A Killing Tide (28 page)

"There's no time, he can catch up with me." Kaz glanced at her watch. Slack tide was in just under two and a half hours. She turned to leave, then stopped. "Wait—was there something you wanted to tell me?"

Lucy hesitated, then shook her head. "Not yet. There's something I need to check first. But Kaz—be careful."

#

At the fire station, Michael stapled the last of his notes together and placed them in the arson investigation file. His cell phone rang. Dropping the file folder on the desk in front of him, reached for the unit, flipping it open. Recognizing the Caller ID, he smiled. "Mac. You ship me those coffee beans yet?"

"Sent them out yesterday. Tasha at the coffee shop sends her best. How the hell you keep them sniffing around when you don't put out, buddy, is a mystery to the entire staffs of the fire and police departments of the Greater Boston Area."

"Right." Michael's smile widened, remembering the events of last night. Mac didn't know that he'd finally broken his long run of celibacy.

He'd forgotten that making love to the woman you'd fallen
in
love with was a completely different, shattering experience. He felt like he'd been turned inside out, that he'd crossed some invisible threshold and was now looking at the world with an entirely new perspective.

"Yo, buddy. You still there?" Mac's voice held a note of curiosity.

Michael forced his mind back to the present. "Any word back on who's been checking me out?"

"The mayor of your cute little burg called a few of the higher-ups, including your surrogate papa, but that's no surprise. And someone from the police department evidently talked to Geoff Whitford who, as we all know, loves you just the way you are. The sonofabitch probably blabbed everything, out of spite."

Michael wouldn't be surprised. Mac was right—Whitford had resented Michael for more than a decade, stemming from an incident during Whitford's rookie years. Michael had been the one to write him up, and to point out to the brass that Whitford wasn't good management material. If Geoff could make Michael's life difficult, he'd leap at the chance. "You know who placed the call?" Michael asked.

"Couldn't ferret that out. So, when are you moving back?"

"Not in this lifetime."

"Says the person with the addiction to quality caffeine."

Michael's phone beeped, indicating another incoming call. "Gotta go. Say hello to Sharon for me."

"You're behind a little, pal. That's what living in the boonies gets you. This week, it's Susie."

Michael shook his head, smiling, and ended the call, picking up the next one. It was the state lab. "Tell me what you've got."

