“You could help yourself here by cooperating. Get in front of this.”
Macayla stared at her interrogator. Detective Sergeant Mullins looked and sounded just like Detective Andy Sipowicz in a cable rerun of NYPD Blue. The mustache, the longish receding hair, the paunch, the weary eyes, even his accent. He must have retired early and come down to Florida, as so many New Yorkers did. But he couldn’t quit the force. The force was with him.
She strangled the urge to laugh. This was so not a funny situation. She had been brought in on suspicion of dog theft with “ransom money” in her pocket. Marked bills that the police had given Ms. Siler to give to the person who brought back her dognapped Boxer had her fingerprints on them.
“You hearing me, little girl?”
“Woman. I’m twenty-seven years old.” She leveled an annoyed look at him. Hated it when her height, or lack thereof, was viewed as a supposed disadvantage by others. “I’ve heard what you had to say. I’m innocent. I have nothing to add to that.”
“That’s not cooperating, which could be taken as an indication that you have something to hide.”
She looked away from him, aware that she wasn’t winning a friend or influencing this person standing in front of the desk she sat behind.
After being brought into the station, she had been made to wait for at least an hour in this small room with one tiny window at the top of the wall before anyone came in to say anything to her. During that time all the details of every police procedural she’d ever watched and read came back to her. How the police left a suspect—
Suspect! Dear god. She had been arrested as a suspect in the theft of dogs.
—to sit and think and worry and generally work herself up into a lather before someone came in and offered her a drink. She’d requested water. But she could only take a few sips. Her throat had seemed to swell shut.
Then more waiting. Now the waiting was over.
The questions came thick and fast with the arrival of Detective Sergeant Mullins.
How long had she been planning before she snatched Arielle? Or did she operate strictly by taking advantage of an opportunity that presented itself? What brought her to Tampa/St. Pete? Was she desperate for cash? Who did she owe money to? Had she been in debt as a gambler before? How long had the thugs who bat-slapped her car worked for her? What determined the amount she charged as a ransom?
She’d sat nearly mute under the barrage of this first round of questions, willing her heartbeat to slow. It felt, instead, as if she’d been running bleachers. Some of the questions were wild accusations. She wasn’t a gambler. Never had been. Others were When did you first get involved with a dognapping ring? type questions. No way to answer without incriminating herself.
All of them were aimed at catching her in a lie.
Now Mullins was back. This time he took the chair across from her, slouching back as if he was tired and needed propping up. “If you give us the names of the people you work with, we might be able do a deal for you that will lessen your jail time.”
Macayla began blinking hard. Jail time. No. She wasn’t going to be stampeded into fear. “Pet theft is a misdemeanor, petty theft. There are exceptions, if the pet is a purebred breeding animal or a show animal. Livestock and racehorses are also exceptions.”
“Oh, so you looked it up, did you?”
“I find lost pets for a living. Of course I’m familiar with the laws surrounding that activity.”
“That makes you a pet detective. And you know that Boxer’s a show dog. But why don’t you tell me how you locate these animals you say you find?”
Macayla chewed her lip. Everything she said could and would be used against her in a court of law. But, for the moment, she couldn’t see the harm in talking about her job. “I begin with where they went missing, check out the surrounding area, depending on how long an animal’s been missing—most pets don’t stray far. I can often coax them out of hiding with treats, water, or toys. That sort of thing.”
“What if you don’t find them there?”
“I have a network of people that I alert to be on the lookout for the missing animal.”
“Want to give me a list of your network?”
Mac could have kicked herself for that comment. She wasn’t being careful enough. “I don’t want to get anyone hassled.”
He smirked. “Why would they be hassled, as you call it, if they’ve done nothing illegal?”
Because she felt hassled and she hadn’t done anything wrong. But she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing that.
She clasped her hands so tightly in her lap the knuckles ached and met his gaze. Then she gave him the names of Sam Lockhart and Gerald Boyd. Both city employees in their respective towns, they would know how to conduct themselves. She thought of Cedric, homeless and wary of authority, who’d brought her the rumor about the greyhounds. The police picking him up could have awful consequences, with him possibly losing his dog Dougie. Not Cedric.
“Is that all?” Mullins didn’t sound mollified.
“Outside of local police and animal control, it’s an informal network. It’s local contact type thing. Joggers and neighborhood watch people. Different with every location.” Not a lie. But not the whole truth. “I sometimes find pets through a veterinarian’s office or at shelters where they’ve been taken by concerned citizens who found them and didn’t have a way to get in touch with the owner.”
Mullins suddenly leaned forward, propping his forearms on the table. “Who’s the muscle you hired to threaten Mr. Massey?”
They knew about Massey?
When she didn’t reply, Mullins reached for a clipboard he’d set on the edge of the desk when he’d walked in. He flipped through a few pages.
“I’ve been checking you out, Ms. Burkett. St. Petersburg has a recent complaint filed against you. A Mr. Massey says you accosted him on his own porch, brought muscle with you. Giant guy with a foreign accent.”
Mac was too surprised to shut down her reaction. She smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Mr. Massey has a public nuisance sheet as long as your arm.”
Mullins smiled. “Friend of yours, then.”
She held on to her temper. This guy didn’t like smart-mouths. “Mr. Massey’s been fined for reckless endangerment to animals twice in the past month. That’s due to me. Which I’m sure you know, too.”
“I know you were involved in the theft of a pair of racing greyhounds that ended up dead.”
Boy, he was playing the old switcheroo with her. Bricks coming from every direction.
“Not involved, hired to find them, through Tampa/St. Pete Recon, which I did. Check with my employer.”
