Page 66 of Stone
Juliana wanted to ask what that meant, but knew the woman wouldn’t provide any additional details so she dropped the matter.
“My team can dig into the officers, but I wouldn’t mind a head start with whatever you’ve already gathered. When is this Philly going to be back?” Parks asked.
Viper lifted his phone. “Assuming there weren’t any issues with the inventory, any minute.”
As if on cue, the door opened and Philly stood there. His gaze scanned the room, his brow furrowing when it landed on Professor Griswold. That wasn’t the reaction that caught Juliana’s attention, though. She’d expectedthatone. However, the shock on Philly’s face when he saw Agent Parks had Juliana straightening in her seat. For the tiniest of moments, Philly’sbody drew taut, and a look so raw flashed across his expression. Not even a heartbeat passed, though, before his easy grin appeared.
“Well, hello, Callie,” he said. Monk didn’t move, Viper cocked his head, and Simon leaned forward. Everyone looked at Agent Parks.
Her eyes narrowed, but other than her knuckles turning white as she gripped the arms of her chair, the agent didn’t otherwise move.
“Cat got your tongue, Callie?” Philly said.
Her nostrils flared, and she flexed. “Fuck me,” was all she said.
32
Stone’s gaze flickered to Monk and Viper, both of whom shot him a look telling him they were as lost as he. Clearly, Philly and Agent Parks had a past, but Stone had known Philly a long time, and not once had he mentioned a Callie Parks. Which in and of itself told him a lot.
Philly laughed, but his demeanor didn’t fool Stone. Or Viper or Monk, for that matter, both of whom watched him warily.
“I offered to do that once,” Philly said in response to Parks’s comment. “We were kids, really. I don’t remember what you said, but since we didn’t end up doing the horizontal dance in the back of my pickup, I’m guessing it was a ‘no.’”
Without a doubt, Philly remembered every word she’d said, but no one was going to call him on it. A man was entitled to his secrets or, in this case, his pain. Philly might be blowing the situation off now, but whatever Agent Parks said nearly two decades ago had hurt him. So much so that he never talked about it. At least not to Stone.
“What are you doing here?” Parks demanded. She might have intended to sound tough, but judging by the look Julianashot him, Stone hadn’t been the only one who’d recognized the thin thread of panic in Parks’s voice.
“I live here. I see you’ve met my brothers. And Juls,” he added, ignoring Griswold, who grunted.
“Your brothers,” Parks said, her eyes traveling to Monk, then Viper, then him before landing back on Philly. “You only have one brother,” she pointed out.
“Had,” Philly said, pulling out a chair and flopping himself down. “Matthew died when he was twenty.”
Agent Parks blinked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Philly never liked talking about his younger brother—his blood brother—and it came as no surprise when he changed the subject. “So, to recap,” he said, his gaze taking in the room. “Callie and I grew up in the same town. Her on the right side of the tracks. Me and Matthew on the wrong side of the wrong side,” he said, directing the second comment to Juliana since he, Monk, and Viper already knew almost everything there was to know about Philly’s childhood. It hadn’t been any better than theirs. “Our spit of land with its double-wide backed up to the three-hundred-acre farm her grandparents owned. Now that’s all been cleared up, what’s the update?”
Juliana blinked, but that was her only hesitation before she launched into a summary of the group’s recent conversation as if the last four minutes had never occurred. Stone didn’t miss how Philly’s gaze stayed fixed on Juliana while Agent Parks seemed focused on either making or reviewing her notes.
When Juliana finished, Philly dragged the closed laptop sitting by Monk in front of him and flipped it open. “Leo’s still doing a deep dive into all officers, but I started looking into the two in San Jose.” He brought up the image of one as he spoke.
“Officer Gerald Handly,” he said. “Started his career in the city, worked under Polinsky for fourteen years, then moved down to San Jose. He bought his SF apartment for $250,000when he started on the force and sold it for close to $600,000 when he moved.”
“Nice profit,” Monk mumbled.
Philly inclined his head, still not looking at Agent Parks. “Yes, but he then turned around and bought a house for $1.5 million,” Philly said. “That doesn’t actually go far in the Silicon Valley, but it did get him and his wife an updated eighteen-hundred-square-foot older home in a good neighborhood with a lot that’s bigger than a postage stamp.”
“Not something a cop would be able to afford,” Stone said.
“Lending practices are insane, but even if he put the full $600,000 that he made from the sale of his apartment—assuming he didn’t owe anything on his original mortgage—I find it hard to believe a bank would lend him the remaining $900,000. Not on a cop’s salary,” Juliana said.
“Any chance he inherited something?” Agent Parks spoke for the first time.
Philly answered but kept his attention on his computer. “His parents live in a trailer park down in Bakersfield—a nice one, but not one that screams money. There was, at some point, a small family farm on his paternal grandparents’ side. The bank foreclosed on it when Gerald was in high school.”
“What about he’s wife’s salary?” Viper asked.
Philly hesitated. “She doesn’t work outside the home. No kids,” he added after a beat.
