The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set

by Danielle Girard

  “What’s that, Tawny?” he asked.

  “He clicked.”

  Mrs. Parker sighed heavily from the couch, and when Hal glanced back, she was asleep.

  “What you mean, he clicked?” Hal asked.

  She studied her hands.

  “Tawny?” he pressed.

  “Like he had a paperclip in his mouth. It clinked around his teeth.”

  Hal tried to imagine the sound. What would the guy have in there? A bullet? “You’re sure it was in his mouth?”

  “Yeah. It weren’t like change in his pocket or anything. It sounded like he had something in his teeth.”

  How was he supposed to go about searching for someone with a clinking in his mouth?

  A sudden pounding on the door made Mrs. Parker shoot upright.

  “Police.”

  Tawny scurried to sit at her feet.

  “Hang on,” Hal said, motioning to her to stay seated. “They’re with me.” Pressed to one wall, he shouted down the hallway. “This is Inspector Harris. I’m already inside.”

  Someone pushed on the door. It stuck.

  The thunk of a foot striking the wood, a sharp scrape, and the door swung open. Two patrol officers stepped into the open doorway, weapons drawn.

  Hal stood in the hallway with his badge in one hand, the other clearly visible. “You guys are a little late.”

  The officers holstered their weapons. “We had a burglary in-progress on the way.”

  “You can go ahead and hang outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The guys went back out the door and, with some effort, shut it behind them.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked Tawny.

  “She’s staying with me,” Mrs. Parker said.

  “I understand you’re her legal guardian.”

  Mrs. Parker frowned. “I ain’t illegal.”

  “But you don’t live here.”

  “Like hell I don’t.” Mrs. Parker struggled to get off the couch. “Go on get your stuff, Tawny. We getting out of here.”

  “What about James?” Tawny asked.

  “I’m going to talk to him next.”

  Hal led them out, past the uniforms and down the exterior corridor to Mrs. Parker’s place. The sky was dark and the buildings were quiet now. It felt almost eerie. Mrs. Parker unlocked the two deadbolts, stuck a third key into the knob and opened the door, breathing hard from the effort.

  He got Mrs. Parker’s phone number and told them he’d call tomorrow. He needed to talk to James Robbins first.

  The corridor was dank as he walked back toward the officers, assaulted again with the stink of rotting trash.

  “We got another call,” one of the patrol guys said.

  Hal nodded, following them to the stairs. “Go ahead. I’m heading out anyway.”

  At the top of the stairs, he called Roger’s cell phone. When Hal had taken Jim’s letter down to the lab an hour earlier, Roger had still been there. He’d said something about a long night. Hal hoped he was still there.

  “Sampers.” The sounds of the lab bled through the receiver—printing, people talking, the loud humming of one of the machines.

  “It’s Hal. I’ve got some blood at a scene at Hunters Project that might connect to our case. Any chance we could get someone out to collect it?”

  “Text me your location, and I’ll get someone right out.”

  “You’re the man.”

  “You know it,” Roger bantered back.

  That made Hal laugh. Progress. They were actually making progress. He sent the address to Roger and started for the stairwell.

  An explosion. A piece of cement stung his ear. The bullet sank into the siding behind him with a thump.

  Hal dropped to the floor. The phone slipped from his fingers. “Damn.”

  He drew his gun as another bullet kicked up a chunk of cement over his head. A third brought the sound of shattering glass and screams from a floor above.

  Hal didn’t move. His heart hammered at his throat. A moment of quiet, then the gunfire erupted in a rapid rat-a-tat. He froze, pressed as close as he could to the wall of the balcony, trying to count the shots. Ten or maybe eleven. An automatic weapon.

  Then, the firing stopped.

  He studied the silence. The crunch of shoes on dirt. Someone walking.

  On his belly, he crawled toward the stairs, hidden behind the cement railing wall.

  The steps went silent.

  Hal eased himself down the steps, still low behind the railing.

