Sandra Marton - Ring Of Deception

But it wasn’t Molly, it was the captain’s clerk, calling to tell him that Lieutenant McDowell wanted to see him at 8:00 a.m. and would that be convenient?

Convenient?

Luke shot the answering machine a look that some of the suspects he’d questioned during the past four years, ever since he’d made detective, would have recognized. The lieutenant or the clerk must be having a good laugh—except that nobody had ever seen either of them smile, much less laugh.

Maybe he’d heard the message wrong.

He toed off his Nikes, tugged his soaked T-shirt over his head and stripped off his shorts. The phone rang just as he reached toward the play button.

“Sloan.”

“Molly wants to know how you’re feeling.”

Luke smiled, tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder and headed for the bathroom.

“Better than yesterday, and curious about today.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I just got a message from the captain’s clerk. The lieutenant wants to see me when I get in.”

“And?”

“And . . . I don’t know anything more than that.” Luke hesitated. “Dan? You think maybe the lieutenant developed a sense of humor?”

“See, I knew you should have come home with me last night. You need Molly’s soup, Luke. You must be running a fever.”

“You could be right. Either I’m hallucinating, or the message on my machine says I should see him at eight . . . if it’s convenient.”

“If it’s . . . ?” Dan gave a gusty sigh. “Man, you’re in deeper do-do than usual. What’d you do to piss him off this time?”

Luke grinned. “Nothing more than usual. Why?”

“Well, last time I know of he used the word convenient was maybe three, four years ago. Right before you got made. He asked Rutledge if it was convenient for him to stop by his office at six one evening. You ever know Rutledge? Tall, mustache—looked like John Q. Public’s idea of a detective.”

“Yeah, I heard about him. The guy who couldn’t have found an elephant in a phone booth with a sack of peanuts in his pocket.”

“That’s the one.”

“So? What happened?”

“McDowell told Rutledge he was putting him on a special detail.”

Luke opened the shower stall door, turned on the water, then closed the door again.

“Which was?”

“Which was, handing him over to that TV anchor with the hairpiece for a PR stint. Well, he wasn’t an anchor then, but you know who I mean—the guy who can’t walk by a mirror without kissing his reflection. After a week, even Rutledge was going nuts.”

Luke sat down on the closed commode. “In other words,” he said slowly, “‘convenient’ is a polite way of saying ‘smile and grab your ankles, pal. You’re about to get screwed.”

“Yeah,” Dan said mournfully, “and not by a babe like that lady last night. What? No, Molly. Honey, I was just—of course not. Would I even notice another woman when I can come home to you? Molly. Baby . . . ”

Luke chuckled. “See you in an hour.”

He put down the phone, stepped into the shower and turned the water on full force.

Dan tended to look at the down side of things. Rutledge had always been an ass; he’d deserved an assignment that paired him with another ass. But Luke knew he was—well, without being too immodest, he was good. He cleared most of his cases and he had an impressive arrest record.

During his five years in uniform, he’d taken down more than his fair share of the lowlifes he encountered. Once he’d been made a detective, he’d busted burglars, pornographers, a child kidnapper and a killer.

Turning his face up to the spray, he let the warm water do its job.

No way would the lieutenant waste him on some idiotic PR thing.

No way whatsoever.

* * *

BY EIGHT-FIFTEEN, LUKE KNEW he was right.

The lieutenant didn’t want to waste him in an idiotic PR thing. He wanted to use him in something worse. He hadn’t said so. Not yet, but Luke could feel it coming.

First there’d been a handshake and congratulations about yesterday’s collar. He and Dan had put in two months working on a dozen cases of home-invasion robberies and finally caught the vicious SOB who’d been busting into the homes of the elderly, stealing whatever he could, and beating up the frail victims just for kicks.

“Good job, Sloan,” McDowell said, to start their meeting.

Then he motioned Luke to a chair and made what was supposed to be some meaningful small talk along with lots of serious eye contact.

The lieutenant, like most of the bosses, had taken a management seminar on how to encourage subordinates to feel like part of the team. The looking-deep-into-the-eyes thing was one of the techniques.

Luke knew that because he’d leafed through a syllabus he’d found lying around.

Lieutenant McDowell wasn’t particularly good at the deep eye contact. He’d come to the department from the mayor’s office, and if he had something to tell you, he had a tendency to yell and get red in the face.

That he wasn’t even raising his voice, but was doing this by the syllabus, made Luke nervous.

Then he offered Luke a cup of coffee. Starbucks, by the taste of it, and one thousand percent better than the sludge they brewed in the squad room.

“Cream?” the lieutenant asked, and that was when Luke knew that whatever came next would not be pleasant.

“No,” Luke said politely, “I’m fine.”

“Sound a little husky, Sloan. Got a cold?”

“I do, yeah.”

“My wife swears by horehound drops. Might want to try some.”

A polite invitation, coffee, an offer to add cream to that coffee, and now some fatherly advice. No, this was not good.

“I’ll do that,” Luke said, and waited.

McDowell sat back in his chair and tented his fingers under his chin. “Well,” he said, “you must be wondering why I called you in today.”

Luke said nothing. Back when he was a marine, he’d learned the drill. Keep your mouth shut and wait. You’d find out what was going on sooner or later. That worked in a cop’s world, too.

McDowell cleared his throat, rose from his desk and walked to a wall map of Seattle. He stabbed a finger at the northwestern section of the city and raised an eyebrow at Luke.

“Some very expensive real estate up here,” he said.

Luke muffled a sneeze. “Uh-huh.”

“I guess you’ve heard about the robberies in the area the last few months.”

Now they were getting down to it. Luke began to relax. Maybe he’d misjudged things. Maybe McDowell was the victim of another management seminar, this one on issuing summonses to his office that didn’t sound like summonses.

“I heard something about a cat burglar doing his thing.”

“At first. But our perp’s gone from playing it cool and careful to strong-arm tactics. Comes in when he knows somebody’s home, frightens them half to death, roughs them up if they don’t move fast enough.”

“Sounds like a real nice guy.”

“Uh-huh. His taste is good, too. He takes only what they call estate jewelry, meaning it’s old and expensive.”

“What more do we know?”

“Well, we had a report of one of the missing pieces possibly turning up on the market.”

“Possibly?”

“Yeah. And not in your usual kind of market, Sloan. This wasn’t a pawnshop.”

“What was it, then?”

The lieutenant sat down behind his desk. “Ever hear of the Emerald City Jewelry Exchange?”

“Sure. Big place, expensive by the looks of it. On a street over in Belltown.” Luke cocked his head. “Wait a minute. Are you saying somebody at Emerald City is fencing stolen jewelry?”

The lieutenant allowed himself a quick smile. “I’m not saying a thing. Not yet.”