“Just getting ready to go out with some friends,” he said. “It just came up. I was going to text you.”
Right. “Who?”
“Tom and Rick. You don’t know them.”
“From school.”
“Yeah. Did you get done early?”
“Something came up.” She pulled out a chair. “I needed to talk to you.”
He stared at her. “Are you okay? Did something happen at work? Is it A.L.?”
She held up a hand. “It’s Matthew Stahl.”
“Shannon’s husband.”
“He’s been arrested,” she said.
“You arrested him?” Gabe asked.
“No. Another officer. But it’s serious. Charges are getting filed. Drugs. Guns and other explosives. He already has a felony record. If he’s convicted, he’s going to prison.”
“Did Shannon call you?” Gabe asked. “Did she want your help?”
“No. I just found out.” She paused. “I had a tag on his name. So that if anything came in on him, the arresting officer would know to contact me.”
“You were watching him.”
She threw up her hands. “Gabe, you’re missing the point. We have chosen these people to shepherd our child into the world.”
“The last I knew he didn’t have a uterus,” Gabe said. “Shannon is probably going to want to do this more than ever. They’ll have some legal expenses.”
“We can’t use Shannon,” she said. “That’s out of the question.”
“The paperwork, all fucking nineteen pages of the contract, have been reviewed and initialed. We can’t stop now, Rena.”
“Our unborn child will be going on visits to the state penitentiary. Is that what you want? Is that what you’d be satisfied with? Happy with?” She got up, too agitated to sit. “People talk and have long memories. Years from now, it’ll get thrown in our kid’s face. People will say, oh, you were that baby.”
“Rena,” Gabe said, his voice low, his tone even. “Is it possible that you’re overreacting?”
She didn’t know. The idea that their child would ever be considered less than...perfect. Or that he or she might actually be less than perfect. After all, who knew exactly how much a fetus absorbed from the outside world while in the womb? She just couldn’t take that chance. Not on something so important. “This breaks the morals clause in the contract.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked again.
She didn’t know what the fuck she wanted. “We’ll find someone else,” she said.
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“We will,” she insisted.
“We’ve already spent a lot of money on this. And with me being back in school for a job that’s going to pay less than what I was making, it maybe wasn’t a good idea to begin with.”
It was what she’d been afraid of. He was going to back out. She felt sick. All their planning, all their hoping. It would fall apart.
She would fall apart.
“I have to go back to work.” She picked up her keys. They felt heavy in her hand. “We can talk later.”
“Seems as if you’ve made up your mind,” he said. “I’ve got to go, too. I’ll be home late.”
He walked out the door, leaving her in her silent kitchen. Her phone buzzed. It was A.L. Are you coming back tonight? No problem if you’re not.
On my way, she texted back.
We’ve got bus video of Coyote Frogg was his response.
Eighteen
“Everything okay?” A.L. asked.
Hardly, thought Rena. “Yeah, fine.” She couldn’t even remember the drive back to work.
A.L. studied her. He likely didn’t believe her but he also understood that sometimes it really was better to compartmentalize. To give your full attention to something else besides what was troubling you. And right now, it was almost 11:00 at night and she’d been up since 5:00. She should be tired. But the thought that they’d found Coyote Frogg was exhilarating.
The door of the conference room opened and in walked an analyst who often helped them with video evidence. “Hey, Louisa, thanks for hanging out with us tonight.”
“No problem. My thirteen-year-old son is having a friend over tonight. Lots of yelling and screaming at the video games. My husband is better suited to dealing with that.”
“I get it.” Would Gabe be that kind of dad? If she backed out of this deal, would he ever be any kind of dad? Damn. Compartmentalize. “What are we looking at?”
“We worked with the city to get video of bus 13, which runs along Clayton Avenue. The stop you were specifically interested in was Wake Street. And we’re pretty sure we got your boys jumping on there once but got them another time a little farther down the line on Poke Street.” She was pulling up video as she talked.
It was gray and a little grainy but there they were, about halfway back, slouched in a seat. “That’s Coyote,” A.L. said.
He looked as if he was sleeping. The guy next to him was awake but barely. He was just staring ahead. “Date and time, Louisa?”
The woman pointed to the bottom of the screen. That’s last Monday, about 16:20 hours.”
The kid had said that he’d seen them between 4:00 and 4:30. He was proving to be a good little witness.
“I’m going to fast-forward to where they get off,” Louisa said. “Here we are twenty minutes later and they’re getting off at the corner of Willow and Spring.”
“What’s at Willow and Spring?” Rena asked. She had a rough idea. There was a three-or four-block radius of manufacturing companies that had many decades back strategically located near the rail line. Trains no longer ran, however, and many of the businesses were closed up. A few had been turned into cool loft apartments, but it was a work in progress. The homeless liked to hang out there, especially under the Oaken Bridge.
“We picked them up on street cameras heading north,” Louisa said. “We lost them when they turned the corner, but perhaps they were headed here.”
Here was an old three-story brick factory. It was a long rectangular shape with a row of very small windows across the front. It would not have caught the eye of a developer looking to turn the property into upscale housing. Some of the glass appeared to have been knocked out. “Nice,” Rena said sarcastically.