An Honorable Man

by Margaret Watson

  She saw him scan down the list of names. His face darkened and he threw the folder onto the desk. “What is Eddie Timmons’s name doing on this list?” He glared at her, daring her to confirm what he’d seen.

  “Detective Timmons’s name is on the list because he’s a suspect, like the rest of the officers on the list,” she said evenly. “Now do you understand why I came to you?”

  He rubbed at his face, and suddenly she saw the weariness in his unshaven jaw and gray skin. His blue eyes were shadowed with fatigue, and his clothes were rumpled and wrinkled. Apparently he had been up all night, just as he’d said. But it didn’t surprise her—whatever McKinley did, he’d give it his all. He certainly had when he’d been a detective on the Chicago Police Force.

  “What’s going on?” he asked wearily. “Do you people at Internal Affairs have a vendetta against my old precinct? Or is it just detectives in general?”

  “We don’t make up the charges, Mr. McKinley, we just investigate them.” She nodded at the folder lying in front of him. “Are you still sure you won’t help me?”

  “Look, I know I’m punchy because I didn’t get any sleep last night, but do you seriously think I’d be interested in helping you nail my ex-partner to the wall?” His voice became tinged with scorn. “Even for two hundred dollars a day?”

  “I thought you might look at it as an opportunity to prove that he’s innocent, and get paid for it to boot.” She scooted forward in her chair again. “I have to have some help on this, McKinley. You know as well as I do that no one who works with Timmons or any of the other people on that list will tell me anything. I have to hire someone from outside. That’s why I came to you.”

  “You don’t think I’ll do everything I can to prove Eddie is innocent?”

  “I’m counting on it. That way, if he does turn out to be guilty, no one can say he wasn’t given the fairest shake possible.”

  He watched her for a long time, a brooding look in his eyes. “How do you know I won’t make sure that Eddie is found innocent?” he asked finally.

  “Because everyone knows that Lucas McKinley can’t be bought and can’t be corrupted. Whatever else you might have been, McKinley, you were honest. And I’m betting that you still are.”

  “A lot can change in two years.” He watched her unwaveringly, as if gauging her reaction.

  “Yes, it can.” Her gaze flickered over the shabby office. “Let’s just say I’m willing to gamble two hundred dollars a day that some things haven’t changed.”

  He continued to stare at her for a moment, then looked down at the folder that lay open in front of him. Almost unwillingly, it seemed, he began to read.

  She studied his bent head, her gaze drifting over his angular profile and the thick, slightly wavy black hair that lay against his neck. It was the same face that had so fascinated her two years ago, the face she’d seen in her dreams for months afterward. Except that two years ago, his eyes had been filled with a deep, searing grief that had muted the impact of his anger.

  A part of her softened as she looked at him. Two years ago, she couldn’t afford sympathy for him or for the horrible events that had precipitated her involvement. Worse, she couldn’t afford to be attracted to the man she’d been investigating. Nothing she could have said or done would have changed the outcome, and she’d forced herself to keep an impersonal distance. But she wasn’t investigating him now, and he was still the man who regularly haunted her dreams late at night.

  She shouldn’t have come here, she thought in a sudden panic. No matter how desperate, she shouldn’t have sought out Lucas McKinley. Bobby might be in trouble, but she was afraid that if she spent too much time with McKinley she’d be in the worst trouble of her life.

  “…enough,” she heard him saying.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said that two hundred dollars a day won’t be enough. If I help you, you’ll have to make Internal Affairs cough up more money. Call it an incentive for overcoming my distaste at the working conditions.”

  Something inside her stirred in anger. She opened her mouth to tell him where he could take his incentive, then slowly closed it when she saw the gleam in his eyes. He was trying to make her lose her cool, she realized. He was trying to rattle her, and he’d succeeded.

  Clamping her lips together, she took a deep breath and managed to subdue her temper. “How much would you require?” She was amazed at how cool she sounded.

  A quick look came and went that might have been admiration, if it were in any other man’s eyes. In McKinley, it was probably just satisfaction at making her angry.

  He tilted back in his chair, never taking his eyes off her. “Three hundred a day should cover it, plus expenses.”

  She shifted on the hard chair, thinking rapidly. If she was very careful about what she ate next month, she would just be able to cover the extra hundred dollars a day. Provided that they were able to find the evidence she needed in a week or less. She sat up and met his eyes again. “It’s a deal. When can you start?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “No time like the present.” He gestured at the file in front of him. “This isn’t all the evidence you have, is it? A few furtive tips from snitches who may or may not be wasted from drugs doesn’t cut it in any court of law.”

  “No, that’s not all the evidence I have.” He wouldn’t provoke her into losing her temper again. “I’ve spent the last couple of months studying the pattern of arrests of the suspects, their hours on duty, their partners, drug raids scheduled and completed, and about twenty-five other factors that could prove their innocence or guilt. I’m convinced they’re guilty, but I haven’t been able to come up with any concrete evidence. They’ve been as slippery as a pailful of eels.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that maybe you can’t find any evidence because they’re not guilty? That maybe whatever facts you’ve managed to assemble are nothing more than a pile of coincidences?”

