Shadows of Doubt (9 page)

She suddenly realized that once again this perfect stranger, if it had been him at all, had reduced her to behaving like a moon-eyed teenager. She roughly stuffed her hair behind her ears and tried to regain her composure as she yanked her partner by the arm to an oak tree across the path.

“Okay...” She wagged her index finger under his nose as if it were the barrel of a gun. “... but I am telling you right now if you mock me or breathe one word of this I will never, and I emphasize the word ‘never’, babysit for you. You understand?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Her partner leaned against the tree trunk and listened to her recount, in full-blown babbling idiot detail, her complete forty-seven second path-crossing with the well dressed, yummy smelling, perfect man in the corridor down at the morgue. The several minutes of continued babbling idiocy with Carpesh and her schizophrenic self-berating drive home. She clammed up the instant Jack started walking up to bring them their coffee and noticed her partner was grinning at her like the fool she felt like.

“Thanks Jack.” Taking the coffee and drinking deeply she glared at Vinny over the plastic lid.

Never bothering to wipe the grin off his face, he took his cup when Jack passed it and thanked him as well.

“Hey Jack, you mind giving Lou and me a few minutes? I’ll catch up to you when we are done.” There was a decidedly jovial ring to Vinny’s voice.

Jack flushed a little, realizing he had again interrupted them. “Oh! Sure, sure! I’ll check in and see if there’s anything new.” He hurried away and met his partner up the path by the corner of the crime tape.

“Thanks buddy!” Vinny shouted after him then turned his wicked grin back to Lou. “Go on. And don’t even dare try to blow it off and change the subject.”

Lou rolled her eyes and slumped her shoulders. “Geez Vinny! Don’t make me feel like more of an ass than I already do!”

“Keep dreaming kiddo. I’m gonna milk this one for all its worth. Now you shouted ‘It’s him!’ when I came up, what did that mean?”

“Some freakin’ detective you are! I meant it was him! Up there!” She pointed to the upper portion of the old road where Vinny had caught her staring. “At least I thought it was him. I am pretty damn sure.”

“Watch it wise-ass. Now either it was him or it wasn’t, which is it?”

“It was him... I think.” She stomped her feet like a petulant child. “I don’t know!”

“Well now who’s the brilliant detective? Come on, what made you think it was him to begin with?” He sipped his coffee while he waited for her to think.

“The coat. Yeah, I noticed the coat.”

“What about the coat? The color? Some logo on it?”

She blew out a breath and hesitated to answer. “It was really nice. One that no one in L.A. wears and it dawned on me, so I looked at the face.”

He cocked his head sideways at her. “What the hell dawned on you exactly?” He watched her stuff her gloved hands into her pockets and shuffle her feet. “Hello? Spit it out Lou!”

“Okay! Okay!” God, this was embarrassing. “In the hall at the morgue, the first thing I remember catching my eye were the shoes. Then as my eyes worked their way up, the man was dressed so perfectly.”

“You realize in the past twenty minutes you have used one form or another of the word ‘perfect’ about a gazillion times in reference to this mystery man?” He was so milking this for life.

“I know!” She blew out a breath. “Okay so he was dressed exactly how I would love a man to dress but they simply don’t! So it made me look up and then he hit me square in the gut.”

“He hit you?!” Vinny nearly dropped his cup of coffee.

“Not literally! Oh come on Vinny! I don’t know how to explain it! You know me, I don’t go all gooey-eyed over men, its not my style. Hell, I haven’t been on a date in what, eight years? And we remember how that turned out don’t we?”

Vinny remembered exactly how it turned out. The date that turned nightmare, quite literally. When Lou turned down a second date, the guy had gone psycho-stalker on her and nearly killed her twice before they finally caught him. It wrenched his gut just remembering it. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Christ, I’ve been trying to forget this stupid... juvenile... whatever it was the other day! Then whammo! Either my subconscious is playing one hell of a game or he was up there. I don’t know what the hell I am doing.”

“Christ is right Lou. Cut yourself some slack! So your hormones got a little shock treatment. Its about time!” He ruffled her hair as if she was a child. “I am pretty hurt though.”

