It Happened One Christmas. Ann Lethbridge
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THREE
LUKE SARKOV WAS BROODING. He was sitting at his desk in the downtown San Francisco offices of the Metropole Insurance Company, supposedly checking into a client’s bank accounts. He knew damn well the client had torched his own restaurant, but he had to prove it; these days, he was an insurance fraud investigator.
But that was only partly why he was brooding.
He stared at the phone, his sandy eyebrows drawn together and his long face taut and angry, the double lines bracketing his mouth cutting his skin harshly.
He wanted to call Judith, his estranged wife, and hear her voice. He wanted her to say their split was all a mistake. He wanted to call his buddies down at the department, get together for a poker game or a few beers, talk cop talk, discuss cases and the latest screw-up perpetrated by the powers-that-be on the heads of the hardworking policemen.
He was forty-one years old, his career down the tubes, wife gone, his life spinning out of control. And here he was, checking into an arson case for an insurance company.
He sneered as he willed himself to pick up the phone, dial the arsonist’s bank, get the records, make Metropole Insurance happy.
His finger pressed Judith’s number of its own volition, and he waited, hearing the ring, picturing the phone at the other end, the table it sat on, the room the table was in. Judith’s new apartment.
God, he wanted her back. He loved her, and despite her protestations, he was sure she still loved him.
The phone rang. It rang again. Then he heard the electronic click, and her answering machine switched on: This is Judith Bancroft. I am not in at the moment, but if you leave a message I will return your call. If this is in regard to a modeling job, please call the Best Agency at…
Her voice—slightly husky and sexy as hell. He drank the tone in, even if what he was hearing was only a recording. A lump formed at the base of his throat. Judith Bancroft. She didn’t use his name anymore. Damn it, they were not even divorced yet.
He hung up without leaving a message, aware that he was grinding his molars. That he was tense, up-tight, not sleeping well, spending too much time alone in the two rooms he was renting. Damn Judith.
Marriage meant loyalty, right? Till death us do part. Well, he’d meant it. Apparently, she hadn’t.
He shut his eyes for a second, took a breath. Reached for the phone, dialed the bank. He knew the bank officials were going to give him a hassle—they always did. But the bank had been served a subpoena and had to cough up the information.
“U.S. Bank, Haight-Clayton Branch,” he heard the receptionist say.
“Regarding Samuel Rae’s account. Mr. Dressler, please.”
The whole rigmarole would have to be gone through, but Luke could be tough. He’d had plenty of practice being relentlessly tough while on the Vice Squad. He could spot a lie a mile away, read people without effort, barge through prevarications and misleading statements, dig out the truth. He could handle pimps and pushers and whores and snitches. Hell, this was only a bank president, and the branch bank at that.
A half hour later he had Dressler’s promise to send him copies of Rae’s accounts for the past three years. And when he got them, he was positive the figures would show a business in trouble, kited checks, overdrafts, stop payment orders, the whole gamut. He’d seen the downslide of businesses before, seen the owner go into the weeds never to see daylight again. And then arson. A desperate act. A dangerously illegal act.
Of course, investigating insurance fraud wasn’t like being a cop. He was only chasing the miserable losers who cheated insurance companies.
When he’d been forced to resign from the San Francisco Police Department, he’d convinced himself that he didn’t want his old job anyway, that he detested the hypocrisy and addictive violence of big-city law enforcement. But, if he admitted the truth, he’d sucked it up, enjoyed the inside knowledge of man’s capacity for evil. What he couldn’t abide was the boredom and predictability of the ordinary world. He guessed he’d learned to love the power over the bad guys and the adrenaline high of danger too much.
Well, he sure wasn’t making the world better for democracy anymore.
His cell phone rang in the pocket of his sport coat, which hung on the back of his chair. Judith? His heart gave a lurch, as if he were coming alive for the first time that day.
He dug the phone out of his pocket, flipped it open and barked, “Hello.”
“Hey, kid.”
Not Judith. But a voice nearly as welcome.
“Bob, my man.”
“I’m not your man and you know it,” came Big Bob Bennett’s raspy voice.
“What’s up, Bob?”
“How are you doing, kid?”
“Oh, you know, okay.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“I’m nailing guys right and left. Women, too. You wouldn’t believe how people cheat.”
“Sure I would.” Bob hesitated. “Listen, I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything.” Luke owed Bob; he owed him big. The man was retired now, but he’d been a Juvenile Division cop back when Luke had met him. Luke had been in college, San Francisco State, when he’d been injured and lost his athletic scholarship. For a while back then he’d felt hopeless and angry, and he’d quit school and gotten into trouble. Luckily, a judge gave him community service instead of hard time, and he was sent to Lieutenant Bob Bennett, to help him coach an inner-city school football team.
Big Bob, as he was known even then, set him straight, got him back into school and then helped him enter the Police Academy. Bob had been his mentor, his father and his family for twenty-two years. Luke had never known his own family; he was an orphan, one foster home after another. Bob understood why Luke had been asked to resign from the force last year. Luke’s mentor didn’t judge; he accepted. Oh, yeah, Luke owed the man.
“My daughter’s in trouble,” Bob said flatly.
“Your daughter?”
“Yes, damn it, Grace. You know, my kid.”
“Sure, I know her, but, wow, it’s been years. I mean…”
“Grace has a little boy named Charley. She got this kid from a junkie. She’s his foster mother.”
“Oh, right, I remember.”
“Anyway, the idiotic judge in Boulder gave custody of Charley back to his biological mother, and Grace took the boy and went underground.”
“She did?”
“Oh, yeah, my little angel. And in a couple days she’s going to be a federal fugitive. She’s in deep, and I’m afraid I’m about to get in just as deep.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Exactly.”
“You sure it’s wise for you to get so involved?”
“Luke, she’s my child. I’ll go to the ends of the earth to help her.”
“Maybe she should turn herself in.”
“She’s afraid for the boy’s safety. She won’t do it and I’m not going to advise her to.”
“But what…hell, what can I do?”
“You could help get the goods on the biological mother for Grace. She’s a sad sack—drugs, jail time for armed robbery. Says the boyfriend forced her to help him. She’s no fit mother, that’s for damn sure.”
“And where is this biological mother?”
“Denver, Colorado.”
“Mmm.”