Читать книгу Hard Evidence - Susan Peterson - Страница 13

In the center of the cramped bedroom, near the closet, sat a wooden, straight-backed chair. But it was what was tied to the chair that almost made me lose the PowerBar I’d scarfed down earlier that afternoon.

The guy didn’t fit the overall decor of Pop’s apartment. He was too uptown for that. His expensive three-piece suit looked as though it might cost in the range of a two years’ salary for me. Unfortunately, he’d bled out all over the front of the suit.

The multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest looked as if someone had taken their sweet time inflicting them. A puddle of congealed blood pooled at his feet.

I almost gagged, but I held on. I told myself I’d seen worse, and I had. Maybe not murders, but car wrecks in the steep Adirondack Mountains could produce some pretty horrific scenes.

Jack swore and I could see him shoot me a quick assessing glance. He was probably worried that I was going to take a header directly into the middle of the crime scene.

I clenched my teeth and swallowed hard. I nodded my head to let him know that I was okay. No way would I give him the satisfaction of falling apart. I was the cop on the scene, not him.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

I shook my head, going for the casual look. “You?”

“Nope.”

I stepped forward and pulled a rubber glove out of my back pocket. Pop always taught me that a cop was always prepared, on duty or off.

I donned the glove with a quick snap of rubber and then carefully lifted the man’s jacket to extract the victim’s wallet and flipped it open.

“His name is Craig Gibson.” I couldn’t keep a touch of surprise from filtering through my voice.

Jack gave me a sharp glance. “So you do know him?”

I nodded. “Kind of. Shawna said that Pop’s lawyer wanted to meet with me tomorrow. She said his name was Craig Gibson.”

“Guess your meeting won’t be going off as planned.”

I closed the wallet and slid it back into Gibson’s pocket.

Reaching into his pocket, Jack pulled out a cell phone and quickly punched in a number. “Yeah, my name is Jack O’Brien. I’m at 354 Pine St., third-floor apartment. Number 3A. Notify homicide they’ve just caught a new case. And tell ’em to bring the coroner.”

He rattled off a few other details as I backed out of the room. I retreated to the kitchen and leaned over the battered metal sink. Turning on the tap, I splashed cold water on my face.

I’d seen enough gruesome car accidents to typically handle the blood and gore without any real show of emotion, but for some reason seeing that guy tied up and tortured that way affected me more than I’d figured on.

When I came up for air, I found Jack standing next to me, regarding me with that familiar, quietly assessing look of his.

“You okay?” he asked.

A sharp retort hovered on the tip of my tongue to cover up how off-kilter I really felt, but I kept quiet because I knew he’d be able to see right through me. So I simply nodded.

“The locals aren’t really going to let you get involved in this case,” he said. “You wanna wait downstairs with the sisters until they want a statement?”

I thought about the current condition of my stomach and the combined smells of Ben-Gay, sausage and sauerkraut leaking out from beneath the Stanziki sisters’ apartment door. “I’m fine. Just got a little shaky there for a minute due to an empty stomach.”

He shrugged those broad shoulders. “Fine by me. Just don’t touch anything. Homicide gets a bit touchy when people fiddle around with their crime scene.”

“I’m not an idiot, Jack. We do have crime scenes up there in the wilds of northern New York.”

Before he could respond, I turned on my heel and marched out into the drafty hallway. I figured I’d spend some time poking around out there, see if Pop’s guests had left anything interesting.

The window at the end of the hall was open partway and a cold breeze touched the side of my face, sending a chill through me. The Stanziki sisters wouldn’t be too pleased to see that. Precious heat was slipping out beneath the window sash like water over a dam. But it might have been how the perp got into the apartment if there was a fire escape attached to the side of the old house.

I walked over to the window and bent down to take a look. An indignant screech greeted me. Careful not to touch the sill and mess up any fingerprints, I leaned out the window.

A huge beast sat hunched on the railing of the ancient fire escape. Yellow eyes glared accusingly into my own.

“Awww, Sweetie Pie,” I cooed. “We forgot all about you in the ruckus, didn’t we? What are you doing out there in the cold?”

He blinked and then let out another indignant yowl. Obviously, he was royally perturbed. But then, anyone who knew Sweetie Pie knew that was a permanent condition.

I leaned out farther and gathered his mangy, hairy body into my arms and pulled him inside. He latched on to my slick, nylon jacket with his claws, their sharpness shredding the nylon and letting loose a few feathers.

His oversize head, with its mangled, gnawed ears, bumped the bottom of my chin, and he nestled closer, shoving his head up against the hollow of my throat. His fur felt cold in my hands, his body heavy. I couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d been sitting out there waiting for someone to come home and rescue him.

