Chapter 6

D oreen didn’t have much in the way of anything to eat, so Mack ordered in pizza. The three of them sat outside, as they discussed the little bit of information that there was on the prior theft of the Taser from Arnold’s house. The animals were nearby, enjoying some additional attention.

“I can give you what I know, which is basically all that’s in the files. Yet the bottom line is this. I was at work one day and came home to find that somebody had busted into my place and had stolen the Taser.”

Doreen frowned. Arnold’s account was too short and far too thin to produce any clues. “And, over these ten years, it was never seen again? It never showed up at another crime scene?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “Not that I know of. You can buy these things on the internet now, although I think they’re more of a cheap knockoff than the actual police issue. At least I would think so.”

Doreen nodded. “Okay, so tell me this. If it did show up in this new case, but you did report it missing at the time and followed proper protocols and were cleared, are you liable for any crimes committed with it later?” she asked both of them.

Arnold paled and frowned at Mack, who immediately shook his head. “No, Arnold didn’t wield it. The Taser was stolen, due to a theft. When the loss is promptly reported, and the proper procedures have been followed, I see no liability issue at all.”

Arnold took a deep breath and relaxed ever-so-slightly.

“Good,” she said.

The pizza arrived just then, and, as Mack brought it to the patio, she heard another voice. She looked up to see Chester ambling behind them. He was a younger cop, who was usually partnered up with Arnold. She smiled. “Hey, Chester.”

“Hey, Doreen.” He wore a huge grin, as he sat down beside the pizza. “Good time to come and visit, right?”

Doreen smiled, as her animals drew closer to the food too.

Arnold snorted. “What are you here for?”

“Came to help out,” he replied. “I told the captain that I was coming too.”

At that, she turned to Mack. “I’ve got a funny feeling about this.” He raised his eyebrows. She looked at the pizza, sighed, and added, “You should probably put in a second order.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

Just then they heard another vehicle coming up Doreen’s driveway.

He stared at her and grumbled, “ Right .” He quickly grabbed his phone and placed a rush order for two more pizzas.

She smiled. “Good thing one of us has the money.”

He snorted and muttered under his breath, “Are you kidding? That will be the end of my paycheck this month.”

“I can cover it.”

“You sure?”

“I still have some of the reward money. So, yes, I can cover it.”

He waved her off.

“I’ll cover it,” Arnold offered, with a sigh.

With a knock at the door, Mack got up and walked to the front. He returned with two more of the guys she knew from the station. Sure enough, following behind and looking a little bit sheepish, was the captain himself.

She grinned at him. “Hey, Captain. How’s life?”

“Not been too bad,” he replied, then stopped to admire the backyard. “Darn, we did a good job here, didn’t we?”

“You guys sure did,” she exclaimed. “I come out here all the time.” She looked around, as she smiled.

“That’s what backyards are for,” he noted, with complete sincerity. “How are you handling this latest problem?”

“If you mean Arnold, we haven’t really gotten started yet,” she admitted, “or do you mean my ex?”

“The ex,” he clarified. “I guess they already told you about the Taser.”

She nodded. “Yes, I heard about that. I’m dealing with Mathew’s death and the associated trouble very well now, thank you. It was a little too convenient for some people, who seemed to be very uncomfortable around me for a while,” she shared, “but hopefully everybody has gotten over that.”

“If ever somebody deserved to die,” Mack stated, “it was Mathew. And, if ever somebody would never commit murder, it is Doreen.”

The others all agreed.

She smiled and added, “By the way, we’re doing fine. Mack and I are doing great.” She patted his hand.

At that pronouncement, grins appeared all around.

“That’s good,” the captain replied. “Now we can all focus on the current problem.” He sat down with a hard plunk , reached into the pizza box without asking, and shared, “Vancouver has already called about this one.”

“Oh? What about it?” she asked.

“They think the missing Taser might be connected to a couple cases down there.”