  Above, someone yelled about a broken window.

  Hal pushed through a pile of black garbage bags until he was pressed against the dumpster. His back to the cold cement, knees to his chest, he was protected on two sides.

  Gun drawn, he listened, waited.

  Cars hummed from the freeway. Someone’s bass pulsed in the distance. Up the stairs, Hal’s cell phone rang. The stench of sour milk, soiled diapers, and something like rotting limes emanated from the garbage bags. Hal stayed put, counting the beats of the music above.

  The place was still. The sound of his own heart rose above the quiet.

  Only when he heard the beautiful sound of shrieking sirens did his heart finally start to slow.

  Chapter 15

  Hailey tucked the kids in and stepped back into the hallway, checking her phone again. Nothing. Why hadn’t Hal been in touch?

  He was up at Hunters Point, at James Robbins’s house. She hadn’t heard from him, and it made her uneasy. She should have gone with him.

  “Lock all the doors, Mommy,” Ali called out.

  “I will,” Hailey promised her. “You’re safe.”

  Hailey walked down the stairs and saw Jim and Tom Rittenberg standing in the entry hall, their heads leaned together, talking intensely. Tom looked better than he had. The cane was missing and he stood straighter than he had last time she’d seen him. Dee was good for him.

  Dee walked in from the living room. Tom straightened up the moment he saw her. Her face flushed. She enjoyed the attention. Tom and Dee. It made sense. Jim patted Tom on the back as Dee opened the door for him.

  How would Hal react to the fact that Dee was seeing Tom Rittenberg, the father of Abby Dennig?

  How much closer could her personal life get to this case?

  Dee followed Tom out the front door, and Hailey started down the stairs.

  “Glad you’re still up,” Jim said. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Hailey followed him into the kitchen, where he poured himself a large glass of wine, offering her one as well. Hailey shook her head. Hal was over at Hunters Point, and she wanted to be sharp when he checked in.

  These days, she had too many balls to keep in the air, and the alcohol didn’t help.

  Jim was drinking too much. He rarely looked drunk, but the recycling bin had more empty wine bottles than usual. The drinking was probably in reaction to something. Would he talk about it if she asked?

  He pointed to a manila folder on the table. “Dee put this together for you. It’s copies of all the media pieces she’s collected—anything at all related to local politics, people I know. She’s thorough.”

  The folder contained maybe fifty pages of print. Hailey set it aside to look at later.

  “She also made a list of everyone who’s been in the house. O’Shea asked for it, so I thought you’d like a copy.” The theory would be that Jim’s shooter knew the layout of the house. Which meant he—or she—had been there before.

  Hailey flipped it open and scanned the names and addresses. At the bottom, Dee had written “UPS to deliver new computer” and “electrician—Liz looking for invoice.”

  “There was an electrician here?”

  Jim drank from his glass. “Dee told Inspector O’Shea she’d get the electrician information from Liz in the morning.”

  Hailey scanned the other names. She’d met so few of them. They were almost all here during the day—while she was at work and the girls at school. But what about in the
hours between school and when Hailey came home? Had the girls met these people? “Any of them seem like possible suspects?”

  “No.” He swirled the wine around the inside of the glass.

  The Chateau St. Jean bottle sat mostly empty on the table. She hadn’t told Jim about Fredricks’s finger. Why would she? She stared at the cork. “How do you buy that wine?”

  “What do you mean—how?”

  “Do you buy individual bottles? By the case?”

  “We buy about six cases when it’s released each year.” He set the glass down. “Seems like this year I’ve gone through more than usual.”

  “It’s been a long year.”

  He nodded without speaking.

  “Do you know the name Donald Blake?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re sure. Donald Blake?” she asked again.

  “I don’t,” he repeated. “Should I?”

  Hailey stood, filled a glass with ice, and added sparkling water.

  It was something Liz always bought—different flavors of water. This one was raspberry and orange. Hailey had actually started to like the stuff.