“What the hell for?”

“The whole nice dressed bit. I ain’t no slouch ya know, my suits are Italian!”

Now it was Lou that cocked her head at him. “Vinny, just because the label has an Italian sounding name on it doesn’t make it an Italian suit, and you know it.”

Vinny huffed, slightly insulted. “We’ve strayed off topic here. So if this guy was making arrangements like Crapass said, why would he be here?”

“I have no idea! Which makes me second guess myself as to whether I really saw him.” She didn’t even bother scolding him about his slander of Carpesh’s name.

“Lets say for argument’s sake that it was him. Maybe Crapass mixed up the guys. Maybe he’s some new admin down at the morgue and he came up here to bean count!” Vinny was proud he had a plausible theory for her.

“Maybe...” That would be easy enough for her to pin down and find out. “Caroline would know for sure!”

“Absolutely. If he’s as yummy as you think he is, she would have sniffed him out the second he landed.” He noted as Lou instantly frowned. “What? Whats wrong?”

“You’re right is what’s wrong. She would have sniffed him out by now and I would have heard about him, so that can’t be it.”

Neither of them noticed when Jack walked up. “Hey guys...”

“What?” Both Vinny and Lou said in unison, and both with an abrasive edge to their voice.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt but I thought you would want to know...” He pointed to the hoard. “We got a ruling as you probably can tell.”

Lou and Vinny looked toward the crime scene and saw that a dozen or so suits were hiking up the hill along with all the marked Metrolink and Amtrak personnel. Caroline was waving at them from behind the tape with her Georgia peach smile, the brightest thing in Lou’s day so far.

“I was right, neither of the trains were cause of death so the scene is all ours. Our forensics should be here soon.”

Vinny gave Jack a pat on the shoulder. “I think the day is lookin’ up my boy!” Grinning at Lou, they all headed towards Caroline and their crime scene, finally.

Max stormed into
the suite and began pacing like a caged tiger. What the hell was wrong with him? How the hell could he lose control of himself like that? He went to the bar and poured himself a stiff drink. Who the hell cared what time it was, he needed to calm down and get things under control. Collapsing into the chair, he took a deep swallow of the 30-year old whiskey and cringed as he reviewed the morning’s events in his head.

Things had started out promising enough. Well, not for the dead woman but nothing could be done about that. Carpesh had called shortly after four that morning from a homicide scene where the high-strung coroner had known immediately that the body was the work of their rogue. Frank had driven at break-neck speed to get them there and even with that, the scene had been swarming with transportation officials and law enforcement by the time they got there. It worked out in their favor though, allowing them to blend in since many of the officials were wearing suits. Frank had driven them in from the upper road which had given them a bird’s eye view of the scene. The red-headed woman, or what was left of her, had been laying in the middle of the tracks, her legs sheared off just above the knees. He assumed the two pieces of tarp were spread out, one to the east and another to the south, to cover the severed legs. The sight of it had made his body tense with rage. He wanted information from Carpesh. Wanted something to get him on the path of their rogue, but Max had no choice but to hang back. Observe and wait. So that is exactly what he did, he waited. While waiting, he watched the officials and officers, transit authority etc., meander about while they waited for bureaucracy to dictate protocol. Max could have left, they didn’t have to stay. Carpesh could have called them with any information later but at the time Max felt he needed to be there. Dammit, he should have left then and there! Even now, sitting in the hotel suite alone, he could scarcely believe how foolish he had behaved. Like some switch had gone off inside him the second he had seen her. All reason flew out the window.

The small figure had only been vaguely visible through the trees when they approached the scene. He had recognized her gait immediately. That strong stride, even next to the man that towered over her, she was unmistakable. Max’s rage had all but vanished as he had watched the pixie of a woman and the man talk to uniformed deputies. It was then Max realized he had classified the man as her partner so they must have been cops. He truly hadn’t been thinking clearly when he had ordered Frank to find out who they were. Frank hadn’t questioned him, he simply took off to comply immediately.

