David Baldacci - True Blue

“We hooked up and then we parted company. And I came back here.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t gotten a lot of work done lately, for obvious reasons. Just trying to catch up. And I was going to make some phone calls.”

“At this hour?”

“To Dubai. It’s the next day there.”

“Thanks for the geography lesson. Where is he?”

“Fourth floor.”

He led them to the stairs. “Why not the elevator?” asked Beth.

Because your little sister has my key card , thought Roy. But he said, “The elevators were acting a little funny when I came down. I don’t want to get stuck in one.”

They trooped up the steps, two armed plainclothes and a uniform in the lead. Other cruisers and unmarked cars were pulling up out front and a perimeter was being set.

“How did you go from working late to ending up on the construction floor in a confrontation?” Beth asked.

“Heard something.”

“From the sixth floor!”

“I meant I heard something on the elevator ride up. Didn’t think too much of it, but then I remembered the day porter telling me about stuff going missing from the construction site so I decided to check it out.”

“You should’ve called the police right way. You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

“I guess you’re right.”

They reached the fourth floor and the lawmen pulled their guns and lights and followed Roy’s directions. They found the Captain still on the floor, only he wasn’t twitching. He seemed to be asleep.

They gave the okay and Beth and Roy came forward.

She looked at the man on the floor.

“He’s a big, tough-looking guy. Ex-military if the jacket and medals are real. How’d you subdue him?” She turned and looked at Roy intently.

Roy bent down and picked up the piece of wood that Mace had given to him. “I used this. You can see the blood on it.”

“You whacked him with this? Did he attack you?”

“No, but I was afraid he might. It all happened so fast,” he added.

Beth turned to her men. “Get Sleeping Beauty out of here.” She glanced at Roy. “I think we can chance the elevator. I need your key card to access it.”

Roy patted his pockets and checked his windbreaker. “Damn, I must’ve left it in my office. Now I can’t get back in. I’m sorry, you’ll have to use the stairs.”

Several more uniforms had joined them and it took all of their combined strength to get the bulky Captain down to the lobby.

Beth said, “I want you to run through everything from the top.”

“Okay, hey, you want to go get a drink while we do it?”

“No, Mr. Kingman, I don’t want to go get a drink. I want the truth.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Chief.”

“From the top, then, and don’t leave anything out, slick. I’m this close to busting your ass on obstruction, tampering, lying to the police, and for just being stupid .”

Roy said wearily, “Are you sure you and your sister aren’t twins?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind.” He drew a resigned breath and started talking.

MACE DUCKED through the yellow police tape blocking the kitchen and Tolliver’s office and searched each place quickly and efficiently.

After finding nothing she had stared at the inside of the refrigerator for some time. Roy had told her that Diane Tolliver was nearly five-eight, about one-forty. Dead bodies were unwieldy things, she knew, having been around more than her fair share. Whoever killed her had to have really wedged the woman in, or else the body could have easily slumped against the door and pushed it open.

She went over the timeline again that her sister had told her and Roy had supplemented. Because Tolliver had had to use her key card that morning they had a pretty detailed understanding of her movements. The garage entry showed Tolliver had checked in at six. Ned had heard her voice in the lobby a minute or so later. She’d swiped her card in the elevator and entered the premises of Shilling & Murdoch ninety seconds after that. Roy had arrived at the office at seven-thirty and found her at a bit past eight. Mace didn’t believe that Tolliver had been alive when Roy got to the office, so she was looking at about ninety minutes for the murder to have occurred and the lady to get stuffed in the icebox.

Tolliver had e-mailed Roy late Friday night. She also had sent him a book with a key in it, probably on the same day. An ex-Army Ranger had been hiding out on the fourth floor and right now was probably the prime suspect. Mace looked at her watch. Gazing out Roy’s office window she’d seen the patrol cars pull up to the building. She figured Dockery was already under arrest, and they’d take a DNA sample from him. If it matched, he was done. Neat, tied together. And then Mace could tell Beth the truth of her figuring it out, nailing the guy, and possibly get her old job back.

So what was bothering her?

She trudged back to Roy’s office so she could see when they brought Dockery out. Like Roy had said, he had a dead-on view of the front of the building.

She pulled something from her pocket. It was a copy of the key that Tolliver had left in the book for Roy. Mace had had a “friend” make the copy for her after she’d left Binder’s goodie shop, with the warning that if he messed up the prints on the original key, she would Taser him until his brain started smoking. That actually would pale in comparison to what Beth would do to her if she found out about the key copy.

She thought of the e-mail Tolliver had sent Roy. We need to focus in on A . And the A was followed by a hyphen. A seemingly trivial detail, but she knew the seemingly unimportant usually became critical in a criminal investigation. She came by her investigative instincts honestly. Her father had been so good at observing and deducing things that the FBI had asked him to teach a course on fieldwork for them at the academy, a tradition that Beth had carried on.

Roy was right, though. It was awkwardly phrased.

We need to focus in on .

She looked down at the key in her hand. Why not just say, We need to key on A- ?

“We need to key on A-,” she said out loud, hoping something would click in her head. Just a coincidence? Key and key? Key on a key?

She sighed and looked out Roy’s office window. Marked and unmarked cars were slung around the front with uniforms and plain-clothes standing around, probably wondering when they could either go back on patrol or return to their hoodles and wait for their radios to bark.

No one was coming out of the building yet, so Mace sighed and lifted her gaze from the front entrance to the building across from where she was.

When she saw the neon, at first she couldn’t believe it.

“Damn!”

She looked down at her key and back at the flashing sign. How in the hell had she missed it? It was purple! But then again she’d never looked out this window at night. But still. Some detective she was.

She snatched the phone from her pocket and fired off a text to Roy.

Come on, Roy, we need to talk like right now.

ROY SNATCHED a peek at his phone after it started to vibrate in his pants pocket. This did not escape the attention of Beth, who was standing near him.

He looked up from the screen and found her gaze on him.

“Dubai calling?” she said coolly.

“No, just a bud in town.”

“Bud’s up late.”

“We’re both night owls.”

“Good for you,” she said, her tone of skepticism delivered like a cannon shot.

“Are we done here, Chief?”

“For now. But next time you hear strange sounds, call the police.”