Dead Reckoning (7 page)

She was staring at him, her gaze direct, her nostrils flaring slightly. He stared back, his own temper stirring up all sorts of nasty comments. “Look,” he began, “I got caught in traffic.” It was a lie, but Frank was getting good at lying, especially to himself. “There’s construction on—”

“Everyone gets caught in traffic in Dallas, Mr. Matrone, including me. That excuse doesn’t wash.”

“I was fifteen minutes late, for chrissake.”

“Twenty.”

“Whatever the case, a few minutes is no cause to have someone removed from an assignment.”

“I guess that depends on expectations and whether or not the person doing the removing is willing to settle for less. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t ever settle for less than what I expect.” She shot him a pointed look over the tops of her glasses. “This meeting is concluded.”

He stared at her in disbelief, aware that his heart rate was up. That his temper was revving. That he disliked her. Intensely. It was one hell of a time for him to notice her eyes. They were the color of a deep mountain lake reflecting a cloudless sky and so blue he thought they had to be contact lenses.

All that blue was fringed with lashes that were long and thick and very black. Her brows were thin and dark and delicately arched. A stark contrast to skin that was the pale ivory of fresh buttermilk. Her lips were as pink as a Texas grapefruit. No power lipstick for Kate Megason. But then she didn’t need facades. The hard edges of her personality more than made up for the softness of her face.

She wore an uptight suit with uptight shoes, and Frank figured if she got any more uptight, the woman would be in a knot. Her espresso brown hair was cut short, barely longer than his own, but it had the shiny gloss of a raven’s breast. He hated boy-cut hair on a woman. He hated bitchy women with holier-than-thou attitudes. But even through the layers of dislike, he couldn’t help but notice that beneath that uptight suit and I’ll-kick-your-ass expression she had one hell of a body. The kind of body a man would risk bodily harm for just one touch.

Frank figured it was a good thing he wasn’t in the market for a woman, to-die-for body or not.

“I don’t report to you,” he said. “I report to Mike Shelley.”

“I think this situation will be best resolved if you walk away and let it go.”

“Not a chance, sweetheart.” He smiled when she stiffened, and Frank knew he’d scored a direct hit. Bingo. She didn’t like being called sweetheart. He wondered how she would react if he told her what he really thought of her. “If you have a problem with my working on this case, I suggest you take it to him.”

“I plan to.” Snapping her briefcase closed, she turned and walked away without looking back.

 
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 5:24 P.M.

“I don’t want him.”

“Kate, come on.”

“He’s got a bad attitude. He disrupted my team meeting this morning. He’s inexperienced. I could go on.”

“Don’t, because it’s out of my hands.” Mike Shelley leaned back in his leather executive chair and tried to look diplomatic.

Kate knew him well enough to know he was about as diplomatic as Hitler had been. “Why is it out of your hands? You’re the DA, for chrissake.”

“I agreed to do this.”

“Do what exactly? Sabotage my case?”

Looking pained, he leaned forward and frowned. “Look, it’s political, okay? I owed the assistant chief a favor.”

“Assistant chief of police?”

“He and I go back a ways.”

“So you dump Matrone on me? If you owed someone a favor, why the hell didn’t you give him symphony tickets or something?”

“He was a good detective, Kate.”

“If he was such a good detective, why isn’t he still a detective?”

“He was in the military. Reserve, I think. Got called to duty and sent to the Middle East. He got hurt when he was over there and has had a rough time of it, so give him a break, will you?”

Kate knew she wasn’t being nice about this, but she couldn’t help it. An investigator’s role was crucial. This case was important. And she didn’t like Frank Matrone one iota. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked without sympathy.

Mike Shelley laughed. “You’re a hard case, Kate.”

“I have a hard job to do.”

“I’m really glad you’re on my team.”

“You’re trying to flatter me because you don’t want to deal with this.”

“Look, I’m not going to change my mind, so you’re just going to have to work it out.”

