“I’m a cake-and-eat-it guy,” he said. “I think you can do both.”
“Not if I’m sitting here all day.”
“Why not? I have Internet access. I’m not tied to the room. If you need to investigate something, I can come along.”
“And sit outside your house while I interview Mrs. McGuilicuty? I don’t think so.”
“I thought you have people talking to the neighbors.”
“Got ya,” Rassouli said softly.
“You’re no help, Lou.”
“Didn’t know I was supposed to help,” he said.
“You didn’t want me on this case,” Tasha said to Lou. “Want us on this case.”
“That was when I thought it was simple assault.” All the humor had left Rassouli’s face. “But that bastard outfoxed all of us tonight. I want him as much as you do. And frankly, if we leave Mr. Chance alone and he faces the perp on his own, we’re as responsible as if we gave out the address.”
“You think the protection idea is a good one?”
“Unofficially, I think it’s the best option we got,” Rassouli said.
“And officially?”
Rassouli turned to Rick. “You’re on your own, Mister.”
Rick leaned back in his chair and watched them both as they discussed this. He wanted their help. He was glad they were considering it.
He had handled this on his own for too long.
But he was willing to compromise. “Tash, it doesn’t have to be you, you know.”
“It ain’t gonna be just her,” Rassouli said. “Sometimes you’ll get me. I know I’m not as pretty, and I’m probably not as much fun to dance with—”
“Lou!”
“—but I can guard with the best of them. And besides, I figure you might know more about this perp than you realize you do. A few hours together, we might figure out how to find this guy.”
Rick was beginning to like Rassouli. He wasn’t sure how he had felt after the interrogation room that morning—and Rassouli certainly knew more about him than he wanted, but it didn’t matter. The man seemed to have a clear head on his shoulders.
“What about the Pfeiffer case?” Tasha asked.
“Allen’s handling it. If there’s blood on the shoes, we’re through. Hell, if he has the paperweight, we’re through.” Rassouli picked the hotel notepad off the table, and flipped through the pages. “I think a day or two won’t make a difference.”
“You think you’ll find the Creep in the next two days?” Rick asked.
Rassouli’s gaze met his. “I think we got to.”
The chill Rick had felt earlier returned.
“All right then. Obviously you boys settled this without me.” Tasha turned to Rassouli. “You get the night shift. You want me to call your wife?”
“I’m perfectly capable of calling my wife,” he said.
“I don’t think someone has to be at the hotel,” Rick said. “I wasn’t followed here. If he’d known where I was, don’t you think he would have been here by now?”
“How do you know he hasn’t been?” Tasha said.
“We’re staying,” Rassouli said. “Or at least one of us is. Can I use your phone?”
“Sure.”
Rassouli got off his chair and wandered into the bedroom. Apparently he wanted to speak to his wife in private.
Tasha looked at the back of her hands. Rick longed to take them in his own. Instead, he said, “I won’t bite you, you know.”
She raised her head quickly. “Excuse me?”
“I know you need to be professional. I won’t compromise that. That wasn’t why I suggested you act as my protection.” It was a little lie. He did want her, not Rassouli, beside him. But he wouldn’t have touched her. He wouldn’t have interfered in anyway.
Unless she wanted him to.
“Then why did you suggest it?” Tasha asked.
“Because,” Rick said, “whether you approve of it or not, I’m going to find this guy. And I have a hunch you’d rather know what I was doing.”
“You can’t get involved, Rick.”
“I am involved. All of this is aimed at me, and I’m not the kind of guy to sit quietly on the sidelines failing to defend myself. I did that once and damn near lost my entire family. I’m not going to do it again.”
She frowned. “What do you mean you lost your family? The plane crash?”
He shook his head. He’d said more than he meant to. “It happened long before the plane crash. I was already gone from here by then.”
“But you were stalked?”
He let out a shaky laugh. “Not quite.”
“What does not quite mean?”
“You read Betrayal, right?”
“I told you I had,” she said.
“Well, the woman in the book was my fiancée for fifteen minutes, until I found out that she was lying about being pregnant. Only she told my family that I forced her to have an abortion that she didn’t want—even though there had been no baby at all—and my parents, my family, believed her.”
“That’s why you went to Chicago,” Tasha said softly.
“That’s why I went to Chicago.”
She studied him for a moment. He stiffened, wondering if she was changing her opinion about him.
“I always thought that novel was devastating,” she said. “I’m so sorry that it actually happened to you.”
“Well,” he said, “if you can’t change it, write about it.”
Tasha nodded. Then Rassouli came into the room. He looked serious.
“Tash—”
“Oh, come on, Lou,” she said. “Don’t do this to me.”
“Do you have a hot date?”
She flushed. Rick scooted back and watched.
“No,” she said sullenly.
“Well, I do. At least, I do if I go home.”
“That’s more information than I wanted, Lou.”
Rick suppressed an amused smile. He had a hunch these two always bantered like this. He liked the affection it showed—and the respect between them.
