Die Buying (20 page)

The man looked up, fumbled at his ankle, and straightened, saying, “Well, if it isn’t déjà vu all over again.” Even though the words were light, Jay Callahan’s expression was sober with his lips drawn into a grim line. “He’s dead.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, moving closer. I was pretty sure he’d reholstered his gun when he recognized me. The question was: why did he have it out in the first place?

“What’s wrong with your leg?” he countered.

“I fell down the stairs chasing whoever was here with Porter,” I said, drawing even with him. He wore jeans again, and the black leather jacket, and smelled faintly of some spicy aftershave.

“You saw someone?” Jay’s eyes narrowed.

“Not well enough.”

“What were you going to do if you caught him?”

“Take him down,” I said coolly, my eyes daring him to dispute it. “Hey, weren’t you supposed to go out with Kyra tonight? Why are you lurking in the garage again? And don’t tell me you’re inventing cookie recipes or I’ll smack you.” I glared at him.

My ferocity got a faint smile from him. Before he could answer—assuming he was going to answer, which wasn’t a safe bet—sirens sounded, getting closer by the second. “I called 911,” I told him.

“Me, too.” He held up a cell phone. “It’s too late for this guy, though.” He gazed down at the man sprawled against the wall.

“Robbie Porter.”

Jay snapped his head around to stare at me. “Any relation to the murder vic?”

“His son.”

We didn’t have time for more as a police car and an ambulance barreled up the ramp and around the corner, lighting up the garage with strobes of red, white, and blue. Jay and I both raised our hands to shoulder height as the EMTs leaped out of the ambulance and ran toward Porter, while the cops stalked suspiciously toward Jay and me. One officer called for backup and a homicide investigator while the other one led Jay some distance away from me to keep us separated. It was going to be a long night.

The responding homicide detective wasn’t Detective-Sergeant Anders Helland, so I got away sooner than I expected. I told the new detective—Detective Lyons—about Robbie Porter being Jackson Porter’s son, so I knew I’d get a call from Detective Helland as soon as the two detectives compared notes. The detective accepted my story about coming back to the office to look for my gym bag and stumbling upon Robbie Porter—I’d give the whole story to Helland when I talked to him. I told Detective Lyons I’d chased someone who’d been near the body, and he looked at me as if I were nuts.

“Are you kidding me? You don’t wanna be chasing after drug dealers, ma’am. Some of ’em would just as soon shoot you as talk to you. Sooner,” he added reflectively.

“What do you think happened here?” I asked.

“Too early to tell.” He shrugged. “Maybe he owed his supplier. Maybe he and another punk were shooting up and got hold of some bad stuff. Maybe he was depressed about his father’s death and the guy who ran was an innocent bystander who stumbled over the body and couldn’t be bothered to play good Samaritan.”

“Suicide?” I wasn’t buying that. Who committed suicide in a mall parking garage? And I hadn’t noticed a plethora of innocent bystanders wandering the parking garage after ten o’clock at night. Speaking of which . . . I looked around for Jay Callahan, but he and the original patrol officers had disappeared. Maybe they’d taken him down to the station to grill him. I felt distinctly pleased by the thought and hoped the cops got more straight answers from him than I had.

It wasn’t until I was on my way home at almost midnight that I realized Captain Woskowicz had never turned up, despite the coming and going of cops and evidence teams and the ambulance and, eventually, reporters in news vans. No way could he have missed all that activity if he was keeping an eye on the camera screens or patrolling the parking areas as he had been when I ran into him. Which led me to believe he was either sleeping like the dead in his office . . . or not at Fernglen at all.

A rude pounding
on the front door jolted me awake at just after five o’clock Friday morning, which was just as well since I needed to be at work at six. Fubar sprang off the bed where he’d been curled at my feet in a rare moment of human-feline bonding—he didn’t indulge me often with cuddling, perhaps thinking it would spoil me—and trotted toward the front hall. Expecting it to be Grandpa Atherton—after all, the last time I was rudely awakened that’s who it was—I snugged my green silk robe around me, muttering, “Hold your horses,” as the knocking sounded again. I found myself limping as I walked to the entrance way, and I hoped I hadn’t really damaged my knee last night.

Only the faintest hint of dawn showed to the east as I pulled open the door, and said, “Grandpa, where—”

But it wasn’t Grandpa Atherton on the stoop. A tall, blond, pissed-off homicide detective glared at me. He’d ditched his suit jacket and was tieless with his shirt open at the throat. My sleep-fogged mind found his slight dishevelment, the haze of stubble along his jaw, surprisingly attractive. The cold nipped at my bare feet, and I remembered that I had bed head, morning breath, and was wearing only the slinky robe I’d bought as a gift for myself when I graduated from Basic Military Training School. After two months of marching, uniforms, and deprivation, I thought I deserved a bit of luxury.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you had a meeting set up with Robbie Porter?” Detective Helland asked. His tone made Fubar hiss.

He had a right to be mad, so I bit back the response that jumped to my tongue. “Come in, make yourself some coffee, and I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve dressed,” I said, pulling the door wider.

For the first time, Helland appeared to notice my state of undress. His eyes traveled from my bare feet to the place where the robe gapped open to show a bit of cleavage to my tousled chestnut hair. Something like interest flickered in his eyes. As he stepped into the hallway, Fubar pounced on his black wing tip, working furiously to untie the laces.

“What the—?” He looked down and said, “That is the ugliest cat I have ever seen.”

“Fubar, stop,” I said, reaching down to pull the cat away. I noted that despite his disgruntlement, Helland hadn’t kicked Fubar.

