The loud pounding shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, the police weren’t used to people slamming doors in their faces, and that’s who I’d just locked out of my office.
“Eddie? What the—? Open the door.” Chance Parker’s voice hadn’t changed. It was still low, but carried a weight to it like every word he spoke mattered. I leaned against the glass with the hope my heart wouldn’t leap out of my chest and splatter on the ground at my, or worse yet his, feet.
The next rap was a knuckle on the glass, instead of the wood frame of the door. The sharp sound of it pulled me out of my panic, and I wrenched the door back open. Just like ripping off a bandage, best to get it over with quick.
“Sorry about that. I thought I heard the phone ring,” I said, my response inexplicable even to myself.
The woman with Chance looked at me like I might be certifiable; he just looked amused. I’m not sure which expression annoyed me more.
“Mind if we come in? We have a few questions for you,” Chance said, though it was clear he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. The “we” included Detective Kate Jarek, who introduced herself and said, “I understand you two know each other.”
“We do,” I said, looking to Chance to see if he planned to fill me in on what he’d told her about our history.
Chance rubbed the side of his cheek as if checking for stubble. It was an action I remembered well—an unconscious gesture he made when he didn’t know exactly how he wanted to respond. Chance was careful with his words, as if they were valuable and he might accidentally drop one he couldn’t afford to lose.
“Down in Seattle,” he said. His eyes held mine, and for an instant I thought he might say more. Something was there in the softness of his gaze, but that brief moment of connection passed and he glossed over a complicated relationship with that single sentence.
I told myself he couldn’t do anything else. Even if it might have felt good to hear he forgave me, now wasn’t the time.
Maybe we could see each other again soon. Alone. And I could find a way to make amends.
“Come on in,” I said, standing aside to let the two of them through the door. I shut it behind them, taking a deep breath before I turned around to face them.
Chance began to pace, his nervous energy filling the room. From the way he averted his gaze from the two of us, I could tell his mind was now focused solely on whatever brought him to my door. I respected that about him. His attention would be directed at you for a moment—intense, all consuming—then he’d turn outward again, as his work took precedence.
Chance was taller than Kate by at least six inches. I could look him in the eye if I were wearing tall shoes, so he stood just over six feet. His hair was brown, but if we were outside, sunlight would glint off red highlights. His eyes were the color of dark chocolate—that satiny look it took on when you melted it on the stove to make some delicious, fattening dessert you knew you shouldn’t eat but couldn’t help yourself from making.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, curious about why a Seattle detective—and my old flame—had appeared on my doorstep up here in Bellingham.
“We’ve got some questions about Deirdre Fox,” Kate said.
That certainly threw me for a loop. I don’t know what I thought they might question me about, but Deirdre Fox wasn’t even in the top ten.
“Okay,” I said, wanting to see where their questions would lead.
“Were you following her or working for her?” Chance asked, confusing me even further.
“Neither,” I said, which was technically true.
“Care to explain this?” Kate handed me a photo that looked like a still picture taken from a video surveillance camera. It wasn’t very high quality, but it was good enough to identify me in my Subaru taking pictures with my telephoto lens. I could tell from the background it was from my stakeout at Hallings’ dealership.
“Why would you think I was tailing Deirdre?” Maybe the woman had filed a report she was being stalked and my name had come up as the stalker.
Maybe I wasn’t as stealthy as I thought.
“Because she turned up dead this morning,” Chance said, carefully gauging my reaction. Shock kept me quiet and he continued, “In recreating her final day, we scanned the videotapes from her place of business, looking for anything unusual. Then you showed up.” Chance tilted his head in that way he had, eyes narrowed, reading your every move, like a cat getting ready to pounce.
“Dead?” I repeated, trying to absorb the fact that someone I saw yesterday in her lingerie was no longer breathing.
“Dead.” Kate said.
“Accidental?” I asked, thinking maybe she had fallen over that flimsy railing. But I got no reply save the flat stares of two homicide detectives.
Maybe that was my answer.
