The two officers who arrived first left after taking off Colton’s handcuffs and Colton sat on the steps outside of the store. He’d stupidly left his cellphone inside and had nothing to do except put on a display sitting outside the store while all the looky-loos walked or drove by to see what the police action was about. He wasn’t allowed back into the store while the crime scene was being investigated.
Colton groaned when his father’s Jaguar XJ13 pulled into the laundromat parking lot next door. His dad’s car was a kit car, but cool and still expensive. Colton watched as his dad slowly walked over to him and sat down on the steps next to him.
“Store busy today, Colton?”
“Oh, you know how it is, John,” his father never let him call him Dad at the store, “had one customer but he departed before buying anything.”
“I heard you had a little excitement this afternoon.”
Colton looked at his father with a raised eyebrow. “How d'you find out, anyway? They have my phone in there.”
“They call me anytime they’re dispatched to the store. They said you were all right, but when you didn’t answer the phone…”
“You decided to pay me a visit. That’s nice of you, John.”
“Smartass. How are you doing?”
“Better, now that the asshole cops are gone.” John raised an eyebrow and looked at the three cop cars still parked in from to his store. “Not those guys. The first responders. They were… excessively rough.”
John grunted but didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing and rested his hand on his son’s shoulder. They sat there for about an hour before a detective approached them.
She was about 5’ 2” and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. She had jet black hair and dark brown eyes. She walked with a purpose, but without swagger or a swing in her hips. John appreciated a beautiful woman, and this detective was attractive and all business. She gave him a discerning glance but quickly diverted her eyes until they fell upon Colton. She squat in front of Colton and John smiled as he stared at her ass. She either ignored him or didn’t see John’s appraisal.
“Colton, my name is Detective Lopez with the Greeley Police Department. I have a few questions to ask you. Are you all right with answering them?”
“Yeah,” Colton sighed out with a tired breath.
“Are you his father or the owner?”
John wasn’t paying attention to her questioning and didn’t realize that the question was for him until she cleared her throat. John smiled and took his eyes off her backside and gave her an embarrassed shrug. “Um. Both.”
“Okay. What can you tell me about the man who came into the store? Have you ever met him before?”
“No. I only work a few days a week, so I don’t know if he was a regular customer or not. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. What do you remember about him?”
Colton rubbed his chin for a few seconds before answering. “He wore a “Save the chubby unicorn” t-shirt. Brown… I think. I don’t know… In his early 30s? Not as old as my dad, but not a college student, I don’t think.”
“Good,” Detective Lopez said while making notes in her little book. “Do you know how tall or his complexion?”
“Um. I think he was Caucasian, he might have been Latino. He had black hair and either tan or darker skin, but he didn’t look… Well… you know. He didn’t look native to one of the Latin America countries if you know what I mean.”
An irritated look briefly crossed Detective Lopez’s face, but it passed quickly. John didn’t think Colton noticed. “Do you know how tall he was?”
“Not really. When I came to the front of the store he was kneeling and hunched over holding a wound.”
“Did you hear the gunshot?”
“Gunshot?” Colton looked entirely confused.
“Yes, I have a report that you told Sergeant White someone had shot the victim.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t?” Detective Lopez started flipping through her notepad trying to find something before sighing. “Okay, so the victim was bleeding out in your store from a stomach wound, but you don’t know the cause?”
“We didn’t chat.”
“And you didn’t see how he got injured?”
Colton grunted in frustration. “I was in the back getting a duster when I heard the door chime.”
“Okay. Sorry, I just wanted to make sure I got the facts right. So, you were in the back, heard the door chime, came out and saw the victim.”
She didn’t state it as a question, but Colton answered anyway. “Right.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“He asked about a back door, I told him he needed an ambulance or something and I went to call the police.”
“And when did he grab you?”
“What?”
“He grabbed your arm?” She pointed to some dried blood on Colton’s arm that he missed when cleaning it earlier.
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“Oh, yeah. He didn’t want me to tell anyone he was here. I pulled my arm free and called 911.”
“… and he left?”
“No, yes. I don’t know.”
Lopez eyebrows furrowed. “Well, which is it?”
“Miss Lopez—” John said before being cut off.
“Detective.”
“What?”
“It’s Detective Lopez.”
John gave her a broad smile. He loved spunky women. “Detective Lopez, what are you getting at?”
“John is it?” John nodded. “I’m trying to determine where the victim is.” She turned back to Colton. “When you were speaking with dispatch, you said he was gone. Where did he go?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Did he go out the front door?”
Colton shrugged. “I don’t think so. I didn’t hear the door chime and the police showed up pretty fast. I’m sure they would have seen him leave.”
“Did you wait before calling the police?”
“Huh?”
Lopez sighed for dramatic effect. “Colton, we have a bit of a problem. You see, we have a lot of blood on your store's floor. A lot. We have a phone call from you to dispatch, but we have no victim. You obviously are not injured, yet we still have at least a pint of blood on the store's hardwood floor.”
“Linoleum,” John said.
“What?”
“The floors are linoleum, not hardwood,” John said with a grin.
Lopez glared at him for a few long seconds before smiling. “Right. Linoleum floor. I’ll make a note of that. It’s an important part of my report.” She turned back to Colton. “Regardless of the floor type, we have a lot of blood and no victim. No witnesses saying he left your store. Other than the blood, we have no proof a victim existed. Do you see my problem here?”
Colton nodded his head slowly. “I understand, but I don’t have an answer where he went. One minute he was bleeding out on our floor and the next… gone.”
