by Beverly Bird
“This is an invasion of my privacy,” he said harshly. “It’s harassment. It’s a heinous breech of etiquette in my time of grief. I—”
Tessa interrupted this time, letting her features settle into a mild scowl. “Don’t you want to help us figure out who did this to Daphne? I should think—”
“Get out,” Benami snarled.
Tessa stood up slowly. Gunner took another step closer to the man. Benami fought for a moment to hold his ground, but he was intimidated. He took a quick step back until his legs came up against the chair behind him.
“I don’t have to take this!”
“Sure you do,” Gunner answered. “You’re a scumbag.”
“This is brutality—”
“I haven’t hit you yet,” Gunner said menacingly.
“I’ll have your badge, Officer.”
“Detective. That’s Detective Gunner, scumbag. I worked hard for that promotion.”
Tessa suspected he had gotten the promotion the same way he seemed to do everything. He had probably done it without planning or effort. She really couldn’t tell yet if his lazy indifference was real or forced. She wondered just how much granite was underneath that crooked grin of his.
She found out soon enough, in a way she’d never anticipated.
“We can do this one of two ways,” Gunner said. “You can voluntarily come with us to a medical facility of our choice, and let a pretty little nurse take a few drops of blood out of your finger there. Or you can cause all this fuss—which, by the way, really makes me wonder why you’re fussing—and you can tick me off, in which case I’ll haul your skinny butt into the nearest court and get a compliance order. One way or the other, you’re going to end up with a pricked finger, and I’m going to get my blood.”
Benami only shook his head.
“Why, Christian?” Tessa pleaded, and answered herself. Because he’s a scumbag. She almost laughed aloud. “It would be so much easier if you’d just—”
“Get out of here,” Benami snarled.
“Gunner’s right, you know. We’ll have to get the compliance order if only to continue with our investigation in a neat and orderly fashion.”
“I said get out. I’m in mourning. Get out of here. Before I—”
“Hang us from a chandelier?” Gunner suggested harshly.
“Get out,” Benami said again.
Gunner gave him a mock salute. “See you in court.”
They were nearly back to the door when Benami stopped them again. His voice was oily and too quiet.
“Tell me something, Tessa. When your husband went down, did the police harass you? Did they ask you for blood? Did they make you relive it over and over again, how his eyes looked after he was dead? How did they look, by the way? Were they open the way Daphne’s were?”
Tessa froze. She fought it, didn’t want to succumb to the likes of this monster. She knew she was smarter than that, and yet she couldn’t help it. She thought of how Matt had looked at her, how he had looked for her, his eyes searching and wild, as he had died.
A small, involuntary cry escaped her throat, then she gasped more loudly.
Gunner had been nearly out the door. He spun back, cutting in front of her, and grabbed Benami by the front of his sweater. And the expression on his face now was nothing at all like the one that had been there when he had merely been playing with the man, bouncing counterpoint tough-cop insults off Tessa’s niceties.
His expression was deadly.
“Gunner!” she cried out instinctively. She clutched his arm in panic. His muscles were like steel beneath his jacket. “Gunner, for God’s sake,” she yelled, panicked. “Don’t hurt him. It’s not worth it!”
It seemed to take forever for him to release his grip on the man. He opened his fingers deliberately and slowly.
“Better get yourself a lawyer, pal.”
“I will. You’ll pay for this, Detective.” Benami smoothed his sweater down.
Tessa wasn’t even sure if Gunner had heard him. He was already out the door again. She watched him go then she looked back wildly at Benami. Her heart hitched and this time something cold scooted through her entire body.
He was smiling.
“That was cruel,” she gasped.
“So is what you’re doing to me.”
“No.” She shook her head, gently at first, then more frantically. “I would have given anything—blood, my arm—if I’d thought it would help convict the man who shot Matt.”
Benami only shrugged.
