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Helen batted a hand. “Nope. No way. I can’t say any more, even if I want to.”
Amanda picked up on the tail end of her statement. Her hesitation to elaborate might not be down to an uncooperative attitude. “Are you afraid of him?”
Helen wheeled her chair back from the counter, and Amanda considered if she was getting ready to make a run for it. She braced for that inevitability, but the woman stayed put.
“Barry doesn’t need to know you sent us,” Trent said. “We’ve got your boss at Central. It will appear that he squealed.”
Helen licked her lips, looked around the front office, and finally landed her gaze on them. “His full name is Barry Holden, and I know where you can find him.”
TWENTY-THREE
Bringing in a uniformed officer to arrest Helen wasn’t fun. But she did even better than giving them Barry Holden’s name and address. She decided to fully cooperate and turned on Simon to secure a deal for herself. She kept a secret logbook where she noted every plate crossing her desk and who Simon sold it to. Her records showed Barry Holden had bought Greg Elliott’s former plates, the ones put on Katherine’s Mercedes.
Helen hadn’t resisted the officer’s efforts to bring her in, either.
Amanda and Trent pulled a background on Barry Holden and found he had a record of drug dealing and assault. More currently, he was under house arrest, which he had been since October after being caught for drug distribution in February. Any violation would send him right back to prison. His record with the Department of Motor Vehicles told them he was six four.
He was far too tall for their shooter, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t facilitated the crime by providing the license plates. How they’d been used or where they were stored until today remained unknown.
The drive to Barry’s house was a quiet one. Trent seemed as caught up in his thoughts as Amanda was in hers. Foremost among them was whether Barry would lead them to Katherine.
Trent parked on the street out front of Barry’s house, a rundown shanty of a place, in a bad neighborhood.
She banged on the front door, and some flakes of peeling paint fell.
After two rounds, there was less paint on the door and still no answer. Barry wouldn’t be the first criminal to finagle his way out of an ankle monitor. Just when she was about to call it in, the door flung open.
“What do ya want?” Barry spoke with an unlit cigarette perched in the corner of his mouth.
Amanda and Trent had their badges in hand and held them up.
“I don’t need to see your shields. I can smell your stench from here, but I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, so beat it, pigs.”
That roused her redheaded temper. She hated the expression, wishing it had long been eradicated from everyone’s vocabulary. “That’s where you’re wrong, Barry Holden. Turn around.” She wriggled her finger in a circle.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Trent grabbed his shoulder, forcing Barry to action. He shrugged him off. Trent wasn’t deterred but approached him with more vigor and slammed Barry into the doorframe. Trent pulled the man’s arms behind his back, and Amanda secured her cuffs on his wrists.
Barry spat out the cigarette. “You can’t arrest me without cause.”
“Oh, we have cause to bring you in, and since you weren’t being cooperative, this is where we find ourselves,” she said, as Trent closed the front door. She and Trent corralled Barry toward the road, each of them holding an arm. The timing of the police cruiser arriving couldn’t have been orchestrated any better. The officer assumed immediate responsibility for Barry.
“One word,” Barry said. “Lawyer.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Amanda and Trent hit a fast-food place for something to eat. Barry Holden had requested a lawyer, and a call was made to his probation officer. She had already been alerted to his leaving his property by his ankle monitor. Ideally, she and the lawyer would be there by the time they reached Central.
The simple act of eating had Amanda reflecting on the unfairness of life. Something so simple, often taken for granted despite so many starving around the world. But right now Amanda was mostly speculating about Katherine’s situation. Was she being given food and water?
They arrived at the station at three thirty, and the probation officer was waiting in the front reception. Her professional attire of dress slacks, blouse, and suit jacket made her easy to pick out. The brunette popped up from her chair the moment the officer at the front desk bobbed his head toward Amanda and Trent.
Her heels may have pushed her to five foot four. While she was a small package, she carried herself with confidence. “You are the detectives who brought in Barry Holden?”
“That’s us. I’m Amanda Steele.”
“Trent Stenson,” he followed up.
