Fallen Angels 04 - Rapture (24 page)

Five blocks later, they came up to the
CCJ
building, and she parked around back, giving the keys to Tony as they walked over to the rear entrance.

“Thanks again,” she said.

“Like I told you, whenever you want. Especially if you buy me breakfast. And will you stop putting dollar bills in my drawer when you take a Twinkie? You know you’re welcome to my stash.”

It was true. Tony had a boatload of food grade petroleum in his desk and she had been known to partake from time to time. But she wasn’t a mooch.

Mels opened the door and held it for him. “I’m not going to rob you.”

“If I give you permission, it’s not robbing. And besides, you don’t take, like, what, more than a Ho-Ho or two a month.”

“Pilfering is pilfering.”

They hit the shallow stairs that led up to the glass doors of the newsroom, and he got the door this time. “I wish everyone felt like that.”

“See? It’s not your job to feed us all.”

The instant they stepped through, the ringing phones and fast voices and scurrying feet was a familiar theme song, sweeping into her body, carrying her to her desk. As she sat down, the dull roar smoothed over the anxiety about Matthias, and she signed into her computer without conscious thought—

The manila envelope landed on her desk with a slap, startling her.

“Got something pretty for you to look at,” Dick said with a sly smile.

She reached for the packet and slid out …

Well, wasn’t she glad she’d given both those sausage biscuits to Tony: They were photographs of the prostitute’s body, eight-and-a-half-by-elevens in color, all up close and personal.

As Dick hovered over her like he was waiting for her to chick out, she refused to give him any satisfaction, even though the center of her chest ached at the images … particularly the one that
showed the neck wound in detail, the deep slash cutting through the skin and into the pink-and-red muscle and pale gristle of the throat.

When Mels put the photos down, she made sure that was the one on top, and noticed that Dick, for all his Big Man attitude, refused to look at the image.

“Thanks.” She kept her eyes steady on his. “This is going to help a lot.”

Dick cleared his throat like maybe he’d pushed the asshole act a little far, even by his own low standards. “Let me see your follow-up ASAP.”

“You got it.”

As he sauntered off, she shook her head. He should know better than to give her father’s daughter a challenge like that.

And P.S., the fact that he would at all was just gross.

Kind of made her think about the way Monty used tragedy for his own purposes.

Frowning, she went through the photographs again, and then focused on the one that was taken on the morgue slab. There was a strange rash on the lower abdomen, a reddening of the skin, as if the victim had been sunburned—

As her cell went off, she answered it without looking at the number. “Carmichael.”

“Hello.”

The deep voice sent a burst of heat right through her core.
Matthias
.

For a split second she wondered how he’d gotten her number. But then she remembered that she’d given him her business card—and written the thing down.

“Well, good morning,” she said.

“How you doing?”

In her head, a Ping-Pong match started up between what Tony
had told her in the car and what that kiss had felt like. Back and forth, back and forth—

“You there, Mels?”

“Yes.” She rubbed her eyes, and then had to stop because the bruised one didn’t appreciate the attention. “Sorry. I’m okay, how are you? Any more memories coming back?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

Mels straightened in her chair, her interest shifting, locking on. “Like what?”

“I don’t suppose your Nancy Drew would mind checking something out for me?”

“Absolutely. Tell me what you want to know.” As he spoke she took notes, writing down names, murmuring
uh-huh
s at the pauses. “Okay. This is no problem. Do you want me to call you back?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

There was a strange pause. “All right,” she said awkwardly. “So I’ll call you—”

“Mels …”

Closing her eyes, she felt him against her, his body pressing in, his mouth taking over, that dominance that was intrinsic to his personality coming out.

“Do you know what happened at your hotel last night?” she said abruptly.

“Yeah. I spent hours thinking about you.”

She closed her eyes briefly, fighting the seduction. “The police found a dead body. That had a very fancy bulletproof vest on it.”

Another pause. Then an even response: “Huh. Any suspects?”

“Not yet.”

“I didn’t kill him, Mels, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“That’s what you’re thinking.”

“Who are these people to you?” she cut in, making little boxes around the names he’d given her to research.

“Just things that have bubbled up.” His voice became distant. “Look, I’m sorry I called you about them. I’ll get the info somewhere else—”

“No,” she said firmly. “I’ll do it and I’ll phone you back.”

After she hung up, she stared into space. Then she rose from her desk chair and went down a couple of cubicles. Leaning over the top of yet another gray partition, she smiled in a fake way that her colleague didn’t know her well enough to spot. “Hey, Eric, what’s up?”

The guy’s eyes shifted away from his computer monitor. “Hey, Carmichael. What can I do you for?”

“I want to know about that murder at the Marriott.”

The reporter smiled, all cat-and-canary. “Anything in specific?”

“The vest.”

“Ah, the vest.” He rifled around the paperwork on his desk. “The vest, the vest …” He pulled a sheet free and spun it to her. “I found this on the Internet.”

Mels frowned as she read the specs. “Five thousand dollars?”

“That’s what they cost before they’re customized. And his was.”

