I will not strangle the nice policeman.
I will not strangle the damned, irrational, tight-assed …
Doc stepped back to usher me inside Cooper’s office.
“You may as well join us, Nyce,” Cooper said. “Close the door behind you.”
After pulling the door shut, Doc leaned against it, crossing his arms over his chest.
Cooper sat behind his desk, his fingers steepled together, his gaze flat yet ominous.
“You wanted to talk to me,” I said, clasping my hands behind my back. I was doing my darnedest not to sound like I wanted to bare my teeth at him.
“Sit down,” Cooper ordered, nodding at the chair across from his desk.
I obeyed, playing nice. Doc stayed put by the door, watchful, giving us space.
“Why were you talking to Helen Tarragon when I explicitly told you to keep your nose out of my case?”
So much for starting with the weather. My hackles got nice and bristly, ready to begin our usual circle and lunge dance.
“What is it with you and my nose?” I asked. “Do you have some kind of freaky nose fetish?”
Cooper’s jaw hardened so fast I could have sworn I heard it splinter.
Doc cleared his throat, warning me.
Right, no fighting. I regrouped, taking another deep breath, and then explained, “I ran into her in the hallway while looking for my client, Cornelius Curion.”
I didn’t bother with explaining which door she’d come out because it didn’t seem important.
“So you made nice with Helen and then started drilling her about Jane?”
“No,”
you big lug head
. “I asked if she was okay, since she was crying.”
Again
.
Cooper’s expression remained hard and unmoving. “Then what?”
“She told me I wasn’t supposed to be down there—”
“She was right.”
Let me finish!
I squeezed the arms of the chair and continued. “She said that ‘they’ would see me, and then that ‘she’ would hurt me. When I asked who would hurt me, she said she couldn’t say because the person would know it was her. Then she pulled me into a storage room and hid me in there for several minutes, shushing me when I tried to ask why we were hiding, giving me some kooky advice about deadly things coming in small packages.”
Cooper leaned forward, his forearms tense, his body language crackling with hostility. “Are you fucking with me, Parker? Because I will happily revoke your freedom and throw your ass back in that cell for the night.”
I pointed at my face. “Do I look like I’m fucking with you? Trust me, I’m well aware that you’d give your left nut to lock me up for a week. I’m trying to tell you the truth if you’d stop being so goddamned, thick—”
“Violet,” Doc interrupted, touching my shoulder. “What happened next?”
I sat back in my chair. “Somebody walked by outside the closet. It sounded like they were dragging something. Then we waited, and when the coast was clear, we stepped outside. That’s when you came along,” I told Cooper.
“You’re telling me that you didn’t ask her any questions about Jane’s murder.”
“Not about Jane’s murder, no.”
“Stop splitting hairs or I’m getting the cuffs back out.”
I looked back at Doc. “Aren’t I supposed to be assigned a lawyer by the court at this point?”
“Did you ask Helen about Jane?” Cooper bit out each word.
“All I asked was how well she knew Jane. That was it, I swear.”
“What was Helen’s answer?” Doc asked.
“She said they’d been close friends for years.”
Cooper stared at me hard enough to see clear through my skull to the other side. “What else?”
“Well, she sort of mentioned that Jane had … uh …” I hated to tarnish Jane’s reputation, but I also hated the idea of spending the night on that nasty cot. “She’d slept with Helen’s husband.”
Cooper’s mouth wrinkled in disgust. “That’s unfortunate.”
“She’d had worse,” I muttered, thinking of Ray.
“Who’s worse than Tarragon?” Cooper asked.
Crudmongers. I probably shouldn’t have started down that path. “That’s not important. The point is that these pieces of information are all that Helen had told me before you showed up and scared her away.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Parker, was Jane sleeping with someone besides Tarragon prior to her death?”
I should have known he wouldn’t let it go. I took his question literally on purpose. “No.”
He watched me for a moment. I picked at a loose piece of vinyl on the chair arm while trying to maintain eye contact.
“Let’s try this again,” Cooper said, straight on, no blinking. “To your knowledge, was Jane having sex with someone other than Tarragon before she was murdered?”
