Page 21 of Dirty Ex-Mas
“No.”
“You at the bar?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
He hangs up without saying goodbye. I know we can’t have extended conversations on the phone, someone could overhear or worse. But having to see him for the second time today will wreak havoc with my emotional well-being.
I try to organize the information Alyssa has gathered to distract myself from seeing him. I’m not sure how he’ll be able to use any of this, if at all. Unfortunately, he must gather intel legitimately and legally. I find it ridiculous that criminals can useanymeans available in their wrongdoings. Yet law enforcement must abide by a code of ethics that is subjective depending upon how you interpret it. I suppose it’s more a lead by example kind of thing, they stay on the right side of the law to prosecute, because everyone should have been on that same side all along.
Where I’m from in Russia, it's more primitive. An eye for an eye mentality is not uncommon as a means of retribution. You can obtain evidence in any way available to you. And it doesn’t even have to be hard or irrefutable. Getting used to a more civilized, American way of doing things, has been a change for me.
When I’m finished going through what Alyssa has printed thus far, I make sure everything is under control out on the bar floor before Mack arrives. I want to devote my attention to him once he is and to how we plan to take care of the David Tremblay problem.
I don’t consider myself to begirlyby any means. Lipstick is my go-to for any kind of makeup at all, but I still make sure it’s touched up and pull my hair from its ponytail and fluff it to make sure it looks okay. It’s pathetic that I go to such lengths, minimal though they may be, for a man that I’ve denied myself to have. It’s almost like I know I still want him, so I want to make sure he still wants me, and the best way I know how to do that is to make sure I look good when I see him.
I look up when I hear a knock on the door frame.
Mack.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
He settles himself into a chair opposite me. His large frame barely fitting into the armed chair—his size is one of my favorite things about him. I’m tall, five feet, eleven inches. It’s hard for a man to make me feel small and feminine when I want to. Mack doesn’t have that problem.
I toss the file at him to avoid thinking about him any longer. I doubt it will work, but at least he won’t notice that I’m watching him if he’s looking at the file. He flips through it, skimming the pages.
“Jesus, he’s guilty as fuck.”
“Anything in there you can use?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Doubtful. Even if I wanted to use this as a basis for what to look for, we’d have to get a warrant for his house and his computer I don’t see that happening with where we are right now.” He glances at a few more pages. “God, Dar, I don’t even want to know how you get some of this stuff.”
He’s right. He doesn’t.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“I wanted to know for my edification whether he was guilty. Problem is I can’t show this to Reed without explaining how I got it. But at least I’m not left wondering, and it gives me something to go on. Reed knows I think Tremblay is guilty, so if I push on this, it won’t seem too out of the ordinary.” He tosses the file onto my desk, loose papers from inside slide out like a fan. “I need a plan. I can bring him in on false charges, see what his alibi is like for that night, but the last victim didn’t ID him in the lineup.”
“Oh shit, I’m sorry, Mack.”
“Me too.” He sighs. “She picked the CGI.”
“Oh, that’s bad.”
He nods in response.
“So, what happens in a situation like that?” I ask.
“Technically, we drop it. But that’s the wrong action to take.” He gestures to the file on the desktop.
“You’ve got to tell Reed something.”
Mack leans back in his chair and scrubs his palms over his face, growling. “You know I can’t do that, babe. And you know why.” He looks at me pointedly. I know he thinks Reed would turn me in, but I feel like I see a different side of him, one that might understand what I do and why.
Shit! I’m getting way too easy on people.
