Authors: Toni Anderson
“
Her
I can rule out.” His smile was as thin as a blade. Nobody touched Susie, not even his boss. “She was with me on Saturday night.”
Nick held the supe’s gaze and let her think they were up to fun and games even then. “I borrowed her car to drive to the murder scene.” And please God don’t let the murder weapon and Tracy’s bag have been put in the boot when he was doing his B&E, because it was bad enough they were going to find traces of the dead woman’s blood in the driver’s footwell.
The look the supe gave him was both disapproving and sympathetic. The former he ignored, the latter pissed him off. Pam had been married to the same bloke for twenty years and she thought all single men were dogs when it came to getting some action. She was mostly right. But he hadn’t felt this good after sex in years and that scared the hell out of him.
“I can’t let you take the lead on this anymore, Nick.”
His head snapped up.
“What?”
She stood, moved to the small sash-window that overlooked North Street. “You’re too involved.”
“You have got to be shitting me.” But her expression was serious. “So what? You’re going to give it to Ewan?” Who was a damn fine copper but treading a thin line while trying to cope with his wife’s illness. Her eyes flickered. “Oh, no. You are
not
calling in someone from outside.” He launched himself out of his chair, disgust burning through him as he paced the few square yards of his office. “It took
how
many years to get detectives into this nick and as soon as we have our first real case, you call for outside assistance?”
Her lips thinned, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“You do that and the next time there’s a budget cut—which is every fucking fiscal quarter—me and Ewan will both get transferred to Cupar or Glenrothes and you’ll be left swinging in the breeze, begging for CID help every time some drug dealer turns up in town or some student gets robbed.”
“You are not impartial.” Her jaw clenched and unclenched. “You
hate
Jake Sizemore, and I don’t blame you.” Those hazel eyes locked on him. “This is a perfect chance to get revenge.”
“Jesus, Pam—” his heart pounded and his shirt stuck to his back, “—I’m a better cop than that. I’m the most experienced homicide detective north of the border.”
She smiled, but it was like the cracking of an ice sheet. “We all know you have the greatest homicide expertise in this constabulary, D.I. Archer, and we also know you can take your pick of assignments. But your judgment is clouded and it could affect the prosecution’s case in this murder inquiry.”
“I’ve run this investigation by the book.” He shoved a hand through his hair then held her stare. “If I’d wanted revenge that bastard would have disappeared years ago and no one would have had a fucking clue.”
She inclined her head, but didn’t relent.
Smiling because he was damned if he’d let his boss know just how much she’d got to him, he sat down and leaned back in his chair and turned back to his email. “Whatever you say, Pam. I’m sure I can find other stuff to keep me busy. I hear Tesco had a shoplifter yesterday, maybe I’ll go watch the surveillance tapes. Stake out the joint.”
She drew an audible breath, then stalked out, her footsteps pounding the hallway like jackboots.
How the hell had she managed to get the drop on him in the first place? Pissed, Nick lifted the handset to call the lab, but saw a file already downloading to his PC so he replaced the receiver and opened the attachment and let it run. Like hell he was handing over this case.
At first he couldn’t hear anything so he turned up the speakers to full volume. A crackle. The sound of scrabbling, rustling material and deep breathing reverberated around the room.
“Let me get the condom.” It was a raw whisper.
That
was Jake Sizemore. Nick sat up straight in his swivel chair, eyes focused on the screen.
“Not yet.”
Was that Tracy Good? There was the sound of a zip. A groan, a strangled “Is the door locked?” A giggle, a bang. “Oh Jesus. Oh God, yes.”
The sounds of a man being blown were not hard to decipher. Thumps and bumps like furniture being knocked and the clatter of what sounded like a pencil falling to the floor.
“What do you want, Jake?” a female voice asked with a giggle. Nick leaned closer to the monitor as if that would improve his hearing. He heard the supe’s footsteps backtracking down the corridor toward his office. He held back a smile as she poked her head through the door.
“Jesus, Jesus! Ow!” The sound of clothing rustling and sudden silence, except for harsh breathing. Then. “You have the most amazing tits.” Sounds of sucking. Little female moans of pleasure.
“Tell me what you want, Jake,” the woman purred. Nick visualized her. Tracy, assuming it was Tracy, holding back on the main prize for the dirty old bastard.
Jake’s voice cracked and he sounded as if he was gripping tight to something or someone. “I want
you
, Tracy. I want to have you every way I know and then I want to fuck you all over again.”
