Every Kind of Wicked. Lisa Black
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asking about you. Where you grew up, where you became a cop.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“The truth: I have no idea. You’re not exactly chatty.”
Strictly true. And even if he were, no chance arose for a heart-to-heart chat about his past since they weren’t really dating. Even if they were dating, Jack thought, Maggie already knew more of his prior activities than she wanted to. Way more.
“He’s going to Chicago.”
Jack stepped off the curb, nearly into the path of a tractor-trailer so large, it seemed to brush the lowest prisms of the chandelier demarking Playhouse Square. Maggie grabbed his arm, saving him from death by Peterbilt.
“He said there were similar vigilante-type murders of scumbags there.” Similar to the men he had killed in Cleveland, she meant. She hadn’t let go of his arm, maintained one steady pull until he faced her. “Were there?”
He hesitated, but lying to her would not help anything, and nodded.
This couldn’t be news to her, but still her shoulders slumped in worry.
The light changed and they stepped into the crosswalk, and she tried to rally. “He did add that it’s hard to conclude anything from that, given the number of murders in Chicago. However—he said he might go on to Minneapolis.”
Theater marquees provided spotty shelter from the still-falling snow as they passed beneath. “The vigilante case was reassigned to me.” That should have kept Rick Gardiner away from Jack’s handiwork.
“This trip isn’t official. It’s all on his own. I don’t think I need to describe how rare it is that Rick does anything on his own.”
Jack agreed. Maggie’s ex would never be known as a go-getter. Not for the first time, he wondered what had ever attracted her to the man in the first place, but stopped himself—not the issue here. What Rick Gardiner might uncover from Jack’s old stomping grounds, that was the issue.
His reluctant, erstwhile, accidental partner in crime could no longer contain her anxiety. “What are you going to do? What’s he going to find, Jack?”
“Calm down,” he said—two words one should never say to a woman. He regretted them immediately.
“I am perfectly calm!” Except she wasn’t, and several other people also waiting for the light at East 18th didn’t think so either as they turned at her sharp tone, their glances then sliding away to give them as much privacy as could be afforded on a busy city street.
Jack, wisely and promptly, backpedaled. “Yes, okay. Let him go. He won’t find anything.”
“You’re sure? He asked if I had a photo of you. Not in so many words, I mean. As he pretended to be chatting, he asked why we didn’t have any selfies on Facebook or something. Since I haven’t posted on Facebook since my niece’s birthday last year, that seemed like a stupid comment . . . until I figured out what he was after.” The light changed. The people around them moved and Maggie continued to talk as if she couldn’t help herself, a measure of her agitation. Jack knew that. Maggie represented a walking time bomb, one that could detonate the cover life he’d built for himself in this city. If one more straw of guilt broke the back of her conscience . . . yes, he might wind up in jail, but more likely he’d simply move on. Maggie would at least give him a heads-up before confessing. Wouldn’t she?
She might figure he had already overstayed his welcome. The person he had followed to Cleveland in order to destroy had been destroyed. He and Maggie had agreed that waiting six months should allow him to leave without causing suspicion. But it had been eight months, and here he remained.
She was saying, “Obviously he’s trying to come up with a picture of you to take with him. He got called away to an overdose, but that’s what he was angling around to. Rick was always a lousy actor. I figured out he was cheating on me, like, two days after he started—”
“He did?” Why the hell—
She waved that away with a gloved hand and no hitch in her stride. “Long story. What can he do if he visits those police departments?”
Cue the knee-jerk reaction. “Nothing. It will be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Somewhat sure. Chicago had a huge force, and he had used a different name there. First Rick would have to weasel Jack’s ID photo out of Cleveland’s human resources unit, then happen to show his picture to the very few guys in Chicago who might actually remember him. On top of that, cops don’t care for people outside their agency asking about their guys, even if those people were also cops. And Chicago had been slammed in the news for several years, so they would be doubly reticent to speak ill of anyone who might have once worn their uniform. Yes, he doubted Rick would find anything to connect Jack to the city at all.
“Positive,” he told Maggie, more calmly.
She appeared no more reassured than he felt. “What about Minneapolis?”
A slightly smaller force, and Rick had the name of a lieutenant there. If he got to that man with a photo of Jack or even a thorough description, the man would know it didn’t match the Officer Jack Renner he’d supervised. That would lead them both to ask why the Jack Renner now in Cleveland had been working in Minneapolis under a different name. “No problem.”
“You’re sure?”
He stopped, turned to face her. “Maggie. Don’t worry.”
“Oh, I’m worried.”
He should have known a simple platitude would hardly dissuade the logical, thorough, and sometimes frighteningly sharp Maggie Gardiner. She had much more to lose than he did. He had designed a fake life in Cleveland, but she had a real one. She had friends, family, career, history. Guilt didn’t often trouble him, but it did now. “Rick isn’t going to find anything to make him more suspicious of me. Let him go, let him investigate his heart out. When he comes up with nothing it will convince him to give it up once and for all and I’ll be clear for good. We’ll both be clear, for good.”
She studied his face, and he watched as she debated whether to accept this. The vigilante murders had stopped—or so the city, and Maggie, believed—and the case assigned to him, the one man guaranteed not to solve them. Rick remained the only cloud on their horizon, but even Riley believed that simple jealousy motivated Rick, the common annoyance of seeing his ex-wife with another man. Jack knew what trails he had left in other cities, and if he wasn’t grabbing his go-bag and heading for the city limits . . . the understandable desire to believe that all would be well won her over.
“Okay,” she said at last.
“Okay,” he agreed, and looked up at the towering center building of Cleveland State University. “Where are we going?”
“Registrar’s office, I guess.”
Maggie hadn’t exaggerated the time he might spend wandering around before he found answers. The campus sprawled, signs and directionals of limited help in the network of buildings and walkways, all pulsing with forced air heat and vivacious students. The Registrar’s office sent them to Security, who said the card appeared to be for student housing, and they trouped through several buildings to reach that main desk. It was much quieter there than the chaotic Registrar’s, with the quarter close to ending and final tests and grading scheduled. Only one slouching boy waited ahead of them.
Once at the counter, the bright young lady recognized the card immediately.
“Oh yes, that’s a unit key. That’s why we don’t put the address on it, or even the unit number—so if someone found it, they’d have to try it in every door in every building to break in or burgle the place or whatever. Thank you so much for turning it in. I’ll be sure to find who it belongs to and see that they get it back. They’ll probably be coming in here looking for a replacement anyway.”
“No, he won’t.” Jack pulled