The Crime Writer

I jerked away, and they snickered at me.

Kaden asked, "Why were you at Genevieve Bertrand's house?"

"Someone tried to break in to my house tonight, then run me over with a brown Volvo. He left this behind." Cuffs jangling, I pulled the Baggie holding the matchbook from my pocket they'd missed it when patting me down for hardware and flung it on the table.

Delveckio examined the skull-and-crossbones matchbook sourly, or maybe that was just his face. The more I studied him, the less I could imagine him having anything to do with Adeline or any of the Bertrands, for that matter. Rather, the less I could imagine them having anything to do with him. Delveckio awkwardly manipulated the bag, showing his partner the address inside.

"Who tipped you?" I asked. "That I was allegedly at Genevieve's?"

Kaden said, "An anonymous caller."

"Don't you trace incoming phone calls?"

"It came in to my private line. Not 911. Not dispatch."

"That's a very anonymous anonymous call. When you go pick up Mort, why don't you see if he's got your digits written down somewhere?"

"We can't pick him up," Delveckio said.

"The guy tried to make me Volvo meat."

"Says you."

"And the matchbook."

"This evidence" he tapped the bag containing the hairs "was illegally obtained."

"But not by you," I said. "So you know you can use it for a warrant and to build a case. And I've been told that it's all about building a case."

Kaden glared at me. "You ever fucking relent?" He jerked his head at Delveckio, and they left me alone with my none-too-chipper reflection.

I wasn't wearing a watch, so there was no way to gauge the time. Every few hours I'd ask to go to the bathroom, and I'd be respectfully led down a hall, passing under a clock.

After my third escort deposited me back in the room, I asked if I'd been arrested, and he said, "Not yet. You're still just being questioned."

I asked, "You guys trying out a new Zen interrogation technique?" He looked at me blankly, so I added, "Don't you have to charge me or let me go?"

"Not as long as we're holding you as a person of interest."

"Person of interest," I said. "That's flattering. I think I'll call my lawyer now."

"Hang on," he said. And then, as if I'd argued, "Just hang on."

He exited, pointedly leaving the heavy door ajar. A few minutes passed, and then I heard the staccato beat of footsteps down the hall. Morton Frankel, led in cuffs, passed the open doorway, Kaden and Delveckio on either side. Catching sight of me, Frankel bucked against the detectives, elbows flaring, and glared in at me. Bruises ringed his eyes from when I'd broken his nose, and he stood stooped from my stabbing him in the thigh. A sheen covered his face, and he had sweat stains under his arms; they'd kept him under the lights. Seeming to relish the confrontation, the detectives gave him a moment.

Frankel said, "I'm gonna gouge out your eyes and skull-fuck your head."

He lunged at me, causing me to jump up. My chair clattered over. Laughing, the detectives yanked him from view, and I heard Kaden ordering someone else to get him to Booking. Kaden and Delveckio returned, closed the door, and sat opposite me. Kaden's eyes went to my knee, which was jackhammering up and down from the scare, and his lips pressed together in a smirk. From his watch it was already two o'clock.

"Good detective work," Kaden said. "At his place our boys found a rape kit in a footlocker ski mask, flashlight, pick set, cloth gags, plastic flex-cuffs, the whole nine yards. And the boy was just sentimental enough to keep a few trophies a scarf, bathrobe sash, bracelet." He paused, bit his lips. "Only one problem, Danner. One of his hair samples we have on record was from an attack he committed the night of January twenty-two under the Redondo Pier. Around, say, eleven o'clock. That time and date ring a bell?"

When Kasey Broach was kidnapped.

Disappointment came in a rush. I sagged back in my chair.

Delveckio gave me a wan grin. "So unless Frankel chartered a helicopter to make his rounds that evening, that pretty well puts him out of contention."

"Who borrowed his car?" I asked.

"We're looking into it," Kaden said. "But we're assuming he needed it to get to Redondo to rape Lucy Padillo."

"That was the car," I said. "The dent on the right panel, everything."

Delveckio threw the matchbook on the table in front of me. "We had the lab take a look at this. No prints, which strikes us as a bit odd, given that it is a matchbook. But you'll like this part even better: The handwriting didn't match Frankel's. Know whose it matched?"

Kaden smiled. "Yours."

I opened my mouth but realized I had not a single goddamned thing to say.

"You're chasing a phantom all right, Danner." Kaden unfolded a photocopy the matchbook note next to a sample of my handwriting, pulled from a DMV form I'd filled out sometime last year.

Matching characteristics of the letters had been circled in red. At a glance it made a convincing argument.