Page 48 of Guilty as Sin
“It’s already booked out.”
“If there’s a cancellation, I’d like the spot. Meanwhile, put me down for next week.” When Lily would be here and Paige wouldn’t, but that was all right, too. The cameras were to catch shoplifters, and right now, that felt like the least of Lily’s worries.
She ended the call, looked absently out the window at those swaying evergreen limbs, and made another call. To Arletta Samuels, the Northern Precinct’s day-shift desk sergeant.
“Hey,” Arletta said, her voice warm. “How you doing?”
“I’m good. Staying at my sister’s in Montana, since the lieutenant says I won’t be coming back for a while.”
“You know they’ve got to go through the whole thing. Her family’s putting pressure on, and you don’t just have Internal Affairs and the Police Commission now. Got the ACLU and everybody else, too. Where were they all when she was getting the shit beat out of her by that scumbag, that’s what I want to know. Her family keeps talking about her kids. Boo-hoo. Should’ve thought about those kids before. Don’t worry. It’s gonna be over. You’re gonna be back.”
“How’s Jasmine doing?” Paige hadn’t seen Pat’s widow at the funeral, because she hadn’t been to the funeral. She’d still been in the hospital. And when she’d gone by the house a few days later, Jasmine’s responses had been as muted as if there’d been a pane of glass between them. When Paige had said, “Call me and tell me what I can do,” Jasmine had turned her head slowly, had looked at her with the dignity of Nefertiti and the unseeing gaze of a statue, and said, “Sure.” And Paige had felt frozen. Shamed.
Guilty.
“Quiet, is how,” Arletta said. “But then, she never was anything else.”
Paige didn’t ask,Does she blame me?Arletta must have heard it in her voice, though, because she said, “Sometimes things just go bad. She’s got to know that by now. You know it, too.”
“I do.” Paige moved on. “Listen, I actually called to ask for a favor.”
“Uh-huh. I can’t go outside channels here. The lieutenant’s on it. You need to wait.”
“No, I know. It’s something else. My sister. She’s getting some weird threats up here. Texts. They’re vague, and I’m not sure what to make of them. She’s under pressure to sell some land. I’m wondering if you could run a phone number for me.”
“This some kind of western land wars thing? Like the cattlemen and the sheepherders?”
Paige laughed. “No. A whole lot more modern.”
“You should go to the cops up there.”
“I know.” Paige didn’t say,But I don’t want them to know I’m impersonating my sister, and I’m afraid they’d sniff it out. I won’t recognize the guy taking the report, and it’ll turn out I exchange goat-cheese recipes with his wife and sold him her Valentine’s Day present. I’ll trip any good cop’s radar, and I’ll get nothing anyway.“But like I said. It’s vague. It could be something else. Could be a shoplifter she kicked out of her store, for that matter. I just want to rule out any real threat, and I’m not sure they’d take it seriously.”
“Cop’s gonna take a cop seriously. You know that.”
Paige waited a second, but couldn’t think of anything to say, so she finally just said, “Could you run it? Actually,” she decided, “two numbers.”
Arletta sighed and said, “Sure. Give them to me.”
Paige read out the one on her cell phone, and then the one on Jace’s, which she’d written down after he’d left yesterday. She was sure he’d handed it over to the cops, but from the sound of it, the Red Thong Stalker wasn’t the Sinful Police Department’s most urgent priority. Even though the story was seriously hinky, the local delivery was more so, and there’d been too much intensity in Jace’s reaction for anything else. If it seemed seriously off to somebody like him, itwasseriously off. How could a cop—a sergeant to boot—not have seen that?
“OK,” Arletta said. “Be back to you when I’ve got something. Could take a while.”
“Thanks.”
Nine-thirty now. She had a day, and she didn’t have enough to do with it. The grocery store would use up half an hour, and the gym wasn’t an option. Like it or not, her leg needed rest.
Check for those hidden cameras,her restless mind offered up.Those pictures of Jace’s.Who are those of?The woman in the first two had been young, and she’d had a curvy body. Could she be Lily? Or even a customer? Time for some high-tech detective work. In other words, time to Google it.
Fifteen minutes later, she knew how she’d be spending part of her day. Driving into Kalispell and buying an electronics detector, then coming back and using it. Simple enough.
At this minute, though? She was right there at Lily’s computer anyway. She Googled Jason Black.
His author website came up first. A head shot, Jace’s face and chest against a background of rusted corrugated iron. Tough-guy setting, like he was about to take down an undercover drug ring. Strong chest, folded arms. Plenty of lean, defined muscle showing in a black T-shirt, and the business end of the dagger tattoo clearly visible.
I was a killer.
Black hair, shorter variety. No beard this time. Blue eyes looking straight into you. A face made up of angles and planes, not quite handsome and all the way hard. A face it was impossible not to stare at.
