Friction, page 7
“Shh.” He hugged her closer and sent his fingers up into her hair until he was cupping the back of her head in his hand. His other slid down her back and began stroking her spine. On one downward trip, it slid past the small of her back and settled on the curve of her hip. And stayed there.
Suddenly neither of them was breathing.
After what seemed an endless time of absolute stillness, she tilted her head up.
Crawford looked down into her brimming green eyes and thought, Oh fuck.
Chapter 6
Crawford growled into his cell phone, “Yeah?”
“It’s Neal Lester. I need to talk to you.”
Crawford pried open his eyes only wide enough to read the clock on his nightstand and was surprised to see that it was after ten. “About what?”
“Were you asleep?”
“That’s what you called to ask me?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
Crawford rolled onto his back and placed his forearm over his eyes. “I had a rough night. That happens after seeing two men gunned down. I’m funny that way.”
All of yesterday’s events came crashing into his mind. The last in that pileup of disturbing recollections was of him having carnal knowledge of Judge Holly Spencer.
He pressed his thumb and middle finger into his eye sockets and stifled a groan. Christ.
Neal asked, “How soon can you be up and dressed?”
“Depends. Why?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
An instant later Crawford was holding a dead phone. Swearing, he struggled to sit up and swung his feet to the floor, propped his elbows on his knees, and held his face in his hands as he prayed that he had only dreamed that erotic interlude with Her Honor. But then memories of it began to crystallize, taking on shape, sound, and substance.
Her. Him. Ignition. Blast-off.
His doorbell pealed. He dropped his hands between his knees. “You have got to be kidding me.” The bell rang again. He pulled on his underwear and stamped through his house to the front door, jerked it open, scowled.
“I was parked at the curb when I called.” Neal hitched his thumb over his shoulder at the unmarked sedan. “May I come in?”
Crawford turned his back and stalked away, but left the door standing open. Neal asked, “Where are you going?”
“To pee.”
Crawford didn’t look back, leaving his unwelcome guest to his own devices. He used the toilet and splashed cold water on his face. He picked up yesterday’s jeans from off the floor beside the bed where he’d shucked them in the wee hours. He was still buttoning up when he reentered the living room.
Neal had closed the door but had remained standing just in front of it. In stark contrast to Crawford’s rumpled appearance, he was a paragon of neatness—hair carefully parted, clothes wrinkle-free, shoes shined, so closely shaven, his face reflected light.
Crawford said, “Kitchen’s this way.”
By the time Neal joined him, he had the coffeemaker’s water tank filled and was scooping grounds into the filter. Rudely, he asked, “What, Neal?”
“The ME said if we want to view the body before he performs the autopsy, we’d better get over there.”
Crawford’s hands were momentarily arrested in motion, then he dumped the last scoopful of grounds, clicked the filter basket into place, and punched the start button on the machine. Only then did he turn around. He gave Neal a once over. “Huh.”
“What?”
“You don’t look like a man who’s lost his mind. But I think you must have. You spent hours last night doing everything you possibly could to piss me off, then you show up this morning and pretend we’re partners? Get out of my house.”
Neal’s mouth formed a thin, grim line that barely moved as he said, “It wasn’t my idea to bring you in. The request came from the chief himself.”
“If he wants a Ranger, have him call the Tyler office, see who’s available. I requested a few days off, and my major said I could take all the time I needed.”
“I know, but the chief said—”
“You got the perp. All that’s left to do is ID him, and you don’t need me for that. I’m going back to bed. Or maybe I’ll go for a long run or a swim. I’ll clip my toenails. The one thing I’m not doing is accompanying you to the morgue to look at your dead guy.”
“I figured you would say that.”
“You figured right.”
“Hear me out before you refuse.”
“I already refused.”
“The chief thought maybe you’d recognize Rodriguez if you got a better look at him.”
“He was a total stranger to me until our standoff on the roof. I didn’t recognize him yesterday. I won’t today. Bye.”
“The chief says it won’t hurt for you to look at him again.”
“Won’t help, either.”
“We won’t know that for certain until you do. You didn’t see Rodriguez close up. If you do, it might joggle a memory.”
“It won’t. And I’ve got other things to do.”
Actually, he didn’t. He had an outing with Georgia planned for later this afternoon, but until then, he was at loose ends. But under any circumstances, he wanted nothing to do with an investigation under Neal Lester’s direction. If the local PD wanted the Texas Rangers’ help, they could get another one. The sooner he distanced himself from yesterday’s incident—incidents—the better.
However, true to form, Neal was taking his job as the police chief’s messenger boy seriously. He remained standing in the center of the kitchen, looking pained but stubbornly duty-bound. Crawford turned away to take a mug from the cabinet. “Want coffee?’
After an abrupt no thanks, Neal said, “We’ve been unable to confirm that Rodriguez is his real name.”
“That’s a problem, all right.”
“His prints weren’t flagged.”
“No priors, then.”
“No. But he had a fake ID. No green card, work visa, nothing like that in his wallet. He had less than thirty dollars cash, no credit cards. No cell phone. In this day and age, it’s practically unheard of not to have a cell phone.”
