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“Jackson, it’s Michaels.” Willis tilts the phone away from his mouth and says, “It sounds busy there.” Josiah Jackson is the desk sergeant.
Hmmm…maybe all hell is breaking loose and we’re about to walk straight into it. “Wonder what’s going on,” I muse, not expecting an answer. It’s more hypothetical, debating if Carlton is actually being a team player. She was very adamant about us getting on the road.
More like getting us out of there. We’ve been gone ten, fifteen minutes tops. With sirens, I could be there, with Lillian, in half that. I wouldn’t use them, just in case, but the reminder it’s an option helps shove down the panic rising in me. Making a U-turn, my decision subconsciously made for me, I’m relieved.
“Good,” Willis states, my brain not figuring out he’s referring to me turning around as opposed to whatever Jackson might be saying. “You don’t know anything about this?”
He switches to speaker, allowing me to listen in, too. “Myers is out today. Food poisoning.” A weird chuckle. “Strangely, Jones is as well. Same reason. Then again, they did eat lunch together, so that makes sense.”
“What are the odds?” I mouth to Willis.
Sensing where I’m going, Willis does a bit of digging, under the guise of precaution. “That sucks. Where’d they go? I’m avoiding it from now on.”
“Nowhere,” he corrects him. “Carlton brought in food for them. The captain and Jones share a birthday, remember? She said it was a belated present from her.”
Now Willis can answer my question, but instead of doing so silently, he says, “Damn good when you stack the deck.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Jackson chimes in.
“It means Carlton caused it. It means she tricked us into leaving.”
“It means you need to get backup to safe house fourteen right the fuck now.” Willis disconnects and we both snarl, “Fucking Carlton.”
“What’s her end game, though?”
“Let’s talk this out while I drive.”
“She has no reason to have gone on this spree.”
“Do we know that for sure? It’s not like we ran her history against the women looking for any connections.”
“All right, let’s set that aside. What else?”
“Well, to be involved, there are only so many roles available.”
“The killer.”
“The victim,” is his contribution.
“Witness.”
“Family member.”
“Accomplice,” from me. The probability of that is low based upon statistics.
“What does Carlton crave more than anything else?”
I don’t even have to think about that. My answer is instantaneous. “Praise.”
“How far would she go to get it? Would she create a situation allowing her to save the day?” He doesn’t wait for a response on that, but gives it in almost the same breath. “They weren’t rumors.”
“What now?”
“Her old department? I dated a dispatcher from there. When she realized where I worked, she warned me. I’d brushed it off as petty gossip.” He quiets, as if he now feels bad about thinking that. “We’d gone out twice, I broke it off after the second. She was rude to the waitresses, the female bartenders, customers that were women.”
“She did set a pattern with that behavior.”
“It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Her attitude toward Carlton was actually warranted, but she’d aimed it at so many others, I couldn’t have known.”
