Private Affair(55)
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up at the modern redbrick police headquarters building on one of the hills above the river valley where Ellicott City had first been established. By the time Max arrived, he saw Olivia disappearing into the building under escort and knew there would be no chance to confer at headquarters. They were all being taken to separate rooms, where they would each tell their separate stories.
Max cooled his heels in an interrogation room. After glancing at the one-way mirror on the opposite wall, he sat down at the scarred table and stretched out his legs. Pretty sure Archie Hamilton was making him wait until everybody else was done, he folded his arms on the table, leaned over, and used them for a pillow. A few minutes later, he was sleeping.
***
“Wake up!” Hamilton barked.
Max lifted his head and looked at his watch. He’d been here an hour and a half.
As he took in the detective’s annoyance, he stifled a smile. Probably Hamilton had thought Max would be bored to tears—or sitting with his stomach churning, wondering if he could make his story match Olivia’s.
“You know the drill.”
“Yeah.”
Hamilton pulled out a chair opposite him. Instead of speaking immediately, he opened a folder he’d brought with him and consulted his notes.
Max kept himself from starting the conversation.
Finally the detective looked up. “What are you really doing in Howard County?” he asked.
“I told you. Acting as bodyguard for Olivia Winters.”
“That’s not what she says.”
“Well, it’s the truth, so I don’t know why she would have said otherwise,” Max answered, hoping Hamilton was using the standard law-enforcement technique of lying in the hopes that he’d change his story.
Again the detective was silent, and Max thought that he looked more like Archie Bunker than someone named Archie Hamilton. Finally, he sighed.
“Okay, I guess that’s close enough.”
Max nodded.
“And what about the engagement story?”
“That was to make it look logical for me to be spending all my time with her.”
“Why didn’t you just say you were her bodyguard?”
“She didn’t want any publicity,” he answered, hoping she’d remembered he’d said that at the reunion meeting.
After listening to the explanation, Hamilton said, “You mind giving me your account of what happened this evening?”
“Like I said before, I got a series of text messages that I thought came from one of my associates—Shane Gallagher. He said he wanted to meet with me away from the house. After I left, a woman in Ms. Winters’ high school class came rushing over. She said she was being stalked and that only Ms. Winters could save her.”
He stopped, took a breath, and then continued. “Apparently the guy had told her to come to the house so he could kill both her and Ms. Winters at the same time.”
“And you weren’t doing your bodyguard bit.”
Max kept his voice even as he said, “I was lured away, by the perp. He went to the trouble of stealing my partner’s cell phone so he could make it look like the messages were legit.
“You looked at the tape?” Max asked.
“Yeah.”
“And it confirms what we’ve said?” It wasn’t really a question. He wanted Hamilton to acknowledge that he’d seen the action.
“As far as it goes.”
Max wanted to ask what that meant, but he kept the question to himself as Hamilton started asking the same questions over again, probably hoping he could shake Max’s story, but he answered the same way he had earlier, and he hoped the way Olivia had answered.
Finally, the detective got tired of going over and over the same ground and getting the same results.
“You can go,” he said.
Max stayed where he was.
“What?” Hamilton demanded.
“We don’t have to be working against each other,” Max said.
“What do you mean?”
“Neither one of us wants another murder out here.”
“Yeah, so you guard the model, and I’ll investigate the case.”
Max struggled not to sigh. He’d hoped he could make peace with the guy. Apparently Hamilton wasn’t having any.
“You had an interesting reputation when you were with the Baltimore PD,” Hamilton said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you poked your nose into cases that weren’t yours.”
Max figured any rejoinder would be the wrong answer. Without saying anything else, he exited the room and strode down the hall to the lobby, where he found Olivia, Shane, and Jack waiting for him.
“Are you okay?” Olivia asked.