having her in his sights and we move on from
here.”
Mo wondered who’d called Hawk in.
His guess was Lucas.
But it also could have been Lawson.
He’d never know because he’d never ask, and it didn’t matter
anyway.
It was just a game that needed to be played to put a sick
man down.
“By the time we hit that club, Hawk, all the patrons were
gone so we couldn’t question them. And none of the employees are reporting the
incident where your man Axl forcibly locked down the suspect and took him up to
the office,” Lawson noted.
“That was because Axl and Jaylen asked him up to the office
and he came of his own free will,” Hawk replied.
“And again, he says otherwise,” Lucas pointed out.
“And again, with what Jorge told me was in his house, I’m
not surprised,” Hawk fired back. “Are you? You got him on intent. You got him
on stalking. You got him on malice aforethought, times two.” He jerked his head
toward Mo, indicating the death threat. “And the Feds got him on using the
United States postal service to deliver a threat. Three counts. You call in the
Feds?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said.
“Now you’re tellin’ me this guy
who had that shit in his house is gonna roll into a
court of law, whine about Smithie and my boys forcibly capturing and detaining
him when the man doesn’t have a mark on him, have pictures shown of that
basement, his journals passed around to a jury, those letters read, and he’s gonna get off?” Hawk asked.
Axl had a talent at that, a capture with no marks.
Downright skilled.
Mo did not smile.
But he wanted to.
“We’re tellin’ you, if we don’t
hand everything to the DA with all of it tied up tight, he’s gonna find a crack to slip through so maybe you can back
off and let us do our job,” Lawson replied.
“And I’ll repeat, I’m good to go down to the station, but I
told you what I saw, where I saw it, what I did, what I reported to Hawk, which
by the way, turned out to be correct, and that I was on Lottie,” Mo
butted in.
“And Lottie…?” Lucas pressed.
“Was in the dressing room, then in my truck, then in bed
asleep and she doesn’t know dick,” Mo told him. “The only letter she saw was
the first, everyone’s call considering the escalation of menacing language.”
“She might hear it if this goes to trial,” Lawson said
carefully.
“I don’t know why, since she doesn’t know dick, so there’d
be no reason to call her as a witness. She doesn’t even know what this guy
looks like,” Mo bit off.
“We’re gonna have to talk to her,”
Lucas said even more carefully.
“You’re gonna have to wait,” Mo
clipped.
Lucas nodded.
“So are we done?” Mo asked.
“We’re done, but we’ll need you to come in as soon as you