Premise of Innocence, page 3
The door opened and Palery strode in.
“Mrs. Northcutt, you’ve had a call from the hospital?”
“The Chate Long-Term Care Facility, where my husband is. Dr. Frederick Sala heads his care team. If you want his phone number to confirm that he called and said my husband has taken a turn for the worse, which the doctor expects to lead to his death as soon as an hour, possibly several hours, I will give that to you.”
“That’s not necessary, Mrs. Northcutt.”
“I have to go. Immediately.”
“But, Ally,” Jamie’s mother protested. “As Detective Landis said, with someone shooting at you, it’s dangerous for you to—”
“I have to, Aunt Dana.” She never took her gaze off Captain Palery.
He knew the backstory. He didn’t hesitate.
“Lights and sirens. Bel, Landis, you take her with—”
“All of us,” Maggie inserted.
“—a marked car to lead and follow. I’ll put out the call for us to facilitate. I’ll let Piscattoway County know the status.” That was Chad Northcutt’s department in Maryland. Palery’s call would send department members streaming toward the facility.
“And Rock Creek County. That’s where the long-term care facility is,” Maggie said. “We’ll have to pass through there, too. Rush hour.”
Palery nodded. “I’ll call both Maryland jurisdictions.” And explain that it was a law enforcement officer about to die. Accommodations would be made. “We’ll get you there, Mrs. Northcutt.”
“Before we go—” Landis spoke with deliberation, stopping the small movements of preparation. “—did anyone see or hear anything before or after the shots? Something that could indicate location or the identity of the shooter?”
Bel added another layer. “Or have any knowledge or suspicion. Anything odd or off-kilter that’s happened lately.”
Ally’s eyelids fluttered, as if she were going to look up, but she didn’t. Instead, she shook her head.
The others followed suit or said “No.”
The difference was he believed the others. He wasn’t so sure about Allison Lindell Northcutt.
A patrol car led them. Landis thought he’d gotten lucky when Bel took Ally and Jamie in his car … until Maggie climbed into his vehicle, along with J.D. Carson. He would have preferred Jamie’s mother and stepfather as passengers, even if a hint of tension remained from their feeling that he’d treated Jamie too much like a murder suspect a while back.
Didn’t bother him. She was a suspect. And it likely would have made for a quiet trip.
But Schmidt was the lucky one who drew them as passengers, in a marked department vehicle, with one more at the end of their compact motorcade.
They were barely on the George Washington Parkway, headed north with clouds closing in now, when Maggie started. “You knew Ally from when you and Chad were in the police academy.”
“Already covered that, Mags.”
She didn’t relent with his use of the nickname. “And you never mentioned it.”
“Never came up.”
“Bullshit. With the investigation around Jamie and the legal—”
“As you say, it was about Jamie. No reason—”
“Bullshit, again. Ally’s been around a lot from the start of it and for all these months getting to the plea deal. Must have taken considerable effort for you to avoid running into her. But Bel had all the contact with Ally.” The recognition of that fact slid right into accusation. “You made sure of that, didn’t you? You were actively trying to avoid Ally. Why? What happened between you two that—?”
“Nothing.”
He might have snapped that off because a driver in a blue BMW with Maryland plates chose that moment to try to cut into the middle of a line of vehicles running lights and sirens.
Odds were high it was another self-important idiot who thought laws, rules, and basic manners didn’t apply to him, but no way in hell was Landis letting any other vehicle get in behind the one carrying Ally.
He closed the gap, squeezing the guy back into his own lane.
As Landis drew even with the BMW, the guy had the nerve to glare over at them. Landis spoke a command to his phone, then rattled off the tag number he’d automatically memorized.
“Jerk.” Presumably Maggie meant that for the driver. The next part, though was not. “Don’t think I missed all that cuteness.”
“Cuteness?”
From the passenger seat, she looked directly at him. He looked straight ahead.
“The feint that you were going to swear and upset Aunt Dana. The emphasis on the whole big group playing sports and talking career. I know a misdirect when I hear one. A first-year law student could’ve spotted distraction after distraction in that speech. Besides, I know you, Landis.”
He’d rather it didn’t but his peripheral vision automatically caught the familiar narrowing of her eyes as her considerable brain processed information.