She turned and ran after Gunner. He was nearly a full block ahead of her by the time she reached the street, but he veered suddenly and started coming back toward her. When he saw her, something strange happened to his face. Relief, shame, simmering anger... it was all of those things, and no single one.
“It took me ten steps to realize that you weren’t with me,” he muttered, “that you were still back there, alone with him.”
“That was stupid, ” she hissed.
“Sure was.”
“I don’t mean—no, not leaving me there. Grabbing him! Gunner, for God’s sake!”
His eyes narrowed. Her breath hitched. She took a quick step backward when he looked that way.
“Yeah? Well, you didn’t see your face when he said that to you.” But he had, Gunner thought, oh, yeah, he had. He had seen the memories in her eyes, and for a minute there, for one lousy, god-awful minute, she had looked again the way she had looked at Matt Bryant’s funeral.
And for one second, one god-awful second, he had felt like killing the bastard who had done that to her. Something still hurt in the area of his chest. Something that shook him up more than a little.
“I’m not some hothouse flower, Gunner!” she cried. “I can’t work with you if you keep treating me like a...a child! I am not going to fall apart! I’ve had a year to fall apart now, and I haven’t done it!”
“You were in the Fifth,” he snapped, still reeling. “They don’t have guys like Benami in the Fifth.”
She was shaking. Badly. “I was in the Fifth for nine months! Not my entire career! You can’t do this to me, Gunner. Please. Don’t do this to me.”
His eyes cleared. The relief and the shame of leaving her ebbed. Now there was only anger.
“Tell you what, Princess. I might not trail a pedigree behind me as long as the state of California. I might not know Mr. Dresden from Mr. Uniroyal, but I know right from wrong. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand around with my hands in my pockets while somebody hurts a woman I like and respect. Pedigree or not, I wasn’t raised that way. So if you can’t take it, then head on back to the Fifth right now and leave me the hell alone.”
He turned and stalked up the street again. Tessa watched him for a full heartbeat before she realized her legs were unsteady.
Never, she thought, never had a man stood up for her that way. Not Matt, who had always treated her as an equal, who’d always been so impressed with her mind. Matt had been smart, cunning, but gentle. Her refined father had never threatened anyone on her behalf, nor her aristocratic brother.
No one. She sat down hard on the curb and put her forehead to her knees.
It took her a few minutes to realize that Gunner had come back, that he was standing beside her again. She looked up at him slowly. He scrubbed a hand over his beard, definitely darker now for all the hours that had somehow passed since they’d met at the unit office that morning. He looked rough and dangerous.
“I warned you,” he said finally. “I told you I was liable to get ugly without my nicotine.”
“So you did.”
“So can I have a cigarette now?”
“Not a chance.”
He cracked a small grin and gave her a hand, pulling her to her feet again. “I stand corrected.”
“About what?”
“You are tough. Tell you what. You can handle our bleeding-heart judge.”
She started walking beside him. “Can I drive, too?”
This time he grinned fully. “Not a chance.”
Chapter 5
They went back to the office to try to arrange a Saturday visit with Judge Baum. They didn’t even make it down the hall to their desk before their captain stopped them.
“In here,” Kennery said shortly, blocking their way, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder. “Now.”
Tessa knew that tone.
Her heart sank, then her face got hot. She knew it, but it had never, ever, been directed at her. She’d been with the department for five years now. The first two she had been on the streets, trying to earn respect—or even disrespect—for something, anything, that had nothing to do with her name. Then she’d worked under Roger Kennery in Homicide for two more years, until she’d been exiled.
She’d heard him rant and rave at others, but never at her. She was conscientious. She crossed her Ts and dotted her Is, and that was that. Until John Gunner had come along.
She shot him a helpless, furious look.
“Easy, Princess,” he said in an undertone. “His bark’s worse than his bite. Trust me.”
“And you would know, right?” she whispered hotly.
Gunner grinned and stepped back to let her enter Kennery’s office first. Kennery went to his desk.
