The Truth Seeker (4 page)

her house and car that she got teased about it by her family; instead of that, Quinn was going to see her after a week in which her schedule had been one of a thousand interruptions. It wasn’t fair.

She popped open the trunk and dumped the sacks there.

“You didn’t need to clean up for me.”

She slammed the trunk closed. “Shut up, Quinn.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He opened the driver’s door for her. She stopped, caught by surprise, looked at him, and then eased inside with a slight smile. She should have expected it; Quinn was consistent to a fault about politeness.

carrying things and getting the car when it rained, always picked up the check, made a point of waiting for a lady to speak first. But when he did those things for her, there was an extra twinkle in his eyes; he liked doing them because he knew it would fluster her.

she enjoyed the unspoken dance. She kept hoping to catch him off guard, but in the years she’d known him he always managed to keep a step ahead of her.

She started the car and turned the air-conditioning on high while he circled around the car to the passenger seat.

“Is there a baseball game on tonight?”

She flipped on the radio and punched in WGN, relieved to find his guess was right. It was a town favorite, the Chicago Cubs playing the Chicago White Sox. The familiar voice calling the play-by-play was a welcome addition; it eliminated the need for conversation. She pulled out of the subdivision and considered traffic on a Sunday evening to choose the best route northwest.

Quinn settled his hat on one knee. “Tell me about the day. I can tell it’s been bad.”

Just when she wanted to be annoyed with him, his voice changed and he said exactly the right thing. No wonder both Jennifer and Kate

had raved about the man when they dated him. He placed a high value on listening. She let herself relax a bit. “The file is on top in the briefcase.”

He retrieved it.

She looked over when it had been silent for several minutes to find him studying the photos. There was nothing gentle about his expression.

She looked away, not sure what she thought of that expression and the intensity in it. He looked like what he was: a cop.

“It doesn’t look like arson.”

“It’s a suicide, Quinn, and I missed it. There’s an addendum in there on a cat that died. The bedroom door was open, and yet the cat died in that bedroom. Egan fed his cat a sleeping pill, took two himself, smoked his last cigar, and lay down to die.”

She felt annoyance. “I just didn’t think suicide; that was stupid. It fits this case like a glove. His wife has been moved to a nursing home, he’d passed running his business to his nephew, friends admitted he was lonely, and his cat died in a room with an open door. He killed his cat.”

“If you’re right, be glad he didn’t show up at the nursing home and kill his wife, then himself.”

“I know.”

She pushed her sunglasses up and rubbed eyes still gritty from the smoke. She was botching a case right in front of him. It couldn’t get worse than this.

Walter Hampton had arrived at the farmhouse before them. He was waiting beside a whiteand-blue truck advertising Nakomi Nurseries.

“Quinn, he’s a grieving man; I’d prefer not to have him think this was a suicide until I know something definite.”

“Relax, Lisa. It’s your case. I’ll stay in the background.”

She parked behind Walter’s truck. “You couldn’t stay in the background even if you tried.”

“I’ll admit, I rarely try.” He opened his door, got out, and slipped on his hat.

She had considered calling Detective Ford Prescott or Jack, but it was now after seven on Sunday evening. She was here to retrieve a cat, have a brief look around. If she found something, she could always call them back to the site.

Lisa waited for Quinn to join her before walking forward to meet Walter. She struggled to find the right words. “Mr. Hampton, thank you for coming back over to the house.”

He turned his baseball hat in his hand. “Your message said it was important.”

“This is awkward, but I need a favor. Would you mind exhuming the cat?”

“Of course. Let me get a shovel; it will take me twenty minutes at most. The shoe box is buried at the edge of the garden.”

The lingering suspicion that it had been foul play and Walter had been involved eased even further with his immediate agreement.

“Thank you. If we could borrow the key again, we’ll be in the house. I need to check one last item.”

“Of course.” He reached into his pocket for the key and looked from her to Quinn.

She stumbled over the error; Quinn was not in the background when he was standing right beside her. “I’m sorry. Mr. Hampton, this is U.S. Marshal Quinn Diamond.”

