Dark thoughts were not productive if there was no evidence for them. There was no reason to freak out until I had some sort of evidence.
When I woke up in the morning, my first instinct was to text Bailey, knowing that she had probably been up baking for at least a few hours. But now I wasn’t sure how to behave around her. I didn’t feel right pretending that everything was fine when there were so many questions hovering in the air.
Racing to work early, Kevin had emailed me the files. There were seven known criminals in the database with a similar sort of scar on record, but one glance told me which one I had seen entering Bailey’s apartment.
Stewart Lake. From the somewhat well-known Lake family of burglars, robbers, and petty criminals. His brothers, Jim, Ricky, and Leon, had all either done time, or had various charges dropped. But somehow Stewart had never quite been convicted. He and his wife Marsha moved every couple of years, so they could never be tracked. There were a few leads with vehicle registrations, but they always seemed to be nearly a year behind wherever the family was actually living.
Looking into the records of Stewart’s brothers, there was a wide variety of crimes, but most of them were only misdemeanors, such as tampering with security systems, trespassing, petty theft. They were many instances of suspected crimes such as breaking and entering, but there was never quite enough evidence to convict them. It was almost as if they were the ones who prepared a site before a robbery. It also looked like they targeted small local banks, jewelry stores, and hotels. Places with good security, but rarely perfect.
What the hell was Bailey doing with this guy? I know that she moved here from out of town, but she wouldn’t say where. How could she know him? And if she knew him, did she know that he was a criminal?
&nb
sp; Probably not.
My mind swirled into a tangle of possibilities. Maybe this guy had gone straight, and he was her security consultant. Maybe that’s why she had such an elaborate video surveillance set up, and industrial locks.
Maybe it was completely unrelated, and she was simply friends with his wife or something, with no idea who he was.
Then I checked his age. Fifty-one.
Digging through his files, they were very few photos of him. The one that identified his scar was from an incident where he testified on behalf of Jensen Jones, who went to jail for ten years for stealing and stripping cars just over a year ago.
There was also a surveillance photo taken twenty-one years ago when Stewart was under investigation for yet another robbery. He was walking through a park with what appeared to be his wife and daughter. The little girl was a toddler, perhaps three or four. They were all dressed in black and dark browns, as if completely blending into the shadows.
There was instantly no doubt in my mind that the little girl was Bailey. I had no idea how I could be so sure of something from a grainy photo of a tiny tot reaching her hand up to her father. There was something in the way she tilted her head. I just knew.
I wanted to be wrong. How could my precious darling Bailey come from a criminal family like this?
Then my head fell into my hands. I didn’t want to be judged by my father’s actions either. No wonder she didn’t mention it.
There was still a chance that I was wrong, but I didn’t think so.
I had to wonder if she was ever going to tell me. If she was ever going to fully let me into her world. Or could she be trying to keep her distance because she knew I was a sort of person to ask a lot of questions?
This was all too much to process, so as I went out on patrol, I tried to clear my mind, simply taking care of the problems at hand.
As always, my partner Dave and I joked about the complete lack of parking skills of some drivers. We checked a faulty alarm that had gone off a few times this month at a local store, but this time the security company assured us it would be fixed once and for all.
We drank coffee. We ate subs. I tried to have a normal day. All the while, the back of my mind was screaming that I needed to talk to Bailey.
Although Dave and I often drove while patrolling, sometimes it was nice to go for a walk around the neighborhood, so that everyone was reminded that we were a friendly police presence. Walking by the local high school, we high-fived some of the kids we knew and gave a wave to the teachers.
Checking the time, it was only twenty minutes to go on my shift. As we turned a corner, we heard raised voices, and instantly glanced at each other. Dave nodded, and I increased my pace.
There was a tone of shouting that we had learned to read. Excitement, anger, frustration – there were many reasons for a person to shout occasionally. But there was a certain tone of rage mixed with a bit of hysterical desperation that meant someone was out of control.
Barging into a convenience store at full steam, I grabbed the wrist holding the knife and twisted it crisply. The weapon clattered against the counter at the same moment his arm was being pinned behind his back.
Dave was already cuffing him and reading him his rights, as I scanned the store. Mr. Welsh, the owner, was rattled but fine. There were no other customers. Probably just another guy with a drug problem needing some instant cash.
I held the door as Dave marched the would-be thief out onto the sidewalk, and I told the owner we’d be back shortly for his statement.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time we’d all been in this exact situation, but I was thankful this time the guy was clumsy and only armed with a knife.
Three steps from the store, something barreled into my back. I spun to see a thin woman with wild, glassy eyes trying to take a swing at me. Her size compared to mine was ridiculously small, but she was obviously not in her right mind.
She wouldn’t quit, her fists windmilling crazily as I kept a hand on her shoulder so they couldn’t connect.