  She sat at the table and fingered the wine cork. The bottle on the table was now empty. “Was there something else you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Just the list,” he said. He was lying, but she had no idea why.

  “Seems like Tom and Dee are spending a lot of time together.”

  “They are,” Jim said.

  She studied his face as he drank from the glass. “Is that a good thing?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Why would it be a bad thing? Because Dee was Jim’s little sister, or was there something about Tom that worried him?

  “Dee’s always done exactly what she wanted, so it’s not like we could stop her even if we wanted to,” Jim said with a soft smile.

  “Seems like you guys are close. She doesn’t talk to you?”

  “She doesn’t. Our family wasn’t good at talking,” he admitted. “She’s got her Valium when things don’t go her way. I’ve got my drink.”

  They sat together in silence for a moment. Then Hailey said goodnight and headed up to her bedroom, the cork still in her hand.

  She checked on the girls. Camilla slept soundly, on her back, her arms splayed, while Ali had curled herself into a tight ball, frown lines deep on her face. Hailey rubbed between Ali’s eyes and watched as she relaxed. Her eyes opened.

  “Mommy,” she said, groggy.

  “Yes, baby.”

  “Is Daddy still dead?”

  Hailey bent down to kiss her forehead. “Yes, baby.”

  Her eyes fell closed again.

  Hailey lay beside her, cupping the tiny form against hers.

  A while later Jim climbed the stairs. A few minutes later came the creaking sound of water in the pipes.

  Hailey rose from the bed and sat in the rocking chair in the girls’ room, using the dim glow of the nightlight to read through the articles Dee had pulled. It was full of news of Abby and Hank Dennigs’ deaths, but every article mentioned Tom Rittenberg. Dee had included policy articles and campaign news that related to the police or guns, but none of them were relevant to their case.

  When the house was silent, Hailey crept back downstairs. She stood outside the door of Jim’s office.

  She never came to this room. Even when Jim and she spoke, they avoided this room.

  John died in this room.

  In certain light, Hailey swore she could still see the bloodstain on the floor.

  The carpet was new, but the stain of John’s blood was still there for her, burned into her retinas like a camera flash.

  She left the overhead light off and turned on the small desk lamp instead. In the corner stood the old file cabinet. Hailey had assumed things would be filed alphabetically. Instead, the top drawer held all his campaign records—contributions, financials, media, literature, and speeches.

  Inside large green hanging folders were thin manila ones. The media file contained eight or ten manila folders—New York Times, Chronicle, the Washington Post. She drew out the Post folder, skimmed through the pieces, and saw Jim’s name mentioned in reference to a couple of bills.

  The folder for the Chronicle was the fullest.

  Hailey skimmed for Donald Blake’s name but didn’t find it on any of the bylines.

  The articles were about politics. No mention of John’s death, nothing about the recent shooting.

  The lower drawers contained the bills Jim was working on and below that, employee files. She skimmed through the names, but none of them were familiar. Below that were things she didn’t even look at—life insurance files, records for his Keogh plan, medical bills …

  Hailey sat on the floor with her eyes closed. Jim had kept the letter from Nicholas Fredricks, so surely he’d kept other letters as well.

  Where were those? There was no sign of them here.

  Something Hal had said came back to her.

  Why all this stuff was coming in the form of letters? Why not calls?

  An anonymous call or email was infinitely easier than delivering a letter to the station.

  Someone was bringing letters in without being noticed.

  Could it be Jim? But what sense did that make? What reason did he have for leaking information he could have easily given them?

  Maybe Jim had a safe somewhere. She sat in his chair and opened the single drawer in the center of his desk. Rows of pens, a couple of small notepads, paperclips, and binder clips in a shallow dish. No keys or codes. When she shut it, his computer woke up, and she jumped as the screen grew bright. She reached to turn off the monitor, but stopped. Jim would know she’d been there. She’d have to wait for it to go back to sleep.