Nick’s stomach twisted. Had Jake used those same words on Chrissie? Had she panted and cried out like that when the bastard had mauled her? Betrayal tasted like bile and made his stomach heave.
“And what will you give me if I let you?”
Nick sat up straighter and swapped a look with Pamela whose eyes had narrowed to pinpricks of concentration. Had Tracy been blackmailing her boss?
The sounds of wet lips sucking flesh followed, but Nick knew Tracy still had her knees pinned together because she hadn’t gotten what she wanted. Yet.
“Anything.” Jake’s voice was rougher, rising higher, breaking, desperate and out of control. “A job, references, a vacation, whatever the hell you want.”
“A job first.” The sound of material rustling was greeted by thick silence. There was another thud, like someone jumping up onto a table. Nick could visualize her long naked legs swinging, knees spread on the narrow worktop of her tiny office. Silence for a second. Another groan. Probably Sizemore popping a vein. Then Tracy again. “And the best fucking reference you’ve ever written.”
There was a harsh gasp as flesh met flesh, Sizemore whispering dirty promises while Tracy made funny little sounds. Nick was trying hard not to think about Susie while listening to this. Hard for the animal inside not to get turned on by the sounds of sex even though the cop wondered if this act had led to Tracy Good’s death.
Tracy started to scream as she came, the noise quickly muted as if Sizemore put his hand over her mouth. Nick hadn’t tried to quiet Susie, whose scream still echoed around his head and whose scent still clung to his skin. But then they hadn’t been committing adultery or moral turpitude.
More grunts. Then repetitive banging as if they didn’t care about the noise anymore. Harsh breaths until finally the last one tore from Sizemore’s throat like a snarl.
“I’ll give you the best fucking reference in the world.”
Then Sizemore started laughing; both of them giggled like children and the sound crawled up Nick’s spine like a tarantula.
He turned his head to look at his boss, raised one brow in question.
“The dirty bastard.” A look of disgust twisted the supe’s features. “Fine. Bring him in, but one mistake, Nick…” She pointed a finger at him and he read his boss’s expression as clearly as blood-red ink on starch paper.
Fuck this up and you’re out.
Susie woke to the relentless sound of the telephone ringing. She sat up, rubbed the grit from her eyes, holding the sheet across her breasts as she realized she was naked. Then she remembered exactly what was missing from this morning’s equation.
She grabbed the phone.
Maybe it was Nick?
“Hello?”
“Susie, darling.” Her mother’s voice was shrill along thousands of miles of fiber optics. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for
days
. Why didn’t you return my calls? I know you’re upset with me, but I’ve been worried.”
Susie huffed out a breath and pulled a pillow behind her so she could rest against the headboard. It wasn’t Nick calling to whisper good-morning and, yes, that had been the best sex ever.
“Sorry, Mom, I’ve been busy.”
“Oh, please!” the senator scoffed. “You think I don’t recognize that lame excuse? I use it every day.”
Payback’s a bitch
.
Susie rubbed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut. She was being uncharitable and despite everything that had happened in the past, she loved her mother.
“Really, Mom, I have been busy, and then there was a murder just outside the lab and last night my neighbor was taken ill.”
“Murder?” Darcy’s voice dropped to serious. “I thought Scotland was safe.”
“It is.” Susie could kick herself. Whatever their disagreements, no matter her age, her mother still took the overprotective view of parenting. “Some poor girl was killed on the beach in front of the marine lab. It was the first murder in this town for ten years, can you imagine if Washington were this safe?”
“I’m sending a bodyguard,” said Darcy.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” There was no way Susie would tolerate being shadowed 24/7. “I’m not having some stranger making my life more complicated than it already is, the press is bad enough.”
“This is something we need to discuss, Susie—”
“No. It isn’t.” No way her mother was getting her own way on this. Between Darcy and Nick she was being suffocated with good intent and look where that had gotten her. And suddenly her mother’s meaning registered. “Even if you become president of the free world, I am
not
having a bodyguard.” Dismay filled her as the implications of her mother’s political ambition hit home like rubber bullets.
“You might not get a choice,” Darcy told her. “The United States takes the security of its leaders very seriously.”
What about Susie’s son? Darcy’s secret grandchild? Would he get a bodyguard? Susie dropped the sheet and jumped out of bed, needing to be dressed for this conversation. There was a knock on the front door as Susie dipped into her lingerie drawer.
She stilled, frowning. “Mom, I have to go, I’ll call you later.”
“You haven’t got a man there have you?” The inflection edged toward sophisticated amusement that made Susie’s teeth grind.
