Becoming Quinn

of friends, but not once had either of them even hinted at taking their relationship further. She was a beautiful woman made even more so because of her intelligence, but he just never felt a romantic attraction. There was a very good reason for this: she reminded him of an older version of his sister, and he couldn’t deny she was filling the void Jake had created when he’d been forced to basically abandon Liz back home.

“No girl problems,” he said.

Her face grew a bit more serious. “Something at work? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said hesitantly. “Everything’s fine. It’s just…” He paused.

“What?” When he didn’t answer right away, she said, “What did you do?”

He cracked a smile. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it?”

“The murder two nights ago,” he said. “I may have a lead on who did it.”

“Are you serious?”

He nodded, then proceeded to tell her everything. Somewhere in the middle of the story, the waitress returned with their oatmeal, but they barely noticed. When he was through, he pulled out the plastic sandwich bag he’d put the matchbook in at his apartment and showed it to her.

“You took that from a crime scene?” she said, staring at him like he was crazy.

“They’d already gone over everything. This could be nothing.”

“Or it could be something. Why didn’t you just give it to someone?”

“Look, I know I probably should have,” he said.

“Probably?”

“Okay, maybe I…I mean, I should have. But they would have just lumped it in with everything else. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to follow up on it, if they even did?”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you at least tell someone about the markings you found on the ground? The cable impression? The spot at the tank where someone was sitting?”

“Those could have been made anytime.”

“And they could have been made the night of the fire, Jake. What the hell are you doing?”

Several people at nearby tables looked over.

Jake leaned toward her, dropping his voice to just above a whisper. “Think about it, Berit. What do I really have? Nothing that can’t be explained away in half a second.”

“That’s not a judgment for you to make,” she replied, the level of her voice now matching his. She frowned, and he could see she was trying to think it all through. Finally, the disapproval on her face softened. “Tell me about these guys at the hotel.”

Jake put the two printouts from the Lawrence Hotel on the table.

She examined them, then shrugged. “I don’t understand how you know these guys are connected to the murder.”

“I don’t know, not for sure,” he corrected her. “It’s just…a feeling.” He explained how he’d been going through the footage, but had stopped when he’d seen the two men come out the front door, and known immediately there was something different about them. He told her how he’d traced their movements backwards, the subtle communication between them, the matchbook.

“That’s it?” she asked. “Nothing connecting them to the murder, or even putting them in the vicinity other than the one guy picking up some matches?”

He shook his head.

“Just a feeling?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She frowned, then pointed at the printout of the man by himself. “What about this guy?”

Jake described the incident in the elevator.

“That could have been anything,” she said.

Jake nodded. “I know. He’s probably not even involved. But I got a print just in case.”

She was silent for several moments, then she gestured at the printouts. “These, I can understand you not wanting to tell anyone about. Other than some instinct you seem to have about them, there’s no way to connect these guys to what happened. But this other stuff—”

“There’s no way to connect them yet,” he said, cutting her off.

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I need your help.”

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

“What if we do a little checking? We can see if someone closer to the crime scene might have noticed one of these guys the other night.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“I’m just saying it wouldn’t hurt anything to show the pictures around,” he went on. “If we start now, we could be done by lunch.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He smiled. “Come on. It’ll be fun. And when we don’t find any connections, you can tell me what an idiot I’ve been.”

“I can tell you that now.”

“I promise that when we’re done, I’ll turn in the matchbook and the pictures I took of the marks in the ground and tell them everything.”

“That’s…going to get you in a lot of trouble, you know,” she said, her voice suddenly uncertain.

“You’re the one who’s been saying I should, and you’re right. Whatever happens to me, I’ll deserve it. I’m just asking for a few hours of digging first. That’s all.”

She huffed out a laugh, then gave him a smirk. “That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“I swear to God, if I get fired because of this, I’m going to kill you.”

“So you’ll do it?”

For a moment, she simply stared at him, then she said, “Three hours. That’s it.”

“Three hours is plenty.”

* * *

Jake’s hope was that if the men from the Lawrence had been involved in the Goodman Ranch Road murder, they would have made a stop somewhere on the way — maybe for gas, or a bite to eat to kill the time.

With a few minor variations, there was really just one logical route from the Lawrence Hotel to the crime scene. Before they began their search, though, Jake grabbed his stuff out of his Civic and hopped in Berit’s vintage Charger. From Di’s Diner, they went to Berit’s townhouse, where, with considerable effort, Jake convinced her that they should don their uniforms.

When he saw the skepticism on her face as she came back down to the living room, he said, “Trust me. It’ll make things easier.”

Her only reply was a low grunt.

They drove out to Goodman Ranch Road, stopping a couple of lots short of the crime scene to make sure they didn’t miss any potential places the men might have stopped, then Berit executed a quick U-turn.

Three-quarters of a mile back down the road, they came upon the first possibility, a combination gas station/mini-mart. It only took a few moments before Jake realized a glaring flaw in his plan. If the men had made a stop somewhere, it would have been at night. Which meant anyone who had been working on Saturday night probably wouldn’t be working that Monday morning.

The look on Berit’s face when the clerk shrugged and said, “I don’t recognize them, but I get off at four every afternoon” let Jake know she’d realized the same thing. But she didn’t say anything.

Rookie mistake, he thought. If you’re doing a business-to-business search, you either got the names of whoever might have been on duty at the time of the incident and contacted them directly, or did the search at the same time the incident occurred. But while they could get names,