Playing Dead (12 page)

Her room was more colorful than the rest of the house, with a dozen brightly colored pillows scattered on a white down comforter. She’d done a half-ass job making the bed, the blankets hanging askew. The cat jumped onto the bed as if he owned it, sat down and stared at Tom.

Being here, seeing how she lived, disturbed Tom on so many levels. He needed to get out of here. Maybe he should never have come back. Claire was better off without him in her life.

You’re innocent. Claire needs to know it, believe it, prove it.

Claire had a small office off her bedroom. It might have been a large closet with the doors removed. He placed the folded letter under her keyboard, leaving half of it protruding. He grabbed a sticky note from a stack and wrote CLAIRE in block letters, stuck it on the edge.

Turning, he glanced over at a picture on the wall separating her makeshift office from her bedroom. It was framed in pewter and placed in such a way that it could only be viewed if you intentionally pivoted to look at it.

He crossed over, took it off the wall, tears clouding his vision.

It was a picture of him and Claire when she was eleven. They’d gone camping in Yosemite for a week that summer. Lydia had even joined them because they’d rented a cabin and she had a real bed to sleep on. It was the last family vacation they’d shared, and they had an incredible time. He and Lydia had reconnected—or so he’d thought then—and Claire was still a little girl, though she’d begun to show signs of the beautiful woman she’d become. The picture reflected a perfect moment in time.

He and Claire sat on the porch swing of the cabin. The colors at sunset were vivid and surreal. But the sheer joy on their faces was something Tom hadn’t remembered until now.

If Claire had hung this picture in her office, even in an out-of-the-way corner, somewhere in the back of her mind she must still love him. Still believe in him.

He clung to that hope. It was all he had, but it was more than he’d had this morning.

He put the picture back on the wall, walked away, then turned and pulled the picture down again, taking it with him. He left the house the same way he’d come in, locking the door behind him with the pick he had opened it with.

TEN

Parked in the lot next to the Fox & Goose, Mitch rested his head on his car’s steering wheel. He’d called Claire for the sole purpose of finding out where she was, where she was going to be, and to confirm when she planned to arrive tonight. All so he could get rid of Steve long before she showed up.

He was in way over his head with Claire.

Mitch walked into the bar early, claiming a small table. Antique wood doors—some with ornate knobs or etched glass—split the bar in two to allow more private seating, but Mitch wanted to see the entire room and the main entrance, so he preferred a spot in the far corner.

A waitress stopped by and he ordered a pint. He was off duty, and he needed a beer about now. First the dive this morning and the subsequent investigation—he and Steve hadn’t left Isleton until after four that afternoon. Steve had to follow up on another case, so Mitch had taken care of the ubiquitous paperwork at headquarters.

Tomorrow morning he’d observe Maddox’s autopsy. Though not required to attend, it would get him a cause of death and an ID faster than if he waited for the report. The sheriff’s department had jurisdiction and was handling the evidence, but Deputy Clarkston had extended the invitation, and Mitch jumped at it.

Why had Maddox gone down to Isleton in the first place? The canvass by the cops hadn’t yielded anything useful, and if the body had really been underwater for nearly four months, a casual witness would probably not remember anything helpful. Still, Mitch had suggested to Steve that they go back with Maddox’s picture and canvass Isleton again. Flash the photo around, see if anyone recognized him. Before leaving headquarters, Mitch had also put in a request for Maddox’s phone records.

They had an appointment with the Davis detective in charge of the missing person case, then they’d track down the girlfriend who reported Maddox missing and find out what, if anything, she knew. Confirm her statement to the Davis PD and see if she remembered anything else.

He was relieved that Meg had cleared him to work with Steve on this case, knowing that it could wind back around to Thomas O’Brien. Maybe his “punishment” was over and Meg wanted his eyes on the case. Or maybe Steve had put in a word for him. Whatever the reason, Mitch was glad to be back on the case. Something was going to break. Maddox had been murdered—of that Mitch was certain—and he hoped that the discovery of Maddox’s body would flush out his killer.