I moved back to my position outside the front door of the apartment, stroking Sweetie Pie’s bulky body as a way of reassuring him that everything was okay. He was pretty tense, his fur standing on end, but after a few minutes I could feel him begin to relax.

I leaned up against the wall again, sliding down to sit on my heels. Some of Syracuse’s finest had arrived and they swaggered into the apartment, a thick wave of testosterone following them in. A few nodded in my direction, but most were focused on what was going on inside Pop’s place.

As I sat cooling my heels in the hall, I itched to get in there and get involved. But I knew police etiquette. I needed an invitation, and none of the guys in there seemed to recognize me. Not that I could expect them to; I’d been gone a long time.

As my tension rose, my hands tightened around Sweetie Pie’s plump body, and he gave me a quick nip on the tip of my thumb as a warning. I concentrated on taking slow calming breaths and slipped a hand beneath his collar to keep him from jumping down and taking off in a huff.

The soft leather of the collar caught my attention and I glanced down. An unexpected lump of hot emotion filled the back of my throat. It was a hand-tooled collar, with clever cat prints lovingly carved into the leather and painted black.

I knew without question that it had been one of Charlie’s creations, a favorite hobby of his—leatherwork. From a metal ring, a tiny pie charm hung off the collar and the name Sweetie Pie and Charlie’s address were engraved on the back.

I fingered the pie charm as if I could reach into Pop’s head and figure out what had happened in his apartment, but it was a useless gesture. Instead, I watched the drama inside the apartment unfold.

For years, I had dreamed—no, prayed—that the brothers on the force would ostracize Jack after his testimony against Pop. I had wanted them to shun his traitorous butt for what he’d done to Pop. And from the cool, studied nonchalant way they greeted him, it was pretty obvious my wish had come true.

Strangely enough, witnessing what I’d prayed for didn’t bring me any great pleasure. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the guy.

Growing up in a cop household had taught me well how important a cop’s fellow officers were, and when Pop had been convicted, I’d watched in dismay as his buddies ostracized him—cut him out of the brotherhood. Now Jack was getting a taste of how it felt, and something told me that he’d been feeling it for quite a while.

The detective in charge snapped a few questions at Jack and then turned in my direction. His smile was warm. Elliot Standish. I hadn’t seen him come in.

He walked over, his hand out in greeting. “Hello, Killian. It’s good to see you. I’m sorry you had to return on such a sad note.” He nodded his head in the direction of Pop’s bedroom. “Not to mention coming to your dad’s house and finding that mess.”

“Not a great homecoming, I agree,” I said, standing up and shaking his hand. Over his shoulder, I could see a touch of resentment flicker across Jack’s face. He hadn’t missed the fact that he’d been pushed aside.

Standish took my arm and lead me back into the apartment. “Give me a rundown of what you observed when you entered the apartment. Don’t leave anything out.”

He and I took a slow, methodical walk through the apartment for the next fifteen minutes, while Jack was left to cool his heels in the hall.

“Any feeling for why Gibson would be here in Charlie’s apartment?”

I shook my head. “I was going to meet the guy for the first time tomorrow. Apparently, he’s handling Pop’s affairs—his health proxy and his will.”

Standish’s right eyebrow, more weathered and gray than I remembered, took a leap upward. “Charlie had the money to hire Craig Gibson?”

“Apparently. You saying the guy charges more than Pop could afford?”

“Let me put it this way—he’s out of my league, your league and Charlie’s league all put together. He and his partner take on only the highest profile cases here in Syracuse and the surrounding areas. Usually, dealers with money to burn.”

I whistled softly through my teeth. “So the question is where would Pop, a guy who is essentially down to his last nickel, get the money to pay for a guy like Gibson? And what would Gibson be doing making a house call?”

“Bingo.” Standish glanced over at the gnome looking guy hunched over the body. “Got any thoughts on how he died, doc?”

“My professional opinion is that he bled to death,” the coroner said dryly.

“No kidding, doc,” Standish said. “Can you get any more specific?”

The coroner pointed to a series of bruises on the dead lawyer’s jawline and upper chest. “They worked him over pretty good. And then they started in on him with the knife. Whoever was wielding the knife knew what he was doing. He made sure the guy didn’t exsanguinate too quickly.” The coroner straightened up, grunting slightly and placing a hand against his lower back.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he said. “Whoever did this wanted information. And he went about getting it in a slow and methodical manner. You want anything more specific than that, you’re going to have to wait until I’m done with the autopsy.”

