Carol Ericson - Brody Law - The Bridge / The District / The Wharf / The Hill

“Maybe. I feel so awful. I don’t even know if I can get up from this love seat.”

“Sean!”

He twisted his head around and answered Curtis. “What is it?”

“Lieutenant Healy wants you down at the station—now.”

“Are you kidding me? Don’t tell me he’s mad because I found the Alphabet Killer’s victim.”

“He’s mad about a lot of things. I suggest you head down there.”

Sean rose to his feet and brought Elise with him, tucked against his side. “Technically, I was on a date.”

Curtis cleared his throat. “Technically, you were on a date with a witness, which is another one of his points of contention.”

“I’m not leaving Elise stranded, and I don’t want her going back to my place alone.”

“Your place?” Curtis rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the LT doesn’t even know about that, but he could add it to his list when he chews you out.”

Elise pressed her shoulder against Sean’s. “It’s okay. There are a million cops here, and my guess is they’ll be here for a few more hours. I can just stay here and wait for you.”

Sean glanced at the coroner’s stretcher in the hallway. “I don’t want you hanging out here, Elise. You’re exhausted.”

“I’ll tell you what.” Curtis smiled at Elise. “You go have your confab with the lieutenant, and I’ll take Elise out for coffee to wait for you or back to my place, or we can even go back to your place.”

“Hot chocolate.”

“Huh?”

“Elise likes hot chocolate with whipped cream.” He hugged her close. “Is that okay with you?”

“Yes, of course. I don’t want you to get into any more trouble because of me.” She sniffled. “I don’t want to be the cause of any more trouble for anyone.”

Sean gave her a quick kiss and didn’t care who saw. “Hang in there, kid. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

She bobbed her head once and sank back down to the love seat.

“Take care of her, Curtis.” Sean glanced over his shoulder at Elise one more time before leaving the crime scene.

When he got to the station, it looked like one o’clock in the afternoon instead of one o’clock in the morning. And Lieutenant Healy was presiding over all the controlled chaos with a tight rein.

When he saw Sean, he barked, “Brody. In here now.”

Sean sat tight-lipped as the lieutenant dressed him down for consorting with a witness, for conducting an investigation on his own and even for continuing to thrust himself into this case when he’d been removed from it.

At the end of the tirade, he praised Sean for his good detective work and was personally inviting him back on the case.

“I’ll deal with the captain tomorrow. He can’t really believe you don’t have something important to contribute, but—” he held up one crooked finger “—Curtis will still be lead. And if you have a problem...”

“No problem with that, sir.”

“Good. Now let’s head over to the situation room. The security office at the victim’s building turned over the tapes. We have the victim’s phone and appointment book, so we’re going to try to match up some appointment times with the videos.”

“I’m in.”

He and the lieutenant and one of the junior detectives hunched over the laptop and fast-forwarded through people walking in and out of Courtney’s building.

Sean tossed down his pencil in frustration. “There are a lot of offices in that building and a lot of foot traffic. Elise Duran told me there were a few nights this week where the victim saw this new client later in the day. Let’s concentrate on the video for those times when there aren’t so many people.”

When the videos were loaded, Sean peered at the grainy images on the laptop monitor. They stopped the video and captured and printed pictures of every man who came through the door.

When he had a stack, he said, “I’m going to run these by Elise so she can see if any of these guys look familiar.”

He studied in particular a stocky man with a cap pulled low over his face, which he kept turned away from the camera. He could even be wearing a gray jacket, like the man who attacked Elise.

Rubbing his eyes, Sean checked his watch. He’d been here for almost two hours. He wanted, no, he needed to see Elise.

He grabbed the printouts and cruised down the hallway to the lab. Lieutenant Healy had the techs hopping in here, too.

Sean waved the papers in his hand. “I need a few of these blown up. Do we have anything on the fingerprints from the office yet?”

Kwan looked up from his computer. “Fingerprints? We don’t have no stinkin’ fingerprints yet.”

“Jacoby hasn’t been back here with his treasures yet? I thought he’d be gleefully running prints about now.”

“Jacoby does love him some fingerprints, but he hasn’t come back from the crime scene.”

“Are they still out there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Sean furrowed his brow and smacked the printouts down on the counter. “Okay, can someone work on these? I’m going to check in with the LT, and then I’m outta here. Call me if something comes up.”

Sean returned to his desk to file some notes and then started for the lieutenant’s office. His heart stuttered when he saw Curtis through the glass talking to Healy.

Had he brought Elise here?

He stalked to the office and pushed open the door. “Where’s Elise? Did you bring her down here?”

Curtis turned and leaned against the lieutenant’s desk. “No, I had more work to do at the crime scene and then the lieutenant called me back here.”

“Where is she? You didn’t leave her alone, did you?”

“Relax, loverboy.” Curtis shifted a quick glance at Healy and grimaced. “I left her with Jacoby. He said he’d take her back to your place and stick around until you got there.”

Jacoby. The adrenaline continued to course through Sean’s body and he charged out of the lieutenant’s office and back to the lab.

“Have you singled out those stills from the video yet?” Sean had punched in Elise’s cell phone number, but it had tripped over to voice mail.

Kwan’s mouth dropped open. “Dude, you just dropped off the printouts. We haven’t had time to match them on the video yet.”

Sean pulled out a chair at one of the computers and opened the portions of the video they’d marked. He scanned through and stopped at the image of the man in the baseball cap. “Kwan, come here.”

Kwan hovered over his shoulder. “What?”

Jabbing his finger at the screen, Sean asked, “Doesn’t this look like Jacoby to you?”

Adjusting his glasses, Kwan leaned in. “Could be, same shape, but Jacoby’s built rock solid. This guy looks a little heavyset to me.”

“That could be the jacket, right? A guy with big muscles might look heavy in a puffy jacket.”

“Sure, but what are you saying? Jacoby was in that building? I mean, he could’ve been—dentists, lawyers, hell, even steroid docs. So what?”

“Fingers. Fingerprints.”

“What the hell, Brody?”

“How come there hasn’t been one set of prints to come out of any of these murders? Not even a partial.”

“The Alphabet Killer wears gloves. He’s careful.”

“He knows police procedures.”

“Jacoby’s weird, but he ain’t that weird.”

Sean’s head jerked to the side. “What do you mean by weird?”

“I don’t know.” Kwan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “With the ladies. He trolls those online dating forums but can never get up the guts to make a move.”

The blood was roaring in Sean’s ears now. He stormed out of the lab and interrupted Curtis and Healy. “Where’s Jacoby?”

Curtis smirked. “Why? Do you think he’s moving in on your woman?”