AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah. Your badge. Didn’t get a good look at it.”
They exchanged hard looks. Raul was fine with locking horns. He’d locked horns with the best. And he didn’t back down.
The man dug into his pocket and came out with a wallet, flipped it open and held it in the palm of his hand. Not giving it to Raul. There was a metal star and a plastic-encased card. The star was five pointed, brass. The card gave his name – Eric Ferguson. “We don’t have badges in San Francisco. We have stars.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
Raul’s neck was crackling.
The guy put his wallet away and turned to Emma. “Ms. Holland, has Mr. Jackson seemed worried or agitated to you lately?”
“In what sense?” she asked sweetly.
“Um. Worried. Agitated. Not himself.” He frowned. “You know.”
“Inspector.” Emma folded her hands in her lap. “Toby and I – and all the other people in the Quantitative Analysis department—do a difficult job that has serious consequences if we make mistakes in our analyses. We’re all a little agitated and worried. It’s part of the job.”
The Inspector blew out a breath. “More agitated than normal, then.”
She cocked her head. Said nothing. Raul’s admiration for her, already high, went up about a thousand points.
“Did he say anything?”
“The last time I saw him at the office, we talked about a client. The client asked us to analyze gold price volatility. So, we discussed annualized daily return volatility, returns, correlations and trading volumes.”
Take that, Raul thought.
“Did he mention any plans?”
“Plans?” Emma echoed delicately.
A muscle jumped in the Inspector’s jaw. “Plans. Things he wanted to do in the future.”
“Oh.” Emma’s eyebrows drew together. “Like investment plans or personal plans?”
“Personal.” This came through gritted teeth.
“No. Absolutely not. We lead separate lives. If he took off for someplace, he certainly didn’t tell me about it.”
Emma flicked a glance at Raul. She wasn’t cooperating with a police officer on his instructions, but she wasn’t happy with it.
Raul was. There was something wrong with ‘Inspector’ Ferguson. He was going on gut instinct and the back of his neck, and they never steered him wrong.
“Where’s your partner,” he asked suddenly. Ferguson turned a tense face to him. “What?”
“Your partner. Police work in twos. Why aren’t you with your partner?”
“He was detained back at the station house. Which is where we’ll continue with Ms. Holland.” He rose. Raul rose, too.
“I think not,” Raul said, smiling, showing his teeth.
“It’s a formality. We’ve questioned the other colleagues.”
“Like who?” Emma cocked her head. “Who did you question? There are twenty of us, all told. There are fourteen quants in Toby’s department. So, who did you question?”
The Inspector’s nostrils widened as his teeth ground. “I’m not at liberty to say. But we do need to bring Ms. Holland in for questioning.”
Over my dead body,Raul thought. “Not today, no.”
