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Faye did not want to get involved. She really didn’t. But some residual sense of responsibility forced her to ask, “Don’t you have to, um, read him his rights or something?”
The officer slipped his fingertip out of the cuffs and took another step back. “He’s not under arrest, ma’am.”
“Then, why—”
“Only sworn law enforcement officers can carry concealed in Illinois,” the officer said tightly.
“You’ve been watching too much TV, cream puff,” Denko told her. “You don’t have to Mirandize until you’re going to question somebody. Usually at the station.”
Faye goggled. Cream puff? What was with this guy? He was apprehended, disarmed and in handcuffs and yet somehow he wasn’t subdued at all. A small part of her almost envied him.
The officer with the cowlick frowned. “Hey, are you on the—”
“At the station,” Denko repeated. “I can fill you in there.”
The two men exchanged glances. Faye felt more out of her depth than ever. “Yeah, okay,” the officer said.
“Don’t you need me to make a statement?” Faye asked.
The officer shifted his gaze to her. “We’ll be in touch.”
She watched him steer his prisoner toward the black-and-white cruiser. He’d parked on the side of the porch, under cover of Aunt Eileen’s rhododendrons. Denko stood quietly while the officer opened the car door and put one hand on top of his head to guide him into the back seat.
Faye began to shake. We’ll be in touch.
Apprehension formed a knot in her stomach. She could hardly wait.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Police chief Jarek Denko’s voice was quiet and cold as a night in January. “This is my town. It’s not your personal sandbox that you can come make a mess in when you’re tired of stinking up Chicago.”
Aleksy Denko clamped his jaw. He knew he was out of line, damn it. But he didn’t allow anybody to talk to him that way. Not even his big brother.
“I was on a case,” he said.
Jarek narrowed his eyes. “A case you didn’t choose to explain to my patrol officer. A case you didn’t bother to run by me. Damn it, Alex, you know the rules of jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly acting officially,” Aleksy muttered. “I thought it was better if you didn’t know.”
“Let me get this straight. You kept me in the dark to protect me?”
Jarek sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. Hell, Aleksy didn’t believe it himself. Before his brother gave up the streets to play Andy Griffith in Eden, Jarek Denko—the Ice Man—had been a legend among the homicide cops of Chicago’s Area 3.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?” Jarek invited quietly.
Aleksy sighed and dropped into the chair facing the chief’s desk. “You know about the shootout on the west side, five, six weeks ago?”
“I read about it in the paper. One officer down, I remember.”
Aleksy remembered, too. He choked off the fresh wave of anger and guilt that rose with the memory. “Yeah, well, what wasn’t in the paper was that it was a joint op. Some scum is running guns from Atlanta through Chicago to Canada. The Toronto police want him. The FBI wants him. The ATF wants him. And we got him. Set up a nice little sting to net the whole operation. Only everybody’s tangoing so hard that somebody missteps. The scum figures it’s a setup and gets away. We’re left with nothing but a couple of mopes who aren’t talking and one dead detective.”
“How do you come into it? Was it your operation?”
“I don’t like it when one of our own goes down. Maybe after the shooting, I pushed a little too hard on the investigation.”
“No ‘maybe’ about it,” Jarek murmured.
Aleksy grinned sharply. “Anyway, some fed got his toes stepped on and pushed back. Next thing I know, my boss is calling me into his office telling me I need an extended vacation.”
“Here in Eden?” Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly Cancún, little brother.”
“Could be I figured you needed some help planning your wedding.”
A month or so back, Jarek had gotten himself engaged to a local babe. A reporter, Tess DeLucca. Aleksy had had some doubts about the match, but his brother seemed happy, and the wedding was set for September.
Jarek shook his head. “Which still doesn’t explain what you were doing on Eileen Harper’s dock with binoculars and a gun.”
“The detective who was killed…” Aleksy hesitated and then shrugged. He had to give Jarek something, or he wouldn’t get his gun back. “I knew her. Karen Vasquez.”
Jarek straightened behind his big metal desk. “Your partner?”
“Former partner,” Aleksy corrected. “We stopped working together nine months ago. Before your move. Remember?”
“That’s right. She put in for a transfer.”
“Yeah.”
“For personal reasons.”
Aleksy tried not to squirm. “Yeah.”
“How personal, hotshot?”
“Look, we were close. We got closer. Her idea, my mistake. Okay?”
“Not okay, if she couldn’t work with you afterward,” Jarek stated.
“I told you, it was a mistake. Anyway, she got reassigned. Coming from Area 3 she got handed this big case. Gunrunning across the border. She was excited. Called me up to tell me about it.”
“She shouldn’t have done that.”
“She thought I might have an interest.”
“And what would that be? Aside from letting you know she was moving on to bigger and better things?”
“She said something about my brother finding himself in the middle of things. So when she—” Died. Hell. “Anyway, afterward, I figured that was a lead up here.”