If they found out who killed Maddox, Mitch was certain it would lead back to Thomas O’Brien’s case fifteen years ago. It was no coincidence that Maddox had gone missing two days before O’Brien was moved to San Quentin’s dangerous Section B.

The waitress placed his pint of Guinness on the coaster in front of him. He sipped, remembering his first date with Claire.

After weeks of flirting and conversation and spontaneous dinners when they “ran into” each other in the evening at Starbucks, he and Claire had come to the Fox & Goose on an official date. Her favorite local band was playing, she said, and asked him if he wanted to join her.

“Do you want to meet there?” he asked.

“Well, I thought maybe we could make a date of it.”

He should have said no. Instead, he’d said, “I’ll pick you up at eight. We can have dinner first.” Why had he agreed? What was he thinking? He knew damn well what he was thinking. He was deeply attracted to Claire O’Brien. He could tell himself he was doing it for the job, but the truth was he wanted to be with her.

Everything that came before that night nearly two months ago Mitch could have justified, even if he had to stretch his arguments. After that night, he had no more excuses.

He’d put everything on the line: his career, his heart, Claire’s trust.

He picked Claire up just before eight that evening. She came to the door in jeans, a red spaghetti-strap tank top, and spiky sandals. Her black hair loose around her face, dancing above her shoulders, and she’d done something to her eyes to make them seem a darker, sultrier blue. A green Celtic knot tattoo decorated her upper right shoulder blade. He wondered if she had any other tattoos, and where they were.

All Mitch could think about was taking her to bed. His face heated. She’d hate him when she learned who he was and why he’d befriended her. Okay, just this one date. He wouldn’t sleep with her. He wouldn’t kiss her.

He should make an excuse that he had to work late. That wouldn’t work, he’d told her he was a writer. Maybe he had a deadline? He didn’t know. Hell, he should walk away, tell her he was ill, and never return to her Starbucks. Disappear from the face of the earth. He had to stop this right now.

Instead, he kissed her. Just a light kiss on the lips. A hello kiss. But that hello kiss whetted his appetite and he wanted more than just one. He stopped himself. She smiled. “Hello.”

She tossed a blazer over her arm and a bag over her shoulder. He told himself it was for the job. But it was no longer about the job. He had originally planned to befriend and keep tabs on Claire on the chance—the good chance—that her father would eventually show up. O’Brien was likely waiting for enough time to pass where he thought it’d be safe to approach his daughter, his only living relative.

But now Mitch saw the flaw in his plan. When O’Brien showed up—and he would, statistics put the odds firmly on that eventuality—Mitch would have to arrest him. It didn’t matter that Mitch had reviewed the evidence and thought there was merit to O’Brien’s claim of innocence. The fact was O’Brien was still a fugitive and Mitch would be risking not only censure, but imprisonment if he didn’t apprehend O’Brien when he had the chance.

And Claire would discover the truth. He’d misrepresented himself. He’d lied. She would hate him. And he wouldn’t blame her.

Deep down, Mitch hoped O’Brien never showed. He wanted Claire to himself, and he never wanted her to find out the truth.

Stupid. She would find out sooner or later. That first night out, while they ate, Claire said, “You know, when I first met you I thought you were a cop.”

Mitch’s blood ran cold, but he kept his face casual. “You did? Why?”

“I’ve been around cops all of my life. And a lot of Rogan-Caruso employees are former cops or military. Two things stood out. First, every time someone walks into your peripheral vision, you glance at them. Quickly, but it’s a habit. And when we sit at Starbucks, you always have your back against the wall. Just like you do now.”

“I was in the military for three years.”

She nodded. “That explains it.”

He didn’t know if it explained it. He’d almost forgotten who he was dealing with. Claire O’Brien was not stupid.

“Marines.”

“Semper Fi.”

He grinned.

“Why’d you leave?”

