Pas de Deux

by Jamie Craig

  He lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “The camera loves me. But despite what I know people think of me, I don’t seek them out.”

  “I know.” Ignoring Scott’s obvious surprise, Duke rose with his cup in hand. “I’m getting another coffee. Would you like one?”

  He glanced at his watch without making a show of it and nodded. “I would. Thank you.”

  Duke left him behind. He waited until after he’d ordered another bold drip to match his own before giving in to the impulse to look at the man again. The tinted glass made the specifics unclear, but it still merited a good enough inspection. Scott made no effort to look at the notepad Duke had deliberately left behind, concentrating instead on his own phone held lightly in his hand. His head was bent, his strong profile softened by the dark window, and his full mouth pursed in response to whatever he was reading.

  Duke didn’t get this man. He had all the earmarks of a showboat, with only enough skill to keep on coasting through, and yet, there was an obvious intelligence lurking behind every word. An honor, too, since he hadn’t even dared to look at Duke’s notes. Why would he choose to represent a criminal who would likely be sentenced to death before his twenty-fifth birthday?

  He carried the two drinks back outside and resumed his seat. “I left room for milk if you’d like some,” he said, setting Scott’s cup in front of him.

  “Thanks.” He sipped from the cup, his face reflecting satisfaction at the brew. “I take it black. I was just looking over my schedule and wondering when you would like to interview Hector.”

  “As soon as possible, though whenever is convenient for you. My schedule is likely a little more flexible than yours is.”

  “Sometimes, I think if I could just get one more hour in the day, things wouldn’t be so bad.” His brow furrowed as he studied the phone’s screen. From the way he squinted at it, Duke wondered if maybe he didn’t need glasses. “I have a two hour block tomorrow night from eight-thirty to ten-thirty. Does that work?”

  His brows shot up. “On a Sunday evening? Why are you conducting all Mr. Young’s business at such unusual hours?”

  “Because I’m handling this case on my own time. Otherwise, I would just have Monica rearrange my schedule as necessary, but I can’t shuffle any of my other clients around right now. Besides, I’m not one to keep normal hours anyway. If I did that, I would never get anything done.”

  “Did you know Mr. Young before he was arrested? Is that why you took his case?”

  “No. I met him the same day I offered to represent him.”

  “So why did you offer?”

  “Honestly, detective? I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the years, and right now, my instincts are telling me there’s something not quite kosher about the situation. It’s easy for the world to dismiss Hector Young. He’s got no known family in the area, his juvenile rap sheet is almost impressive, and a conviction on this case would reflect well not only on the department, but on the entire city.” Scott inclined his head. “Fair enough. But I’m paying attention to what happens to him.”

  “So…you took this case, details unknown, client unseen, because your gut told you to?” At Scott’s grin, he shook his head. “That’s insane.”

  “It wasn’t quite that bad. I did know the basic details of the case. But everything leading up to the arrest and after just seemed a little too convenient.”

  If he hadn’t sounded so damn sincere about it, Duke would have suspected a personal angle of some sort. He knew very few lawyers in Scott’s circles who were quite that altruistic. But everything about Scott screamed sincerity.

  As long as they were going by gut instincts, Duke was inclined to believe him. He just would have thought the man was smart enough not to tie himself to a sinking ship.

  “The DA won’t be able to stall past Monday,” Duke said.

  “No, but Hector won’t be in jail after that. I’ll get bail, and the DA won’t be able to do anything about it. He just doesn’t have the evidence he needs yet.”

  The temptation was too great. The corner of Duke’s mouth lifted as he said, “Yet. You keep forgetting I haven’t had a chance to tackle this case yet.”

  “I’ve no doubt that you’re an amazing detective, but even you can’t find something that’s not there.”

  “Did he give you an alibi?”

  Scott’s nostrils flared. “No. Not as such.”

  He let the smile fully form for a flash of a second. “Then there’s something for me to find.”