“My first thought was that Ally was another woman who got the Landis treatment. Except your reactions are off for that. Both of you. She’d be either trying to get you back — and thank God she has too much sense for that — or embarrassed she ever fell for you. And you’d be truly smooth and above it all instead of pretending to be.”
“I’ve told you. Met her through Chad when they were engaged, part of a big group. You’re way off on this, Mags. You’re reading something else into it when it’s the weirdness of these circumstances.”
Her narrowed eyes didn’t change.
“You do know what I’d do to you if you hurt my cousin.”
“No worries, Mags.”
Because it had been the reverse.
She didn’t let it go. “You must have worked hard to avoid her, so there must have been a reason and I intend—”
“Maggie. Let the man drive.” J.D. Carson kept rising in Landis’ estimation. “Grill him after we get to our destination alive.”
His view of the other man dipped a bit at the invitation to pick this up later. Still, it did divert Maggie. For now.
She spent the time calling her assistant, Nancy Quinn, updating her on where they were — Nancy would already know what happened — and tapping into Nancy’s sources for any information outside and/or faster-moving than the official.
* * * *
It wasn’t the fastest trip. But considering the traffic, what with rush hour in the D.C. area basically going from six a.m. to 10 p.m., they made good time. Some people even pulled over for their lights and sirens.
Landis saw Ally being whisked inside by Jamie, as Bel’s vehicle pulled away. He took his turn to drive under a portico to drop off his passengers.
“Come inside after you’ve parked,” Maggie ordered.
“I have to check in and—”
“Come inside after you’ve parked,” she repeated.
J.D. Carson added a look that reinforced the order before he closed the back door.
Landis pulled his vehicle forward, out of the protected area so Schmidt could drive in and take his place to discharge his passengers, then considered the choices. His top choice — if he’d had a real choice — would be to leave, but that was out of the question.
A knock on the passenger window jerked his head around. That wasn’t good. Not noticing someone coming up on his vehicle.
Even if it was Bel.
He unlocked the door.
His partner slid in, letting in the smell of mist consolidating toward rain.
“Why’re you sitting here?”
“Strategizing about looking for a spot to park. No reason for you to stick around—”
“Staying. Owe you. Took the last good one.”
Committed to a course of action by his own words, Landis put the vehicle in gear and looked for a place to park.
Someplace they wouldn’t get blocked in, someplace with a fast exit, someplace not too far from the building. He’d picked out four possibilities with the first circuit of the lot.
Instead of going immediately to join Jamie, Belichek sat silently beside him.
He was accustomed to his silences.
Silences while his partner processed what they’d seen, heard, discovered. Those silences both comforted him and challenged him.
Comforted because the silence meant Rutherford Belichek was on the job, working hard, as always. Bel would come up with angles and insights he wouldn’t.
Challenged because his job was to come up with angles and insights Belichek wouldn’t.
He usually did, though he seldom recognized them before the words came out. Another difference between him and Belichek, who examined each facet and every long-range implication before he spoke. Or acted.
But this silence… Not the same at all.
This silence challenged without comfort.
Its only similarity to their usual silences was he knew that during it Belichek’s brain churned through the raw material of what he’d seen, heard, and discovered.
Landis’ second-choice parking spot came open when a gray-haired man with the slow, shoulder-slumped walk of grief came out and got in a sedan. The man sat there a full minute before he turned on the car. He backed out slowly.
Landis waited for the man to clear the spot and start away, so if the circumstances pierced the man’s preoccupation, it didn’t look like Landis had been tapping his fingers impatiently waiting for the man to be gone.
He backed into the spot, turned off the engine, reached for the door handle.
“You know her.”
The words caught Landis off guard despite knowing it was coming eventually. “Told you all at the courthouse that I knew her. Barely. Knew of her, more like. Way back.”
“Bullshit.”
Landis looked at him. But his amused indifference wasn’t the genuine article. “It’s not. Chad was a guy who’d been at the academy the same time as me. They were engaged.”
“Is she the reason?”
His mistake had been not getting out of the vehicle without answering Bel’s first words.
Though that probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
When his partner intended to say something, he said it.
With that thought barely formed in Landis’ mind, Belichek continued, talking as if Landis had said what or who or some other lame response, when he hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even acknowledged the words with a glance. “Is she the reason for accumulating all the unavailable women. The commitment phobia on steroids. Why you are how you are with women.”
