Chapter Five


Tisha leaned back in her seat and stared at the cork board she had hanging in front of her desk. Index cards with the suspects and clues found thus far were pinned to it; she found it easier to shuffle them around as new evidence came to light than writing a timeline on a whiteboard.

Unfortunately, neither timeline nor whiteboard could solve this case for her. It had been almost a week since Patrick’s murder. In Baltimore or DC, a week was pretty much the blink of an eye in a murder investigation, but this was Baltimore County. There was the illusion of safety to protect.

David rapped on her doorframe.

“Please make it good news,” she said.

“We finally found that Noah guy Bobby told us about,” David said. “Does that count?”

“Have you brought him in yet?” Tisha asked.

“He’s in the interrogation room. Roy’s going at him,” David answered.

“That’ll do.” Tisha stood. “Does he have a lawyer?”

David grinned. “Turned one down.”

Tisha permitted herself a brief smile. “Now, officer, you have made my day.”


Noah couldn’t be any older than 22. He had a scraggly beard and the lean, hungry look of a zealot. Something Roy said had clearly upset him, as Tisha and David walked in to find him slamming his fist on the table.

Roy was unfazed. “Quite the temper you got there, sport,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I don’t have any patience for assholes,” Noah snapped.

“Or for pet shop owners, it seems,” Roy said. “Patrick McGovern’s got a long list of complaints against you.”

Noah snorted and crossed his arms. “Patrick McGovern is the ultimate asshole.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

Noah groaned. “For the millionth time already, I didn’t touch him!”

“You threatened to,” Roy pointed out. He pulled out some print outs and pushed them across the table. “Recognize these?”

Noah gave them a cursory glance. “I was just trying to make him understand how serious it is,” he said. “Free speech isn’t a crime.”

“Threats aren’t protected by the first amendment.”

“Threats?” Noah laughed. “Are you gonna arrest Sarah Palin now too? ‘Cause this is just the type of language she uses. Please, PLEASE do. It would make my fucking day.”

“I’m pretty sure Sarah Palin didn’t threaten to put rat poison in people’s food so they could ‘understand the suffering that these fatally ill factory-bred puppies endure’,” Roy responded.

“Did he die by rat poison?” Noah asked.

“No.”

“Then clearly that was just an empty threat.” The young man sounded pleased with himself.

“So you admit it was a threat.”

“What? No!” Noah shouted. “Stop twisting my words!”

“I feel like I’m watching a cat eating a bunny rabbit,” Tisha murmured to David.

“One of those Monty Python rabbits, maybe,” he said.

Back in the interrogation room, Roy looked unimpressed.

“Where were you between 7:30 and 9 PM on the night Patrick McGovern was murdered?” he asked.

“I was at a party in DC,” Noah grumbled.

“Did anybody see you there?”

“What, do you think I have some kind of fucking cloak of invisibility?” Noah asked. “There were hundreds of people there! Pretty much all of them saw me.”

“Would any of those hundreds remember you?” Roy asked pointedly, and Noah wilted slightly.

“I danced with a few chicks,” he said, but he didn’t sound nearly as confident anymore.

“Get any phone numbers?” Roy asked. Noah shook his head. “Any of these chicks have a name?”

“Names weren’t exactly high on my priority list,” Noah said.

“Kinda sleazy, dancing with a girl and not even getting her name,” Roy said.

“Below the belt,” Tisha muttered.

“I always get the name of my partners,” David said. “Never know when you’ll need an alibi.”

“Can you tell me where this party was?” Roy continued.

“Some abandoned building downtown,” Noah said. “It was a word of mouth kinda thing.”

“Well, you better hope I can track down some of those mouths,” Roy said. “‘Cause I’m telling you, it’s not looking good, buddy. You might as well come clean with me now.”

“I’ve told you everything I know!” Noah insisted.

“I hope you did, sport.” Roy stood. “You’re free to go, but don’t go far. You don’t want me chasing you.”

Noah booked it out of the room, not dignifying Roy with a response. The officer ambled out after him and leaned against the doorway. “Y’all catch that?”

“Could certainly be him,” Tisha said. “Young, idealistic kid with a hot temper. What do you think?”

Roy rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe,” he said. “But kids also say some dumb shit. Exaggerate. They don’t get the difference between threats and just talk.”