  Scott’s eyes danced. “It’s definitely going to be interesting. Either way. And you never told me if eight-thirty is good for you.”

  “It’s good.” And as he sipped at his coffee, he silently agreed with Scott.

  Interesting. Most definitely.

  Chapter 4

  On the same Tuesday Hector Young had been arrested, Saucedo and a small team went through his apartment in search of anything that might link him to Tana Mayfield’s murder. They found nothing. No prints, no unexplainable items, nothing on the man’s cheap cell phone to indicate Young and Mayfield had ever even crossed paths. According to the notes Duke found in the file, Saucedo had gone back a second time on his own, but the lack of an official report for that visit suggested it had been as fruitless as the first.

  Duke wanted his own opinion. He trusted Saucedo’s team to have done a thorough search, but he wanted a feel for the man they had arrested. Understand the man, understand the crime. It was simple math. With his first official interrogation of Young still twenty-four hours away, he had plenty of time to garner first impressions from the man’s living situation. There was even a chance he might discover something useful in his case.

  Hector’s address was in Visitacion Valley, or Viz Valley as the locals called it. As far as San Francisco neighborhoods went, it rated amongst the worst, its reputation for gang violence scaring away anyone with enough money to live elsewhere. In reality, it wasn’t quite that bad—well, except for Sunnydale, which even Duke treated with kid gloves—but in a city where snobbery had a way of running deep, just the appearance of violence was more than enough.

  Duke borrowed an older model car from the precinct’s garage, a dusty black Hyundai Elantra from the nineties nobody would miss if it got boosted. As he drove through the narrow, winding streets, he replayed his conversation with Scott from that morning over and over in his head, looking for anything incriminating Scott might have let slip. There wasn’t anything, of course. The only tidbit that had been in any way encouraging was the fact Young didn’t have an alibi. The fact that Young had failed to produce one before now had suggested it to Duke anyway, but he liked it better knowing Young had told Scott the same thing.

  It was a chink in Scott’s charming armor. Duke would chip away at it as much as he needed to, to get the man to stumble.

  He still found the entire notion of representing a stranger based on a gut instinct absolutely incredible. After Scott had left, Duke had spent the rest of his morning pulling as many public records on the man he could find. He had a lot of news stories, true, but he also had a lot of wins to show for it. Regardless of how futile this case seemed to be, Duke respected the man’s intelligence a lot more when he was done reading about his most recent “headliners,” as Scott had called them.

  Beating him by getting a conviction would be a rewarding win. True adversaries always made the job better.

  Understand the man, understand the case.

  He wondered if it was possible to understand James Scott at all.

  Hector’s address was a studio in-law unit at the rear of a surprisingly well-maintained duplex. Duke flashed his badge at the small Asian woman who answered the front door, and thanked her when she directed him around to the side and the studio’s independent entry.

  “You’re not the same cop who was here before,” she said.

  “No. I’ve taken over the case, ma’am.”

  “You going to let Hector out?”

  Her query made h
im pause. “Not in the foreseeable future, no. I’m afraid you won’t be able to rent the apartment just yet.”

  Her features screwed up into a frown as she waved a hand in dismissal. “Who cares about the apartment? Hector’s the one I’m worried about. You need to let him out.”

  So Hector had more than Scott as a defender. “Well, that decision isn’t entirely up to me, ma’am.”

  “It’s your case.”

  “Well, yes—”

  “So let him go. He didn’t do it.”

  “Do you have any information pertaining to the case, ma’am?”

  “No, I just know Hector. He’s been trying so hard. He doesn’t need this.”

  “Trying so hard?”

  Another wave. “You know. No more stealing.”

  Duke nodded. Clearly, the landlady didn’t know about the fingerprint they’d found at the victim’s apartment. Saucedo’s notes on his questions for the landlady had been sketchy. He made a mental note to re-read them when he got back to his desk.

