Justification for Murder (11 page)

T
he ride to the station didn’t take long. Saffron learned that Sergeant Russell and Officer Bush were both married. The sergeant had three daughters, one in law school, the middle one pursuing a career in dance, and the youngest one a senior in high school. Officer Bush had a four-year-old son and a daughter on the way.

“Here you are, safe and sound,” Sergeant Russell said once they’d pulled into the station’s parking lot.

“Thank you very much,” Saffron said and shook their hands through the open window before going into the building.

At the front desk, she asked for Detective Lynch and waited in the lobby until he came down to fetch her. She was looking at the elevator, but he surprised her coming out from the stairwell. She lifted an eyebrow at him.

“This way, I can eat French fries with my burger,” he said when he saw her expression.

Saffron laughed.

“We can either do Starbucks, walking distance, or take the car and go to Crema, on The Alameda. They have great coffee.”

“Let’s go there. I’ve always wanted to try it.”

Once in the parking lot, Darcy guided her to his car, which was a few feet from the elevator.

“Whoa, a 1965 Shelby Cobra?” Saffron asked as soon as she saw his car.

Now it was his turn to show surprise. “You know about cars?”

“I know about this one. My dad’s a fanatic. One of the very first Christmas stocking presents I can remember was a little Cobra toy car. But mine was blue with two white stripes.”

She marveled at the candy-apple red with a light tint of gold and wondered if it was real or a visual effect caused by the parking lot lighting. The interior was black leather. He opened the door for her and closed it softly once she was inside. She leaned across the driver’s seat and held the door open for him until he reached it.

“No woman has ever done that for me,” he said and blushed, quickly adding, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s the least I can do. You gave me a protective detail, for God’s sake. I bet you don’t get to trail many bad guys in this baby.”

He smiled and looked at her. “You’d be surprised.”

“No way,” she objected. “You’d be spotted miles away.”

“Notice the gold tint?” he asked once they were out in daylight. “It has incognito powers.”

“Whatever,” she smiled and looked out the side window.

The top was down and the temperature was perfect. Her stomach felt better, and her headache was almost gone.

“Seriously.” He winked when she turned to look back at him.

“Prove it,” she dared.

“It’ll have to be next time. We’re already here.”

“How convenient.”

Saffron stuck her tongue out and regretted it immediately.

“I didn’t see anything,” he appeased her.

“There was nothing to be seen,” she said and smiled again. Her face was flushed, as if sun-kissed and brightened by the wind during the ride.

They walked inside and ordered coffees. Darcy’s black, Saffron recited her complicated drink, having to repeat parts of it a couple times.

“Let’s sit outside,” he said after paying.

The chairs were wicker and had arms. The stone tables were cold, even the ones under the sun. They picked one covered by a large red umbrella. Darcy took his sunglasses off and set them on the table. Saffron put hers on her head, to hold her hair away.

“You still have no idea who tried to kill you?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.” He looked out into the road, as if he were reviewing something in his head. “Do you remember if the gloves were actual leather, or could they have been fake leather?”

“What do they call that, pleather?” She laughed. “It’s such a stupid name.”

Darcy nodded. “Do you?”

“I don’t think I could tell the difference, to be honest. Besides, I didn’t get to touch them, I just saw he was wearing gloves. I think besides the knife that was one of the things that freaked me out the most. It was way too warm to wear gloves. Of any kind.”

“And the knife. You said it was serrated.”

“Yeah, but not all the way.”

“It was half-smooth and half-serrated?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Detective Lynch pulled his phone, tapped at the screen a few times and handed it to Saffron.

“Was it something like this?” he asked, showing her a picture of a SOG Seal Team Knife.

She stared at it for several seconds. “Yeah, something like this, but not exactly. I think the serrated part was all the same, not like this one that has three tiny grooves and then a larger one.” She gave the phone back. “But I’m not a hundred percent sure, though.”

Saffron looked into Darcy’s eyes, sharing a silent apology for not being better help. She saw again what she had seen that first night in her elevator. There was a difference between his eyes. One looked bluer.

“I have more photos at the station. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure we’ll find it.” She watched him as he rubbed his left temple. “It’s a fake eye,” he blurted out and immediately looked away.

