Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  “Yeah, it’s kind of their thing.”

  “I might have to get cake.”

  “I wouldn’t stop you.”

  “Jen!” someone yelled. He looked up to see a woman with unnatural burgundy hair making a beeline for them. He caught a glimpse of Jennifer, looking briefly panicked, and then the woman was enfolding Jennifer in a warm hug.

  “Mary Lynn!” Jennifer smiled down at her—she was considerably shorter than either of them. “How have you been?”

  “Good, good.”

  “This is Mark, from work.”

  “I know Mark from work, we’ve met in court.” Now that she mentioned it, he did recognize her—a case or two earlier in the summer. Mary Lynn shook a finger at Mark. “And don’t ask me about how the case is going! You know I shouldn’t talk about that.”

  “Is it even your case?”

  “No, which is exactly why I shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “That seems reasonable.” He grinned at her. She was trying, but she seemed to have about as much interest in him as she might have in a lamppost. Her eyes kept darting back over to Jennifer, who had obviously stopped to redo her hair before coming here.

  Jennifer took a quick sip of her wine. “Can I get you anything?” She was still looking down at Mary Lynn, and the expression on her face was surprisingly tentative. Mark turned to the bartender to hide his own smile, ordering a glass of the pinot grigio.

  “Mark?”

  He knew the voice—he turned as he tried to place it; too deep for Gavin or Travis—and found himself looking up at Lukas.

  “Hey!” He reached out and shook Lukas’s hand briskly. “Good to see you.”

  “You too.” Lukas had a beer in one hand. He gestured loosely at the rest of the room with it. “Here for the cake?”

  “Well, I am now. I didn’t realize there was cake when Jennifer said we should come.”

  “Jennifer?” Lukas’s eyes slid over to where Jennifer was standing.

  “One of the public defenders. Jen!”

  She turned away from Mary Lynn, smoothing her hands over her dress. (Little, black, perfect for a first date.) “Yeah?”

  “Meet Lukas, he’s a PI on one of my cases right now.” Mark waved a hand at him, watching Lukas scan Jennifer quickly, almost—but not quite—imperceptibly. Then his eyes flickered sideways to Mary Lynn, and he was smiling by the time he reached to shake her hand.

  They traded the classic one-firm-pump handshake Jennifer favored. “The big one?”

  “Yeah.” Mark groaned. “That one.”

  Lukas was watching him. “For what it’s worth.”

  Mary Lynn raised her eyebrows. “For what it’s worth?”

  “It’s my first criminal case.”

  “You’re doing great.” Mark slapped his back; Lukas was wearing a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, with jeans and a pair of work boots. Speaking of lumberjack chic, Jesus. “Your reports are so clear. I can actually understand what you’re trying to say. Katie writes like a drunk college freshman.”

  “You’ve worked cases with Katie before?”

  “Oh, yeah, we all know Katie. She’s awesome. It’s just luck of the draw, who we get for a case. Whoever’s on.”

  “I had Katie a couple of weeks ago,” Jennifer chimed in. “Just run-of-the-mill stuff.”

  “Which for you means what, death threats?” Mark rolled his eyes at her and then added to Lukas, “She handles domestic violence cases.”

  “That sounds...charming.”

  “You have no idea.” She wrinkled her nose and took another sip of her wine. Mary Lynn laughed a little too loudly, watching Jennifer’s face carefully. It was endearing.

  “So who gets the death threats?” Lukas pointed his bottle at Jennifer. “You?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly it’s the wives. Or new boyfriends.” She stole a sidelong glance at Mary Lynn. “New girlfriends. They don’t handle perceived abandonment well.”

  “Oh, perceived abandonment?” Mark grinned at her. “Sounds like somebody was a psych major in undergrad.”

  “Shut up!” Jennifer giggled explosively.

  “Is it true? Am I right? Oh my God,” Mark said, turning to Lukas. “I’m right.”

  Jennifer poked him in the arm. “I said shut up. But yes. You’re right.”