None of what Belichek said constituted real questions. He wouldn’t have answered anyway. Sure wasn’t going to say I have no idea what you’re talking about the way so many stupid arrestees did when anyone could see they were trussed up and done for, each futile struggle only tightening the bonds.
“You fell for a married woman—”
“She wasn’t married.”
If he couldn’t manage to keep his mouth shut, he shouldn’t have said it fast, like it mattered. Or like he had anything to feel guilty about.
To feel anything about.
All of it was water that was never going to see that bridge again. Ever.
“—and after that you went for ones just like her.”
He’d given too much away with that She wasn’t married, but did Belichek think he’d blurt out something like There wasn’t anyone else like her. All the others have been—
No, he wouldn’t dismiss them or himself that way. Even in his own head.
Belichek didn’t let his lack of response stop him. “Because you couldn’t have what you wanted.”
The phrase gave Landis the toehold he needed. “That’s exactly it. Turned down by a woman — years ago, so a girl, really — and decided right then and there I’d revenge myself on the rest of the sex forevermore.”
Bel nodded, as if the sarcasm dripping from Landis’ words didn’t leave them both wading in a flash flood of the stuff. “That fits.”
“Christ, Belichek—”
“Except the revenge was on yourself.”
“Hah. You know how many guys in the squad envy my life? Sword master, that’s what Terrington called me.” He chuckled. “Some revenge.”
“You’ve been miserable.”
“You’re crazy. And deluded, Belichek. Don’t be a dumb f—”
“You’ve got that position filled, Landis.”
Another silence. No better than the previous one.
“You know the history. The three girls, all cousins—”
“Do you think I missed the genealogy during Jamie’s case, Bel? There were four Frye siblings. Two brothers — Maggie’s father and Jamie’s father, who died young and then his widow married Wes Chancellor. Two sisters — Ally’s mother and Vivian, the aunt the three girls spent summers with.”
“Right. Until she fell for a master manipulator and pedophile, who courted Vivian but wanted Jamie. Tried to snatch her. Except Maggie, with help from Ally and others, foiled that and got him caught. But the trial… He got off.”
Landis cut him a look. “And Mags blamed herself. She doesn’t confide in me the way she does in you, but I’ve known Mags for years, too, and I am a detective for God’s sake. And yet you’re surprised I know.”
Bel’s silence confirmed it.
Landis produced a grin. “Guess your detective instincts aren’t half bad, either. Your grandmother told me.”
Bel snorted knowingly. “Of course she did.”
“Don’t worry, Bel, she still loved you, even if she did confide all your deepest secrets to me the first time we met.”
His partner didn’t rise to that lure to be amused. “Putting aside my grandmother’s soft spot for you, at least tell me you stayed away from Allison, no contact after she married.” Not waiting for Landis to obey that order, Bel pushed open the passenger door and got out, but immediately leaned back in, halfway across the seat to glare at him. “Maggie and Jamie’s cousin. That’s bad enough. But the wife of a cop in a coma? God, Landis. That’s as bad as it gets.”
She hadn’t been his wife.
Not yet.
That had been the real kick in the gut. She could have broken it off. Walked away.
She chose Chad.
* * * *
They walked toward the entry. At the last second, he peeled off.
“Calling in,” he said.
Bel’s laser look called bullshit on that. But he kept walking and went inside. That worked for Landis.
He made good on his words, pacing to the edge of the portico, where he wouldn’t block traffic, although the rain could get him if it put some effort into it.
When Palery answered, he said, “We got them here to the long-term facility without incident. Bel and Schmidt are inside. I stayed out to call you, Captain. I need to talk to you. Alone. Not on the phone.”
“When and where?” His boss didn’t ask anything else. He knew Landis would have already said more if he could.
“As soon as possible. I could come back—”
“No.” Palery confirmed what Landis had expected … and hoped against. “Stay with them.”
“I’ll call when I shake free.”
Palery grunted acceptance of that, then moved on. “See anything on the way?”
“No. The others?” Anything major he’d have known about from radio traffic, but there could have been something Bel or Schmidt spotted that didn’t warrant the radio.
