“That’s a good boy,” Kellen said squatting down and giving the dog a vigorous rub. “Did you take care of business?” He scratched Ralphie behind the ears and received a wet sloppy lick on the cheek in return before the dog bounded to his bed in the corner, made three circles and flopped down.
Kellen shut the doors tight, trying to not look at the mess that still made him shudder across the wall. He had pulled the curtains closed on the French doors so he couldn’t see. There would be time enough for that later, as he helped the cleaning crew and the neighbors try to piece it all back together.
He crawled back on his bed, on his back and waited for the sun to come up. He would take his turn guarding Ian at 8 a.m. Ripley had insisted on double shifts. The mountain of a man had taken such a shine to him.
He had told Kellen that Ian was the first big shot he’d ever met that treated him like a human and not a piece of furniture. The man even bawled when he first got a look at him in the hospital bed, all bloody and bruised and lifeless except for some ragged shallow breaths.
There were so many pieces that just didn’t fit. His gut told him that something just wasn’t right. Blue Richards had waited in that closet until the right time. He definitely intended to kill Ian, but why? And why did Peyton Balouche cover it up? What was the connection? Had HRT really pressured the police force into a more publicly acceptable outcome?
Blue Richards had waited in that closet for who knows how long. He could have grabbed whatever he wanted to steal and been long gone, but he had slipped in that closet well during the early evening, changed in to dark clothes so no one would recognize him and waited until he heard or saw Ian enter the bedroom alone. But why did he not want to be recognized if he hadn’t intended to kill him?
Semen on the ground, that’s what Peyton had told him they had found. It could have been from almost anyone at the party who decided to have a little tryst in the bushes. Kellen sat straight up in bed. The first pieces fit. Blue Richard had been watching Ian for days.
Of course, that would lend itself to the stalking aspect of the case. He would have to find out where Richards hiding place was. Kellen lay back down and his mind whirled. What if Ian was the target but not necessarily the intended victim? “That could be it,” He thought.
That still led back to the question of why and didn’t explain the connection with Balouche. Surely it wasn’t Balouche who set the whole thing up. Balouche would have known that Kellen would have come bounding over pistol drawn. Had he been the intended victim, Richards would have had to do some mighty fancy footwork to make it look like Ian had shot him in a jealous rage. Nope, that theory was out and there was still absolutely no connection between Balouche and Richards.
Kellen tried to put it all out of his head. He needed to get a little sleep. He rolled over on his belly and tried to relax. He put his head face down on the pillows and slid his arms under their coolness.
Wait! Was that his doorbell? Kellen snapped back from his thoughts and realized someone was at his front door. He looked outside.
It was still black. The sun hadn’t come up yet. He grabbed his underwear from the floor and quickly pulled them on. Ralphie got up from his bed and trotted downstairs as Kel reached for his robe and tied it around him.
He looked out the window. He didn’t recognize the car. Had something happened to Ian? He started to panic, and thought; no, Ripley would have called immediately. As he hit the first floor landing he looked through the peephole.
That guy from the police station—the partner—what was he doing here? At this time of the morning? Kellen flung open the front door. “Detective Mitchell? Is something wrong?”
“Officer Jackson, I am so sorry to bother you at this time of the night, but I wanted to make sure that no one knew I had come.”
“Well, you certainly picked a great hour.”
“Am I disturbing you, sir?’
“Actually, no. Having a little trouble getting to sleep…”
“I meant, are you alone?”
“Yes, of course.”
“May I come in? It’s important.”
Kellen motioned him in and the young man hesitantly stepped through to the foyer. He was dressed in jeans and a hooded tee, and had a backpack over his right shoulder.
“I didn’t know who else to go to, but something’s just not right, sir…”
“Listen, Detective Mitchell, if this is concerning a case, you should really be talking to your partner and not me…”
“Andy…”
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Andy, sir.”
“Alright Andy, and drop the sir stuff. You can call me Kellen or Kel”
“Thank you…uhm…may I sit down for a moment?”
“Come on in.” Andy followed Kellen through the foyer into his deceptively sparse living room. He motioned for Andy to have a seat, which he did on the very edge of the couch, very uncomfortably. He took is back pack off and let it drop between his feet.
“The Ian Justyn case…”
“I thought that was closed.” Kellen didn’t bother to hide his contempt for that fact from his voice.
“You’re right, it is…and you’re right, nothing is adding up. That’s why I’ve come to you…”
“Have you brought this up to Balouche?”
“Everytime I try, he shoots me down, has a too easy solution or changes the subject.”
“I’ve known Peyton for a long time, and I think we can both agree that he’s never wrong, even though most of the time he is…”
“I really didn’t think much about it until I went in to do the paperwork. He’d done it already.”
“Balouche? Did paperwork? That’s a red flag right there!”
“It was already typed, signed and filed by the time I had come in to get it done. I asked about it and he just said he thought I deserved a break and since he’d done most of the footwork himself…”
“Like that ever made him do paperwork before….” Kellen remembered all too well.
“Of course he left all the filing on our end to be done, which I went ahead and did, but I noticed he hadn’t made a copy for our files.”
“Probably didn’t even realize that that had to be done, the butt wipe.”
“That’s what I assumed, so I just went to Betty and asked her to make me a copy, which she did. Just for kicks while he was off bullshitting with someone about the stalker case he just solved, I read it over. It’s all pretty pat, and unquestionably supports his resolution.”
“So? Why are you coming to me? To rub it in my face?”
“Absolutely not. Kellen what’s in the report adds up, but it’s what’s left out that makes it add up…”
Kellen sat up. “Coffee, we need coffee and I need to put some pants on.”
“I can make the coffee while you dress.”
“Heard about my coffee, huh?”
“The facts just add up…”
Kellen sniggered. “Kitchen’s through there, I’ll be right back down…” Andy headed off toward the coffee maker and Kellen up the stairs to find pants and a shirt. He picked the jeans that he had wadded up off the floor and shucked them on. He sniffed his tee before pushing his arms through, but decided that a new shirt was in order. He pulled open the top drawer
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