files. We are a bit backlogged, though. I’ll keep checking.”
When he’d warned Connie Day that he couldn’t promise anything, Brett hadn’t expected that there would be absolutely nothing. He wondered if the person she’d talked to had just been covering their backside, making up something because the paperwork had been lost. It happened—it was the nature of bureaucracies, he thought. He—
“Hey, Dunbar!” The division clerk’s shout shook him out of his thoughts. “Aren’t you supposed to be giving a deposition this morning?”
Damn. The Lester case. He had forgotten, even though he’d looked over his notes last night to refresh his memory. He looked at the clock, realized he had about twenty minutes to make a half-hour drive.
“Thanks,” he said as he got up, grabbed his jacket and his phone, and headed for the door.
He hit the button to wake up the phone and gave it a quick swipe with his thumb. The last screen he’d used popped into view, where he’d entered and saved Sloan Burke’s number. The blank silhouette seemed to chide him for not taking a photo for it when he’d had the chance. Not that he needed a picture. He remembered what she looked like. Perfectly.
He pondered for a moment as he hit the button to unlock his car. He could call, tell her what he’d found.
Hi, Ms. Burke. I just called to say...nothing.
Yeah, that would go over well.
He brought up the number for the prosecutor he was doing the deposition for and hit Call. Told the paralegal who answered he was on his way but might be a few minutes late. He was doing this only as a witness, because it wasn’t his jurisdiction and he had only happened to be outside the drugstore a few blocks from his place when the dispute that had preceded the assault had taken place. He hadn’t even had to break up the argument. One of the teenagers had sped away in his car. Only when he’d seen the vehicle description in the news that night did he find out the kid had later gone back after the other guy and beaten him pretty severely.
So now he was on his way to the north end to officially give a statement on what he had seen. He hoped it would be enough. He didn’t really want to end up having to testify in court to his small part in it. There were witnesses to the actual crime, so they shouldn’t need him. But a cop’s testimony, even if he’d been off duty, could carry more weight, and he understood the prosecutor wanting to be thorough. Always better to have evidence you don’t need than not enough.
He spent an hour recounting what he’d heard and positively identifying the two involved parties—and wincing at the photos of the battered face and bruised body of the kid who had taken the beating. He felt a flash of guilt. Maybe he should have guessed at something like this, but at the time it had been verbal only, and you couldn’t arrest somebody for what they just might do in the future. At least, not yet.
“Not your fault, Brett,” the prosecutor said, reading him accurately. “Kid had no record of violence. No reason to expect this. But he went home, stewed about it, took a little taunting from a friend who threw some drugs into the mix, and voilà, we have assault and battery.”
And a little more knowledge of how kids could go wrong, he thought.
“Thanks,” he said.
On his way back to the car he had his phone out and had that new number on the screen before he truly realized what he was doing. He had thought, in the middle of his recounting, that he did really have a reason to call but didn’t think he’d decided to do it. Except apparently some part of him had.
Probably the same part that completely forgot that reason when he heard her voice answering.
“Hello?” she said, in a tone that jarred him out of whatever cloud he’d slipped into; it was the tone of someone who had said it more than once. He realized he was standing next to his car and had yet to hit the button to unlock it. He shook his head sharply. Unlocked the car and answered simultaneously.
“Sorry. Ms. Burke, this is Brett Dunbar. We met this—”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer, just a question or two that I should have asked before.”
Except I was in a hurry to get away before I said or did something beyond stupid.
“Of course. Do you need Connie? I can get her.”
“Maybe you can answer these,” he said as he opened the door and got into the driver’s seat. “Do you know when they filed the application?”
“October 15. Eleven in the morning.”
His brows rose. “That’s rather exact,” he said.
“I drove her there,” she said.
“That was...kind of you.”
“I could taxi her all over forever and never make up for how she’s looked out for me.”
She said it so fervently it was all he could do not to ask why she’d needed looking out for. Or where the rest of her family had been.
“Good for her,” he said inanely, belatedly reaching to pull his door closed as someone began to pull into the space next to him.
“What else?” she asked, her tone brisk, as if she’d regretted her outburst. “You said a question or two.”
He shook his head sharply. “Yes. Do you know if she happened to keep a copy of the application?”
“Yes, she did. I made her.” She sounded a bit embarrassed. “I’m kind of zealous when it comes to that. Learned the hard way.”
“Never a bad idea.” He wondered what that hard way had been.
“Do you need it?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. Just wanted to know if there was one.”
The conversation ground to a halt, yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to say goodbye. Beyond stupid, but there it was. And after a moment she spoke, saving him.
“How’s Cutter?”
“Probably still snoozing. Unlike me, he gets to rest up after our run.”
She laughed. It rippled over him. “How else will he keep you on your toes when you get home?”
“He’s relentless. I’ve taken to going home for lunch and running him ragged some more,” he said. “He’ll chase a tennis ball until he drops.”
He didn’t add that that very doglike behavior was one of the few reasons he was reassured Cutter wasn’t something spookily more than just a dog.
“Where’s home? You must be local, unless you run a marathon every day.”
For some reason he didn’t want to analyze, he liked that she’d asked. But still he hesitated, with that innate caution all cops had. He didn’t generally discuss where he lived with people he’d only just met.
“Just
