Page 35 of Always Murder

Big surprise: Ryan didnotlike that.

He only tried to run away once.He made it as far as the door before Keme grabbed his collar, and then he gave up immediately.

I was starting to think Keme had a future in a field that generously rewarded physical violence.MMA, maybe.Or the military.Or what did you call those guys in the mob who broke your leg if you didn’t pay up?An enforcer.My adopted son-slash-big brother would make one heck of an enforcer.

When Bobby got there, he heard us out.He looked at the money.And then he and I stepped outside while Keme fell into the natural role of prison guard.

“Are you going to arrest him?”I asked.

“For what?”

“I don’t know.Keeping secrets.High treason.Criminal abuse of a Hot Pocket.”

“How much syrup did you put in your oatmeal?”

“Bobby!”

“I’m not going to arrest him.”

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“For what?”

“Uh, snooping?Sleuthing?Playing laser tag without a vest?Impersonating a police officer while under the influence of Jinx St.James?”

Sometimes, when Bobby gets quiet, it feels like he’s quiet for alongtime.

“It was getting interesting there at the end,” he said in what I—a writer!—would have calleda deadly tone.“Keep going.”

“What about the money?”

“When did you impersonate a police officer?”

“I was really more of an accomplice.That’s not a crime.”

“Itisa crime.It’s actually its own crime.It’s called being an accomplice.”

“Bobby: the money?”

He gave me a look that suggested the previous conversation was not finished, but he said, “I’m not going to do anything about the money.Sure, it’s weird that Ryan found it in his car.And I believe you when you say this might be someone’s attempt to frame Paul.But think about it like this: all we know for a fact is that Ryan found some cash.No one has reported that money missing.No one has accused Paul or Ryan of a crime.It’s not a crime to have a lot of cash on hand.And it’s not a crime to hide it in weird places.”Bobby put his hands on his hips.It’s a good look on him; he’s got broad shoulders and a trim waist, and when he puts his hands on his hips, it accentuates the defined vee of his body.It also emphasizes his gun, which—even though I don’t like guns and don’t want guns and don’t have any general, uh, truck with guns—still has an effect.“What I don’t understand is why everyone was so fixated on Paul in the first place.”

“Because it was his packages that were being stolen.Only his packages.”

“But see, that’s just not true.I mean, maybe a higher number of Paul’s packages were being taken than, say, another random delivery driver.But porch piracy is a big—and I meanbig—problem.We’re talking billions of dollars a year.I understand Paul had already made a dumb mistake at work.They had him pegged as potential trouble.Maybe they felt like they needed to make an example.Or maybe they really did think Paul was stealing those packages.”

I could hear something else trying to nose its way out from between Bobby’s careful sentences.“But?”

Bobby glanced around, but we were still alone in the small staff parking lot behind the strip mall.“Do you know how porch pirates work?”

“I mean, they take packages off of porches, right?”

“Right.Sometimes, it’s a crime of opportunity—someone passes a house with packages on the porch, and they run up, grab them, and leave.But other times, it’s planned.For some people, this is their equivalent of a full-time job, so they have strategies, and they know what works.They might dress up as a delivery driver, for example, and drive an unmarked van, so it looks like they have a reason to be carrying packages to and from the porch.Or they dress up as an employee from a utility company, or something else—something nobody would look twice at.Sometimes, they follow a delivery truck and grab anything that isn’t brought inside right away.And sometimes, they work in groups.”

“So, somebody could have been following Paul, and that’s why it was only his packages—” The rest of what he’d said caught up to me.“Wait, groups?”

“It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, if you want to call it that.Some people get organized about it.”

Farther down, one of the back doors set into the strip mall opened, and a middle-aged guy came out lugging a bag of trash.

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