I sat there, weighing the consequences of telling Cooper about Ray and Jane versus the results of keeping my mouth shut and having Cooper find out later and then throwing me back in jail for some other cockamamie reason.
“Damn it, Parker. I don’t need this bullshit. Just answer the fucking question.”
And yet another pun, I thought. “Yes. She was, but it was just a one night stand.”
“Who?”
I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see his anger when I came clean. “Ray Underhill.”
“And how long have you known about this?”
“Since Jane told me the morning after—two days before she was murdered.”
A flurry of cursing blew my hair back. I risked opening my eyes when he quieted.
“Is there anything else you would like to tell me about my case involving the murder of Jane Grimes?”
I glanced at Doc. He stared back, his expression hooded, unreadable.
“Yeah,” I said, focusing on Cooper. “I’m pretty sure she was killed by zombies.”
Chapter Fourteen
Cooper sat so still I didn’t think he’d heard me. The only sign of life was the slight pulse at the base of his neck where he’d loosened his tie.
Something about that pulse made my upper lip sweat. I shifted in my seat. “Two zombies, probably,” I said, thinking of my earlier conversation with Prudence via Wanda.
His squint settled even deeper into the corners of his eyes.
“Could have been three, I guess,” I said rubbing my chin, “with one waiting in the getaway car.”
Cooper looked over my shoulder at Doc. “Get her out of here before I do something I’ll regret later.”
Glad to make my escape, I grabbed my purse from the floor next to my chair. “Alrighty then. You have what you need from me, so I’ll head back to work.”
I made it as far as the open door.
“Parker.”
My shoulders seized up at the tension strangling his vocal cords. I grabbed Doc’s arm in case Cooper had changed his mind and tried to drag me back to that stinking cell.
I slowly turned around.
His eyes were hard and cold, like little steel ball bearings rolling around behind his lids. “What else are you withholding from me?”
Besides the fact that I got my inside information from a ghost who also told me something in the bottom of the Open Cut was supposed to have dragged Jane’s body away but didn’t?
“Nothing that I can think of at the moment.”
“Are you sure there isn’t something more about Ray you’d like to share?”
Ray? I doubted the detective would buy into my various conspiracy theories involving that horse’s ass. Besides, I could tell by Cooper’s hardpan glare that anything I said was going to ricochet off him and slam me in the face.
I shrugged. “For a man who thinks he’s cock of the walk, Ray has a rather unimpressive penis.”
Doc had a short coughing fit behind me.
Cooper’s right cheek twitched. “I was referring to my case with Jane Grimes.”
I pursed my lips.
“Or your involvement with the Mudder brothers.”
MY
involvement with … The furnace in my gut flared. “Contrary to what you think, Detective, I know very little about that whole Mudder brothers’ deal.” Something I was trying to rectify now that I had disappearing albino issues. “I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The tilt of his head cried bullshit, which made me want to snarl and paw the ground, considering the lives—including my own—that had been at risk due to his damned police-business-only mantra.
“Listen,” I said, stepping toward Cooper, my finger out and pointing. “You were the one keeping secrets about Ray’s involvement in that whole fucked up mess, putting us all at risk. If anything had happened to Natalie or Doc …” I paused, trying to control my rage before I swelled into a big, green monster and started breaking things.
Cooper stood so fast his chair slammed into the wall behind him. He planted his palms on his desk, challenging me. “Be careful where you point that blame, Parker. I’m not the only one holding cards close to the vest. You’re still hiding shit from me. I can smell it on you.”
I closed the distance between us in three strides, leaning across his desk, accepting his challenge. “Watch where you stick that nose, Detective. It might end up broken again.”
“Okay,” Doc interrupted. “I think we’re done here.” He wrapped his arms around my waist, lifting me clear off the floor, and carried me toward the door like I was a big doll. “We’ll be in touch if we hear anything more about either case, Detective,” he called over his shoulder.
“Parker, you’d better stay the hell away from the opera house!” Cooper hollered after us.