He nodded his head and two of his staff wheeled a gurney with an open body bag on top into the room.

Standish jerked his head toward the living room. “Let’s get out of their way.”

We moved back out into the living room where a crew of CSI workers swarmed over the area, busy dusting everything for prints.

“You ready to go?”

I glanced up to see Jack standing next to me. He and Standish glanced at each other, but neither spoke. I had learned from Jack earlier at the hospital that he was actually on speaking terms with Standish, but their current coolness toward each other told me that their friendship was probably on the sly. No doubt Standish didn’t want any of his fellow officers knowing he associated with someone who had actually broken the blue wall.

“Yeah, I’m ready.” I turned to Standish. “You’ll call me as soon as you hear anything?”

Standish nodded and wandered off to talk to a few other officers congregated in the kitchen area.

Jack swung a small cat crate in my direction. “You’re going to have to put the beast in here. We’ll never get him across town otherwise.”

Sweetie Pie’s ears immediately went back and he hissed. I wasn’t sure if it was Jack’s presence or the appearance of the cat crate. Whichever it was, Sweetie Pie wasn’t happy. Jack was smart enough to know that he best not try to hustle Sweetie Pie into the crate. He left that job to me.

As we trooped back down the stairs, I asked, “Why would Pop hire a lawyer known for working for the dregs—drug dealers?”

Jack shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to ask him when he wakes up.”

A few minutes later, we were on his bike, the cat crate sitting snug between us as we headed across town. Sweetie Pie yowled his discontent the entire way.

THE ELEVATOR to Jack’s apartment was different from the one I remembered from nine years ago. Apparently, the loft had become a bit more upscale over the years. Gone was the freight elevator ambience, replaced with a sleek, metallic-looking interior filled with mirrors and recessed lighting.

“Impressive,” I said, shifting the cat crate to my other hand and glancing around.

Jack pressed the button for the fourth floor and then leaned one shoulder against the wall as the elevator started upward. “The place went co-op about five years ago. It was either move out or buy in. So, I bought in.” He grinned. “Kind of strange to be a home owner.”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting domesticated.”

He laughed. “Hardly. The place is made up mostly of singles. But we’ve made a lot of improvements to the building over the past couple of years. You haven’t seen the place in a while so it’ll look pretty different.”

Haven’t seen the place in a while? Who was he kidding. I hadn’t stepped foot in his apartment since the day I got word that he’d reported to work and ratted out Charlie.

That single thought sent a flash of guilt rumbling through me. What the hell was I doing here? Hadn’t I sworn this would never happen?

It was hard accepting the fact that I was even standing in the elevator next to him. The rest of the family would probably tar and feather me and ride me out of town on a rail if they knew where I was at this very moment.

The elevator slid to a smooth stop and the door opened.

Jack’s apartment was directly across the hall. He unlocked the heavy door, leaned in and flicked on a switch. Soft light flooded the interior. He stepped aside and motioned for me to go first.

My heart kicked up a few beats as I brushed past him. I was careful to keep my arms close to my sides. I didn’t think I could handle any contact between us after our forced intimacy on the back of his bike.

The feeling had been uncomfortable and incredibly awkward, like having to be the maid of honor to your usher of an ex-boyfriend during your best friend’s wedding. You can’t back out and you can’t let everyone know how stupid you feel.

I forced a bit of a swagger into my step. It was all an act, but what else was I supposed to do—except wonder what the hell I was doing casually walking into O’Brien’s apartment. Apparently, I’d lost connection with my last fully functioning brain cell.

Of course, Jack seemed oblivious. He moved about the cavernous room, turning on lights and talking as he went. “Make yourself at home. I’ll let you take the bed.”

He nodded toward one end of the room that had a large Japanese-style screen set up to partition off the bedroom area. “I’ve been sleeping on the couch lately, anyway.”

A glimmer of self-amusement touched one corner of those exquisite lips and my heart tumbled just a little. I pushed the feeling deeper and concentrated on what he was saying.

“I’m on call. I could get beeped at any time. It’s just easier this way.” He ran a restless hand through his thick black hair. “I haven’t been sleeping too well lately and will just end up keeping you awake. I’ve got a touch of insomnia.” He gazed at me, his eyes telling me he knew I’d understand.

I nodded noncommitedly, not wanting to let on that I knew exactly what he meant. But there was no denying that I knew. Hard, fast memories flooded my brain with the force of a dam breaking. Memories of sleeping next to Jack, my butt pressed tight against his hard belly, his strong arm wrapped securely around my chest, resting directly below my breasts.

