Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (2 page)

“No shit.”

“Hey, it’s clear,” the
second cop said, holstering his weapon. He glanced over to me and the old woman
and chuckled. “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “Zoe Grey, right? Ellmann’s
girl?” Then he laughed. “This is great.”

“Ellmann’s girl?” I
repeated, looking between them. “Is that what you guys call me?” I gave Frye a
pointed look.

Frye had the wisdom to
look cautious and slightly embarrassed. The other guy just chuckled again and
nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “But
it’s true, isn’t it?”

I sighed. I wasn’t
sure how I felt about my identity as “Ellmann’s girl.” True or not.

“Whatever. Mind giving
me a hand here?”

They looked at each
other then back to me. After a very long minute, they stepped over Dennison and
each took the old woman by an arm, easily hauling her up.

“Don’t let her go,” I
said, getting to my feet, a wary eye on the woman. “Not until I’m long gone.”

Frye looked me over.
“She do that to you?”

I was almost afraid to
know what the damage had been. From what I could see, there was blood on my
jeans and shirt, and my shirt was torn. My left cheek and the side of my neck
burned where her nails had clawed me, and they felt sticky with blood. The
chunks of hair that had come loose from my ponytail were stuck in it.

“Yeah.”

“You need an
ambulance?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Better take your skip
and go then. We’ll stay with her until EMS gets here.”

I didn’t wait around
to be told twice.

“Thanks. Appreciate
it.”

I went to Dennison,
grabbed an arm and his belt, and pulled him to his feet. The pain bloomed in my
shoulder again, and I winced.

“Should you be
working?” Frye asked, having seen my face.

 “It’s been six weeks.
The doctor released me.” Technically a true statement. Technically.

“He know this is what
you’re doing?”

No. That was the rub.
But I had sat around for as long as I was able.

“I’m fine,” I said.
“Good to see you, Frye.” I looked at the other guy. “What’s your name?”

“Brooks. Jason Brooks.
I just started a few weeks ago. I’ll probably see you around.” He grinned
again, amused.

“Right. Well, Brooks,
tread lightly.”

Confusion pinched his
eyebrows together. He glanced at Frye, who gave a small nod.

I steered Dennison out
the door and off the porch.

__________

I parked my truck outside the
physical therapy office and shot a glance at the rearview mirror. After my
early morning escapade, I’d dropped Dennison off at the detention center and
gone home to clean up. I had to give it to her; the crazy old bird had gotten
in a few good blows.

There were twin
stripes across the bottom of my left cheek and jaw and a trio along the side of
my neck. They were all red and ugly, but the ones on my neck were far worse,
bruised and gapping. Now I wore a white dressing over them, but that didn’t
necessarily look any better.

Of course, the old
woman had been treated in the emergency department and transferred to the psych
hospital, so I’d definitely come out ahead. Frye had called to tell me the
doctors were detaining her on a 72-hour hold. I suspected the woman had been a
hamburger short of a happy meal before she’d ever met me, but the last thing my
reputation needed was a rumor about how I’d driven an old woman nutty.

I gathered my long
hazelnut-colored hair into a knot on top of my head and pinned back my long
bangs. As summer stretched on, more streaks of red and blonde were appearing.
There are also quite a few grays now, too—a parting gift from a terrible
supervisor and a lousy man currently serving a prison sentence. Payback is a
bitch, as they say. Whatever the colors, my
hair is a hot mess as often as not. Reminiscent of a
90s-era Julia Roberts, it is thick, wavy, and has a mind of its own.

My eyes fluctuate
between deep green and hazel depending on my mood, burning darker with emotion.
This morning, they were hazel.
I
have fair skin that never tans, only burns, and freckles across my nose. I’m
five eight most days, five nine on really good days, and currently only
thirty-five pounds overweight. It had been more, but regular visits to the gym
had helped trim down that number. Of course, getting shot really jump-started
the decrease. Not that I would recommend a gunshot wound as a means of weight
loss.

I was dressed in my
usual uniform of jeans and a t-shirt, my newest accessory on the bench seat
beside me. For the last six weeks, I’d been under strict doctor’s orders to
wear a sling when up and around. For the most part, I complied, particularly in
the beginning. But six weeks is a long time, and not only was the sling a
hindrance, I preferred to do without the pain and stiffness caused by the
prolonged immobility.

