Null Pointer

Loquacious Lumberings

February - Trixie

February Crawl - 2,127 words

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2,127 words.

“We solved the case,” Honey said.

“We did,” Trixie said without enthusiasm.

Honey laughed at her best friend and business partner. “You’re supposed to be excited about that, you know.”

“I am, I guess. It’s just—it doesn’t make sense.”

“What about it doesn’t make sense?”

“All of it.”

Honey sighed. “Arthur Berenheit stole the diamonds from Sleepyside Fine Jewelry. He mimicked his theft on the heists done by Deangelo Miotelli. I believe the term is ‘copycat’. It’s sound strategy, for a criminal. As long as Berenheit can provide an airtight alibi for at least one of Miotelli’s heists, he can claim himself innocent of all of the robberies, including the one he did commit.”

“Oh, I understand the general principle of it. But Miotelli! Have you looked at his rap sheet? What he’s convicted of, and what he’s suspected of? He’s a nasty character on a good day, and he’s particularly cruel to people who cross him personally. Of all the jewel thieves Berenheit could have impersonated, why would he choose Miotelli? If Miotelli finds out, Berenheit is likely to wish he was only arrested for his crimes. Unless…”

“Unless?” Honey prompted. Trixie’s leaps of logic were sometimes intuition that the facts would bear out only after much more work on a case, but sometimes her leaps were just… well, unicycling poachers in the preserve. Or Mr. Maypenny. Still, Honey knew it paid to listen to her partner’s hunches.

“Unless Berenheit knew Miotelli wouldn’t find out. What if Miotelli’s been arrested?”

“Why wouldn’t we know about that?”

“Because someone’s working a bigger case. Either to get the people around Miotelli, or some other case where they needed a ready-made cover as a jewel thief, with street credibility. Think about it. Berenheit can tell everyone he committed Miotelli’s heists and framed Miotelli for it—and got away with it—and the diamonds from the Sleepyside robbery are the proof. It explains why NYPD’s heist unit stepped in and usurped this case from the Sleepyside Police Department, even though the jurisdiction is fairly clear. Maybe it even explains why the Captain let them.”

“So what do we do? We were hired to find out who robbed Sleepyside Fine Jewelry. We have the answer. We should report it to our client; that’s what we’re getting paid to do. But, if there is a bigger investigation in the works, we might be endangering an undercover officer’s case, or life, or both, if we tell Mr. Olson what we’ve uncovered about the robbery at his store.”

“We call Dan. Maybe he can use his Sleepyside charm on the NYPD officers and see if they are working a bigger case. And I will call Abby and see if she’s heard of the money guys at the National Investigative Bureau working a case that this might be part of. If she doesn’t know off hand, she knows who to ask. And then we’ll determine what we can and cannot share with our client after that. Once we have all the facts.”

“I have an email to Dan about something else already started, so I’ll finish that and let him know your theory, if you’d like. You can go call Abby,” Honey offered.

“That’d be great, Honey!” Trixie smiled, glad for the excuse to call her best friend from her days as a federal agent. Trixie picked up her phone and dialed the familiar number. “Hey, Abby,” she said when the call connected. “Work call. I have a quick question for you and the Bureau.”

“I hope I have a quick answer.”

Trixie giggled. “Are the GoGreens—” GoGreens was the NIB’s internal nickname for the division that dealt in the theft or illegal transport of goods that could be used as currency, be it actual cash, jewels, art, or—in conjunction with the trafficking and exploitation division—people. “Are they working a case against the jewel thief Deangelo Miotelli?”

There was a pause in which Trixie thought she heard the clatter of Abby’s keyboard. “Nothing out in the open. Is this mere Belden curiosity, or do you need confirmation?”

“I need confirmation,” Trixie admitted, explaining the situation to Abby. “The problem is, NYPD is dragging their feet about releasing a report indicating that it was robbery and that there is no evidence any employee of Sleepyside Fine Jewelry was involved. Until the authorities issue such a statement, the insurance company won’t pay out Mr. Olson’s claim. Bigger stores, in bigger cities, probably make enough profit to weather this kind of drawn out proceeding, but Mr. Olson’s shop is small. He’s really struggling because of this. That’s why he hired us. He thinks the insurance company will accept our report, or, at least, the existence of such a report will put pressure on the police to issue a similar (or contradictory, if they so believe) report. But Honey and I don’t want to endanger a bigger case and undercover officers or agents, if we don’t have to, and this feels like someone is pulling the strings.”

“If so, it’s probably the heist unit in New York City,” Abby pointed out.

“And we’re asking Dan to look into that. But I thought maybe the GoGreens were pulling their strings, in this case. Miotelli was certainly on their radar when I was there.”

“He is. Look, I’ll bring a coffee for Timothy tomorrow morning. He’s always inclined to be generous with the first person to get caffeine in his system. I’ll let you know what I learn.”

“Thanks, Abby. I appreciate the assist.”

My Sleepyside charm, Dan thought with a snort, recalling Honey’s suggestion that he use it to convince NYPD to tell him if they were holding up the case report because they were working something bigger. Those who stayed in the NYPD had a bad habit of looking down their noses at cops who left for smaller precincts, as Dan had done when he came home.

Still, whether he called it Honey’s tact or Sleepyside charm, he was going to have to be diplomatic to get the information he needed. Or the bigger bully. He really wasn’t sure which, which was half the problem.