“Dead when?” A tight, clenched feeling started in my gut. The memory of Chance Parker telling me about another person, dead by his own hand, rose in my mind. “Dead how?”
The two detectives exchanged a glance, and I felt a stir of jealousy. They had the ability to communicate silently, in a way only old married couples and police partnered in the field are able to do.
“Tell me this wasn’t a suicide,” I said. Chance shook his head, as Benjamin Cooper’s ghost rose up between us. He shot a nod to Kate.
“Not a suicide,” Kate said as the two of them decided via telepathy to give me some information, at least about the time of death, or TOD as the police would say. “We think she died between ten and midnight last night.”
Ten o’clock would mean she died right after I’d taken pictures of her. I hoped that didn’t mean I was a suspect if this was a murder. Had I been the last person to see her alive?
Should I have noticed something?
I did some quick calculations. I’d left the hotel right around 10:00, with Deirdre Fox alive and well, and hopefully basking in the post-coital glow of her romp with Matthew Hallings. Hallings left before I did, but he could have returned later instead of going home. Then there was my client. Was she capable of violence? Had she followed me? Had I led her right to the mistress? She didn’t appear the type for that kind of act, but what did we ever really know about another human being?
For the moment, neither one was off the table for Deirdre’s death.
Neither was I, for that matter, when it came to alibis.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said, filling them in on my investigation into Hallings, his affair with Deirdre, and how I’d last seen her at the hotel during the TOD the police had established. Private Investigators had a code of conduct, but we weren’t bound by confidentiality like an attorney. I wouldn’t intentionally throw Kendra under the bus, but I had a responsibility to the law.
“You’re sure about what time you saw Matthew Hallings leave the hotel?” Chance said when I was done. “With Deirdre still alive?”
I nodded.
Had she died at the hotel?
“What can you tell us about the wife?” Kate asked.
“She’s petite,” I said, wondering if Deirdre died from the kind of trauma that would require more strength than my client would be physically able to inflict. “Early thirties. So far she’s been a crier, but I haven’t seen her angry yet about her suspicions of the affair, so I can’t tell you if she would go into a killing rampage, if this is a homicide we’re talking about ….” I left the door open for them to fill in the blank, but neither one stepped over the threshold.
“Suspicions?” Chance said. “You haven’t given her proof?”
“She’s coming by later this afternoon. She said she had things to do until then.”
“We’ll need copies of all the photos you took that included Deirdre,” Chance said. I was guessing there hadn’t been any surveillance cameras outside the hotel, so my photos would be the only photographic evidence they’d have from there. I nodded. Taking a memory stick from the top drawer of my desk, I made sure it was empty and downloaded the photos from the dealership and the hotel.
“This is the camera,” I said as I got out my digital and showed Kate that it registered the correct time stamp.
Kate made a note.
“Your IT people can prove I was online at home about eleven,” I said, still wondering if I needed an alibi. Should I worry that I had a whole unaccounted-for hour overlapping with the official TOD?
“So you didn’t see anyone else? Following Deirdre? Or at the hotel?” Kate said in a tone of voice that felt like disapproval.
Was I supposed to have known she was in danger? There was that tug of guilt again.
“No. But keep in mind it wasn’t Deirdre I was following; it was Hallings.”
“Right.”
What was that supposed to mean? I could feel a lump lodge in my chest and I resented it. Deirdre’s death wasn’t my responsibility any more than Benjamin Cooper’s was, yet somehow I felt like I should have seen something that would have helped.
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” Chance said.
Was he talking about Deirdre? Or Coop?
Kate looked surprised, though at his comment or my reaction I wasn’t sure.
“No,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t mean it that way.”
Her tone didn’t convince me, but at least Deirdre wasn’t a suicide. One suicide on my conscience was enough.
Kate handed me a business card. “We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”
“Where did you find her?” I asked, assuming it had to be somewhere public for them to be this far into their investigation. Had she died at that hotel? Right after I drove away?
“It’s going to be on the news,” Chance said, looking at Kate and answering a question she hadn’t asked. “She’ll put two and two together.”