Still, I put the sling
on now and got out of the truck. The physical therapy office, located in the
old Women’s Clinic building on Prospect and Lemay, was hopping for nine a.m..
The place was filled with the elderly, who were all packing an assortment of
equipment: wheelchairs, walkers, canes, adult children. They all stared openly
at the bandage on my neck. Someone’s hearing aid was buzzing. And, as I took
the only available chair, the old woman next to me let go a breezer. My eyes
started watering almost immediately.

My therapist is a
short white guy named Sam with a bald head who’s as bulky as a refrigerator.
Despite his height, he’s a man anyone should think twice about tangling with; he
could wipe the floor with a man twice his size. Sam’s in his forties and still
does competitions like Ironman. And wins. He’s like our local, domestic version
of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

By the time he called
my name, I was certain my lips were blue from lack of oxygen. I practically ran
out of the lobby.

“What happened there?”
he asked, pointing at my face as he limped along beside me.

“Nothing, really,” I
said with the wave of a hand. “Just a small misunderstanding.”

“That seems to happen
to you a lot.”

Yes. It did.

“No crutches today?” I
asked, looking down at his knee. I could see the brace under his scrub pants.

We walked through the
gym and into a private exam room.

“Nope.” He grinned.
“Just got cleared Wednesday.”

“That’s great.
Congratulations.”

He’d messed up his
knee a couple months ago and was recovering from surgery. We had this in
common.

About seven weeks ago,
I’d been working full time for a property management company and seen my client
stabbed when I’d arrived to show her an apartment. Incidentally, this was how I
met Ellmann; he’d been the lead investigator on the case. Guilt and curiosity
and whatever else had driven me to start poking into things myself. I didn’t
understand until too late that I‘d been poking at a hornets’ nest. And I’d
gotten stung.

There were four
subsequent attempts on my life. I was shot twice, once in the left shoulder and
once in the right thigh. The shoulder injury is by far the worst. The bullet
entered just below my collarbone and lodged against my scapula. After being surgically
repaired, everything had been re-damaged in my escape when the killers had
kidnapped me. The leg injury was through-and-through and left almost no
lingering affects aside from matching scars on both sides of my thigh. I don’t
even walk with a limp anymore.

I sat on the table and
removed the sling.

“How’s the shoulder
feel?”

“Better.” Truthfully,
it was aching from my run-in with the Dennisons that morning.

He pulled some
measuring equipment out of a drawer and walked me through a series of tests,
making notes on a piece of scrap paper from his pocket. We chatted about his
latest competition and my gym workout routine. He’d finished second in the St.
George Ironman triathlon, and I was back to thirty minutes on the elliptical
three days a week. He would have come in first had he not tripped over the
runner that went down in front of him and torn several ligaments in his knee. I
was considering pushing myself to forty minutes, now that my leg was healed.

Exam complete, he sat
at the small desk in the corner and punched notes into my chart on the
computer.

“Your strength has
improved greatly,” he said. “You’re about eighty-eight percent recovered
there.”

“I sense a ‘but’
coming.”

“
But
your range
of motion is less than ideal—less than what I’d expect to see at this stage.
Have you been doing your home exercises?” He turned away from the computer and looked
at me.

“Yes.” And it was the
truth. Generally speaking, I have a hard time taking orders of any kind. But it
was my shoulder in question, and since it had been compromised, I’d discovered
I relied on it more than I realized. I needed it healed and dependable.
Slacking on Sam’s homework wasn’t going to help me accomplish that.

“All right, good,” he
said, turning back to the computer. “I’ll make some adjustments to your routine
today to include more stretching and range-of-motion stuff. I also think we
need a repeat MRI. I’ll call your doctor’s office when we’re through here.”

“Is my shoulder as
good as it’ll get? Dr. Allen projected I would only recover eighty-five to
ninety percent of my strength and function.”

Sam looked at me
again. “I’m not saying that. And I’m not giving up. But I don’t want to lead
you on, either. It’s been six weeks. The window for healing is closing.”

