it’s chocolate, hard at work in his little cubicle and oblivious to his surroundings.
I reach in the bag now on my shoulder and pull out a Godiva bar. Lang gives me an approving wink and hangs back a bit, giving me room to work. I snag a chair from a nearby vacant cubicle and roll it in beside Chuck, joining him at his desk, where I set the bar in front of him. He grins at the sight of it and glances over at me, his fingers still working his keyboard. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing. My finger. My gun. His fingers. His magical keyboard that holds answers I need now and always. “You don’t have to give me gifts.”
“Almost every murder I’ve solved involved you and long hours. Which I appreciate. But I do actually need a couple of things again. Now.”
He chuckles, and it’s a low rough chuckle that is brawny and oversized for a man who stands level to me at five-foot-five and probably outweighs my one eighteen by about five pounds. “That means you need a lot of things.” He shoves a yellow pad in front of me. “Make a list.”
I don’t reach for the pad. “Everything you can get me on the new Summer case. I’m headed to the ME’s office, but I’m taking a leap of faith that the cause of death is poison by cyanide.”
“And you need to know where the killer got the cyanide.”
“Exactly. We worked a case a few years back, and that case file has a dark web contact we never caught up with.”
“Case file: Roderick Kensington,” Lang says, leaning on the edge of the cubicle wall on my side, his way of not overwhelming Chuck.
Chuck gives him a wave and writes it down. “Got it. On it. And I know the routine. I’ll pull cameras for his home and work, search emails and phone records, and all the normal stuff.”
“And pull the entire body of work for a poet named Arthur Guiterman,” I add, “with emphasis on a poem titled ‘Fate, The Jester.’ Cross-reference it to the rest of his work.”
“Arthur Guiterman,” he says, scribbling additional notes. “‘Fate, The Jester.’ Summer case file. Got it all.” He keys in the name and glances over at me. “Says here this is Roberts’s case.”
“About that,” I say. “Roberts moved to Houston abruptly.”
His brows dip. “This murder happened three days ago. He worked the scene and, according to these notes, one of my coworkers did quite a lot of work for him. You’re sure he’s gone?”
“That’s right. He’s gone. And we’ll need your coworker’s notes, or help, if you can recruit that person.”
Chuck hasn’t moved on from his present state of confusion. “That’s more than abrupt.”
“His phone is disconnected,” Lang says. “We need to reach him. In fact, we’re going to go by his house after we leave here.”
Chuck’s gaze latches onto Lang’s, understanding in his stare. “Oh dear,” he murmurs. “I’ll ping his phone. You want me to dig deeper?”
“Not yet,” I say, but I hesitate on a hunch. “Actually, look for any connection between Summer and Roberts. And cross-reference Summer to all of his cases in the past year. No, two years.”
“Oh dear,” Chuck murmurs again. “Yes. Of course. Right away. And just an FYI, Roberts’s home security system was turned off with his power. Patrol is trying to find a neighbor who might have a camera angled toward his house.”
“It seems no one has a working camera these days,” I say dryly. “Thanks, Chuck.”
Lang hulks his shoulders forward and growls. “Hulk Smash. The Chuck Smash.”
Chuck looks at him as if he’s crazy. He’s not wrong.
A few minutes later, Lang and I are in his Ford Mustang, part of a pilot program that allows a few detectives to use their own vehicle, fully outfitted with police equipment. All part of an undercover job he did two years back that almost got him killed. He revs the engine and glances over at me. “My gut’s roaring louder than my car, and I don’t like what it’s saying.” He backs us out of the parking space with a squeal of tires.
Lang has never been small on dramatics, but in this case, it feels rather appropriate.
Chapter 5
Roberts lives, or lived, about ten hot August minutes from the precinct—well, ten minutes without traffic, which is something that happens in dreams, not reality. Hellish traffic is the way of the world in Austin these days, and I adjust my air vent, willing the coolness