Javi didn’t like games, especially when he thought Cloister and he had already agreed on the rules. Kincaid liked to do that, to move the goalposts when you weren’t looking and see what happened.
Javier. Trust me, Javier.
But a small clear voice noted through Javi’s temper that Cloister was so straightforward you could use him as a ruler. Even his emotional issues were out in the world for anyone to see, along with a battered Airstream trailer and a pile of missing person cases. As for the martyr bit? That wasn’t like him either. Cloister ate his pain. It was gone before you could even apologize.
He’d still been an asshole, but it wasn’t a game.
That didn’t help Javi shake off his sour mood. It just made him realize he might know who he was angry at, but he wasn’t sure why.
Javi pulled a sour face and paid for his coffee with a swipe of his thumb. Once the transaction was done, he shoved his phone into his pocket and his temper into the back of his mind. Cloister could wait. Javi had—at least until Joel got there—a job to do.
THE LABhad punched a hole of the corner of the business card. It made it look like an old-fashioned loyalty card—ten court trials, and you got a free billable hour. A bargain if you asked anyone who ever had to retain a lawyer.
“Andrew Macintosh,” Javi said as he finished his coffee. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“You’ve never heard of Mac the Knife?” Frome sounded almost giddy.
“The song?” Cloister asked.
Javi gave him a sharp look. “I doubt the lieutenant is planning a sing-along,” he said.
Frome snorted and leaned back in his chair. The door to the office was shut, and once Frome saw the card, he closed the curtains as well. “No, but Mac was a shark, all right,” he said. “If someone hired Andrew Macintosh to represent him, then you knew they were probably guilty as sin.”
Javi flipped the evidence bag over and squinted at the back of the card. The contact details had been scrawled out, but he could make out the shape of the letters below.
“Yet he was based in Plenty?” he asked skeptically. “In Delacourt.”
Frome snorted and held up two fingers. “Delacourt was a lot nicer back then, and Mac owned half of it,” he said as he folded down one finger. “And Plenty was a lot worse. I only met him once. I was a rookie deputy, and my partner and I had pulled over this driver who, it turned out, had a dead body in the trunk of his car. My partner got shot during the arrest, got put on desk duty after that until he quit. He just couldn’t hack it on the streets. Trial comes around, and Mac takes the legs out from under us. His client had just borrowed the car, had PTSD from an unreported carjacking that his therapist backed up with some very freshly printed files, and this little guy with a wife in the hospital came forward to admit he committed the murder. The driver got off with careless discharge of a firearm, the little guy got jail time, and some generous soul paid off the wife’s bills. Back then Plenty suited Mac.”
“So what happened?” Cloister asked. “Did he get scooped up when the police department got cleaned out?”
“No.” Frome frowned for the first time. He stretched over the desk to pick up the card and pursed his lips as he studied the folded edges and the fade pattern. It had obviously been in someone’s wallet for a while. After a pause he laid it down on the table. “He murdered his family.”
Javi raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That would explain why he doesn’t practice anymore.”
“Well,hadsomeone murder his family. It was over a decade ago. I wasn’t involved in the investigation at the time, but everyone that Macintosh had screwed over followed what happened. He tried to make it look like someone with a grudge had killed his wife and sons, but it turned out that it is a lot harder to manipulate people’s perceptions in the real world than it is in a courtroom. People suspected that he was involved right from the beginning, even before it broke that they weren’t such a happy family. His wife had talked to a divorce lawyer the year before. And she was his second wife. Macintosh had already gone through that once. It went to court, but Macintosh still had the friends—and money—so it didn’t stick. He didn’t even bother to mount a defense, no excuses or alibis, just sat and waited for the jury to return a hung verdict. Everyone knew he’d done it, though, even that woman whose ‘innocent’ he’d bought on the jury, and the guilt even got tohimeventually. He started to lose cases, get drunk, and eventually he just disappeared. Mac the Knife was long gone by the time the sheriff’s department took over here.”
“So why would a down-on-her-luck wannabe designer from New York have his card?” Cloister asked. He paused. It might not have been pointed. “Or maybe Stokes’s card.”
It probably wasn’t a jab. Even Cloister’s fake-out birthday date was a blunt instrument compared to what Javi would have pulled. It was just the wrong day to bring up Stokes’s name.
“Maybe she wanted to tail someone,” Javi said coolly. “Or she collects old business cards. At this point, speculation is pointless. Until we know more, Janet could have had that card for any reason.”
Frome gave Cloister a warning look, his hand partially raised in a “stay calm” gesture. In the corner of his eye, Javi saw the hitch of broad shoulders as Cloister shrugged. There were times Javi suspected his desire to keep his private life exactly that was helped by the fact that Frome thought he didn’t like Cloister much. It would actually have been easier to stay civil if that were true. People Javi didn’t like didn’t get under his skin. They especially didn’t get under his skin without him knowing why.
“I suggest we hold off on theories,” Javi said as though he hadn’t noticed the exchange. “Until we’ve had a chance to talk to Stokes. He might be able to help shed some light on what Morrow wanted, and maybe who she is. I’ll get in touch with him, set up an interview.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Frome said. He stood up, put his jacket on, and tugged it straight over his gun. “I’m going to get lunch and a coffee. Deputy Witte, since you apparently feel you don’t need to recuperate, you can help SSA Merlo with any research he needs to do. It might keep you out of trouble.”
Or, Javi thought dryly as they followed the lieutenant out of the office, Frome was perfectly aware of their—call it involvement, for lack of a better word—and just liked to watch them squirm.
MRS. CRISTINALopez wasn’t happy.
She was also probably only a decade older than Javi, which made him wonder how close to middle-aged Tancredi would call him.
“I am thevictimof acrime,” Mrs. Lopez said, the stress laid onto the words as though she thought the deputy on desk duty might misunderstand them. She slapped her hands on the counter. “I came down here tocollectmycar,and now I’m beingheldagainst mywill.Idemandto speak to someone incharge.”
The deputy had the weary look of someone who had heard this rant more than once.
