Page 23 of Trusting Laurence
Larry couldn’t hold back a smile as he listened to Maddie chattering away a mile a minute. Just like she used to when she was young. He soaked in the sight of the woman before him, remembering the sweet little girl with a smile like sunshine and a heart of pure gold. He rubbed a hand over a suddenly aching chest, right around where his heart was. He’d missed his little Tiger Lily.
After another twenty minutes of catching up, Larry finally said his goodbyes. He hated leaving them, but he really needed to get back to the office. He wanted to get the phone and flower box to the lab as soon as possible. He didn’t hold out much hope, but it didn’t hurt to try.
With a promise to stay in touch, he left. Standing on the sidewalk outside the house, he checked the street to see if the sedan was still there. Sure enough, it was parked in the same spot. As surreptitiously as possible, he pulled out his phone and snapped a couple of quick photos before he started walking toward it.
Clearly, the occupants were watching. They started the vehicle and pulled away as he got within a car’s length of them. He’d been expecting it but had hoped he’d at least get a look at the people inside before they got away.
With a sigh, he headed back to his car.
8
It didn’t give Larry any satisfaction knowing he’d been right about the lab results. There had been no markings or company name on the box and none of the fingerprints they’d managed to lift had led them anywhere. No police records, nothing out of the ordinary. Just ordinary citizens, apparently.
The cell phone had given them only one clue. The call had been traced back to a burner phone. Which, in turn, had been traced back to the general area of the prison. That’s where the trail ran cold. There was no way to pinpoint its exact location. But it did give them a place to start.
He’d run a search on the vehicle himself to avoid alerting anyone if, indeed, they had a mole. His search had led him to a small-time dealer with big dreams and bigger ambitions. Apparently, he’d been getting in with some big hitters lately in an attempt to further his career. Larry intended making time to see the man. But first, he wanted to pay Marcus another visit.
It had been a shock to realize he had a leak somewhere, and it made him twitchy to think it could possibly be someone in his department. He thought long and hard about who it might be, considering how few people were privy to the knowledge of Marcus Forrester’s accounting records.
Having gone back and forth, his thoughts churning wildly, he’d eventually decided to confide in Finn. After the years they’d served together, the amount of times they’d had only each other to rely on for survival, he refused to believe the man was dirty. He’d stake his life on his innocence, just as he’d trusted the man with his life in the past.
He placed the first of his two calls.
As he waited for Finn to answer, he searched for Jim’s number. A couple minutes later, there was a knock on his closed office door.
“Come.”
“You looking for me, sir?”
“Yeah. Please ask Mary-Beth to hold all my calls until I tell her different.” Larry watched as Finn disappeared from sight for a moment before returning and closing the office door behind him.
“What’s up, boss man?”
He rubbed his hands over his face. All of sudden, he was bone weary. He was getting way too old for this shit. He’d been seriously contemplating retiring after this case was closed. Today had solidified that decision.
“We have a leak,” Larry replied. He watched the other man’s face intently. Reading him. All he saw was anger and disbelief.
“As in a mole?” The incredulity in his voice would almost be funny if the situation weren’t so serious.
“Yeah, as in a mole.”
Finn shook his head. “Are you sure, sir? How is it possible? There’s only a handful of us that know anything worth knowing at this point.”
Larry handed the file lying in front of him to Finn. Nodded at it. “I’m sure. Have a look and see what you think.”
In silence, Finn sifted through the contents of the folder. There were photos of the dead flower in its plain white box, a printout of the message Tahlia had received on her phone, a photocopy of the card that had accompanied the flower. Larry had also included the lab results on the florist box and cell phone, along with the vehicle registration papers.
The file landed back on the desk with a thump. Finn jumped from the chair, pacing across the office floor. “Shit. This is not good news.” He paced. Larry watched. The man was like a caged panther, stalking across the room. Frustration, anger, they rolled off him in ways. “I thought the incident with Forrester was random. Like, maybe he’d pissed the wrong inmate off and had to be taught a lesson in respect. But this? This is a whole different ball game. It puts a completely different spin on things now. That beatdown was probably as much a warning as all of that.” He gestured at the manilla folder lying on the desk.
“That’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking. The car parked outside the house worries me. It tells me they’ve got constant eyes on Tahlia O’Connor. And that makes me all kinds of nervous.”
“You know what this means, though, right?” A look crossed Finn’s face, like he’d smelled something bad. “It means one of us is dirty. The question is who? And how the hell do we shake ‘em down?”
A heavy sigh escaped Larry as he nodded at Finn’s words. “Yep, it sure looks like one of us is dirty. We’ll have to set a trap to smoke them out. First, though, we need to go pay Forrester another visit.”
While Finn continued to pace around his office, Larry made his second call.
“Wilder.”
