Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (3 page)

The second was Cory
Dix, twenty, enrolled in Colorado State University. Dix had been arrested by
CSU police after streaking naked through a campus gathering by a Christian
organization. After making a nuisance of himself there, he came across a pizza
delivery car sitting outside the dorms. The delivery guy was inside, so Dix
drove the car back to his house, one block from campus. He and his roommates had
eaten most the pizza they’d found in the car by the time the police caught up
with him. There was a list of charges, and the bond was for five thousand
dollars. There was no job listed, and his parents, who lived in Washington, put
up the collateral, but he was a full-time student. I thought I could track him
down.

“I’ll take these two.”

“I need someone to
take this one,” he said, pulling the file off the top of the stack before
replacing it in the basket. “Danielle Dillon, felony assault and property destruction,
fifteen-thousand-dollar bond. We forfeit in seventy-two hours.”

I took the file from
him and opened it.

“That’s not much
time,” I said. “Why hasn’t she been found yet?”

“The information
listed for her is either out of date or false. The address we have doesn’t
match the address on file with the DMV or any address known by the police. I’ve
had guys out to all of them and they’ve turned up bupkis. Every phone number
I’ve been able to track down for her is disconnected. None of her friends or
family is being very helpful. You sort of have a gift for running into people.
Maybe you could run into her.”

“Who secured the
bond?” I asked, thumbing through the file.

“Her grandmother. Put
up her house.”

I looked up. “Grandma
is about to lose her house and won’t say where the girl is?”

Amerson shook his
head. “No. I talked to her myself, but I don’t think she
knows
where the
girl is.”

I closed the file and
set it on the other two. “All right, I’ll look into it. But you better have
someone else available, because if I can’t find anything, I don’t want to be
responsible for losing Sideline fifteen grand or an old woman her house.”

Amerson turned to the
computer and began printing the authorization-to-capture paperwork.

“No pressure or
anything, Grey, but if you can’t find her, no one can.”

__________

“How have things been since we last
talked?”

“Fine. No change,
really.”

My therapist and I go
way back. The court had ordered therapy for me thirteen years before when I’d
shot and killed my father after discovering him attempting to molest my younger
brother. He’d also tried to kill me, which was why the police never put me in
jail—or juvenile detention, as it would have been.

For a shrink, Dr.
Cheryl Hobbs isn’t so bad. Now forty-five (or thereabouts), Hobbs is a decent
woman who tells it to me straight, and even if she can be a moron sometimes,
she isn’t totally stupid. She’s about five-five when she stands and is still
rail-thin, though she has gained a couple dress sizes in the years I’ve known
her. She usually wears her shoulder-length light brown hair layered and down,
though today it was up. She has brown eyes and wears square-framed glasses. She
was dressed in a brown knee-length pencil skirt and brown striped button-down
blouse.

But no shrink is
without his or her own issues, and I’ve long suspected for Hobbs it’s a milder
form of OCD. She’s overly particular and detail oriented. A perfectionist, but
to an extreme. This hasn’t necessarily affected my therapy, but it is evident.
Her hair, done up in a French twist, was absolutely perfect, straight and even,
not a single hair out of place. Her glasses never had streaks or smudges, her
clothes were never wrinkled or misaligned, her desk and office were tidy to the
point of Spartan. She had a thing about coasters, and everything was at right
angles. Also, she liked to conduct business in a particular sequence. At
various points in our history, I’d made attempts to alter that sequence, and
the results had not been favorable.

She sat now in the
same chair she always occupied while I was in the one she always indicated for
me. A yellow legal pad was propped on her crossed legs, and she was reviewing
notes from past sessions while occasionally making new notes. I was back in the
sling, less out of compliance and more out of function. I’d filled an ice pack
before leaving the bonds office, and the sling held it in place perfectly.

“What about the
nightmares?”

“I’ve still got them,”
I said, wondering if she thought they’d simply go away.

“Are you still seeing
the same thing? Are you seeing your father?”

With all the attempts
on my life had come incidents of self-defense. Not unexpectedly, I had some
post-traumatic stress stuff after killing my father. Not surprisingly,
defending my life again several weeks ago had triggered it all. Back on the
surface, I was experiencing horrible nightmares.

Scenes from the recent
shootings and the car chase would replay themselves in my head. Somehow my mind
had inserted the night my father died into some of those dreams, and I’d see
him coming after me in different settings, in place of or in conjunction with
my latest would-be killers. I hadn’t really had a good night’s sleep since.

“Yes.”

“I know you’d been
sleeping alone last time we spoke. Is that still the case?”

“Yes, for the most
part.”

Because of the dreams,
I sometimes woke up screaming or crying or both. Not only did I find this
embarrassing and unsettling, but it kept Ellmann from sleeping. I was sure he
was sincere when he said he wanted to be there for me, but I thought it unfair
for us both to be awake and miserable all night. Plus, we’ve only been dating a
short time. I thought it was probably too soon for us to spend every night
together.

“How does Alex feel
about this?”

I shrugged my good
shoulder. “I don’t know. I think he gets frustrated with me sometimes, but he
understands. I also think a part of him is relieved, because he really wasn’t
getting any sleep. He needs to be rested to do his job.”

“Do you feel like
you’re letting him in?”

I shrugged again.

“Yes. Why? Is that not
coming across?”

“Has Alex said
anything about you being distant, or wanting you to open up to him?”

“Sometimes he says I
don’t lean on him, but I don’t think that’s the same as keeping him out. I
mean, the only person who knows more about me than Ellmann is Amy. That’s
saying something.”

