I woke up to a tapping on my shoulder and Heather’s concerned face only inches from my own.
“Harry?”
“Yes?” I leaned forward, hurriedly taking in my surroundings and realizing what I’d done. “I’m all right.”
“It’s two o’clock, Harry. You’ve been asleep for five hours.” She perched on the corner of my desk, not something she’d typically do, but something that showed me how concerned she truly was. “Do you need to go to the doctor? I know you’re going to say no, but tell me the truth.”
I sat forward, leaning my elbows on my knees and rubbing my eyes. “Honestly, that may’ve been just what I needed. The pain meds aren’t messing around.” I sat up straighter, realizing I wasn’t feeding her a line, or at least not entirely. “But my head feels one hundred percent better. Maybe I should sleep in here more often.”
She eyed me, not interested in the light-hearted tone. “You never sleep here. What’s going on? Are you sure they cleared you for all the concussion protocol?”
“I think it’s been way long enough for that concern,” I said, pulling out my phone. It was more to appear natural, to have something to do, than anything. Though the idea of falling asleep in the middle of the day did concern me somewhat. Maybe I’d mention it to Amanda later. Maybe I’d just play the whole thing by ear. But as I swiped my phone open and pretended to check for new texts or emails, I knew that Heather’s almost motherly gaze was more than enough to keep Amanda satisfied.
“I’m really fine,” I said. “Probably shouldn’t have come in early, I’ll give you that. But you know as well as I do that this is where I need to be. I haven’t taken medicine in…” I checked my watch. “Seven hours, so I may be singing a different tune by four o’clock, but for now, I feel good. I actually feel better than I have since Jacobi jumped me.”
Heather folded her arms and leaned back a little, assessing my words and my appearance. “What are we supposed to do today?”
I grinned. “A test, huh? I suppose I can’t be mad that I hired the best. We’re supposed to go see that very same Jacobi.”
“Because?”
“Because one of my crack staff members found a connection between Hattie and Beatrice, and we want to see if that will rattle his cage a bit. I’m with you, Heather. I really am. If anything changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
Her expression didn’t appear entirely convinced, but she lifted herself off the desk and walked around to the chairs, the side where she usually was. “You realize that if we go in there, and you conk out on the floor, he’s going to just love it.”
“I do realize that,” I said. “That’s why we should get going before the pain comes back. Don’t forget who trained you.” I couldn’t resist and added, “Boss.”
The corner of her mouth pulled up just slightly. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.
“All right.” She sighed. “Give me five minutes to gather up the paperwork and then we head out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay.” She waved a hand as she walked out the door. “Enough funny stuff. It’s not your forte.”
I leaned on the desk after she left. I did feel better. At least nominally. The throbbing in my head was gone, though I wondered how long it would be until it came back. The pain meds, Neurontin and Toradol, were a far cry from the Oxycodone I’d also been given a prescription for. “Basically Tylenol’s big brothers” is how the pharmacist had described them. But if I was going to be back at work, the last thing I needed was a narcotic in my system. Thankfully, Tylenol’s big brothers were doing their job. And as childish as I knew it was, I didn’t want Jacobi to see me flinch. He’d already gotten an eyeful when we’d brought him in; this time he needed to see Harry Starke at his finest. It might not take him down a peg, but I knew my size and my ability to be intimidating was always there when I needed it.
Heather poked her head back in the office, her eyes still carrying a slight hint of concern. “Ready?”
“Never been better.” I grabbed my jacket from the back of my chair and slipped it on, doing my best to hide the wince of pain in my ribs as I lifted my arm. Heather, for her part, did her best to act like she didn’t notice it.
We walked out to her car, neither of us discussing who was going to drive. “You know he’s gonna be lawyered up,” she said as she climbed behind the wheel.
“I assumed so, but that’s not my biggest concern.”
“What is?”
“What kind of lawyer he has. Jacobi Milton is a public defender guy all the way. We see anything outside of that, then we have some more questions to find answers to.”
“Not a high view of bikers, I see.”
I glanced over at her as she backed out of the parking spot. “Not a high view of people who jump people from behind. Not a high view of people who advertise One Percent. Not a high view of people who can beat someone half to death and then only be disappointed they didn’t finish the job.”
“Fair enough.” She flicked on her turn signal and turned toward the police station downtown. “You don’t think he’s got a lot of dirty money lying around? Enough to get a decent lawyer? Or the club might? Those guys are supposed to be like a family, aren’t they?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never been in one. Done a few cases where I pretended to be, and yes, they look out for each other. But you were there when we brought him in, and Kate can vouch for it. They gave him running room, but nobody was sticking their neck out for the guy. He’s probably a probie, on probation.”
She drove quietly for a few moments. “Are you gonna be okay with this?”
It was a loaded question. She knew full well I could handle myself, but this was a different set of circumstances than we usually walked into.
“Are you asking if I’m going to jump across the table?” I tried to be light-hearted. “Because no. If you’re asking if I’m going to be firm, you already know the answer to that.”
“Fair enough.”
Ten minutes later we were pulling into the county jail parking lot. The building was a maze of hallways and rooms, all of which looked the same. The only place I’d ever seen that put so much effort into making a layout confusing was Vegas, and their motivations were exactly the same. Keep people in. We wandered through the initial check-in, the separate rooms where they patted us down, a male officer for me, a female for Heather, and then were finally brought to a small room that had nothing more than a desk with a clear, Plexiglas divider in the middle and chairs on either side.
Heather and I waited for a moment before Jacobi walked in, with a young, dark-haired man in a sharp suit and a smug expression at his side.
I glanced at Heather. This was going to go nowhere.
“Mr. Starke,” the lawyer said. “How nice of you to come see us. You should be glad I was already here or you would’ve had to wait a while.”
I raised an eyebrow. The lawyer wasn’t my concern. I wanted to see what Jacobi did, how he acted, how he responded. He was in prison khaki, his hair greasy from the poor washing his indigent kit shampoo would’ve given him. He had a five o’clock shadow now, but the nicks on his neck let me know he’d been trying to keep up appearances. My guess was he’d been put in a gen-pop kind of situation, waiting to find out what his case was going to be. So the man across from us was new. Otherwise, any decent lawyer would’ve had Jacobi out hours ago.
“I assume you understand how incredibly complex our current situation is,” the lawyer began, not even bothering with an introduction. “You were a police officer. Now you’re a private detective. And you happen to be accusing my client of assaulting you while you were in a secure neighborhood.” He leaned back, a smug smile on his face. “The conflict of interest here isn’t even worth pointing out. Whatever you think you might have is, I assume, garnered from what we might call questionable means. You used your connections in the police department to harass a man who was doing nothing other than working. Things aren’t going to go well, Mr. Starke.”
I looked at Heather. We’d heard this same kind of rigmarole a dozen times before. “So,” I said, “despite the fact that he all but admitted he did it, on camera, when Captain Gazzara brought him in, we’re changing things up?”
“My client had been through a very emotionally and mentally hectic situation,” the man said.
Jacobi put his hands on his head, leaning back in the chair. For a moment, I thought he was going to put his feet on the table just to prove how relaxed he was.
“So you want to do it this way?” I asked, looking Jacobi solidly in the eyes.
“I officially request that you not address my client,” the lawyer said. “I’m here as his legal representative, and he has nothing to say.”
I looked over at Heather. Her hands were grasped together firmly in her lap and I could see her jaw muscles clench. “Then I think we’re done here,” I said.
I stood up and took Heather by the elbow, feeling her anger trembling in her tricep. “Back to the office. We can deal with it there.”