At that, Arnold groaned and asked to be sure, “My Taser?”

“Yeah, your Taser,” the captain confirmed. “About its stupid distinctive pattern.”

“Right,” Arnold muttered.

“So, Vancouver believes that Arnold’s Taser was used in their two cases?” she asked.

The captain nodded. “We don’t have a whole lot in the way of a database for that stuff here. It’s on the future budget as a needed expense, but we don’t have a common database that can connect cases from place to place.”

She shook her head. “If I had billions of dollars, that would be one of the first things I would want set up.”

“We would be more than happy to have you do that,” the captain offered. “It’s frustrating to always have our hands tied by something like this. We must constantly reach out and ask each department, ‘Hey, do you have any cases like this, or, hey, have you seen anything like that?’”

She nodded. “And, with something like a stolen Taser, I gather it wasn’t that important to coordinate at the moment.”

“Nope, it wasn’t, and, in Vancouver’s investigation, they thought the Taser came from somebody local. Therefore, it was information they’ve had for their cases, but it didn’t trigger anything or register on our radar. We had no knowledge that it was one of ours. Now, of course, it’s a different story.”

“Those cases down there, were they murders?” she asked the captain.

“No, thank God.”

At that, Arnold sighed. “At least that’s one good thing. I would hate to think my previous Taser had killed anybody else.”

Doreen nodded. “It’s bad enough that it killed anybody, but that’s what we have. Okay, so all we know is that the Taser involved was stolen in a burglary from how many years ago?” she asked, looking at Arnold.

He shrugged. “Must be about ten years now.”

She frowned and considered that. “So, for ten years, this thing was around, and nobody’s used it?” She turned to the captain. “So, these cases down on the coast, when did they happen?”

Looking at her cautiously, he replied, “In the last six months.”

She pondered that.

“You know what it really means,” Mack suggested, “is that it only recently came into circulation, even though it’s been gone all that time. Either Arnold’s stolen Taser came into somebody else’s possession recently, or, for whatever reason, this guy’s flipped a switch and needed a weapon all of a sudden and just lately remembered he had it lying around.”

“I like the idea that it came into somebody else’s possession,” she stated.

At that, Arnold looked at her in surprise. “Why?”

“Because, if someone had hung on to that weapon all this time, I can’t imagine them suddenly building up the confidence or the bravado to use it after that many years. It’s far more likely that they would just keep it packed away or would hand it off to somebody else.”

“Or it could have been stolen from him.”

She frowned at that. “So, you have no idea who was involved in your B&E?” she asked Arnold.

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“Did you have any roommates at the time or anybody who stayed with you even temporarily?”

“Let me clarify my answer. At the time, I did question a buddy of mine, who was living with me and had shown a lot of interest in it. However, he had an alibi supposedly ,” he shared, with an eye roll, “and had absolutely promised me that he had nothing to do with it.”

“ Right .… How good of a buddy?” she asked.

“He had previously been a good buddy, but we weren’t such good buddies after that.”

“You still had that bit of suspicion, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t really have any reason to suspect him, not to mention any evidence.”

“Reasons are evidence and places to start,” she muttered, “but I think it’s more about instincts at that point.”

The captain nodded. “We run by instincts more than we care to admit,” he agreed. “And instincts have often saved our butts. Sometimes it’s the only thing we have to go on.”

Mack spoke up just then. “Doreen and I have discussed that a couple times,” he shared, “and I’ve warned her to never ignore her natural instincts. If it says, Run , then you run and don’t ask questions, not until you’re somewhere safe.”

She nodded. “That’s very true, though I can’t say I’ve learned how to listen to that run message all that well.”

“No, you haven’t.” He glared at her. “You keep getting caught in situations you’re not supposed to even be in.”

She grinned at him. “You’re welcome.” He gave her an eye roll. She turned to Arnold. “So, I’ll need the address, the date, your friend’s name, and anything else you can tell me.”