“Why do you have to repay this favor on my watch? At my expense?”

“From what I hear, Matrone was a good cop, Kate. Give him a chance to do his job. He might surprise you.”

If Kate had learned anything in the course of her career, it was that she didn’t like surprises. Particularly when it came to her job.

 
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 11:13 P.M.

“Ellis is going to talk.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know enough about that sleazy little son of a bitch to know he’ll do anything to save his neck, including sell us out.”

The man in the Italian-made suit leaned back in his leather chair and contemplated the woman sitting across from him. She’d poured herself a cognac before sitting down, but he could tell by the way she was gripping the crystal tumbler that the alcohol wasn’t helping. She was usually unshakable. It worried him that she was letting this get to her.

“Even if he talks, how much damage can he do?” he asked calmly. “He’s a piece of scum. No one will listen to him.”

“Don’t be naive,” she said. “He knows too much. If the wrong person listens, he’ll blow this entire operation right out of the water.”

She had a point, but he would be a fool to admit it. They had good reason to be uneasy about Bruton Ellis sitting in a jail cell surrounded by two hundred and fifty cops. If he started talking and someone started putting two and two together, the situation could get ugly.

“Bruton Ellis has a record as long as my arm,” he said. “He’s a junkie and a thug. The police have the robbery and murder on tape. There’s not a cop on this sweet earth who will believe him if he tells some story about his being a hired gun.”

The woman nearly came out of her chair. “Are you willing to stake this entire operation on that assumption? Are you willing to risk your life? My life? Do you have any idea what will happen if someone figures this out?”

“It’s not going to do us any good if we panic.”

“I’m not suggesting we panic,” she snapped. “I’m concerned. We need to do something.”

“Like what?”

It was so quiet for a moment he could hear the overhead fluorescent lights buzzing. The hiss of traffic on the street sixteen stories down. Then the woman in the Ellen Tracy suit leaned forward and pressed her fingers to her temples. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m scared. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“For God’s sake, pull yourself together.” Realizing his annoyance with her was showing, he reached out and touched her arm. “We’re going to be all right.”

“Ellis took out the wrong camera. He murdered two people in cold blood. He left DNA behind when he raped that woman. None of that was supposed to happen.”

The man sighed, wondering how well she would hold up if the situation took a turn for the worse. If he had learned anything in his lifetime, it was that fear and panic invariably caused rash behavior. Rash behavior never did anything but get people caught. He’d decided long before he’d committed himself to this that he would not get caught.

“What we need to get through this are level heads and some clear thinking.” He gave her arm a final squeeze, then folded his hands and set them on the desktop in front of him. “I don’t want you falling apart on me.”

She raised her head, her eyes seeking his. “Have you talked to Ellis?”

“No.”

“He’s been in jail for three weeks. This is Texas, for chrissake. He knows he’s facing the death penalty. He has nothing to lose. He’ll do anything to save his neck, including implicate us.”

“Even if someone does listen to him, he doesn’t know enough to point anyone in our direction.”

“He knows enough to cause problems.”

The man in the custom suit said nothing.

She visibly struggled to calm herself, folding her hands in front of her, then pursing her lips. “Maybe we could contact his lawyer. Anonymously, of course. Pay his legal bills. See if we can help him get a deal.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Third party, maybe. Napier is protected by attorney-client privilege.”

“Not that Napier has any morals.”

He contemplated her for a moment, wondering how he’d ever thought she was strong enough to do this. “You know I will not let anything happen to jeopardize everything we’ve worked for, don’t you?” he asked.

She nodded, but he could see she was, indeed, scared. He wondered if she had any idea the lengths he would go to avoid prison.

“There are two ways we can approach this,” he said after a moment.

“I’ve been wracking my brain for weeks, and I—”

He cut her off by slicing his hand through the air. “We ride this thing out and see what happens.”

“By the time we realize he’s talked, it’s going to be too late.”