Ignoring her mother, she peeked out of her bedroom window and saw a short, chubby, mustached guy in a flat-cap, wielding a toolbox the size of her car. She wiggled into her underwear and snagged a pair of Levi’s out of another drawer.
“Mom, it just so happens I do have a man here and for all I know he could be the father of all those grandchildren you want for your campaign ads.” Bitterness surged inside her because her other child hadn’t been good enough. “I’ll call you later.”
Susie hung up, tapped on the glass, hiding her nakedness behind the drapes. “I’ll be right out,” she called.
It was a guy from the alarm company. Nick had no reason to come back for an encore. He didn’t do long term, she reminded herself. He didn’t even do the morning after. She should be grateful he was just a one-night stand, but instead she was pissed. Men like Nick Archer might fulfill her sexual fantasies, but they’d never help heal her heart.
“I couldn’t get parked outside and I only put one of those parking vouchers on my car and I’m
not
paying a fine so this had better be quick.” Sizemore’s square chin jutted and his chest puffed out with belligerence as the desk-sergeant let him through to the back of the police station.
Nick flicked a glance at P.C. Lewis, who was back on dayshift. She picked up her cue. “If you give me your keys, Professor, I’ll bring your car around to the back of the station.” She gave Sizemore a quiet smile as if she were embarrassed on his behalf. “Just between us, sir, I think the parking system in this town sucks.”
Jake’s hostility dropped a notch as he absorbed the feminine charms of P.C. Lewis.
“Yeah, it does. Thanks.” He handed over his keys. “It’s a dark blue Toyota sedan parked outside Luvian’s ice cream shop.”
Lewis left without a word, but she’d already achieved what he wanted.
Sizemore’s eyes latched onto Nick, who sat quietly in the corner keeping his mouth shut. He had professional training in interview and interrogation techniques, Scientific Content Analysis, nonverbal clues and neurolinguistics. He knew how to get results and he knew how to read liars. But the first hurdle was always to get a suspect talking, to develop a rapport. With Sizemore, Nick had more chance of catching rabies.
“And I don’t want that SOB anywhere near me.” Sizemore pointed in Nick’s direction.
Nick kept his expression sullen, but he’d planned this to the last detail. Adrenaline raced through his veins and heightened his senses, but he forced his breathing to remain calm and steady. He didn’t believe in coincidence. One supervisor, two dead girls. The odds were stacking up against Sizemore, and Nick intended to be the one brandishing the handcuffs when the fucker went down.
This was what he’d been working toward for twelve interminable years. This was why he’d joined the police force in the first place.
Ewan did his thing. “I’ll be conducting the interview, sir. Not to worry.” He flicked an ashamed-to-be-associated glance in Nick’s direction. Nick had already put together a personal history folder on Jakey-boy. And an outline of questions he wanted asked. Ewan was a natural. Getting Sizemore a coffee, a biscuit, being courteous and kind. People trusted that bumbling demeanor, not realizing the copper behind it was as sharp as a diamond tack.
His boss entered the office.
“Nice to meet you, Professor.” Her accent was soft as her cheeks. She held out her hand to shake Sizemore’s as if he was a visiting dignitary, not a murder suspect.
They all wanted this bastard. Nick could almost scent the excitement of hunters seeking prey. Maybe they were overdoing it, but no, Sizemore was lapping it up, his shoulders relaxing, taking deeper breaths into his barrel chest.
“I’m afraid D.I. Archer has to sit in on the chat as he’s the senior officer assigned to the case, but rest assured he knows his boundaries. We need to make sure everything is above board. You understand, of course?” The supe smiled so benignly, Nick half believed her himself.
Sizemore’s eyes flashed in his direction, more confident. Assessing. Potentially cruel.
How cruel?
The supe tapped Sizemore’s elbow in a consolatory move. “Be assured D.S. McKnight will be running the show.”
She shook the guy’s hand again before she left. Mother Teresa saving the world, a hardnosed cop who hadn’t got to the top by being a fairy godmother to criminals.
“Right then.” Ewan took a deep breath. “Shall we go through?”
“Yes, let’s get this over with.” Sizemore was relaxed and in control now as he followed Ewan through the door. Nick gave them a moment to get settled, enough time for Sizemore to waive the right to a lawyer before they had their chat.
Nick walked through the booking office with its tall filing cabinets, barrage of forms and box-files all neatly sorted and stacked. The interview room was marked by a laminated A4 sheet of paper taped to the cherry veneer. Sizemore sat on the far side of the table. He’d removed his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt collar. Ewan was just sitting down after turning on the recording equipment.
