16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

Brady threw up his hands. We’d tried. He left for the day at five, which may have been the first time since I’ve known him. I left a minute or two after that. I had to fight off three reporters’ requests for “Just one question, Sergeant” on my way to the car.

At home I cooked your basic spaghetti with marinara sauce and meatballs for me and Julie. We walked our good dog, after which I bathed Julie, read her a book with kittens and ponies in it, and put her to bed.

At eight I was starting to relax. I had shut off the TV and was ready for an early night in bed when Brady called.

There was no acceptable reason to ignore his call.

I said my name into the phone.

He said, “Boxer, here’s a no-surprise surprise.”

I listened as Brady told me that Connor Grant had called him directly. “He says gunshots were fired through his window. That someone is trying to kill him. He wants protection. You heard me. I told him I had wanted to assign cars to his house.”

“I remember vividly,” I said.

Brady scoffed. “Well, he’s changed his mind. Done a Uturn. Conklin is on the way over to Bayview. You go, too. Maybe now that he’s scared, he might blurt out something semi-useful.”

I was wearing fluffy socks and my favorite pajamas. I’d been ten minutes from dreamland. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay.”

I hung up with Brady, called the darling Mrs. Gloria Rose. I asked her, “Will you do a shift with Julie, please? She’s already eaten. She’s asleep.”

“When have I ever said no?”

I thanked the number one best nanny in the world, threw on clean jeans and a cotton pullover, jammed shoes onto my aching feet. After Mrs. Rose crossed the hall to my place, I looked in on Julie and told her I’d be home before she knew it. She rolled over and turned her face to the wall.

I told Mrs. Rose I’d call her. Then I booked.

CHAPTER 54

I TROTTED OVER to Twelfth Street, where I had parked my new secondhand Explorer, a newer model than my former beloved ride, which had been shot to pieces while I was behind the wheel.

The new car had bells and whistles I didn’t need, but the same comfortable seat height, five-star crash rating, and curve control. Add that to its zippy pickup and quiet ride, and this was the perfect vehicle for me. Before pulling out, I called Conklin.

“I’m about twenty-five minutes out,” I told him.

I heard sirens through my phone.

“I’m a block away,” he said. “Suggest you step on it.”

I gunned the engine and headed to Jamestown Avenue, in Bayview, where Connor Grant lived.

As it had been the first time I came to his place, the tidy wood-frame house, set back from the street and flanked by two concrete buildings, was hemmed in by a formation of squad cars. But now, in the dark, its plain, everyday exterior was animated by cherry lights whirling, flashing, and strobing the landscape.

Conklin was standing on the front steps of the house talking to Grant. I badged the uniforms between me and the front door and joined my partner and the psycho who was officially innocent of all charges.

If the shooter who had shot out his windows was watching, he could be on a rooftop or inside a parked car. To tell the truth, I didn’t much care if Grant got picked off while standing on his porch. But I did care about my partner’s safety and mine.

I said, “We should go inside.”

We followed Grant into his multipurpose living room. I felt creeped out just being in close proximity to him, but still, there was an opportunity here. Everything about Grant seemed to be some kind of act. From the first time I met him, all starry-eyed in the face of death and destruction, to the time he cross-examined me like a professional legal sharpshooter, Connor Grant didn’t compute.

I might never get into this house again, but maybe there was something in plain sight that would give me a peephole into the enigma that was Connor Grant.

I crossed the living room and walked through the open doorway to his office. There was an even bigger pile of mail than before stacked on the credenza, and next to his armchair were four plastic tubs of mail the post office had been holding for him.

Grant interrupted my thoughts.

He said, “Well, Sergeant, it took you long enough to get here.”