He looked at the card and then tapped it against his palm.
There shouldn’t have still been a hesitation. Unless—crap. He recognized my name, but not as a lawyer. Elise had said something about them thinking Mark killed Troy in a jealous rage over me.
I imagined the way my mom’s face looked when she was dealing with a particularly confrontational officer. “Is there a problem Detective…?”
“Dillion.” He tucked my card into his suit jacket pocket. “Whether or not there’s a problem depends on whether you’re lying to me right now.”
Bending the truth, yes. I wasn’t here because Anderson ran out of time. Lying, not exactly. I was working Mark’s case. But I knew how to play the game. If I tried to defend myself, I’d only look guiltier. “What benefit could I possibly get from lying to you about being Mark Cavanaugh’s lawyer? Unless you believe I’m here to break him out.” I held out my arms. “You’re welcome to check me for weapons if you’d like.”
I made sure to let a touch of derision slide into my tone. It left a slimy feeling in my mouth after the words were out. Posturing might work for my parents, but it always felt wrong to me, like I was trying to fit into someone else’s clothes.
He turned and motioned for me to follow him. “I’ll show you the way.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “But you can only have ten minutes. There’s no reason you should need more than that to prepare your client for a bail hearing. Assuming he’s not considered a flight risk, you’ll have plenty of time to discuss anything else regarding the case after that.”
I let the flight risk zing pass with a smile. If I jumped to Mark’s defense, it would only call into question my professionalism. “Thank you. Ten minutes will be more than enough.”
The sidelong glance he leveled at me turned my hands cold. It was a look that said he didn’t believe attempting to break Mark out was actually outside of what I was capable of. It was a look that said they’d be investigating me almost as closely as they were investigating Mark as they continued to build the case against him. It was a look that said they had no doubt he was guilty. And that I might have helped him plan this whole thing.
I kept my mouth shut through the rest of the walk. Had it been anyone else who walked me down, I might have tried to dig a little. But the part of me that had years of experience as a lawyer watching police officers work said, this time, I’d lose more than I’d gain if I did.
We reached Mark’s cell. He shot to his feet. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He’d probably been about to ask me what I was doing there. Thankfully he’d figured out just in time that I’d end up kicked out of the station without what I’d come for if he did.
I gave Detective Dillion a pageant-worthy smile. “I can find my way back up. You don’t have to wait for me.”
He pulled up his sleeve enough to reveal his watch and touched one finger to the face—an unspoken reminder of my time limit—then he turned and left us alone.
I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “He’s almost as bad as having to work with Grady Scherwin.”
“Scherwin seems to be one of the only officers they haven’t put on leave. I saw him when they brought me in.”
That figured. The only officers who didn’t have some sort of good relationship with Mark were the ones who were either both new and young—like Troy had been—or were kind of unpleasant—like Grady Scherwin. It was a small pool, and it left us without allies on the force when we could most use them.
“I’m guessing you didn’t come here to talk about Scherwin, though,” Mark said.
I almost made a joke about how I missed him already and snuck in for a kiss, but just thinking the words brought an uncomfortable burning sensation to my eyes. I explained my guess about this connecting to a case he and Troy worked together.
Mark blew out a long breath. “That’s going back over a year. If we had access to the case files, that’d be easy to figure out.”
“If I’m right, it’ll be a case where someone wasn’t happy with the results.”
“I worked a drunk driver case. He got off on a technicality, but that had nothing to do with me. I only dealt with the body of the person he killed.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I can’t remember if Troy worked that one with me or not.”
Mark usually had an exceptional memory. I’d heard stories of how he could answer questions in court without consulting his notes. He barely needed to refresh his memory.
But the pressure of testifying in court as a professional wasn’t the same kind of pressure a person felt when they were behind bars, fighting for their own freedom and knowing that everyone was looking at them and wondering if they really did the horrible thing they were accused of.
The pressure of only having ten minutes—five now—didn’t help.
“Come at it sideways.” I used the same soothing voice that worked to coax my bullmastiff Toby when we went to the vet. “Have you personally received any threats or angry messages?”
He brought his hand away from his face. “One. He wasn’t threatening, but he was angry. I deemed a death natural causes, but the man’s son was convinced his stepmother killed his dad for his life insurance policy. He called for weeks and even showed up a couple of times asking me to reconsider. I had to have him removed from the funeral home, even.”
It was possible someone who felt justice hadn’t been rendered for his loved one could move from angry to vengeful. “Was Troy involved in the case?”
Mark shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t remember, but he was the one who escorted the man out of Cavanaugh’s and told him, if he didn’t stop, they’d hit him with a restraining order.”
The door at the end of the hallway swung open. Time was up. Dillion was back.
I yanked my phone out. “What were the names?”
Mark told me in a hurried whisper. With Dillion coming toward us, I didn’t even get a chance to squeeze his hand before saying goodbye.
He’ll be out on Monday, I reminded myself. He’s not a flight risk, and we’ll find a way to make whatever bail they set.
In the meantime, I’d call Hal, the private investigator I’d worked with on a few prior cases, and have him look into the names Mark gave me.
As I was dialing Hal’s number on my way to my car, a text came into my phone. I stopped to check it.
Isabel.
Were you able to narrow it down to a couple favorites?
I leaned against the door of my car, keys in one hand, phone in the other. It might be paranoia and nothing more, but Isabel’s behavior still struck me as odd. It wouldn’t hurt to have Hal dig into her background as well.
Troy and Chief McTavish were both fit men who’d been trained to defend themselves. For both of them to be overpowered by a stranger seemed like a stretch. They wouldn’t have turned their back on a man they didn’t know if anything at all seemed off about his behavior. They also wouldn’t have been relaxed enough to allow a man they didn’t know to pull a gun on them. They’d have reacted, and we’d have found signs. They’d have had their guard up with a strange man.
They might not have if their attacker was a woman.
And Isabel had been in the area of Lakeshore Park around the time McTavish went missing.
