Brewster climbed his porch. The three cops shifted over to make room for him.
“Hey.” He tried sounding nonchalant, but the presence of police on his doorstep burned his cheeks, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Brewster DeLay?” the local cop asked.
“That’s me.”
“I’m Officer Fred Burton of the Northbrook Police. These two gentlemen have flown in from New York City to ask some questions about an accident out their way.” He motioned to the short, heavy guy. “This is Detective Ethan Jones.” Then he nodded toward the slim, wounded soldier on his other side. “And this is Detective Samuel Barnes.”
Brewster shook hands all around. He didn’t have a clue about any accidents, but his mouth had gotten twitchy over the news that two detectives had traveled all the way across the country to give him the evil eye. Could he come across any guiltier?
The nearest neighbors damned him, too, and why wouldn’t they, what with the police on his porch and all? Emily Saunders, a gray-haired retiree living on the other side of the cul-de-sac, rushed out of her garage with rake in hand, no doubt foraging for gossip fodder. She made an unconvincing show of clearing the leaves from the perfect vantage point in her lawn to stare at his porch. Another neighbor watched from a few doors down, until Brewster turned in that direction and the man ducked inside. Didn’t these people have a life?
The wind gusted. The thin cop tightened his jacket.
Brewster leapt at the opportunity to get his embarrassing guests out of view. He grabbed a ring of keys out of his pocket and fumbled one into the door lock. “Come on inside where it’s warm, fellas.”
* * *
Brewster offered coffee, but all three men declined, so he steered them away from the kitchen and into the living room. They grabbed the couch—fat cop, rookie cop, thin cop lined up in a row of solemn faces and probing eyes—leaving him to sit in a chair in front of them like a kid dragged into the principal’s office. Only worse. These were cops staring him down, not Sister Mary Josephine. He tried not to fidget, racked his brain for a reason he’d attracted the attention of the NYPD, came up with the city’s status as a well-known target of terrorism, and settled on a conclusion that set his knee bouncing.
Crestview Finance loaned money to truckers, and a big rig could haul a huge bomb. His staff was supposed to use various loan application screening techniques to weed out identity thieves and other lowlifes, especially the dangerous ones whose names popped up on watch lists. He hoped to hell his team had been following the protocol. Still, even if a terrorist had slipped through the screen and financed a truck with Crestview, Brewster hadn’t heard about an attack in the recent past. Also, the FBI would have come, not the police, and they would have tracked him down at his office, not his home. Wouldn’t they?
The Northbrook cop spoke first. “Mister DeLay, I’m just going to fade into the background and let these other two gentlemen talk.” He’d already done a pretty good job of that, having sunk into the cushions in the middle of the couch between the out-of-town heavies. The poor kid didn’t have any room for his elbows and knees.
“What’s this all about?” Brewster tried to control a knee threatening to twitch again.
“We’re looking into an accident from a while ago,” the bigger cop said. His glare left no doubt whose fault the accident might be.
“This is probably no big deal,” the guy’s gaunt pal added, apparently assuming the good-cop role.
“An accident?” Brewster cursed the tremor in his voice. He reminded himself he couldn’t possibly have caused an accident a thousand miles away. But these two New Yorkers had damned intimidating stares.
The bad cop leaned forward and scowled. “Let’s cut to the chase.”
“Okay.”
“Were you in New York City last year?”
Whew. This had to be a case of mistaken identity. “I haven’t been east of the Skyway in ages.”
“The Skyway?”
“A bridge. It goes from Chicago to Indiana.”
“And you haven’t gone east of there.”
The big cop’s expression had disbelief written all over it, but these guys had the wrong man. Brewster’s twitchy knee steadied. “Look, I run a company that finances trucks. I used to travel east for dealer visits, but times are tough and—”
“Pulaski, New York. It’s right on the inscription.” The skinny cop couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He’d found Carla’s snow-globe on the coffee table—the one she’d hoped Brewster would carry home through a wormhole.
And he had.
The cop had turned it over, base up. “This has a date from last year stamped right on it. Are you sure you haven’t been out east lately?”
Brewster gripped the arms of his chair. Having three cops barge in on him and insinuate his involvement in an accident was one thing, but picking his stuff up, especially that particular item, crossed the line from annoyance to outright violation.
A measure of anger also stemmed from the embarrassing realization he’d been caught in a lie, although he hadn’t intended to tell one. His mind-boggling trip to Tug Hill seemed in retrospect to have little connection with any real time or space. He might as well have gone to the moon, and he hadn’t made the connection he’d actually traveled east when asked the question. Brewster looked the cop in the eye—Barnes or whomever. “A friend gave that to me. Would you mind setting it down and telling me what the hell you guys want?”
All three of them kept their calm. The good-cop-turned-bad returned the globe to the coffee table, the Northbrook cop stayed squished in the middle, and the bad-cop-still-fat spoke up. “Look—”
Barnes cut his partner off with a wave of his hand, then turned to Brewster. He flashed an