“Accident?”

“You could say that,” he said and stopped rubbing.

T
yler Warren stared at his computer without seeing anything on the screen. All he could think about was his evening with Eva. She was insatiable and he had barely got a couple hours of sleep. When he woke up, she was already gone. He knew it was silly, but he had been disappointed when he hadn’t found a note. He had showered at the hotel, put on a clean shirt and made it home just in time to wake Lucas up and take him to school.

He surprised himself when he realized that he wanted to see her again. This was the first time he’d wanted to see a woman a second time since his wife died. He fought the urge to call her and settled for a text: “I want to see you tomorrow night.” As soon as he sent it, he felt like a loser and wished he could recall the message.

A few minutes later the beep of an incoming text made his heart jump, but the message was from Lucas. “Hey, Dad, can I go to Simon’s after school? His mom’s making meatballs.” He smiled and replied, “Yes, I’ll ask your aunt to pick you up there. Love ya!”

His desk phone rang. “Qiang is here to see you,” his secretary said.

“Send her in.”

He put the phone back on the desk and watched his VP of R&D open the glass door and close it behind her. Her lab coat hung as if it was several sizes too big, even though he knew she had the only XS size they had in the company. Her hair was shiny and very dark. If she ever decided to put it up in a set of pigtails, she could pass for a teenager.

When Tyler first met her, he thought she was very insecure. Her accent was strong and she just blinked and blinked, trying to keep those overly long bangs from getting into her eyes. But after five minutes of conversation, he realized he was talking to the one of the most brilliant scientists he’d ever met.

“Tyler.”

She sat across from him and moved the chair closer to his desk, as if she wanted to confide something to him, but the distance between them made it impossible.

“Yes, Qiang?”

He smiled. She was always so proper, so calm and demure.

She leaned forward and interlaced her thin fingers, resting her hands on his desk. She looked at him and started blinking again.

“Have you ever considered cutting your bangs shorter?” he asked.

“What?” She looked puzzled.

“Never mind. What’s up?”

“I didn’t want to say this at the staff meeting this morning…”

Tyler took a deep breath. He rubbed his chin, still smooth from the morning’s shave.

“The latest trials failed too. We’re going to need more time.”

“We don’t have more time,” Tyler said under his breath. That was all he could do to not scream from the top of his lungs.

“Tyler, we’re close. Very close, but we’re not there yet. You need to sell our progress to the board.”

“Qiang, there’s no progress to sell to the board. You just said it. We’re at the end of the rope and we’re falling fast. You have to do better. You’re our last hope to find a cure.”

His eyes shined, but not from excitement. Tyler reached out across the table and opened his hand so Qiang would take it. She did. He squeezed hard enough to let her know they were in it together.

“I really need you to find the problem so we can save people.”

She squeezed his hand back and got up. “I know, Tyler. I know.” And she walked out, her head low, her stride slow and tired.

He followed Qiang out of his office to speak to his secretary.

“Nancy, I need some time. No interruptions until I tell you, okay?” he said to his secretary.

“Got it,” she said, looking at him briefly.

He closed the door behind him. When he sat back in his chair he looked for the prepaid phone in his briefcase. There was only one number in the call log. He hit redial and waited.

“How’s the progress?” he asked as soon as Harper answered.

“Only one left from the last list.”

“All different?”

“As you wanted.”

“Very good. How come I haven’t seen anything in the news?”

“Maybe check the obituaries,” Harper said.

“I have a new list. It’s a bit longer. We need to speed things up.”

Harper was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “I still have the one left from the previous list.”

“Oh?”

“I ran into problems with her.”

“I trust that you’ll take care of it. You’ve done a remarkable job so far.”

“About that…” Harper paused. “Things are getting worse on my end.”

Tyler bit his fist, almost breaking the skin. After a few seconds he said, “I have your back, Harper, I promise. I just need you to get this done. See you tomorrow, same time and place, okay?”

“Okay,” Harper said and hung up.

Tyler put the phone back in his briefcase and logged into his computer. The screen came alive, and he opened an encrypted document. He stared at the list. Twenty-four names stared back at him. Sixteen were crossed out already. They had a long way to go and very little time.

