Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(3)

“Jack McEvoy?”

He had gotten the name right but had pronounced it wrong. Mick-a-voy.

“Yes, McEvoy,” I said, correcting him. Mack-a-voy. “What’s going on?”

“I’m Detective Mattson, LAPD,” the older of the two said. “This is my partner, Detective Sakai. We need to ask you a few questions.”

Mattson opened his jacket to show that he, too, had a badge, and the gun to go with it.

“Okay,” I said. “About what?”

“Can we go up to your place?” Mattson asked. “Something more private than a garage?”

He gestured to the space around them as if there were people listening from all quarters, but the garage was empty.

“I guess so,” I said. “Follow me. I usually take the stairs up but if you guys want the elevator, it’s down at that end.”

I pointed to the end of the garage. My Jeep was parked in the middle and right across from the stairs leading up to the center courtyard.

“Stairs are good,” Mattson said.

I headed that way and the detectives followed. The whole way to my apartment door I was trying to think in terms of my work. What had I done that would draw the attention of the LAPD? While the reporters at FairWarning had a lot of freedom to pursue stories, there was a general division of labor, and criminal scams and schemes were part of my turf along with Internet-related reporting.

I began to wonder if my Arthur Hathaway story had run across a criminal investigation of the swindler and whether Mattson and Sakai were about to ask me to hold the story back. But as soon as I thought of that possibility, I dismissed it. If that were the case, they would have come to my office, not my home. And it probably would have started with a phone call, not an in-person show-up.

“What unit are you from?” I asked as we crossed the courtyard toward apartment 7 on the other side of the pool.

“We work downtown,” Mattson said, being coy, while his partner stayed silent.

“What crime unit, I mean,” I said.

“Robbery-Homicide Division,” Mattson said.

I didn’t write about the LAPD per se, but in the past I had. I knew that the elite squads worked out of the downtown headquarters, and RHD, as it was called, was the elite of the elite.

“So then what are we talking about here?” I said. “Robbery or homicide?”

“Let’s go inside before we start talking,” Mattson said.

I got to my front door. His nonanswer seemed to push the answer toward homicide. My keys were in my hand. Before unlocking the door, I turned and looked at the two men standing behind me.

“My brother was a homicide detective,” I said.

“Really?” Mattson said.

“LAPD?” Sakai asked, his first words.

“No,” I said. “Out in Denver.”

“Good on him,” Mattson said. “He’s retired?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “He was killed in the line of duty.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mattson said.

I nodded and turned back to the door to unlock it. I wasn’t sure why I had blurted that out about my brother. It was not something I usually shared. People who knew my books knew it, but I didn’t mention it in day-to-day conversation. It had happened a long time ago in what seemed like another life.

I got the door open and we entered. I flicked on the light. I had one of the smallest units in the complex. The bottom floor was open-plan, with a living room flowing into a small dining area and then the kitchen beyond it, separated only by a counter with a sink. Along the right wall was a set of stairs leading up to a loft, which was my bedroom. There was a full bath up there and a half bath on the bottom floor beneath the stairs. Less than a thousand square feet in total. The place was neat and orderly but that was only because it was starkly furnished and featured little in the way of personal touches. I had turned the dining-room table into a work area. A printer sat at the head of the table. Everything was set for me to go to work on my next book—and it had been that way since I moved in.

“Nice place. You been here long?” Mattson asked.

“About a year and a half,” I said. “Can I ask what this—”

“Why don’t you have a seat on the couch there?”

Mattson pointed to the couch that was positioned for watching the flat screen on the wall over the gas fireplace I never used.

There were two other chairs across a coffee table, but like the couch they were threadbare and worn, having spent decades in my prior homes. The decline of my fortunes was reflected in my housing and transportation.

Mattson looked at the two chairs, chose the one that looked cleaner and sat down. Sakai, the stoic, remained standing.

“So, Jack,” Mattson said. “We’re working a homicide and your name came up in the investigation and that’s why we’re here. We have—”

“Who got killed?” I asked.

“A woman named Christina Portrero. You know that name?”

I spun it through all the circuits on high speed and came back with a blank.

“No, I don’t think so. How did my name—”

“She went by Tina most of the time. Does that help?”

Once more through the circuits. The name hit. Hearing the full name coming from two homicide detectives had unnerved me and knocked the initial recognition out of my head.