Lopez stood and bent over to stretch her sore legs from squatting so long. She looked up at John who quickly diverted his eyes from staring down her shirt at her cleavage. She sighed and stood up straight. John turned back and smiled at her.
“Is there anything else you can think of?”
“The two cops, they—” Colton stopped speaking.
“They what, Colton.”
“They were here fast and asked a lot of questions. They were—aggressive in the excess if you were to ask me.”
Lopez flipped through her notes and noted Hernandez and White stated they down the street. “They were checking out a vandal call down the street. They were probably just a tad hyped. What questions were they asking?”
“They wanted to know where something was at. They aggressively pried my hands open and searched the store for something. They kept saying they needed to find him.”
Lopez rubbed her temples for a few seconds and breathed slowly. Sergeant White was a real prick. She’d had her run-ins with those two, but White was something else altogether. “I’m sure they were making sure you didn’t have a weapon on you. They were probably looking for the weapon that caused the injury. I wouldn’t overthink it. First responders are always on the edge since that’s when all the shit goes downhill. They were also trying to locate the victim due to the amount of blood at the scene. I’m sure they were professional in their actions.”
Colton looked off to the side and shrugged his shoulder, but Lopez knew those two idiots were just being assholes. Unfortunately, all police forces have a few of them on staff. Being a police officer takes a special personality type and every once in a while you get the neighborhood bully.
“Detective? Do you have any more questions for Colton?” John asked.
Lopez jerked out of her reflections on those two pricks. “Um. No. Thank you for your time, Colton.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out two business cards. She started to write on it. “Call me if you have anything else you can think of. If you call, make sure you reference the case number which I just wrote on the cards.”
“You’re giving me your number already? I didn’t even ask,” John said with a twinkle in his eyes.
Lopez looked down on Johns left hand and saw a wedding band. She closed her eyes slowly in frustration. All the good-looking ones were taken or creeps. This guy was both.
“Call my office if you have anything to add John. Colton, think of anything…”
“I’ll let you know. Thanks, Detective Lopez.”
“No problem.”
Lopez turned and took a step before John interrupted her departure. “Oh, Detective Lopez?” She closed her eyes again before answering without turning back.
“Yes?”
“When can we open back up?”
Lopez turned back around and glanced at her watch. “You close at 5 pm on Sundays?”
“Yes?”
“We’ll finish by then. I’m afraid you’ll probably want to have a restoration company come to clean the store before tomorrow. Anything else?”
John smiled. “No, you are free to go. Thank you.”
Lopez sighed in frustration. “This kid's father is something else,” she muttered under breath.
###
The police and CSI team packed up and let John close up the store for the night. He said they had a cleaning crew coming in the morning. Detective Lopez was standing out by her car when a black SUV pulled up next to her car. Two men in suits stepped out of their vehicle and approached her. She cringed internally at the sight of Feds.
“Detective Lopez?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Special Agent White and this is Special Agent Black.” He flashed his FBI badge so fast that Detective Lopez wanted to have a second look, but knew it would be a waste of time. They had obvious fake names. It didn’t help that White was African American and Black was Caucasian. The obvious play on names was not lost on her.
“And?”
“We are looking for a Professor Dávid Zima and have heard you might know where he is?”
“David Zima?” Lopez shook her head. “Never heard the name before.”
“He was last seen in the Greeley area and rumors have it… at this very store.”
“Our victim?”
Black and White said nothing.
“Right. Then I don’t know if I can help. Sorry boys, but we have a crime scene and nobody.”
Special Agent White gave Black a slight nod.
“Dávid Zima teaches at Mines on a top-secret project and disappeared yesterday afternoon. I don’t know how he lost his tail, but we picked him up here in Greeley early this morning. We have since lost his trail again. I got word of a shooting victim here and wanted to know if you have video.”
“They don’t have cameras in the store and couldn’t find any cameras on the street. So, no. No video record of our victim. Honestly, I was leaning towards a staged crime scene rather than an actual crime scene. Nobody, no eyewitnesses—also, where did you hear about a shooting. I heard of no calls to dispatch for shots fired.”
“I’m afraid that’s classified.”
“Classified, my ass. Since there is only one other person to report to me about a shooting victim, I’m wondering if it’s the same asshole who talked to you, two jokers.”
“Ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me. I’m a detective and I work for a living. I’ve earned my badge and I’ll be damned if I will let two fake agents with fake names come here and try to blow smoke up my ass. I’ll tell you what to do. Go talk to my Captain and have our cooperation come down through the official channels then I’ll be more than happy to discuss this case further. Until then, I’d like you, two gentlemen, to move your SUV out from behind my car and get out of my face.” Lopez paused and smiled. “Please.”
Special Agent Black’s lips lifted in a partial smirk. “Are you sure this is how you want to play this?”
“As sure as I’m positive your name is not Black and his name is not White. I know enough to see a bullshit story when I see one.”
“All right, Detective. We’ll play it your way. I’m sure you’ll get a call first thing in the morning from your Captain. Until then—” Special Agent Black didn’t finish his sentence before turning back to the SUV and driving off.
Lopez stood next to her car and watched the SUV turn onto 8th street before getting into her car. She looked back at the mobile phone store and shook her head. She thought she would not try hard to solve a case without a victim before those two idiots showed up. However, now she’s got to track this Zima character.
“What to do? what to do?” she muttered under her breath.
Did she honestly want to get involved with the Feds? Something fishy is going on and it stinks to high heaven.