Page 82 of Beyond the Cut
He’d texted to see how she was doing, but she hadn’t returned his messages. At first, he figured she was overreacting to the body in her back lane. But then Arianne had passed on a message that she needed some time alone.
Alone from him. Not Benson.
“Yeah. I’m there. Never could resist twins.” He stared at the picture and wondered if they were like Maia and Tia who had such different personalities. Maia was so damn sharp. She knew exactly what was going on. And Tia… he would have liked to hear her talk. Just once.
Damn Benson for giving her a way out. Damn Mad Dog for making her need it. Damn him for not doing what needed to be done. He had to get her out of his system and move on. Or was it moving back? Back into endless nights and unfulfilled mornings. Back to a search for something he had already found.
***
“Look what we got!” Dawn slid off Arianne’s bike and held up the USB stick she had just picked up from Bunny. They had driven straight to Banks Bar to share the news and watch the video together. “Bunny interviewed the investigator before Jimmy got to him. I didn’t really think he’d pull through for me, but he did.”
“Gimme a minute.” Banks stuck his head out from under the hood of his Jeep. “I need a new part and I gotta get a measurement.”
“Your Jeep always needs parts.” Arianne laughed as she parked her bike. “If not for you, I don’t think Sparky would be able to keep his garage running.”
“She’s got no respect,” Banks muttered. “You don’t talk down a man’s Jeep. Something happens to people when they put on that damn Sinner cut. Never happening to me. When Jagger came begging me to join the club, I told him where to go. Don’t want anything to do with bikers.”
“Me either.” Dawn hadn’t spoken to Cade since the afternoon Jimmy dumped the body in the lane, nor had she answered his text messages. She knew she’d hurt him when she called Doug, but panic set in, taking with it all her faith in Cade and the Sinners. And now she’d made a decision that meant she and her girls would be safe, together, and as far away from the Brethren as possible. She should be happy, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.
After Banks finished with his Jeep, they squeezed into his office and Banks downloaded the file. “Where’s the popcorn?”
“You want popcorn while we watch someone being interrogated?” Dawn stared at him aghast. “That’s sick.”
“Buttered popcorn would be sick. Plain popcorn is a healthy snack.”
They suffered through the first few minutes of the video in silence. Bunny sat across from the investigator in a dingy office. Even now, Dawn couldn’t look at him without feeling sick inside. With his slightly mussed brown hair, pock-marked plain face, and rumpled short-sleeved shirt, he looked so ordinary, like anyone’s dad. Which is why she had so easily fallen for his ruse.
Bunny asked a few questions. The investigator shook his head. Finally, Bunny pushed a piece of paper across the desk. The investigator paled and then everything spilled out.
“I was hired over the phone to set up some woman behind a school, and then testify in court. I’ve done setups before. I don’t got any issues with them, so long as I’m paid. I was given a time and place where the woman would be, and the location of a duffel bag that had half the money, a school sweatshirt, a photograph, and a small ziplock bag filled with coke.”
“You sure it was coke?”Bunny said.
“Yeah. I tasted it ‘cause it had a sparkly sticker on it, and I wanted to be sure it was real. You gotta use the real stuff ‘cause they need it as evidence.”
“Who filmed you?”
“Dunno. Usually I do that myself with a hidden camera but that wasn’t the job. I put on the sweatshirt and told the woman I was selling tickets for the school picnic. She handed over the money. I handed over the coke. Usually the mark knows what’s going on right away, but I think the sticker threw her off. When she figured it out, she threw the bag at me. I got the rest of the money after I testified in court that she’d approached me asking if I had anything for sale.”
Dawn sighed after the video finished playing. “He’s right. Because of the sticker, I thought he’d given me something for the kids—pretend fairy dust, or a sugary treat. My brain just couldn’t process the danger because of the sweatshirt, and the way he looked, and because I was at the school, and who would sell drugs at a school?”
“Every drug dealer in the city,” Banks said. “But your kids are young. You don’t have to worry about that until they’re eight or nine years old.”
“Eight?” Dawn stared at him aghast.
“Got offered my first joint when I was eight. Good stuff. Got me through Mrs. Keevil’s art class. I was never big on art, but when I was stoned you shoulda seen the kind of shit I painted.”
“I called my lawyer before we left Bunny’s place.” Dawn leaned back in her chair. “He said we can offer the video as evidence but with the investigator dead it’s a long shot whether the court will accept it. I looked at the video of the setup last night, and I went back to the school, but all I could figure out was that the person who took it had to be taller than me.”
“Well, that narrows it down to every adult in the city,” Banks said.
Dawn huffed. “I’m not that short.”
“You’re not that tall, either.”
“I figured he must have been at the curb, and not in the shadows, which means it wasn’t Jimmy because I would have recognized him.”
“A mini Colonel Mustard with a pipe in the kitchen.”