“No. Northcutt’s department knows the status, including what happened here. There’ll be plenty of law enforcement there shortly. But if you or Bel think someone from Rock Creek County needs to be there officially, here’s the contact.”
He rattled off name, rank, and phone number, both of them knowing it might be the second call if 911 would get people on scene faster.
Even without a 911-level situation, this had potential to be dicey.
If whoever shot at Ally — he was going with her being the target unless something proved to him otherwise — followed them over here and was stupid enough to try again amid the influx of law enforcement about to start, there’d be three jurisdictions involved.
First, the Rock Creek County, Maryland, locals whose turf this was.
Second, Northcutt’s Piscattoway County Police Department from a smaller, neighboring county with a chip on its collective shoulder toward the home guys at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times, so add in emotions heightened by the imminent death of one of their own. Particularly this one of their own.
Third, Bel, him, and Schmidt from across the river. The three of them would hardly be factored in at all by the other two groups except for one fact. They were essentially in possession of the almost-widow and intended shooting victim, as well as her family, including an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney.
That status was borne out when he checked in at the desk and was taken to a waiting room filled with the contingent from Virginia, while a handful of Piscattoway County uniforms remained in the hallway just inside the main door.
Actually, the room held the contingent from Virginia, with the exception of Ally, he saw immediately.
He took an empty seat between Bel and Schmidt. Bel had taken the chair where he would be the first to see who came in the door. Now Landis would be second.
After a moment, Landis realized Jamie wasn’t in the room, either.
Schmidt tapped away at his phone, then said in a low voice, “That document’s to you, sir.”
Bel switched from reading one document to another on his screen.
“Copies to you, too, sir,” Schmidt said to him.
Landis got busy on his own phone, reading the earliest of the prelim accounts from other officers on the courthouse scene. Those were followed by initial witness accounts, focusing on the direction the shots came from.
A lot would follow.
This was the first trickle of what would become a flood. With that many witnesses in a public place, with multiple cameras on them, definitely a flood.
The trick would be to pick out the relevant pieces and do it fast enough that nobody drowned in the flood. Not the investigators. And not Ally.
CHAPTER FIVE
With those few early reports long read, re-read, and digested, Landis had also drained his cup from another round of coffees Schmidt brought in a while back.
“Mrs. Northcutt, you’ve had a call from the hospital?”
“The Chate Long-Term Care Facility, where my husband is. Dr. Frederick Sala heads his care team. If you want his phone number to confirm that he called and said my husband has taken a turn for the worse, which the doctor expects to lead to his death as soon as an hour, possibly several hours, I will give that to you.”
“That’s not necessary, Mrs. Northcutt.”
“I have to go. Immediately.”
“But, Ally,” Jamie’s mother protested. “As Detective Landis said, with someone shooting at you, it’s dangerous for you to—”
“I have to, Aunt Dana.” She never took her gaze off Captain Palery.
He knew the backstory. He didn’t hesitate.
“Lights and sirens. Bel, Landis, you take her with—”
“All of us,” Maggie inserted.
“—a marked car to lead and follow. I’ll put out the call for us to facilitate. I’ll let Piscattoway County know the status.” That was Chad Northcutt’s department in Maryland. Palery’s call would send department members streaming toward the facility.
“And Rock Creek County. That’s where the long-term care facility is,” Maggie said. “We’ll have to pass through there, too. Rush hour.”
Palery nodded. “I’ll call both Maryland jurisdictions.” And explain that it was a law enforcement officer about to die. Accommodations would be made. “We’ll get you there, Mrs. Northcutt.”
“Before we go—” Landis spoke with deliberation, stopping the small movements of preparation. “—did anyone see or hear anything before or after the shots? Something that could indicate location or the identity of the shooter?”
Bel added another layer. “Or have any knowledge or suspicion. Anything odd or off-kilter that’s happened lately.”
Ally’s eyelids fluttered, as if she were going to look up, but she didn’t. Instead, she shook her head.
The others followed suit or said “No.”
The difference was he believed the others. He wasn’t so sure about Allison Lindell Northcutt.
A patrol car led them. Landis thought he’d gotten lucky when Bel took Ally and Jamie in his car … until Maggie climbed into his vehicle, along with J.D. Carson. He would have preferred Jamie’s mother and stepfather as passengers, even if a hint of tension remained from their feeling that he’d treated Jamie too much like a murder suspect a while back.