He was a huge man, at least six foot five, and he was shaped like a barrel. His chair squeaked when he lowered his girth into it, as though complaining of the strain.
Gunner roamed and Tessa took a chair across from the desk.
“You know,” Kennery began, “when I paired you two, I thought it was a really smart move.” He looked pointedly at Gunner. “I thought you’d be real good for our princess here.”
Our princess. God, how she hated that label. And funny how it didn’t irritate her half as much when Gunner said it.
Gunner nodded.
“And you.” Kennery swiveled his big head again to look accusingly at Tessa this time. “I thought you might keep him in line.”
“God couldn’t keep him in line,” she snapped impulsively, and Gunner grinned wider.
“Come on, Cap,” he said, finally coming back to the desk to sit on the edge of it. “You paired us because I was between partners. Again.”
Kennery narrowed his eyes on him. “And I thought it was a brilliant arrangement. Guess I don’t have to tell you how much I hate being wrong. A couple of days into this partnership, and I’m already getting calls about you two. And I was dragged into this office on a Saturday specifically to take such a call.”
Tessa stared down at her clasped hands. She was going to kill Gunner for this. Slowly. With enjoyment.
Kennery’s chair squeaked again. Tessa looked up quickly to find that he was leaning back now, his hands clasped behind his head.
“Badgering witnesses is lousy protocol, and I won’t have it in my unit. Now that I’ve reprimanded you like I promised that jerk I would, fill me in. I take it that Benami’s a suspect.”
Tessa blinked.
“Damn straight he is,” Gunner said.
“What jerk?” Tessa asked.
“Basil English the Fourth,” Kennery said shortly.
Tessa groaned.
“Who’s that?” Gunner asked.
“The best criminal attorney in the city. After my father,” Tessa murmured. “And Dad’s firm doesn’t do criminal work anymore since Jesse—my brother—took the D.A. post.”
“La-ti-da, ” muttered Gunner.
Her gaze slashed air as her eyes came around to him again. “I’m warning you, Gunner—”
“Easy, children,” Kennery chided. He leaned forward again to clasp his beefy hands on the desk in front of him. “The long and short of it is as follows. Christian Benami will not give you the blood you asked for. I take it the autopsy showed that the killer left something of himself behind?”
Both Gunner and Tessa nodded.
Kennery rubbed a band over his crew cut. “Well, if you pursue trying to match it to Benami, English says he’ll hit the city with a harassment suit.”
Gunner was out of his chair like a shot. “The bastard’s a suspect!”
“Why?” Kennery asked evenly.
Tessa filled him in on Benami’s lack of a paper trail. “Could be Witness Protection,” Kennery said pointedly, as Tess had. “We’re seeing an awful lot of that these days. For every odd occurrence, there’s at least one possible innocent answer. What else have you got?”
Tessa dropped her eyes again.
“What else?” Kennery demanded again suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Tessa and Gunner answered together.
Kennery sat back slowly. “Let me get this straight. You beat up on a witness because he has no paper trail?”
“Gunner didn’t beat him up! I mean, he never actually struck him.” Tessa took a breath. “And he’s right. Benami is a suspect, and since when do suspects get to threaten harassment suits?”
“When they’ve just come into more money than God,” Kennery said shortly.
“If he was innocent, Captain, he’d give us that blood,” Tessa insisted.
“Sure he would,” Kennery agreed mildly.
“We need to get a compliance order, and if he sues, well then, too damn bad,” she said faintly.
Gunner raised a brow at her. “That’s telling him, Princess.”
“Stop princessing me!”
“Baum’s not going to give you a compliance order,” Kennery said. “And Baum’s on our bench this month.”
“We’ve got to try,” Gunner snapped. “What do you want us to do? Back off and let the jerk walk?”
“Nope,” Kennery said. “But I sure would be grateful if you’d keep your hands to yourself from here on in.”