“Who the hell can afford that?”

“Exactly what I’m asking myself.” More rifling. “Big-time security firms are one. U.S. government is another—but not for your Joe Schmo FBI agent, mind you. You’d have to be very high-level.”

“Any VIPs in the hotel?”

“Annnnnd that’s what I looked into last night. Officially, the staff can’t give out names, but I overheard the night manager talking to one of the cops. There’s nobody special under their roof.”

“What about that area downtown?”

“Yeah, I mean, there’re some big businesses around the neighborhood,
but they were all closed as it was way after normal business hours. And it defies logic that some dignitary was walking around Caldwell and one of his security team happened to go rogue and get his throat in the way of someone’s knife.”

“When did it happen?”

“’Round eleven o’clock.”

After she’d left and gone to the crime scene. “And no clue on the identity?”

“Not a one. Which brings us to the next hi-how’re-ya.” Eric chewed on the end of a blue Bic. “No fingerprints.”

“At the scene?”

“On the body. He didn’t have any fingerprints—they’d been etched off.”

Mels’s ears started to ring. “Any other identifiers?”

“A tattoo, apparently. I’m trying to get some pics of it as well as the body, but my sources are slow.” His eyes narrowed. “Why all the interest?”

Fancy bulletproof vest. No prints. “What about weapons?”

“None. He must have been stripped.” Eric leaned forward in his chair. “Saaaaay, you’re not trying to sweet-talk Dick into getting you a byline on this, are you?”

“God, no. Just curious.” She turned away. “Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.”

When the phone rang about a half hour later, Matthias just stared at the thing. Had to be Mels getting back to him.

Damn it, this was a mess. …

After Jim had taken off to go do breakfast or errands or some shit, naturally, the first thing he’d done when he was alone was call Mels and try to find out if that story was true about the father and the son up in Boston. It hadn’t dawned on him that she’d have heard about what went down in the basement, but come on, sloppy thinking much? It was all over the cocksucking news. Even nonreporters who didn’t keep up with that kind of shit knew.

The phone stopped its electronic ringing. But she was going to redial.

God, her voice when they’d spoken. She’d sounded suspicious, and in so many ways that was the best thing for her. Yet it killed him.

When the phone started going off again, he couldn’t stand it.
Grabbing his cane, he walked out the door of his room and headed blindly for the elevator. As he took it down, he had no clue where he was going. Maybe breakfast.

Yeah, breakfast.

It was what people did at nine a.m. all over the country.

Annnnnd, of course, the only restaurant that was open for business was the one he’d gotten to know intimately the night before— and as he walked past the colored glass wall, he decided to go off Marriott property to—

“Matthias?”

At the female voice, he pivoted around. It was the nurse from the hospital, the one who’d given him a helping hand, so to speak. Outside of work, she was fresh as a daisy, with her dark hair loose around her shoulders and a pale dress hanging below her knees.

She kind of looked like a bride.

“What are you doing here?” she said as she came over. “I thought you’d be home recovering.”

As people walked by her, they all stared, men with hot speculation in their eyes, women with varying degrees of envy and dislike. Then again, she was stupidly beautiful.

“I’m okay.” He tried not to stare at her. It was like looking into the sun, painful on the eyes. “How about yourself?”

“My mom’s come into town. Or rather, she was supposed to be here by now. Her flight was due in a half hour ago, but it got delayed in Cincinnati because of storms. I’ve been debating whether to wait or go home—we were going to have breakfast. Is that where you’re headed now?”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Well, then, how about we go dutch. I’m starved.”

Her black eyes positively sparkled, to the point where they made him think about the night sky. But it wasn’t enough to make him want to cop a squat in the—

“Okay,” he heard himself say, like some third party had taken over his mouth.

Together, they walked over to the maître d’s stand.

“Two,” Matthias said as the man did a double take at the nurse, and then froze like a deer in the headlights, apparently struck stupid by all the lovely.

“I’d like a window seat,” she said, smiling slowly at the guy. “Perhaps over …”

Not the window he jumped out of, Matthias thought.

“… there.”

Bing-fucking-o.

“Oh, yes, sorry, right away.” The maître d’ got with the program, snagging a couple of leather-bound books and leading the way. “But there are some better views across the room, overlooking the gardens?”

“We don’t want the sun to be too bright.” She put her hand on Matthias’s arm and gave him a little squeeze, as if she wanted him to know she was watching out for his bad eyesight.

Man, he really didn’t like her touching him.

As they walked across the room, the nurse created a total stir, men peering over the tops of their
Wall Street Journal
s and their coffee cups and sometimes their wives’ heads. She took it all in stride, like it was just the normal course of things.

After they sat down in front of the window he’d violated with Jim, coffee materialized, and they mulled over the menus. The civilized bullshitting that came with picking and choosing among the fifty different plates of good-morning got on his nerves. And he didn’t want to eat with her, although to be fair, he didn’t want to eat with anybody.

The stuff with Mels was the problem. Yeah, he’d called her with that info search, but the bigger truth was, he’d just wanted to hear her voice.