“Hey, O’Connell,” he called, seeing an officer he’d gone to the academy with as he entered the Heist Unit’s headquarters.

“Mangan, what are you doing back in the City? I thought you were done with the Big Apple.”

Dan smiled. “I know you city folk will never understand, but I do love Sleepyside. I’m here on business. The Heist Unit big-footed one our cases, local jewelry store robbery. My Captain wanted me to come see how the investigation was going and re-offer our department’s assistance.” It was true. O’Connell didn’t need to know that the Captain’s orders had come when Dan requested permission to visit the unit with Trixie’s theory.

“That’s the Berenheit case, isn’t it?”

“The robbery of Jackson Olson’s Sleepyside Fine Jewelry store,” Dan said, wondering what to make of the fact that this NYPD officer plainly knew who had committed the crime. It did make Dan more inclined to believe Trixie’s theory. “It’s different in the City. People expect the D in NYPD to stand for Discretion. First thing you get asked, walking into a crime scene, is if we can just keep this quiet, please. In a small town, you can’t keep anything quiet. Everyone talks. And they keep talking until they have a reason to stop. So my Captain wants this closed, so the gossip mill can move onto something else other than questioning how well we’re doing our jobs when it’s not even our case anymore.”

“You can’t just will a case closed, Mangan,” O’Connell reminded him with a laugh.

“Which is why my Captain sent me down here. I’m to help out until the case is resolved. Now, I know you guys don’t want me down here underfoot, and I don’t really want to be down here wasting my time. So what are we looking at?”

O’Connell studied him for a minute, judging his motives. Then he shrugged. “Come on back. I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Dan followed the officer, wondering when it had gotten so easy to tell a fellow officer—if from a different force—what he wanted to hear instead of the simplest version of the truth. Maybe it was too many years under Captain Molinson, who was highly distrustful of outsiders taking over his cases, whether that was the NYPD or the BWGs.

Dan listened as the NYPD officers outlined most of the same facts Honey and Trixie had shared when they told him what they’d found. Dan wasn’t sure whether the officers were holding back their trump cards or not, but Honey and Trixie’s report had contained a few details the NYPD briefing did not.

“Okay,” Dan said when they finished. “Is there any problem with you guys filing an update that says you identified the robber as this Arthur Berenheit fellow, but he’s in the wind? That’ll satisfy my Captain, and get me out of your hair,” he bargained. And Trixie out of my hair, and Mr. O back in business, Dan added silently.

“Gossips gonna gossip,” O’Connell warned him.

“They’ll find something new,” Dan said.

“Come on, Mangan,” Lieutenant Williams said, leaning against his desk. “We’re not at all as easily led as O’Connell there. What’s your Captain really worried about, that he wants us to file the partial?”

Dan shrugged. “I know better than to question the Captain,” he replied honestly. “But if I had to throw out a guess, I know the local PIs have been sniffing around this case.”

“Christ, man, you have more than one PI to worry about in your little town?”

“Two of ‘em, partners,” Dan said, hoping for the right amount of resignation in his voice. He didn’t have the distaste for private investigators many of his police brethren did. “Hard to come down hard on them about staying out of police business if the village folk can’t see we’re taking care of that business. We have to resolve the case before we can quiet them. Small town politics,” he explained with a shrug.

“How’d it go with NYPD?” Trixie demanded when Dan caught up with the rest of the Bob-Whites at Wimpy’s that evening.

“I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “I met up with a guy I knew from the academy who works the Heist Unit now. He came right out and called this the Berenheit case.”

“So this is part of something bigger?”

“If it is, they didn’t say, but I did convince them to file the partial for Mr. O.”

“I knew your Sleepyside charm would get what we needed,” Honey told him.

He grinned. “It didn’t. I told them my Captain needed the case ‘resolved’ so he could keep the local PIs from sticking their noses in police business. Those guys didn’t want small town cops—even me—running around in their investigation. They definitely didn’t want small town private investigators nosing around.”

“Well, the report for the insurance company is the important thing,” Honey said with a sniff of distaste for police officers who thought private investigators were more the enemy than the criminals they both pursued.

“But we still have to answer to our client,” Trixie reminded her. “What do we tell Mr. Olson?”

“Wait until NYPD files their partial report. It should happen tomorrow. Then you can write up your report for Mr. O. Just don’t report more than they do. He hired you to investigate if any of his employees were involved. They weren’t. He did not hire you to catch Berenheit, or Miotelli, so what you found about them isn’t germane to that report, right?”

“Right,” Trixie said reluctantly. It felt like leaving a mystery half-solved. But what could she do? Mr. O didn’t care about Berenheit or Miotelli or whatever the bigger picture was. He just wanted to reopen his store and get back to business as usual.

Jim squeezed her shoulder. “You told me last night that the reason you wanted Dan to talk to NYPD was to make sure your report didn’t endanger lives or justice. That’s the important thing, isn’t it? Mr. Olson will be grateful for what you’ve done.”

“I know. I just wish I knew the whole story!”

“Watch out, Jim,” Mart warned. “In a minute, she’ll be ‘just dying’ if she can’t figure it out.”

Trixie stuck her tongue out at her almost-twin. “As if you haven’t been listening all evening, trying to decide if there’s a Sun-worthy article in all this!”

“Ah, but, my dear kinswoman, that’s my job. As yours is to let this go.”

Trixie frowned, but he was right (as he was much too often, she hated to admit).