Paper Bullets

by Reed, Annie

  I always kept the security door locked whenever I was home. It definitely made me feel better now as I opened my front door to these two stranger men.

  “Abby Maxon?” the shorter of the two asked. He had about ten years on me, but where he stood on my front stoop, he was shorter than I was. The house was one step up from the stoop, so I figured he was maybe my height or just a little taller. His dark hair was shot through with gray, and his neck strained against his shirt and tie.

  Instead of answering, I lifted an eyebrow. “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “Are you Abby Maxon?” the other guy asked. He was younger and taller and blond, and I could see the hint of a five o’clock shadow glinting in the last of the summer sunlight.

  This time I didn’t say anything at all.

  The two cops—and by now I’d figured out that they were cops; between the suits and their attempt at intimidation, they couldn’t be anything else—shared a quick glance.

  The shorter, older cop was closer to the door. He took his ID out of a pocket and held it up for me to look at.

  According to his ID, he was Detective Vincent Archulette of the Reno Police Department.

  Detective?

  “And you?” I asked the younger cop.

  His expression still neutral, he held up his ID. Detective Martin Squires. Also Reno Police Department.

  I breathed a mental sigh of relief.

  They weren’t from the Sparks Police Department, which meant they weren’t here because something had happened to Kyle.

  Enough of the officers Kyle worked with knew the two of us were dating that if anything horrible happened to him, they’d let me know. The very worst notifications were always done in person, never over the phone.

  Which meant these two were at my front door about something else.

  I’d talked to a lot of police officers either through the investigations I did for Norton Greenburger or the accident investigation work I did for other attorneys. I’d never met these two before, and I wasn’t sure I liked the official tone of their visit.

  “What can I do for you, detectives?” I asked when they put their IDs away.

  Detective Archulette sighed. “You’re Abby Maxon, right?”

  Norton always pounded into his clients that they shouldn’t admit anything to police officers who showed up unannounced, but Norton wasn’t dating a police officer. I had a slightly different perspective. Archulette had won me over a bit with that sigh. It told me he’d had a long day, just like I had.

  “That’s me,” I said. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Can we come inside?” Archulette asked.

  A particularly loud and discordant noise came from the den where Samantha was still pounding away on the piano. Archulette winced.

  “My daughter’s working off some steam,” I said. “It’s probably quieter around back.”

  I unlocked the door and let the detectives inside. I offered them iced tea. They both declined, and we walked through the house and into the backyard.

  Neither Ryan nor I were big into gardening, but he’d felt it important to put in the type of landscaping appropriate to a successful lawyer.

  The backyard had a fire pit, a covered patio that was bigger than my living room, a built-in barbecue, and a water feature that included a fountain and a pond that used to have koi fish the size of small trout. Ryan took the fish when we split up and I told him that if he left the fish for me to feed, I’d feed them to the cat.

  I wouldn’t have, not really, but the fish had never been my favorite part of the backyard. I’m not sure what he did with them since he doesn’t have a pond big enough for them at the condo. He never said and I never asked.

  Ryan took the upscale patio furniture we used to have, which was fine with me. I had a small glider swing and some inexpensive lawn chairs I’d picked up at a garage sale, and that was enough for me. My days of catered patio parties were long gone, and good riddance.

  The sun had ducked down behind the hills to the west, and the worst of the day’s heat was leaching into the night sky. An evening breeze rustled the leaves in the oak tree along my back fence, and the neighbor’s kids on the other side of Freddie March’s house were splashing around in their pool.

  A typical summer evening in suburbia, and here I was, entertaining two detectives.

  I sat on the glider.

  Archulette sat down on one of the lawn chairs. Squires stayed on his feet, feigning interest in the fire pit.

  “How old’s your daughter?” Archulette asked.

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  “Fun age.”

  I recognized the small talk for an attempt to put me at ease. I decided to go with it and see where it went.

  “You have kids?” I asked.

  “Two girls,” Archulette said. “One thirteen, one just starting college. Squires there, he’s smart. He’s still single. No kids.”

  Squires gave him a nod and a fleeting smile that had no humor to it. Squires would never be the good cop. I had the feeling Archulette had more practice at it.

  “You married?” Archulette asked.

  Something twitched along the back of my neck at the question, almost like my subconscious had picked up on some subtle change of tone or posture that I hadn’t otherwise noticed.

  “Divorced,” I said, although I had a feeling Archulette already knew the answer.

  Archulette nodded. “You know a woman named Melody Hartwell?”

  Squires had stopped looking at the fire pit. He was studying me instead.

  Whatever this visit was about, it had something to do with Melody. The sudden chill in my fingertips had nothing to do with the evening breeze.

  “My ex-husband’s fiancé,” I heard myself say.

  It was Squires who asked the next question. “Can you account for your whereabouts between four and six this afternoon?”

  They were asking if I had an alibi. Cops don’t ask about alibis unless they’re investigating something serious.

  I’d been home with Samantha from a little after four. I hadn’t left, and I was pretty sure Freddie March could verify that, but I wasn’t about to tell these two cops any of that.