  “So how’s Katie doing? I haven’t actually talked to her in a while,” Mark said. Lukas looked briefly lost before nodding.

  “She seems good. We don’t know each other all that well.” Lukas shrugged. “She just brought me on board for this case, and depending on how it all goes, they might keep me in the pool.”

  “That’s got to be a good thing, right?” Mary Lynn was wearing a shade of lipstick a little too dark for day-to-day work, must have touched it up on her way here. It was so a first date. In a group setting, so it couldn’t get too awkward. Mark was going to roast Jennifer about this on Monday.

  Lukas nodded. “For me, yeah. State work is good, more consistent than a lot of the private work.” He looked looser, more easy, than Mark had seen him before. “I guess you don’t rely on the private workforce so much, huh?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, we pretty much rely on the police.”

  “That has to come in handy.”

  Jennifer was watching the exchange. Mark caught her eye behind Mary Lynn’s head as she leaned forward, and shot her a huge grin. She narrowed her eyes at him, pursing her lips. He just let his grin get wider.

  “You getting cake?” He turned back to Lukas, who looked up at the menu.

  “Think I might have to. They sound pretty good.”

  “Who are you here with?”

  Lukas’s gaze slid off to a table in a shadowy section of the bar. “Just some of the guys.”

  Mark followed his eyes. There were four or five of them sitting around a table. A couple of men, a couple of women.

  “The wives dragged them, and they figured they’d drag me, I guess,” Lukas added. He looked uncomfortable again, tensing up right before Mark’s eyes.

  “What are friends for if not to drag you to new and exciting places where you can get drunk?” Mark raised his wineglass in their general direction as one of the women turned to look at them, waving at her a little. She waved back. “Coming here was Jen’s idea. A bunch of us from work getting together. I think—oh, here’s Travis!”

  Travis threw an arm over Mark’s shoulder, squeezing in greeting. “Hey. You’re the new investigator, right? Nystrom?”

  “Yeah, call me Lukas.” Lukas shook his hand too, Travis peeling himself off Mark. “Good to meet you.”

  “Travis Cho, I’m one of the attorneys on felonies, so I might see you again one of these days.”

  “I’m hoping. Kind of a trial basis right now.”

  “Well, Lena likes your reports, so that’s a good sign.”

  Lukas glanced over at Mark, raising his eyebrows slightly. “Does she?”

  “Yeah, she wanted to see what you had after that first meeting.”

  “Understandable.”

  “No more shoptalk!” Mary Lynn tapped his arm sharply. “Remember, I’m an enemy spy in your territory. Don’t say anything in front of me you wouldn’t want the DA to hear.”

  “That’s going to put a damper on the conversation,” said Travis. “A lot of what we say is just straight-up personal imprecations about him. Aspersions on his character.”

  Jennifer was nodding. “He’s an easy target. He looks pinched. Lemony.”

  “Somebody must piss in his Cheerios on a daily basis to give him that kind of squint.”

  Mary Lynn flailed in exaggerated annoyance. “Come on! Who’s going to step up and get cake with me first?”

  “I will.” Mark put a hand over his heart solemnly. “For your sake, of course. Not mine.”

  “Of course.” Lukas’s lips twitched.

  “You going to get a cake?” Mark squinted up at the menu. “Smoked chocolate. S’mores. Peanut butter. Classics, all good.”

  “I’m go
ing to try the s’mores.”

  “Really? I had you pegged for a smoked-chocolate man. Sophisticated tastes.”

  Lukas leaned forward onto the bar. “Nah, I’ll rot my teeth like a kid.”

  “No dignity there. Marshmallow’s just so gooey. But you know, you like what you like, right?” He grinned up at Lukas just as Lukas turned his head, too close, and a laugh died on Lukas’s lips as their eyes met. There was a long moment that felt elastic, a sudden heat crackling up Mark’s spine.

  “Yeah.” Lukas looked back across the bar and caught the server’s attention. He ordered for the whole table—he must have been sent on it as an errand.

  Then he turned back to Mark, gave him a firm, brief slap on the back, and said, “It was good seeing you. I’ll check in after I talk to some people on Monday.”

