The momentary softness I had seen in Nash’s features instantly disappeared. “I’m listening.”
“I’m not admitting anything, but hypothetically, what if I told you that I know exactly where Schaeffer’s file boxes are, and that ten of them are missing?”
“Hypothetically?” he asked.
I nodded. “Hypothetically.”
“Well then, hypothetically, I’d wait for my warrant to come in, and then I’d arrest you and take you back to the station and interrogate you until you told me what I wanted to know.”
“And hypothetically,” I said, “what if I told you you don’t have time to do that?”
“And why wouldn’t I have time?”
“Because the files will be gone before the night is out if you don’t go to Schaeffer’s house and get them right now.”
I wasn’t sure I believed this myself, but it seemed like my best shot at both getting out of this sticky situation and getting an armed escort back to Schaeffer’s place.
“What makes you think that?”
The building blocks of the case for going back in immediately assembled themselves in my mind even as I spoke. While I had previously written Dr. Schaeffer’s paranoid tendencies off as the actions of an academic eccentric, perhaps there really was a piece of sensitive information in the files I didn’t know about that someone else was after. That theory made sense under the circumstances. After all, PetroPlex fought the kind of toxicity and safety negligence claims I brought against them every day, and no one had turned up dead before. And since there were file boxes left, there was no guarantee that whoever was in Schaeffer’s house before wouldn’t be back—and the sooner the better.
“Those boxes contain crucial evidence against PetroPlex. And I know for a fact that all forty of them were at Schaeffer’s house for his last-minute review the night he was murdered. I also know for a fact that he kept the boxes hidden in a secret place, because he was almost clinically paranoid.”
“Okay,” Nash said. “And how would you know there are now ten of those boxes missing?”
“I don’t,” I lied. “I only hypothetically know, remember?”
Nash shrugged. “Okay, whatever.”
“If there are ten boxes missing from the secret place, that means someone else knows the secret. They’ll be back for the rest of the boxes as soon as they can. I’m guessing you ran them off responding to the murder scene—or was it a torture scene? And you kept them away with crime scene personnel crawling all over the place. But now that your people are gone and it’s dark, they’ll be back fast—before your people find the boxes first.”
“How do you know my people are gone?”
“It’s dark.”
“Crime scene techs work in the dark.”
“I have a feeling,” I said.
“Uh huh.” Nash shifted his weight and ran his fingers through his hair. “Where is the secret place? Or wait. Let me guess. You can’t tell me. You have to show me.”
“Yep.” I nodded as innocently as possible.
“You’re just prolonging the inevitable,” he said. “Don’t think this is going to get you out of an arrest. I’m going to get my warrant any minute.”
I was seriously on the verge of losing my temper. “Fine. Go ahead. Arrest me. You’ll just be wasting time on me you could be devoting to Schaeffer’s case. You know I’ll have myself lawyered out of your custody in no time.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“So are we going, or what?”
Nash wanted to say no. I could see that even through his all but expressionless face. But he wouldn’t.
He stopped short of saying yes, instead turning towards his car and motioning for me to follow. I did.
He opened the back door for me.
“I don’t think so,” I said, sliding into the front.
He sighed, but thankfully, that was the extent of his protest.
CHAPTER 9
When Anna Delmont got home with the pizza, the poker game was well underway. She now faced a dilemma. What should she serve it on? On the one hand, it was just an informal poker game. On the other hand, the police chief, the mayor, and a couple of bigwigs from PetroPlex (who she knew only by reputation) were all sitting in there. If she walked in with paper plates, would they think she was uncouth? Her silver-rimmed china was certainly overkill, but maybe her Pottery Barn dishware would be okay. She settled on the Pottery Barn dishes, stacked some up in a neat pile on a serving tray, placed the pizzas beside them, and carried the whole thing in.