Amy Wells has been my
best friend since before our first birthdays, and we literally grew up
together; we are more like sisters. We know everything about each other—all the
dark and dirty secrets, of which there are plenty. Amy is the only person on
the planet who knows every detail of my life, every skeleton, every sin, and
loves me anyway.

“Ever since you first
mentioned Alex, you’ve called him by his last name. Why do you do that? Is that
an attempt to distance yourself from him?”

This was one of those
times when I think Hobbs is a moron. Freaking therapists, man, they’re always
trying to read into every tiny detail of everything. Sometimes a name is just a
name; sometimes it doesn’t mean anything.

“No. I call him by his
last name because everyone else calls him by his last name. A lot of cops are
called by their last names. When I met him, it was in a professional capacity,
so I called him by his last name. I guess it stuck.”

“You have a history of
keeping people at arm’s length,” she persisted. “You don’t let people in. Why
would Alex be any different?”

I bit back a sigh and
turned to stare out the window. Hobbs’s office is on the first floor in an old
Victorian-style house off Remington and Elizabeth, a block from campus. Many of
the houses in town had been converted to similar office spaces. In this
neighborhood, being so close to campus, most houses are occupied by college
students. Hobbs’s office window overlooks Remington and the side yard. I watched
cars slow for the intersection and bikers and pedestrians flow by in streams.

Hobbs’s office wasn’t
the only one in the house. There was a photographer and another therapist on
the first floor, a massage therapist and an acupuncturist on the second. There
had been three accountants sharing the bulk of the space on the first floor
until last May. They’d made it through tax season then decided to expand. They
moved to a bigger space and hired another accountant. A week later, a medical
marijuana dispensary moved in. Everyone in the entire house had made a fuss,
but the landlord had rented it anyway. Now there was a lot of activity on the
property, lots of people stopping by to legally buy dope.

I was thinking about
Hobbs’s question and how to answer it, trying to decide what the answer was,
when I saw a familiar face through the window. I sat forward and stared closely
for a moment, then I bent and pulled my bag onto my lap, retrieving the files
I’d gotten from Amerson. I flipped open the one marked “Martin Fink” and looked
at the photo stapled to the inside.

“You’ve got to be
kidding me,” I muttered under my breath as I confirmed the man on the street
was in fact Fink.

“Excuse me?” Hobbs
said. “What’s going on?”

I glanced at my watch
as I stuffed the files back into my bag. My session wasn’t even halfway over.
Through the window, I watched Fink round the corner to the front of the house.
I pulled the handcuffs out of my bag before dropping it back to the floor.

“Uh, I need to use the
bathroom,” I said, jumping up. “I’ll be right back.”

I left the office then
walked the hall to the front, where I saw several people passing in and out of
the door, Fink among them. The small entry area and front room, which had been
converted to a waiting area, was empty aside from those walking to and from the
dispensary. Fink was at least fifteen years older than anyone else either
coming or going. His brown hair was thinning badly on top, and his midline was
expanding, drooping over his belt. He was wearing ill-fitting stonewash jeans,
loafers with tassels, and a white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt with pink
stripes.

“Oh, my gosh,” I said,
as if surprised to see him, and walked toward him. “Are you Martin Fink?”

“Yes,” he said,
slowing as he looked at me, obviously confused. “Do I know you?”

I stopped a couple
feet in front of him.

“Not yet. I’m Zoe Grey.
I work for your bond company. You missed your court date. I need to take you in
to reschedule.”

He looked at me,
considering the sling, then laughed. I should have left it in Hobbs’s office.

“What, you’re going to
arrest me?
You’re
going to arrest me?”

“I am,” I said,
holding the handcuffs in my right hand for him to see. “Please turn around.”

“No,” he said, like a
spoiled kid. “I won’t.”

“Please, sir, it’s
better if you cooperate.”

“What are you going to
do, make me? You’re a girl, and you’re crippled, too. Go away. Quit bothering
me.”

He turned. Taking the
cuffs in my crippled left hand, I reached for him with my right, placing my
hand on his shoulder. He reacted immediately. Grunting, he spun around, his
right hand in a fist, swinging toward my face. I deflected the blow, stepping
out of the way. His momentum carried him forward when he missed his target, and
he stumbled. When he righted himself, he charged me, both hands outstretched
toward me.

I grabbed two of his
fingers and pushed them back in one of my most trusted moves. He dropped to his
knees, crying out in pain. Maintaining the grip, I stepped around him, bringing
his hand behind his back. With my left hand, I reached up and pulled the sling
over my head, allowing me full use of my crippled arm. I secured the cuffs
around both of his wrists then jerked him up. I held him by the back of the
shirt as I marched him back down the hall to Hobbs’s office. This would
seriously alter Hobbs’s routine. I hoped she could roll with it.

She turned toward the
door when it opened, her eyes wide when she saw Fink. I steered Fink in and sat
him down on the sofa then shut the door. I replaced the sling and adjusted the
ice as I went back to my chair and sat down. Hobbs looked at me.

“What’s going on?”

Fink launched into a
very loud rant about his rights and injustice and a bunch of other crap. I cut
him off then told him to keep quiet. He didn’t seem as interested in
challenging me now as he had been in the waiting room, even if I was just a
crippled girl.

“He’s an FTA,” I
explained. “I’ll take him in when our session’s over.”

Fink recovered before
she did.

“What?” he said with a
groan. “You want me t—no. No, no, no. Just take me in! Please!”

I’ll admit, this was
the first time anyone had begged me to take them to jail.

“Quiet, Fink. I have
to pay full price if I leave early. You’re not worth that much money.”