by Anne Frasier
Angry footsteps told David that Lamont was following him. In the cemetery, David turned to see the guy barreling down on him, his face red. Not a surprise, considering Lamont’s massive ego.
“I’m here because you can’t do your job.” Lamont pointed at David’s chest. “And the only reason you’re here is because you’re sleeping with the boss.”
Ooh-hoo!
“Yeah, that’s right,” Lamont said. “It’s no secret. Know what else? You were never a good profiler. You blew that case in Puget Sound. You should have had that guy. And your wife? Don’t get me started about that. About how you were living with her and didn’t see what she was. So shut the hell up about my profiling. If you were as good as you think you are, your kid would still be alive.”
For the past few years, David’s entire existence had been about control, or rather about always feeling on the verge of a meltdown, always feeling he was just one breath away from losing it.
It felt good to let go.
To finally just say, Come on. Jump. Fall. Stop fighting yourself. Let it happen. He had just enough cognizance to realize that this was how murderers felt. This was how it happened. It wasn’t that one day they just decided to do something aberrant. No, it was that one day they decided to no longer stop themselves. And once they experienced that total release, the total embracing of who they were deep down and dark, they realized they were free.
To finally punch that asshole Vic Lamont in the face? It felt great. Should have done it years ago.
And to see the expression on the guy’s face? That comical look of shock, followed by indignant anger? Oh yeah.
It was a solid hit, but David was still surprised when Lamont went down, landing with a loud exhale, laid out flat on his back in the grass.
David had little time to enjoy the scene, though, because Lamont didn’t stay down. He scrambled to his feet and charged, not with any technique, but rather an angry animal kind of thing, his head aimed at David’s stomach.
This time they both crashed to the ground. And damn if every punch of Lamont’s fist didn’t feel good. After a point, David wasn’t even sure if he was hitting back anymore. Maybe he was just lying there, enjoying being pummeled.
It didn’t take long for the commotion to draw the attention of more than just tourists wandering through the cemetery, cameras in hand. Pretty soon officers in blue were running toward them. Hands pulled Lamont away, and David almost laughed at the looks of astonishment when they saw that David was the one getting the shit beaten out of him.
“That son of a bitch attacked me,” Lamont said, his arms pinned, jacket torn, nose bleeding.
David panned the crowd from his position on the ground, stopping when his gaze landed on Jay Thomas Paul. Big eyes—and that goddamn camera. David made a mental note to delete the journalist’s files. Or maybe just smash his camera.
“Did you attack him?” The question came from none other than Major Hoffman, undoubtedly alerted by the noise.
David wiped at his nose and checked the back of his hand for blood, happy to see quite a bit. “Yep,” he said. “I threw the first punch.” He felt euphoric.
“In my office. Just you.” Hoffman turned and strode away.
This wouldn’t end well.
David stumbled to his feet, lurched forward, steadied himself, then aimed for the police station.
He felt better than he’d felt all day. Better than he’d felt all week.
“Shut the door behind you,” Hoffman said once they were both inside her office. The sound of the closing door was even more ominous than usual. There would be no reaching into his pants today.
Hoffman sat at her desk, her expression stern. “Badge and gun.”
“What?”
“I want your badge and gun. On the desk. Now.”
“Isn’t that a bit of an overreaction?”
The anger in her face increased, and he could almost hear her teeth gnashing. “You know why we hired you?” She answered her own question. “We hired you because we couldn’t afford anybody else.”
“Ouch.”
“Ex-FBI was better than no FBI. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time.” She opened one drawer, searched for something, opened another, slammed it. “Your entire history wasn’t included in your file. I didn’t know everything about you until you got here. By then I thought you might as well stay.”
Another drawer. Pale blue bottle he recognized as antacid. She uncapped the lid and took a swig. “I have to admit that once I saw you, I decided to keep you for a while.”
Harsh. Nice-looking people had a whole other kind of bias to deal with.
“You ended up surprising me.” She recapped her drink. “You screwed up sometimes, and you’ve been on probation more than I can count, but you got a lot of things right. The press even called you a hero a few times. That was generous, but it reflected well on the department. I liked it.” She dropped the bottle back in her desk and slammed the drawer. “But I’m done. Take two weeks, and I’ll rethink this once I’ve cooled off. But, David, I’m afraid you aren’t a good fit here. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look sorry.
“Is it because of us? Is that why you’re doing this?”
“Us?” She let out a scornful laugh. “There is no us. It was fun for a while, but people are talking. I can’t have that. I’m not looking for a relationship. I’ve had those, and I don’t want any more. What you and I had was handy for me. Sex, with no strings. I knew you weren’t looking for commitment either. At least not from me. But it was a bad idea, sweetie.” Her face softened on the “sweetie.” He wasn’t sure she’d ever called him that, even in the throes. “Throes.” What a weird word.
“I’m giving you fair warning.” Her eyes narrowed, and her severe expression returned. “There’s a good chance you won’t be coming back.”
CHAPTER 23
I’m outta here,” David said.
