16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

I stifled a snappy comeback that he had rejected police protection and that I wasn’t his personal muscle. Instead I said, “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

Grant pointed up to the second floor.

“I was upstairs watching a movie when the window shattered.”

He pulled the collar of his shirt away to show us glass cuts on his cheek and neck. I nodded, but I had no sympathy for Grant. The little nicks in his skin only reminded me again of the shower of glass shards flying hundreds of feet in all directions. Lit by sundown for bonus points.

Grant said, “I rolled off the bed onto the floor. When the shots stopped coming, I peeked out the window. I saw a car lurch and head north. I got three letters off the license plate.”

I wrote down the letters.

“What kind of car?”

“I couldn’t tell. It was dark colored and had a boxy rear end.”

“Like a van?”

He nodded. “Could have been.”

“How many shots were fired?” I asked.

“Four or maybe five.”

“Have you gotten any threatening phone calls?”

“Only three or four an hour on my landline. ‘You’re lower than pond scum. You should die.’ I unplugged the phone.”

I told Grant we’d try to get records of incoming calls from the phone company, and I jotted down his cell phone number for the record.

While Grant took Conklin around the small house to do a security check on the doors and windows, I switched on the lamp near Grant’s easy chair and turned it so it lit up his library, which wrapped around two sides of the small room.

I had only a couple of minutes, but I gave his bookshelves another look. Scanning the spines, I saw books on law, art history, archeology, astronomy, and notable people from A to Z. Grant also had a section on guns, about three feet of shelving dedicated to explosives, a section on aeronautics, as well as a top shelf with books on psychology and computer science.

Besides my personal experience with Grant acting as his own attorney, Yuki had told me how he’d distinguished himself throughout the trial. Question: How had he managed to educate himself with law books and retain enough practical knowledge to put on a such a skillful defense against Len Parisi?

I pulled out an intriguingly titled book, Satan’s Advice to Young Lawyer. I opened it and saw a bookplate: “This book belongs to” and the inscription “Sam Marx.” A random sampling of three more law books had the same bookplate and inscribed name, Sam Marx.

Maybe Grant had bought the collection at a tag sale or from a secondhand bookstore. But why?

I heard footsteps on the stairs. Grant was telling Conklin, “I was falsely arrested and tried. My reputation has been trashed. Now I could be assassinated. I was stupid to turn down police protection, but now I demand it.”

I left the living room and met Grant and Conklin in the foyer. “We’ll get you round-the-clock surveillance for a while,” I told him, “but if I were you, I’d move.”

“You really have a hate-on for me, don’t you, Sergeant?” Grant said. “Do I remind you of someone? Do you have a problem with intelligent men? Do you just like to throw your weight around? You should get over your superiority complex. You’re not that superior.”

I handed him my card, saying, “We’ll check on that partial plate as well as incoming phone calls. Any more shooting incidents, call 911, then call me.”

“You mean, if I’m not dead.”

Conklin said, “Consider taking Sergeant Boxer’s advice about moving. She’s usually right.”

CHAPTER 55

FIVE MINUTES LATER Conklin and I were sitting in his car in front of the mass murderer’s sweet little blue-and-white house.

“I can’t possibly say how much I hate that guy,” I said.

“You’ve got good reason,” he said. “Linds, just do what you’re doing. Stay cool. We do our jobs and maybe some superhero will take him the fuck out.”