The chill air off Elliott Bay seemed to run directly down Jason’s neck as he watched Vallon Drake’s sensual retreat. From the two times he’d met her, he figured retreat wasn’t her usual modus operandi, so something had her well and truly spooked. He waited, watched the stair, and saw her come out and duck behind the bookstore, then leave in a spray of water and squealing tires. When she was gone he could breathe again.
Almost.
“Christ.” His fingers scrubbed his lips again, but it didn’t help against the heat she’d evoked. Sure, he’d been with women since Cheryl passed, but this was different because along with the desire had come the knowledge this was happening too fast, even though he wanted it to happen. Even though it felt like a train wreck. That was bad.
She was a murder suspect, for god’s sake.
He shook his head and inhaled the air ripe with car exhaust and wet cedar, trying to dislodge the scent of her from his nose. The soft scent of roses and moist earth heated in the sun. It evoked a simpler time, his first job helping old Mrs. Liebowitz with her garden, his first love.
A shiver ran up his spine. She’s a murder suspect, you idiot.
But maybe not. He dug in his pocket, hoping like hell he wasn’t making a fool of himself, and called Blacklock.
“Hey, I found the phone.”
No greeting. No joke. Blacklock would pick up in an instant that something was wrong.
There was silence and then. “So bring it in.”
Jason had to laugh because if he didn’t he’d think he was going a little crazy right now after what had happened. “I’m afraid that’s a little impossible.”
“What—you give it away or something?”
“Nope. But I need you to get a CSI team up here again with a jackhammer or something that can cut through concrete.”
Silence again. “Where’d you find the phone, Slick?”
“I think you better come see for yourself. I’m at the scene.”
When Blacklock assented, Jason hung up and turned back to the wall that held the phone. How the hell could a phone get in there except on the day the wall was poured? Answer: it couldn’t.
Smooth concrete, except now that he looked at it, it wasn’t that smooth. There were two distinctly different areas. One was the main wall that stretched floor to ceiling and the length of the garage. The other was right where the phone had been found. The former looked like it had been built in a single pour. But the smooth lines of the forms weren’t present in the space by the phone.
He stepped closer and his sense of difference disappeared. He stepped back, and in the shadowed light of the rainy lunchtime a pattern formed on the wall.
He blinked and shook his head. It couldn’t be, because it made no sense. He went back to the wall and knelt down to look at the smooth piece of plastic chrome in the concrete.
Unless recovering the phone was what brought the vic and the suspect here in the first place.
He paced the pavement until Blacklock and the CSI team arrived. Blacklock just shook his head at the bit of exposed plastic.
“How do you know it’s a phone?”
“I heard it ringing.”
Clint’s shaggy brow rose above suspicious eyes. “And how might you have heard that?”
Jason sighed. “She came here—I guess after being at work.”
“Your girlfriend?”
It stung, given what had happened and how he could still taste the sun-warmed—strawberries?—from her lips. “Not my girlfriend. But yes, Vallon Drake arrived.”
Blacklock checked his watch. “Not a very long shift.”
“Apparently.” He motioned at the site where the body was found.
“So just how did you come across that little piece of evidence?” Blacklock must have picked up on Jason’s discomfort. “Something you’re not telling me, Slick?”
“Yeah, this.” Jason grabbed his partner’s arm and dragged him back from the wall hoping that Blacklock would miss all the tells that something else had happened. Christ, he felt like he had bright red lipstick on his face.
The incident with Vallon wasn’t something that would be repeated; another loss to go along with all the big losses in his life. He swung Blacklock back toward the wall.
“Look at the wall and tell me what you see.”
Clint gave him a strange look.
“Concrete?”
“Fine, but look at the concrete.”
Blacklock rolled his eyes, but made a show of considering. A haze of dust and the whine of a concrete saw filled the garage and obscured some of what Jason thought he’d seen, but now that he’d recognized the pattern, he couldn’t not see it.
