She gave him a quick look, but apparently understood his logic and complied as four uniformed officers got out of the two squad cars and made it official. “Keep your hands in the air,” one of them shouted.
The cops eyed them with suspicion. “What’s going on here?” a guy who seemed to be in charge called out. Unfortunately, he wasn’t anyone Max had met when he’d been with the Baltimore PD.
“We were attacked by a man who came here with a gun,” Max answered. “He’s gone, but he shot a woman. She’s in the house.”
“Ambulance?” the officer asked.
Max shook his head. “It’s too late for that.”
“Don’t move,” the officer in charge ordered.
They all stayed where they were with their hands in the air.
“We’re unarmed,” Max said as two of the cops went into the house. They were back pretty quickly, coughing.
“She’s dead all right,” one of them confirmed. He looked at Max. “Smoke bomb?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn around. Hands against the wall. Legs spread,” the man in charge said.
Max heard Olivia gasp.
“It’s okay. They have to be sure we’re the good guys.”
They all complied, and Max endured a very thorough pat down. He knew his partners understood why the police had to do it, but he was sure Olivia was hating the process and being a suspect when she’d just almost been killed. Turning toward her, he saw that she wanted to speak, but he shook his head. “Not yet,” he mouthed.
When it was clear they were unarmed, the lead officer said, “Okay. Let’s get this sorted out.”
Max glanced at Olivia.
“I was here alone, and a woman I knew in high school came over in a panic, saying someone was stalking her,” she said. “While I was trying to calm her down, he showed up and threw a smoke bomb through the window.”
One of the officers walked several yards away and turned his back, and Max assumed he was using his body mike to call in a detective.
The officer who had been asking the questions looked at the three Rockfort agents. “And how are you involved?”
“I was here earlier, but the assailant lured me away from the house with text messages,” Max answered. “When I realized what was going on, I came rushing back, but it was already too late for the other woman.”
“Claire Lowden,” Olivia supplied.
“She thought she was being stalked, but she didn’t report it?” the officer asked, sounding like he didn’t believe the story.
Olivia answered. “From what she told me, I think he’d convinced her that if she asked for help, she’d be killed. He told her to come here. He said it was the only way for her to stay safe, but I think he was planning to kill us both.”
“This is the fifth member of the Donley High ten-year-reunion class who’s been murdered,” Max said.
The officer swung toward him. “Oh yeah? Then why don’t we know about it?”
“You know about Angela Dawson,” Olivia said. “But the other murders didn’t look connected—or even like murders. And they happened over several months—and years.”
“And the Howard County PD didn’t figure it out?” the officer asked in a hard voice.
When Olivia started to answer, Max put a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me handle this.”
The cop swung back to him with an inquisitive look on his face and asked, “And what is it that you want to say?”
“This is the first time the guy has come in shooting. Three of the previous murders looked like accidents. But one was that Ellicott City businesswoman, Angela Dawson, who was strangled.” As the officer stared at him, he kept talking. “I’m a private detective from Rockfort Security. Olivia hired me to protect her after the Dawson murder.”
It wasn’t exactly what had happened. She’d really hired him to find out who had killed Angela, but he knew that the cops weren’t going to like hearing that someone had been called in to do their jobs.
To his relief, Olivia didn’t correct his false statement, and he thought everything was going to work out okay, until another car came speeding up the driveway. It was an unmarked cop car, and the man who got out looked them over, then zeroed in on Max.
Chapter 17
Max cursed under his breath.
“What?” Olivia murmured.
“Trouble.”
The chunky man came stamping toward them. He was wearing a rumpled tweed sports coat and dark slacks, a white shirt that had seen better days, and no tie. His name was Archie Hamilton, and Max had tangled with him on a couple of cases a few years ago. That was one of the factors that had convinced Max it wasn’t worth going back into police work after he’d been shot. Hamilton had a tendency to act like a bad cop in a film-noir drama. But Max didn’t have time to explain any of the background to Olivia. He had to deal with the guy right now.