18
Parker
I locked the door securely when I left, Danny’s dog tags hanging around my neck and tucked safely in my shirt, with Boo’s collar clutched tightly in my hand. Staring down at the ground to make sure I didn’t trip over my feet, I cut a beeline through the yard to my car and ran into a wall of muscle before I could get there.
"Shit!" I managed to say as I started to fall. But I didn’t hit the ground because a strong pair of hands wrapped around my shoulders and kept me upright.
"Hey, Parker," Artie said with a bright smile that seemed more than a little out of place, given the circumstances. I mean, who smiled when another person took a digger and almost fell right on their ass? "I finally caught up to you."
"Thanks for the save, Artie." I pulled away and started for my car. "I’ll see you later, okay?"
I’d almost made it into my car when he was there again, grabbing the top of my car door and keeping me from leaving.
"I wanted to talk to you about the fire."
A split second passed while I tried to process exactly what Artie said. He didn’t remove his hand from my car door, and I didn’t open it any farther, but he still waited with that patient smile on his face for me to answer him.
"The fire," he prompted. "Remember? I thought for sure someone would have come to ask me if I’d seen anything at all. But no one came by." He kept on babbling as I struggled to figure out what in the world he was talking about.
"Okay?" I knew for a fact that I couldn’t hide my confusion. I hoped that he would take the hint and explain further.
Unfortunately, seconds ticked by while he stared at me with that cheery smile and didn’t say a word, just stared.
"Artie," I prompted him. "What are you getting at?"
His vision cleared, and his smile dropped. Once again, he was the same serious man that I’d known just as long as I’d known Remy. "Uh, I have cameras on the exterior of my house, remember?" He turned back to his house and nodded toward the white camera I could see poking out from under the soffits on his porch. Taylor was standing there with a bottle of water in her hand, so I waved with an awkward smile.
"From when I checked about Boo," he went on. "I have the video file from the night of the fire, and I thought that might be helpful." He held out a plain white padded envelope that had his address on the front. He’d pulled it out from behind his back, and the pieces clicked into place.
"Oh, shit, Artie, that’s amazing." I pushed the door open, careful not to hit him with it, and took the envelope that he offered. "Thank you."
"No problem, Parker. I hope it helps." With that, he walked back toward his house, leaving me with my thoughts and an envelope that might have answers as to who would throw a Molotov cocktail through my window.
Those thoughts led me to the only logical thing to do with the envelope. I drove to BPD to get answers.
The redheaded woman sitting in dispatch smiled broadly at me. "Hi, Teri." I looked around. "I thought you worked over at the sheriff’s department."
Teri laughed. "Not anymore. Chief Townsend offered me better benefits. You know … money, and the fact that I don’t have to see Logan all the time." She ran a hand through the curls that fell around her shoulders in cascading waves, and I couldn’t hide the laugh bubbling up.
Teri and Logan were kind of an epic love story gone wrong. She’d gotten her heart broken, and he left town for a few years. Then he came back and started working with the state police while she worked dispatch for the sheriff’s office.
"So…" I pursed my lips together and looked around to make sure no one was listening in. "You’re telling me you quit Birch County, because your ex got a job there."
She nodded, her eyes bugging out. "He said it had nothing to do with me, but then I had to keep hearing his stupid voice over the radio every night. I decided to leave when Chief Townsend offered me more money, and I started last week."
"Makes sense to me." I tapped my fingers on her counter. "I’ve got a hundred bucks on the fact that he’ll be working for BPD before the end of the year though."
The horrified expression that crossed her face only made me laugh harder than I had before.
"Take that back," she hissed and then scrunched her nose at me. "It’s not a nice thing to say."
"No," I said while shaking my head. "But if you decide you need help burying his body, let me know. I’m sure I could round up a few people to help."
"I can definitely do that." Teri winked and turned back to her computer for a moment. "So, what can I do for you? Are you here to see Remy? I’m not sure if he’s in the office right now. That man never remembers to log his status in his computer, and they all take the back door to the station." She prattled on for a minute, and I let her with a smile on my face.
"No, actually." I held up the envelope in my hand and wondered idly how she even knew that there was something going on with the two of us, but then thought better of it. Police officers were worse gossips than high school girls. Without a doubt, before I’d even made it home from the hospital after the fire, they all knew about Remy and me. "I’m here to see Officer Ortiz about the fire."
She nodded in understanding. "Okay, I’ll buzz you in. Come on back, and I’ll take you to him."
A moment later the loudest buzzing sound I’d ever heard before filled the air for about two seconds. I grabbed the door while it was still unlocked and walked in, smiling at Teri when she saw that I’d made it inside okay.
"You wouldn’t believe the number of people who can’t get in through the front door." She laughed lightly. "Let’s go."
I followed her down the hall, which had white walls lined with photos of the department at different dates throughout the last hundred years. All the way back to the very first Birch Police Department, a horse and buggy crew that I’d love to have seen in real life.
At the end of the hall, we walked into a wide-open area which could only be the bullpen. Milling about were three different officers, all looking like they were trying to do anything to get out of paperwork. One even had a paper airplane in his hand that he threw and then went to pick up.
"Hey, Parker." My brother-in-law, of course. Linc shot me a devilish grin while he leaned down to grab the offending piece of paper that hadn't quite made it as far as he wanted. "What are you doing here?"
I held up the envelope and shook it while shrugging my shoulders lightly. "Oh, nothing. Just doing your jobs for you, that’s all," I teased, but the flash of a challenge being presented to him made Linc laugh. "But seriously, I'm here to see Officer Ortiz."
Linc nodded toward a group of doors at the far end of the bullpen. "He's in the detectives' office working on something."
Teri patted me on the shoulder. "Let's go. I've got to get back up front, so the sooner I get you to him the better." She eyed the hall we'd just come back through suspiciously. "The last time I left my desk, the patrol officers thought it would be funny to steal my chair. Which was hilarious, until I grabbed all of theirs while they were gone and then wrapped all their desks in plastic wrap after they got their chairs back."