The Killing Game(45)
“Total crap,” he said aloud as he climbed into his truck. Picking up his cell, he punched in his brother’s number. Dallas didn’t answer, so he left a voice message, “Just so we’re clear. I’m not writing any goddamn book.”
*
September walked out of the squad room and through the door to Laurelton PD’s reception area. She passed by Guy Urlacher, who slid her a look as she exited the front doors. Guy was a stickler for protocol and had intimidated September with his strict rules when she’d first been promoted to detective. He never intimidated Gretchen, however, who did as she pleased and told Guy he could do many colorful things to his body should he really demand she sign in and out every time she entered or left the building. Over the last year September had become inured to his stiff and small ways and had adopted some of Gretchen’s chutzpah. Now there was a silent, cold war brewing between them, but at least he’d stopped sliding the clipboard her way and demanding her signature.
She was alone and intent on interviewing Grace Myles, Tynan Myles’s mother, at Maple Grove Assisted Living. Weeks had passed since she’d planned to contact the elderly woman to see what, if anything, she could glean from her memory, weeks when she and Gretchen had been drawn into other cases, both of which were Wes and George’s, but for one reason or another on which they’d needed extra help. Gretchen had actually gotten a pot thrown at her by the infuriated husband whose wife and girlfriend had been cheating on him. She’d deflected the missile but not the hot soup it contained and she’d ended up with a scalded arm.
September had helped unravel what had truly gone down among the three of them along with Wes, Gretchen, and George who, true to form, had spent most of his time in the squad room rather than doing legwork. She and Gretchen had helped be Wes’s “partner” while George rode his swivel chair. Lieutenant D’Annibal had seen what was happening, but so far nothing had changed, and because no big cases had come along, the relationships within the squad room were status quo ... except that Wes’s feelings about his partner had taken a slide down the scale. He’d moved from mildly annoyed to pissed off to out and out angry with George.
They were all on edge, actually. Talk of cutbacks had reached the department, and being the newbie, September knew her job would be axed first. She honestly didn’t know what she would do, if that were to happen. She was as attached to her job as if she were already a lifer. And she knew, even though she’d been a media darling for a while, that it wouldn’t cut any ice if and when jobs were cut.
So, Gretchen was with Wes, interviewing several eyewitnesses to a knifing outside a sports club in downtown Laurelton, while George was working the phones and following up on the background of the prime suspect. September hadn’t been needed on the case, so she’d gone back to the list of Aurora Lane residents she’d compiled, anyone who’d lived in the houses over the last thirty years. It was discouraging how little people remembered or knew about the Singletons and/or the eighteen-year-old male whose bones had been found in their basement. She’d worked the phones and walked Aurora Lane and generally bothered people to the point where none of them wanted to talk to her or anyone from the Laurelton PD any longer. Gretchen had tried her own brand of bullying with even less productive results. More interviews with Fairy and Craig had seemed to only confuse them, so for all intents and purposes, she was back at square one.
Today, after another unproductive conversation with the Lius’ daughter, Anna, whose Chinese, non-English-speaking parents had lived across the street from the Singletons and whose patience with September was paper thin, she’d decided to make another run at Grace Myles. She’d been to see the older woman twice and had been rebuffed by the administrator who ran the facility both times with what September now thought might be excuses. She’d sensed that Tynan, for all his expansive talk about allowing his mother to be interviewed, had asked that she be left alone, and the place had complied. September had been nice about it. She truly didn’t believe Grace had any information for her. But she was at loose ends and pissed off and cranky, and so today she’d thought, to hell with it and had headed out to take a final stab at it. Gretchen was busy, so she didn’t have her partner with her, and maybe that was a saving grace as well; subtlety wasn’t Gretchen’s strong suit.
Maple Grove Assisted Living was a two-story, aluminum-sided building painted a pinkish beige. The second floor boasted green shutters on the windows, though the color had faded and showed patches of white, and several hinges were loose or broken, making them lopsided. The effect wasn’t exactly in keeping with their motto, The Closest Thing to Home. If September had been asked to move in she would have run the other way.
This time she passed through and, noticing the sign-in sheet wasn’t being closely manned at the moment, sailed down one of the corridors, checking the nameplates on the doors. Several older women were deliberately pushing walkers down the hallways and one gent followed her with his eyes and finally called out, “Hey, good-lookin’. Come back here.”
Grace Myles’s residence was on the second floor and toward the end of a corridor, which suited September just fine. The room wasn’t on the way to anywhere else, so therefore might be less traffic outside her door. Good. September didn’t want to talk to the battle-ax of an administrator if she didn’t have to. She gave a soft, perfunctory knock, then tried the handle, which opened beneath her palm.