“Unless you’re someone who doesn’t want to be captured by police with one in your possession.”
“You said you didn’t think he spoke English very well.”
“That was only a guess. He might have been fluent and was just pretending not to understand me. Maybe he was so jumpy that his knowledge of inglés deserted him. A man trying to pull off such a boneheaded stunt wouldn’t be thinking clearly or intelligently.”
“Why do you think it was a boneheaded stunt?”
Crawford cocked his eyebrow. “You don’t?”
“Of course I do. But I’d like to hear why you think so.”
“You haven’t got that much time.”
“Look, be an asshole. That’s what I expect from you. I’m not here because I want to be. Believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you, Neal. You look downright constipated.”
“But as long as I was sent on this errand, you could give me something to take back to the chief.”
Crawford was about to tell him that he didn’t care if he had only his dick in his hand when he returned to the chief, but the coffeemaker was just now beginning to burble. As long as he had to wait on it, he thought, What the hell, and decided to air something that had been puzzling him.
“The guy has just gunned down a man in front of witnesses.”
“Right.”
“He’s fleeing the scene of a capital crime.”
“Right.”
“Why go to the roof?”
“Because two law enforcement agencies are located on the building’s first floor.” The matching annexes for the PD and sheriff’s office were connected to the first floor of the courthouse, extending back from each side of it to form a large letter U.
Crawford said, “Even so, going down is a much better option than the roof, where there’s only one means of escape. And another thing, he lights up a smoke.”
“Camel unfiltered.” Neal shrugged. “He needed a jolt of nicotine.”
“No doubt, but…I don’t know.” Crawford idly scratched his bare chest and turned his head to gaze out the window above the sink. It looked like rain. He might have to change what he had planned for Georgia that afternoon.
“What else?” Neal probed.
“The guy virtually guaranteed that he would be either captured or killed. Those were his only two options.”
“Suicide.”
“Also after which he would be dead.”
“What are you getting at?” Neal asked.
“Why the costume?” Musing out loud, he elaborated. “If escape was all but impossible, if he was doomed to wind up either in handcuffs or a body bag, why bother with the disguise?”
“For the scare factor?”
“Possibly,” Crawford murmured. “If so, it worked.”
His thoughts shifted back to Judge Spencer’s meltdown. For hours, she had managed to delay her reaction to the fright she’d experienced in the courtroom. She’d contained it well until his bullying, as she’d called it, had cracked her restraint. Emotions had burst out of her and the overflow had been unstoppable.
His attempt to comfort her had been awkward because, up till then, they’d never touched, not even to shake hands. Then, from that tentative, consoling pat, they had proceeded at warp speed to desperate, clutching, grinding fucking.
“You with me?”
Crawford cleared his throat and turned back to Neal. “Sorry, what?”
“Are you sleepwalking?”
“No, I was just mulling over what you were saying.”
“Which part?”
Neal posed the question like a snotty know-it-all, which was the way he’d been as a kid, and the way Crawford continued to regard him. “Look, sergeant, if you don’t like the way I’m conducting the conversation, feel free to get the hell out of my house.”
Neal stood his ground. “I repeat. None of the government agencies in the courthouse—city, state, or federal—had an appointment scheduled with a Jorge Rodriguez. He had no outstanding traffic ticket to pay. No tax bills.”
“Maybe he was there to get married.”
Neal didn’t so much as blink at the quip, much less smile.
“Think before you rule it out, Neal. JP’s office is on the fifth floor. Some men will go to great lengths to avoid tying the knot.”
Although badgering the detective felt good, Crawford’s heart wasn’t really in it. He was remembering the purpose with which Rodriguez strode toward the judge’s podium. “He was there to kill.” He looked at Neal and stated with unqualified conviction, “I don’t know who he was, or why he went about it so stupidly and suicidally, but he meant to kill.”
The coffeemaker hissed and spat one last time. Crawford filled his mug and leaned against the counter, sipping thoughtfully. Though he told himself to shut up about the incident and to tell Neal to go take a flying leap, he heard himself ask, “You get him on security camera coming in?”
“He entered through the main entrance at one forty-one. Here’s something interesting. He wasn’t carrying anything.”
Dammit, that was interesting. “No gym bag, sack, backpack?”
Neal shook his head. “So either he’d stashed his costume on a previous visit in preparation for yesterday, or he was wearing the painter’s garb under his street clothes.”
“No way,” Crawford said. “He didn’t have time to switch back into street clothes after leaving the painter’s stuff in a pile. He would have gone out onto the roof wearing very little or in the buff.”
“Damn. You’re right.” Neal thought it over. “I suppose the cap, gloves, shoe covers, and mask could’ve been stashed in his pockets when he entered the building.”
“Maybe,” Crawford said, but he wasn’t convinced of that. “Anything else?”
Neal shook his head. “Once through the door, he got lost in the shuffle, one of many flowing into the building around that time. Prospective jurors.”
