Living with the Dead
Page 7

Finn listened to the dull roar of the press firing questions to the officers guarding the perimeter. The club had been very helpful, even calling in off-duty bouncers to help them with crowd control. They must have had a few infractions on the books, hoping their cooperation might make those disappear.
He knelt beside the items that had been scattered beside the body. Women's things – makeup, a compact, tissues.
"I figure that belongs to the victim," Downey said. "Her purse was empty – dumped."
Finn surveyed the small mound of items, then glanced at Portia Kane's purse, barely big enough to hold a pack of smokes. "All this didn't fit in there."
"Hey, you should see all the crap my wife squeezes into hers. I swear, those things are magic."
Finn nodded, as if he understood. He wasn't married. No girlfriend, not for... well, it had been a while. It took all his time and energy to do his job – a life spent in service of the dead.
He could resent it, but he'd never really seen the point. He'd been given this gift, and it was his duty to use it.
Finn sorted through the purse debris with a gloved hand, looking for insight into the woman who'd left it behind. A young officer tapped him on the shoulder and said Marla Jansen wanted to speak to him. From the way he said it, Finn knew he should recognize the name, but he considered himself lucky to know who Portia Kane was.
He followed the officer – Tripp – into the hall and found a young woman with stop-sign-red hair bouncing on her tiptoes, trying to see into his crime scene.
"The body's been removed," Finn said.
"Oh!" Jansen's dark eyes widened with put-on horror. "I didn't want to see – " She shuddered. "Eww."
An actor. In this town, one learned to identify them at a hundred paces. From her exaggerated expressions, he would peg her as a wannabe – and likely to stay that way – but if Tripp knew her, she must be semifamous. Finn just hoped she didn't expect him to ask for her autograph.
"Officer Tripp says you saw something."
Jansen launched into a lengthy account of being in the club with Portia then sending Kane's PR rep – a woman named Robyn Peltier – to find her when she'd been gone too long.
"Portia Kane goes clubbing with her publicist? Does she expect to need her?"
"Of course not. Portia feels sorry for the chick. She lets her tag along with us sometimes. I always told her you shouldn't socialize with the hired help, and now look what happened. The chick flipped out and killed Port in a jealous rage."
"Was there an issue?"
Jansen fluttered her hands. "There's always an issue with people like that. They hate us. Finally it just bubbles over and... boom."
"Boom?"
"Or 'bang,' I guess. Anyway, they were fighting."
"About what?"
"How would I know?"
"When did this happen?"
"Right before Portia left us," Jansen said smugly. "The PR chick said something and Portia didn't like it. She told her to call the driver and went to the bathroom."
Didn't sound like much of a fight to Finn.
Jansen nibbled a purple-painted fingernail. "Do you think I should, like, get a bodyguard?"
"I doubt it's an epidemic."
Her brow furrowed, trying to figure out what he meant. Then she gave up and pulled out her cell phone. "I'm going to get one. Maybe two. You can't be too careful."
 
 
ROBYN
 
Robyn stood across the road from Bane. She looked down at her cell phone for the umpteenth time, as if the image she wanted was just slow in materializing, like one of those old Polaroid cameras. It was a great shot... of the blurred top of a light-haired head.
She looked at the club – at the growing crowd, at the reporters, the TV vans, the police cars, the ambulance... and she realized that every step she'd taken since finding Portia's body, as right as it had seemed at the time, had only made her situation worse.
She'd left her prints on the murder weapon. She'd been spotted fleeing the scene. She'd maybe even been spotted running down the alley. And now, to turn herself in, she'd have to pass the gauntlet of reporters and news cameras.
A primitive voice in her head screamed for her to run, but she silenced it. That would be the worst thing she could do.
She imagined a client calling her with this situation. She'd tell him to prepare for a trip to the station... just as soon as she'd made a few calls and gotten professional advice on how to proceed.
That's what she needed now: professional advice.
 
She didn't call ahead, just showed up on Judd's doorstep and prayed he was home. Judd Archer was a contract bodyguard Portia hired when she needed extra security, or wanted to look as if she did. He was much in demand in Portia's circles, not so much for his security abilities – which were top-notch – but for the extra services he provided.
Judd was an ex-cop. Robyn wasn't completely sure what his story was, only that he'd been screwed over by the department. And he was mad as hell about it, which meant he was happy to exact some revenge by advising his clients on ways to deal with the law.
Judd answered the door on the second ring. Dressed in sweatpants, he rubbed his fist over his bleary eyes.
"Rob?" He blinked hard. "What's wrong? Portia in trouble?"
"Not her. Me."
He frowned, as if he must have misheard.
"Portia's dead," Robyn said. "And they think I killed her." He backed up and waved her inside.
 
They were in the kitchen, Robyn on a stool at the island, Judd behind it making coffee.
Judd had loaned Robyn a sweatsuit. She'd changed into it and carefully folded her dress into a bag, so the police could test it for gunshot residue. Then she told Judd everything.
"Did you get a look at the detectives?" he asked. "I knew most of the homicide guys in that division."
"One guy in a suit came out to talk to the officers guarding the scene. Big guy with a craggy face. Dark blond hair in need of a trim. Early thirties, maybe?"
"Did he have an accent? Texan, I think. Or Oklahoma... No, I guess you wouldn't have been close enough to hear.
But it sounds like John Findlay. Hopefully it is. He's a good cop. Might look like a cowboy, but he isn't, not when it comes to police work. Slow, steady and thorough. He won't jump to conclusions or railroad you into a confession."