“So we’re still where we started,” Tisha sighed.

“But we know more than we did this morning,” David said. “That’s progress!”

Roy snorted. “Sometimes I wanna take your optimism and shove it down your throat.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “And that’s just talk."


Captain Wascomb’s mysterious spy network had been working overtime. Jeremy met them both at the front door when they walked in the next morning.

“Captain wants to see you,” he said. “What kind of roses do you want on your graves?”

Karen shot Rona a dirty look. “Thanks, Jeremy,” she said.

Rona followed a step behind her roommate into Captain Wascomb’s office. As usual, he did not look up when they entered.

“Close the door behind you, please,” he said. Rona did, and reached to pull up a chair. “You will remain standing.” He looked up, and there was a cold fury in his gaze.

“Officer Mendoza, did you or did you not have an appointment with our lawyer yesterday afternoon?”

“I did, sir.”

“And did you or did you not reschedule that appointment under false pretenses?” he continued.

Rona took a breath. “I did reschedule the appointment, sir.”

“Is checking on the animals at Your New Best Friend one of your assigned duties?” he asked, his eyes boring into her.

She looked down. “No, sir.”

“Did we not just talk yesterday about how you are, in fact, forbidden from going there?”

“We did, sir.”

“Then kindly explain to me why you deemed it necessary to disobey my direct orders and break into an active crime scene.”

“We believed that Mr. McGovern may have left the evidence he wanted to give to Officer Mendoza in his office,” Karen said before Rona could speak. Captain Wascomb finally directed his piercing gaze on her.

“You were a witting part of this?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Karen said firmly.

“You are aware that, once certain facts are known, Officer Mendoza will be considered a prime suspect,” he said. “And that stunts such as will only strengthen the case against her.”

“We believed it was a necessary risk.”

“Then why didn’t you go, Officer Beaudry?” Captain Wascomb asked. “You at least would have seemed marginally less suspicious.”

“I was closer to Towson, sir,” Rona said quickly. “It was more efficient for me to go and Karen to cover my other appointment.”

“Efficient.” Captain Wascomb broke down and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It is not my policy to try to talk sense into imbeciles, so let me put this as plainly as I can. If you involve yourselves in Patrick McGovern’s murder investigation in any way, you will be suspended indefinitely without pay. I hope you will consider the reputation of this institution, and your own safety.”

“Yes, sir,” the women said quietly.

“Dismissed.”



Before heading to lunch, Tisha swung by David and Roy’s desks. She found David with his feet propped up on his desk, trying to catch cheese puffs with his mouth. The moment he caught sight of her, he nearly fell backwards in his attempt to straighten himself.

She tactfully ignored the display. “Anything new?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah!” Roy rolled his eyes as David dug through his desk. “Ballistics came back on the murder weapon.” He found the file and handed it over with a smile.

“That’s great!” Tisha said.

“Gun was the vic’s.” Roy ruined the moment.

She resisted the urge to sigh. “So basically, we’re still nowhere.”

“No, we’re somewhere,” David said. “Just not sure…where yet.”

“Very helpful, Detective,” Tisha said dryly.

“But we can be pretty sure that the killer either knew the victim pretty well or didn’t come to the shop intending to kill him,” David said.

Tisha sat up. “Explain.”

“Well, the gun is a recent acquisition. He only bought it in the last six months, and he was pretty quiet about it. The killer couldn’t plan to kill him with his own gun unless they were close enough to him to know about it.”

Tisha tugged her ear and considered this. “I’m not entirely sold on the logic,” she said slowly.

“Also, the signs of struggle,” David added. “If the killer came armed, he could’ve killed McGovern before he could pull out his own weapon.”

“It’s worth keeping in mind,” Tisha said. “Roy, I want you to look into Mendoza’s alibi. Get in touch with a farmer in Bowie named Boyd, confirm that she left his farm at 7, and that I-95 traffic was backed up. Any luck with the Craigs List women?”

“Nope,” Roy said. “None of ‘em saw him more than twice. Kinky bastard. He wasn’t the kind to…keep it in the bedroom, you might say.”

“There’s still plenty more to get through,” David said.

“That does increase the chance that Mrs. McGovern could find out about it,” Tisha said.