“Yeah,” Crawford said. “I was waiting at the end of the hall for our two o’clock court time. All of sudden the fourth floor corridor was crawling with people.”
“The jurors were on their way to Judge Mason’s court, two doors down from Judge Spencer’s. Rape case with extenuating circumstances. Both attorneys had asked for a large jury pool from which to select.”
“Must have been fifty, sixty of them,” Crawford recalled. “Most came up on the atrium stairs instead of using the elevators.”
“Rodriguez could have blended, then easily slipped into that closet unnoticed. Cameras on the roof got him coming out that door at two twenty-eight. No disguise, but he’s carrying the pistol, which he set on the wall at the edge.”
The security cameras had verified the sequence of events as Crawford remembered and had related them in his statement, but they failed to enlighten him as to Rodriguez’s purpose. In fact, when Neal finished talking through it, Crawford was left with even more gnawing questions. It was second nature for him to want to plug up the holes of missing information.
But mentally he slammed shut the door on his curiosity.
“Answers will come with a positive ID,” he said. “In the meantime, you’ll have to keep playing the guessing game.” He raised a toast with his mug. “Good luck.”
“The chief wants—”
“No.”
“He’s cleared it with your major lieutenant in Houston.”
“I’ll talk to him and unclear it. Which should make you happy. We wouldn’t be simpatico changing a flat tire together. Wasn’t it you, just last night, who took issue with my tactics?”
“I was out of line.”
Crawford snuffled over the detective’s stilted apology. “Never mind, Neal. My feelings aren’t hurt. I don’t give a shit what you think of me.”
“Then I won’t play diplomat here. I don’t like you or your Dirty Harry brand of cop. But,” he said, taking a breath, “it’s not up to me, and others hold you in high esteem.”
Crawford knew what it had cost the guy to say that. He almost felt sorry for him. But he remained unmoved. “Thank the chief for the vote of confidence, but you’ll ID Rodriguez without me. If you feel like you need another Ranger—”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“You were the only person on the roof with this guy, the only one who exchanged words with him.”
“You have everything in my statement, including my admission that I responded instinctively, and, as you were quick to point out, I did so without weighing the consequences of such a rash action. Which I now regret.”
He could tell Neal was shocked to hear him say that.
“Not for the reason you think,” Crawford said. “I took the correct action. I stand by that. I regret it for an entirely selfish reason.”
“Want to share?”
He saw no reason not to. “Charging after that gunman has almost certainly scotched my chances of getting Georgia back. At the next hearing, my father-in-law is going to remind the judge of my reckless disregard for my own safety. What judge is going to entrust a little girl’s future to Dirty Harry?”
Especially a judge who’s been slam-bam-thank-you-ma’amed by him.
Thinking back on those moments in her kitchen, he wondered if maybe he had read Holly Spencer all wrong. When she raised her head from his chest and looked up into his face, what if her watery-eyed, parted-lips expression wasn’t evidence of lust but revulsion?
Hell, maybe she hadn’t been telegraphing Take me and take me now. Instead, that look might have been a warning that if he didn’t remove his grubby paw from her ass, she was going to scream the house down.
But she hadn’t.
He’d acted on the signals as he’d read them. When he’d crushed her against him and lifted her off her feet, she hadn’t protested. When he’d lowered her onto the living room sofa and she’d raised her hands toward him, it wasn’t to stave him off, but to fight with him for ownership of his belt buckle to see who could get it undone faster.
But in the glaring spotlight of retrospection, he doubted that she would remember it quite like that. He hadn’t had the crying jag, she had. He wasn’t the one who’d been in desperate need of a comforting hug, she was. If he’d stopped it there, he might have been okay.
But…so much for that.
The best thing he could do now was to stay the hell away from her and leave the unanswered questions about Rodriguez for someone else to answer. He didn’t need to get in any deeper.
Irritably, he wiped away the sweat trickling down his torso, a byproduct of his memories of their tussle on her small sofa. Grumbling, he said, “I’ll call your chief and square it, but even he can see how this creates a conflict of interest for me. If I want my kid, it’s best I sit this one out. You know your way to the door.” He turned to the sink and tossed the dregs of his coffee down the drain.
“So that’s a no?”
“Between you and me, that’s a fuck no.”
“Then how should I rephrase it to Mrs. Barker?”
Crawford came around. “Who?”
“Chet’s widow.” Neal reached into the breast pocket of his sport jacket and took out a letter envelope. “This was hand-delivered to the department this morning by one of her relatives. It’s addressed to you, but sent in care of the chief, who took the liberty of reading it before asking me to pass it along.”
He extended the envelope toward Crawford, who actually recoiled from it. Neal laid the envelope on the dining table. “Basically it says how highly Chet thought of you. He felt you were unfairly criticized over…Well, you know.” Neal’s expression turned sour.
“She goes on and on for several paragraphs, reiterating how highly Chet praised you. Your skills. Courage. Blah, blah. You get the idea. Anyway, she appeals to you to get to the bottom of the courtroom shooting and provide her with an explanation for her husband’s death…which came about here only a few months away from of his retirement.”
