Thicker Than Water

by Maggie Shayne

  She hurried out of her bedroom, into the upstairs hall, and thought of her car, still parked in the hotel’s garage. She was going to have to take Dawn’s Jeep. Not that Dawn would mind, really, although she would pretend to, and probably gripe about her mother’s notoriously poor driving skills being turned loose on an innocent Jeep.

  Julie paused at her daughter’s bedroom door and peeked in. Dawn was sound asleep, her back to her mother, nothing visible but the shape of her body underneath the blankets. The radio was playing softly beside the bed. She always fell asleep with her music playing. All the better, Julie thought, and she pulled the door closed and tiptoed to the stairs, down them and out to the garage.

  * * *

  Sean hadn’t gone home at all. He’d driven around for a little while, wondering who, among all the man’s known enemies, would have had the best motive to murder Harry Blackwood. The senator’s brother had a less than stellar reputation. He drank. A lot. He gambled. And it was widely known that he liked his women. In fact, the big scandal of the last election had involved allegations from a prostitute who claimed Harry was one of her best customers. The guy was a lowlife.

  But now he was a dead lowlife, and Sean wanted to know why. In fact, he wanted to know a lot more than he already did about Harry Blackwood and his sleazy side. A guy like that must have more than a few skeletons in his closet. And the public would want to know. Within twenty-four hours this was going to be the biggest story in the state. People would be clamoring for inside dirt, and he was just the man to provide it. His value as a reporter, he thought with a slow smile, was about to sail through the roof. And that new job he’d been thinking he didn’t stand a chance of landing might just be in the bag. He could use this.

  Meanwhile Channel Four’s ratings were sinking, had been ever since Julie Jones’s former coanchor had retired and she’d begun sitting alone at the evening news desk. She was good, he thought. But he was better. People liked the dynamics of a male-female anchor team. She couldn’t give them that. People also liked dirt, and she wouldn’t give them that, either.

  He was about to leave her in the dust.

  People’s dirt, he knew from experience, turned up in people’s garbage. So he used his cell phone and directory assistance to get the exact address, minus the apartment number, and he drove to Harry’s building. He parked his car where it seemed relatively safe and took what he needed from the glove compartment. The Dumpster Diving Kit, he called it. He always carried one. He’d thought once or twice that he ought to patent it and sell it to journalists the world over.

  Harry had lived in a good neighborhood; he had to give the guy that much, Sean thought as he locked his car and walked casually toward the alley beside the building. The building was a century-old brick structure that had been in pretty decent shape up until the city’s recent downtown restoration efforts. Now it was like new again, sound, clean and safe, even while keeping its original look.

  He used a small penlight to guide his feet. No rats scurried out of its beam, and there were no homeless old men to trip over. Yep, a nice neighborhood. Toward the far end of the alley, he found what he needed. The Dumpster. The lid was raised, and the garbage chute angled into it from the side of the building.

  Digging through garbage was never a pleasant job but almost always a profitable one. Sean opened the gallon-size zipper-seal freezer bag and took out a pair of yellow rubber gloves. He had found some of his very best material in the garbage. He’d learned of extramarital affairs, celebrity pregnancies, addictions, nose jobs and political corruption from various piles of refuse. Occasionally he found stuff that was too lowbrow even for his radio show. Stuff that would be considered beneath him, though granted, according to most of the respected press, that was a very narrow area. When he found stuff like that, he never used it for his show. He had to preserve what little journalistic integrity he had. So he would simply sell it to the tabloids, which were always more than willing to keep his name out of it. It was a tidy little side business. Hell, it had paid for his Porsche.

  At worst, this Dumpster should provide something kinky enough to bring a good price at the tabloids. At best, it would provide a motive for Harry Blackwood’s murder and enough leverage to move him up a few rungs on the journalistic ladder.

  He pulled on the yellow rubber gloves, then took out the white surgical face mask and tied it around his head. Then he found a small broken crate lying on the ground, and he flipped it upside down beside the Dumpster to use as a makeshift stepladder. It was dark. He put his penlight in his mouth and peered down into the depths of trash.

  Most of the garbage was bagged. People were neater these days than they’d been ten years ago. He reached for a plastic trash bag, picked it up by its knotted top and let it dangle and turn in slow-mo, shining his light and peering through the transparent sides until he spotted a name on a discarded envelope or sheet of paper. He repeated this process over and over, tossing the bags aside when he found any name other than Harold R. Blackwood. Harry had lived alone, as far as Sean knew. He wouldn’t likely have anything addressed to anyone else. There! Harold Blackwood. Apartment 624.

  He tossed the bag to the ground to be examined later and kept on digging for more, stopping only when headlights spilled into the alley from the street beyond and he heard a car pulling to a stop out in front of the building. The engine shut off. The lights went out.

  He glanced at his watch. 2:00 a.m.

  Okay, it was probably nothing, but he had a little nerve at the base of his skull that tingled when there was a story nearby, and it was tingling now. Maybe he’d better check it out, just in case….