“And the humiliation,” David added. “It’s one thing for your husband to have a string of casual encounters in the privacy of his own love nest. But out in pubic, where all the neighbors might see? That’d piss me off.”

“I think it’s time to have another talk with the wife,” Tisha agreed. “And the son, too. Defending mom’s honor.”

“Doubt it,” Roy said. “Bobby’s been working construction down near D.C. for the past six months.”

“He was working Lutherville when we talked to him,” Tisha said.

“His first day, remember?” Roy said. “’S’not impossible that he found out about it, but there’s no way he ran across his dad getting blown at the local cafe during lunch.”

“Unnecessarily colorful,” Tisha said, “but you have a point.” Her jaw popped as she yawned. “Sorry. Right. So Roy, tomorrow you’ll look into Mendoza’s alibi and continue interviewing Craigs List girls. David, you talk to the wife.”

“What about you?” Roy asked.

“Paperwork,” Tisha said. “Anybody want to trade?” She chuckled a little at the dead silence. “That’s what I thought.”



If their offices were better staffed, Rona and Karen both would have been suspended - or at least assigned desk duty - for the previous night’s incident. As it was, they were simply given an official reprimand that would go on their service records.

“One bullet dodged,” Karen muttered as they left Captain Wascomb’s office. “What’s on your docket today?”

“Nothing in particular,” Rona said. “Standing by, waiting for the operators to call.”

“You’ll be drowning soon enough,” Karen said. Rona was one of the detectives who could not say no to any case, no matter how implausible sounding, and the operators knew that. Any time there was a case that was not a clear and obvious sign of abuse, they directed it her way.

“I’ve got more horses today,” Karen continued. Karen was not generally one for small talk; Rona wondered if her roommate was trying to signal that all was forgiven. “Sometimes I wish I lived in a state with fewer equines.”

“Do you want to move to Florida and deal with alligators?” Rona asked.

Karen shrugged. “It’d be a change of pace,” she said.

One of the other officers, Eric, walked past them, eating a carrot in an eerily rabbit-like manor.

“Hey Mendoza, you’ve got a visitor at your desk,” he said.

“How’s that for a change of pace?” Rona asked.

Karen, the taller of the two, stood on tiptoe and peered across the room at Rona’s desk. A quip died on her lips.

“It’s Bobby.”

Rona wasn’t sure if she had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, or if she was jumping from the fire back into the frying pan. Either way, she was burning.

“Does he look upset?”

Karen shot her friend a look.

“He looks like his dad was just murdered.”

“Let me rephrase - does he look like he’s going to blow up at me?”

“I’m an animal cop, not a bomb technician,” Karen said, and shoved Rona lightly forward. Rona hated her friend at that moment, but was also grateful that Karen didn’t leave.

“Bobby,” she said at they approached her desk. Her mind blanked on what she was supposed to say next.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Karen said, bumping Rona lightly. She offered her hand to Bobby. “I’m Karen Beaudry, Rona’s partner.”

“Did you know my dad too?” Bobby asked. His tone seemed calm enough, but Rona couldn’t relax. She and Bobby had gotten along well enough before; she had enlisted his help in trying to get his father to assist in the puppy mill investigation. But they were hardly friends, and even the closest friendship would have been rocked by her being a suspect in his father’s murder.

Karen shook her head.

“What are you doing here, Bobby?” Rona asked, and winced at how accusatory she sounded. “I mean —“

“It’s okay,” Bobby said.

She gestured for him to take a seat. Karen discretely pulled up a chair to the side, listening in unobtrusively.

Bobby perched on the edge of the chair and tugged anxiously on his fingers. “I heard you were the one who found my father’s body,” he said.

That surprised Rona. The detective had told him that she had found the body, but not that she was a suspect? For safety reasons, it made sense that she wouldn’t mention that Rona was a suspect; technically they shouldn’t have given him any details on the investigation, but things always slipped. It just seemed like an odd thing to slip.

“Your dad told me he had a lead for me,” she said.

“Do you think that’s why he was killed?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t know,” Rona said. “But I’m sure Detective Wiles is following every lead.”

The tugging on his fingers increased, and Rona was a little afraid he would dislocate something.

“He went to visit the puppy mill,” he blurted out.

This made Rona jump. “What?”

“I’d been pressuring him for awhile,” Bobby said, “and he finally gave in.”

