Chapter 29 Annie #2
Ian turned to her then, smiling, though his eyes remained cold and hard as ice. “I’m getting to it.” He turned back to Jake. “Did you know Jamie Boyd worked down at the pool?”
Jake folded his arms across his chest. “Of course. So?”
“So, she had a little group of friends that gathered down there on the weekends, and you know how girls like to talk to one another. Sharing all the dirty details of their lives.”
Jake’s fingers were tapping rapidly against his arms now, and Annie could tell it was with great restraint that he was still behind the counter, and not on the other side of the desk, slapping whatever information Ian had right out of him.
“And?”
Ian pulled another cigarette from the pack in his pocket and wagged it between his fingers. “Honestly, Jake, here I was thinking you were smart. Who owns the pool?”
“Your parents,” Jake said without inflection.
“I do,” Ian said sharply, pointing a thumb at his chest. “I own it.”
“Okay, your parents gave it to you. What about it?”
Ian ignored the jab and continued to flick the unlit cigarette back and forth.
“Being the owner, I usually work in that little office around back, that room behind the lifeguard stand, and with my window cracked open, I can hear what goes on outside. Jamie’s friends come down there almost every day, and the way them girls talk”—he laughed and shook his head—“it’s like they haven’t seen each other in years.
They talk about boys, mostly. Their love lives.
Heck, sometimes they even tell me directly if I’m out on deck.
Kinda dropping hints here and there if they’re available, I figure. ”
Annie barely managed to keep her face from folding into a cringe.
She could just picture it, this man in early middle age sidling up to the teen girls beside the pool.
There was a specific breed of man, a specific breed of snake, that specialized in mistaking the innocent conversations of young women for an invitation.
“So, you overheard something about Jamie’s love life,” Jake said, steering Ian back to the point at hand. “What was it?”
“Not overheard,” Ian corrected. “Just heard.”
“What was it?”
“Well, as of a week ago, Jamie was dating a guy from up on her road in the briars. Older than her, I gathered from the conversation. Jamie told her friend Stephanie that she was thinking of calling it quits on him; so, we’ve got us a dead girl and a spurned lover on our hands.
I’ve seen enough Law and Order to know that’s something worth looking into. Or, at least, I would… if I were you.”
Jake dropped his gaze to the desk and shuffled the stack of papers there.
“We’ve been made aware of that already, thanks.”
There was dismissal in his tone, but Ian didn’t seem to notice.
“Now, she never said outright that it was Daniel Barela, at least not that I heard, but this is a small town, and there ain’t many single men in it, am I right?”
“You’re single,” Annie pointed out, failing to keep the haughtiness out of her voice.
Something like surprise flickered in Ian’s dark eyes, and one corner of his mouth twisted sourly.
“By choice,” he retorted. “It’s not like I couldn’t have any one of those girls if I wanted to.”
Jake’s hands clenched into fists on the desk. “Be careful, Ian. Some of those girls you’re talking about are minors.”
“Jamie was nineteen.” Ian turned for the door and pushed it open with a flat hand. Halfway out, he paused to look back over his shoulder. “And trust me when I tell you this: She was no child.”
He was out the door and gone before either of them could respond.
“What a creep,” Annie breathed as Jake sank heavily into his chair.
The phone rang again, and this time Jake was the one to lift it from the cradle and slam it down, yanking the cord from the back for good measure.
A full minute passed, Annie staring at Jake, and Jake staring at the phone.
“I need to go to Vancouver,” he said at last. “That’s the closest circuit judge from here.”
Annie’s brows drew together. “What do you need a circuit judge for?”
Jake turned to meet her gaze with eyes full of misery. “A circuit judge is the one who issues an arrest warrant.”
Annie blanched, and for several seconds she could say nothing. She knew the indignation was unwarranted, but it welled up in her chest anyway, bursting out in a storm of words.
“You can’t be serious… You’re his best friend, Jake, you guys have known each other for years. He trusts you, and you’re just going to waltz up there and slap a pair of handcuffs on him?”
Jake didn’t look at her as the words fell like blows, and when she was finished, he merely shook his head.
“What else can I do, Annie? He’s avoiding me.
There’s a reason he never went home last night.
I know the guy. I know him better than just about anyone else does.
Daniel’s a turtle, he gets into his shell and there’s no getting him out of it.
I have to force him onto neutral territory.
I have to put him into a situation where he has to answer questions.
Where he has the fear of the law hanging over his head and can see me as something other than the guy he goes fishing with on Saturdays. ”
Jake was right, and there was no arguing it, but stubborn tears pricked at Annie’s eyes anyway as her chest rose and fell in silence.
“If you have anyone else we should investigate, I’m all ears,” he said. “But the fact is, you don’t. You and I both know we have more than enough evidence for a warrant. And frankly, putting it off is not just stupid, it’s negligent.”
Annie sat back in her chair, suddenly worn-out and exhausted and a hundred years old.
Why was she fighting back so hard against Daniel as the obvious suspect?
Why was she clinging to the hope that Jamie’s killer was someone else when Jake, who had known Daniel far longer than she had, was already willing to set his personal feelings aside in pursuit of justice.
Jake, who didn’t even have the full story.
Jake, who still believed Daniel Barela was, in fact, Daniel Barela.
When Annie remained silent, Jake sighed again and rose from his chair.
“Can I take your Jeep? I left the cruiser at my place, and I don’t feel like walking all the way back. I won’t be gone more than a few hours.”
“Sure.” She handed him the keys. “Just be careful on the freeway, it’s been stuttering a little bit over fifty-five.”
Jake nodded and turned to leave.
He was halfway to the door when Annie’s conscience got the better of her.
“Wait…”
He stopped, turning back.
Annie pushed aside her guilt. It was the right thing to do. And it was past time.
“There’s something you should know.”
He walked back around the desk. “I’m listening.”
She could feel the words bubbling up, rising from the place where she had buried them. “Jake… Daniel isn’t who you think he is.”