They were the only ones who’d know if it was true or not. The same way they were the only ones who knew if the accusation against Marlow was true or not.
“Is there any news on Marlow?” Cade asked.
Lem shook his head. “The cops are looking for him, but they just say he’s a person of interest. No details. So he’s in the wind, but why and where we don’t know.”
The “why” didn’t matter. Cade didn’t care if Marlowhadmurdered someone. To be honest, it would pull some of the teeth from the background worry that, despite everything Cade had built up to keep him-now and him-then apart, Marlow could do better.
The “where” could be solved, but it would take time—
“Youcannotgo in there!” Cade’s assistant objected from outside the office. Her voice was shriller than usual. “Unless you have a warrant or—”
The sentence ended on a startled “eep,” and the door swung open to let O’Hara stalk in. A few paces behind him came Bennett, her face set in an unhappy scowl despite her split lip.
“Captain,” Cade said, his voice coldly impersonal. “This is unexpected. Did we have an appointment?”
“Shut up,” Bennett said.
O’Hara held his hand up to quiet her. She clenched her teeth, the tight muscles visible along her jaw, and held her tongue.
“Have you seen or spoken to Marlow?” Cartwright asked.
Cade raised his eyebrows and glanced at Lem. “What time is it?”
“Six a.m.”
“So if I did, I ate him,” Cade said. He tasted bile in the back of his throat for a second, and it stung when he swallowed. Apparently, it wasn’t funny yet. O’Hara didn’t need to know that. “Is that all?”
“No.” O’Hara reached into his pocket and pulled out a photo of a dead man to show Cade. His hair was wet and sandy brown, slicked severely back from his lax, sallow face. “Do you know Barney Lyons?”
Cade glanced at the photo briefly and shrugged.
“No.”
“Really?” O’Hara said. “Because he worked just down the street, in The Fat Fish. That’s not even a block away. You’ve never been there?”
The memory of the unexpected encounter with Marlow on the street outside was so vivid that Cade could feel the warmth of Marlow’s kiss on his lips. He remembered the crumpled sticker on the wrapper he’d tossed in the trash for the cleaners to sort and dispose of.
Anyone who watched TV knew it was surprising the amount of things you can find out from someone’s trash. Not many knew how easy it was to actually track your discarded bags from the backyard to the dump if you were motivated enough. If the SDPD were on the ball—even if it was the wrong ball—it wouldn’t take them long to find out he’d been there. Once or twice, at least. A blunt denial could be used against him later.
“I’m bad with faces,” he said. “I might have seen him around, but we never got beers together. Why?”
“He’s dead.”
“…obviously,” Cade said. “They wouldn’t have let him work with food if he looked like that under normal circumstances.”
The corners of O’Hara’s mouth twitched with repressed annoyance. He tucked the photo into his pocket.
“You have been a royal pain in the SDPD’s ass since you arrived in town,” he said. “So I get that you have invested a lot in this knee-jerk anti-authoritarian persona that you’ve cultivated. This isn’t the time.”
Lem snorted and shrugged when both O’Hara and Bennett glared at him. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “You aren’t the first cops he’s thought were stupid. The SDPD isn’t even in the top five.”
“Maybe that says more about him,” Bennett said.
“Well, duh.”
Cade ignored both of them as he looked at O’Hara. “What is this about, O’Hara? And can it wait till I have pants on?”
There was a long pause as O’Hara weighed his response. Finally, he nodded briefly to himself and stepped forward into Cade’s personal space. So apparently, “no” on the second question.
