Page 40 of Dirty Looks

I ran downstairs and grabbed the file and was back up before Jack had his weapon strapped back on. It was still daylight outside, so I took Jack’s advice and put on my sunglasses and got my bag, even though it looked like the sun was fighting a losing battle against another wave of gray clouds rolling in.

“Maybe we should move to Arizona,” he said, eyeing the same clouds as we left the funeral home. “I wouldn’t mind a dry heat.”

I snorted out a laugh and got in his police unit.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said as we headed back toward Regent Park. “Martinez is a great cop, and he’s pretty fun. But this is what I’ve been missing today.”

“It’s pretty rare for people to get to be partners at work and home,” he said. “I worry about Martinez sometimes. Losing apartner is like losing a close family member. He still never talks about Lewis. I’m not sure he’s ever really processed his grief.”

In reality, I couldn’t blame Martinez. And I certainly made it a point to never bring up Lewis when he was around. It had been my father who’d killed Martinez’s partner.

“What’d you find out about the second victim?” Jack asked. “Goble.”

“Cause of death was three gunshot wounds to the chest,” I said. “Close range. Any of the three bullets were fatal. Everything else came back normal. The only thing that came back abnormal was that he’d had sex shortly before death.”

“With the woman who shot him?” Jack asked.

“Possibly,” I said. “But I don’t think so. Astrid told us she’d come into work that day around ten, which was also confirmed by the chef. She found Kitty Lidle sometime after noon. We’ve got the 911 call for a time stamp. And she was at the house when Plank arrived with the EMTs. I don’t know how she would have had time to get back down to her place and meet up with the walking STD.”

“He had an STD?” Jack asked.

“A couple of them,” I said. “Showed up in the blood work. We probably need to have a conversation with Lizzie Ryan. That’s the granddaughter of the woman who’s been with Kitty Lidle since her childhood. Lizzie and Alan Goble were caught in the act not long ago. When I say he’d recently had sex, there was seminal fluid on the inside of his jeans and on him. No underwear.”

“Like he’d dressed in a hurry,” Jack said. “Maybe he and Astrid have something going on the side and she finds out about the other girl. Uses the confusion at the house and the kidnapping to kill him in cold blood. Scorned lover.”

“It’s as plausible as anything,” I said.

Jack slowed as we drove past Regent Park. The evidence of any semblance of a crime scene at the park had been washed away. Gone were the evidence tags and spatters of blood on the sidewalk. And all that was left of the crime-scene tape was a last remaining scrap that clung to a tree.

“I hope to God we got all the evidence we needed,” Jack said.

“We’ve not recovered the pajamas she’d been wearing,” I said. “Or whatever he used to strangle her with. We’ve got DNA out the wazoo, but it doesn’t matter if there’s no suspect. And as much as I wanted it to be so, there were no fresh wounds or scratches on Alan Goble. He wasn’t her attacker.”

“Making it all the more curious as to why Astrid killed him,” Jack said. “I did a cursory check on Goble. He’s got a sealed file.”

“Sealed is just a word,” I said, making Jack wince.

“Carver was a bad influence on you,” he said.

Jack was a by-the-book kind of guy. But Carver had worked for the FBI and they were a little more relaxed when it came to the gray areas. Doug was very much like his uncle, and I knew the seal on Alan Goble’s file would be an open book by the end of the night.

Myrtle Sparrow’s house was painted a soft green, and it had the best curb appeal on the block. There were plants everywhere. There was a beige Corolla parked under the carport and a black truck parked in front of the house. Jack parked behind the Corolla in the driveway.

“Looks like he’s home,” I said.

Jack and I got out of the car, and before we could get to the front door the screen opened and a man stepped out and started toward us. I saw Jack casually put his hand on his weapon.

“Who are you?” the man said.

“Sheriff Jack Lawson,” he said. “And this is Dr. Graves with the coroner’s office. Are you Jackson Sparrow?”

He made a snorting sound and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket and then moved to stand under the carport.

“My mother won’t let me smoke in the house,” he said. “Have to come out here. Feels just like it did when I was in high school.”

Jackson Sparrow wasn’t an attractive man. He wasn’t an unattractive man. He was medium. That was the only way I could think to describe him. Medium height, medium weight, with a medium amount of hair on his medium-brown head.

He wore a pair of rumpled khakis and a brown flannel shirt over a white undershirt. He smelled of cigarettes and beer.

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