  He jumped down from the crate and picked up the bag he’d retrieved, peeled off his gloves and face mask, tossing them into the trash, and then he walked back up the alley to the street.

  A powder-blue Jeep Wrangler had stopped there, and the woman who got out of it was…He had to blink and look again. There was no mistake. She was none other than Julie Jones.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he muttered. Licking his lips, he set his trash bag down and pressed himself closer to the wall so he could peer around it and watch her without being seen. “What the hell is she up to now?”

  She walked up the broad stone steps of Harry’s building, then paused at the front door, biting her lip and squinting at the security panel. Finally she pushed a button. She was only three yards away from Sean. She kept her finger on the button until a groggy, angry voice came over the intercom in reply. “Who the hell is this?” it demanded. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you, but I forgot my key. Could you just buzz me in?”

  “Fuck off, lady,” the man said.

  She waited a couple seconds, then hit the same button again. The voice returned. “You want me to call a cop?”

  “You want me to keep my finger on this button until they get here?”

  “All right, all right. Jesus.”

  The guy buzzed her in. Sean heard the deep drone of the buzzer and the door lock disengaging, and shook his head in amazement, both at her brass and at the fact that her ploy had actually worked. Jones opened the door and walked through. Swearing under his breath, Sean lunged out of his spot, running in three long strides to the stairs. The door was already swinging closed and Jones was striding toward the elevators, her back to him. He flung himself bodily, landing chest first on the stairs, arms stretching doorward. He just managed to thrust his fingertips into the opening before the door slammed on them.

  Clenching his teeth and swearing under his breath, he pulled himself forward, grabbed the door with his free hand and pulled it open. Then he got to his feet and stepped inside. His fingers throbbed. Shit. He rubbed them and shook his hand as the door fell closed behind him. Then he heard the elevator ping and looked ahead to see its doors closing, as well.

  Crossing into the lobby, he dug through his memory for the number he’d seen on that envelope—624, that was it. Sixth floor. There was only o
ne elevator, and he didn’t want Jones getting too goddamn far ahead of him. Nor did he relish the thought of being caught there in plain sight should the irate neighbor Jones had bothered with the buzzer decide to call the cops after all.

  He looked around, found the stair door and took that way up. Five flights. He hurried, because he didn’t want Jones out of his sight long enough to do anything he would regret not seeing. He figured it took him a minute or so before he made it to the sixth floor landing, opened the stair door and stepped quietly into the hall. Or as quietly as he could manage while panting for breath. His heart was pounding hard enough to wake the residents of the entire floor, and he told himself he was too old for this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

  Then he shook his head. Getting too old, maybe. But he wasn’t there yet—he’d managed to catch up to her. Jones was walking down the hall, peering at the numbers on the doors of the condos on this floor. He walked forward, stepping just as softly as he could manage. She was wearing jeans now. Her hair was a mess, and her sweatshirt was baggy. This was not a Julie Jones too many people would recognize.

  Then she stopped suddenly and just stood there, staring at one of the doors. And when he got a little closer, Sean realized why. It was Harry’s apartment door, and it was standing wide-open.

  Someone had been there first, and even as he wondered whether they might still be around, Julie Jones walked inside.

  Swearing under his breath, Sean rushed ahead and paused momentarily outside the door to look in at Jones as she tiptoed through the apartment like some kind of goddamn cat burglar. He knew it was freaking insane, but he had to find out what she was up to. My God, he didn’t have dreams this good. Oh, he’d fantasized lots of scenarios involving Julie Jones over the years, getting the best of her being his second favorite. But this was better than anything he could have made up. So he crept in after her.

  Harry’s living room looked like some dated idea of a playboy’s love nest. Black leather furniture, white shag carpet, wall-size stereo system, wet bar. Jones moved through it into a hallway and went through a door about halfway down. God, he hoped she wasn’t heading for the bedroom. He could only imagine what that would look like.

  She wasn’t. He moved quietly to the door she’d entered. She’d left it open, so he could look inside. It was a study or library. Desk, chair, file cabinet and a big-screen TV that would have seemed out of place if not for the wall of videos.

  He thought they were books at first, in the muted light. But no. VHS tapes. One entire wall housed a built-in cabinet that must have been full of them. Right now, its doors were flung open wide, and video cassettes lay toppled on the shelves and strewn over the floor. The file cabinet nearby was open wide, too. File folders and papers were thrown everywhere.

  Jones stood there, looking at the mess, shaking her head from side to side as if the sight rendered her unable to move or speak. She pressed her hands to either side of her head, fingers digging in her own hair. “Oh, Jesus, look at all this,” she whispered.

  “Jones.”

  She whirled when Sean said her name, one hand clenched in a fist and the other pressing to her chest as if to keep her heart from busting out.

  “Easy, easy, it’s just me.”

  “MacKenzie. What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?”

  “Hell, no. I was getting some background for my story.”

  She tipped her head to one side and lowered the fist. “How?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it again.