Without looking up from her computer screen, Elise said, “Just a minute. I have a few e-mails I need to read that might be pertinent to the case. We got a handwriting match for Devro and Murphy. I’m still waiting to hear back on Chesterfield.” Apparently she’d somehow missed the drama in the cemetery.
“I’m not heading out to interview people,” David said. “I’m leaving leaving. In fact, I think I might get a drink.”
“It’s not even noon.” She spun around in her chair, took in the condition of his face and clothes, and barely blinked. Another day at the office.
That was when he gave her an abbreviated version of what happened in the cemetery, leaving out the words Lamont had spoken to instigate the attack.
“Hoffman put you on temporary suspension?”
“Yep. Two weeks.”
“Now? With a murderer out there?”
“You’ve got everybody you need. You’ve got the handsome and not-yet-balding FBI profiler, you’ve got the reporter from New York, you’ve got an old man with cancer who will most likely crack the case with some kind of hoodoo voodoo mojo mind-expanding spell. You’ll be fine.” He grabbed his jacket off the chair and flung it over his shoulder to demonstrate how carefree he was.
“You have blood on your face.”
He rubbed his jaw and checked his fingers. Blood crumbs.
She handed him a bottle of water and a tissue. He uncapped the bottle, wet the tissue, and began blindly cleaning his face.
“Here.” She took the tissue from him, wet it some more, and wiped the side of his cheek and under his nose, then tossed the tissue away. “You might want to change your shirt before you go to a bar.”
He looked down. “Oh, right.” Then, “Maybe people will just think I’m a sloppy eater.”
“Did you two break up?” she asked.
She was thinking the same thing he’d thought, that Hoffman was doing this out of spite.
“There was never anything to break up,” he said.
“That’s not what I heard.”
He gave her a crook
ed smile. “Word gets around in a small town.” A rueful shake of his head. A thought about how quickly the day had changed. And how he somehow still felt better than he’d felt an hour ago. “I don’t think it was anything to do with that.”
“Then what?”
“She’s just sick of my behavior, that’s all.”
They’d done this before. Elise knew the drill. “I’ll keep you in the loop,” she told him.
“I hate to leave you hanging, but right now . . . Not sure I want to be in the loop.” For the last year Elise had talked off and on about quitting. Funny that he might be the one moving on.
“You’ll be back. I’ll bet by tomorrow she comes around. It’s not like you shot somebody. And she’s not following any protocol.”
He didn’t feel like going into the other stuff Hoffman had said. “Thanks for the bath.”
“I’m going to talk to her,” Elise said. “This is unacceptable.”
He smiled. “We made a good team.”
“Not made, make.”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
He liked that she was going to battle for him regardless of the inevitable outcome. “Now it’s my turn to talk about opening a coffee shop. I’ll work on a name.” His hand was on the doorknob when he stopped. “Have you done the crossword for today?”
“Not yet.”
“Me neither.”
She gave him a long, penetrating look, one meant to get a suspect to confess. “Why’d you hit him?”
The question was so Elise, and it was a question Hoffman hadn’t bothered to ask. Elise wasn’t mad at him for punching Lamont. She just wanted to know why. “He had it coming. And I’d do it again.”
Out of the building and in his car, David stopped at the first bar he saw. Closed, so he hit the liquor store. Better anyway, especially when he planned to black out.
CHAPTER 24
After David left, Elise met with Major Hoffman, but the woman wouldn’t budge.
“You’ve got the team you need,” Hoffman said. “Victor Lamont has been given the okay to stay on for a couple of weeks. He’ll be reporting to me, and I’ll be reporting to the mayor. Detective Avery will continue to run the task force downstairs, and you’ve got Jackson Sweet.”
“You know how I feel about Sweet,” Elise said.
“Get over it. I want Gould’s desk cleared so Agent Lamont can set up there, and I want you to make your father welcome, and I want him involved. And if you ever find a suspect to question, I want Sweet to do the questioning.” Hoffman’s voice, upon bringing up their lack of suspects, was snide and accusatory.
Had the woman totally lost her mind? First firing David, then this stuff with Sweet? “I’m the best at interrogation,” Elise reminded her.
“Not anymore. I’ve been too lenient, and I have to confess I’m beginning to regret giving you the position as head detective.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“Which I should have heeded. You didn’t want it. You made that clear. And now here we are with the mayor’s daughter dead and all our jobs on the line.”
Ah, so that was it. Major Hoffman was concerned about losing her job.
“I think it’s a bad idea to remove Gould from the case,” Elise said.
“His attitude toward Lamont was seriously hindering the investigation. Hopefully I can talk Lamont out of filing assault charges, because that’s the last thing we need right now. Admit it, Elise. Gould is a detriment.”
It was true. “Yes,” Elise said with reluctance.
“See that Agent Lamont is moved from the task force station into your office as smoothly as possible, and let’s catch this killer. Not tomorrow and not next week. Now.”
The next couple of hours were taken up with getting Lamont settled in. He was smirky and cocky about it, and Elise was glad David wasn’t there since he would’ve punched him all over again.
Strange how one person could change the feel of everything. Lamont exuded a man’s-world vibe, and Elise got the sense he didn’t consider her on his level, but then maybe that was typical FBI behavior.
