Page 16 of Identify
Quinn takes the pint glass and practically skips to the tap station. “Which one?”
“The stout,” Mack and Daria both say then smile at each other.
Quinn points to each one, reading off the name, until she comes to the Russian Imperial Stout, and stops. “This one?”
Daria nods once.
Quinn sticks the glass under the spout and pulls on the tap, dancing slightly in place. Foam fills the glass. She turns to Daria. “Is this a trick?”
Daria laughs. “No. But there is an art to pulling a beer. Let me show you.” She grabs a clean glass and shows Quinn how to hold the glass to avoid the foam and pulls a perfect draft for Mack. “Now, this does not mean you can serve beer. You are still low on my totem pole. But at least now you know.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Quinn salutes Daria and tries to click her heels, they both laugh. Daria disappears for a moment and returns with our burgers.
I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I see the burger. I throw my tie over my shoulder and take a huge bite.
“Mmm,” I groan at how good it is. “You could make so much more money as a burger joint,” I say as a compliment.
“No, I couldn’t.” Daria laughs. I know she’s right; I have a feeling the bar does well, but she takes my statement for the compliment it was.
Mack finishes with his burger before I’m halfway through mine. By which time a few more customers have filtered in, some at the bar and some at tables. And a server is out on the floor.
“You good,” Daria asks him.
“I’m always good when you’re around,” he says. She throws a bar towel at him; it lands in the ketchup on his plate. She rolls her eyes and hands his plate to Quinn telling her to take it in the back.
I’d thought Quinn was kidding when she said she was working here now. So when she gets back, I ask her. “You’re really working here now?”
She smiles. “Yep.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s still, like, my first hour here. But so far so good.”
It amazes me how happy she always is. I think that’s part of what draws me to her. Like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. Maybe David won’t mind me dating her once he’s married.
Hell, maybe he won’t mind now.
Not that it matters. I won’t ask.
Now is not the time. I need to get this case behind me before I can think about anything else, especially my personal life.
I look over at Mack and Daria talking quietly. She’s leaning on her forearms on the bar and he’s stroking her arm lightly with his pinky finger. You’d almost miss the touch if you weren’t looking for it. I always look for it. And it’s always there. I’ve asked him countless times why they aren’t together when it’s so obvious they have feelings for each other.
He always responds with some vague answer about it being hard with our jobs what they are. But I don’t buy it. Plenty of other agents marry and do fine. I know he’s not seeing anyone else, and he makes us come here for lunch at least once a week if not more. Maybe one day he’ll be honest with me about what’s going on. Until then, I’ll just keep looking for clues.
8
Mack
I’mpremature in asking Daria to get information on Tremblay. But something tells me Reed will be resistant to acknowledge that Tremblay may be a valid suspect. Can’t say I blame him, the two have been friends since they were young. I’d feel the same if I were him. If Daria can come up with something solid, it will help.
Reed’s been quiet the entire drive back to headquarters. Now that we’re here, I know the director will want us to do something about the facial recognition results on the sketch. And that something he’ll want us to do will be a photo lineup. And Reed won’t want to do it.
We each have an email-memo sitting in our inbox from the director requesting exactly that. This could go two ways at this point. If Paula Nelson doesn’t ID Tremblay as the guy, we’re back to square one. But if she does, we’ll have to bring him in. If it ends up we have to bring Tremblay in, I don’t want to tell him the real reason we’re doing it. I’m not above bringing suspects in on trumped-up charges to suss them out and see what else we can get.
If Tremblay is guilty—which I think he is—all we can charge him with right now is kidnapping, and it’s flimsy. We can’t risk going ahead with an arrest until we have something more solid. Plus, I don’t want to alert the other players in the game until we get more intel on their entire operation. Regardless of what Reed wants, we’ll start with a photo lineup that includes Tremblay and go from there.
Reed makes the call to Paula Nelson to have her come in. If she picks Tremblay out of the lineup, I figure at the very least we can place a tail on him, maybe a stakeout, and definitely requisition his cell phone records. If anything incriminating pops up, we can go from there.
