“We have to find a new house to move into so we can move both our households at the same time.”
“Exactly.”
“Good luck on the house deal.”
“Thanks and hopefully we’ll sell yours soon too.”
Then they were both hurrying to dress and grabbed a quick breakfast of eggs and toast. They kissed and hugged, and she was off to see the Realtor and he was off to speak with Phyllis and her lawyer.
“Okay,” Tori said in the interrogation room at the bureau, Adam giving her the floor again with Phyllis and planning to stay out of it unless she needed him to back her up on something. “The prosecution has agreed to the plea bargaining, if Victor is where you say he is and you testify against him and against Dover about ordering the kidnapping of the girl.”
“Unless Victor believes I’ll turn on him and he’s taken off, he should be in either one of two different locations. He’s stayed at Lonnie Hicks’s place. I know Lonnie is in jail, but Victor’s got a key to the house. The other location is a room above the Fast Time Bar and Grill. He rents it under the name of Vlad Romansky.”
“Okay, let’s go.” Adam called it in to the judge, and they got search warrants for both places.
Tori smiled at Adam as they headed out in his vehicle.
“What? You did all the talking, and when we wrapped it up, it was time to go.”
She laughed. “I love working with you. When I worked with the FBI, I didn’t have a wolf partner, and this is so much better.”
“I’m glad you’re my partner too.”
“So which place do we go to?” she asked.
“We’ll send a unit to Lonnie’s house, and you and I will go to the bar and grill. We don’t want to spook him if he has an informant tell him we’re searching one of his places and he runs from the other.”
“Good idea.”
When they reached the bar and grill, they found stairs to an upper apartment, and with backup, they headed up the stairs. One of the police officers knocked on the door, but no one answered. Then they heard someone inside and the officer kicked the door in.
“This is the police!”
They heard a window opening in a back room, and Adam and an officer raced to intercept the person. As soon as they reached the window, they found Victor on the fire escape. Adam radioed to the other police that Victor was on his fire escape out back while he headed down after him.
Suddenly, Victor turned and looked up at Adam, drawing a gun at the same time. Adam knew that look. Victor wasn’t going to give up without a shoot-out.
“Drop the weapon!” Adam yelled, his heart pounding.
Victor fired at him, but the round ricocheted off the metal ladder as Adam ducked. Adam fired his gun and the round hit Victor in the hand, and he dropped his gun.
Adam continued to race down the steps while Victor reached the bottom of the ladder and landed in the alley. Adam caught up to him as other police officers surrounded them with guns drawn. Adam took Victor down to the pavement, and one of the officers called for an ambulance.
Tori retrieved Victor’s gun and made sure Adam wasn’t the one injured, then returned to the apartment. Once they had read Victor his rights and treated him for the gunshot wound, he was taken to the hospital. Adam knew he would have to do a bunch of paperwork and wished he hadn’t needed to shoot Victor, but he hadn’t had any choice.
Adam soon returned to the apartment to help with the investigation to find any other criminal evidence against Victor, while Tori called the other officers who were checking out Lonnie’s place to let them know Victor was in custody.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t get shot,” Tori said to Adam.
“I know. Sierra probably would have been upset with me.” He opened a drawer and smiled. “More guns, more stolen credit cards.”
Tori waved a piece of paper at Adam. “A rental receipt for a boat storage unit fourteen by forty-four feet and the key to it.” She held up the key with a tag on it.
“Since they were involved in the theft of boats, I think we should check it out,” Adam said and gave a call to the judge, who okayed the order for a search warrant. “Let’s go.”
They had two officers come with them, and when they arrived at the boat storage unit, they unlocked and opened the door and found a 2019 SeaArk EasyCat. Adam checked the list price. “Going rate on one of these is around $54,000. I suspect this wasn’t the boat they were in when they stole the other.”
“Nope, unless it was stolen too. This for sure is,” Tori said, checking the serial number on the engine with a list of stolen boats she had on her phone.
When they finally finished processing both crime scenes and the boat was hauled off as evidence, they returned to the office and found Sierra at the bureau, sketching a witness’s account of a man who had stolen the witness’s purse at the grocery store. Unfortunately, the place where he stole it wasn’t in view of a camera.
Sierra smiled at Adam, and he hoped she had good news about her house. As soon as she was done with the lady, she came over and gave Adam a hug. “I sold my house, and your house has an offer.”
“All right. We’ve got good news too. We caught Victor.”
“Yes! That’s the last of them, isn’t it?” She frowned as she saw a small amount of blood on Adam’s sleeve.
“It’s not my blood. It’s Victor’s. I had to shoot him in the hand so he wouldn’t shoot at me again.” Adam let out his breath in exasperation. “Which means tons of paperwork. But we need to go out and celebrate the sale of your house tonight.”
“And the capture of Victor without you getting shot.”
“Absolutely.” He began to do the paperwork and Tori was checking into a couple of cases at the same time.
Roland came to him with a bit of good news. “Ballistics came back on those shell casings and bullets found at Victor’s old farmhouse, and we had a match on a couple of the rifles used in the shooting incident in Forest Park.”
Adam smiled. “That’s great news!”
“Yeah, I thought you would want to know right away.” Roland left to do some other work.
A police officer motioned two men to speak with Adam and Tori, and they learned the men had witnessed the boat accident where the three men had drowned on the Willamette River.
Adam and Tori sure hoped they could have confirmation one way or another about what Kinney’s former cohorts had witnessed concerning the men’s drownings.
“We saw the driver of the boat make a turn and cross its own wake,” the older gray-haired man said, his face weathered and tan. “During the maneuver, the two men seated near the transom of the boat fell overboard. The captain of the boat turned it around and motored over to the men, then he dove into the water.”