“Of course.”
Jake unrolled the picture he’d been given of the two men. “Do you recall seeing either of these men?”
“Sure. That’s Mr. Redmond,” he said, pointing at the light-haired man. He moved his finger to the other guy. “And that’s…Mr. Walters.”
“They’re guests here?”
“They were. Left this morning, I believe.”
“Did they have their own cars or…”
“No cars. Taxis. They both seemed to enjoy walking, too. I’ve seen both head out on foot.”
Which could have meant they had a car they weren’t parking at the hotel, Jake thought.
He showed him the other picture.
“Yeah,” the doorman said. “Saw him a few times, but don’t know his name.”
“Also a guest?”
“Not sure.”
Jake rolled the pictures back up. He had last names now, at least for two of them. It was something, but not much. “Thanks,” he said.
“You got it.”
10
Jake was up early the next morning. Patrol the night before had been uneventful, and both he and Haywood had finished on time. Jake had spent most of the shift as they drove around thinking about the men in the pictures. Could it possibly be that they were connected with the murder? Should he tell someone about them?
He still had no answer for the first question, and his immediate response to the second was no. No one would believe such a tenuous connection. A feeling? But then he’d reconsidered. There was one person he could talk to who wouldn’t think he was crazy, not more than usual, anyway.
Around 11 p.m., while Haywood had been doing his flirting thing with Maria the waitress, Jake had called Berit and asked if she wanted to grab breakfast the next morning.
“Breakfast? You mean get out of bed before ten?” she said.
“I was thinking eight-thirty? At Di’s?”
“Eight-thirty? Ugh! Why?”
“I’ve…I’ve got something I need to talk about.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Fine. Eight-thirty. You owe me.”
Back at the academy, when they’d both realized they were different than most of the recruits, they’d made an agreement to always be there for each other. A sounding board, a pressure release, whatever the other one required.
This was definitely one of those times.
Jake arrived at Di’s fifteen minutes early, took a booth by the window, and contented himself with coffee until Berit arrived. As was her habit, she was right on time. The way she was dressed — a pale green button shirt and blue jeans — people would have been hard-pressed to guess her profession. She just didn’t give off that police vibe. But Jake knew her kind eyes and disarming smile were deceiving. It was like she had a thin layer of sweet covering a solid don’t-fuck-with-me body.
Like Jake, she was a voracious reader, a habit that led them into conversations about such subjects as microbiology, Middle East history, computer programming, and the future of paper money. They could go on for hours about almost anything. It was like being in college without actually enrolling anywhere.
As Berit slipped into the other side of the booth, their waitress walked over.
“Something to drink?” the woman asked.
“Coffee, please,” Berit said.
“Sure thing.” The waitress retreated to the counter.
Berit stared at Jake for a moment, then said, “Four and a half hours.”
“I’m sorry?” he said.
“Four and a half hours. That’s how much sleep I got. I should still be in bed, but I’m not. You owe me three and a half hours of sleep.”
“You get eight every night?”
The waitress returned with the coffee before Berit could respond, and set it on the table.
“You guys ready to order?” she asked.
“Oatmeal,” Jake said.
“All right. And you, ma’am?”
Berit was holding the coffee to her lips and blowing across the surface. “It’s too early to eat.”
“So, one oatmeal? That’s it?”
“Make it two,” Jake said. “She’ll get hungry.”
The waitress made a quick note on her pad, then left them again.
Berit rolled her head around in a circle a couple of times, and said, “I swear to God this better not be girl trouble. I will kill you if it is.”
Problems with the opposite sex were another thing they would discuss now and then, though it was more about the men who kept asking Berit out than the few dates Jake went on. It was interesting. They were the best of friends, but not once had either of them even hinted at taking their relationship further. She was a beautiful woman made even more so because of her intelligence, but he just never felt a romantic attraction. There was a very good reason for this: she reminded him of an older version of his sister, and he couldn’t deny she was filling the void Jake had created when he’d been forced to basically abandon Liz back home.
“No girl problems,” he said.
Her face grew a bit more serious. “Something at work? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said hesitantly. “Everything’s fine. It’s just…” He paused.
“What?” When he didn’t answer right away, she said, “What did you do?”
He cracked a smile. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it?”
“The murder two nights ago,” he said. “I may have a lead on who did it.”
“Are you serious?”
He nodded, then proceeded to tell her everything. Somewhere in the middle of the story, the waitress returned with their oatmeal, but they barely noticed. When he was through, he pulled out the plastic sandwich bag he’d put the matchbook in at his apartment and showed it to her.
“You took that from a crime scene?” she said, staring at him like he was crazy.
“They’d already gone over everything. This could be nothing.”
“Or it could be something. Why didn’t you just give it to someone?”
“Look, I know I probably should have,” he said.
“Probably?”
“Okay, maybe I…I mean, I should have. But they would have just lumped it in with everything else. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to follow up on it, if they even did?”
She rolled her eyes. “Did you at least tell someone about the markings you found on the ground? The cable impression? The spot at the tank where someone was sitting?”
“Those could have been made anytime.”
“And they could have been made the night of the fire, Jake. What the hell are you doing?”
Several people at nearby tables looked over.
Jake leaned toward her, dropping his voice to just above a whisper. “Think about it, Berit. What do I really have? Nothing that can’t be explained away in half a second.”
“That’s not a judgment for you to make,” she replied, the level of her voice now matching his. She frowned, and he could see she was trying to think it all through. Finally, the disapproval on her face softened. “Tell me about these guys at the hotel.”
Jake put the two printouts from the Lawrence Hotel on the table.
She examined them, then shrugged. “I don’t understand how you know these guys are connected to the murder.”
“I don’t know, not for sure,” he corrected her. “It’s just…a feeling.” He explained how he’d been going through the footage, but had stopped when he’d seen the two men come out the front door, and known immediately there was something different about them. He told her how he’d traced their movements backwards, the subtle communication between them, the matchbook.
“That’s it?” she asked. “Nothing connecting them to the murder, or even putting them in the vicinity other than the one guy picking up some matches?”