“Fubar?” Helland’s brows rose. “As in—”

“Fouled up beyond all recognition,” I said, replacing the more colorful “f” word some people used to start the popular military acronym. “Because he is. And I am.” Holding a squirming Fubar who wanted to return to assaulting Helland’s laces, I retreated to my bedroom, leaving Helland to do whatever the hell he wanted.

I emerged twelve minutes later dressed in my uniform, with clean teeth, brushed hair, and the confidence that comes with all that. I found Helland in my kitchen, examining my spice rack. He held my Operation Achilles mug in his large hands, the one given to me by a British friend that I never let anyone else use, and half a pot of coffee sat behind him on the counter. Fubar streaked past me and out the cat door.

“You alphabetize your spices?” Helland asked.

“I don’t imagine you’re here to critique my organizational habits,” I said, maneuvering past him to get to the coffee. For some reason, I really, really wished my retiling job were done; I didn’t like Helland seeing my kitchen half-dressed, as it were.

That reminded him he was mad at me. “I cannot believe you arranged a meet with Porter and didn’t tell me. You’re interfering with a murder investigation. I ought to arrest you.”

I couldn’t resist the urge to needle him just a bit. “I thought that case was closed. Gatchel did it, right?”

He ground his teeth. “You know damn well Wedzel’s murder raised some questions. Your irresponsible hot-dogging—”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have called you after Robbie contacted me. I screwed up.”

He stopped in mid-rant. “Well,” he said after a moment, “that takes all the fun out of chewing you out. But I still reserve the right to arrest you for
fouling
up my investigation.”

His emphasis on “fouling” made me smile. “How did you know I’d talked to Robbie?”

“Please. You didn’t expect me to believe that you just happened to trip over him in the middle of the night, did you?”

“No.” I sipped my coffee. “I was going to call you this morning when I got to work and fill you in. In fact, I’ve got to get going—I’m due in at six.”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “Not until you’ve told me everything you know. And I damn well mean everything.” Setting his mug—my favorite mug—on the counter, he crossed his arms over his chest.

I sighed and brushed my bangs out of my eyes. It was time for a trim. “He called me yesterday, after I’d been showing his photo around like you asked me to.” I told him everything I knew, which wasn’t much.

“This guy you chased—did you get a description?”

“No more than I gave Detective Lyons last night. Medium height—somewhere around five-ten or eleven, I’d guess, medium build, black clothes, fast runner. I never saw his face, so I can’t even say if he was black or white.”

“You’re sure it was a man?”

“Could have been a woman.” I shrugged. “I know it’s not much to go on. Do you have autopsy results yet?”

He shook his head. “Maybe later today. But it looks like a drug overdose. Not exactly a shocking end for an addict.”

“How do you think this connects to Jackson Porter’s death? Or Wedzel’s?”

“We don’t know that it does,” he said. “Gatchel could still be good for Porter’s death. Wedzel’s murder could be completely unconnected—he surprised a burglar, maybe—and the kid’s death could be the simple overdose it looks like.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “You don’t believe that! What are the chances that these three deaths occurring within the same week are coincidence?”

“Slim,” he admitted, “but it’s my job to find the link—not yours. So go back to reuniting lost kiddos with their parents and tracking down mega snakes and leave the murder investigation to me. I
will
arrest you for obstruction of justice if you get in my way again.”

The steely look in his eyes convinced me he was serious. “Oh, that reminds me,” I said. I told him about talking to Monica at Diamanté and my theory about the twosome who had probably freed Kiefer’s reptiles and might have had a grudge against Jackson Porter for destroying habitats with his building projects.

“Thin,” he said. “Only a moron would think that killing one developer would stop building projects in their tracks.”

“If all murderers were Mensa material, the jails wouldn’t be overcrowded,” I pointed out, miffed that he had dismissed my theory so easily. My gaze fell on the microwave clock. Five fifty-four. “I’m late. Out.” I herded Helland unceremoniously ahead of me through the garage door. I could see his gaze noting the screwdrivers arranged in descending size order on the Peg-Board, and the rake, snow shovel, and broom hung neatly on the far wall. “Don’t say anything,” I warned. I’d taken grief from my family my entire life about my passion for order. My brother Clint insisted that’s why I’d joined the military, because no other organization on the planet would appreciate my “anal-retentive obsessiveness” (Clint’s words) so much.

Helland laughed, a surprisingly pleasant sound, and ducked under the garage door as it rose. I waited until he drove off and then took off at a speed no cop would condone.

Even though I was running late, I stopped by Grandpa Atherton’s place. I hadn’t heard from him in twenty-four hours and I was getting worried. Not “file a missing person report” worried, but concerned enough to stop by. The community, with its lookalike cottages and knee-high iron fences useless for penning up even a teacup poodle, was quiet. Knocking on Grandpa’s glossy blue door, I waited for a response. None came. No sound drifted from inside, and I didn’t see any movement. Either Grandpa was up and out awfully early, or he hadn’t spent the night here. I chewed the inside of my lip, wondering what to do. Nothing, I finally decided. Grandpa was an adult. My mom might think he needed a keeper, but that was because he got up to antics that made her nervous, not because he was infirm or losing it mentally. Maybe he’d spent the night with one of his lady friends. I returned to my car, resolving that I’d take action if I hadn’t heard from Grandpa by the time my shift was up.

I walked through the doors of the security office at twenty after six, debating whether or not I should ask Woskowicz why he hadn’t shown up in the garage last night. The smell of stale coffee permeated the room as I slung my jacket over the back of my chair.

“You’re late,” Woskowicz barked, emerging from his office. Bloodshot eyes blinked from between pouchy lids. He swiped the back of his hand under a red and irritated nose, then sniffed. His white uniform shirt was crumpled, with a smear of something at the cuff. “And why the
hell
do I have to learn from the morning news show that a death occurred at my mall last night?”