She gave him a slow, liquid smile. “Evidence is going before the court next Tuesday,” she said. “It’s exculpatory. The conviction’s going to be vacated.”
Stewart’s eyes flared heat, then narrowed. “Maybe he doesn’t make it to Tuesday.”
She almost hit him. Almost reached for his throat.
She said nothing.
Behind him, the door opened, and Jazz looked over his shoulder to see Lucia standing there, tense and ready. “Jazz?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Detective Stewart was just dropping off—what was it you were dropping off?”
“Congratulations,” he snapped, and turned and walked away, brushing past Lucia as if she wasn’t even there.
Jazz let out a slow breath, tilted her head and got a similar wide-eyed look from her partner.
“Well?” Lucia asked.
“I think we’d better go warn Ben,” Jazz said. “Just in case.”
Jazz hadn’t given it much thought, really, about how much time Lucia had spent in and around Ellsworth during the investigation. How many times she must have dropped in to talk to McCarthy.
But when they sat down at the table in the visitor’s area—no claustrophobic booths here, it was just open plain tables with preformed benches, much more accessible—and McCarthy walked in from the prisoner’s door, the first one of them he smiled at was Lucia, and that look…
That was a look Jazz had never seen in his eyes before.
She glanced sideways at Lucia, who was staring back, and caught the same glint.
Well, she thought blankly. Huh. That’s…interesting. She couldn’t decide if it was interesting-bad or interesting-good. McCarthy had always been her territory, more or less…not in a romantic sort of way, but in a proprietary sense, anyway. He’d been her partner. Her friend.
She cut her eyes toward Lucia again as McCarthy walked over and slid onto the bench across from them. Yes, that was the look. A hungry look. Something open and—odd, for Lucia—vulnerable.
“Hey.” McCarthy nodded at Lucia, and then—with reluctance, it seemed to Jazz—transferred his smile to her. “Jazz. You look good. How you healing up?”
“Not so bad,” she said. “I guess there can’t be too many people who’ve taken it like that and lived to tell about it. Even with a vest.”
“Not too many,” he agreed. His hair had grown out more, and was curling on the ends. Silver threads gleaming all through it like hidden treasure. His eyes flicked over to Lucia again, as if he couldn’t keep them away for long. “But you’re taking it easy, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, everybody interrogates me about that. I’m fine, okay? How about you? How’s the arm?”
He extended and flexed it. “Healed,” he said. “Ribs, too. Collarbone’s still a little tricky, but it’ll do.”
“We want to make sure you keep them that way,” Jazz said. “Stewart came to see me this morning.”
McCarthy went still, arm still flexed, fist clenched. She heard tendons crack, but his face had gone expressionless, his eyes hidden and dark. “Yeah?” he asked neutrally. “Dropped off hearts and flowers?”
“Not exactly. He said you might not make it to the hearing on Tuesday,” she replied. “You’re going to watch your back, right? Night and day?”
“Jazz, no way I’m letting them get to me now. Too much to hope for.” He looked at Lucia again, a little longer this time. “What about the pictures? Any leads on who sent them to Manny?”
“No, but we authenticated them,” Lucia said. “The photographer’s name is Harrison Rohrman, he’s a private investigator out of Michigan. He got the pictures by accident, actually. He was photographing everybody who came out the back door because he was waiting for a husband to duck out with one of the strippers. Divorce case. He had no idea the pictures were important.”
“But somebody knew,” Jazz said. “Somebody who recognized you in them and dropped them to Manny, knowing he’d be able to do something with them.”
“Meaning?” McCarthy’s hands stretched out flat on the table. Jazz thought about reaching for them, but before she could, Lucia’s hand moved and stroked lightly over his knuckles, then retreated.
As if she couldn’t help herself.
McCarthy’s hands moved after hers, then stopped.
Neither of them willing to commit, not in front of Jazz. She felt heat in her face, felt like an outsider, and hated it.
“Meaning,” she forced herself to say, “it was probably somebody from the force who doesn’t want to be identified as helping you out. Somebody Stewart might go after out of sheer revenge.”
McCarthy nodded. “Yeah, there are still a few guys who’d step up and do that, at least anonymously. Hell, I don’t care who did it. So long as the judge admits the evidence, I’ll just be grateful.”
“You know this won’t mean you get reinstated,” Jazz said. “The payoffs—”
“Yeah, my lawyer talked about it. There’s a deal on the table, if the evidence gets admitted. I get time served on the extortion. Community service, and I lose my pension, but Jazz, I deserve that. We both know it.” McCarthy shrugged. “I should’ve been better than I was. I will be, from now on. If I can’t be a cop anymore, that’s okay. I’ll find another way. The important thing is that I’m not stuck in here anymore. That I can have a life again.”
His eyes flicked to Lucia, then away. Not quite an admission of interest, but…
Jazz swallowed, forced a smile, and said, “Yeah. That’s great.”
On Sunday, Jazz woke to the sound of gunfire, and came bolt upright in bed. Mooch shot off the comforter with a growl and stalked away. She rolled over, grabbed her pistol from the nightstand and shrugged on a robe over her white T-shirt and sweatpants before easing open the bedroom door.
The door read, Jazz’s Room, in shiny black letters, along with Authorized Personnel Only. Inside the room, things looked like a normal bedroom—like her old bedroom, in fact, down to the curtains and the battered furniture—but outside, it was still disorienting to see that it was a freestanding cubicle sitting in the middle of a concrete warehouse floor.
Not that the place was empty. Over to the right was the freestanding kitchen, to the left was the curtained-off entertainment room, and beyond that was Manny’s private space where even she didn’t dare go.
The lab, however, was directly in front of her, and as she looked in that direction, she saw Manny pull off a pair of safety goggles and make safe an automatic pistol. He spotted her standing in the doorway, and waved, then looked awkward.
“Um—did I wake you up?”
“With the gunfire?” She gestured at the pistol he’d just put down, and the ballistic tank of water he’d fired into. “Oh, no. Had to get up anyway.”
“Sorry. It’s just that—”
“Never mind, Manny. Really. I’m awake.” She stretched, realized she was still armed and dangerous, and went back to replace the pistol in its drawer next to her bed. When she came back, Manny was in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee. He handed it to her and leaned on the counter, staring at her with one of his puppy-dog expressions.
“Manny, why are you test-firing a gun? Since you don’t do violent-crime work?”
“Yeah, well…” He shrugged. “I’ve been thinking of getting back into it. A little. This is nothing, though. The insurance company wants to prove that the owner of the gun shot up his own house and then claimed it was a drive-by. Oh, here. Message.” He reached over for a pad of paper and slid it across to her. Written in Manny’s neat calligraphy was Call Borden cell phone. “He didn’t want to wake you up.”
She yawned and nodded. “What time is it?”
“Six o’clock.”
She froze, blinking. “In the evening?”
“Yeah,” he said apologetically. “I thought you—the doctor said you should sleep as much as—”
“Manny, I was supposed to go to the office!”