the man. Juicy looked gleeful. “See? She knows what I’m talkin’ about. Baltes is dead. His old lady is dead. Lamont is dead. There’s just no way of bringing’em back.”
“We could have argued the Crowley murder falls within the realm of our investigation,” Risa mused on the way back to Nate’s office.
“And I would have if I thought it would shed any light on whoever is torching up these cops. But what we got from Crowley led us to Juicy, and he’s the one of interest here.” Nate was still trying to figure just how involved he was in this case. “It wasn’t worth waging turf wars over it. Let someone else sift through the scores of phony witnesses Juicy will have willing to swear he was somewhere else when Crowley took the dive off that building.”
Detectives Tomey and Edwards turned a corner, nearly ran into them. “Good,” the older Tomey grunted. “We were just looking for you.”
Interest quickened inside him. “You get a match on those photos I gave you?”
“We didn’t see any signs of the others, but this guy?” Tomey tapped the picture Nate had added to the packet before giving it to them this morning. “He’s front and center at two of the services.”
The picture was of Joseph Mauro. The suicide that had somehow ended up with a bullet in his chest.
“Good work,” he told the pair of detectives. “Any chance the other men in the pictures could have been there and not shown up on the camera?”
“Camera placement was pretty solid,” the more laconic Edwards put in. “But there are definitely areas on the video that can be looked at more closely. The services were huge. I heard officers from all over the state, even some outside the state, were there to pay their respects.”
“Which makes it,” Risa murmured when they continued on their way to Nate’s office, “even more interesting that Randolph didn’t show. Or Eggers.”
“I didn’t go to the last memorial,” Nate pointed out, as he headed back to his desk. “I went to the visitations for each victim, but once the investigation was up and running, I felt my time was better spent trying to solve the thing.”
He could tell he hadn’t convinced her when she settled into a contemplative silence. When his cell rang, he took it out and checked the caller ID. His pulse quickened. He lost no time answering it. “Kristin.”
“Call off the dogs, Nate.” His sister’s tone was caustic. No surprise there. “Who do you have sniffing around? Cass? Some other female cop? I know you have someone hounding all my friends. Tell them to back off.”
“Where are you?”
“If I’d wanted you to know that, I would have told you before leaving, wouldn’t I?” He knew his sister well enough to recognize the false bravado in her voice. “Just for once give me a little space. A little credit. I’m just trying to find a better job.”
“In Atlantic City?”
Silence was his only answer. He barely noticed when Risa walked by, dropping a slip of paper on his desk before heading out the door. “I can get a PI buddy of mine to verify where you are. To locate your hotel.”
“And then what? Come to haul me kicking and screaming back home?”
The visual image wasn’t a pretty one. Mostly because it mirrored pretty closely what he’d had in mind. “Tuck needs to be in school. And he does best with consistency. With familiar surroundings.”
“Tucker’s fine. School will be out in a couple weeks anyway. Sometimes I think you wish he were your son and not mine. But he is mine, Nate. And I have to have a way to provide for him. We can’t depend on you forever.”
“And what will you find in Atlantic City that you can’t find here?” Even he recognized the note of resignation in his voice.
Her tone was cautious, as if not trusting in his too easy capitulation. “A job. I got a tip the night I went downtown with some friends last week that they were looking for dealers. But if that doesn’t work out, I might be able to get hired on as a bartender. I’ve already got a line on a college student who could watch Tucker at night, while he’s sleeping. That’d be easier on him than leaving him with a stranger during the day, Nate. You know it would.”
He could have pointed out that Tuck’s current babysitter wasn’t a stranger. But the battle was lost, and he knew it. Unless he