Chapter Sixteen: Max
It was funny how even a locker room full of adult men could be just like a locker room back in high school, maybe even junior high. I finished a twenty-four-hour stint and was exhausted, but needed a good shower and a very important conversation with the guys before I slept it all off.
Everything I found out was burning a hole in my brain and I needed to pass it on fast. It really got me thinking of Rose, which made my shower very uncomfortable because I couldn’t jack off once I started thinking about her naked, ramming my cock in her over and over. Unfortunately, the thought of her in danger eclipsed everything. We had to figure this out, and fast.
I wrapped my waist in a towel and stepped out into the locker room, which was finally empty just as I knew it would be at that time. I already knew that Nate and Alex were coming in. It just wasn’t private enough in the precinct, and Alex was still getting too many visitors and such about his promotion. This case was already blowing up and if we gave too much away at once, we would lose it entirely. The three of us operated like that sometimes, certain cases that needed to be contained. We were good that way, and the Lieutenant appreciated it. We sort of made the seventy-eighth what it was in the past few years, but we didn’t like to think much of it.
We just did our jobs.
I managed to put deodorant on before they came busting in the room. Fuckers.
“Fuck do you want man, this is my tea time!” Nate just about shoved me into my locker before sitting on the old wooden bench. Alex just shook his head and leaned against the locker. I still hadn’t gotten used to seeing him in a suit all the time.
“I sort of figured everything out.”
“Sort of? Everything? You don’t sound very convincing.” Alex crossed his arms and I about rolled my eyes at him. I mean I love him like a brother but sometimes he can be an entitled prick. His slightly swollen eye hadn’t gone down yet.
Ugh, that was my lack of sleep talking.
“I have a guy on the inside, you remember Keeg?” I asked them. They both nodded.
Keeg was a guy we took down way back in our early days, and got him off by basically hiring him as our inside guy to the Irish mob. It was a little messed up, since he was committing crimes, probably felonies, and we weren’t arresting him. But it helped us close the bigger cases so…yeah, that was the American police system.
“I had a feeling about him after Amy connected all these crimes. His mob was behind those shakedowns a few years back, way before our time.” I start getting dressed because the towel was scratchy. “Anyway, I called him up just to see if he had any ‘idea’ and he didn’t take too kindly to being accused. But that’s besides the point—he knew some shit.”
“Some shit?” Nate chuckled.
“Yeah. A lot of it. Turns out these killings are the same as those robberies back then.”
They both looked confused and I knew why.
Those robberies back then were just that, robberies. They were fairly low on the radar even though they were so many. Mostly because the guys were all rich and no one honestly cared about the few hundred dollars that were stolen from them. Of course, there was an investigation at the time and minimal security once they were all linked, but once they figured out why they got robbed, their wealthy asses skipped town.
“So, they go from shaking to killing? That doesn’t really make much sense.” Nate commented.
I rolled my eyes and finished getting dressed. Once my gun belt was on, Alex got a call and got all stoic. It lasted a few seconds and sounded pretty serious.
“What was that about?” Nate asked him first. Alex ticked his jaw, as he always did when he was tense.
“Some assault in an alley near the crime scene of our vic. I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like our guy’s MO.”
“Another dead victim, then?” I concluded regretfully. A dead victim didn’t do much for us in terms of catching the suspect.
“No actually, he’s en route to the hospital. I need to go down there and get a statement, maybe see how similar he is to the other victim.” Alex went all detective-mode and the realization loomed in the air over all of us.
Maybe we were jumping to conclusions, but another incident meant the suspect was escalating, but why would he leave him alive? If it was anything like the old crimes years ago, then it would get worse.
I thought about getting in contact with Keeg again, hoping he might have some insight to who was doing this.
“What else was there?” I asked Alex.
“All the vic said was that the guy was Irish.” He shrugged.
Damn. It didn’t take me long to put them both together. It was definitely a repeat of those crimes from years ago. Keeg didn’t tell me any specifics about the stuff from back then. Just that the Irish were going after some rich businessmen. It didn’t make much sense since the Irish had tons of cash flowing in from their ‘pursuits.’ I wasn’t understanding why they had to shake people down. Maybe they needed some free lawyer or something? I didn’t fucking know.
“Seriously?” Nate said.
“Yeah, I need to go get all the information down.” He posed to leave but Nate called him back.