He didn’t want to talk about himself, but he wanted to share something real with Claire. And it didn’t get more real than this—his past, the past that made him the man he’d become. The good, the bad, and sometimes the ugly.

“The real question should be, why’d I join.”

“Okay. Why’d you join?”

“My dad.”

“He was in the Marines?”

“No. The Air Force.”

She didn’t say anything, but he saw her mind working behind those incredible blue eyes.

“When I was growing up in Santa Barbara, I didn’t have plans for my future. My dad was the district attorney, and I was a beach bum.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t fit. I don’t see you lying around on the beach working on your tan.”

He laughed. “No, lying around wasn’t my style. Surfing was. Surfing and diving. Travis—Travis Cole, my closest friend since we were six—and I spent every afternoon on the waves or under them. And we cut enough classes that I had to study my ass off to pass my finals.”

“Your dad didn’t like that.”

“Hell no. He didn’t like Travis, who was from a wealthy family. They had the kind of money that seemed to grow on trees. I didn’t have the same advantages. We weren’t poor by any stretch, but putting me through college and law school like my father planned would wipe out their savings account.” Mitch heated with regret remembering when he told his dad he’d be a lawyer over his dead body. Rod Bianchi was dead less than a year later.

“I joined the military right out of high school to get away from Dad. It was the military or college, and I really didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to travel the world with Travis on his yacht, diving in the tropics and surfing waves that hit empty beaches. But I couldn’t do it. I told myself it was because my mom would be devastated, but in truth I was still under Dad’s thumb. No matter how many shenanigans I pulled with Travis, I kept going home and asking for forgiveness.”

“You probably would have gotten bored with that after, oh, ten or twenty years.”

He nodded, gave her a half smile, though his memories were of an unhappier time.

Something passed across Claire’s expression that told Mitch now was the time to get her to talk about her dad, but then it was gone and she said, “So you joined the Marines because he had been in the Air Force.”

“Yeah.”

“And why’d you leave?”

“My dad died. Heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was a workaholic. On the job 24/7. He didn’t know the meaning of the word
relax,
and his doctor had been warning him for years that if he didn’t slow down or take care of himself, he would die early. Rod Bianchi didn’t believe him. He was in shape, worked out at the gym every morning, ate healthy. He died at his desk.”

“And you came home to be a beach bum?”

“I considered it. But I ended up going to college. Travis got tired of traipsing across the planet, so he joined me. We got a place on the beach and spent a lot of time on the waves, and a little time in class.”

“How’d you end up becoming a writer?”

Now they were getting into the lies. It had felt so good to tell Claire the truth about himself that he dreaded the next sentence that came out of his mouth.

“I worked on the campus newspaper. I liked it, and when I graduated I took a job on a paper in the south. Then moved my way up the Eastern Seaboard. Came back to California when my mom died. When my grandmother passed a year later and I had a bit of money, I decided that if I was ever going to do something big, I needed to try now. So I’m trying to write the Great American Novel.”

The lies came off his tongue effortlessly, but he wished his heart wasn’t so twisted. He wanted to tell Claire everything—how he joined the FBI because he thought that would have pleased his father, the man he had fought with only days before he died. How his mom had blamed him for his dad’s early death.

Instead, he created a fictional past for Claire and hated himself for it. He couldn’t tell her he thought her father was innocent, or that he had intentionally befriended her in order to capture Tom O’Brien.

Claire took his hand and kissed it. “You’ll have to teach me to surf someday.”

“There’re no beaches in Sacramento.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really? Guess we’ll have to head to the coast for a weekend sometime.”

His heart did a flip and his hand tightened within her grasp.

“Guess we’ll have to,” he said thickly.

Instruments were being tuned in the bar, and Claire smiled. “That’s Finnegan’s Wake.”

“What?”

“The band. Named after the classic Irish folk song. A homage of sorts. This is their first time here.”

“I thought this was a British pub.” He pointed to the British flag hanging on the interior glass windows of the converted warehouse. “And isn’t that Queen Elizabeth?” he said, gesturing toward a mural.