The Poet (Samantha Jazz)
“Personal decision.” He offers no further explanation. “I’ll let him know that he’ll be briefing you on this case. You’re taking it over. It’s your decision to either pull in Detective Langford or fly solo. This case, as far as I’m concerned, is your destiny, Detective Jazz.”
Chapter 3
I exit the captain’s office with the file in my hand, and Roberts’s rapid departure bugging the heck out of me for no real reason. Actually, that’s not true. There’s a reason. Roberts was close to my father, and knowing what I now know about my father, that’s not a positive connection. Still, the man has a right to live his life and not tell a bunch of homicide detectives he works with in advance. I know this, of course, and yet when I arrive at my desk, with Lang waiting for me, I find myself ignoring him. Which isn’t unusual. I’m as good at ignoring Lang as Lang is at ignoring me. Uneasy energy keeps me on my feet, leaning over my desk to my keyboard to look up Roberts’s number before punching it into my cell phone.
Lang snaps his fingers in front of me. “What the hell is going on?”
Roberts’s number plays a disconnected message in my ear that is both unexpected and downright odd. The captain said Roberts would be briefing me. Right now, it appears Roberts is already gone.
“Jazzy,” Lang snaps. “Earth to—”
“You know Roberts pretty well, right?”
“Yeah. I worked a case with him last year. Good guy. Why?”
“I’m taking over one of his cases. He’s making an abrupt move to Houston but was supposed to brief me on a case before he left. Apparently, that’s no longer the plan. His phone’s disconnected.”
“Get the hell out of here. Roberts?” He scowls in my direction. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I just tried to call him.”
“This makes no sense. I had drinks with him last week and he said nothing about a damn move to Houston. You must have dialed wrong.” He reaches for his phone to dial Roberts, but I know I didn’t dial wrong. I cross the office again and poke my head into the captain’s office.
He arches a brow. “Already solve the case, Detective Jazz?”
“Trying to,” I say. “Anxious to talk to Roberts. Do you have a number for him?”
Irritation flicks across his face. “He’s in the system.”
“That number’s disconnected.”
His brows sink. “That’s odd. He isn’t leaving town until Friday. Did you dial wrong?”
I’d like to introduce him to Lang right now, the other guy wasting his time with that conclusion, but I refrain from that offer. Instead, I watch him punch a number into his phone, only to end the call almost immediately. “You’re right. It’s disconnected. Huh. Let me call Captain Newton down in his Houston precinct, or soon-to-be precinct. He should be able to reach him. I’ll let you know when I talk to him.”
In other words, get lost, but I don’t follow that direction. Not yet. “Captain—”
“No. This has nothing to do with your father’s scandal.”
Scandal.
That word sours in the air and in my mind. So much so that I want to ask him if that’s what we’re calling my father getting caught on tape, commending a cop for his “good work” after he killed a suspect. But I don’t. I bite my tongue and hard. It should be bleeding right about now.
The captain might not be my best friend, but I believe he absolutely hated my father for justified reasons. Moore’s hard and difficult, but he’s a good man and a good cop. My father was the reason I joined the force, and he was neither of those things, but that’s a complicated piece of my psyche that most people, me included at times, wouldn’t understand.
Feeling that double pinch in my chest that the counselor the department made me see after my father’s death helped me identify as grief and anger, I fade back into the workspace and quickly return to my desk.
“You’re right,” Lang concludes. “His line’s disconnected.” He lowers his voice. “Is this—”
“No,” I say before he can ask about Roberts’s relationship with my father, because that’s where this is going. I know him. He knows me. Five years of sharing a desk and a good hundred cases investigated together has that effect, and yet I didn’t really know my father, whom I grew up with. Or maybe I did, and that’s my real problem. I leave it at that one word and move on. “The captain’s getting me a new number.”
“Right.” He doesn’t look convinced or satisfied. “What’s the case we’re taking over?”
We’re taking over.
I could shut him out, but I’m not going to do that. Not on this one. Not when he’s already looking for a connection between the case and Roberts’s departure. I am, too. I hand him the file and sit down, watching him scan the contents, waiting for his reaction.