“So it is true,” Mick said, drawing Ian’s eyes away from Cam’s. He’d been plugging away, typing up his report when he felt a stare on him. He hadn’t expected it to be Cam’s and wanted to get up and go talk to her, but held back. She played along just as well, it seemed.
“Mick,” he said, standing up and bringing his partner in for a hug. “What are you doing here? How are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling good. I needed to get out of the house before the wife took a knife out and stabbed me again. Said I’ve been getting on her nerves.”
Ian laughed, glad that Mick seemed to be getting stronger each day. “What is she going to do when you retire next year and you’re around even more?”
“Who knows? Now I know I better have some kind of a plan. Maybe this was a good thing, letting me know we might have to do some traveling or something.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Ian said.
“So back to Dr. Mason. I see you did more than manage to talk her into signing your release.”
Ian grinned. He had to play along. Seemed Cam knew what she was doing all too well. Best that he didn’t jump up like a lovesick fool trying to get everyone to believe he was still winning her over.
He’d never been a lovesick fool in his life and he sure the hell wasn’t going to turn into one during this assignment.
“You only wish you had the charm that I’ve got.”
“I had it years ago,” Mick boasted. “No need to have it now when I’ve got Penny at home.”
“Just sharpening those knives,” Ian said.
Mick snorted, then sat at his desk. “Fill me in. What’s going on with the case?”
Ian had been dreading telling Mick what had been discovered. That Zippy’s body was found in an alley Saturday morning. “No word on Fast. He’s gone in the wind right now.”
“I heard about Zippy, Ian,” Mick said, his eyes troubled.
“That’s why you’re here? Who told you?”
“I get a lot of visitors. Someone thought you would have told me.”
“Things have been a little crazy lately.”
Mick nodded his head. “The trouble at your girlfriend’s house?”
Since the alarms went off and police were dispatched, he couldn’t play that off. The same with the tires. Only a few knew about the snake. “We’re looking into it. As for Fast, I asked around last week. Nothing. If anyone knows, they aren’t saying, not that I figured they would.”
“They would have spoken to Zippy about it. Do you think he was silenced?”
“OD. Been dead a few days when they found him. Nothing looked like foul play. Nothing they could find.”
“Any word on the girl?”
“You mean the one that was trying to gut you like a deer?” Ian said. “Nothing.”
He’d walked around showing her picture to everyone on the street. Trying to get a name. Anything he could find out. She still had a toe tag in the morgue. At some point the body would be cremated if no one claimed it. He hadn’t been able to ask when that would be. Hadn’t wanted to think about it.
“You did the right thing, Ian. I wouldn’t be sitting here today if you didn’t.”
“I know. I’m not second-guessing myself in the least. She was too high to know what she was doing fully. She probably thought she was losing her supplier. Didn’t matter if she wasn’t aware. She was stabbing you over and over.”
“Do they know who hit you in the head? Any signs there?”
He’d been dreading this too. “I’m sorry, Mick. It’s looking like Zippy betrayed us.”
“What? No way. He wouldn’t. He’s been my informant for years.”
“Giving him cash, food, and clothing, a hotel room now and again wasn’t enough. Someone else gave him more. We’re thinking it might have been Fast.”
“What makes you believe it was Zippy that set us up?”
Little by little memories came back to him over the weekend. The sense of unease entering the drug den. That no one was in the apartment but Fast and the girl. There were users all over the place on the way up, but not in the apartment.
“When they’d found Zippy’s body, he had wood splinters in his hand. Wood that matched the two by four that hit me in the head. Zippy had a bag full of blow on him and a needle in his arm.”
It didn’t matter Zippy never had coke on him before. Always heroin, but there was coke in his blood, mixed with the heroin and it was lethal enough.
The assumption was someone gave him what he needed to set the two detectives up. That someone was probably Fast and long gone.
“So now what?” Mick asked. “Case is closed? Moving on to something else?”
“It’s still open, but not a priority at the moment,” Ian said. He nodded his head to the pile on his desk. “Lots of shit to take care of. Lots of things to work on. It’s tight when we’re a man down,” Ian said, ribbing Mick.
“Hope to have my medical clearance in a week. Then onto a few visits with your girlfriend. Think you can put a good word in for me?”
“I think you’ll do just fine. Like you said, you had it years ago. You’ll be able to pull enough out of your ass to get your release.”
***
Two days later, Cam went to open her office door and couldn’t find her keys. Yesterday Tiffany opened and closed since Cam was out, but today she planned on getting some work done in the peace and quiet.
After she fished around enough in her purse, she realized they weren’t there. She went down to her car and looked around to see if they’d fallen out there. Her purse was always falling on the floor when she was driving, but there were no keys around that she could see.
Rather than go home and look for them, she went to the cafeteria on the first floor and got a coffee, talked to a few other people in the building housed on her floor and made her way back to the office at nine. Still no Tiffany. Not until five minutes after.
“How come you’re standing here?” Tiffany asked.
“I must have left my keys at home. I couldn’t get in.”
“But you drove here?”
“My car key is separate. It’s a fob. I don’t even need to take it out of my purse to start the car.”
“Oh,” Tiffany said, smiling, then finally unlocking the door. “But you’ve got your keycard, right?”
“No. I couldn’t find that either. I switched purses this morning and must have left them out.” She’d been distracted like she never used to be.
She and Ian had met for lunch yesterday...still having to give the perception of a dating couple. It was getting hard to find things to talk about though. Things that had to do with the case. Things she was able to tell him.
She was guessing he was feeling the same. There was only so much he could tell her about the case too. It seemed they were trying to steer clear of personal topics. Almost walking on eggshells around each other.
That stupid kiss. Then calling him over in the middle of the night and all but holding him tight to her bosom like some smothering grandmother...all the while she was barely dressed.
God only knew what he was thinking of her. She sure as hell didn’t want to know.
She was wondering if they were doing a horrible job with their fake relationship. Or maybe it was a good one since they didn’t have much in common and it seemed everyone thought it was odd they were dating anyway.
People were probably taking bets on how long it’d last.
At least everyone Ian knew thought it was odd. She hadn’t told anyone that knew her. Though Tiffany figured it out since Ian came and picked her up for lunch yesterday.
Cam managed to push everything out of her brain and met with her patients for the rest of the morning. She ate lunch at her desk, looking over her schedule for the rest of the week, finishing up her notes and trying not to think of Ian.
When the smoke alarms started to go off, she jumped up, her heart racing, wondering if she was going to have a heart attack at some point. It seemed every time she turned around something was making her jump.
It was probably just a false alarm and she went to buzz Tiffany and see if she knew anything. When the phone went unanswered, she realized Tiffany was still out to lunch.
She grabbed her purse and got up to leave, but when she got to the inner waiting room door, she remembered she didn’t have her keycard. She forgot to ask Tiffany to leave hers. She was trapped inside. All those security precautions to keep her or a client safe or give them privacy from the reception room was working against her now.