Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (13 page)

He was younger for one thing, maybe in his mid-forties, and had dark auburn hair that was slightly curly. He also had some of the clearest, bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I found myself wondering about his ancestry as I scanned his face and hair, figuring him for another American mutt given his name and the mix of Mediterranean and Northern European features. He wore a rumpled tan suit that was probably about right for Los Angeles but would be pretty thin for up here, especially at night.

I hoped he’d brought an overcoat.

When I looked away from him, I saw Black staring at me, his expression cold.

I fought not to roll my eyes at him and he looked away, clenching his jaw before he folded his arms over his chest.

When I glanced at Angel, she was looking between me and Black, a bemused look on her face. I found myself thinking she’d been oddly reassured by the fact that both me and Black were still being slightly ridiculous about other people. Hopefully, it would also make her realize it wasn’t personal––specifically the part about me doing that to her.

As I thought it, I found myself pulling the pad of paper I’d brought out of my back jeans pocket. It was the same pad Black used to draw that symbol in black ink in the other room. Flipping to a clean page, I scribbled on an unmarked set of lines.

Did Nick talk to you?
I wrote, sliding it over to her.

Her eyes grew puzzled. She shook her head.

I wrote a second note, then slid that over to her too.

Drinks tonight? I’m buying. And not the cheap stuff.

Her eyes scanned the print, then she grinned, glancing at me right before she nodded. “I’m in,” she said. “You have a place in mind?”

“You pick,” I told her. Hesitating, I wrote a third note.
I’m sorry about earlier. Really sorry. I was an asshole.

I watched her eyes puzzle over that, then relax all at once. When she looked up that time, her expression looked relieved. She nodded again.

“I’ll get dinner,” she said.

I shook my head. “No way.”

Angel laughed. Nick glanced over, quirking an eyebrow at both of us. Black glanced between me and Angel too, but his expression was unreadable now.

That’s right about when Mozar started talking.

“I’m Andrew Mozar,” he said. “D-IV, out of L.A., Rampart Division, as most of you know, and my department’s been overseeing the Templar case down there. I don’t want to waste a lot of time here, to be honest,” he said, glancing around the table with those sky-blue eyes. “I’m not sure there’s much to talk about until we know for sure if the cases are connected. I’d really like to head to the scene if we can... and maybe talk on the way. I’m assuming the area’s still being protected?”

Everyone looked at Nick, including me.

I couldn’t help frowning a little, glancing at Hawking. No one had introduced him. Not even Hawking himself. He also hadn’t spoken.

I saw Nick glance at him too, frown a little, then let it go. He glanced around at the rest of us before he frowning faintly at Mozar. “Squints are still going over the scene,” he said. “CI was still down there too, last I knew.”

Mozar nodded, unsmiling. “Great. I’d like to talk to them, too. Maybe we can go over background and the rest of it on the way?” He glanced at his watch, then around the table, again pausing on me for a beat longer than the others. “...Is everyone here who needs to be here?”

Again, he didn’t even glance at Hawking.

I saw Hawking glance at me. His expression didn’t move.

Turning back to Mozar, I found him looking at me too. Seconds later, I found myself reading him, almost without knowing I meant to do it.

...definitely not a cop,
I heard him thinking.
Must be one of the consultants Tanaka mentioned. Something about her... can’t put my finger on it. Why does she keep looking at Hawking?
I felt a pulse of jealousy on him. Then desire, unmistakeable.
Fuck, snap out of it... she can see you staring at her, for crying out loud...

I withdrew at once, feeling my face warm.

That time, when I glanced at Black, he scowled.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d decided to sample some of Mozar’s thoughts. I admit, I was startled at what I’d found in that brief glimpse. When I looked at Mozar, his face was as calm as an ocean lake. Calm enough that I found myself wondering if I’d been reading the right person. Apart from the slightly lingering stare, I saw zero indication that he had any interest in me whatsoever.

The only person around the table who looked calmer was Hawking.

I glanced at him again, trying to decide if I should try reading him too. Seeing that flat-eyed stare trained on me, I decided not to push my luck. He was definitely the beta of the two anyway. Even so, in some ways, Mozar wore more of a mask than Hawking, who suddenly struck me as probably more likely to be ex-military than a jock.

I’d known military guys who were quiet in that way.

Whatever the deal was with Mozar and his quiet partner, both of them were good at masking their emotions. A hell of a lot better than most people were.

It made me think maybe it would be easy to underestimate them.

“Do we need to go around the room first?” Nick was saying when I was listening again. When I looked at him, I saw annoyance in his expression too, and had to fight to keep from rolling my eyes at him as well. “...Or do you want to do that on the way, as well?”

I heard the bite of sarcasm there. I wondered if anyone else did.

Nick had his masks, too.

“On the way,” Mozar said, closing the leather-bound notebook in front of him as he rose to his feet. “...I think better when I’m in motion.”

Hawking followed him without a word.