Thinking about it all now seemed somehow worse. Not even the bite of the whiskey could take the edge off of Max’s embarrassment. He could have lived with it had things stopped there, but no, he went on, continued to an even lower depth of... What the hell was it anyway? Hormones? He wasn’t a teenager by a long, long, long shot but that is exactly how he had been behaving. He pictured himself standing up on that ridge, staring down at her like some dumbstruck juvenile. He had noted her hair was a bit of a mess compared to the other day, but that had only made her look more charming. What the hell had he been thinking? He was a Dominor. He had a job to do, not fawn over some strange woman. He remembered thinking that at the time but then he had been distracted, noticed she was wearing gloves that were far too big for her. It made her look impossibly fragile and vulnerable. She must have been cold and borrowed the man’s gloves. Max remembered that he felt the instant need to give her his coat, to warm her, wrap his arms around her. He had even started to take a step forward before he caught himself. Or rather she had caught him.

That had been when he started his nosedive into the ridiculous, as if it hadn’t been bad enough. She had looked straight at him. While that should have mortified him sufficiently to snap him back to his senses, he ducked and ran instead. The Dominor for the whole of North America, and formerly Britain, ducked and ran for cover! For the love of all things sacred, what in the hell had he been thinking? But he hadn’t been thinking, had he? If he had been, he wouldn’t have needed, yes needed, to know what she and her partner scurried off to talk about, would he? He wouldn’t have run down the road like a buffoon, slid down the hillside unnoticed so that he could skulk around oak trees in the gloom of dawn like a common thief. All to eavesdrop on a total stranger! It made him cringe to think about it. But that hadn’t been the end of his folly, oh no. He recalled slinking through some oaks to get close enough to listen to their conversation. His cell phone had begun to vibrate and scared the crap out of him. Replaying it in his head, he may as well have screamed like a little girl, it would have been par for the course! But the shock had come when he finally answered. Frank hadn’t even waited for Max to say ‘hello’ before he started yelling in his ear.

“That’s Donovan and her partner!” Frank had told him, managing to shout and whisper all at once. Max thought at the time he had heard wrong but Frank repeated it with emphasis as though reading Max’s mind. “You heard me! Carpesh’s ‘Detective Lou’, as in Detective Tallulah, Donovan and her partner, Sergeant Vincenzo, aka Vinny DeLuca.” Frank had then muttered something about meeting at the car and abruptly clicked off.

Max should have left immediately. He knew it then. He knew it now, but he hadn’t. Instead he plastered himself to a tree and listened to the woman recount their chance path-crossing the at the morgue to her partner. He listened carefully, to his shameless delight at her fluster and bewilderment that mimicked his own. He listened to her exasperation at her lack of rationality. He listened with more than a little amusement as her partner ribbed her. What the hell had he been doing allowing himself to muse that way! It was absurd at best. If not for the other cop interrupting Lou and her partner, Max probably would still be there. But somehow he still had enough sense to seize the opportunity to get the hell out of there and make a beeline for the car.

Frank never asked him a thing the whole way to the hotel. They had ridden back in silence. And now, an hour later, here Max was, staring into an empty glass and feeling like a complete fool. He couldn’t help it. She was all he could think about.

The smack of the file landing on the coffee table startled Max out of his pity party. It hadn’t even registered with him that Frank had entered the suite. Boy, was he off his game.

“Okay so here are the specifics on our Tallulah Donovan.” Frank plopped down on the sofa and kicked his feet up. “Sure didn’t see that coming. I expected a fat old rumpled dude, not a girl!”

Max didn’t mean to laugh, but he did so with a snort even. Christ he had to get himself focused. “I was expecting the same thing so don’t worry about it. Now what the hell are we going to do to get this case out of her hands before she and Devereux add that to their little mystery?” This was good, talking things out was getting him back on track.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” Frank grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

Max quirked a brow. “Care to enlighten me, oh faithful sidekick?”

Now it was Frank that snorted. “I have my scanners set up in my room. While I was pulling up Donovan’s data, an LAPD car called in on an abandoned vehicle in a grocery store parking lot. A couple bags of rotting groceries and a purse were on the front seat. So, I called one of my guys to trot down there and check it out. Turns out one of the cashiers knows the owner of the vehicle and its been there for three days.”