Roger Freemont, in rolled-up shirtsleeves and loosened tie, looked up from paperwork to glare at me from behind his dark-rimmed glasses. “What part of ‘appointment only’ don’t you understand?”
Ah, a year passes with Roger and yet it’s as if no time at all has gone by....
I shut the door. “Thought you might make an exception, and see me without an appointment. For old times’ sake.”
“Would it kill you to knock? This isn’t much, but it is my office.”
He was right—it wasn’t much. This was a single room, not terribly big, no reception area—hell, no receptionist—just broad-shouldered Roger at a big battered wooden desk, wooden file cabinets lined up St. Valentine’s Day Massacre-style on the opposite wall, and several hardback client chairs under a high ceiling that was home to a shut-off ceiling fan and peeling paint.
The only sign that this was not a P.I.’s office in a 1940s film noir was the laptop computer on the scarred desk.
“Actually, I do apologize for bursting in on you,” I said, meaning it, moving toward one of the two client chairs opposite him. “I expected an outer office...a receptionist....”
“It’s a one-man agency, Mrs. Tree,” he said crisply. “Just the essentials.”
I stood next to one of the chairs, but didn’t seat myself. I tried out a smile. “Shouldn’t the essentials include a shapely secretary and a bottle of whiskey in the bottom desk drawer?...And it’s ‘Ms.’ Tree, remember.”
“I remember,” he said, his eyes cold and unblinking. He had the look of a high school science teacher who coached football on the side. “What do you want? I’m a busy guy.”
“Mind if I sit?” I said, and sat. “Thanks.”
“Always a pleasure,” he said dryly.
I crossed my legs, supported my purse in my lap, gloves still on—didn’t want him to think I was settling in for the afternoon. But only the literal gloves stayed on. “You know, Roger, you’ve always been kind of a prick.”
He pursed his lips and he wasn’t throwing a kiss. “You can’t imagine how hearing you say that devastates me.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and smiled again. “But not as big a prick as this....Not the raging asshole who quit me right when I needed him most.”
That hit home.
A corner of his mouth twitched and, behind the lenses, the eyes finally blinked, and blinked some more. Suddenly he was ill at ease.
Good.
“Look,” he began, “I, uh, I really am busy. What the hell do you want, anyway?”
I leaned forward. “How much do I need to fill you in? Has Rafe ever shared his theory about this so-called Event Planner with you?”
Roger shrugged. “What if he has.”
“You do know that Dan and I are working the Addwatter case.”
“Sure. It’s been all over the media.” Another shrug. “Looks pretty open and shut. Whacko wife snuffs hubby and his hobby.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. “That’s how it looks. But Dan and I think what happened with Marcy Addwatter is one of those ‘events.’ ”
He drew in a breath. Let it out.
Then he admitted, “Has all the earmarks.”
“So does a certain other case.”
“What certain other case?”
“Mike’s murder.”
He tasted his tongue. “Is, uh, that what Rafe says?”
I shifted, re-crossing my legs. “Rafe says the cops aren’t interested in solved cases. And he’s been good enough to hand eight files over to me. And to Dan. You remember Dan.”
“I remember Dan.”
“He could use your help. I could use your help.... Are you getting this, Roger? We could use your help.”
Roger, increasingly ill at ease, began, “I don’t—”
I held up a traffic-cop palm. “I’ve had plenty of time to think, in the year since Mike was killed. And one thing that’s occurred to me? Maybe you and Mike left the PD at the same time for more reasons than just wanting to enter the world of small business.”
Roger’s mouth twitched something that was neither smile nor frown as he returned his attention to his paperwork. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lady.”
“What were you and Mike working on...mister? That you couldn’t work on from inside the department?”
He looked up, dropped the paperwork onto his desk with a sigh. He seemed about to speak, then stopped to think a moment. And sighed again, and loosened his collar with a forefinger.
I said, “What are you, Roger Freemont or Rodney Dangerfield? Spit it out.”
His expression was pained. “Look...Ms. Tree. I promised Mike I’d...that I wouldn’t....” Then that expression changed, melted into something I’d never seen on that normally sour puss: he seemed torn up.
“What, Roger?”
“I promised him, Ms. Tree. I promised Mike.”
I sat forward. “That you wouldn’t endanger me? Well, Mike’s dead, Roger—and I’m the Michael Tree you owe your allegiance to now!”
Roger began to speak, and a coughing sound came out, or seemed to come out of him; only it wasn’t a human cough, rather a mechanical one, following by the sharp sound of breaking glass.
And I looked down, startled as hell, as a slowed-up slug bounced off my left breast.
I straightened to see the frozen, open-mouthed Roger—a thick trail of blood oozing from an exit wound near his heart, spreading on his white shirt—try once again to speak, and fail.
Then he flopped unconscious onto his paperwork, breathing slow, loud, ragged.
Already on my feet, I got back behind his desk and ripped away the blinds to reveal the spider-webbed bullet hole in the window, a fire escape yawning beyond.
I touched Roger’s shoulder and said, “Hang in, Roge,” then shoved open the window and, getting the nine millimeter out of my purse, climbed out onto the iron grillwork.
On the metal landing, gun in one hand, cell phone in the other, I looked down as I told the 911 dispatcher, “Shooting at Axminster Building on Van Buren, Suite 714....” Then looked up and saw a skinny, dark-haired male figure in a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans and white running shoes scrambling up the fire escape, a silenced automatic in one latex-gloved hand.
“Freemont Investigations,” I told the dispatcher. “Sucking chest wound—I don’t know, just fucking hurry!”
I slipped the cell in my trenchcoat pocket and aimed the nine mil skyward, but the guy had hopped up and onto the roof, out of sight.
But not out of mind—up I went, like Sheena of the Jungle on a goddamned tree, flying up six stories of fire escape, and then I was climbing onto the rooftop only to see Roger’s assassin, dark hair standing up in the wind and wiggling, as he ran hard and fast...
...and then leapt onto the adjacent rooftop.
I took pursuit, but the bastard had a real lead on me. And when I got to the edge of the rooftop, where he’d leapt from, I stopped abruptly, looking down at my shoes—short-heeled pumps, but heels nonetheless.
“Shit,” I said, and kicked them off.
Then I backed up, breathed deep, and made a run for it.
I leapt for the next building, trenchcoat flapping, and landed on my nyloned feet, gracelessly but on them, and when I looked up to take my bearings, there the assassin was, still on the run, but glaring back at me now, aiming the silenced automatic in my direction.
I dove out of the way as several whispering bullets chewed up roofing tar around me, and I hit hard but not knocking the breath out of me.
And I was still down when I looked up to see all the way across the rooftop where the dark-haired assassin in running shoes was in the process of backing up, preparing to jump to another building.