“No. I don’t accept
that. It’s
my
shoulder. And this isn’t good enough.”

Sam smiled. “That’s
the Zoe I know and love. A fighter to the end. If you’re serious, there are a
couple other things you can do.” He swung around and pulled open another
drawer, withdrawing two business cards. He handed them to me as he spoke. “We
talked briefly about massage therapy, and I think that would help now.
Particularly with range of motion. Second, you can try acupuncture. When I
injured my knee, the surgeon told me I’d never race again. I couldn’t accept
that, so I started doing some research. Western medicine is beginning to take a
closer look at acupuncture, and it’s proving acupuncture works.” He pointed to
one of the cards. “I see this woman myself. And it’s helping. I plan to compete
in the world championship at the end of the year.”

Wow. I couldn’t deny
that was impressive.

“I’ll call her. Thanks.”

“No problem. Now,
let’s go work out, huh?”

Ironman Sam gave new meaning to the
word “workout.” For this, I loved and hated him in equal measures, though not
always simultaneously. As I walked to the parking lot, it was a lot more of the
latter.

I returned to my
truck, a 1978 International Scout II, and tossed the sling onto the seat. I’d
found the Scout four years before by happenstance. I’d been selling my
Mercedes, a reminder of a life I no longer had nor wanted, and Stan had been
looking to buy something new for his wife. There was something about Stan I
liked, and he must have known then that he was dying. I knocked a big chunk off
the price of the Mercedes, and he threw in the Scout.

Talking around an
ever-present cigarette between his lips, Stan had told me he’d purchased the
thing new in ’77 and, being a mechanic, he had done all the work himself. With
one glance, it was obvious it had been impeccably—and lovingly—maintained. The
Scout is a thing of beauty. It’s hunter green with a white removable hard top.
The interior is an Army-tan color. Everything works as well as it had the day
it rolled off the manufacturing floor.

And almost everything
is original. Shortly after Stan died, the lock on the tailgate busted—the
truck’s way of mourning, no doubt. I never replaced it because I knew Stan would
never approve of anything less than an original Scout part, and my half-assed
attempts to locate one had turned up zilch. But the open tailgate had been how
the kidnappers had succeeded in grabbing me, so I’d gotten serious about
repairing it. My new mechanic, Manny, had fixed it for an exceptionally
reasonable price.

Later, I’d also had
Manny install a new soft top, a sailcloth Replace-a-Top, kidnappers be damned.
I’d debated but ultimately gone ahead because I wasn’t sure Stan would be
disappointed. The thing looked amazing. Besides, I was carefully storing the
hardtop; it could go back on at any time.

The second addition
was a small toolbox bolted to the floor behind the backseat. This fugitive
recovery gig required certain equipment, and not only did I not want to haul it
around with me if I didn’t need it, but I didn’t want it falling into the hands
of anyone else. Three of the handguns I own had been used by bad guys for bad
reasons; I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.

The weather in Colorado
is predictably unpredictable, but by this time in June, it’s pretty much
guaranteed to be hot. Today was no exception. At ten a.m., it was upwards of
ninety degrees. I rolled up the sides of the soft top, wincing once or twice at
the strain on my shoulder, then climbed back in the truck.

I motored out to
Prospect and headed east to
Sideline
Investigations and Bail Bonds,
conveniently located about a mile from the detention center.
Sideline Investigations and Bail
Bonds is owned and operated by a retired cop and his long-time friend. Wesley
Meeker had been a cop in Orlando, Florida, for fifteen years before moving his
family to Fort Collins, where he worked as a detective for another fifteen
years. Shortly after he retired, he realized how incredibly bored he was and
started taking on private cases just to keep busy. He is a born investigator,
and it’s turned out that’s all he really knows how to do.

His friend Mickey
Sands had been an investment banker in Florida until the whole market/economic
crash/crisis thing. He got out just before everything went belly-up and decided
Colorado was as good a place as any to spend his golden years. But he could
only play so much golf. He ended up dabbling in a few business ventures here
and there until his best friend made passing mention of a private investigating
firm.