  Not yet, and not without Norton in the room with me.

  “Well?” Squires asked.

  “I think I’m done answering questions,” I said.

  “We can take you downtown,” Squires said.

  I nodded, hoping that my face didn’t betray how fast my heart was beating.

  “That you can,” I said. “And I can have my lawyer meet us there.”

  The two cops shared a look. Archulette sighed again.

  “That’s only going to work once,” I said.

  Archulette actually looked a little guilty. “Had to try,” he said.

  Right. “Look,” I said. “I like cops. I’m dating a cop. I want to help you guys out, but if I’m a suspect, it’s not in my best interests to talk without my lawyer present.”

  “Who’s your lawyer?” Archulette asked.

  I gave him Norton’s name. “I work for him, part-time. He’d probably fire me if he knew I’d agreed to talk to you at all without him.”

  Archulette held my gaze for a minute.

  After all the years I’d been married to Ryan, not to mention all the years I’d been an investigator, I was pretty good at waiting people out. Most people tried to fill uncomfortable silences by rambling on, usually about themselves. It was something investigators counted on. I know I did. Kyle told me once that cops did, too, and that I was one of the best he’d ever seen at waiting people out.

  Easy to do when I was the one looking for information. I was discovering fast that out-waiting a cop was more difficult when the cop in question was treating me like a suspect, but I did my best not to fidget.

  “Okay,” Archulette said. “Here’s the thing.”

  He leaned forward in the lawn chair, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely in front of him. Squires stood behind Archu
lette, arms crossed over his chest, his face expressionless.

  “Somebody torched Melody Hartwell’s car this afternoon,” Archulette said. He looked hard at me, and I realized that he could do the bad cop stare as well as his partner. “Ass end of an empty lot downtown. Nobody saw anything. A passing motorist called it in.”

  He stopped talking, but it was just a pause for effect. There was something else coming. Something bad. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Archulette didn’t give me a choice.

  “The thing is,” he said, “Melody Hartwell was in her car at the time.”

  CHAPTER 12

  TWO HOURS LATER, I was in an interview room at the Reno Police Department with Norton Greenburger.

  Detectives Archulette and Squires sat on the other side of a plain metal table that had been bolted to the floor. The straight-back chairs weren’t bolted to the floor and I wasn’t in handcuffs. I wasn’t technically under arrest, but the detectives had made it clear to Norton that I was a “person of interest.”

  I’d had a hurried conversation with Norton in a private room little bigger than a closet that Norton assured me had no hidden recording devices. I’d expected him to read me the riot act for talking to the detectives at my house. Instead he’d asked for a bullet-point outline of my day.

  I told him everything that had happened, right down to Mr. Muscles taking my picture with his cell phone and Ryan firing me for letting myself be seen by Melody.

  “Ryan can clear this up,” I’d said to Norton, then it really hit me—Ryan’s fiancé was dead.

  Why the hell hadn’t he called to let me know?

  Was he really that pissed at me that he felt he couldn’t lean on me for support?

  So pissed off that he’d let Detectives Frick and Frack blindside me?

  I made myself take a deep breath. Ryan probably wasn’t in any shape to talk to anyone about anything.

  I felt like a shit for my internal rant, brief as it was. His world had just fallen apart. I had no reason to expect that the first person he’d call would be me.

  “You don’t need Ryan,” Norton had said. “Not right now. What you’re going to concentrate on right now it sticking to the simple facts of your day. You’re an investigator. You were hired to investigate. That’s all you did. It’s possible you saw something these officers can use in their investigation. If I jump in and interrupt the questioning, you stop talking. Are we clear on that?”

  I’d nodded. Easy concept to grasp. Much harder to apply.

  The official recorded interview with the detectives started out easy. They asked specific questions, and I gave them specific answers. When did Ryan call me, what did he want me to do, where had I gone that day, what had I seen Melody do. Those questions were easy to answer. All I had to do was repeat the bullet points I’d already gone over with Norton.

  When they asked what made Ryan think Melody had a stalker, Norton interrupted. “My client can’t answer as to Mr. Maxon’s state of mind,” he said. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Good enough,” Archulette said. “But something must have made him think this guy your client was supposed to uncover was dangerous.”

  I started to say something, but Norton’s hand on my knee stopped me.

  “Again,” Norton said. “That’s a question you’ll have to direct to Mr. Maxon.”

  Archulette grunted. “Do you often take dangerous assignments?” he asked me.

  I waited to see if Norton was going to say something, but he didn’t.

  Archulette’s question made me think of the conversation I’d had with Jonathan’s mother. I didn’t think any of the assignments I took were dangerous, although at least one had turned out that way.

  “That’s hard to answer,” I said. “I suppose it depends on what you think is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous to you,” Archulette said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Why?” This question came from Squires, who so far had let Archulette take the lead.

  I glanced at Squires. “I think your partner knows the answer to that question.”

  “Your kid,” Archulette said.

  I nodded.

