Jonathon King - A Killing Night

Fried nodded and leaned back again.

"Now, you got anything on him from Florida that's gonna help her nail his ass for the killing of Faith Hamlin, I'm more than happy to forward that information along, Mr. Freeman."

I sat back as well, more than happy to increase the personal space between us. Fried didn't know that I had once been married to his boss. Uncle Keith had been more circumspect than that.

I stood up and offered my hand.

"If I should come across anything that I think you can use, Detective, you'll be the first to know," I lied. "I appreciate the time."

"Hey, any friend of the sarge. Maybe I'll catch you out some night, buy me one," he said, just one of the boys again.

I grinned the guy grin while he showed me out. In the hallway I found myself shaking my head and thinking some line about six degrees of separation. My ex-wife and now my ex-lover had swapped notes on O'Shea and his connection with the disappearances of Faith Hamlin here, and about the disappearances of the women in Florida. They both had the guy's ass in their rifle sights. I figured I knew that Sherry Richards's motive was this hell-bent desire for justice for the victims. Meagan's I was equally sure of: a premier scalp on her already extensive collection, a step up her ambitious ladder to who the hell knew where, and yet another man-challenge to conquer. I didn't think either had mentioned my name or my intimate connection to both of them.

"Don't tell me that God has a plan, Mamma," I whispered to a pale empty wall. "Or he is one bizarre poet."

I was waiting for the elevator when I heard her call my name and there was no denying the voice.

"Max?"

I looked back down the hall toward IAD and she was standing in a cerulean-colored suit that I could only imagine her coming up with when the dress code said blue. Even from here I could tell the high cut of her skirt was not regulation. Her head was angled slightly with a questioning look and her honey blonde hair took advantage of the tilt to cascade down over one shoulder. She had called out my name once like that when we were married, late one night while she tried to sleep after a SWAT shooting she'd been in on. Her voice had sounded like she'd needed me, so I'd held her in our bed until she stopped shivering. But the next morning she had no recollection of it and I had been wrong about the needing.

"Max?"

I put my hands in my pockets and took a step toward her. The elevator bell rang and I ignored it. I watched her hand a load of files to a man in a suit next to her and wave him into the office, all without taking her eyes off me. As she approached she looked down once, then raised her eyes and reached up and took a strand of hair that had come loose and in one heartbreaking motion that burned in our past, she tucked it behind her ear. We met halfway.

"Max Freeman, holy shit, look at you!"

Her lips were sealed in a barely contained smile but her eyes were undeniably bright. She tossed her arms around my neck and I think I put one hand on her back. Her perfume was new. Her cheek soft and the same. I felt my weight anchor in my heels and the hug might have lasted a second too long for a divorced couple standing in a police headquarters who hadn't seen each other for more than five years. She stepped back, or I did, and she still held my shoulders.

"Jesus Christ, a beach bum? An oil rigger? A damn boat captain? What the hell have you done with yourself, Max?"

"Hi, Meagan. How have you been?" was all I could manage and my face felt stupid and flushed. She cocked her head. She was one of those women whose eyes told you she was smarter and wittier than you, but she was willing to let you try to catch up.

"It's the Florida sun," I said. "Plays hell with a guy's complexion."

I wanted to tell her that she hadn't changed a bit. But she did it for me.

"Did you come all this way just to see me?" she said with that teasing smile of hers.

The elevator pinged again and a group got off.

"Uh, yeah, Meg, in a way," I said, lying again. Home must have brought back that special talent in me. I guided her to a bench in the hall and sat.

"I'm actually working for an attorney in West Palm Beach on a case."

"You're a P.I., Max. How perfect for you and that independent streak of yours. Do I know the firm?"

"Uh, I doubt it. He's a one-man show. Kind of independent himself."

"It's just that my husband, Troy Montgomery of Montgomery and Wallace, does a lot of work with real estate attorneys in Florida," she said. She crossed her legs with the grainy shoosh of fine nylon and rested her left hand on her knee. The ring on her finger flashed, even in the poor fluorescent light.

"I, uh, congratulations," I said. "I didn't know you were married."

"Yes you did, Max," she said, fluttering the fingers of her left hand on which a rock the size of Gibraltar clung. "You've always been an observant cop."

"Anyway," I said, avoiding that trap. "I came up to talk with some folks about a former officer, Colin O'Shea. He was a few years younger than me. I think you might have met him."

She looked past me, spinning, I knew, the scenarios through her head. Meagan had been a sharpshooter on the SWAT team when we were married. She was tough, accurate and knew through training, and not just a little of her naturally conniving character, how to see a path in her head before taking it.

"Is this the O'Shea some agency in Florida is looking at as an abduction suspect?"

"Yeah."

Never underestimate a smart woman with skills.

"A detective down there called me. I gave her what we had in the file. You do know I'm heading IAD these days?"

I nodded.

"And I wouldn't be giving you credit, Max, if I didn't suppose that you also know about the Faith Hamlin case."

"Yeah, I do."

Without physically moving, space of some kind opened up between us on the bench. A step back, without one actually taking place.

"This detective, she was very persistent. Wanted to know more than what we had. Very aggressive."

I nodded again.

"You know her?"

"I've done a couple of overlapping cases."

"Overlapping?" she said, raising that eyebrow of hers. I'd determined years ago it was a skeptical twitch she must have been working on since childhood. I pretended to ignore it. "So, do you know more, Max? About O'Shea?"

Here came the info for info drill, I thought.

"I guess I know that he was your prime suspect in the Hamlin disappearance and that because he couldn't be charged he moved to Florida," I said.

Meagan did not flinch.

"And you also know that your overlapping detective friend is considering him as her main suspect in the disappearance of other victims."

I fell back on my refusal to answer rhetoric.

"How Republican of your local constable to farm out investigative work to a private contractor, Max," she said. "Or are you somehow working for Mr. O'Shea as a defensive player?"

Down the hall the suit Meagan had been with stuck his head out the door of her office and looked at us, briefly, no high sign, no clearing of the throat, before retreating,

"She asked me to talk with O'Shea, see what he might say to someone from the neighborhood. It was a favor," I said.

Meagan's eyes brightened, the sudden look of enthusiasm catching me, like it had the first time I'd met her.

"Then we've got to have dinner, Max," she said brightly as she stood. "You can tell me about this conversation with our Mr. O'Shea and what that perceptive mind of yours came up with."

"And you can bring along the investigative case file for me?" I said, playing the info game.

"All in my head, Max," she said, smiling and touching her hair with an index finger. "Yours for the asking."

"Tomorrow, eight o'clock at Moriarity's then?" I said, instinctively tossing out a place we'd gone to many times when we were together.