Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(65)

“Not we, you. And yes, I believe you have,” he said. “Now all that’s left to do is arrest Green.”

That was a relief. Now she felt comfortable dropping the bomb.

“Actually, there’s more. And it creates a big problem.”

She took a deep breath and told him. His reaction was succinct and summed up her feelings perfectly.

“Oh, shit,” he said.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


The next morning Eve, Duncan, Rebecca Burnside, and Sheriff Lansing all gathered in Captain Shaw’s office. It was a tight fit. Eve was the only one standing and her laptop was close by on the coffee table.

Burnside was in a tennis outfit but somehow wore it like one of the suits she wore in court. It was every bit as stylish and wrinkle-free, and perfectly highlighted her curves without being in-your-face sexy. Her makeup was also perfect. Eve wondered if she’d applied it for the game or for the meeting or never went out in public without something on her face.

Shaw was clearly pissed off at Eve and his anger radiated like a heater. He’d had no role in calling this meeting and only found out about it when the sheriff and Burnside showed up. He spoke up the instant everybody was in the room and the door had closed.

“If there’s an emergency situation that merits the sheriff and the ADA being called in here, in person, on a Saturday morning, I need to hear about it first and I’ll decide whether it requires all hands on deck,” Shaw said to Eve. “Does chain of command mean nothing to you? Who the hell do you think you are?”

Eve had a direct line to the sheriff and she intended to exploit it, chain of command be damned, when it served her cases.

“You’re right, of course,” Lansing said to Shaw. “Her actions display a blatant disrespect for your authority and, ordinarily, I wouldn’t let it stand. But she’s cashing in a marker, whether she realizes it or not. This isn’t the first time Eve has organized an urgent meeting like this. In that case, I disregarded what she had to say, and it nearly cost a child’s life. So I’m willing to hear her out and then decide if disciplinary action is in order.”

“Thank you, sir,” Eve said. “We’ve solved the spree of home invasion robberies but—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Shaw interrupted. “That’s old news. You closed that case four days ago. You dragged everybody in here for that?”

“This time we’ve really closed it and tied up all the loose ends, some we didn’t even know we had before. We’ve finally identified and nailed down everyone involved.”

Shaw waved off Eve’s clarification. “So you tracked down Dalander’s girlfriend. That’s hardly urgent and it doesn’t change anything.”

“Actually,” Duncan said, “she’s still at large.”

“What else is there?” Shaw asked.

“We stumbled onto a key piece of evidence in the home invasion case while we were investigating the unrelated fetal abduction at Oakdale,” Eve said. “And it completely changes our understanding of the crime.”

Eve explained about Green’s Greenery, the fake Amazon delivery van, and Michael Green’s connection to Dalander, Colter, and Nagy.

“I get it now,” Lansing said. “You’re saying I was wrong when I told the media that the case was closed at the awards ceremony for Grayson Mumford. I appreciate your concern about the potential embarrassment to me and to the department, but don’t worry about that. I’ll play up that you two kept at it, going above and beyond, because we never quit. In fact, this will reflect very positively on the department. It shows we’re tenacious and not worried about public perception. But I agree with the captain—this wasn’t an urgent matter and doesn’t justify dragging us all down here.”

Burnside studied Eve. “There’s more.”

Lansing looked at Burnside, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “What?”

“That’s only the beginning. She’s not done,” Burnside said. “I wouldn’t be here if that was all there was to it. Look at her face. The other Manolo Blahnik hasn’t dropped yet.”

Lansing turned to Eve and he could see that Burnside was right. “This won’t be good. Go on.”

“There was an inside man, someone who smoothed the way in and out of the gated communities for Green and picked the homes to be hit.” Eve went to her laptop computer on the coffee table, opened it, and displayed a photo of Green’s soccer team. She pointed to one of the teenage players. “Grayson Mumford.”

Shaw squinted at the screen and shook his head. “Just because Mumford was on the same soccer team as the three dead assailants years ago doesn’t make him part of the robbery crew. By that logic, we should arrest the whole team.”

Duncan said, “But the rest of them aren’t working as floating front gate security guards at every community that was hit.”

Eve tapped a few keys on her laptop. “I’d like you to take another look at the video of the grocery store shooting.”

The video and sound from the confrontation played out from various camera angles on her laptop screen.

Colter charged into the grocery store and went straight for the liquor aisle, Grayson tracking his movements on a parallel course.