  “Was that a ‘yes’?” Squires asked.

  I took a breath instead of making a smart-ass remark.

  My kid was currently cooling her heels at Bess and Freddie March’s house. I’d told her briefly what had happened to Melody. She hadn’t cried, but she’d said she felt bad for her dad and sorry that anyone had to die like that. She’d been subdued when I walked her over to the Marches under the watchful eye of the detectives.

  Tonight was definitely one night I’d rather be with my daughter helping her process her feelings about the sudden, violent death of a woman she hadn’t liked rather than spending the night being grilled by Detectives Frick and Frack.

  And that’s just what this was.

  Sure, Archulette’s questions were mild so far. He was letting Squires come in with the zingers. But I had no doubt they’d be just as happy to pin what happened to Melody on me if they thought they could make the charges stick.

  I made my expression as neutral as I could under the circumstances. “Yes,” I said. “I’m a single mother. The choices I make in my work affect my daughter, so I don’t deliberately take dangerous assignments.”

  Norton didn’t wince when I said “deliberately,” but even I knew I shouldn’t have said that. It gave Archulette an opening, and he took it.

  “Deliberately.” Archulette leaned forward just a little. “What about by accident? Like when you’re doing a favor for your ex?”

  “Ryan hired me,” I said.

  “Hired you,” Archulette said. “He works for a big firm, right? Doesn’t the firm have their own investigators?”

  “My client wouldn’t know that,” Norton said. “You’d have to ask—”

  “—Mr. Maxon,” Archulette said. “Don’t worry. I will. So your ex wants to hire you. Why did you agree to the job? It couldn’t have been fun, trailing around after the new woman in your ex’s life.”

  I’d asked myself that more than once that day, especially after I ran into Melody at the gym. I could have said it was for the money, which would have been partly true. But the real reason was simple.

  “He asked,” I said.

  “So you do anything he asks?” Squires said.

  “We have an amicable relationship,” I said. “I try to be amenable when I can.”

  “Even though he dumped you for a new woman,” Squires said. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Norton sighed. “Gentlemen, it’s getting late. Too late for a fishing expedition when you don’t even know if there are fish in the lake. Let me make this simple for you.”

  His voice was calm and cool, but there was steel in his eyes.

  Norton Greenburger wasn’t a big man, but he could be impressive when he wanted to be. He was at least sixty, still worked out obsessively, and had a reputation as one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Reno, if not in the state. Even though I knew Norton got to the office every morning shortly after seven, he was still going strong after eleven at night.

  “When you attempted to get a statement from my client at her home, outside the presence of her counsel,” Norton said, emphasizing the last few words, “you asked if she could account for her whereabouts between four and six this afternoon. The short answer is yes, she can, and we’ll be happy to file an alibi if it comes to that. My client is not your suspect, nor is she a person of interest. She was hired to conduct an investigation, which she did. Since the job she’d been hired for was complete, she sent a final report and bill to her client.” He stood up, sliding the chair noisily across the linoleum floor. “That, as they say, is that.” He paused for a moment, staring in turns at Archulette, then Squires, and then back to Archulette. “Either book her, or we’re leaving.”

  At the words “book her,” my heart started beating double time. I did not want to spend the night in jail. I didn’t deserve to spend the
night in jail. I knew it, Norton knew it, didn’t the detectives know it, too?

  Archulette smiled, but it had no humor to it.

  I tried not to think ill of the man. He was just doing his job, and he was clearly as tired as the rest of us, but he was also a chess player.

  Detectives had to be always thinking three or more moves ahead. Kyle told me that the first detective he had as a partner had insisted that Kyle learn how to play chess. Kyle was trying to teach me now, but I wasn’t the best student.

  Archulette had brought me in to see if I would slip up and say something they could use. They clearly wanted information about Ryan, which worried me. They couldn’t actually think Ryan had anything to do with Melody’s death, could they? Ryan loved her. He’d only wanted to protect her from the kind of crazy people we both knew were out there. He must be devastated by her murder.

  “You and your client are free to go, Mr. Greenburger,” Squires said, then he turned his cold gaze on me. “We’re going to want a look at the contents of that report you sent your ex. Are we going to need a search warrant?”

  “That depends on whether Mr. Maxon authorizes my client to release the report,” Norton said. “We are more than willing to cooperate with your investigation provided your inquiries don’t delve into areas involving client confidentiality. In that case, we’ll either need to get authorization from Mr. Maxon or you’ll have to get a warrant.”

  I had no desire to see my office torn apart by the police department in a search for whatever information I’d uncovered about Melody.

  Or my home, for that matter.

  I tried not to bring my work home, but sometimes it was unavoidable. I hadn’t done any work on this case at home. That didn’t mean the cops wouldn’t include my house in the warrant.

  I would gladly give the detectives whatever information I could to keep that from happening, but Norton hadn’t had time to go over the quick report I’d sent to Ryan. He’d be looking at everything I’d done from a lawyer’s perspective, keeping the worst case scenario firmly in mind.