Walter dropped the key as he handed it to her, then dug it from the dirt with an apology. He nodded briefly to Quinn. “Mr. Diamond. Let me get that shovel.”

She watched him walk toward the detached garage. “I feel sorry for him,” she said quietly to Quinn. “This is tough.”

“The guy is nervous.”

“Because he dropped the key?”

“He didn’t look at me once we were introduced, but given the circumstances, I don’t suppose I can blame him. He knows there’s something you’re not saying.” Quinn turned toward the car. “Get the flashlight, let’s go to work.”

She walked back to the car and opened the trunk. She found the flashlight in the box with the roadside flares and the jug of extra windshield wiper fluid. The flashlight gave a weak beam. She should have changed the batteries before coming.

“What are you looking for in the house?”

“I just want to see the scene again from a different viewpoint.”

He walked with her up to the house and wrestled the front door unlocked.

The house groaned around them as the evening breeze picked up.

The charred smell of burned wood hung heavy in the humid air. “Let’s check the office area; maybe he wrote a final note,” she suggested to avoid facing the upstairs for a few more minutes. She’d be surprised if there was one; statistically most suicides didn’t leave one, but it was possible.

Walter had boxed what papers were salvageable from the desk. If there had been something in the office, he would have likely found it, but Lisa thumbed through the box to double-check. They spent time searching through the downstairs rooms but came up with nothing specific. There was no diary, no letter, no note left in his Bible.

“I’m going to look upstairs again,” Lisa said, accepting the inevitable. Quinn joined her. The flashlight flickered as they reached the steps.

“Wait,” Quinn cautioned. “I saw another flashlight in one of the desk drawers.”

He disappeared back into the office.

Striking the flashlight against her palm a couple times brought the beam back. Lisa shone her flashlight back up the stairwell. She needed to see if there was any other evidence of a last evening: a favorite book, a keepsake like a picture nearby. If this was a planned suicide, Egan had

It darted toward the bedroom, and she moved to close the other

probably changed his normal nightly routine in more ways than just a cigar.

A flash of movement at the top of the stairs stopped her. Something was up there. Something fell, and she heard the unmistakable bark of a squirrel. The last thing she needed was an animal disturbing the scene.

She started up the stairs. “Quinn, there’s a squirrel trapped up there.”

She reached the landing, choosing her steps with care. The beam illuminated the animal at the end of the hall, its golden eyes gleaming back at her. She could sense the poor thing’s terror and the panic it must feel with the burned smell all around. How was she going to get it out of this house? She couldn’t leave it here.

doors in the hallway, eliminating other places it could run. She was aware her foot was on something soft an instant before the world moved.

The wood gave an explosive break, and she was falling into darkness.

It was pitch black. Her flashlight was gone. She was lying on her back, and she had landed on something sharp.

Lisa struggled to breathe, could feel the shock swallowing her, couldn’t stop the narrowing of her vision.

She was impaled on something; it was a horrific realization. It hadn’t punctured a lung, but she could feel the agonizing pain ballooning through her chest.

“Lisa! Where are you?”

The voice was edged with panic. It echoed through the clouds of billowing, choking ash settling on the remains of the collapsed stairs and flooring, settling on her face and clogging her breath, smothering

her. All the annoying things she had ever thought of him she silently apologized for.

“Quinn.”

He had to have exquisite hearing to catch her faint whisper; as soon as she said his name, his light moved toward her. The beam pierced the cloudy ash and struck her face, and then he was scrambling over beams and through rubble toward her. He jammed the flashlight into a crevice and pushed aside the remains of shattered flooring and part of a stair step.

In the wavering light she saw him flinch, and she tried to offer a reassuring smile. He yanked off his shirt, the buttons flying. “Hold on.”

She couldn’t get enough air; she had to know. “What

land on?”

He didn’t answer her.

It must be bad.

She shivered and felt a warm flood rush across her hand as her vision went black.