  “Of course I’ve considered that possibility! Do you think I want to find that seven police officers, seven decorated detectives, are guilty of accepting bribes to protect a group of slimy drug dealers?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that your job at Internal Affairs?” He leaned back and waited for her answer. His eyes were faintly challenging, as if he’d figured he’d backed her into a corner.

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “It’s our job to make sure the police don’t lose their credibility with the citizens of Chicago. If that means uncovering crooked police officers, then yes, that’s our job. That doesn’t mean we like to do it.” She leaned toward him. “How did you feel about dirty cops when you were on the force? Did you want them protected, or did you want us to get rid of them?”

  His eyes darkened. “I feel the same way now as I did two years ago. Dirty cops are scum. I wouldn’t tolerate them for a minute.”

  She settled back in the chair, beginning to enjoy the exchange. For the first time since she’d walked in the door, his anger was directed somewhere other than at her. And she felt vindicated. She’d somehow known he couldn’t have changed that much, that his passion for doing what was right wouldn’t have been eroded.

  “That’s why I came to you,” she said softly. “I hoped you’d feel like that.”

  He slammed the folder shut. “Eddie Timmons was my partner. I know him. He wouldn’t take a bribe. Hell, I know he never took a bribe in the three years I worked with him. He couldn’t change that much in two years.”

  She took several more files out of her briefcase and pushed them across the desk. “One of the things. I’ve learned is that you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do, even about the people you’re closest to.” That was a lesson that had been burned into her soul. She wasn’t likely to forget it.

  Shutters dropped over his eyes and he stood abruptly and turned away. After a few moments, during which the tenseness of his back seemed to seep into the air around them, he slowly turned to face her, resting one hip against th
e edge of his desk.

  “Supposing I assume, just for the sake of argument, that you’re right. Where do you expect me to start looking?”

  “Just for the sake of argument, I want you to look at all the indirect evidence I’ve collected. See if you can find any inconsistencies in it—make sure I haven’t missed anything, even the slightest detail. When you’ve had a chance to go over everything, we can decide together on the next step.”

  “Together my rear end. I work alone. If you hire me, you let me do things my way.”

  “This is my case, Mr. McKinley,” she said, sitting up straighter. “I’m responsible for the outcome. I’m not going to just hand it over to you and sit back and wait for you to tell me the answers. Either we work together or the deal’s off.”

  She saw the struggle in his eyes. He wanted to tell her to go jump in the lake. But he also wanted to prove Eddie Timmons’s innocence. She was counting on the need to exonerate his partner being the stronger one.

  “All right, then I guess the deal’s off.” He spoke coolly, but anger swirled deep in the dark blue of his eyes.

  Did she dare call his bluff, walk out the door and wait for him to call her back? She didn’t have any choice. There was no way she was going to let McKinley loose on this case by himself.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. McKinley. If you change your mind, let me know.”

  She stood, reaching for the files that still lay piled on the edge of the desk. When she’d stashed all of them in her briefcase, she moved around to take the folder that lay in front of Lucas. He moved just as she reached for the folder, and his hand brushed her arm.

  She went completely still, waiting for him to move his hand. His fingertips lingered on the skin inside her elbow. After what seemed like an eternity, he clenched his hand into a fist and dropped it to his side.

  She couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from the place his hand had touched. The skin there still burned. Slowly she raised her head to look at him. Something gleamed in his eyes, something she didn’t want to identify.

  Snatching up the folder as if something had bitten her, she stepped away and shoved it into her briefcase. Thank goodness he’d refused to work for her. The awareness that had just flared between them was something she hadn’t foreseen. It was the one thing she hadn’t planned about this case. She knew for a fact she couldn’t handle it, even for her brother Bobby.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. McKinley.” Turning, she clutched her briefcase tightly in her hand, conscious of his eyes on her back.

  “Just a minute, Ms. Carleton.”

  She’d made it almost to the door before his voice stopped her. Slowly she turned around.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said abruptly. “We’ll be partners. Buddies. Just like in all the best cop movies.” He gave her a bland smile. “Who knows? We might…enjoy it.”

  In spite of her determination to not let him get the upper hand, she felt temper curdle in her stomach again. “We don’t have to enjoy it, Mr. McKinley. We just have to get the job done.”

  Walking back to him, she reached inside her briefcase and tossed the pile of folders onto his desk. “Give me a call when you’ve read through these.” She then pulled out a business card, scribbling her home phone number on the back. Laying it gently on the pile of folders, she walked through the door and closed it quietly behind her.

  She waited until she stood in the lobby of his building to lean shakily against the wall. She’d done it. She hadn’t failed. “I hope you’re grateful, Bobby,” she whispered. McKinley was going to help her find the evidence that would put his ex-partner, Eddie Timmons, away where he belonged.

  Remembering the flicker of pain in his eyes, she pushed herself away from the wall as she squashed the guilt that stirred deep inside her. Maybe McKinley was hurting, but she couldn’t afford to think about that. Because whether McKinley believed it or not, Eddie was as guilty as sin. She knew it, deep in her soul. Just as she knew, deep in her soul, that working with McKinley was going to be the biggest mistake she’d ever made.