“Or you can let me handle it my way.”

Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

She looked so damn innocent. The image she made looking at him with those wide eyes almost made him laugh. He wondered if she was so deep into denial that she hadn’t yet accepted what they had been doing for the last four years.

“I’m talking about taking care of the problem.”

“Ellis?” she asked.

“For starters.”

Some of the tension seemed to leave her, but she still didn’t look appeased. “I don’t care how you do it. Just keep this situation from getting any worse.”

“Let me make some calls,” he said and picked up the phone.

 
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 9:43 A.M .

Mike Shelley’s words echoed inside Kate’s head as she headed toward Frank Matrone’s office, which was just down the hall from hers. She’d been putting off approaching him, hoping Mike would change his mind and let her remove Matrone from the Bruton Ellis case. No such luck.

She reached Matrone’s office to find the door closed. Puzzled and annoyed, she put her hands on her hips and leaned toward the door to listen. Not hearing a phone conversation, she twisted the knob and entered without knocking. Surprise rippled through her when she found the office vacant, the lights off. The computer off. And the message light on the phone blinking wildly.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, realizing he hadn’t yet come in. She glanced at her watch. Almost ten o’clock. Unbelievable.

Spotting a sticky pad next to his keyboard, Kate walked to the desk and snatched it up. She would also send him an e-mail—for the sake of documentation when it came time to fire him. She looked around for a pen. “Why would he need a pen, silly?” she muttered. “He’s never here.” She tried the pencil drawer and to her surprise it opened. He didn’t even lock his desk. What an idiot.

Picking up the pen, she began to write the note, all the while her temper simmering. This was exactly the sort of thing she wanted to avoid. She had a ton of work to do, yet she’d spent the better part of her morning dealing with an AWOL investigator. She had witnesses to talk to. Evidence to review.

“And one asshole to rake over the coals,” she said beneath her breath.

“If I’m the asshole you’re referring to, we can go ahead and get the raking out of the way now.”

Kate actually started at the sound of his voice. She stopped writing mid-word and looked up to see Frank Matrone standing just inside the doorway, watching her with an expression that was at once amused and irritated. He was wearing a black leather bomber jacket and dark slacks. The jacket was open just enough for her to see that his shirt was wrinkled, his tie askew.

Despite the fact that she was his boss and was in the process of leaving him a note because he was almost two hours late, she felt heat creep into her cheeks. She knew what this might look like to him. That she had been ransacking his desk.

“I was just leaving you a note.” Setting down the pen, she rounded the desk.

“Yeah? What does it say?”

“You’re two hours late.”

“I had an appointment.”

“You were twenty minutes late yesterday.”

He said nothing, his expression inscrutable.

“You need to keep me apprised of your schedule and account for your personal time.”

“Does this mean I’m still on the case?”

Annoyance flared, but Kate stomped it down. “It means that for some reason unbeknownst to me, Mike Shelley wants you on this case.”

He had the gall to smile. “So we’re going to be working together after all.”

“It means you’re going to be working for me.”

He nodded, sobering, but his eyes were amused. He knew she was pissed, and he was enjoying it. Damn him. And damn Mike Shelley for putting her in this position.

“Great.” He rubbed his hands together. “So what’s first on the agenda?”

“First, I guess we need to discuss the hours you’re expected to be here, since you don’t appear to have that clear in your mind.”

“I’m clear.”

“The hours are eight to five with mandatory overtime.”

“Got it.” He smiled. “About that agenda . . .”

He crossed to the desk and stopped. Kate had never noticed the way a man smelled before, but she did now. Frank Matrone smelled like a subtle mix of pine and soap and healthy man. He was standing three feet from her, close enough for her to see that even though he was clean shaven, he had a heavy beard. He must have shaved hurriedly because he had a nick on this chin. The leather jacket he wore was expensive, but the tie was cheap. He might have looked nice if it hadn’t been for the cowboy boots. She hated cowboy boots. . . .