“How well do you know the breeders of the stolen racing dogs?”
“Not at all. Don’t even know their names.”
“Are you sure about that? Because I got a thousand-word photo that says different.” Smiling, he pulled a sheet from the stack of clipped papers. It was a picture of Jarvis Henley and his wife talking with Oliver. In the shadowy foreground a figure had been circled in ink. It was Mac.
The detective laid out several more shots, all of them including her. In one she was shaking hands with Mrs. Henley. “Nice photos, huh?”
“Mr. Jarvis Henley owned the greyhounds I was hired to find?”
He frowned. “You want to play it that way, fine. I got more.”
He pulled out another photo from the St. Petersburg/Tampa Bay Times. It was one of her and Oliver on the stage together. “Seems like you’ve got connections to all the players.” He tapped Oliver’s photo. “Massey claims this is the fella who threatened him.”
“No one threatened Mr. Massey.” His grandson, possibly, but this was a don’t-volunteer-squat situation. “That gentleman was the banquet speaker for the SAR conference. He’s a search-and-rescue rock star who’s since gone home.”
“Drawn to the spotlight, are you?”
Mac didn’t respond.
“Have it your way. St. Petersburg police are waiting their turn to speak to you.”
“About Massey’s complaint?”
“That and other things. You should know we’ve got some serious intercity cooperation going on here. Mr. Massey filed his claim after his grandson and two others were picked up on suspicion of felonies committed in the area in which five dogs have been snatched this week. He says your threats were an attempt to keep his grandson quiet about what he knew about your part in the thefts.”
Mac let the crazy wash over her. Too many things were coming at her thick and fast. “I’m done talking about this.”
“Then let’s talk about you, Ms. Burkett. I thought your name was familiar. Macayla Burkett is famous in Florida.”
Macayla flinched. Here it came, the reason she’d left Tallahassee.
“You were a Trauma Services Child Specialist with Children’s Advocacy Services in Tallahassee. You also worked with a therapy dog. The case was pretty sensational. Made all the media including national. Six-year-old girl with disabilities who’d been the victim of an abusive parent attacked…”
Macayla stopped listening. She knew the story better than he ever would.
Jily, her mother called the defendant. Confined to a wheelchair, Jillian Catherine Neighbors was expected to call her father an abuser in a courtroom filled with adult strangers.
Jily didn’t speak well. Her disabilities had robbed her of so much, and were sapping more. But Jily liked the big flop-eared Lab/retriever mutt named Katie whom she’d met at Macayla’s office. Loved Katie so much that she would talk to Katie about anything.
Macayla had thought about offering her dog to Jily’s mother. But she doubted the woman had time for a dog in her life, not with all they were already going through. Still, she’d made the decision that she and Katie would remain in Jily’s life, afterward.
Katie.
Macayla breathed in slowly through her mouth. Katie was dead.
Suddenly the world she’d spent a year constructing shattered. Her nightmare had broken through and gone live.
The chill of the courtroom was back. The blank walls, the hushed silence as they sat in the rear. Waiting. Waiting for the unspeakable to play out.
The father entering the courthouse.
Their gazes locking at the exact same moment. And she knew.
How had he gotten the gun through security?
Too late for that. Jily’s face was pressed into Katie’s neck as she whispered secrets meant only for doggy ears, never aware of a thing. A blessing.
But six years of life was not enough. To give her a chance at more, Mac could only wager her twenty-six years.
Shots fired.
One life spared. One lost.
“Ms. Burkett? Ms. Burkett?”
Macayla snapped back, tasting salt on her tongue. When she focused on Detective Mullins she saw that he was holding out a tissue. He looked very unhappy. “I got that you saved the girl’s life. That was a very brave thing to do.”
“Was it bravery? I don’t know.”
He frowned, but went on doggedly. “How about this? You were celebrated as a hero for a while. Saw the footage of the CNN interview. That kind of attention can turn anyone’s head. Then, like all good things, the spotlight moved on. You were last week’s news. That has to have been hard for a young woman. You’d been shot protecting the girl. You could have died. You deserved the attention.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“No. I can see it happening. In looking for ways to feed your need for the praise that made your sacrifice worthwhile, you started stealing dogs so that when you returned them you would be rewarded with the praise that you deserved.”
She stared at him. He’d woven a perfectly plausible, if emotionally unstable, motive for why she might succumb to stealing dogs. Except for one thing. “I only find dogs after they’ve been lost or abandoned.”
“Bet you thought of that, too. Dognappers often just abandon their victims if the owners won’t pay the ransom. Convenient for you to show up, collect it another way.”
“Coincidence. Not convenient.” But he’d shaken her confidence at last. He’d fabricated a motive. Or someone had helped build a case against her. “Someone’s trying to frame me.”
Mullins sat back at the table, his expression suddenly mellow. “Why would someone want to do that, Ms. Burkett?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who would want to frame you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
Not nearly enough to answer his questions. She drew in a long breath that sent a shudder through her entire body. But when she looked up at him, all of Macayla Burkett was in advocacy mode for herself. “Arrest me, or let me go. Either way, I want an attorney before I say another word.”
“No need for that. You haven’t been formally charged yet. You voluntarily gave us your fingerprints.”
She shrugged. She was already in the state system. “I have nothing to hide. That doesn’t mean I don’t need protection.”
“From what?”
From you and your theories. But she was done talking. Way past done.
Mac shook her head. Somewhere things had gone off the rails.
“Then stand up, because I am formally charging you with theft and extortion. I’ll show you where you can make that call.”