Nightcrawler (Trackers #1)

Chapter Seventeen

RAVEN

I couldn’t believe Ned had taken this bullshit as far as he had. The whole situation felt surreal, and I had no idea how he thought he was going to get away with it. As Miguel and I entered the Hollywood precinct and were locked into separate rooms, I was left fuming.

I’d managed to reach Cassidy who promised to get over to the station as soon as possible but the cops watching me make the call had asked me to put it on speaker so they could listen to every word. I’d done it, not wanting to argue with the pricks, hopeful that if I cooperated, Miguel and I could go free as soon as we’d given a statement.

I expected Cassidy would take care of things but still, seeing my neighbors watch Miguel and I being loaded into a police car first thing in the morning, had been awful. Talk about embarrassing.

I sat in the room, staring at the four scruffy, gray walls and the glass window where I suspected people could observe interrogations—or interviews as the officers had called them—from the other side of the glass. The room smelled of burnt coffee and sweat. I felt dirty and angry, and by the time Cassidy walked into the room more than a half hour later, I was ready to cry.

He, on the other hand, looked like he was going to kill someone.

“I’m sorry it took so long, Raven,” he said.

I jumped up from the table and threw my arms around him, hanging on for way too long as he gave me an awkward hug back. “I’m so glad you came. I didn’t know what to do and they kept us separated, so I couldn’t even see how Miguel is.” I let go, only then noticing the tears running down my face, and feeling extra angry that I didn’t have better control over my emotions as I swiped at them.

“He’s all right. They’ve got him next door. Have a seat and let me tell you where we go from here,” Cassidy said, grabbing the metal chair to sit facing me.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said, sitting down hesitantly. “What do you mean?”

Cassidy shook his head. “First of all, don’t worry. You’re going to sit here and write out a statement of every single thing you did from the time you first brought Miguel home and encountered Ned Jeffries in front of your house, to this morning when you woke up and found two LAPD officers pounding on your door. Will you do that for me?”

I swallowed hard. That meant that everyone who read my statement, including Cassidy and Mike, would know that I’d slept with Miguel last night. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed. I’d been out since high school and I couldn’t give a shit what anyone thought about me being gay but the very idea that Ned had put me in this position, rubbed me the wrong way. I hated him for it.

“But I didn’t do that to Ned…those horrible pictures…what kind of monster do the officers think I am?”

Cassidy reached out and took my hand, ducking his head, and looking directly into my eyes. “None of that matters, Raven. Do you hear me? I don’t care what they think about you as long as we get you and Miguel out of this, do you understand? Secondly, this is Hollywood. Do you think those officers have never encountered a gay man before?”

I offered him a tiny smile, knowing that he’d sussed out my feelings for Miguel. Hell, the other day at dessert, I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off him while he ate. “If they haven’t, they’re probably not very good police officers. You and I both know gay couples have just as many domestic disputes as straight couples. And if they haven’t broken up at least one fight at a gay bar, then they aren’t answering their radio.” I sighed, looking down at the pen and pad he'd brought into the room. I pulled them toward me. “Okay, I’ll write my statement. What about Miguel?”

Cassidy sat back. “Miguel is in with Mike right now, getting the same speech I’m giving you.” He nodded to the yellow pad. “He’s also going to give us a statement.”

I nodded, looking down at the pad. “Okay, good.” I glanced up at him as something occurred to me. “You and Mike work in the Brentwood station. Will you be able to stay on as detectives in this case? Won’t it be a conflict of interest?”

“No. That’s for the judge and lawyers to deal with. But don’t worry about that. I’ve already talked to the detectives who caught this case and while you’re writing your statement, I’m going to go out there and catch them up. At that point, I’ll ask to be put on the case. They’ll have to get it cleared by their lieutenant, but I know the guy and he’s reasonable. I have no doubt he’ll sign off on it.” He pointed to the pad. “When you write out your statement, be very precise about every single person you encountered yesterday, every call you made or answered, and try and give me correct times for all those encounters. I don’t care if it was you waving at your mailman or a neighbor. Give me an approximate time that it happened, who was with you at the time, and Mike and I will check it all out.”

“That’s how we’ll get out of this?”

“Yes.”

“They haven’t read me my rights or anything, Cassidy. Are they supposed to get away with that?”

“You haven’t been arrested. You’re here for questioning and I have no doubt the lieutenant will want to sit in when we talk to you but first, write out your statement and then we’ll follow up with questions once you’ve got it all on paper. Okay?”