“Let the record show D.I. Archer entered the room,” Ewan clarified for the tape, a paragon of protocol.
Nick pulled a chair to the corner of the room, as close as he could get to the door. He looked up out of the barred windows with a bored expression on his face. If he had his way, Sizemore would see bars for a long time. He clamped down on the hate and concentrated on the job.
Ewan looked at his notes. “Professor Sizemore. Do you mind if I call you Jake?”
Jake eased back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.”
“Jake, do you know why I’ve asked to talk to you today?”
“Frankly, I have no idea. I’ve already answered all your questions and I’m a very busy man.”
“I understand, sir, and I appreciate you coming in.” Ewan was even better than Nick had expected. “Who do
you
think may have committed this crime?”
Sizemore shifted in his chair, leaned forward and back, finally staring up and out the window at the diffuse afternoon sunlight. “No idea.”
“Tell me why you wouldn’t have done something like this.”
Sizemore’s nostrils flared as he glared at Ewan. “I’m the goddamned head of department at one of the top universities in the world! I’m not capable of doing that to someone. I have a solid reputation, a wife and children.” He blinked rapidly and glanced at Nick, who remained impassive.
So far Jake was showing all the signs of being a big, fat liar.
“How do you think the results of this investigation will come out for you?”
Sizemore sneered at Nick, his top lip curled. “If it were up to Detective Delusional over there I’d be beaten black and bloody, and locked up ’til I’m dead.”
Nick repressed a smile. He could hope, right?
Ewan gave a disappointed little shake of his head and shot him a look. Nick raised an eyebrow, but remained silent. Three years undercover and four years homicide were paying off big time in this little room as he watched Sizemore sign his own confession. He was not going to screw up putting this bastard’s ass in jail.
“Would you take a polygraph?” Ewan asked.
“About the murder?” Jake hedged.
Ewan pressed his lips together. “Yes, about the murder, what else would I be talking about?”
Sizemore’s eyes slid away. Cleverly he hadn’t answered the question. But Ewan moved on. Nick had coached him on the importance of getting Jake to relax, to get the guy to think he was in control, that he could walk away any time he wanted.
“Can you tell me what sort of girl Tracy Good was?”
Jake stared at the carpet, closed his eyes for a moment as if remembering. When he opened them they were clear and focused. “She was an excellent student.” His eyes moved up and to the left. The neurolinguistic indication he was telling the truth, assuming the man was right handed.
Ewan must have read Nick’s mind because he passed over a piece of paper and a pen. “Do you think you could write down a few key words to describe her for us?”
“What is this, some kind of remedial psychology test?” Jake picked up the pen with his right hand, staring suspiciously at Ewan and Nick.
Ewan chuckled. “Something like that. You don’t have to write anything if you don’t want to.”
Sizemore jotted a few words and sat back, passed the paper back to Ewan who studied it carefully. Nick wondered what Jake had written, but for now it was irrelevant.
Ewan continued in his soothing voice, the soft Scottish burr calming even Nick’s coiled tension. “Did you have a sexual relationship with Tracy Good?”
Jake’s eyes flicked high right and he touched his nose.
Liar, liar pants on fire
. “How can you even think I’m capable of sleeping with a student? I was raised to be a God-fearing Christian.”
So was Nick. He suppressed a grin that felt sharper than broken glass.
Jake hadn’t answered that question either. He swept a hand through greasy-looking hair before he leaned back in his chair, brows lowered, lips tight.
“I need an answer for the tape, sir,” Ewan repeated.
“I just gave you a goddamned answer! I swear on my mother’s grave I never touched her!” His eyes flicked up and right and once more he touched his itchy nose, confirming what they already knew. Whatever lies came out of Jake Sizemore’s mouth, he had been screwing Tracy Good.
Ewan picked up his notes. “She was a good-looking lassie. Gossip in the Gatty suggests she was a bit of a goer.” Ewan gave him a subdued version of a male smirk. “Did she ever make advances on you?”
Sizemore shifted his weight from one buttock to the other. “Well, yes, actually she did, but I didn’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
Rage boomed inside Nick’s head, sending pain through his skull.
“This is a murder investigation, Jake,” Ewan reminded him. “We need the truth, no matter how potentially embarrassing.”
“I didn’t touch her.” Sizemore’s voice rose, his fingers rapidly kneading his trouser leg.
Ewan frowned and kept his voice moderate. “Then how do you explain this?” He opened up a laptop on the desk and clicked on a file. The sound of sex filled the air.