S
orensen headed directly to see Lou. He guarded the evidence bag, fully sealed with the tiny piece of glove, in his pocket. The day was already hot and he was sweating profusely under his jacket. He entered the building, hoping to feel a rush of cold air, but there was nothing.

The elevator doors opened, and he walked into the reception area, waving his hand in front of his face, trying to cool down.

“The AC’s broken,” Mary said behind her desk. “They’re supposed to fix it tomorrow, but who knows.”

“This is terrible. How can you stand it?”

“I’m used to it. It seems that it’s broken more often than not.”

He plunked an elbow on the high desk and said, “I think I got something.” He pulled out the evidence bag and waved it in the air. “Straight from the ME’s office.”

“Right on.”

He arched an eyebrow and stared at her, watching her face the whole time.

She didn’t even flinch. “Sorry. Teenage boys. You end up speaking like them. You’ll see soon enough,” she said and pushed her chair away from him. Mary pulled a couple flyers she had on the counter and used them as a fan.

“Ah, no. Mine are girls.” Sorensen said.

“Same difference.”

“Don’t spoil it for me. I like to live in ignorance as long as I can.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Lou in?”

“You’re lucky. He just came back from a meeting. He’s in his office.”

“Thanks,” he said, already walking away.

Sorensen liked coming to the lab. There was always the hope that they would find something that would help him break a case. Sometimes that was true. Sometimes it wasn’t.

“Mr. Lou, how are we doing today?”

“I fucking hate bureaucrats. Have I told you that before? I hate them. They’re the scum of the earth, and I’m fed up. I’m going to quit this thankless job and send them all to hell.”

“Okay. Should I come back?” Sorensen asked, but he sat down instead.

Lou was walking back and forth behind his desk, his large body moving slowly and his wobbly stomach dancing up and down.

Darcy wasn’t joking when he said it looks like Jell-O
, Sorensen thought, making a mental note to avoid eating it ever again.

“I think it just turned noon somewhere. Want to go for a drink?” Sorensen asked. It was going to take a lot more than pacing to calm Lou down.

“I’m fine. I’ll be better when I quit.”

He sat down. His eyes were bloodshot. His dark chocolate skin was peppered by even darker freckles. He passed both beefy hands over his bald head.

“You haven’t come here to listen to me bitch. What do you want?”

“I’m actually enjoying this. I’ve never heard you cuss this much.” Sorensen leaned back and rocked on the chair, watching his friend.

“Oh shut up. You’ve gone to enough Raiders games with me to know that’s not true.”

“Fair enough. So, what did the bureaucrat sons of bitches do to you this time?”

“Same shit, different day. I got a nice pep talk last week about how the department’s doing awesome and blah, blah, blah. So, I go in there today, asking to buy the LTQ XL Linear Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer, which would help in so many ways, and do you know what they tell me?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Sorensen played along. “No, what?”

“The motherfuckers told me no. No. Can you believe that?”

Sorensen shook his head, trying really hard not to laugh.

“They said no. They said no to a machine that could solve cases in half the time than with the piece of crap we have now.”

Lou looked up and saw Sorensen’s face.

“Oh fuck you too. Why are you even here?”

“Lou, you go through this every single time you find a new toy. I’m amazed that in the seventeen years you’ve been working here you haven’t learnt that if you want something, you have to get it yourself.”

“This is a $35,000 machine!”

“Well then. Kid’s college fund you can dip into?”

Lou shook his head in frustration. “The reason the bad guys always win is because we don’t have the best tools to solve crimes.”

“Hey, hey, the bad guys don’t always win. And that’s why you have people like me, to pound the pavement.”

Lou brushed him off with his hand. “You know what I mean.”

“Anyway, I brought you something interesting.”

He pulled the evidence bag out of his pocket. Lou looked at the tiny contents.

“From the mugging victim last night. The husband’s coming over this afternoon. I’d like to be able to tell him something.”

“This afternoon? Are you joking?”

“No.”

“Fine. I’ll have Mauricio work on it.” Before Sorensen left his office, Lou said, “But just so you know, if we had the mass spectrometer I could have this for you in less than an hour.”

“Make sure you get it, then,” Sorensen said, only looking back quickly enough to see his friend’s face flush with fury.