“Tash, we have tickets to the Santana concert tonight.”
“Yeah, right. And I’m having dinner with George Clooney.”
“Really?” Rassouli sounded surprised.
“Lou, if you had Santana tickets, you would have been bragging for weeks.”
“They were a surprise, Tash. Friday’s my birthday, or have you forgotten?”
Rick crossed his arms. Tasha closed her eyes and moaned. “Birthdays are not fair.”
“Looks like you and the writer get to spend the night together.” Rassouli grinned at her. “If I were you, I’d get him to tell you how he does all that research.”
“Lou!”
Rick’s gaze met Rassouli’s, trying to figure out if this was a set-up. He doubted it.
“And you,” Rassouli said. “No matter how flip I’m being, you asked us here for protection, and that’s all it should be.”
“I know,” Rick said. “I already promised Tasha that.”
“Good.” Rassouli looked at both of them. “I gotta get home or I’m a dead man. I’ll have my beeper if you need me, Tash.”
“You owe me for this,” she said.
“No, I don’t. This is payback for garbage duty.”
Tasha moaned.
“I’ll be back. Eight a.m. sharp. And you,” Rassouli looked at Rick, “be ready to do a ride-along.”
“Yes, sir,” Rick said.
“Night.” Rassouli grinned at both of them as he let himself out the door.
“Son of a bitch,” Tasha mumbled. “How does he always manage to do that to me?”
“I thought you don’t do protection,” Rick said.
“Stake-outs. He manages to get out of those, too.”
“He’ll have me tomorrow,” Rick said.
“Yeah, a ride-along. That’ll be difficult. Me, I’m stuck on a hotel couch.” She sighed.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Rick said.
&n
bsp; “No, you won’t,” she said. “The couch is near the door. I’m not going to cross two rooms to confront someone who’s broken in.”
“Better hang out the do-not-disturb,” he said. “I don’t want to know what you’ll do to the housekeeper if she doesn’t knock loud enough.”
Tasha glared at him and stood. “We gotta go out.”
“And here I was thinking of dinner in.”
“You shouldn’t be enjoying this.”
His good mood suddenly vanished. “I’m not, Tasha. I’d much rather be home, in my office, meeting my deadline.”
“Sorry,” she said in a tone that implied she wasn’t. “We still gotta go out.”
“Why? This hotel has room service.”
“Well, right now I have no change of clothing,” she said, “and Lou just took our car. So you have to drive me home.”
“How about we get dinner on the way?”
“Sounds fine by me,” she said. “As long as we stay away from your neighborhood.”
Rick sighed. “He’s going to find us, isn’t he?”
Tasha grinned. It was a confident, strong grin. “Not if I find him first.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY WALKED TO the parking garage and were about fifteen paces from Rick’s truck when Tasha stopped.
“Damn,” she said.
“What?” Rick asked.
“That truck of yours. It’s a neon sign saying, ‘Find me.’”
“What’s wrong with my truck?”
“Besides the dents and the missing muffler? Oh, let’s try the non-existent paint job, and commemorative license plates.”
Rick looked at his truck. It was parked kitty-corner in the stall so that it wouldn’t get any more dents. The sides were a bit rusty, the paint a bit strange, but he loved that truck. It was more dependable than all his other cars, and it carried stuff—a lot of stuff—without complaint.
“I thought you were without a vehicle.”
“I am,” she said. “But we can get to my vehicle rather easily. Then we follow our evening’s plan.”
“Okay,” he said, and let her lead him back across the street into the hotel. He found himself watching everyone to see if they were watching him. Men especially. If they looked the slightest bit suspicious, he glared at them, hoping the intensity of his look would scare them away.
“You know,” Tasha said, “it’s better if you let me keep an eye out for us. You’re drawing attention.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’ve got hotel security watching you.”
Sure enough. He looked toward the front desk. A man wearing a uniform, a name tag, and a walkie-talkie stood near the pillar with his arms crossed. He was staring at Rick.
Rick grinned. “At least I’ve got the good guys looking out for me.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Tasha headed toward the concierge desk. “I think you’re just making yourself memorable, and if our guy shows up and asks about you, maybe fifty people can tell him you’re here.”
“You sure know how to dampen a man’s mood.”
“My job is not to entertain you. It’s to make sure you survive the next couple of days.”
“I thought it was to catch the bad guy.”
“That too,” she said.
She leaned across the concierge desk and asked them to call her a cab. The concierge obliged. Rick stood back with his arms crossed. This was so different from Chicago. There, they would have stepped outside the door and had the valet hail one of the passing cabs.
“Come on,” Tasha said. “Let’s go outside.”
He waited until she had started, then slipped a tip to the concierge, who gave him a grateful smile. There was a group of people on the sidewalk, along with a pile of luggage. He and Tasha stepped around it.
The air was getting cool as the skies grew dark. When he had been in Chicago, this was one thing he had missed about the Pacific Northwest. The temperatures cooled down significantly at night. Sleeping was always good here.
