The campaign staff sure kepttight reins on Park. “I get the feeling sometimes that you’re not in charge of your own campaign.”
“I feel that way a good deal of the time.”
Jackson stood and started packing up his stuff. He was reluctant to leave, but he’d gotten all of the information he’d come here for. He’d wanted to feel useful, and asking more questions had seemed like a step forward. Waiting for more informationfrom the police just meant that they were in a holding pattern until someone made a move. It felt like playing chicken.
Speaking of playing chicken, Jackson certainly could have done all this by phone and not violated his own rule about meeting in hotel rooms. He realized now what a mistake it was, because he was tempted, lord he was tempted, to just reach over and touch Park. And he knewthat once he did, it would be all over.
“What else did the crime scene report say?” Park asked. “Anything we hadn’t considered yet?”
Jackson looked at his hands and tried to focus again on the case. “Not really. No sign of a break-in. Murder weapon seems to have been a cleaver from the knife block in your kitchen.”
Park winced. “I’ll have to buy new knives, too.”
“The medical examiner’sreport showed there were hesitation wounds. I don’t think whoever did this was a seasoned killer. Probably he went into your kitchen and grabbed the most menacing-looking knife he could find.”
“Those were the knives we got from your aunt Cheryl as a housewarming gift when we moved into the place on Sixty-Eighth Street.”
Jackson’s breath caught. He remembered that knife block. “I forgotyou wound up with those when you moved out.” He sat on the desk chair, close to where Park now sat on the bed.
“They were good knives! And it’s not like you ever cook.”
“I cook sometimes.” But Jackson laughed, because he wasn’t very picky and ate so many meals on the go. Park was the foodie, and he liked messing around in the kitchen, so it made sense that he’d taken most of the cookingsupplies when he left. Jackson had never replaced those knives, because he didn’t cook enough to need them.
“God, remember that housewarming party?” Park asked. “We really thought we’d gotten our first grown-up apartment.”
“Yeah. It wasmostlya grown-up apartment.”
Park had banned posters without frames and anything with nudity because he thought it made the apartment look too muchlike a dorm, so Jackson had picked out a print of a male nude painting and a really nice frame and argued to Park that if it was classy enough to hang in the Met, it was okay for their apartment. Park had allowed it in their bedroom. That print currently hung in Jackson’s living room.
“I remember that guy from your law school class,” Park said. “What was his name? Dill?”
“Dale?”
Parklaughed. “Yeah, Dale. He drank like no one had ever let him have beer before. Remember that?”
“I remember he puked on the rug you’d just bought and you freaked out. Shrieked so loud, I think they heard it on Mars.”
“It was a new rug! I had to get it professionally cleaned.” Park shook his head. “Are you still in touch with him?”
“Sporadically. Last I heard, he’d gone back to schooland is teaching classes at NYU.”
“Oh, you didn’t date him or anything?”
Jackson laughed. Dweeby Dale? The plain guy who rarely ever spoke to Jackson? “No. Dale? No.”
“Oh, because he had such a huge crush on you.”
“Dale? Really? No way.”
“He sure did. Whenever he came to the house, he spent half of his time staring at me like he was waiting for me to make one false move so hecould swoop in there. The rest of the time he looked like he was trying to make laser beams sprout from his eyeballs to kill me with.”
“I had no idea. That’s crazy.”
“I couldn’t blame him.” Park leaned closer to Jackson and raised an eyebrow. “You were really hot. You still are.”
Heat flooded Jackson’s face. “Stop.” It wasn’t so much that he didn’t appreciate the compliment, but itwas an odd thing to hear after all this time. He didn’t want to be charmed by memories, by Park, by the easy way they could still talk to each other. He didn’t need this complication.
Park smiled. “God, I missed you.”