One thing led to
another, and soon they were set up with an office. Sands worked on running and
building the business while Meeker did the investigating. Within a year, they’d
hired two associates to handle their growing caseload. A year after that, Sands
pushed Meeker into bail bonds because there was such money to be made. Meeker protested
on principle, believing there was something wrong with a former cop helping
criminals get
out
of jail, and left a large part of that to Sands. Now
the partners had six full-time investigators and four full-time bond
enforcement agents. There are others, like me, who work on a case-by-case
basis.

In looking for whoever
had stabbed and killed my client, I’d gotten on the trail of Tyler Jakowski,
a.k.a. Tyler Jay. Tyler Jay had been Larimer County’s number-one most wanted
fugitive for several months running, but I didn’t have any trouble finding him.
After a few minutes on the computer, I had a couple doors to knock on. Tyler
had answered the first one. But he had a dirty cop tipping him off, and it
proved more difficult for the cops to actually arrest him.

In total, I found
Tyler Jay three times in about a week. My information eventually led to his
capture, and I was paid the $15,000 reward he’d had on his head. It was this
that caused Ellmann to suggest fugitive recovery to me in the first place. It
seemed I had a knack for it.

Looking to get out of
property management and for something I might not be easily fired from, I’d
taken the weekend training and certification course. A week later, I’d walked
into Sideline with a certificate of completion and a badge the state gives with
it, which looks a lot like it came out of a Cracker Jack box. It was the sixth
bonds office I’d hit up, and I thought surely it would be my sixth strikeout.
I’d started with the smaller companies, thinking they would be more likely to
take on someone with no experience, and had gone to Sideline last because it
was the biggest in the area. But Dean Amerson, the office manager, had given me
a chance. Maybe because he saw potential in me, or determination. I didn’t
think shaking his hand and thanking him for his service after spotting the Navy
tattoo on his muscled arm had hurt anything, though.

In the movies, people
who do what I do are called bounty hunters, but I’ve learned that title pretty
much went out with the Old West. Whatever we’re called, the concept is the
same: we find people in exchange for money. The way our system works is this:
when people are arrested, they may or may not be eligible for bail. Those who
are may or may not be able to afford bail. Those who can’t may or may not go to
a bondsman. If they do, they put something up as collateral, and the bondsman
pays the money to the court for that person to be released.

An agreement then
exists between the court, the bondee, and the bondsman that the bondee will
appear in court when he is scheduled to. If that person fails to appear in
court, a warrant is issued for his arrest and his bail is forfeited. If that
person is found and returned to jail within a certain amount of time, the
bondsman is returned his money. If not, he loses it. This is where bond
enforcement agents (me) come in. We track down the people who fail to appear in
court, or who are FTA. We arrest them and take them back to jail. For doing
this, we’re paid a percentage of the bond, and, like I mentioned, this can be a
pretty good payday.

I parked out front and
used the front door. Inside, the lobby looks a lot like the one in my dentist’s
office. To the left of the door, a receptionist sits behind a counter with a
headset and a computer. She’s responsible for handling all phone calls and
scheduling all appointments for the office. Off the lobby, back and to the
right, there is a hall that leads to the offices and desks where Sideline staff
work. At the back of the lobby, there is an office with a large window beside
the door: Dean Amerson’s office. Meeker looks like a retired cop. Sands looks
like a retired investment banker. And Dean Amerson looks like what he is:
ex-military.

Amerson is between
thirty-five and forty but looks thirty, and he’s built like a linebacker.
Except Amerson doesn’t look like he’ll sack you before you throw the ball and
score a touchdown for your team. He looks like he’ll rappel from a helicopter
and hack his way through the jungle using only a pocket knife and compass to
find you, kill you, then get back out again, and do it all without ever being
noticed or leaving a trace. No one really knows what Amerson did in the
military, but everyone has their own theory, their own stories. All that’s
known for sure is that Amerson was a Navy S.E.A.L. and attained a very high
rank after serving only fifteen years.