“Yes, and then you’ll talk to Ned? Get him to drop this crap? Find out who really beat him?” I shook my head. “I can’t believe he’d go that far.”

Cassidy frowned. “Go that far? You don’t think he was randomly jumped and then saw an opportunity to put it on you?”

“No. You have no idea how safety conscious this bastard is. He carries mace on his belt all the time, even when he’s out dancing or whatever. He’s a complete loon when it comes to that. He once told me, he might die in a fight but not until he took the other guy down with mace. That’s why I stepped between him and Miguel yesterday. I was really afraid he’d use it. I’m a 100 percent sure he hired someone to beat him up just so he could get back at me for firing him. He warned me. After I fired him, he told me I hadn’t heard the last from him. I guess that’s what this is. His way of getting back at me and Miguel.”

Cassidy nodded. “I’ve met guys like him. Can’t take rejection or no for an answer.”

I nodded emphatically. “Yes! That’s Ned to a tee.”

He tapped the yellow pad a couple of times. “Make sure you mention that he came on to you multiple times as well.”

I nodded, feeling the tears welling up again. “I’ll try to remember, Cassidy. He was a good nurse for my nana which is why I never reported him. I thought they were harmless flirtations but now, I’m not so sure.”

“Okay.” He stood up and patted my shoulder as I looked up at him. “I’m going to go and talk to Mike and the lieutenant, just like I said. Everything will be okay, Raven. Just tell the truth, try and be comprehensive in everything you say, and what words were exchanged between you and Jeffries. I’ll be back.”

“Okay, Cassidy.” I looked up at him. “This is going to be all right? If I get arrested, I’ll lose my security clearance with GMS and they’ll fire me…and Miguel…he’s homeless now which is why he stayed over.” I thought of something. “Oh! He moved some boxes to my garage yesterday, but I couldn’t help him with the footlocker for obvious reasons.” I waved in the vicinity of my midsection.

“Sure,” Cassidy said. “What can I do?”

“I can tell it’s incredibly important to him but it’s not secure.”

“Where is it?” Cassidy asked with a frown.

“In the bed of his pickup which is parked in front of my house. He was going to put it in the garage with the help of my gardener, Jesus, when he came to do the yard this morning, but then the police came, and I guess you know the rest.”

Cassidy smiled, patting my shoulder again. “I’ll make a call and have someone take care of it.” He thought for a second. “You have a nurse at the house to answer the door to give them access to the garage, right?”

“Yes, her name is Dolly, but she might be skittish. She just started as Ned’s replacement this morning only to see me being locked in the back of a police cruiser, so she might not let anyone in. I tried to tell her but once she got to the house, those cops were assholes and barely let me say goodbye to my nana, much less give Dolly any instructions about her care. They’re terrible people.”

“Some of ‘em can be jerks, that’s true. Write a note to her and tell her a couple of friends of yours will be coming by to move Miguel’s footlocker into the garage. We’ll take care of it or have friends with badges do that for you.”

I smiled, thankful that Cassidy was a wonderful friend. “I can’t tell you how much your help means to me, Cassidy.” I paused for a second. “You and Mike have helped me so many times over the years and I know I’ve been remiss in our friendship.” I felt the tears again. “I should have treasured you so much more.”

He smiled. “That’s okay, Raven. We never felt like you or your work with GMS was an imposition to us, and we kind of like you too. Don’t say anything more about it, okay?” At my nod, he pointed at the yellow pad. “Go ahead. Write the note.”

I scribbled quickly, signing the bottom of it, and then handed it to Cassidy who folded it up. I’d managed to tell Dolly what my nana liked to eat and that I’d try and be in touch later in the day, though, it might not be until tonight. I was embarrassed all over again as I watched Cassidy walk out the door and lock it behind him. I spared a moment to glance around the stinky room one more second before tucking into my task with gusto, trying not to leave out a single thing.

MIGUEL

I was fuming as I sat in the room writing out the statement Mike Williams had asked me to put on paper. After I’d told him what happened, Mike had instructed me to write it all down, including elaborating on why I’d threatened to “end” Ned Jeffries. As I accounted for all my time since meeting Ned, I realized there was only one period of time in which I had been alone all day. It had been the time between seeing my landlord, and Vonne a few hours later.

