“Not for the thief,” Ellie murmured under her breath.
Jerry heard her. “That’s not the lede Blake wants us to go with,” he told her. “Turns out that this isn’t this detective’s first brush with being in the right place at the right time.”
“Oh?” Ellie did her best to sound interested, but she was really having trouble raising her spirits this morning. She’d resigned herself to the fact that some mornings were just going to be worse than others and this was one of those mornings. She needed to work on that, Ellie told herself silently. Jerry didn’t deserve to be sitting next to a morose woman.
Maybe coffee would help, she reasoned.
“Yeah,” Jerry was saying as he navigated the streets, heading for the precinct. “I didn’t get the details to that. Figure maybe you could do a follow-up when you do the interview.”
She nodded absently, still not focused on the story. Out of sheer desperation, Ellie forced herself to make a few notes. Something had to spark her. “What’s the detective’s name?”
Jerry shrugged. “Blake said we’re supposed to ask the desk sergeant to speak to the detective who uncovered the stolen paintings.”
“In other words, you don’t have a name,” she concluded.
The curly-headed cameraman spared her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Blake seemed in a hurry for us to get there. Said the story had already been carried on the radio station. Wanted us there before another news station beat us to it.”
Well, that was par for the course, Ellie thought. She sighed. “Why is it that every story is the story—until it’s not?”
She received a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile in response. “Beats me. All I know is that all this competition is good for my paycheck. I’ve got a college tuition to fund.”
“Jackie is only five,” she reminded him, referring to the cameraman’s only child.
Jerry nodded, acting as if she had made his point for him. “Exactly. I can’t let the grass grow beneath my feet.”
Jerry stepped on the gas.
* * *
The police department was housed in a modern-looking building that was barely seven years old. Prior to that, the city’s core had been domiciled in an old building that dated back to the ’50s and had once contained farm supplies. People still called the present location the new precinct. Centrally located, it was less than five miles from the news station. They got there in no time flat, even though every light had been against them.
Ellie got out first, but Jerry’s legs were longer and he reached the building’s front entrance several strides ahead of her.
“Ladies first,” the cameraman told her, holding the door open for Ellie.
She smiled as she passed him and headed straight for the desk sergeant’s desk. She made sure she took out her credentials and showed them to the dour-faced man before she identified herself.
Even so, the desk sergeant, a snow-white-haired man whose shoulders had assumed a permanent slump, presumably from the weight of the job, took his time looking up at the duo.
The moment he did, Ellie began talking. “I’m Ellie King and this is my cameraman, Jerry Ross.” She told him the name of her news studio, then explained, “We’re here to interview one of your detectives.”
White bushy eyebrows gathered together in what seemed to be a preset scowl as the desk sergeant squinted at her credentials.
“Any particular one?” he asked in a voice that was so low it sounded as if he was filtering it over rocks.
“Detective,” he said a bit more loudly when she didn’t answer his question. “You want to interview any particular one?” His voice did not become any friendlier as it grew in volume.
“The one who caught that art thief,” Jerry answered, speaking up.
The desk sergeant, Sergeant Nolan according to the name plate on his desk, scowled just a tad less as he nodded. “You wanna talk to Benteen,” he told them.
The moment Nolan said the name, it all but echoed inside her head.
It couldn’t be, Ellie thought. Breathe, Ellie, breathe!
“Excuse me,” she said out loud, feeling like someone in the middle of a trance. “Did you say Benteen?”
“Yeah. Detective Colin Benteen,” the desk sergeant confirmed, acting as if each word he uttered had come from some private collection he was loath to share with invasive civilians. Nolan turned to look at a patrolman on his right. “Mallory, tell Benteen to come down here. There’re some people here who want to talk to him.”
Having sent the patrolman on his errand, the sergeant turned his attention to the people from the news station. “You two wait over there,” he growled, pointing to an area by the front window that was empty. “And don’t get in the way,” he warned.
“Friendly man,” Jerry commented, moving to the space that the sergeant had indicated. When he turned around to glance at Ellie, he saw that she’d suddenly gone very pale. A measure of concern entered his eyes. “You feeling all right, Ellie?”
“Yes,” she responded. Her voice sounded hollow to her ears.
It was an automatic response, but the thing was that she wasn’t all right. She’d recognized the name of the detective, and for a moment, everything had frozen within her. She tried to tell herself it was just an odd coincidence. Maybe it was just a relative. After all, Benteen wasn’t that uncommon a name.
It had been a patrolman with that last name who had come to the scene of the robbery that had stolen Brett from her. This was a detective they were waiting for.
Because of the circumstances that had been involved and the fact that she had removed herself from the scene, Ellie had never actually met the policeman who had arrived shortly after Brett had foiled the robbery. The patrolman, she was later told, who’d tried—and failed—to save Brett’s life.
But she knew his name and at the time had promised herself that as soon as she was up to it, she would seek out this Officer Benteen and thank him for what he had tried to do—even if he had ultimately failed.
But a day had turned into a week and a week had turned into a month.
After several of those had passed, she gave up the notion of finding the policeman to thank him for his efforts.
After a while, the thought of talking to the man who had watched Brett’s life ebb away only brought back the scene to her in vivid colors. A scene she was still trying, even at this point, to come to grips with. She honestly didn’t think that she was up to it. So eventually she avoided pursuing the man altogether.
Jerry was watching her with concern. “You don’t look fine. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you look like you’re about to break into a cold sweat.”
“Jerry, I already have a mother,” she told him, an annoyed edge in her voice—she didn’t like being read so easily. “I said I’m fine.”
He was not convinced and was about to say as much when she turned away from him and toward the man she saw walking toward them. The expression on her face had Jerry turning, as well. If anything, she appeared even paler than she had a moment ago.
“You look like you’re seeing a ghost,” he remarked uneasily.
The universe was sending her a message, she thought. It was time to tie up this loose end.
“Not a ghost,” she answered. “Just someone I never got to thank properly.”
The