  “Sure.” Mark watched him, already turning away. “You do that.”

  *

  At the table with Alex and Lila and Nick and Consuela, Lukas kept feeling his eyes drifting back to the group of lawyers.

  Mark was wearing a black suit with a dark red tie. Made him look serious. Older, somehow, than he got the feeling Mark actually was—Mark had a big, bright laugh. He kept smiling at things Jennifer and Mary Lynn were saying.

  Jennifer’s hand lingering, faltering, by Mary Lynn’s elbow made him smile, a little, and he turned hastily back to the table.

  “—so I said to the guy,” Alex was drawling, clearly enjoying the story about the rube who didn’t know ship repair from a hole in the ground, “yeah, we can do that, but the damn thing’s still going to leak.”

  Lukas laughed dutifully. There was a stir of movement over where the lawyers were. He snuck a glance their way—a red-haired man had arrived, also in a suit, and he was getting backslaps and quick hugs from everyone. He shook Mary Lynn’s hand, like the rest of them had. She was clearly the new one.

  The redhead took up a post at Mark’s elbow and ordered a cake for himself, pointing to the menu overhead. The server nodded at something.

  “You worked at Alex’s company for a while, right, Lukas?” asked Consuela, smiling tentatively.

  Lukas shifted his focus to her. “Right, when we were—what, twenty-two?”

  Alex nodded authoritatively. “So he knows what I’m talking about!”

  “Yeah, man.” Lukas reached out to clink his bottle gently against Alex’s. “Sure thing.”

  All the lawyers were standing close to each other, talking loudly, animated. They looked friendly. But no one was actually touching Mark.

  Lukas drained the rest of his beer and tried to keep his eyes on his friends. It got easier when they got their cakes, little hot jars of chocolate cake that was almost liquid in the center. He dug out a big spoonful of the marshmallow fluff and tried to follow Lila’s story about a shipment of stock that had been late at her store.

  He looked over at Mark one more time, and when he looked back at the table, he saw Alex watching him speculatively.

  Chapter Five

  Monday morning was ugly. Not another arraignment day, thank God, but when Mark got off the light rail at the Pioneer Square stop, the crowd of homeless people was thicker than usual, clumped together in the chill. He had to shoulder through, brushing them off. It made him feel like an asshole. He probably was one.

  Gavin looked dead tired at his desk in their shared office. Jennifer had arraignments, and she was down at court. “Long night?” asked Mark. “Need coffee?”

  “Jesus, would you?” Gavin pressed a hand against his forehead, then raked it through his thinning red hair. “I feel like I got hit by a truck. No real reason, even. I think I slept funny. My shoulder’s killing me.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” Mark dropped his crap at his desk and went to grab a couple of mugs of coffee from the break room.

  He was just pouring the second cup when Lena walked in—must not be a court day for her, she’d gone for the gray pantsuit. “Hey,” he said. “Any new news?”

  “No. Actually, yes. Dauer sent a fax Friday night, just got it this morning. We got the field blow.” She sighed, reaching up past him to get a packet of hot chocolate out of the cupboard. “Guess.”

  “Uh. Not legal?”

  “That’s technically correct but not specific. Commit to a number.”

  “Point one?”

  “Higher.”

  “Point one five?”

  “Higher.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Point two three.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “I know. I fucking know.” She shook her head slowly. “I really thought maybe we were on to something with this, like maybe she wasn’t actually driving drunk, but it sounds like she did herself a fucking favor by refusing the blow at the station.”

  “How was she even on the fucking road? How did they overserve her that bad?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about that.” Lena dumped the packet of hot chocolate into a mug of coffee, stirring briskly. “Let’s say she went to the warehouse to see her goddamned motherfucking boyfriend.”

  “I’m not going to like where this goes, am I?”

  “They have a couple more drinks together. They fight.”

  “Damn it, Lena, this is the kind of shit the cops are supposed to say.”

  “I’m saying she needs to come up with a better alternate theory than ‘got fucking lost in my own backyard’ if she wants us to even be able to start a defense.”

