I got out. He pushed me toward the building. I walked. He opened the door and held it for me, then followed me into the office. “Sit,” he said.
“I’m not sitting down until you take off these cuffs,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “You can keep standing. I’m gonna sit down.” He pulled out the chair behind his desk.
“Chief Rudiger, you are way over the line here. Do you want me to start naming all the rights violations?”
“Ms. Zambelli filed a complaint,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I just brought you in for questioning. You are handcuffed because we are alone in this office and because in the brief time I have known you, you have proven yourself to be hostile and uncooperative.”
“What complaint? What are you talking about?”
“For the past few days, Ms. Zambelli has been aware that she is being followed by an unknown party. Today, one of my part-time officers observed you waiting for her in the parking lot, then following her to her residence.”
“The man who has been following her drives a white Cadillac,” I said. “I’ve already given you that license number. If you bother to run it, you’ll see that it belongs to a private investigator out of Detroit. His name is Whitley.”
“Ah, so she’s got two investigators following her? I don’t suppose the two of you are working together.”
“I’ve never met him,” I said. “I presume he’s working for Charles Harwood, the man who’s been trying to find Maria for the last eighteen years.”
“You seem to know a lot about the situation,” he said. “I mean, for a man who supposedly has no involvement.”
“You know my story, Chief. I came here to see Maria because my friend was looking for her.”
“Your friend the con man.”
“So it turns out.”
“And today, you were following her because…”
I hesitated.
“You waited in the parking lot for twenty minutes,” he said. “After she told you in the company of my officer that she had no recollection of this friend of yours, the friend who was supposedly looking for her.”
“She did say that, yes. I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to ask her some more questions.”
“So you waited in the parking lot. For twenty minutes.”
“Thereabouts.”
“And then you followed her home.”
I felt stuck. I couldn’t tell him that she wanted to know about Randy. More than anything, I couldn’t tell him about what she had confessed to me.
It was time to play my trump card.
“I can’t tell you anything more,” I said. “It’s between me and my client.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Well now,” he finally said. “Your client.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that convenient.”
“It was her idea,” I said. “She asked me to help her.”
“You don’t say.”
“You can call her and ask her.”
“I might just do that,” he said. “Maybe later. For now, I’d better get those handcuffs off you. I mean, seeing as how I’ve made such a terrible mistake.”
He stood up and took the key out of his pocket. I turned around. He unlocked the cuffs and took them off, dropping them on his desk. I stood there rubbing my wrists as he went back to his chair. He didn’t sit down this time. He put his hands on the back of the chair and leaned over his desk.
“What’s your game, McKnight?”
I shook my head. “No game, Chief.”
“I think you’re as dirty as your friend. I think you’re trying to take advantage of a very frightened woman who happens to have a little money. Which makes you what? I don’t think the scale goes that low.”
“I’ll have to muddle through despite your opinion of me,” I said. “Is there anything else you want to say to me? Or am I free to go?”
“That’s all you’re gonna do? Just walk out of here? After I dragged you down here like this?”
“I’ve had worse, Chief. Believe me.”
“Nobody’s here, McKnight. Maybe you want to take a swing at me.”
“If you’re going to shoot me,” I said, “you’re gonna have to do it in cold blood. I’m not gonna give you an excuse.”
“Shoot you? My, you do have an active imagination.”
“Sure,” I said. “And that’s why you’re making a point of standing across the room from me, with your hands free.”
I didn’t really think he’d shoot me. I was just trying to rattle him. The day before, I’d been wishing he’d get off his ass and find out what had happened with Randy. Today, I was hoping he’d spend all of his time thinking about me instead. I was on the case, and this was just part of the service.
Perhaps the man would have shot me if he’d thought he could have gotten away with it. Or if I had given him a good excuse. Or if he’d simply had enough guts to do it.
Hell, maybe he would have worked up the courage to do it, if he had a few more minutes alone with me. He would have shot me and then watched me die on the floor, and my last thought would have been how familiar the feeling was, to be looking up at a ceiling and feeling all of my blood flow out of my body. But one of his part-time men showed up at the door just then, breaking the spell. It was Rocky.
The chief offered me a ride back to my car. I declined.
“It’s two miles,” he said.
“It’s a nice day for a walk,” I said. “It’ll give me the chance to get to know the place a little better. Now that I’m going to be working here.”
A half mile down the road, I heard him behind me. I turned and watched his patrol car. He sped past me without the slightest glance in my direction.
Damn it all, I said to myself. I forgot to compliment the man on his house.
CHAPTER 18
When I got back to the motel in Whitehall, I called Leon.
“I don’t have anything new on this PI, Whitley,” he said. “I’ve called his number a few times, but nobody’s answering.”
“He’s been hanging around in Orcus Beach,” I said.
“A good PI would have an answering service,” he said. “Or he’d automatically forward his calls to his cell phone.”
“I don’t know if Whitley would make the ‘good’ list,” I said. “If he’s working for Harwood, he doesn’t have very good taste in clients. We’ve got reason to believe that he broke into Maria’s house, too.”
“He broke into her house? That’s offensive, Alex. The man is giving private investigation a bad name.”
“I seem to recall the two of us doing the same thing,” I said. ‘Twice, in fact.”
“That was different,” he said. “We were wearing the white hats on both occasions.”
“Whatever you say.”
“So why did he break into her house?” he said. “Did he take anything?”
“No, he probably just went through her mail and whatever else he could find. You know, gathering information.”
“He could have planted a bug,” he said.