“Sorry, slick. It’s just concrete.”
“Look there.” Jason pointed. “Do you see any marks?”
Clint squinted through the dust. “So just what is it I’m s’pposed to be seeing, ‘cause I’m afraid I’m seeing concrete and that’s it.”
Not the reaction Jason wanted. Maybe it was just his overactive imagination, but there was no help for it. He pointed out the features—the blurred marks that arched the top, the long straight lines that looked hurriedly smoothed away.
“Work with me here. It looks like a door, damn it. A door that someone’s tried to hide.”
Blacklock turned a doubtful look from Jason to the wall. “Okay. I see what you’re talking about, but what does it matter that the owners filled in a door?”
“A door to where? That’s what I want to know. Think about it. The phone’s in the wall. We know Lamrey and Drake
work for Homeland Security. Maybe—maybe something bigger came down here.”
“In an empty parking garage? You’re kidding, right?”
“The owner of the garage is an off-shore holding company. Maybe there’s something beyond that wall and the reason Lamrey was here was to recover the phone as evidence. Maybe Drake came after him to try to stop him. Or maybe Lamrey wasn’t the good guy and Drake was trying to stop him from getting something.”
“Yeah, right. Are you listening to yourself? Slick, those thriller books you read have eaten your mind.”
“Come on, Clint, think about it. Aren’t we paid to look at all the possibilities?”
“Yeah. To eliminate them.”
“It would explain a lot and fit the facts pretty well.”
“And it’s fucking fiction.”
“Damn it, you’re starting to piss me off. Call it a working theory. That’s all I’m asking. I’m trying to keep an open mind and examine all the potential theories.”
Blacklock’s bulk blocked the garage’s meager lights as he confronted Jason. “You’re pretty fired up about this. Why?”
“I just want to see us down the right track. Not waste our time pursuing false leads.”
Blacklock looked him up and down. “I thought our first theory fit the facts pretty well, too, even if we haven’t found the instrument she beat him with.” Blacklock’s gaze narrowed. “Wouldn’t happen to have something to do with the fact that your theory places a certain Agent in a better light?”
“It has nothing to do with Vallon.”
Blacklock’s brows rose again. “It’s Vallon, now, is it?”
Jason felt the flush before it reached his face and wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment because it was true, or if it was anger at the fact that he’d let things slip and that Blacklock doubted him. He turned away.
“Great, partner. I do my job and try to look at all the possibilities and you accuse me of going after the girl.”
“She’s a suspect, Slick. No matter how she makes your heart go pitter-pat. And by the way, it’d be nice under different circumstances to see a woman really interest you again. But not a suspect.” He grabbed Jason’s shoulder, hauled him around. “You listening to me?”
“How could I not, you old bastard?”
“Ah good. Affection. So now that we got that straight, I can see what you’re talking about with that wall. It’s gonna take a heap of paperwork to
get permission to open it up.”
Jason caught the sideways look. Shook his head. “And I’m so much better at putting words on paper than you.”
“You got that so right, Slick. But tell you what—I got a contact in Homeland Security. Why don’t I give him a friendly call and ask what’s up?” A beefy hand landed on Jason’s shoulder again. “So let’s blow this pop stand. All this dust is killing me.”
Blacklock swiped at his eyes and Jason stopped. Something about the dust came swimming out of his subconscious like a huge solitary fish, but it dove back down to the nether regions of his mind before he could grasp it. It’d come to him in time. He knew it would, but whatever it was, it sent a tremor of ill-ease up his back.
“You got a problem, Slick?”
Jason caught the professional doubts in his partner’s gaze before Blacklock hid it. So he didn’t really believe, and didn’t want to, even if Jason was determined to pursue this line of investigation.
It brought back a too-familiar sense of loss. Blacklock had been his partner since Jason became a detective. They’d built a bond of mutual trust and respect.
Losing it would be akin to losing Cheryl.