“Where’d they get in? Door? Window?”
“It’s not that there’s actually, uh…I’m scared, Carson. That much I know. Can you come over?”
When I pulled to the curb in front of Dani’s house, I saw her at the window, backlit, the curtain pushed aside. Her outline was hauntingly beautiful, and I felt an ache simultaneously within me and far away. She opened the door as I stepped to the porch.
“Thanks for coming so fast.”
I brushed past and left her hug hanging in the air. Her front closet held the alarm center. No lights were flashing to indicate a breach.
“You haven’t reset anything, have you?” I asked. “Moved the parameters higher?” The detection modes were set to thresholds so the system didn’t dial cops every time mail dropped through the door slot.
She shook her head. “Haven’t touched it.”
“No windows open, doors unlatched?”
“No.”
“Might I ask why you think someone’s been inside?”
She beckoned me to follow her upstairs. Passing her bedroom, I glanced inside. An unmade bed, the covers a tangle, a big tangle.
It seemed I could smell flowers coming from the room.
Dani led me to her office, shelves of books and magazines, a couple of billowing ferns beside the window, a ceiling fan. The space was centered by a large teakwood desk. There was a credenza behind it, a chair between them. She pointed an accusatory finger at the chair.
“Someone was at my desk.”
“How do you know?”
She sat, turned to the computer monitor. “I touch-type about seventy-five words a minute. I focus on the screen, watch the words. Because I never take my eyes away, everything’s set up to grab it efficiently. Like a blind person, maybe. Watch.”
She opened a blank screen, began typing, her eyes riveted to the monitor. I stood beside her and watched the words race across the screen.
I’m writing a story, Carson, but now I’ve decided I want to make a note, so I reach for a pencil…
Her hand reached out to a mug of pencils. Two inches past her fingertips. She drew her hand back, kept typing.
See? Too far away. I’m back writing my story. Uh-oh, I need to confirm some facts with a source. So I reach for the phone…
She reached. This time her hand was an inch or so to the right.
Suddenly I decide I need a telephone number. It’s in my PDA. Still banging away, I reach behind me to its usual place, right on the corner edge of the credenza, but…
Her hand swung behind her, fingernails tapping the edge of the credenza, the PDA a book’s-width away. She turned to me.
“See?”
“Maybe you were having an off day. About an inch off. I’m not trying to be funny.”
“I’ve been working like this for eight years. My office at the station is set up the same way. Someone was here, moving things.”
“You’ve checked your files? Anything missing?”
She opened the bottom desk drawer. A few hanging folders, scant pages in them. “Nothing I can see. No active stories. No names of people or companies being investigated, no secret meetings, no incriminating papers. All I have are outdated notes. What should I do?”
I cleared my throat. “There’s no evidence someone’s been in here. It’s based on…ergonomics.”
Her pink nails clacked on the credenza. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I’m not sure what I believe anymore, Dani.”
She frowned. “That’s a strange thing to say, Carson.”
“Where are the flowers, Dani?”
A pause. “What flowers?”
“You haven’t seen Ms. Place, I take it? I stopped by earlier. She accepted a few hundred dollars’ worth of posies. I brought them over here.”
“Uh, they’re in my bedroom. They were from the station. Uh, because of me being made an anch-”
“Save yourself some lying. I read the card.”
All color drained from her face. “Carson…”
“I heard your phone message the other night, too. When did you start fucking Buck Kincannon? Recently? Or all along?”
She closed her eyes. Swayed. At that moment I would have let her fall.
“We, Buck and me…were dating before you and I met. It was over a year ago, obviously. What you’re thinking, it’s not…”
I mimed pulling a card from an envelope, like at an awards show. Or from a florist’s delivery.
“And my final question is…”
“Please don’t, Carson.”
“Have you been to bed with Buck Kincannon recently? The past month?”
Her fists balled into knots. Tears streamed down her face. “Carson,” she whispered.
“Answer me!” I screamed.
She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.
Said, “Yes.”
“You’ve got some items at my house, Ms. Danbury,” I said. “I’ll leave them on your porch in a day or two.”
CHAPTER 16
By two-fifteen a.m. I had all Dani’s possessions in a green garbage bag. I set the bag in the kitchen, but that didn’t feel right, so I put it on the deck. That felt wrong, too. The same with the stoop. I finally carried it downstairs and jammed it in the little cold-water shower beneath the house.
I tried to sleep but pictures clashed in my head and feelings banged into feelings in my heart. The internal warfare kept me awake until four, when I went outside and fell asleep at the edge of the water. The sun woke me at daybreak. I stood, brushed sand from my clothes, and went inside to shower and make coffee.
Though it was barely half past six, I decided to head into the department, get a jump on the day. I was still ten miles south of Mobile when I saw a plume of smoke rising above town, a heavy smear against the crystal-blue sky. I flicked the radio to the fire band, heard the cacophonous mix of voices that indicated a bad burn.
“Jeffers here, on the east side. We’ve got flames from the fourth-story windows.”
“Get a hose on it.”
“All the high-volume hoses are working the south side.”
“This is Smith. We’re losing pressure from the Corcoran Street hydrant. Get us a tanker, fast.”
“Jeffers. I’ve got a woman says there’s people on the fourth. She heard screaming. Wait…I got a man at a window. Elderly. Jesus, he’s getting ready to-”
I stuck the flasher on the roof, pushed the accelerator to the floor, aimed the truck at the plume.
Eight minutes later I was weaving through the crowd of gawkers at the periphery. I pulled onto the curb a block away, staying well back from the firefighters. The last thing they needed to deal with was a vehicle blocking a needed path. I flapped my badge wallet open, stuck it in my pocket, jogged toward the scene. The air was oily with the smell of smoke and steam.
I knew the place, an old apartment building, four stories, maybe a dozen units per floor. The rent was inexpensive, but not so cheap the place became a haven for junkies and derelicts. I’d been on a few calls there as a patrolman, a couple domestic beefs and picking up a hooker on a bench warrant, no big deal. Back when I was