Rona leaned forward. “Did he give you any details? What did he find?”

Bobby shook his head. “He didn’t say anything about it,” he said. “But whatever he saw really spooked him.” He pulled a GPS out of his pocket and slid it across her desk.

“What’s this?” Rona asked.

“My dad’s GPS,” Bobby said. “I thought maybe you could use it to figure out where the mill is.”

Rona turned it on, and was dismayed to find a large number of trips in the recent history. She hid it as best she could; it was better than nothing.

“Thank you,” she said.

Bobby shrugged. “I didn’t want it to ruin everything.”

“Did your dad keep any kind of appointment book?” Karen asked. “Something we could use to figure out which of these trips was to the mill.”

“In his office,” Bobby said.

Damn, Rona thought. That would have been claimed as evidence in the investigation. There was no way she could get her hands on it, not as a murder suspect.

Bobby waited a moment to see if they had any more questions. “I wish there was something more I could do to help,” he said, standing.

“No, this is wonderful,” Rona said. “Thank you. I really am sorry for your loss.”

He shrugged uncomfortably and left. Rona sat back down and spun her chair to face Karen.

“So what are we going to do?” she asked.

“You have to take this to the cops,” Karen said firmly.

“What? No! This is my lead!” Rona protested.

“You need that appointment book,” Karen said.

“There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to figure out the address, even with the appointment book,” Rona said.

“But you’ll definitely never figure it out without it,” Karen said. “Besides, if he was murdered because of what he found at the mill, you could be charged with withholding evidence.”

Rona leaned back in her seat, metaphorically digging in her heels. But she knew Karen was right, and Karen knew that she knew.

Her roommate stood. “I’ve got horses to stable. I’ll see you tonight.”

She left Rona to her conscience.



Tisha closed her eyes and took a moment to just massage her forehead. The computer screen was swimming before her eyes, but she couldn’t close up and go home just yet.

The smell of french fries and something meaty caused her to open her eyes. Jay leaned against the doorway, holding up a bag of food.

“Thought you might be hungry,” he said. “So I slayed you a wooly mammoth.”

“You are my hero,” Tisha breathed, reaching out for the bag.

“You gonna clear some space on that desk so we can eat?” Jay asked, pulling up a chair.

Tisha almost said “screw it,” but some of those documents were going to the state’s attorney. She quickly gathered them together and set them aside, far from the food. Jay handed her a sandwich as reward.

“How’s the case going?” he asked, munching on his fries. Tisha had just taken a bit bite of her food; he chuckled a little as she tried to swallow it. “Sorry.”

She shook her head. “It’s fine.”

“The case?” Jay asked.

Tisha sighed. “We haven’t caught anyone yet. I’m afraid I’ve got a lot more late nights ahead of me.”

“I guess I’ll be bringing a lot more dinners,” Jay said.

“You don’t have to,” Tisha told him.

“How else am I gonna get to see ya?” Jay asked. “You know,” he continued when she didn’t answer. “Word on the street is BMA is looking for a new chief of security.”

Tisha snorted. “Since when is the Baltimore Museum of Art the talk of the street?” she asked.

He ignored her. “You should look into it. It sounds right up your alley.”

“How’s that?” Tisha asked.

“You were an art history major, weren’t you?” Jay said.

Tisha laughed. “For a year. Then I switched to engineering, then finance. And then I graduated and went to the Academy.”

“That’s a lotta switching,” Jay said, and she shrugged.

“It was my twenties,” she said.

“Well maybe it’s time to start switching things up again,” he said.

Tisha sighed, her headache coming back full force. “Do we really have to talk about this now?” she asked. “I’ve already told you I’ll think about it once the investigation is over.”

“And how long is that going to take?” Jay asked.

“Longer than five days,” she said. “This isn’t an hour drama.”

“What if you don’t solve it?” Jay asked. “What if this becomes one of those cold cases and you get moved to something else? Will it have to wait until that is over too?”

Tisha pushed the remains of her sandwich away, no longer hungry. “I don’t want to fight about this right now.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight,” Jay said.

“You succeeded anyway,” she snapped. She softened her voice apologetically. “I won’t be much longer. I’ll see you at home.”

Jay tossed the rest of his food into the trash can. “I’ll be holding you to that too,” he said.

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