Sizemore’s countenance remained indifferent until his voice came over the speakers, and then his mouth gaped.
“Tell me what you want, Jake.”
“I want you, Tracy. I want to have you every way I know and then I want to fuck you all over again.”
The blood drained from his face. He hadn’t known about the tape. Maybe that’s why he’d been happy to dispose of the murder weapon and Tracy’s bag inside Susie’s car.
“Was there an argument?” Ewan pulled out a photograph of the crime scene. Tracy’s matted hair, dark crusted with crimson, her smashed skull against a backdrop of blood-soaked sand. “You lied about a sexual relationship. Did you kill her as well?”
Jake swallowed forcibly.
“Did you kill Tracy?” Nick echoed Ewan’s question.
Jake’s eyes swung toward him, wide, trapped.
“Did you kill Tracy Good?” Louder. Meaner. Nick wanted to force the confession from the bastard’s lips.
“No! No, I didn’t kill her. I did not kill Tracy!” And Jake’s eyes flickered left, like an innocent.
No, no, no, no, no!
Nick’s breath constricted in his throat, his heart beating furiously as the pressure in his veins rose. He could feel Sizemore slipping away from the noose he’d crafted for his neck. He left the room as Ewan finished the interview.
Nick shoved out the door into the walled-off car park at the back of the station and his failures rose up inside him like a flood—and he was drowning. He leaned against the wall, the rough brick scraping his fingers. Desperate to catch a breath, he tried to slow the pounding of his heart and quiet the ugliness that surged through his blood. If he believed his own so-called expertise, Jake Sizemore was only guilty of adultery.
He booted the wall and a bone snapped. Then he did it again.
Half an hour later Nick stood on his balcony overlooking the harbor. Gulls marauded through the sky looking for easy prey. The sun glared fiercely off the water and made his eyes hurt.
“Did you ever think…maybe…she just died?” Ewan’s voice was low. Somber. He was talking about Chrissie, of course, not Tracy.
Nick glanced at his colleague, noted the lines of strain around Ewan’s mouth, and the gray hairs that outnumbered the brown. Jake had finally admitted to a sexual relationship with Tracy Good, but there was still no evidence he’d killed her. Nick wished he could just sink his blade into Jake’s heart, twisting as he pushed the hilt home. It would be simpler. Quicker. The man was guilty, but Nick might never be able to prove it.
But twelve years ago when he’d joined the force, he’d sworn an oath to uphold the law. It wasn’t just about personal vengeance; he’d needed to believe in something positive otherwise he’d have ended up as useless and depraved as his junky whore of a mother. He’d always wanted to bring down Sizemore in the most public and humiliating way possible. Showing him for the lying, cheating piece of shit he really was.
“It would be easier if I just let it go, wouldn’t it?” But Chrissie hadn’t just died. She’d been killed by a combination of Nick’s pride and Sizemore’s lust. Nick gripped the rail. “She was too safety conscious to go diving on her own, especially in shark-infested waters.” The usual rage that accompanied thoughts of Chrissie’s death felt as cold as the mortuary. “Someone got her out to sea, maybe drugged her, probably made her bleed and then tossed her into the water.”
Had she tried to swim for it, knowing she was attracting the deadliest predators in the ocean? Or had she been unconscious and unaware, unable to help herself? The thought of her suffering made his intestines twist. “Would you let it go, if it was Amy?”
Ewan stared silently at the water for a long time before he shook his head. “So who’s the prime suspect for Tracy Good now?” He sipped his coffee. “The wife?”
“We definitely need to talk to her,” said Nick. Judy was a miserable human being, but he didn’t figure her for a killer. He frowned. “Why would you stay with someone when you knew they were going to leave you for someone else?”
Neither spoke for a moment, then Ewan slanted him a guarded look. “Were you going to divorce Chrissie?”
Nick didn’t want to answer that question. He’d been raised in an environment that considered divorce more grotesque than murder. If marriage to Chrissie had been a test of faith, he had failed in every possible way.
“Yes,” he finally admitted. “I was going to divorce her.” The infidelity still stung, mixed with the overriding sense of guilt that had shaped his life ever since she’d died. That they’d loved each other so passionately and she’d turned from him so easily. And that he’d let her.
An image of Susie popped into his mind.
He’d been with hundreds of women since Chrissie died. Why did Susie Cooper have to be the one he couldn’t stop thinking about? He looked out to sea and knew he’d hurt her already and would do so again. But he could no more resist that temptation than he could walk on water.
Ewan slurped his coffee, reminding Nick there were all sorts of tragedy.