During that gap in time, I had no alibi, and unfortunately, it had been plenty of time to find Ned and beat him. I knew any good prosecutor would argue that due to the fact that I worked for a skip tracer, tracking Ned wouldn’t have been an arduous task on my part. That meant if I wasn’t believed, I’d be fucked and could go to prison. I felt a lot better every time I remembered Cassidy and Mike were my friends and that they’d go to extraordinary lengths to get to the truth, hopefully, making a fool out of Ned when they found out who had really beaten him. Personally, I’d come out of torture dens in the Mideast looking a lot better than that fucker had in the photos I’d finally been shown.

I’d been in the room the better part of two hours when the door opened and Mike returned, this time with Cassidy. They held some paperwork in their hands. “Finish your statement?” Mike asked.

“Right here.” I pushed the yellow pad and pen toward him. I’d used seven pages to write everything out longhand.

“Good,” he said, picking up the pad and looking it over before passing it to Cassidy. He read through it before looking up.

“There’s some time when you were alone.”

“Right. I used it to pack up my place.” I looked at Mike. “You told Cass about being evicted which is why I’m staying at Raven’s place?”

Mike nodded. “Yep.”

“So, you packed up boxes and then your friend, Vonne showed up to help you load them and the footlocker in your truck.”

“Yes.” I’d been totally truthful. I knew I was in trouble if they decided to question me further about it. When Cassidy smiled, it felt like all the breath left my body.

“Okay then,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Just like that?” I asked, feeling shell shocked. “I thought someone was going to interview me?”

“The chief of detectives and my lieutenant read the statement Raven wrote out and agreed that if yours matched his except for the time when you were apart, of course, then, you could go,” Cassidy said.

“They can still bring you and Raven back for questions if our interview with this Ned dude turns out to be the least bit credible,” Mike added. “He won’t be in for his interview until tomorrow, so you can go home and come back if we think that’s merited. Personally, we don’t even think that will be necessary.”

I felt the breath whoosh out of my body. I’d gone numb with worry and if I didn’t have to pee as badly as I did, I wouldn’t have known I was human at all. “I can go home just like that?” I asked again.

“Just like that.”

“And Raven? You can’t think he did this, right?”

Cassidy and Mike both shook their heads. “No way, man,” Cassidy said. “He doesn’t have it in him to hurt another person.”

I understood what Cassidy was saying. I was Force Recon while he was a retired SEAL. I knew I’d most likely killed a lot of people while in the Corps, just like he’d done his duty in the Navy. That’s just what happened when you were a highly trained specialty branch of the military. You were the tip of the spear. It’d been our jobs to kill people who’d needed killing which is why Uncle Sam had put a gun in our hands.

Raven, on the other hand, was anything but dangerous but then again, he didn’t have half the training to know good from evil the way we’d been taught. And Cassidy was right. Raven couldn’t hurt a fly. The first time I’d met him he’d questioned me about why I carried a firearm on my belt. I’d not yet told him that his little lecture to me out there in front of the Capitol Records building, had been a wakeup call for me, and I hadn’t carried a gun on my person since.

“Okay,” I said, following them out into the squad room. “Where’s Raven?” I looked around, and Mike pointed at him as my gaze landed on him. “Right there.”

Raven was slumped in a hard-backed chair pushed up against a wall. He was scrolling on his phone and hadn’t looked up.

I smiled at Mike and headed in Raven’s direction. The minute I got close, he looked up and then practically leapt out of his chair and threw his arms around me. I was a little embarrassed by his public display of affection in front of a room full of cops and our friends, but I pushed the thought away as I hugged him.

“God, that was awful,” he said.

“It’s okay, Sunshine.” I pulled out of his arms and looked into his beautiful eyes. “Let’s go home.” I broke the gaze and glanced around the room, spotting Cassidy and Mike watching us. “I need to piss.”

“The men’s room is right over here,” Mike said with a grin as he came forward. “You’ll need a key. Follow me.”

“Thanks.” I turned and looked at Raven.

“I’ll be right here. Take your time,” he said, reading my mind.

I nodded and followed Mike to the bathroom.

When I came out of the men’s room wiping my hands on a paper towel, Raven was waiting right outside with the detectives.

“I’ll take you two back to your place, Raven…or do you want to go someplace else?” Mike asked as he and Cassidy escorted us out of the Hollywood station.

“No, that’s good, Mike. Thank you.”

We headed toward a Toyota Prius, and Mike clicked the key fob. When we stopped at the car, I turned to Cassidy. “Now what?”

“Mike and I are going to talk to this Ned character,” he answered.

“You haven’t talked to him yet?” I asked, surprised.