By the time evening rolled around, the day felt wasted. In the parking lot, Jay Thomas Paul was waiting next to her car.
“I thought you’d left for the day,” Elise said when she spotted him.
“I didn’t want to talk about this in front of Agent Lamont, but is it true about Detective Gould? Did he get fired?”
“I suspect he’ll be back.” But as she spoke the words, she had her doubts.
“I was writing a story about the two of you . . .”
“Oh, that’s right.” She made a face. “I’m sorry.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Will that end up in your story?”
“Maybe. This is what I do. I can’t shut it off.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” Annoying Twitter photos aside, she’d started to like Jay Thomas Paul. He’d never pretended to be anything he wasn’t.
“Would you like to grab a bite to eat before heading home?” he asked.
“Not tonight.”
He immediately looked embarrassed.
“But thanks for asking. Maybe we can get a drink sometime.”
That cheered him up.
While Jay Thomas walked away, a bit of a bounce in his step, Elise called home. Audrey answered to tell her Strata Luna was there, cooking.
“Cooking?” Elise asked. “Strata Luna?”
“Well, her houseboy is cooking. Strata Luna is bossing him around.” Mother and daughter laughed. “She says she has to fatten Grandpa up.”
Elise cringed whenever Audrey called the man staying with them Grandpa.
“How’d his chemo go?” Unbelievably, Audrey had been able to talk him into getting it. She’d apparently inherited his power of persuasion.
“He seems normal. Like it was nothing. He even met me after school.” Her voice dropped. “He still doesn’t want Strata Luna to know. I feel weird about that.”
Had he even gotten the chemo? Elise wondered. The plan had been for him to take a cab to the hospital and back once a week for five weeks, and he’d insisted upon going by himself. “Don’t hold dinner for me.” She’d deal with Sweet later. “As long as everything’s under control, I’m going to stop by David’s.” Even before the incident with Lamont, David had been acting strange. Few realized it, but he was fragile.
CHAPTER 25
At David’s apartment, located in a dark and foreboding building called Mary of the Angels, Elise’s knock went unanswered, so she pulled out her mobile phone and hit “Speed Dial.” From the other side of the door came the sound of a ring tone.
David didn’t pick up.
His car was outside. He might have been jogging, but that didn’t fit his routine. She rattled the knob and pounded, this time shouting his name. Could be he just wanted to be left alone, but his volatile behavior at the police station worried her. Added to that were past mental issues and his predisposition to breakdowns.
After another minute of no response she took the stairs to the caretaker’s apartment on the first floor.
“I can’t let you into someone’s rental,” the old man said. He was as decrepit as the building itself, and Elise seriously doubted there was much care going on at Mary of the Angels. She hated to do it because it was so needlessly dramatic, but she pulled her jacket aside and flashed the badge on her belt.
“Oh yeah. Now I remember you.” He was referring to an unpleasant incident that had almost led to David’s eviction. Getting kicked out seemed to be a recurring theme in her partner’s life.
“I wouldn’t do this if you weren’t both cops,” he let her know as they rode the ancient elevator cage to the third floor. At the apartment, he turned the master key in the lock and swung the door wide.
David’s cat, Isobel, let out a hiss, skidded around the corner, and disappeared down the hall in the direction of the bedroom.
Barefoot, dressed in a gray T-shirt and faded jeans, was
the man of the hour. From his sprawled position on the floor, he turned his head in an attempt to see who’d invaded his space. “Oh, hey.”
It was hard to believe this wasted David had come about in just a few hours. He looked like he’d spent the last week living on a deserted island.
“He’s drunk, that’s all,” the caretaker said with a tone that conveyed satisfaction and maybe even approval. Yeah, cops let go sometimes.
David’s place was small, probably not much more than four hundred square feet. The combined living room and kitchen made it impossible to miss the evidence of his one-man party—which amounted to an uncapped half-empty fifth of vodka on the kitchen counter and a glass on the floor.
Standing in the doorway, the caretaker said, “He looks pretty happy to me.”
“He seems to be good at finding his happy place,” Elise said with distraction as she eyed a brown prescription bottle next to the sink.
From the floor, David let out a chuckle while the caretaker shuffled away without further comment and Elise stepped inside and closed the door.
At the sink, she read the label on the prescription bottle. “Did you take any of these?”
He blinked and narrowed his eyes, trying to bring the thing in her hand into focus. “Don’t know. What are they?”
“Sleeping pills. Slumberon.” She recognized the name. A newer sedative that had been getting negative press. Like some other sleep aids, it was said to cause sleepwalking and sleep driving, among other alarming types of behavior.
“Don’t think so.” He groped the floor beside him, found what he was after, and lifted a short glass to his mouth, looking like an invalid giving himself a much-needed sip of water.
“You’re not an attractive drunk.”
He let out a snort and sprayed vodka, most of it landing on his chest, where it left a dark splotch on his T-shirt. “That’s funny as hell.”
“Just being honest.”
He raised the glass to his mouth again for another attempt. She thought about telling him it would be easier if he sat up but decided that would only encourage him.