  McKinley stood, staring at the door, long after her footsteps had faded away down the hall. What the hell had he gotten himself into? he wondered wearily, rubbing his hand over his unshaven face.

  Eddie. He rolled his ex-partner’s name around on his tongue, tasting the bitterness it left there. Even two years later, despite his partner’s continued friendship, he couldn’t quite forgive Eddie for testifying against him. He’d had no choice, Eddie had argued, and Luke knew it was true. There had been a slew of other witnesses. If it hadn’t been Eddie, it would have been someone else. Someone else who might not have been on Luke’s side. And Eddie had only been telling the truth, after all.

  The final result had been the same. In the end, it hadn’t mattered what Eddie had said. Julia Carleton and Internal Affairs had made sure of it. He’d been convicted even before he’d walked into the hearing room.

  She’d done her homework, he had to give her that. She’d been unflappable that hot July morning, calmly stating the findings of her investigation, just as calmly calling witness after damning witness.

  And now she was applying that same relentless will to an investigation of his partner, Eddie Timmons, an investigation she’d sucked him into. Well, if Eddie was innocent, he’d make damn sure she realized it. He owed his ex-partner that, if for no other reason than all the nights Eddie had come by to drag him out to dinner in the last two years.

  He moved to the window, looking down on the crowds starting to hurry along the street. Business started early in this working-class part of Chicago. People who earned their living by the sweat of their brow couldn’t afford to keep banker’s hours.

  He wasn’t looking for a slim figure in a dark blue suit, he told himself. He’d be seeing enough of Julia Carleton in the next few days without deliberately looking for her. Still, his body reacted when he spotted her dark red head weaving through the people on the sidewalk. In spite of himself, he watched as she unlocked the door of a flashy red sports car.

  Another little piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit. She was the kind of woman who should have driven a small, foreign economy car. As he watched her fold herself into the driver’s seat, a small movement on the edge of his vision caught his attention.

  A figure dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt edged out of the alley behind her and slipped into a nondescript black sedan parked two cars behind her low-slung red one. The windows of the sedan were too heavily tinted for him to see the driver’s face, but he really didn’t need to.

  Before he’d taken another breath he was out the door and running down the stairs. By the time he got to the street, the little red sports car was turning the corner, the black sedan right behind it like a big cat toying with its prey before it pounced. He watched helplessly as the two cars disappeared from view.

  Chapter 2

  Luke stood on the sidewalk for a long time after the two cars disappeared, battling the sick feeling in his stomach. It didn’t necessarily mean what he thought, he tried to tell himself. For all he knew, Julia Carleton might have a bodyguard from the Internal Affairs Department because of the explosive nature of the case she was investigating. She might know all about the slimy character in the car behind her.

  But he didn’t think so. The punk who had been hiding in the alley looked too furtive, too sleazy to belong to the police. He’d been too careful not to let Julia see him. And as Luke stared down the street at the place where the two cars had disappeared, the hairs on the back of his neck were still standing straight up.

  At least he was able to get the first three letters of the guy’s license plate. Bounding back up the stairs to his office, he dialed his connection at the motor vehicle division.

  “Hi, Babs, it’s Luke,” he said into the phone a few minutes later. “Can you look up a plate for me? Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to do this. But hey, what are friends for?”

  In spi
te of his anxiety, he grinned at the familiar exchange. “Yeah, I’ve got the bail money right here. And if they don’t throw you in the pokey, we’ll use it for dinner some night instead.”

  Leaning against his desk, he laughed softly at her answer. Babs Dugan had worked in the motor vehicle division forever, outlasting several police chiefs and a handful of mayors. She’d been outspoken about his dismissal from the police force, and had promised that if she could ever help him, she’d be glad to do it. He counted Babs among his closest friends.

  “I don’t know what kind of car, and I only got part of the plate. Yeah, the first three letters are SRG. The rest were numbers, three of them, and the car was a black sedan. That’s all I can tell you.”

  He shifted on the desk while he waited for Babs to run through the computer listing, and picked up one of the files Julia Carleton had left on his desk. Before he could read any of the information, though, Babs came back on the line.

  “There are ninety-two cars that fit that description,” she reported. “Kind of tough to narrow it down.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was an American car,” he answered. “Does that help?”

  He listened to her type. A few moments later she said, “That brings it down to sixty-three. Want me to print them out and send them over?”

  “Thanks, Babs. I’d appreciate that. And I meant it about dinner. Maybe next week, okay?”

  He hung up, his smile lingering for a moment. Then he looked down at the files in front of him and the smile disappeared. He’d felt the tug of attraction toward Julia two years ago, even through the haze of grief and guilt that enveloped him. And it had only intensified his guilt and selfloathing. Now, in spite of himself, an image of Julia’s slender body floated in front of his eyes. He could still see her creamy skin, touched with a hint of rose when he’d stared at her. He could almost feel the pulse in the crook of her elbow, pounding madly when he’d accidentally touched her there.