Didn’t bother him. She was a suspect. And it likely would have made for a quiet trip.
But Schmidt was the lucky one who drew them as passengers, in a marked department vehicle, with one more at the end of their compact motorcade.
They were barely on the George Washington Parkway, headed north with clouds closing in now, when Maggie started. “You knew Ally from when you and Chad were in the police academy.”
“Already covered that, Mags.”
She didn’t relent with his use of the nickname. “And you never mentioned it.”
“Never came up.”
“Bullshit. With the investigation around Jamie and the legal—”
“As you say, it was about Jamie. No reason—”
“Bullshit, again. Ally’s been around a lot from the start of it and for all these months getting to the plea deal. Must have taken considerable effort for you to avoid running into her. But Bel had all the contact with Ally.” The recognition of that fact slid right into accusation. “You made sure of that, didn’t you? You were actively trying to avoid Ally. Why? What happened between you two that—?”
“Nothing.”
He might have snapped that off because a driver in a blue BMW with Maryland plates chose that moment to try to cut into the middle of a line of vehicles running lights and sirens.
Odds were high it was another self-important idiot who thought laws, rules, and basic manners didn’t apply to him, but no way in hell was Landis letting any other vehicle get in behind the one carrying Ally.
He closed the gap, squeezing the guy back into his own lane.
As Landis drew even with the BMW, the guy had the nerve to glare over at them. Landis spoke a command to his phone, then rattled off the tag number he’d automatically memorized.
“Jerk.” Presumably Maggie meant that for the driver. The next part, though was not. “Don’t think I missed all that cuteness.”
“Cuteness?”
From the passenger seat, she looked directly at him. He looked straight ahead.
“The feint that you were going to swear and upset Aunt Dana. The emphasis on the whole big group playing sports and talking career. I know a misdirect when I hear one. A first-year law student could’ve spotted distraction after distraction in that speech. Besides, I know you, Landis.”
He’d rather it didn’t but his peripheral vision automatically caught the familiar narrowing of her eyes as her considerable brain processed information.
“My first thought was that Ally was another woman who got the Landis treatment. Except your reactions are off for that. Both of you. She’d be either trying to get you back — and thank God she has too much sense for that — or embarrassed she ever fell for you. And you’d be truly smooth and above it all instead of pretending to be.”
“I’ve told you. Met her through Chad when they were engaged, part of a big group. You’re way off on this, Mags. You’re reading something else into it when it’s the weirdness of these circumstances.”
Her narrowed eyes didn’t change.
“You do know what I’d do to you if you hurt my cousin.”
“No worries, Mags.”
Because it had been the reverse.
She didn’t let it go. “You must have worked hard to avoid her, so there must have been a reason and I intend—”
“Maggie. Let the man drive.” J.D. Carson kept rising in Landis’ estimation. “Grill him after we get to our destination alive.”
His view of the other man dipped a bit at the invitation to pick this up later. Still, it did divert Maggie. For now.
She spent the time calling her assistant, Nancy Quinn, updating her on where they were — Nancy would already know what happened — and tapping into Nancy’s sources for any information outside and/or faster-moving than the official.
* * * *
It wasn’t the fastest trip. But considering the traffic, what with rush hour in the D.C. area basically going from six a.m. to 10 p.m., they made good time. Some people even pulled over for their lights and sirens.
Landis saw Ally being whisked inside by Jamie, as Bel’s vehicle pulled away. He took his turn to drive under a portico to drop off his passengers.
“Come inside after you’ve parked,” Maggie ordered.
“I have to check in and—”
“Come inside after you’ve parked,” she repeated.
J.D. Carson added a look that reinforced the order before he closed the back door.
Landis pulled his vehicle forward, out of the protected area so Schmidt could drive in and take his place to discharge his passengers, then considered the choices. His top choice — if he’d had a real choice — would be to leave, but that was out of the question.
A knock on the passenger window jerked his head around. That wasn’t good. Not noticing someone coming up on his vehicle.
Even if it was Bel.
He unlocked the door.
His partner slid in, letting in the smell of mist consolidating toward rain.
“Why’re you sitting here?”
“Strategizing about looking for a spot to park. No reason for you to stick around—”
“Staying. Owe you. Took the last good one.”