“Check out the police file. Nothing else I can tell you.”

“Sure there is. Where did you keep it?”

“Oh, that’s easy enough, in the bedroom.”

“In the closet, on the bed, in the night table?”

“In the night table. I was supposed to have it with me that day. I’d come home, put all my gear down on the night table, then had a shower,” he shared. “When I got up the next morning, I got dressed and put it all back on again.”

“Yet you forgot it that day?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I did. I ended up dumping breakfast cereal down my shirt, so I ran upstairs, took off my belt and everything, then changed shirts and raced to work, not wanting to be late, and I ended up leaving the Taser at home.”

“Right, that makes sense.”

“It made as much sense back then as it does today,” Arnold muttered, “but it still makes me feel like an idiot.”

“I understand,” she agreed. “How many years until retirement?”

He shrugged. “Six,” he replied, with a sideways glance at the captain, who just frowned at him.

“And we need every one of those years from you. The amount of work we have,” the captain noted, turning to glare at Doreen, “is astronomical.”

“Yeah, did you ever ask for any extra man-hours to handle all these reports?” she asked. “You’ve got to be the best department in the country.”

He laughed. “We’ve definitely got commendations coming since we closed a lot of cases,” he noted, “and I have requested extra man-hours for all these reports, but, so far, no additional money has been allocated.”

She didn’t like hearing that, but she understood. “Of course budget money is something you can never really argue with because they pull that card every time.”

The captain groaned, as he nodded. “Everybody does, and economically the country is doing okay. People are not exactly flourishing, but everybody is getting by, and it’s not everybody who’s a problem. It’s just that same few.”

“It’s always just a few people,” she agreed sadly, “and they mess it up for everybody else. Now, back to your friend.” She turned to Arnold. “What does he do for a living?”

He winced at that. “Back then he didn’t do anything, and now I’m afraid he’d gotten into an uglier venture back then.”

“Drugs?” she asked.

“Not so much, now that weed is legal. Yet he was always out to make a name in that industry.” Arnold sighed. “He was always on the verge of disaster and always had big ideas to make some fast money.”

“He could work at one of the cannabis dispensaries,” she suggested. “It’s a big industry and growing now.”

“He could do a lot of things if he wanted to,” Arnold said, grimacing at her. “But, the bottom line is, he doesn’t really want to work.”

“Right, so I need whatever contact information you have on him. Then I will sniff around and see what I can find out.” She looked over at Mack. “Obviously somebody is officially handling this case, so who is that?”

Mack smiled at her. “Yours truly. It’s connected to my murder investigation.”

“Right,” she muttered, pondering that. “I suppose you won’t want me to talk to your prime suspect.”

“A prime suspect in the murder or in the original theft?” he asked calmly.

Doreen clarified, “The person of interest in terms of the theft.”

Mack chuckled. “You see, Captain? I told you that she would make a great cop.”

The captain nodded.

“And I’ve also told Mack that I don’t have the tolerance for all the rules and regulations,” she reminded him. Staring around at the people gathered here, she added, “You don’t have quite the whole department here.… Where’s Insley?”

“At work,” the captain replied, with a laugh. “This isn’t her style.”

“Maybe it’s not her style because she hasn’t had a chance to make it her style,” Doreen guessed.

At that, Mack stared at her in surprise. “Do you want Insley in on this?”

Doreen shrugged. “I’m not sure what to say to that. Has she got something to offer?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“We don’t want any stone unturned on Arnold’s case,” Doreen pointed out, “but let me wander around and muddle my way through some of this first.”

“So, what do you think? Will talking to my buddy from back then give you something?” Arnold asked, eyeing her curiously.

She smiled. “Of course. All kinds of things potentially. People like him won’t talk to you because you’re a cop, but the things that they say to me are a different story.” She frowned, looking around for her animals and found Mugs chewing on a piece of pizza on the ground. She stared at him, then asked Mack, “Did you give that to him?”