He’d always been a light sleeper, a person who prowled the apartment at all hours of the night. When we’d slept together, I used to hear him get up and leave the bed, and sometimes I’d go in search of him, finding him slouched in a chair or standing in front of one of the huge windows overlooking the dark street below. The soft light filtering in from the street lamps would caress the hard, muscular lines of his body, and the beauty of him would always take my breath away, leaving me with a painful ache of need deep inside me.

Just the thought of those times made the ache creep into my belly, catching me off guard. I blinked, trying to regain my equilibrium, but the memories continued to wash over me.

Jack would always chalk his restlessness up to work, thoughts about a case pressing in on him. I used to lean up against him and gently massage his shoulders, molding my body to his and soaking in his warmth and strength.

It never seemed to do much in the way of getting him to relax, but it always seemed to have a nice effect on our love life. At times, his insomnia had meant marathon sessions of wild and wickedly delicious tumbles in the twisted sheets.

Startled, I shook myself. Memories like that were going to have to be off-limits if I planned on staying even one night under the same roof as Jack. They were too dangerous. I needed to stay focused on the here and now—no more trips down memory lane.

“I’m not taking the bed, Jack.” I moved over to the couch and swung my duffel bag and Sweetie Pie’s crate up onto the cushion. “I’ll be fine on the couch.”

“Same old Killian, huh? Incapable of ever doing what someone asks of her?”

I stiffened. Bullheadedness had always been my badge of honor. But it was the one thing that kept me whole and sane in a crazy world that changed at a moment’s notice. Leftover stuff from my early life.

“Apparently not,” I said, leaning down to open my backpack and rummage through the contents. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, I just knew I couldn’t look at him right then.

“There’s no privacy out here in the living room. At least the bedroom is partitioned off.”

He paused for a moment and then added quietly, “I’m asking for my benefit, Killian, not yours. It would just be better if you had some privacy.”

The soft tones, rich and husky, filtered across the space between us and lifted the hair on the nape of my neck as if I’d been touched on the tenderest part of my skin by the calloused tips of his long fingers.

I lifted my head and met his gaze across the length of the room. Those dark blue eyes burned with an intensity capable of opening a hole right through the middle of my chest and stabbing the center of my heart.

I struggled to breathe as he waited.

Finally, I shrugged and swallowed hard against the sudden dryness in the back of my throat. “Fine. You win. I’ll take the bed.”

He smiled that slow, easy smile of his and the intensity of his gaze softened a bit, as if he knew even before I spoke that he’d won. I tightened my fists and pulled my duffel bag closed with a fierce tug.

Damn it, he’d done it to me again, manipulated the hell out of me and he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

I, on the other hand, had a fat bead of sweat rolling merrily down the valley between my breasts, making its way toward my belly button.

I ignored it. No way was I touching any part of my anatomy with Jack O’Brien’s smoldering eyes sparking like heat lightning across the length of the loft.

I knew without him saying anything that he was more than a little aware of my current predicament. Damn his psychic hide. I had thought the little thread of connection between us had died a long time ago. Apparently I was wrong.

I reached down and opened Sweetie Pie’s crate. He slinked out gingerly. I’m sure he wasn’t used to the degree of cleanliness that permeated Jack’s apartment. Charlie appeared to be a bit less of a fastidious housekeeper in his older years.

“He’s going to need a litter box.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

I yanked my bag off the couch and slung it over my shoulder, wincing slightly.

“Shoulder still hurting?”

“I’m fine.”

“Doesn’t appear that you’re fine. You took a pretty bad fall. Better let me take a look at it. If you need to have it X-rayed, we’re going to have to head back over to the hospital.”

“What, you’re a doctor now?”

“No, but in case you’ve forgotten, I’m a paramedic.”

“I’m fine. A hot shower will take care of it. You don’t mind if I use your shower, right?”

“Help yourself. Towels are in the cabinet behind the door. Shampoo and soap are on the shelf in the stall. I’ll check the shoulder after you shower.”

The slight smugness touching one corner of those perfect lips made me clench my back teeth. He turned away, his attention on the expensive-looking stereo equipment lining one side of the wall.

As I entered the bathroom and slammed the door shut with a quick kick of one foot, the smooth, soothing tones of Norah Jones slipped from the speakers and filled the loft.

I groaned aloud and leaned my head against the door of the bathroom, closing my eyes in frustration. Oh, God, was he doing this on purpose? Was he looking to ignite me into a single roaring flame of sexual desire?

I bent over the tub and turned on the cold tap. Forget the hot shower. I was going to need to freeze out the scorching heat coursing through my bloodstream if I intended to go back into the same room as Jack O’Brien and converse like a rational, coherent human being.