There are lots of
civilian jobs for ex-military guys through private security companies,
especially the guys who did the things no one knows or talks about. I suspected
Amerson had been one of the guys who did those jobs no one talks about. Sands
mentioned to me once it had been a hell of a deal that had made Amerson agree
to work for Sideline and pass up a very high-paying job doing some private
security business in the Middle East. For the last couple years, he’s been
managing the Sideline Investigations and Bail Bonds office. Well, mostly
managing. Sometimes he goes out and gets people himself. I don’t know what the
office was like before Amerson got there, but I know what it’s like now, and I
think it’s damn lucky to have him.

I smiled at the
receptionist, who was on the phone, as I passed. There were always people in
the lobby, and today there were three. Fort Collins is something between
country-bumpkin and big-city metropolitan, an eclectic mixture of many cultures
and histories, but it has its fair share of crime and problems. And, as the
population continues to grow, so does the demand for the services provided by
Sideline Investigations and Bail Bonds. Amerson’s door was closed, but the
blinds on his window were open; he saw me and waved me in.

“I thought you might
drop by, Grey,” he said as he hung up the phone. He wore tan cargo pants and a
blue short-sleeved cargo shirt (his typical uniform). “I heard about your early
morning play date.”

Amerson had contacts
everywhere. It wasn’t hard to believe he’d already heard about the Dennison debacle.

I sat down as my eyes
rolled. “That woman was a magician short of a birthday party before I ever got
there. Probably she never should have been living at home in the first place.”

“Dennison is swearing
revenge. Says you beat up his mother.”

I pointed to my neck.
“If I had, it would have been justified. She attacked me. And she tried to
shoot
me. Anyway, what’s Dennison gonna do? Chuck beer cans at me? Piss on my tires?”

Amerson looked at me
for a beat then shook his head. “The weirdest shit happens to you, Grey.”

I sighed. “I know.”

I set two pieces of
paper between us. They were body receipts. When a bond enforcement agent
delivers a bondee back to jail, the agent is issued a body receipt from the
jail to bring back to the bondsman for payment. It’s basically proof we’ve done
our job and guarantees we get paid.

He picked up the
papers then held one up to me. “This one didn’t take long.”

I shrugged. “She was
seventy. They aren’t hard to catch.”

Senior citizens aren’t
big runners.
I’m
not a big runner. I’d track seniors all day long.

He shook his head as he
turned to his computer. “You’d think someone her age would know better.”

“It’s job security,
right?”

“Sometimes I wonder
what this country is coming to.”

I wasn’t sure what to
say. It scares me too. I thought that if I’d given fifteen years of my life to
defending the country, it would do more than scare me; it would piss me off.
Amerson didn’t seem angry, though. I guess he—and others who served in the
military—saw a lot of stuff that would piss them off if they let it.

“How’s the arm?” he
asked, glancing at me as he tapped out several keystrokes. “Haven’t seen much
of that sling lately.”

“Better. And I hate
the sling.”

“You’ve brought in
quite a few captures, some at decent bounties. I’m sure you can afford to take
a couple weeks off.”

“Geez, Amerson, you
sound like Ellmann. I don’t need time off. I’m fine.”

I was pretty sure I’d
get into trouble if I was just supposed to be sitting around at home doing
nothing. There was a better than fair chance I’d get into plenty of trouble
anyway, but the other way almost guaranteed it.

He clicked the mouse a
couple times then sat back.

“Okay, forget I
mentioned it. I sent your payment.”

“Thanks. What else do
you have?”

He swung his chair to
his left and reached for a stack of files in a tray on the edge of the desk. He
fingered through the stack, calling out names, charges, and recovery fees as he
came to each one. When I was interested, he handed me a file, and I glanced
through it. Most were low-level bonds. The high-dollar cases went directly to
the full-time recovery agents or guys with more experience. Those on Amerson’s
desk were the ones with smaller recovery fees (or bounties) that had come in
within the last twenty-four hours that he would try to assign to agents like
me, who took cases as they came. I handed the files back to him, keeping two.

Martin Fink,
forty-seven, with a history of DUIs, had been arrested for driving under the
influence and without a license. He’d been released on a ten-thousand-dollar
bond and missed his court date two days before. That he’d been eligible for
bail at all was a real testament to the fact that our jails and prisons are
overcrowded. He’d managed to hold a steady job and had a local address. Chances
were good he wouldn’t be hard to bring in.