Outside Cooper’s office door, Doc set me on my feet, his body blocking me from returning to chew on Cooper some more, damn it.
Pulling the door closed behind him, Doc frowned down at me. “Well, tiger, that could have gone better. You hungry?”
Huffing, I shook my head and stormed toward the front desk. “Wrongfully accused again,” I announced to the small crowd of policemen hovering around the coffeemaker.
Doc followed me out into the front room. “Violet, wait.”
I stopped at the glass doors, looking back.
He handed me his car keys. “I forgot something. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Forgot what? I didn’t like the sound of that, but I also didn’t like the big, stupid grin on the jowls of the police officer staffing the desk. Without another word, I pushed outside, sucking in the fresh air of sweet freedom, and bounded down the steps.
When I reached Doc’s Camaro SS, I leaned back against it with my arms crossed. The metal felt warm through my clothes, calming.
Now that my blood pressure was no longer red-lining, I was able to think rationally about Cooper and the widening chasm between us that made all of our conversations happen at a shouting level.
He wanted to know everything. That was all good and fine, but he’d made it clear with the subject of the albino that he couldn’t handle hearing everything. No matter how many times he drilled me, my answer was still the same—the albino disappeared in a puff of smoke. As much as I’d love to have a rational explanation for what had happened, there wasn’t one.
I had to accept that.
So did he.
With all of this freaky stuff going on, I needed Cooper to have a little faith in me, but the only thing he seemed to have faith in was his gun. I had no idea where to go from here with that hardheaded man.
A ray of sunlight peeked through the clouds and warmed the top of my head. I fished my sunglasses from my purse and found a folded piece of paper stuffed next to them. I unfolded it, wondering what part of a horse’s anatomy Layne had drawn for me now.
But it wasn’t a drawing.
It was a printed note with large, bold capital letters:
WE WANT WHAT BELONGS TO US!
The words sucked the breath from my chest.
I wadded up the note with shaking hands and stuffed it back into my purse. Behind my sunglasses, my gaze darted around, scoping out the police station windows, the parking garage behind me, the Rec Center, and the neighboring playground across the street. I tried to act nonchalant while dewy with sweat, feeling like Bambi’s mom caught in the crosshairs.
My legs went weak with relief at the sight of Doc coming out the station’s front doors, pulling on his sunglasses as he trotted down the concrete steps.
His brow wrinkled as he drew near, his fingers taking the keys from my hand. “Are you okay?” he asked, opening the passenger door for me.
I shook my head and crawled inside, sinking into the warm leather seats. The scent of his cologne wrapped around me, easing my skittishness. “Let’s get out of here.”
Doc shut my door and then joined me, sliding behind the steering wheel. “What is it? Something Cooper said?” he asked, keying the Camaro SS to life.
“I’ll show you when we get home.”
He stared at me from behind his sunglasses for a moment. “Yours or mine?”
Spending the afternoon in his place, letting him and his hands help me forget about all of these bizarre events for a short time would have been nice, but I hadn’t even been into work yet today. Jerry was going to have my head if I didn’t get my ass in there. “Mine, please.”
He nodded, rolling out of the parking lot and onto the road. His palm drifted from the gear shift to my thigh. I covered his hand with mine, leaning my head back against the seat.
“What did you forget in Cooper’s office?” I asked, staring blankly out my side window, wondering which of the police officers might have slipped me that note and what it meant.
“Something I needed to talk to him about.”
Me?
I wanted to ask, but it sounded insecure. As Harvey had reminded me earlier, not everyone’s world revolved around me.
“Bail money?” I prodded.
“You were free …” he squeezed my thigh, “this time.”
I grimaced. “I owe you for coming to my rescue.”
“I thought we’d already established how you’ll pay me back for any hardship—in my bed, preferably naked, but I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Lifting his hand to my lips, I kissed his knuckles. “You called earlier wanting to talk to me about something.”
He turned into the Presidential District neighborhood, making a left toward Aunt Zoe’s house.
“I opened the bottle,” he said.
“What bottle? You mean the black one from the crate at the funeral parlor?”