  Mark leaned back against the counter, a mug of coffee in each hand. He took an experimental sip from one of them and winced at the heat. “We’ve still got a couple of weeks until the preliminary hearing. We can put something together.”

  “I don’t want to keep stumbling over these fucking land mines! She keeps lying to us, we’re going to be standing there in court with our thumbs up our asses!”

  “You want me to talk to her?”

  “No, I will.” Lena ran a hand through her hair, which was floating loose that morning in a mostly silver flood. “I don’t want her to make us look like monkeys fucking a football.”

  “Okay. And I’ve got Lukas talking to some more people at work today. Going to try to figure out if anybody else hated him.”

  “Else? Who hated him?”

  “Sounded from the interview on Friday like the wife was not his biggest fan.”

  “Yeah, go figure. Men.” She snorted. “More trouble than they’re worth.”

  “You’re telling me,” he muttered.

  She took a gulp off her ersatz mocha. “Anyway, let me know what Nystrom finds out today. Interesting or not.”

  “Will do.”

  “One more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  Lena scowled at her mug. “I’m hoping the cops fucked up the traffic stop. When I talk to her again, I’m going to ask about the procedural shit. I’m hoping we might be able to suppress the findings.”

  “That’s kind of a long shot,” Mark said, surprised.

  “Is it? You know how many times Martin’s been reprimanded for fucking up stops? And Jackson beat all hell out of a guy last year so bad it ended up on the front page, for talking back. Dash cam caught it, and he’s only not fired because his sister-in-law is buddies with the police chief.”

  “So you’re going to ask, see if that gets us anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Should have thought of it sooner.” She shook her head grimly as she headed off down the hall.

  He started sifting through a report from a PI on a different case of his, sipping slowly at a cup of foul, foul breakroom coffee.

  He actually got a call, while he was still wrist-deep in that client’s blustering denials, from a reporter, asking for a comment on the Carville case.

  “I really can’t comment,” he said, “I’m sure you understand.”

  “It’s just that this story is rapidly shaping up to be—”

  “No comment.” He hung up. Gently.

&n
bsp; *

  Lukas waited patiently for the man who was blowing out clouds of watermelon-scented mist.

  “Some fuckin’ smoke break, right?” The worker sighed heavily. “God, I miss cigarettes. But the wife says this is better for me.”

  “Better listen to her.” Lukas watched him suck in another breath. “You worked with Greg?”

  “Almost ten years now.”

  “How was he as a boss?”

  “Kind of a son of a bitch. Just the last couple of years. Think he got to be more of an asshole when things got rough with his wife, you know?”

  “I heard that wasn’t going so hot.”

  “Nah. I mean, I guess people know by now he was fucking Gina.”

  “Did a lot of people know?”

  “Didn’t really know for sure until she got arrested, but I thought they might be. He had that couch here and she’d show up at weird hours. Stick around late. That kind of thing.”

  “Was anybody else having problems with him?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of the guys were on probation for some stupid shit, but I don’t see them starting anything over it.”

  “Regular employees?”

  “Yeah, we have good guys. Not a lot of turnover.”

  “And did you know Gina?”

  “Sure. Everybody knows Gina.”

  “What do you think? Do you think she could have killed him?”

  The guy turned the little contraption over in his big, rough hands. “Not on purpose,” he said, slowly. “But by accident? Yeah. Maybe. She gets upset easy when she’s been drinking.”

  “And does she drink very often?”

  “More than she should.” The guy shook his head. “I know Greg kept a bottle in his desk. Think they were splitting it, nights he slept here.” His eyes darted to the charred portion of the building where Greg’s loft office had been, where there was still water discoloration staining the siding.

  “So you think she might have gotten drunk and started a fire?”

  “Look, she still smokes, doesn’t she? She said she quit but I know she always had a pack stashed somewhere. Came in reeking like it. I think maybe she got real drunk and left and didn’t realize she’d left one burning.”

  “I see.” Lukas pretended like he was taking notes.