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“You don’t have to go too?” she asked.
“Me? No. I’m about to sweep the floor with your sister in bowling. Besides, my days of personally arresting multiple corrupt cops are well in the past, Ms. Hunt.”
Jessie shook her head in disbelief.
“You already know about that? How do you get access to everything so fast? It’s almost like…”
She stopped suddenly, her mind racing.
“Almost like what?” he asked curiously.
“It’s almost like you have inside information that, if you wanted to, you could share with trusted law enforcement personnel in the hope that they could correct miscarriages of justice before they got swept under the rug.”
“That is quite a lot and oddly specific, Ms. Hunt,” Garland replied with an inscrutable smile.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I guess I’m a real Chatty Cathy.”
“If you say so,” he said noncommittally.
“Speaking of chatty folks,” she said, deciding to let him off the hook for now. “How did it go with Hannah last night? Are you two besties now?”
Garland’s smile faded and she saw immediately that something was wrong. All her fears from before, the connections she’d made between Hannah and Richard Kallas, resurfaced.
“What?” she asked.
“Let’s save it for another time,” he suggested.
“No. What is it? You profiled her, didn’t you, like I asked?”
“I had a pleasant conversation with her,” he answered calmly.
“Then why is there a massive pit in my stomach right now?”
“Listen, Jessie,” he said, using her first name for what she suspected was the first time ever. “We can discuss this in greater detail at a more appropriate time. For now, just know that you don’t need to overreact. Hannah and I spoke a fair bit and most of our time together was quite agreeable.”
She was about to press him on what “most” of their time together meant when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number but something made her answer anyway.
“Hello,” she said.
There was a moment of silence before anyone spoke. The delay reminded her of the full second before she got the call threatening Hannah. Sure enough, when a voice finally began to speak, it was digitally altered.
“You should have quit when you had the chance, little lass. I may pay a price now. But one day, maybe sooner than you think, you will. I hope it was worth it.”
Then the call ended. Though there was no way to prove it, she knew who had made the call. She could only recall one person ever referring to her as “little lass.” It had happened just the other day, when she bumped into a cop in a police station hallway and, with no one else nearby, he’d threatened her.
The call had come from Sergeant Hank Costabile.
Now she had a new enemy.
