Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Sixty: Joanie, Saturday

As Joanie predicted, she wasn't allowed on the team that would sit on the house and wait for the bombers to return to tie up loose ends. She was too close to the victim, they'd said. She wouldn't be able to maintain her professionalism and might put lives at risk, they'd said.

They couldn't stop her from living at the house, though, not if Agnes had given her the keys before she left on her trip. With no one else at the townhouse, she felt a little lonely (Agnes and her kids had grown on her after that trip to Granville Island on Monday, and after the dinner she'd had with them and with Mrs. Mackenzie on Tuesday; they'd become a happy mishmash of a family) so she thought she might as well stay the weekend at Patrick's house, where at least she might have the opportunity to chat with one of the police officers assigned to watch the house, as long as she promised not to confront the criminals herself.

Not that she'd have much chance to sit around the house today. She was on shift with Fatima and wouldn't be back until the evening, and if the perpetrators did come around they'd wait until nightfall anyway.

At the moment, Joanie was wondering what to do about the red dot on her phone screen. The tracking device Sunny had planted on the Challenger was doing a splendid job of pinging the cell towers in its vicinity and letting her know where it was. Her problem was how to reveal to the proper authorities that she knew where it was. It was out of the Township of Langley, so she couldn't go to the location herself and arrest the thieves, if in fact they were still there. For all she knew, it was being rendered down into parts, and the device would soon be discovered during the rendering. That was why it was crucial that she told somebody about this.

She didn't want to have to do it; she felt no sympathy for the man who intended on following her home with his own tracking device, for what purpose she could only guess, and certainly not for his prosthetic phallus of a car. Still, she was police, and the BOLO was still out there, and she felt the duty to at least clear it from the long list of BOLOs with which all active patrols were dealing. 

"Maybe we can make an anonymous call to Crime Stoppers," Fatima suggested.

"Oh, yeah," Joanie said without enthusiasm.

"I could do it if you want."

"I don't know if it should be us, though. I know they're supposed to be anonymous but I'm not convinced they wouldn't trace it to our cell phones if they wanted to."

"What if we called from a payphone?"

"Better, but I don't think we should be seen using a payphone while we're in uniform, if we can even find a payphone. Do you know where one is?" 

"Not off the top of my head. What if you asked one of your friends from last night to do it?"

Joanie thought about it for a moment. "That's a good idea. Lauren should be home; I don't think she went off to Kelowna with the others."

She dialled Lauren on speakerphone so she could keep the map on her screen.

"Hey, girl!" Lauren answered.

"Hi, Lauren, I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"Nah, I'm just at work shuffling paper and envying Rachel for getting to go to that event tonight."

"Oh, if you're at work I shouldn't bother you, then."

"No, no, it's fine. What's up? How did the rest of your night go last night?"

"I went home at the same time you did, but I've been keeping track of the car, and it's been sitting in one particular location for a length of time that concerns me. It might be getting chopped, and I think we need to tell the police, but I don't think I can do it."