Operation Power Play. Justine Davis

       Chapter 3

      Brett drummed his fingers on his desk as he considered his options. The physical action and the slight noise seemed to help him focus. Or at least reminded him to keep his mind on the matter at hand and not on the woman who had been such a pleasant interruption in his routine this morning.

      Besides, for all he knew, she was married and had kids. She hadn’t been wearing a ring—so sue him, he’d noticed—but that didn’t always mean anything. Or it could mean she was divorced with those kids. Not that he had anything against kids; he just knew a little too much about the ways they could go wrong. They’d planned on kids, someday, he and Angie—

      Damn. He hadn’t strayed down that painful path in a long time. So much for focus, he thought, and stopped the steady drumming.

      Just decide on the next step, he told himself.

      Rick Alvarado, his friend over at the county zoning-and-permitting office, had seemed as puzzled as he was.

      “What’s odd,” he’d said, “is that there’s no record of a study being done or even asked for that I can find. For that matter, I can’t find any record of the Days’ application either. It’s not in the approved, denied or pending files. We are a bit backlogged, though. I’ll keep checking.”

      When he’d warned Connie Day that he couldn’t promise anything, Brett hadn’t expected that there would be absolutely nothing. He wondered if the person she’d talked to had just been covering their backside, making up something because the paperwork had been lost. It happened—it was the nature of bureaucracies, he thought. He—

      “Hey, Dunbar!” The division clerk’s shout shook him out of his thoughts. “Aren’t you supposed to be giving a deposition this morning?”

      Damn. The Lester case. He had forgotten, even though he’d looked over his notes last night to refresh his memory. He looked at the clock, realized he had about twenty minutes to make a half-hour drive.

      “Thanks,” he said as he got up, grabbed his jacket and his phone, and headed for the door.

      He hit the button to wake up the phone and gave it a quick swipe with his thumb. The last screen he’d used popped into view, where he’d entered and saved Sloan Burke’s number. The blank silhouette seemed to chide him for not taking a photo for it when he’d had the chance. Not that he needed a picture. He remembered what she looked like. Perfectly.

      He pondered for a moment as he hit the button to unlock his car. He could call, tell her what he’d found.

       Hi, Ms. Burke. I just called to say...nothing.

      Yeah, that would go over well.

      He brought up the number for the prosecutor he was doing the deposition for and hit Call. Told the paralegal who answered he was on his way but might be a few minutes late. He was doing this only as a witness, because it wasn’t his jurisdiction and he had only happened to be outside the drugstore a few blocks from his place when the dispute that had preceded the assault had taken place. He hadn’t even had to break up the argument. One of the teenagers had sped away in his car. Only when he’d seen the vehicle description in the news that night did he find out the kid had later gone back after the other guy and beaten him pretty severely.

      So now he was on his way to the north end to officially give a statement on what he had seen. He hoped it would be enough. He didn’t really want to end up having to testify in court to his small part in it. There were witnesses to the actual crime, so they shouldn’t need him. But a cop’s testimony, even if he’d been off duty, could carry more weight, and he understood the prosecutor wanting to be thorough. Always better to have evidence you don’t need than not enough.

      He spent an hour recounting what he’d heard and positively identifying the two involved parties—and wincing at the photos of the battered face and bruised body of the kid who had taken the beating. He felt a flash of guilt. Maybe he should have guessed at something like this, but at the time it had been verbal only, and you couldn’t arrest somebody for what they just might do in the future. At least, not yet.

      “Not your fault, Brett,” the prosecutor said, reading him accurately. “Kid had no record of violence. No reason to expect this. But he went home, stewed about it, took a little taunting from a friend who threw some drugs into the mix, and voilà, we have assault and battery.”

      And a little more knowledge of how kids could go wrong, he thought.

      “Thanks,” he said.

      On his way back to the car he had his phone out and had that new number on the screen before he truly realized what he was doing. He had thought, in the middle of his recounting, that he did really have a reason to call but didn’t think he’d decided to do it. Except apparently some part of him had.

      Probably the same part that completely forgot that reason when he heard her voice answering.

      “Hello?” she said, in a tone that jarred him out of whatever cloud he’d slipped into; it was the tone of someone who had said it more than once. He realized he was standing next to his car and had yet to hit the button to unlock it. He shook his head sharply. Unlocked the car and answered simultaneously.

      “Sorry. Ms. Burke, this is Brett Dunbar. We met this—”

      “Of course,” she said quickly. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

      “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer, just a question or two that I should have asked before.”

       Except I was in a hurry to get away before I said or did something beyond stupid.

      “Of course. Do you need Connie? I can get her.”

      “Maybe you can answer these,” he said as he opened the door and got into the driver’s seat. “Do you know when they filed the application?”

      “October 15. Eleven in the morning.”

      His brows rose. “That’s rather exact,” he said.

      “I drove her there,” she said.

      “That was...kind of you.”

      “I could taxi her all over forever and never make up for how she’s looked out for me.”