  When she sat back in his chair and saw a paperclip on the floor, she stooped to pick it up and noticed a hidden drawer under the desk. The drawer was small—maybe three inches deep and nine inches wide—and set all the way at the back of the desk. Hailey touched it, felt a small metal pull on its underside, and slid it toward her, cupping her hand beneath it in case it fell. Amazingly, the drawer slid all the way to the front of the desk and beyond a few inches. Just enough to see it was empty. Hailey pushed it closed again.

  If anything had been in this office, Jim was smart enough to get rid of it. He had a shredder.

  She glanced around the office for it. Under the desk, Jim’s small wire trash can was empty. She looked beside the file cabinet and behind the door. Circled the room. No shredder.

  Cabinets lined the wall behind the desk, the shelves filled with stacks of printer paper and boxes of stationary and envelopes. She eased the doors shut again and opened the next two. More office supplies. Behind the third set of doors, Hailey found the shredder, drew it out, and set it on the floor.

  The bin was empty.

  A fine, white paper dust coated the surface of the dark plastic, and a handful of tiny diamond shapes suggested it had been used, but how recently was impossible to tell. Hailey lifted the shredder and peered down into the metal slats of the machine.

  Nothing.

  She flipped it over and saw a thin strip of paper caught in the bottom.

  Her fingers were too wide to get hold of it. Using an unfolded paperclip, she pried the scrap loose. It was blank on one side, and the other side had only two letters, which read “ry,” handwritten and photocopied. It could have come from anywhere.

  Hailey put it on the floor to reassemble the shredder and imagined all the words that ended with “ry.” Impossible to guess.

  Someone’s name? Harry? Mary?

  Hailey returned the shredder to the cabinet and looked at the narrow wedge of paper again. It looked like there was a line after the y. Not a line, an exclamation.

  She recognized the handwriting.

  She knew what this was.

  Still holding the tiny paper wedge, she shut off the desk lamp and ran up the stairs, avoiding the spots that creaked the loudest. Inside the small
room she used for a den, she dug through her briefcase for the photocopies of the evidence. Beneath those was the page she was looking for—the article from the Chronicle.

  She lifted the tiny scrap to the edge of the page they’d been sent.

  “No source, no story!”

  The scrap from Jim’s shredder matched exactly.

  Hailey sank back into the chair, willing it to be different, to see some clear distinction that wasn’t there.

  They were the same.

  Jim had sent the police Donald Blake’s article. Or he’d gotten one just like it and hadn’t told her. And he said he didn’t know Donald Blake.

  Which meant Jim was lying.

  With the scrap tucked carefully into a pocket of the bag, she booted up her laptop. Her phone vibrated on her hip. Hal.

  “That took you a while,” she said.

  “Someone just shot at me.”

  “Hal! Are you okay?”

  “I’m still out here. I’ve called for backup. They’re en route.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Hailey—”

  “Text me the address.”

  She ended the call, started up the stairs to wake Liz, and found her already halfway out her bedroom door. Since the girls and Hailey had moved in, Liz and Jim had turned the bed in their room around so Liz was on the outside, and she’d developed an almost supernatural sense for knowing when Hailey was coming.

  “I’ve got to go in.”

  Liz followed her down the stairs, poking her head into the girls’ room to check them as Hailey sprinted for the front door.

  No text from Hal. When she called, it went straight to voicemail. The awful pit in her stomach formed as she called dispatch.

  “His backup is two minutes out,” they told her.

  “Text me the address.”

  “Will do.”

  She would not think about everything that could go wrong in two minutes. She heard the buzz of the text from dispatch, checked the address and drove toward the projects. She counted to sixty, too fast to make a whole minute, and counted again. Then, she dialed.

  Hal answered. “Hey.”

  “Shit,” she cursed, letting the fear course out. “Damn it, Hal.”

  “Yeah,” he said, breathless. “I know.”