The man raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow, leaned over the desk, and supported his weight on one hand as he studied the shield. After a second he nodded.
“Of course, Special Agent Merlo,” he said with a perfectly empty smile. “If you could just wait here, I’ll let Mr. Stokes know you’re waiting.”
He stepped out from behind the desk and headed down the hall. Javi sat in one of the low black leather chairs. He tapped absently against the arm as he glanced around. Unlike Sean’s stripped-clean suburban house, his office looked like it had been designed. Black wood and leather hovered carefully between modernism and the gumshoe aesthetic of the movies. Framed photos on the wall chronicled Sean’s qualifications—from the gold-sealed diploma from the police academy to a story cut out of the newspaper, praising Plenty PD for catching a serial rapist.
That tweaked Javi’s interest enough that he got up to try to read it through the glass. He remembered the story. It was one of the last good things the papers had reported on Plenty’s police department. Javi recalled that even Saul, who took the department apart in his investigation, approved of the detectives involved.
But Sean Stokes wasn’t one of the names Javi’s scan picked out of the text.
The mutter of voices in the other room suddenly rose.
“…you son of a bitch!”
Javi turned. One of the office doors slammed open—hard enough that the handle dug a dent into the plaster—and the receptionist stalked out. He passed Javi without a word, grabbed his coat from the rack, and shoved his arms into it aggressively.
“You know what?” he said as he turned toward Javi. “I hope you are here to arrest that prick.”
He slammed the door behind him as he left. Javi glanced back at the wall. The impact had left the framed news story crooked. He put a finger under the corner and straightened it and then headed to the still-ajar door. A nudge from his toe swung it open.
“Sean?”
“Special Agent Merlo,” Sean said. He was perched on the edge of his desk, hands hanging loosely between spread thighs. At least he was dressed, although the unbuttoned cuffs and yanked-loose rag of a tie made him look like he regretted it. “Sorry about that. You just can’t get the staff these days.”
“Your ex?” Javi asked.
“Ha, no,” Sean said. He rubbed his thumb along his clean-shaven jaw where a bruise smeared under the skin like a stain. “My ex would have laid me out. That was… nothing. He’ll be back. You’re not here about my staff, anyhow. You’re here to meet Betsy Murney.”
He jerked his chin to the other side of the room, where a woman who looked like Angelina Jolie playing a wino sprawled on the black leather couch. Betsy was beautiful in a way that cheap makeup, old clothes, and the stench of hard living couldn’t quite hide. Javi would lay money that she’d had occasion to wish it did. She was also snoring like an asthmatic old man and hugging a bottle of cheap whiskey in her arms as though it were a cuddly toy.
“I thought you were sobering her up,” Javi said.
“I was,” Sean said as he pushed himself up straight. He gave his tie another tug, and the knot gave up completely. “Unfortunately I had to step out, and it turns out she’s pretty damn good at picking locks.”
“Wasn’t it the daughter who was an addict?”
“Yeah, well, bottle doesn’t fall from the tree,” Sean said. He levered himself off the desk and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Ask my brother. You want me to put the coffee on?”
“That’s a myth,” Javi said. He went down on one knee next to the bed and carefully pried the bottle out of Betsy’s grip. “It doesn’t actually help sober you up.”
Besides, if Betsy had been boozing long enough and hard enough, she’d be more lucid with some in her system. He passed the bottle back and waited until Sean took the sloshing weight from his hand.
“Ms. Murney.” He took her hand and patted it gently. Her palm was rough against his and cracked and hard from work and weather. “Betsy, I need to talk to you for a minute.”
She stirred and moved abruptly from unconscious slumber to confused but awake and shoved herself back into the cushions. She registered Javi with dark, bloodshot eyes and then flicked them over his shoulder to check out Sean.
“Last time anyone wearing a fancy suit wanted to talk to me,” she said, voice gently slurred around the edges, “I spent three weeks in a church-sponsored rehab listening to how Jesus loved teetotalers.”
“I’m a federal agent,” Javi said. “We’re looking for your daughter.”
Resistance washed visibly over Betsy’s face. It set her mouth like a knife. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s not in trouble, Betsy,” Sean said. It might have been a lie. “We—the police just need to talk to her about something.”
Betsy tucked her chin in and looked down. She picked and rubbed with her thumb at a stain on her shirt. “Can’t help. I ain’t seen her in years.”
Javi let the silence hang just long enough to get uncomfortable. “I don’t suppose this is the life you planned for yourself, Ms. Murney,” he said. Under a lowered shroud of still-thick lashes, she watched him suspiciously. “I assume that this is the result of some very hard choices, so I don’t really want to make your life any more difficult. But I will.”
She pulled a sour face. “Everyone does.”
