Spooky Business (The Spectral Files #3) - S.E. Harmon Page 0,90
me were in my favor.
I held the phone away from my mouth a pinch. “St. James,” I bellowed.
Sure enough, it only took him a few seconds to answer. “What?”
“Are you free for an assist?”
“Depends,” he yelled back.
“On what?”
“On if you’re planning on getting poisoned—”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“Initiating a high-speed car chase—”
“The suspect initiated that chase,” I protested loudly.
“Did he?” Danny asked on speaker, his voice skeptical.
“Boy, everyone has a long fucking memory in this department,” I complained.
Tabitha appeared in my doorway, an irritable expression on her elfin face. “Hey. Hello. Hi.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“We have this wonderful new invention called the phone. You know, like that thing you’re currently on?”
I winced. I forgot her office was between Kevin’s and mine. “Sorry.”
She scowled and turned on her heel. She disappeared down the hall, but her voice floated back through my open doorway. “Also, he nearly jumped off a building, you guys. And almost took the boss with him.”
“True story,” Danny agreed.
I glared at the empty doorway. “Lest we not forget I was trying to save a life.”
Quiet reigned for a moment. Then, somewhere down the hall, Nick bellowed, “Anyone have some extra R-75 forms?”
Tabitha’s door slammed.
“I have to call you back,” I told an amused Danny. “We’re going to find this Dillon guy, and it’s going to be perfectly safe.”
“That sounds like a fucking great plan. Make sure it turns out that way.”
“I always try.” I hung up on him and grabbed my keys. By the time I got to Kevin’s office, he was mowing through a bag of jellybeans. “St. James.”
He glanced up suspiciously, a handful of candy halfway to his mouth. “I’m busy.”
“Working on ass expansion is not a paid activity,” I said. “Now get your ass in the car. I’ll even drive.”
“Christiansen, if you want to drive my car again, you’re going to have to buy it,” he said definitively. “My Camaro hasn’t been right since. You fucked up my suspension.”
“I gave your car a thrill. You drive like a little old lady on her way to bingo.”
“Yes,” he said pointedly. “And you know what? Little old ladies arrive alive to play bingo.”
“Are you coming or not?”
He leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “I promised my wife I wouldn’t ride with you again.” At my glower, he held up his hands. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are walking, talking trouble.”
I waved a hand airily. “Things are different now. I was still finding my groove back then.”
He grumbled as he shut down his computer. He shook the rest of the bag of jellybeans in his mouth, muttering something about even a Death Row inmate getting a last meal.
“They did away with that policy,” I informed him. “Don’t worry, this isn’t dangerous in the least. We’re going to question a suspect and everything is going to be perfectly routine.”
I’d like to say I kept my word. I really would. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.
Chapter 24
Dillon’s neighbors were helpfully nosy. At our repeated knocking, a blue hair poked her head out in the hallway and told us that it was Dillon’s laundry day. She also informed us that he usually went to the Wash ’n Suds on 44th avenue.
We found the giant laundromat with no problems and a nice place to park to boot. Kevin took the back of the building as a precaution, while I entered the front, and so concluded the “going smoothly” portion of the program.
I scanned the occupants of the laundromat. It only took a few seconds before I spotted Dillon. Other than a young pregnant woman, he was the only other person in the building under sixty. He was carrying a basket under one arm and scrolling through his phone in the other hand.
He looked up then, almost as though I’d called his name. His gaze went straight to the badge at my hip and then shot back up to my face. There was a moment of frozen silence between us before he threw the basket at me and sprinted for the back door.
Please be clean, please be clean, I prayed as I batted the clothes out of my face. A dirty sock fell from my shoulder, and I held in a gasp. I ran on as dirty laundry flew in my wake, even though I was tempted to give up the chase and strip down naked, just so I could Lysol my very soul.