Virginia Kantra - All A Man Can Ask

Jarek shook his head. “Which still doesn’t explain what you were doing on Eileen Harper’s dock with binoculars and a gun.”

“The detective who was killed…” Aleksy hesitated and then shrugged. He had to give Jarek something, or he wouldn’t get his gun back. “I knew her. Karen Vasquez.”

Jarek straightened behind his big metal desk. “Your partner?”

“Former partner,” Aleksy corrected. “We stopped working together nine months ago. Before your move. Remember?”

“That’s right. She put in for a transfer.”

“Yeah.”

“For personal reasons.”

Aleksy tried not to squirm. “Yeah.”

“How personal, hotshot?”

“Look, we were close. We got closer. Her idea, my mistake. Okay?”

“Not okay, if she couldn’t work with you afterward,” Jarek stated.

“I told you, it was a mistake. Anyway, she got reassigned. Coming from Area 3 she got handed this big case. Gunrunning across the border. She was excited. Called me up to tell me about it.”

“She shouldn’t have done that.”

“She thought I might have an interest.”

“And what would that be? Aside from letting you know she was moving on to bigger and better things?”

“She said something about my brother finding himself in the middle of things. So when she—” Died. Hell. “Anyway, afterward, I figured that was a lead up here.”

“But why—” Jarek’s eyes narrowed as he answered his own question. “Richard Freer. Liberty Guns and Ammo. His place is opposite the Harper dock.”

Aleksy nodded. “I tried to rent the cottage but the owner had already promised it to her niece.”

The big-eyed pixie in the flowered skirt who had called the cops.

Jarek tapped a pencil against his desk. “Okay. I’ll give you that Dick Freer is a pompous son of a bitch. But as far as I know, he’s legit. And he’s got a lot of pull in this community. Hell, he was on the search committee that hired me.”

“Whoever our gunrunner is, he’s got good cover. Or the feds would have caught him by now.”

“And what makes you think you can succeed where they’ve failed?”

“I have to,” Aleksy said.

Jarek’s gaze sharpened. His voice softened. “It’s not your job. It’s not your case. You need to stay out of it.”

“I can’t.”

“Alex—”

But Aleksy cut him off. He appreciated his brother’s concern, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. Some things were too painful to get into, and way too personal to share. “Are you going to stop me?”

His brother hesitated. “I can’t let my department get mixed up in your personal vendetta.”

“I know that. That’s why I didn’t spill the details to what’s his name. Larsen. I just need you to leave me alone.”

“That’s it?”

“Well…you could give me my gun back.”

Jarek opened a drawer in his desk and hefted Aleksy’s snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38. “You carrying the ‘chief’s special’ now?”

“You always did.”

Jarek peered along the blue steel barrel. “Yeah, but yours is longer than mine.”

“Barrel envy, big brother?”

Jarek’s teeth glinted in a smile. “Yeah. What is yours, three inches?”

Aleksy laughed. “At least mine feels like a real gun instead of a kiddie toy.”

Jarek raised his eyebrows, but he laid the gun flat on his desk without comment.

Aleksy slid it into the clip at his back. Some cops liked an ankle holster off duty, but he’d never been able to stand walking with one. “Thanks.”

“You need a place to stay?”

Aleksy dropped his jacket over the gun to hide it. “No, I’m good. We’re only an hour or so out of Chicago. I can get home occasionally to shower and change. Besides, the fewer people who associate you with me—or me with the police—the better.”

“As long as you understand I expect to be apprised of your activity while you’re in my jurisdiction.”

Aleksy nodded to show he’d received the warning. “Understood.”

“And, Alex…yell for help if you need it.”

Aleksy grinned at his big brother. “Haven’t I always?”

“Not always,” Jarek said. “You let Tommy Dolan whip your butt in fifth grade.”

Aleksy shrugged. “Fine. You want to help?” He did a mental playback of Faye Harper’s wide eyes and unexpected spunk. “Fix things with the cream puff.”

“—can only apologize and hope you’re willing to forget about the matter,” the police chief’s cool, smooth voice said over the telephone line.

Faye’s hand tightened on the receiver. He was talking down to her. A lot of people talked down to her. Too bad for the Denkos she was getting tired of it. “Most women would have difficulty forgetting an armed intruder.”

The police chief coughed. “Actually, unless you previously communicated your desire for him to leave the property—if the yard were fenced, for example, or if signs were posted—he wouldn’t be guilty of criminal trespass. Of course, I understand your—”

“He had a gun,” Faye said.

The line was still for a moment. “A gun he was legally authorized to carry.”

She knew it was futile to argue. But still. “Your officer said only sworn law enforcement officers could carry concealed firearms.”

“Yes,” the chief said, adding very gently, “My brother Alex is a detective with the Chicago PD.”

The fight leaked out of Faye like air from a pricked balloon. What was the point of protesting? What was right was never as important as what was expedient. She should have learned that by now.

But the mocking memory of her trespasser’s hard, dark eyes dared her to say, “And what was a detective from Chicago doing on my dock?”

Another pause. “I can’t say.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

Jarek Denko was silent.

Don’t get involved, Faye told herself. You don’t want to know. She tucked the receiver under her jaw and used her left hand to massage her right wrist. Without the support of the cast, it ached when she used it too long.

“Never mind,” she said. “I won’t press charges or—or whatever it is. I don’t have time, anyway. I’m here to work.”

“Really?” the chief asked politely. Well, now that he had what he wanted—her cooperation—she supposed he felt compelled to be polite. “What kind of work do you do, Miss Harper?”

Once she would have told him with pride that she was a teacher. Now she stammered. “I, um…not work, exactly. I should have said I paint.”

“Lots of pretty scenery up here,” the chief said, still politely.

She made an agreeable noise—it seemed the fastest way to get him to leave her alone—and hoped he wouldn’t start to tell her what views she ought to paint while she was here or about his aunt/sister/cousin who used to model clay/draw her own Christmas cards/do decoupage.

He didn’t. He thanked her again formally and got off the line.

Faye drew a shaky breath and looked around her aunt’s living room, now serving as her temporary studio. Brushes stood in mayonnaise jars. Paint dried in plastic trays. Photographs—a bright sailboat slicing the horizon, a flock of birds above an inlet, a skyscape at midday—spilled across the table. The metallic strip board she’d hauled from her Chicago apartment propped against one wall, her most recent work held in place with small round magnets.

I paint.

Beautiful scenes. Bright scenes. Safe scenes.

She bit her lip, aware of a faint dissatisfaction. Maybe they did lack a little of the energy and edge that characterized her earlier work, but they were pretty. Soothing.

Lame, Jamal would have said, with a shake of his head and his wide, white grin…

The tight control she’d held over her thoughts fissured, and through the gap, bitter self-accusation swept in a flood. Don’t go there, she told herself. Do not. Go there. Don’t.