“Her body was found in an abandoned building around three o’clock this morning,” Kate said.
“Found by whom?”
“We believe it was tweakers who’d gone in to pull out the wiring.”
Meth addicts had taken to removing copper wiring from buildings to sell for drug money. It was bad enough when they stripped old, abandoned buildings, where the power was off, but every once in awhile they went after live wires and ended up fried for their troubles.
“She was stuffed behind a crawlspace. If it weren’t for the anonymous tip the tweakers gave us, she might never have been found,” Kate said.
“You’re moving fast on this,” I said, noting that she’d only been discovered a few hours ago.
“Plain view,” Kate said, meaning the body could be seen without entering the building, which would have sped up getting inside. “The tweakers had pulled her into the front room, so her foot was visible through the window. The patrol officer who arrived on the scene went in to see about resuscitation, but it was clear she was dead.”
“I had the search warrant on the judge’s doorstep before five a.m.,” Chance said, shaking his head at the memory. “Not a great way to meet a local judge for the first time, but she knows the drill.”
Once the police knew Deirdre couldn’t be revived, they would have to wait for a search warrant before starting their investigation. The patrolman would have immediately exited the building, called for backup, and secured the premises.
“She had ID on her?” I asked, surprised that someone would hide a body but leave a way to identify the corpse.
“The ME had just bought a new Chevy,” Chance said, referencing the medical examiner who would have been first on the scene. Even the detectives couldn’t touch her until the ME had finished his job. “Deirdre had done his paperwork. He recognized her.”
Bad luck for whoever stuck her in the wall, but good luck for Deirdre. Or at least, good luck toward finding her killer. The first twenty-four hours were the most important in a homicide investigation. The fact the detectives found the body and were able to get inside the building and ID her so fast could be invaluable.
“We’d appreciate it if you’d keep that part of her death to yourself for the time being,” Chance said as the two started to depart. “She won’t be identified on the news.” He made it sound like a request, but I knew the truth. Interfering with their investigation would get me into serious trouble. I could mention Deirdre’s death to my client, but not the circumstances.
“Chance, wait,” I said, enjoying the feel of his name on my tongue. “What are you doing here, in Bellingham?”
“Bellingham had a spot open. I transferred in.”
“James Mallory?” I asked, turning to Kate, who nodded.
The Bellingham Police Department had a number of detectives working in their Major Crimes Task Force, including James Mallory, who’d had to take time off to deal with ailing parents. The rest of the team had been working additional hours to cover his absence.
“He left permanently?” I’d worked with him a year or so ago on a domestic abuse situation and liked him.
“His father died and he’s decided to help his mother move to Florida,” Kate filled me in. “He said he wouldn’t mind a little more sun.”
The weather here in the Pacific Northwest wasn’t for everyone.
“I’m sorry to hear about his father,” I said, then turned to Chance again, “Will you let me know what you find?” Chance shrugged, and I knew him well enough to understand he’d chosen not to respond, not that he didn’t have an answer. I let it go and the two headed for the door.
“Nice to see you, Eddie,” he said, just before he slipped out, a smile lighting his face. It was the look that always got me. That little moment when you felt his attention solely on you and knew he liked it that way too.
“We should find a time to catch up,” I said, ignoring the pleading undertone of my voice.
“Right now I’m a little tied up,” he said.
Then he was gone.
I knew it wasn’t personal. When detectives are on a homicide case, the investigation consumes all their time. The two lead detectives work until they get so tired they might make a mistake, then after a few hours to recharge they are right back at it. That can go on for a very long time.
But it felt personal.
My heart hadn’t stopped racing since I’d first seen Chance Parker in the hall, but now it felt like it might never beat again. I’d extended an olive branch. Had it just been refused? Or merely delayed?
Before I could get myself too twisted into a knot trying to analyze Chance’s reaction, a knock sounded on my door.
“Come on in,” I called out, thinking the police had forgotten a question. But the person stepping into my office wasn’t Bellingham’s finest.
“Crap,” I said, “what are you doing here?”