  The studio was surprisingly nice, with a well-swept, bamboo hardwood floor and spotless, though faded, furniture. A knitted afghan was crumpled on a tan futon, like Young had been woken from sleep when he’d been arrested, and the drying rack next to the sink was full of clean dishes. Posters covered most of the walls, their subject matter diverse—some model in a skimpy red swimsuit, Jimi Hendrix, the theatrical poster for Big Trouble in Little China. There was even an Ansel Adams in a scuffed frame. Everything was squared neatly in place, nothing haphazard about their arrangement at all.

  Tidy. Meticulous. Not what he would have expected from someone whose sloppy mistakes had gotten him in trouble since he was twelve.

  Maybe he’d learned from his past crimes. Covered his tracks in the Mayfield case. That would explain why there was so little physical evidence tying him to the victim.

  Slowly, Duke paced around the room’s periphery, taking his time to pull on a pair of gloves before he started handling anything. Fingerprint dust still covered the surfaces the techs had tested. He saw no reason to re-examine those. Instead, he focused on a beat-up metal desk in the corner, pulling open the top drawer with a spine-crawling screech.

  Duke found exactly what one would expect to find in desk drawer. There were a few envelopes—bills from the power company—and a few receipts and movie ticket stubs. Loose change littered the bottom, pennies and nickels sliding to the back of the drawer as he pulled it open. A search of the three drawers on the side of the desk turned up little more than that. Duke knew that it wasn’t just because the desk had already been swept for evidence—very few things had been brought back from the station.

  He quietly shut the drawers and turned to look at the narrow futon. He could tell without taking a step that there was nothing underneath it. No boxes to explore. No stacks of papers. Of course, no murder weapon.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.

  Scott stood there with his hands shoved into his pants pockets, jacket open and more casual than Duke had seen him that morning. His hair was mildly mussed, as if he’d been caught briefly in the wind, but an amused smile didn’t mask the careful way he tracked Duke’s movements.

  “No, you shouldn’t.”

  His mouth pulled into a slightly disappointed frown. “But you don’t seem very surprised to see me, either.”

  “Based on what I’ve learned about you, if I allowed myself to be surprised at every move you made, I’d spend far too much time thinking about you and not the case.”

  Scott’s frown instantly disappeared. “I don’t see the downside of you spending all your free time thinking about me.”

  The mildly flirtatious tone startled Duke into hesitating. That, he hadn’t expected. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it, either. He hadn’t thought Scott would use his orientation against him. It wasn’t the man’s style. It occurred to him, then, that the fact it wasn’t suggested Duke was reading too much into a few innocent words.

  He deliberately turned away from Scott and resumed his examination of the room. “Of course, you don’t. You don’t want me focused on putting your client back in jail where he belongs.”

  “Well, technically, he’s still in jail. Not for long, though. Find anything interesting?”

  “Not yet.” He ran his fingertips along the Jimi Hendrix print, testing for differences in thickness. “Are you here to make sure I don’t?”

  “Not at all. I doubt there’s anything in here to find. Saucedo’s been over it twice, and my client isn’t guilty anyway. But Ishi called me and told me the police were poking around here again. I thought I’d come down and say hi.”

  “Because you have so much time on your hands?” He moved on to the next poster, though Scott was right. Saucedo would have checked behind these. Duke was only avoiding the inevitable attention Scott commanded by checking them again. “If that’s the case, perhaps we can move the interrogation to tonight.”

  “We could, but I have a date in an hour, so you’ll only be frustrated in the end.”

  “I don’t get frustrated.”

  “Really? What about when you’re in the middle of something intense and it’s abruptly interrupted? That always frustrates me.”

  Something about Scott’s tone drew Duke’s focus for a moment, and he swept his gaze down the length of the man’s body. He appeared relaxed, but his body language betrayed a readiness to leap at the slightest provocation. A man who rarely stopped. With too much energy for his own good. “Yes, I imagine it would.”

  Scott’s smile widened. “So why are you here alone? You don’t work with a partner?”

