Justice Served (22 page)

“It’s pretty early,” Rebecca said.

Michael laughed. “Sloan has no regard for time, especially when she’s involved with a case. She keeps odd hours.”

“But she
was
here earlier in the evening?”

“Oh, yes. We went out in the late afternoon and were back here by nine, I think. We…” Michael smiled faintly and blushed. “We went to bed early.”

Watts shifted uneasily and made a point of gazing out the wall of windows toward the Delaware River. Barge traffic was already heavy on the river below.

“Would you happen to know about when you…got to sleep?”

Michael laughed softly. “I’m afraid I wasn’t watching the clock, Lieutenant.”

“No, of course not,” Rebecca said evenly. “So you have no idea when she might have left?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. I seem to sleep very deeply once I finally nod off.” Michael tilted her head, her expression quizzical. “Why don’t you call her cell phone? Most of the time she forgets to turn it on, but since I’ve been…ill, she’s very good about it.”

“We will,” Rebecca replied. At the moment, she wasn’t actually interested in speaking to Sloan. What she wanted was to establish a timeline for Sloan’s activities the previous evening. Hopefully, a timeline that would put her far away from the parking lot at Front and Market.

Rebecca waited until Michael had gone to the kitchen and returned with a tray holding coffee mugs, cream and sugar, and a small plate of muffins before continuing her questions. “Would you know if she made any phone calls last night from home?”

“No, I’m quite sure she didn’t. We came in and went directly to bed.”

Watts coughed and busied himself with his coffee.

“What about incoming calls? Did she perhaps receive a call and go out afterward?”

Michael frowned. “No. Nothing that I recall. What’s going on? Is…she’s all right, isn’t she?” She sat forward, paling visibly. “You don’t think she’s hurt or in danger?”

“No,” Rebecca said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

“But
something
’s wrong. What’s happened?”

Rebecca hadn’t touched her coffee. She’d gotten little help from what Michael had given her, and that frustrated her. But the sudden change in Michael’s appearance worried her even more. Michael was trembling, and there was something close to panic in her eyes. “Michael, I…”

The nearly inaudible swish of the elevator doors sliding open brought Michael to her feet, and the sudden change in position made her light-headed. She swayed unsteadily.

The first thing Sloan saw when she walked into her home was her lover, looking as if she was about to fall.

“Michael?” Sloan cried in alarm, reaching Michael’s side in four long strides. “Baby, what’s wrong?” She slid an arm around her lover’s waist and eased her down on the sofa. She brushed her lips over Michael’s forehead. “Hey. What happened? Did you get sick? Why didn’t you call me?”

“It’s all right, darling,” Michael murmured, smiling weakly. “I’m fine. It’s fine. I was asleep when Rebecca came. I’m just not quite awake yet.”

“You’re not hurt? Not sick or anything?” Sloan passed trembling fingers over Michael’s cheek.

“No. I’m really all right.” Michael stroked Sloan’s arm, then covered Sloan’s hand with her own, placing a fleeting kiss on the palm.

With one protective arm still around Michael, Sloan looked from Rebecca to Watts in confusion.  “Then what are you doing here?”

Rebecca was about to answer when a voice called from the other side of the room, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Sandy shuffled into view, Mitchell’s T-shirt brushing her thighs mere inches below her panties. Mitchell was right behind her in a PPD T-shirt and boxers. “We heard voices. Problem?”

Watts took one look in Sandy’s direction and immediately glanced away. “Jesus Christ. No one around here has any clothes on.”

“What do
you
sleep in?” Sandy mumbled as she walked past him in the direction of the kitchen. “Ugh. No, never mind. Forget I asked.”

“We needed to talk to you, so we thought we’d come by,” Rebecca said to Sloan. “Where have you been?”

Mitchell and Sandy returned, each holding a cup of coffee. Sandy curled up on the sofa on Michael’s left. Mitchell stood uncertainly midway between Sloan and Rebecca, who sat facing one another across the expanse of living room.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Sloan said sharply.

“I need to know where you were tonight, from the time you left here until now.” Rebecca’s face was a blank, her voice still calm. But now, a core of steel crept into her tone.

“Same question goes. Why?”

“Just answer the question, Sloan,” Watts urged in a surprisingly gentle voice.

Sloan jumped to her feet so rapidly that only Rebecca’s quick reflexes prevented her from being taken off guard. She surged upright just as quickly, so that she and Sloan ended up only a few feet apart.

“Do you think I don’t recognize an interrogation when I hear one?” Sloan’s body vibrated with fury. “You have the fucking balls to come here in the middle of the night and question my
lover
?”

“Sloan,” Michael said gently, standing as well. She placed her hand in the center of Sloan’s back. “Darling, let Rebecca talk.”

“She’s done talking. She’s leaving
now.
” Sloan took another step in Rebecca’s direction, one hand raised as if to shove Rebecca aside.

“You don’t want to do that, Sloan,” Rebecca warned.

With surprising grace, Watts gained his feet and insinuated himself between them in one fluid motion. His face was an inch from Sloan’s, his voice like granite. “You dumb fuck. If she hadn’t stood up for you tonight, you’d be downtown in a locked room with Clark right now. So put your dick away and answer the questions. Then we can all get back to work.”

Sloan stared into his eyes for a long moment. Whatever she saw in their hard, cold depths must have extinguished the blaze of fury consuming her reason, because the tension in her broad shoulders eased visibly. She took a long breath and shifted her gaze to Rebecca’s. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“No. I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer.” Rebecca needed the interview to be by the book if it was to be credible to Avery Clark. She waited, wondering how far Sloan’s tenuous trust would extend. Wondering, not for the first time, what had happened during those lost years in Sloan’s past.