The lab technician, for once, sounded dead serious. "You'd better get over here.
Now
."

~~~~

Chapter 24

Lucy watched Sykes go down the hall to his office, enter, and close the door. She stood and wandered over to the vending machine against the far wall, fed quarters into it, punching the button for a can of soda with more force than was necessary.

Okay, think.
Something wasn't adding up—what she'd just overheard didn't compute. And dammit, if she just had more caffeine in her system, her fuzzed-out brain would be able to sort through this mess.

Clint Jackson had told her that Sykes had been the one to put Gary on suicide watch. But Sykes was acting as if this was news to him. So someone was lying. And when she put that together with Gary's refusal to talk to the cops all along, then the way he resisted arrest...
hell
. Somewhere, there was a dirty cop. And the obvious choice was Jackson.

Could he be the in-town buyer of the drug smuggling ring? The fishermen were just the runners, she was fairly certain. But a
cop
? She knew these guys. She had trouble believing that any of them would be in on drug deals.

Then again, who
better
than a cop? A cop would have the inside track on investigations and undercover narc work. She remembered what her snitch had said the other morning at the warehouse.
You cops, you think you're above the law.

A shiver ran down her spine. Jackson made sense—he'd been in the right places all along. He'd been assigned surveillance on Kaz's house, yet suspiciously absent when she'd had break-ins. Hell, he'd even been in on conducting the search warrant. He'd been in the vicinity and easily could've attacked Kaz afterward. And he'd been present at Gary's arrest. How many of Gary's injuries were
really
the result of resisting arrest?

She slapped the wall beside the vending machine, then leaned her forehead against her arm, closing her eyes. If she was right, then Gary was in real danger. He knew too much to be left alive.
And a cop could make it look like suicide.

She gulped down soda. Although she didn't like her options, she had no choice—she had to take her suspicions to Sykes. If she were wrong, well, then she'd look like a fool. So what else was new? It wouldn't be the first time she'd jumped to conclusions and then had to live down the consequences.

No question that the guys on the force wouldn't trust her from here on out. Cops didn't rat on each other. But stand by and watch Gary possibly be murdered?
No way.

She turned and walked down the hall to Sykes' office. His door was still closed—she could see through the window that he was on a phone call. When he finished, she tapped on the door and opened it, entering.

Eyebrows raised, Sykes motioned for her to sit. "What's on your mind, McGuire?"

"Sir, I'd like you to delay the arraignment."

He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head, a scowl on his face. "I've already been through this with Kaz. Jorgensen doesn't need his own lawyer to stand there for five minutes and enter a plea."

"That's not what I'm talking about." Lucy leaned forward in her chair. Her best strategy was to convince Sykes that the case wasn't yet solid enough. "I've uncovered some information that indicates that Gary might've been framed."

Sykes went abruptly still. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, for one thing, Gary's not stupid enough to leave the tire iron where we could find it. And," she continued before he could argue, "the timeline doesn't work. I got the lab results back, and given the match of the concrete and mud samples with the bridge, Gary wouldn't have had time, after leaving the tavern, to meet up with Ken, kill him, then transfer him to the boat and set a time-delayed fire. Kaz was right on his heels—"

Sykes held up a hand. "Look, McGuire. I understand that you haven't worked that many homicides, so you wouldn't necessarily be aware that, in cases like these, not all the evidence lines up neatly. There's always some detail that doesn't seem to make sense. But that doesn't mean that Jorgensen is innocent. The man ran, and he resisted arrest."

"I think I can explain that," Lucy said urgently. "If I'm right about a theory I'm working on, one that I'd like your permission to pursue."

Sykes took his time pulling out a cigar and lighting it. After a couple of puffs, he motioned for her to continue.

She drew a breath and plunged in. "You said, a few minutes ago, that you didn't know that Gary had been placed on suicide watch."

Sykes stared at her through a cloud of smoke, his expression blank. "So?"

"So Clint told me before you got here that
you
were the one who had put Gary on suicide watch." Lucy waited for a reaction, but he said nothing. "Don't you see? If Clint is in on this, and Gary knew it, he'd be afraid to turn himself in."

"Whoa." Sykes sat forward abruptly. "McGuire, you can't just go around accusing your fellow officers of being dirty."

"But what if Clint put Gary on suicide watch because it would make a good explanation if he winds up dead?"

Sykes didn't say anything for a long moment, and she resisted the urge to shift in her chair. Finally, he nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting theory. Do you have any proof?"

"Not yet, but I'm working on it. And Kaz could have plenty later this evening."

"Oh?" He pinned her with a hard look. "You letting a civilian get mixed up in this?"

She fell back on the excuse that he would understand. "Do you think I could've stopped her? Her brother's in jail, accused of a crime he probably didn't commit—"

"We don't know that," Sykes said, his tone firm. "I'm still inclined to believe that he's guilty. But he may not have been working alone—almost certainly, he wasn't. Where is Kaz right now?"

Lucy hesitated. She'd opened the door—she could hardly refuse to answer. "The mooring basin."

He stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray and stood, indicating that their meeting was over. "I'll look into what you've said. I don't want one cop investigating another on my force. Until I have more proof, I'm not formally investigating one of my own detectives. If you pick up any other information, you need to tell me right away, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." Lucy stood and turned to go.

"McGuire?"

At the door, she turned back. "Sir?"

"Good work."

#

At the Redemption, Kaz sat in the darkened corner of the same booth that Michael had occupied that first night, sipping a glass of beer and watching the other patrons in the bar. She'd tried Michael at the station, but there'd been no answer. Then she'd left a message on his cell phone. So far, he hadn't shown up.

Steve hadn't been happy when he'd seen her arrive, but she doubted he suspected why she was there. Svensen was standing at the bar along with Jacobsen and others. It was now two hours before the end of slack tide. If Karl was planning to make a move, he had to make it soon.

Karl drank the last of his beer and paid his bill, then headed for the back hall, his actions exhibiting a casual purposefulness. Anyone watching him, though, would assume he was simply going to the men's room.

After a minute, Kaz stood and followed him. The back hall was dimly lit, like the rest of the bar. Several doors, all closed, led off it, and at the very back, a door led outside, probably to the pier. Svensen was nowhere to be seen.

Kaz walked down the hallway to Steve's office door. She turned the knob quietly, opened the door a crack, and glanced inside. The room was empty. She stood there for a moment, perplexed. Then she heard a toilet flush in the men's room, and footsteps. She ducked into the office, closing the door behind her.

That had been close. Evidently, Karl really
had
come back here to relieve himself of all that beer. Then the footsteps got louder, coming down the hallway.

The knob of the office door turned. She hurriedly glanced around for a hiding place, then she dove underneath the desk, curling herself up as best she could inside the cavity and pulling the chair back into place.

The door opened, temporarily letting in the noise from the bar. The bar noise abruptly muted as Karl closed the door, locking it from the inside.

Kaz concentrated on breathing shallowly and quietly.

The light came on, and she watched boot-clad feet walk over to the file cabinet. He opened a file drawer. The plastic of folder frames clacked as he shoved them together. Then she heard something thud down on top of the cabinet. As quietly as possible, she shifted so that she could put her head down on the floor and look out from under the edge of the desk.

Karl stood with his back to her, unwrapping some kind of package. She heard a rustling sound, then he slammed the drawer shut, picked up the package, and turned around. Just before she ducked back under the desk, she saw that whatever he had was covered in black plastic. Her movement brought her butt up against the other wall of her hiding space. The wood of the desk creaked ever so faintly.

He stopped, turning back toward her hiding place. She stopped breathing.

After a long moment, his boots shifted out of sight. The light went off, plunging the room into darkness. Then, silence.

He wasn't leaving. Her air was running out, her heart pounding so loud she couldn't believe that he couldn't hear it.

Finally, finally, he crouched in the far corner of the room, pulling back the carpet. Reaching for something in the flooring, he flipped it, then used it to pull open the trap door. The dank odors of the pilings and stagnant water flowed into the room. She heard the waves lapping against the pier. There was a shuffling noise, then he dropped through the door, pulling it closed after him.

Kaz sucked air into her deprived lungs.

She climbed out from under the desk. Gary's information had been dead on—Karl was probably on his way upriver to the mooring basin. She had only minutes to spare if she wanted to follow him.

Rounding the desk, she cautiously opened the door. The hallway was clear. She slipped out, closing the door behind her. Smoothing her clothes and hair, she walked back into the bar. Steve gave her a sharp glance, his eyes worried. She smiled reassuringly.

Casually walking over to her table, she sat down and drank the last of her beer, unhurriedly setting down the mug, then placed some folded bills under the edge of the glass. Standing, she walked calmly out the door.