Gunner’s jaw hardened.
“It was my fault,” Tessa said softly. Both their gazes swiveled to her. “Benami was ... taunting me. I didn’t handle it as well as I could have. Gunner was just doing the White Knight routine.” She looked at him almost dazedly. That still overwhelmed her a little.
Then she realized that, for perhaps the first time since she had known him, Gunner seemed speechless.
“Yeah, well, hands off from now on,” Kennery muttered. He picked up the phone, spoke briefly and slammed it down again. “Baum’ll see you in his chambers in an hour. Keep me posted on this one,” Kennery said. “I want every little detail. It’s a potential time bomb. If it’s going to blow the department off its foundations, I want to know about it ahead of time.”
Gunner went to the door. “We need twenty-four-hour duty on this one, Cap,” he mentioned.
Tessa paled.
“Now what’s the problem?” Kennery asked, watching her closely.
“I...nothing.” She shook her head. Twenty-four-hour duty meant that they could, would and should be armed at all times. She darted a look at Gunner. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”
“Benami is a sleazeball,” he snapped. “I don’t trust him.”
Tessa sighed. He was certainly that.
She was not afraid of gunfire. She was not. Not so long as she, too, was armed, ready and able to do something this time. She had aced her marksmanship courses at the Academy.
Both Kennery and Gunner were still watching her too closely.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, and left the office. She was halfway down the hall again before Gunner caught up with her.
“You want a hot dog while we wait for Baum?” he asked too idly. “My treat.”
She groaned and shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. “The one you talked me into yesterday kept me up half the night.” Of course it had had nothing to do with the sometimes-titillating thoughts of John Gunner that had plagued her.
Those thoughts were not getting any less tangled. She combed her hand through her hair nervously.
“Suit yourself, Princess.” He fell silent and waited until they were in the elevator to go on. “Just for the record, I can fight my own battles.”
She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon
?”
“I didn’t ask you to take the rap for me in there. Right from the start I guess you ought to know that I take my own flak. I don’t drag anyone else down with me, partner or not.”
The elevator doors opened. Gunner stepped out. It took Tessa a moment to follow.
“You know, Gunner,” she called after him, “you ought to do something about that machismo problem!”
He pushed through the lobby door in search of his hot dog, turning around at the last moment to look back at her.
“There’s no problem, Princess. My machismo is fine.”
Baum wouldn’t give them the compliance order. Nor was he happy to have been pulled away from his golf game to see them. He sat behind his desk and glared at Gunner.
“You have no probable cause,” he said flatly.
Gunner planted his palms on the judge’s desk. “The hell we don’t. Benami doesn’t exist. He’s using an alias. His wife didn’t commit suicide and as far as we know, he was the last one to see her alive. She had blood under her fingernails. I want to know if it’s Christian Benami’s.”
“It could not possibly be Mr. Benami’s,” Judge Baum said. “Please remove your hands from my desk. I’m not a thug you can intimidate, Detective, and if you continue this behavior, I’ll fine you.”
Gunner hesitated a moment too long before jerking away.
“Your Honor, we have no irrefutable proof that it’s not Benami’s blood,” Tessa argued. “And you have to admit that his lack of a background is suspicious. He bears looking into.”
Baum’s gaze moved to her. It changed from hostile to guarded. She was a Hadley, after all.
“What’s your point, Detective?”
“Benami could have been in and out of that party without anyone being the wiser.”
“You’ve got over a hundred statements in this file. He’s got an alibi.”
“Not really. It’s not airtight. There are holes all through it.”
“All the same, if I gave you a compliance order, that would be harassment. I can’t risk a lawsuit over pure conjecture. Bring me something else. Bring me something incriminating, and I’ll cooperate with you. As it is, you’ve got no grounds for this request.”
Tessa shot a quick look at Gunner. A little nerve was beginning to tick hard and fast at his jaw. He thrust a finger at the judge.