Committed to a course of action by his own words, Landis put the vehicle in gear and looked for a place to park.
Someplace they wouldn’t get blocked in, someplace with a fast exit, someplace not too far from the building. He’d picked out four possibilities with the first circuit of the lot.
Instead of going immediately to join Jamie, Belichek sat silently beside him.
He was accustomed to his silences.
Silences while his partner processed what they’d seen, heard, discovered. Those silences both comforted him and challenged him.
Comforted because the silence meant Rutherford Belichek was on the job, working hard, as always. Bel would come up with angles and insights he wouldn’t.
Challenged because his job was to come up with angles and insights Belichek wouldn’t.
He usually did, though he seldom recognized them before the words came out. Another difference between him and Belichek, who examined each facet and every long-range implication before he spoke. Or acted.
But this silence… Not the same at all.
This silence challenged without comfort.
Its only similarity to their usual silences was he knew that during it Belichek’s brain churned through the raw material of what he’d seen, heard, and discovered.
Landis’ second-choice parking spot came open when a gray-haired man with the slow, shoulder-slumped walk of grief came out and got in a sedan. The man sat there a full minute before he turned on the car. He backed out slowly.
Landis waited for the man to clear the spot and start away, so if the circumstances pierced the man’s preoccupation, it didn’t look like Landis had been tapping his fingers impatiently waiting for the man to be gone.
He backed into the spot, turned off the engine, reached for the door handle.
“You know her.”
The words caught Landis off guard despite knowing it was coming eventually. “Told you all at the courthouse that I knew her. Barely. Knew of her, more like. Way back.”
“Bullshit.”
Landis looked at him. But his amused indifference wasn’t the genuine article. “It’s not. Chad was a guy who’d been at the academy the same time as me. They were engaged.”
“Is she the reason?”
His mistake had been not getting out of the vehicle without answering Bel’s first words.
Though that probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
When his partner intended to say something, he said it.
With that thought barely formed in Landis’ mind, Belichek continued, talking as if Landis had said what or who or some other lame response, when he hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even acknowledged the words with a glance. “Is she the reason for accumulating all the unavailable women. The commitment phobia on steroids. Why you are how you are with women.”
None of what Belichek said constituted real questions. He wouldn’t have answered anyway. Sure wasn’t going to say I have no idea what you’re talking about the way so many stupid arrestees did when anyone could see they were trussed up and done for, each futile struggle only tightening the bonds.
“You fell for a married woman—”
“She wasn’t married.”
If he couldn’t manage to keep his mouth shut, he shouldn’t have said it fast, like it mattered. Or like he had anything to feel guilty about.
To feel anything about.
All of it was water that was never going to see that bridge again. Ever.
“—and after that you went for ones just like her.”
He’d given too much away with that She wasn’t married, but did Belichek think he’d blurt out something like There wasn’t anyone else like her. All the others have been—
No, he wouldn’t dismiss them or himself that way. Even in his own head.
Belichek didn’t let his lack of response stop him. “Because you couldn’t have what you wanted.”
The phrase gave Landis the toehold he needed. “That’s exactly it. Turned down by a woman — years ago, so a girl, really — and decided right then and there I’d revenge myself on the rest of the sex forevermore.”
Bel nodded, as if the sarcasm dripping from Landis’ words didn’t leave them both wading in a flash flood of the stuff. “That fits.”
“Christ, Belichek—”
“Except the revenge was on yourself.”
“Hah. You know how many guys in the squad envy my life? Sword master, that’s what Terrington called me.” He chuckled. “Some revenge.”
“You’ve been miserable.”
“You’re crazy. And deluded, Belichek. Don’t be a dumb f—”
“You’ve got that position filled, Landis.”
Another silence. No better than the previous one.
“You know the history. The three girls, all cousins—”
“Do you think I missed the genealogy during Jamie’s case, Bel? There were four Frye siblings. Two brothers — Maggie’s father and Jamie’s father, who died young and then his widow married Wes Chancellor. Two sisters — Ally’s mother and Vivian, the aunt the three girls spent summers with.”
“Right. Until she fell for a master manipulator and pedophile, who courted Vivian but wanted Jamie. Tried to snatch her. Except Maggie, with help from Ally and others, foiled that and got him caught. But the trial… He got off.”