Within a few minutes, a cab had rounded the corner, and skidded to a stop in front of them. Tasha got into the back without hesitation, and Rick followed, hoping they were trusting their lives to a driver who knew what he was doing.
Tasha gave the address, which Rick instantly recognized as the precinct. He had thought they were going to her house first, and he said as much.
“I’m parked there,” she said rather tersely and leaned back in the seat, staring out the window at the passing scenery. Her position made it clear she wasn’t interested in conversation. Rick settled in too, and hoped the drive would soon end.
The driver obviously hadn’t realized that they were going to the police station because as he pulled up, he said, “This can’t be right.”
“Oh, it’s right,” Rick said, reaching for his wallet.
“I got it,” Tasha said.
But Rick had already paid, taken the receipt and slid out of the cab. He stood on the curb, staring at the building.
The first time he lived in Portland, he’d managed to avoid this place, and now he was here twice in one day.
“Let’s go in,” Tasha said.
“I thought we were just coming for the car.” Behind Rick, the cab driver gunned his engine and then sped off, as if he didn’t want to be in front of a police station any longer than necessary.
“I want to check a few things first.” Tasha passed him and headed for the door.
Rick sighed. At least he was going in the front door this time, and he wasn’t handcuffed. That was a step up from the morning.
The station wasn’t as busy as it had been earlier in the day. There were fewer uniforms walking around, and almost no one in the waiting area. Tasha strode past the main desk without saying hello to the desk sergeant. The man didn’t look up as Rick passed either.
They stepped into an area filled with desks and files and phones. A few detectives huddled over those desks, staring at files. Tasha’s desk was near a wall with a large window in it, a window that looked into someone else’s office. Shades blocked the view.
Tasha didn’t even seem to notice. “I hope you’re not that hungry.”
He was a little. The area smelled of cold pizza—two boxes were open on a table that also housed the coffee maker. “Why?” he asked.
“Because this may take a while.”
“What are we doing?”
“Come with me.” She led him into a tiny room that had once been an office. It had four computers, all of them more than a year old. She sat at one, jiggled the mouse, and the police department logo appeared on the screen.
“You can log on from my system,” Rick said. “And we could have had room service while you were doing it.”
“I have access to information here that we can’t get off your system,” she said.
He doubted that, but he let her believe it. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted a police officer—especially this police officer—to know he could illegally find his way around cyberspace.
“All right,” he said, pulling over a chair. “What are we trying to find?”
“Tell me again who knew you were moving to Portland. Your family?”
“No,” he said. “They didn’t find out until I’d arrived.”
“Who else?”
“My agent. My editor. Some of my Chicago friends, but none of them know I write.”
“Someone who has at least part of the connection,” Tasha said, “is your secretary.”
“She doesn’t know anything about me. I told you that.”
“But she knows you moved.”
“She knows Jessamyn moved. She got the address change about a month before I moved so that she could help me with the transition.”
“Help you with the transition? Or Jessamyn?”
“Jessamyn,” he said. “But my secretary believes that Jessamyn is married to Rick.”
“Bingo,” Tasha said.
“Before you go any farther,” Rick said, “
my secretary is a woman in her sixties who has worked for me for the past ten years. She’s been steady, reliable and never given me a spot of trouble.”
“I’m sure she hasn’t,” Tasha said. “But does she have any relatives who might?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Give me her name,” Tasha said.
“I don’t think it’s her.”
“Her name.” Tasha’s tone was flat. He decided not to argue further.
“Miranda Foyt.”
“Relative of A.J.?”
“I doubt it.”
“You never asked.”
“I’ve never met her in person,” Rick said.
“Then how do you know so much about her?”
“You see, there’s something called a resume—”
“Oh, cute,” Tasha said. She opened a database and typed in Miranda Foyt’s name. “Where is she located?”
“Chicago,” Rick said. “You know, I have all this information on my computer.”
“Including her social security number?”
“No,” Rick said. “That’s at home.”
Tasha grunted. They both knew they weren’t going there. Not tonight at least.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing if she has a sheet.”
“Miranda Foyt? She’s a grandmother.”
“So was Ma Barker.”
They waited a minute as the already outdated system tried to access information. “Nothing,” Tasha said.
“If it were that easy, I could solve it myself,” Rick said.
Tasha frowned. “There’s no way of knowing relatives or anything else.”
“I doubt it’s her, Tash.”
“Humor me.” Tasha closed that screen and opened a new one. “Let’s figure out who else has access to your information.”
Rick put his hand over hers. It was like touching a live wire. Her gaze met his. She had felt it too.
“Let’s do this differently,” he said. “Let’s get some dinner, you get your clothes, and then let’s come back here. This building never closes, right?”
“Yes, but the sooner we do this, the sooner we get the Creep off your back.”
“I know,” Rick said. “However, I’m dying of hunger and you can quiz me at the restaurant.”
The Perfect Man Page 18