It didn’t occur to me until I got up to follow that Hawking hadn’t spoken a single word the whole time we were in that room.

HAWKING DIDN’T TALK in the car, either.

I rode down to the crime scene with Nick, Glen, Mozar and Hawking.

Nick and Glen rode up front. Mozar and Hawking sat in the back with me, one on either side, which made sense given that I was the smallest of the three of us but still felt weirdly calculated. Angel and Estevez must have taken their own lot car, and Black disappeared, which made me wonder if he was coming with us at all.

The fact that I couldn’t feel him, for the first time in weeks––maybe since I’d found him in Paris––and that he didn’t say a word to me before he walked out, didn’t exactly help my calm. Having to field stares from Mozar where he sat next to me in the back of Nick’s unmarked city car didn’t help much, either.

I didn’t reach out with my mind, though. I ignored Hawking with my mind too, although that was less of an issue since he spent the whole drive staring straight ahead, as if trying to bore a hole through the back of Glen’s skull as he drove, using only his eyes.

Generally speaking, I only used my psychic ability for information I thought might be useful for work or in a personal safety capacity. Given the frequency of Mozar’s looks and what I’d felt on him earlier, I wasn’t thinking most of his glances were work-related.

Besides, even if I couldn’t feel Black, I didn’t fully trust he couldn’t feel me.

“You’re a psychiatrist?” Mozar asked finally, still watching my face.

I took a sip of coffee, not looking over.

Weirdly, I could feel Hawking listening for the answer, too.

Maybe they really were a tag team.

Mozar as distraction, while Hawking played invisible.

“Psychologist,” I said. “Clinical and research, mostly.”

“And what’s your connection to this case, exactly?” Mozar said. I could feel the interest on him, even without reading him, even as I tried to sidestep it. “Are you a profiler, Ms. Fox? Or should I call you Miriam?”

“Either is fine,” I said, keeping my voice indifferent. I gave him a bare glance. “And yes. I generally help Nick out with profiling. Especially in cases where motive is unclear, or has more of a psychological rather than a material basis.”

Mozar continued to watch me for a few seconds.

“We had a profile worked up on the Templar killer in Los Angeles,” he said then. “Maybe you’d like to see it? I have a copy with me.”

I gave him another brief look, only to find those blue eyes fixed on my hands. I didn’t read him that time either, but I definitely got the impression he’d been looking for a wedding ring.

“I thought you wanted to wait on that,” I said, my voice still more clipped than usual. I was doc-speaking him, but I still felt weirdly trapped between the two men. I hated that I did it, but I squirmed slightly in my seat. “...Didn’t you say you wanted to wait until we’d verified some kind of connection before we dug into the details of your case?”

“Professional interest,” he said. He smiled when I glanced up, and I got the impression he’d noticed my squirming. Instead of reading it as me feeling uncomfortable, he seemed to choose to take it a different way. “I thought you might want to see it purely out of interest in the case study, Miriam.”

Nick glanced back at that, raising an eyebrow at me.

I ignored him too.

When I glanced over at Mozar, the blue eyes were focused on my lips that time, but they flickered down to my chest as I watched. When he seemed to feel me staring at him, he looked up hastily and blushed.

“Okay,” I said, my voice blunt. I held out a hand. “You got it on you?”

Next to me, I felt a faint whisper of amusement on Hawking.

Maybe the guy wasn’t a complete zombie after all.

Mozar smiled too, the embarrassment no longer noticeable in his expression. Still studying my face, he leaned back in the seat, pulling his stack of papers and folders onto his lap. I watched him open up the leather-bound portfolio and legal pad combination he’d brought into the Northern Precinct conference room, his movements businesslike. Rifling through what were probably case file papers, he pulled out a set of paper-clipped sheets and handed them to me.

“Most of what I have is electronic too,” he explained. “So if it turns out this is our boy, I’ll make sure you get your own copies of everything. In the meantime, this is a printout of the summary we got from the FBI profiler we brought in, plus my notes...”

“Then FBI is on this?” I said.

Again, I felt Nick listening from the front seat.

“Not officially. Not yet. But they’re keeping an eye on it. I have a few friends there, so I called in a favor to get access to one of their top profilers.”

He said it like maybe it was supposed to impress me, but I only nodded, skimming through the printed text along with what was written there in what must have been Mozar’s hand in blue ink. He was left-handed, I guessed, just from the direction of the strokes in the blocky, upper-case letters covering the page.

The profile itself went from high level to more detail.

The high level stuff was pretty textbook.

White male. Thirties to mid-forties. Unlikely to be younger than thirty-two or thirty-three due to the high level of organization and meticulousness behind the crimes. Loner. Likely grew up in a house with abuse and/or alcoholism, but where those issues were hidden and tightly controlled in public. Likely from a religious family, possibly even the son of a religious leader or preacher or some other person of high standing in the community. Likely Christian, although possibly a later-life convert since adult converts were often more fanatical. Could also be someone who lost religion and found it again.