Four

Quinn, quit fussing.”

“I’ll fuss as long as I like. Get used to it,” he retorted, his voice abrupt but not his hands. He was trying to figure out how to get Lisa out of the car without touching something that would cause her more pain, and it was proving to be an impossible problem to solve.

Eight days in the hospital and about the only thing on this last Monday in October that hadn’t changed was her irritation with him.

Finally accepting that there was no pain-free way to do this, he turned her legs toward the street and slid his hands under her arms.

“Here we go.” He eased her to her feet, holding his breath as her mouth went thin and taut. She was too stubborn to admit how bad it hurt, but her forearms rested against his chest and he braced to take her weight.

Her head bowed as she fought the pain off. He didn’t catch the words she said, but he got the drift. He ran a soothing hand across her hair, silently giving her time.

“Don’t you dare let the other O’Malleys see this.”

“I won’t.”

They had a little conspiracy forming as they stood there and the other two cars pulled into her driveway behind them. A shift of his body shielded the distress she was in from her family. The ride to her home had been hard; there was no way around that. She had insisted

the doctors release her today, and she was paying for it.

She wouldn’t be walking anywhere very fast, anytime soon. The joist rebar had done more damage than a bullet. Two inches to the left and it would have paralyzed her, two inches higher, killed her outright.

As it was she had suffered through four days in intensive care and four days on the general ward to deal with the trauma, surgery, and massive amount of blood loss. Displaced ribs were slow to heal.

The other O’Malleys saw, but they silently pretended not to.

“Okay. I can make it.”

He kept a firm grip under her forearms as she straightened. Only after he was sure she was steady did he reach back into the car for her things. He handed her the cane she’d been ordered to use for the next few days.

“I am so glad to be home.”

He set her suitcase on the drive. She was trying to close her left hand with its broken index finger around the cane. Watching her cautious movements made him hurt; he shifted the cane to her other hand and moved her injured hand to rest on his forearm. “Let’s get you inside.” One of the others would bring in the suitcase.

“Who’s been taking care of my animals?”

“Kate or I have been by every day.”

All of the O’Malleys with the exception of Jennifer were here, and it had taken a concerted effort from the others to get Jennifer to stay in Baltimore. She had been prepared to be on the first plane out, chemotherapy or not.

Quinn had never met a family more united than this one. The seven of them were related not by blood, but by choice. At the orphanage —Trevor House—they had made the decision to become their own family, had as adults legally changed their last names to O’Malley. Two decades later this group remained incredibly tight.

And they’d made him part of it.

He’d felt the change in the last week. They’d always made him feel

He was under no illusions of why. Lisa’s accident and his part in it Stage one had been direct. Jack had slugged him. A fast right cross

welcome, but it was different now. When it came time to move Lisa home and get her settled, they had passed that assignment to him without even asking.

had hit this family hard. Their group reaction had come in stages. It would have been fascinating to watch if he hadn’t been in the middle of it. As it was, he was simply trying to survive it.

had caught him on the jaw line and come close to rounding what had always been a rather square jaw. Quinn had found himself flat on his back in the hospital parking lot, looking up at the sky, feeling like a truck had hit him. He hadn’t even seen it coming.

Quinn had shaken off the stars to find Stephen, the paramedic in the family, standing over him, yelling at Jack. Quinn had moved to touch his jaw, and Stephen had looked down and given him a blistering order not to move or he would finish what Jack had started. The dynamic duo of brothers had been mad at him for letting Lisa get hurt; they’d just differed on how to most effectively make their point.

Marcus had arrived in the middle of the exchange. The man had flown back from Baltimore and arrived to find his sister still in surgery.

Quinn had stayed on the ground precisely because he was the man’s partner. Marcus was the oldest O’Malley and guardian of the group, and he took Lisa’s welfare personally. Marcus wouldn’t just make his jaw ache, he’d break it. It wouldn’t be the Christian thing for Marcus to do, but it would be the older brother thing to do. Quinn wasn’t willing to find out which would win out.