  “Well, you sure as hell couldn’t be interviewing neighbors at this hour. What were you doing, digging through the trash?”

  It was supposed to be a sarcastic little barb, and he would be damned before he admitted that it was dead-on target. There was nothing wrong with digging through the trash. “You’re the one breaking and entering,” he reminded her.

  “The door was open.”

  Arguing in whispers was an interesting concept, he thought. Each of them tried to whisper more forcefully than the other.

  “It was,” she said, apparently mistaking his silence for doubt.

  “I know, I know, I saw.” He took her arm. “Let’s get out of here before both our asses wind up behind bars.”

  She tugged her arm free. “You go on. I have to look around some more.” Her eyes were on the scattered files, scanning them as if trying to read the labels.

  “Jones, someone broke in here tonight.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Well, has it occurred to you that it might have been the killer?”

  “Gee, no, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “He might still be around here somewhere, Jones. Did you think of that?”

  That brought her head up. Her eyes leveled on his, widening a little. Her body went so still that he didn’t think she was breathing for a second. The idea of someone else in the apartment frightened her. Good. She should be frightened. But after a second, she seemed to decide her reasons for being there outweighed her fear.

  “Maybe you should go check out the rest of the place,” she suggested. “Make sure no one else is around.” Then she turned away from him, dropping to her knees to scan the file folders littering the floor.

  “Right, and leave you here alone to abscond with whatever evidence you find.” He knelt right beside her, checking the videocassettes. Some were commercially made, with printed labels, films that sounded like porn, with titles like Mistress Mary’s Discipline and Dungeon Lover. Others had white labels on them with handwritten titles. Sean pulled out his penlight for a better look, because the handwritten ones were harder to read in the dark. He flicked the light on and read them aloud in a whisper. “Vanessa. Marianne. Barb & Sally.” He looked at Jones. She was still pawing frantically through the files that carpeted the floor. “Just what is it you’re looking for?”

  “I’m not looking for anything. I’m just looking.” She took his light from his hand, shining it on papers with an air of impatience, then stopping the beam on something that lay on the floor, something that reflected the light with its glossy surface. Photographs, Sean thought, but as soon as he thought it, she dropped an empty folder on top of them.

  “What was that? Was that something?”

  “No. Nothing.” She shone the light elsewhere; then, getting to her feet, she scanned the few files still in the open drawers.

  “What is it you expect to find in the files, Jones?” He got up, too, brushing off his pantlegs, waiting for a chance to see what it was she had covered up.

  “How would I know?”

  “Then why do I get the feeling you’re looking for one that says Julie Jones on it?” Then he lifted his brows. “Or should I be looking for a tape with that label instead?”

  She turned toward him, probably about to tear him a new one, he thought, but then she went still at the sound of a bell—just one single ping. “What’s that?”

  “The elevator.” He grabbed the light from her, shut it off and ran back through the apartment to the still-open door. He peered out into the hall. She came up behind him a couple of seconds later. “Is it…?”

  Lieutenant Jax was striding down the hall toward them, flanked by the same two cops from the hotel room. Sean ducked back inside. “Police,” he whispered. “Come on.”

  The two of them ran through the apartment, ducked back into the study and closed the door behind them. Sean went to the window and parted the curtains, looking for a balcony. What he found was even better. Thank God this was an old building. He yanked open the window, turned and held out a hand to Jones. “Come here.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” she whisper-shouted at him.

  “Fire escape. Come on. Hurry.” Taking her hand in one of his, holding the curtains for her with the other, he helped her out first, then climbed out after her. As he did, he glanced back into the room, at the floor. And, yes, it was dark, and his light was in his pocket now—but he didn’t see the file fo
lder covering up the photographs anymore. It had been kicked aside, and he didn’t see the photos at all. Maybe they’d been kicked aside, too, but he didn’t think so.

  He had an inkling that those photos were in Jones’s pocket by now. Sighing, he closed the window behind them and turned to where she stood on the black metal landing, looking down at the skeletal flights of iron stairs and the street below. “You all right?”

  The wind blew none too gently, and it carried a bite of autumn chill with it. She nodded but didn’t speak. She kept looking down, and he thought maybe heights were not her favorite thing in the world. He had no idea why, but he squeezed past her, so he was in front, then reached behind him and caught her wrist in his hands.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Relax, Jones. This is strictly business.” He pulled her hand up, pressed it onto his shoulder. “Just hold on to me, okay?” And then he started down the fire escape’s zigzagging stairs.

  She stayed right behind him, her hand closing tight on his shoulder, the second one quickly following suit on the other side. The fire escape was a good one, as fire escapes went, but even the best of them tended to sway and jiggle. Every time this one did, her nails dug into his flesh, right through his clothes. He moved slowly, carefully, because the thing was noisy. He figured he had maybe five minutes, maximum, before the cops noticed the window unlocked and came outside to check. It might be far sooner. Jax was sharp; she didn’t miss much. If he’d been alone, he could have taken it twice as fast and been gone by now, despite the noise.