Landis cut him a look. “And Mags blamed herself. She doesn’t confide in me the way she does in you, but I’ve known Mags for years, too, and I am a detective for God’s sake. And yet you’re surprised I know.”
Bel’s silence confirmed it.
Landis produced a grin. “Guess your detective instincts aren’t half bad, either. Your grandmother told me.”
Bel snorted knowingly. “Of course she did.”
“Don’t worry, Bel, she still loved you, even if she did confide all your deepest secrets to me the first time we met.”
His partner didn’t rise to that lure to be amused. “Putting aside my grandmother’s soft spot for you, at least tell me you stayed away from Allison, no contact after she married.” Not waiting for Landis to obey that order, Bel pushed open the passenger door and got out, but immediately leaned back in, halfway across the seat to glare at him. “Maggie and Jamie’s cousin. That’s bad enough. But the wife of a cop in a coma? God, Landis. That’s as bad as it gets.”
She hadn’t been his wife.
Not yet.
That had been the real kick in the gut. She could have broken it off. Walked away.
She chose Chad.
* * * *
They walked toward the entry. At the last second, he peeled off.
“Calling in,” he said.
Bel’s laser look called bullshit on that. But he kept walking and went inside. That worked for Landis.
He made good on his words, pacing to the edge of the portico, where he wouldn’t block traffic, although the rain could get him if it put some effort into it.
When Palery answered, he said, “We got them here to the long-term facility without incident. Bel and Schmidt are inside. I stayed out to call you, Captain. I need to talk to you. Alone. Not on the phone.”
“When and where?” His boss didn’t ask anything else. He knew Landis would have already said more if he could.
“As soon as possible. I could come back—”
“No.” Palery confirmed what Landis had expected … and hoped against. “Stay with them.”
“I’ll call when I shake free.”
Palery grunted acceptance of that, then moved on. “See anything on the way?”
“No. The others?” Anything major he’d have known about from radio traffic, but there could have been something Bel or Schmidt spotted that didn’t warrant the radio.
“No. Northcutt’s department knows the status, including what happened here. There’ll be plenty of law enforcement there shortly. But if you or Bel think someone from Rock Creek County needs to be there officially, here’s the contact.”
He rattled off name, rank, and phone number, both of them knowing it might be the second call if 911 would get people on scene faster.
Even without a 911-level situation, this had potential to be dicey.
If whoever shot at Ally — he was going with her being the target unless something proved to him otherwise — followed them over here and was stupid enough to try again amid the influx of law enforcement about to start, there’d be three jurisdictions involved.
First, the Rock Creek County, Maryland, locals whose turf this was.
Second, Northcutt’s Piscattoway County Police Department from a smaller, neighboring county with a chip on its collective shoulder toward the home guys at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times, so add in emotions heightened by the imminent death of one of their own. Particularly this one of their own.
Third, Bel, him, and Schmidt from across the river. The three of them would hardly be factored in at all by the other two groups except for one fact. They were essentially in possession of the almost-widow and intended shooting victim, as well as her family, including an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney.
That status was borne out when he checked in at the desk and was taken to a waiting room filled with the contingent from Virginia, while a handful of Piscattoway County uniforms remained in the hallway just inside the main door.
Actually, the room held the contingent from Virginia, with the exception of Ally, he saw immediately.
He took an empty seat between Bel and Schmidt. Bel had taken the chair where he would be the first to see who came in the door. Now Landis would be second.
After a moment, Landis realized Jamie wasn’t in the room, either.
Schmidt tapped away at his phone, then said in a low voice, “That document’s to you, sir.”
Bel switched from reading one document to another on his screen.
“Copies to you, too, sir,” Schmidt said to him.
Landis got busy on his own phone, reading the earliest of the prelim accounts from other officers on the courthouse scene. Those were followed by initial witness accounts, focusing on the direction the shots came from.
A lot would follow.
This was the first trickle of what would become a flood. With that many witnesses in a public place, with multiple cameras on them, definitely a flood.
The trick would be to pick out the relevant pieces and do it fast enough that nobody drowned in the flood. Not the investigators. And not Ally.
CHAPTER FIVE
With those few early reports long read, re-read, and digested, Landis had also drained his cup from another round of coffees Schmidt brought in a while back.
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