He shook his head.

She looked over to Arnold, his face riddled with guilt. “Wow, no wonder Mugs loves seeing you guys coming,” she muttered. Just then the doorbell rang. Looking around, she asked, “Can one of you get that? It’ll probably be more pizza.”

“More?” the captain asked in delight. Then he quickly grabbed one of the last two pieces. Arnold made quick work of the other one.

Moments later, Mack returned with two more large pizzas and placed them on the table. “There you go, guys,” he called to the others. “Tank up.” Soon everybody had helped themselves to more pizza, including Doreen.

As she sat here munching, Thaddeus hopped onto her shoulder and snuggled up close. “Hey, big guy,” she greeted him.

Immediately he started squawking. “Big Guy, Big Guy, Big Guy, Big Guy.”

“No, we won’t go see Big Guy today,” she replied. “ Shh .”

Thaddeus stared at her and repeated, “ Shh , Doreen. Shh , Doreen.”

She groaned. “The talking wouldn’t be so bad, but he acts like a two-year-old half the time.” Almost immediately, as if on cue, Thaddeus responded.

“I’m a two-year-old. I’m a two-year-old. I’m a two-year-old.”

He had slurred the words together, but it was close enough that she understood him. She glared at him. “You’re supposed to mind your manners when you have company.”

“Mind your manners, mind your manners, mind your manners.”

“I can’t get him to say anything new for weeks and weeks. Then you guys show up, and all he wants to do is mouth off.” She glared at the bird. “You’re supposed to be nice.”

“Supposed to be nice, hey, hey, hey, hey . Supposed to be nice, hey, hey, hey, hey .”

With the others in stitches over his antics, she sighed, broke a small chunk of pizza off her slice, and handed it to him. He immediately snagged it up, then dropped it onto her shoulder, making her wince at the concept of him eating pizza off her shirt, and she glared at him. “You could take that to the ground.”

“Take that to the ground. Take that to the ground.”

“Why are you talking so much?”

Thaddeus looked at her, grabbed the piece of pizza, and dropped to the ground, as if fully understanding.

The others stared at her and then at her talkative bird.

“Does he really understand?” the captain asked in disbelief.

“I would normally say no. However, when he does something like that, it makes me question everything I thought I knew about him,” she muttered. “I swear he’s just there to torment me at times.”

At that remark, everybody nodded, but it was Mack who spoke up. “And to support you and to save you when you get into reckless situations,” he reminded her. “Oh, and, when you get depressed and feel low, he’s there for you to cuddle.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” she muttered. “He’s a huge part of my family, but he’s certainly a mouthy part.”

The others all laughed.

“Anyway,” she began, as she stared down at the pizza in her hand, realizing that the second order of pizza was getting demolished almost as quickly as the first. “I’ll wander around and see what I can find on Arnold’s missing Taser, but no guarantees.”

“That’s okay,” Arnold stated. “I feel strange even asking you to help.” He looked over at the rest of them. “And you guys will do your best, right?”

“Definitely,” Mack replied. “We’ll solve this thing, and we’ll solve it quickly.”

Arnold nodded glumly. “I still feel bad that one of my weapons was used to kill somebody.”

“Who’s this victim anyway?” she asked curiously. At that, Mack glared at her. She shrugged. “I can hardly look into the stolen Taser case without knowledge of the murder-by-Taser case. Even without your giving me the victim’s name, there seems to be no honor among thieves. One bad guy with a stolen Taser probably used it on another bad guy. Obviously the target of the murder by Taser is always part of the answer.”

Mack smiled at her. “You’re even starting to talk like us.”

She smiled at him. “ Yeah , and I know very well that I’m not one of you, but sometimes I feel a bit as if I am.”

“Hey,” Arnold interjected, “more times than not, it seems you are one of us,” he muttered.

She smiled. “Thank you, Arnold. That’s a lovely compliment.”