“I was here until just after two,” Sloan stated in a flat, uninflected tone. “I woke up thinking about the computer traces that Jason and Mitchell have been running. I haven’t had a chance to go over any of their data because I’ve been so busy at Police Plaza with the…other situation. So I decided to have a quick look at what they’ve got. I dressed and went downstairs.”

“Is there any way to verify that?”

“No. Michael was asleep.”

“What about a time stamp on the security cameras?”

Sloan shook her head. “The internal cameras are turned off when we’re home.”

Mitchell spoke up quietly. “There should be a record of when you logged on the system downstairs.”

“Circumstantial,” Sloan replied. “Doesn’t prove it was me.”

“It’s corroboration,” Rebecca said. “There are only a limited number of other people who it might’ve been.” She scrutinized Michael, then Sandy and Mitchell. “The only real possibility is Mitchell.”

“Dell was with me from one thirty on,” Sandy said immediately.

“Did either of you hear Sloan leave?” Watts asked.

Mitchell shook her head. Sandy replied, “We were talking, and then we were…busy.”

Watts snorted.

“So we wouldn’t have noticed,” Sandy added sweetly as Mitchell blushed.

Watts looked glum. “Perfect.”

“All right.” Rebecca made a notation in her notebook. “You were with Michael all night. Went to the offices just after two.” She turned to Mitchell. “I want you to secure the computer logs. No one touches the system until you’re done.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell said smartly. “I’ll get dressed and get right on it.”

When Sloan opened her mouth to protest, Michael said softly, “Let Rebecca help you, darling.”

Sloan reached for Michael’s hand, nodding silently.

“You weren’t here when we arrived at four fifty-five,” Rebecca stated. “There was no answer. Where were you?”

“I went for a walk after a couple of hours of scanning the data.”

Rebecca stared at her, and Sloan held her gaze unflinchingly. Finally, Rebecca said, “At four in the morning?”

Sloan shrugged. “I was awake. I was restless. I went for a walk.”

“I don’t suppose you have any way of proving that?” Watts interjected.

“Not real…” Sloan slid her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and extracted a crumpled slip of white paper. “I bought a cup of coffee at the diner at Third and Market around ten minutes to five.”

“Christ, she couldn’t have been any closer to the scene and not tripped over one of us,” Watts muttered.

Rebecca took the offered receipt, smoothed it out, and noted the time and date in her notebook. She then placed it carefully in the breast pocket of her shirt. “Is someone there going to remember you?”

“The waitress. Jenny. She knows me.”

Watts looked skeptical. “She’s a…what? Friend?”

Sloan gave him a withering look. “Acquaintance.”

“There’s nothing between the two of you that might bring her verification of your alibi into question?” Rebecca asked as discreetly as she could.

“No. Nothing. I’ve never even seen her outside of the diner.”

“Good,” Rebecca muttered.

“Look,” Sloan said irritably. “I’ve told you where I was. Now tell me what’s going on.”

“George Beecher was murdered about three blocks from here sometime in the last six hours,” Rebecca informed her, watching Sloan’s face intently. As she had anticipated, Sloan’s expression never changed, but her violet eyes darkened to nearly black. Rebecca was convinced she hadn’t known.

“And you think I did it?” Sloan’s voice was cool, her posture relaxed.

“No,” Rebecca replied. “I don’t.”

“But Clark does,” Sloan murmured, filling in the blanks.

“Darling, what is this all about?” Michael asked quietly. “Who is George Beecher?”

“No one.”

“No one who someone thinks you might want to ki—” As if a sudden realization had struck, Michael faltered and looked from Sloan to Rebecca. “Is this the person who might have had something to do with my accident?”

“That’s right.” Rebecca was curious as to just how much Michael knew. Although she believed Sloan innocent, she was too much a cop not to examine all the evidence from every angle.

“Sloan would never have done anything to him,” Michael said with absolute conviction.

“Why do you say that?” Rebecca asked.

“Because she promised me she wouldn’t.”

Watts laughed. “
That
will certainly go a long ways in court.”

Michael turned solemn eyes to his. “If you don’t understand why that matters, then you don’t know Sloan very well, Detective Watts.”

Watts blushed and actually ducked his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”

At that moment, Mitchell returned in black chinos and a navy shirt. “I’ll head downstairs, Lieutenant.”

“Good,” Rebecca said. “Watts, go with her and take Sloan. Make sure you document everything that Mitchell does.” She turned to Sloan. “You don’t touch anything down there. If there’s even the possibility that you’ve altered the data, none of it will help us. All I want you to do is walk them through as much as you can remember of what you did and when.”

Sloan nodded. “Okay.” She kissed Michael, murmured something that none of the others could hear, and followed Mitchell and Watts to the elevator.

“I’m sorry to have upset you, Michael,” Rebecca said.

Michael sank onto the sofa. “I understand.”

Sandy leaned close. “You okay? How about I get some tea?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you,” Michael replied gratefully, giving Sandy a small smile. Then, to Rebecca, she added, “Thank you for being so patient with her. I know you’re trying to help her.”

“I’m trying to do my job,” Rebecca rejoined. “If I thought she were guilty, I would do the same.”

“Yes, I know. And so does Sloan.” Michael shook her head. “She’ll realize you’re on her side when she’s feeling less threatened.”

“Don’t you mean pissed off?”

“Oh, that’s part of it, to be sure. But it’s coming from something far more serious. She was betrayed, Rebecca, by someone she loved. Abandoned by the system she believed in. Incarcerated by those she thought she could trust.” Michael sighed. “She keeps expecting it to happen again.”

“It won’t,” Rebecca said empathically. “You’ll never betray her. And I won’t let anyone make her a scapegoat. I promise that no one will touch her.”

“You didn’t say ‘if she’s innocent.’”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Thank you, Rebecca.”