“You know what this means right? About Rose?”
Alex and I nodded.
“Look, I hadn’t told you guys yet, but someone was watching Rose last night,” Nate explained.
About a thousand scenarios ran through my head. Rose wasn’t safe—that was at the forefront. I knew I had to be worried about it in the beginning, but I never expected it to actually take form. She lived close to the crime scene, so she was already exposed to any connections with the crime. Not to mention her being a primary witness; at that point no one else had seen anything.
We had been keeping tabs on her since the incident, so nothing serious had happened. But obviously, it wasn’t enough to keep her safe.
“What if she needs real witness protection?” I said, my voice graveled at the severity of it.
She would have to change her whole life around, and not to mention she would not ever really feel safe again, even if she was being watched. I didn’t want that for her at all. She had so much life to her. This case—whatever it turned out being, would put a damper on that.
“I don’t know. She might? The guy looked pretty amateur, but he was taking photos of her. That isn’t a good sign.”
We all went silent, doing our own thinking. I had a lot of feelings about Rose but didn’t really know what to do with them. I mean, Rose was beautiful. Really fucking sexy in all the right ways and it kind of drove me mad a little bit, because I wasn’t sure if she was up for what we offered. Rose was really head strong and knew her own way, it was just as intimidating as it was attractive. I didn’t want to change her, and I was afraid putting all that security on her would do that. I was fine keeping tabs on her in my free time, but having extra uniforms would just make her feel…I don’t know.
She definitely couldn’t be changing in the window. That was only for us. Fuck, I knew it was serious when the thought of sex didn’t do anything to stop my thinking.
“Maybe not officially. For now. But if someone is watching her, that’s serious. Obviously, we can’t handle it ourselves. It would be worse for something to slip by us because we didn’t make the right call,” Alex said.
“You just described our job, man. Nothing much different here except our dicks are involved.” Nate said.
“Well, mine is.” Alex cracked a slight smile. “We don’t have to tell her everything. Just let her know we’re just being safe. I just don’t want her to worry.”
“Okay. But it would be worse if she does find out and she thinks we assumed her stupid or something, or couldn’t handle it,” I said.
Alex huffed. “Right.”
“Look, I think we’re getting ahead of shit. Let’s just check out this new vic and go from there. If we link everything together, we’ll make a decision then,” Alex decided.
He could always be the level headed one that made the most logical choice. It sounded good, but my head was still swimming with all the fucking unknowns. Was Rose even safe at that moment? I already worried about her from day one, but just knowing that someone was taking photos of her, that someone could really be planning something…
I almost wish she never made a statement that first day. Never even called the police to begin with.
But then how would I have met her? Of course, it was my fucking luck that the woman who got my wires all crossed was one that could be in danger. I took on a job that required me to protect people all the time, so why was it so hard to protect Rose?
It felt like every choice I was trying to make towards her was wrong. I was second guessing everything and I didn’t like it, because I just wasn’t wired that way. All the cases I worked required some hard choices and a tough gut, so I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t apply that to Rose. Sure, I worked mostly on exploited children cases, but I had the basic skill set of a cop.
Rose had a way of making me forget everything I trained for and stumble around looking for the right answer.
“Sounds good, man. You should head to the hospital…is it the same one Rose works at?” I asked.
“I would assume so. I’ll check in with you guys later, maybe come down and see what’s up?” He asked us.
We both nodded. We had nothing planned for the day other than patrol.
“Yeah.”
Nate and I gave each other a look as Alex left.
“So, someone was really watching Rose last night?” I asked him.
I sat on the bench next him and he nodded in response. It seemed to be weighing pretty heavy on him. “Yeah. At first, she called me when she was coming home, but she didn’t tell me why at first. Not until we were at her place and she told me she felt like she was being followed. Later on, I saw a guy on her water tank with a camera.”
“Fuck. Any chance they were on something else? Maybe some landscaping shit or something.” I was semi-hopeful, but it didn’t seem likely otherwise.
“Not likely. Just doesn’t seem so since she felt like someone was watching her earlier. I don’t know.” Nate hated the real stuff, and if he couldn’t make a joke about it, he would rather avoid it.
“I don’t know anything at this point.” I almost laughed.
“Yeah. Let’s go run patrol and then head to the hospital,” Nate said.
We left together and tried not to talk about how worried we were about Rose.