  “No. I work better alone.”

  “Somehow, I’m not the least surprised by that. I’ve got a story for you. Do you want to hear it?”

  “If this is an attempt to distract me from doing my job, you’ll only be disappointed.”

  “Like I could do anything to distract you. Besides, it’s related to your job.” Scott stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “There was once this kid who was basically a bright boy, but more or less unexceptional. Orphaned by the time he was eleven, he decided anything was better than being caught in the foster system. So, he fell in with whatever group would take him and was immediately given the job of lookout. He watched for the cops around the corner from where the closest thing to a caretaker he had was selling rock. It wasn’t an easy life, and he didn’t expect to see his eighteenth birthday. Or his fifteenth, for that matter. But he made it. And before his lifestyle really did get him killed, somebody told him, ‘Hey, you know, it doesn’t have to be this way.’ What do you think so far?”

  “I think you’ve just described half of the inmates in San Quentin.” He was tempted to stop, because for all his assurances to the contrary, the rolling Midwest cadence to Scott’s voice kept coaxing him to pay attention, like Scott was about to share a secret he trusted only to Duke. In that moment, he actually felt sorry for the lawyers who had to face Scott in front of a jury. No wonder he had so many wins under his belt.

  “I think the difference is that nobody told those guys it doesn’t have to be this way. Or if they heard that, they didn’t pay any attention to it. But the kid in my story, he did pay attention. He started showing up at temp offices until somebody gave him his first job. Then he found himself an apartment. A place of his own. He even got himself his first bank account. For the first time in his life, he thought maybe—maybe—he had a shot. And then the person who helped him drag his life back on track disappeared, only to be found in the bay. Tragic, isn’t it?”

  “Really? That’s the explanation you’re going to use?” Now he had to stop, because the sheer disbelief at Scott suggesting such a farfetched connection prevented him from doing anything but addressing it. Scott was better than that. He’d proven it time and time again. “Who is ever going to believe that Tana Mayfield of the New Haven Mayfields, beautiful, talented, a dancer in the Cor
ps of one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the country, could ever cross paths with an ex-con with a juvie record that fast-tracked him into the big leagues before he hit the age of twenty-five? That’s not a tragedy, Mr. Scott. That’s a farce.”

  “Of the New Haven Mayfields? Oh, forgive me, I had no idea we were dealing with such prominence.” Scott casually leaned against the desk and folded his arms. “We’re not in New Haven. And Ms. Mayfield had quite a history of volunteer work, beginning when she was twelve. She participated in programs to help disadvantaged children get books and supplies for school. When she was nineteen she began volunteering in a halfway home for nonviolent criminals. She tutored them in reading and basic math. No doubt she was a talented girl from a comfortable background, but she wasn’t a snob.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that no physical evidence links the two except a fingerprint and a trashed apartment.”

  “Right now, there’s more evidence to support my theory than there is to hold Hector in jail. Especially since Hector was in that halfway house when she began volunteering there.”

  Duke shook his head. “Your delivery is going to need more work if you plan on convincing a judge and jury of that.” He turned away to hide the ghost of a smile he couldn’t contain. Witnessing Scott’s bravado was going to be the most entertaining part of this case. “But it was a nice try.”

  “I don’t need to convince a judge or jury of anything, Duke. Your one piece of physical evidence is explained away by the fact that the victim and Hector were friends, and he visited her house on two occasions. And yes, I have a witness who’ll attest to that. I’ve had a busy day.”

  His head snapped up at mention of a witness. “Who?”

  “Ah, now I’ve got your attention. Saucedo has not done a very thorough job so far. Or maybe people just didn’t like to talk to him. I don’t know. But I found several people today who were quite happy to tell me what they knew of Ms. Mayfield.”

  “You still haven’t told me who.” Saucedo’s list of witnesses hadn’t been unusually short. Duke couldn’t imagine him missing someone as valuable as this, especially if there was more than one.