That was true. The German shepherds that acted as their courthouse security bomb-sniffers tended to go belly-up around Colby. It was hard to explain to any civilian bystanders that the dogs just wanted to acknowledge Colby as their alpha. Theo made them nervous, too, just wary enough that it was possible that they would miss something. Gretchen and Martin were the only two in the office who could reliably handle them.
“Dogs love me,” Colby said.
Martin snorted. “A little too much. Tell me about whatever it is you found out yesterday.”
“Right.”
Whenever the time came to stop goofing around, Colby fell back into his old military bearing and usually wound up in parade rest: now was a perfect example.
“They traced our bomb threat call back to a disposable cell phone. So that’s got me reevaluating the ‘punk kids’ angle. I don’t know that kids would have thought of being that careful. Then again, it’s the kind of thing they could have easily picked up from TV, so it’s too soon to say.”
Martin nodded. “I know we complain about crime shows getting things wrong, but sometimes we get screwed over when they get it right, too.”
“I’m a soap opera guy, myself,” Colby said. “Then you know the level of reality you’re dealing with.”
He supposed that was true.
“Anyway, according to the store owners that I talked to yesterday, everybody does a lot of business selling these burner phones to teenagers. They want to be able to make calls and send texts their parents won’t know about. Then you have the kids who are convinced they’re going to be mob kingpins. They want the phones so they can look more mysterious.”
“I’m so glad not to be seventeen.”
“Tell me about it. So I’d say eighty percent of them get the phones because they just want their secrets and only twenty percent get them because they’re convinced they’re hardened criminal badasses.”
“And what do you think we’re looking for, the eighty or the twenty?”
“I’m hoping the eighty. Then when I find this kid, all I’ll have to do is shake some sense into them. If they’re in the twenty percent, I’ll have to shake some sense into them and hook them up with some kind of counselor. I guess Jillian will know somebody, she’s still working at the Youth Center.”
Martin smiled. Only Colby would spend this much time tracking down someone he didn’t even plan to arrest, just so some kid would straighten up and fly right.
“But that’s just a hassle,” Colby said, dismissing his own dedication. “One way or another, that’ll all work out okay. What worries me is who might have made the call if it wasn’t a kid.”
“I know you don’t like the bomb squad’s theory that it could be a professional—”
“I don’t. The odds are against it, boss. Terrorists, the mob—they don’t usually play around first. I think if it was anything like that, we wouldn’t have gotten the bomb threat. We’d have just gotten the bomb.”
“True.”
“Plus, none of the store owners I talked to remember selling a burner lately to anyone who seemed particularly hard-edged or even particularly intense. Their customers who aren’t kids are mostly people who just don’t have the money for another monthly bill.”
Good. He was glad Colby was covering all his bases, even the ones he didn’t like. “You’re doing a good job.”
Colby’s ears went red. “Thanks, boss.”
“So what’s your worry?”
“That it’s something serious. That someone’s deliberately crying wolf—no offense to my own people—in order to make us not take the real threat seriously when it comes.”
It had an awful plausibility to it. People loved attaching themselves to events that were already getting way too much media attention. This trial of the century circus definitely qualified.
And Martin was just cynical enough to believe that something like this might happen just because it was completely the wrong time for it. The last thing he needed right now was another complication. The last thing he needed was enough worry and stress to distract him from giving Tiffani the courtship she deserved.
No, actually, scratch that. The real last thing he needed was the thought of her in any kind of danger. She would be sitting in that courtroom day in and day out. If Colby’s worries were right and there really was something bigger going on...
He couldn’t let anything happen to her.
“There’s no real proof of that, though,” Colby said, probably picking up on Martin’s mood. “It’s just... something in the air. This trial has blown up too big, and that just makes it feel like something’s gotta give. But we’ll all have an eye on it—I’d like to see anything get past us.”
“Right,” Martin said. He still couldn’t stop thinking about Tiffani at her desk in the courtroom. Entirely vulnerable.