Silence. His Adam’s apple moved. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly.Bingo.
“What did Jayden come and see you about? He looked a little ... upset.”
Raddison crossed his arms over his chest. “It was personal,” he said quietly.
“Anything to do with the Lexus?”
“Like I said, it was a personal issue.”
“Just as a matter of interest, Mr.Raddison, where wereyouon the night of Tuesday, November twenty-eighth?”
He wavered for the first time. “Look, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but frankly you’re wasting my time. And consequently, the mayor’s. So if you don’t have—”
“What do the initials B.C. stand for?” Angie interjected.
“Excuseme?”
The door to the mayor’s office suddenly opened wide, and Jack Killion himself appeared. “Zach—a moment of your time, please.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Killion glanced at Maddocks, then Angie, then raised his brows at his aide.
“Metro’s finest,” offered Raddison.
The mayor’s gaze narrowed as he measured them in greater detail. “About what?”
“They haven’t told me yet.”
The mayor hesitated, then said to Maddocks and Angie, “We have an inaugural meeting to prepare for, officers. I need my man. If you could speed things up?” He disappeared. The door shut.
Fuckhead,thought Angie, suddenly feeling much more kindly toward Chief Gunnar. If this was the new regime, it spelled trouble.
Raddison pushed off his desk and sauntered toward the door. He extended his arm toward the exit. “If you decide what it is that you wanted, or if you have any further questions, please do feel free to make an appointment with my secretary.”
Angie stood her ground. “B.C.,” she said again. “What do those initials stand for?”
“I have no idea ... Before Christ? British Columbia? Bacon and cheese? One hundred other things?”
She lifted an open matchbook out of the bowl, the one she’d been examining earlier, and held it out to Raddison—a plain white cover with two curlicue letters intertwined—a B and a C.
He stared at it, shoved his hands into his tailored pants pockets and pursed his pretty-boy lips, then shook his head slowly. “Sorry, no idea. People drop business cards in there mostly. Looks like some matchbooks, too. Could have been left by anyone.”
“You a smoker?”
“Occasionally.”
She casually flipped open the matchbook cover to the number she’d seen scrawled on the inside flap. “Who gives out matchbooks these days anyways?” she said, studying the number again.
Anger darkened his face, and he snatched it from her hands. “You want to look at anything more in this office, you better come back with a warrant.”
She looked up into his black eyes. His mouth was tight, neck taut. Raddison, it seemed, was not a young man who appreciated being crossed by a woman. Or maybe by anyone.
“Maybe we will, Zach,” she said softly. “Maybe we will.”
As they exited the building, Angie ducked under an awning out of the rain. She pulled her notebook out of her bag slung across her chest and quickly checked the number Drummond’s mother had given her at Saint Jude’s moments before her daughter had died. “Shit,” she said softly.
“What?” said Maddocks.