“Not in depth, just a conversation,” Cassidy replied. “We tried to catch up with him at the hospital, but he’d been released and sent home with painkillers after surgery. He said he was too fragile and in too much pain to be interviewed.”

“Fragile I can believe…but surgery?” Raven asked, sounding panicked. “What exactly happened to him that required surgery?”

“Not invasive surgery, Raven,” Cassidy reassured him. “His arm was dislocated so he had to be sedated and reduced as well as having a wrist fracture that needed what would have been painful tending. The doc decided to do it all under anesthesia since he said he’d rather be knocked out. They did their work on him, woke him up, and he’s been sent home as of an hour ago.”

I watched Raven check his watch. It was late afternoon and even without my watch, which was still sitting on Raven’s bedside table, judging by the height of the sun, I could tell it was nearing five. We’d been at the police station all fucking day and I was hardly happy about it.

Raven looked over at me with worried eyes and then back at our friends. “So, you’ll talk to him and get him to drop all this?” he asked hopefully. “I still can’t believe he blamed his injuries on me. Maybe I should talk to him.”

“NO!” I said at the same time Mike and Cassidy did.

“Listen, you are not to go and start something with that little jerk,” I said. “You’re going to let our friends handle it. Don’t worry. He won’t get away with this. Liars always get found out eventually.”

“Miguel is right, Raven,” Mike said. “You leave this in our hands. With injuries as bad as he sustained, someone had to be working with him. He couldn’t have possibly dislocated his own arm or broken his own wrist. Cassidy and I will interview him, and then start investigating all this crap. I have a feeling he plans on suing you civilly, since no criminal prosecutor is going to be able to make a case for him as long as your alibis stand up, but the criminal case will have to come first. It’s my job along with Cassidy’s, to prove that there’s no criminal case to be made.”

“As far as his claim that you threatened him, it’s ridiculous,” Cassidy said, looking at me. “You’ve explained why you did it and your explanation makes more sense than his fabrication. The fact that he’s so over the top in his descriptions of how his life was in danger is ludicrous, though, Mike and I believe he’s going to try to push that ridiculous narrative as far as he can. We’ll fact check everything he says and follow up with the people he says were witnesses. When we checked, we found three other similar complaints made by Ned. All of them were settled out of court with unspecified damages in civil lawsuits.”

“There were witnesses?” Raven asked, clearly worried about witnesses which were probably made up. He sounded frantic again and I walked over, circling his shoulder with my arm, pulling him into my side. I kissed the side of his head and bent until my lips were pressed against his ear. “Stop freaking out. It’s going to be okay. Cassidy and Mike say he’s done this before. He probably sees your big house and knows it’s worth a bundle of money. He’s a liar, Raven, and he’s not going to get away with this.” I lifted my face and looked at Cassidy. “You and Mike will take care of it,” I stated, knowing there was no question about it.

They both grinned back. “You bet we will. This is the kind of stuff we live for,” Cassidy replied. “Mike’s gonna take you home. I have dinner and a man waiting for me.”

Raven pulled away from me and wrapped Cassidy in a huge hug. “Thank you. I’m sorry for dragging you into this but really, Cassidy, I don’t know how to thank you.” He let go after Cassidy gave him a pat on the back and then he turned and hugged Mike, thanking him profusely as well.

“We never got to talk about the job to get your fugitive,” Cassidy said when he turned to me.

“Breakfast tomorrow?” I asked.

“Same time, same place,” Cassidy said with a sharp nod. “I’ll make sure Jarrett and Thayne are there as well.”

“They’re really good guys?” I asked.

Cassidy smiled. “Let’s put it this way. When you get back to Raven’s place tonight, you’ll find your footlocker tucked nicely away in his garage.”

“What?” I frowned, staring at them until realization hit. “They did that?”

“Raven was worried about it so when he told me, I had them run over to his place and move it,” Cassidy said. He looked at Raven. “Your new nurse, Dolly, was very nice to them, and the way I heard it, went something like, ‘the one with white hair is funny but the one with Bahama blue eyes is a dreamboat.’”

Raven and I both laughed, and I reached for his hand, looking over at him, not believing just how lucky I was. While facing all the trouble and uncertainty with what was even going on this morning, Raven had thought about my footlocker and asked our friends to make sure it got handled. Jarrett and Thayne had dropped everything and gone over to take care of the one thing in the world that meant everything to me. Now, looking at sweet, adorable, Raven Mathis…I knew that was no longer true.