“But why—” Jarek’s eyes narrowed as he answered his own question. “Richard Freer. Liberty Guns and Ammo. His place is opposite the Harper dock.”
Aleksy nodded. “I tried to rent the cottage but the owner had already promised it to her niece.”
The big-eyed pixie in the flowered skirt who had called the cops.
Jarek tapped a pencil against his desk. “Okay. I’ll give you that Dick Freer is a pompous son of a bitch. But as far as I know, he’s legit. And he’s got a lot of pull in this community. Hell, he was on the search committee that hired me.”
“Whoever our gunrunner is, he’s got good cover. Or the feds would have caught him by now.”
“And what makes you think you can succeed where they’ve failed?”
“I have to,” Aleksy said.
Jarek’s gaze sharpened. His voice softened. “It’s not your job. It’s not your case. You need to stay out of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Alex—”
But Aleksy cut him off. He appreciated his brother’s concern, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. Some things were too painful to get into, and way too personal to share. “Are you going to stop me?”
His brother hesitated. “I can’t let my department get mixed up in your personal vendetta.”
“I know that. That’s why I didn’t spill the details to what’s his name. Larsen. I just need you to leave me alone.”
“That’s it?”
“Well…you could give me my gun back.”
Jarek opened a drawer in his desk and hefted Aleksy’s snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38. “You carrying the ‘chief’s special’ now?”
“You always did.”
Jarek peered along the blue steel barrel. “Yeah, but yours is longer than mine.”
“Barrel envy, big brother?”
Jarek’s teeth glinted in a smile. “Yeah. What is yours, three inches?”
Aleksy laughed. “At least mine feels like a real gun instead of a kiddie toy.”
Jarek raised his eyebrows, but he laid the gun flat on his desk without comment.
Aleksy slid it into the clip at his back. Some cops liked an ankle holster off duty, but he’d never been able to stand walking with one. “Thanks.”
“You need a place to stay?”
Aleksy dropped his jacket over the gun to hide it. “No, I’m good. We’re only an hour or so out of Chicago. I can get home occasionally to shower and change. Besides, the fewer people who associate you with me—or me with the police—the better.”
“As long as you understand I expect to be apprised of your activity while you’re in my jurisdiction.”
Aleksy nodded to show he’d received the warning. “Understood.”
“And, Alex…yell for help if you need it.”
Aleksy grinned at his big brother. “Haven’t I always?”
“Not always,” Jarek said. “You let Tommy Dolan whip your butt in fifth grade.”
Aleksy shrugged. “Fine. You want to help?” He did a mental playback of Faye Harper’s wide eyes and unexpected spunk. “Fix things with the cream puff.”
“—can only apologize and hope you’re willing to forget about the matter,” the police chief’s cool, smooth voice said over the telephone line.
Faye’s hand tightened on the receiver. He was talking down to her. A lot of people talked down to her. Too bad for the Denkos she was getting tired of it. “Most women would have difficulty forgetting an armed intruder.”
The police chief coughed. “Actually, unless you previously communicated your desire for him to leave the property—if the yard were fenced, for example, or if signs were posted—he wouldn’t be guilty of criminal trespass. Of course, I understand your—”
“He had a gun,” Faye said.
The line was still for a moment. “A gun he was legally authorized to carry.”
She knew it was futile to argue. But still. “Your officer said only sworn law enforcement officers could carry concealed firearms.”
“Yes,” the chief said, adding very gently, “My brother Alex is a detective with the Chicago PD.”
The fight leaked out of Faye like air from a pricked balloon. What was the point of protesting? What was right was never as important as what was expedient. She should have learned that by now.
But the mocking memory of her trespasser’s hard, dark eyes dared her to say, “And what was a detective from Chicago doing on my dock?”
Another pause. “I can’t say.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
Jarek Denko was silent.
Don’t get involved, Faye told herself. You don’t want to know. She tucked the receiver under her jaw and used her left hand to massage her right wrist. Without the support of the cast, it ached when she used it too long.
“Never mind,” she said. “I won’t press charges or—or whatever it is. I don’t have time, anyway. I’m here to work.”
“Really?” the chief asked politely. Well, now that he had what he wanted—her cooperation—she supposed he felt compelled to be polite. “What kind of work do you do, Miss Harper?”
Once she would have told him with pride that she was a teacher. Now she stammered. “I, um…not work, exactly. I should have said I paint.”
“Lots of pretty scenery up here,” the chief said, still politely.
She made an agreeable noise—it seemed the fastest way to get him to leave her alone—and hoped he wouldn’t start to tell her what views she ought to paint while she was here or about his aunt/sister/cousin who used to model clay/draw her own Christmas cards/do decoupage.
He didn’t. He thanked her again formally and got off the line.
Faye drew a shaky breath and looked around her aunt’s living room, now serving as her temporary studio. Brushes stood in mayonnaise jars. Paint dried in plastic trays. Photographs—a bright sailboat slicing the horizon, a flock of birds above an inlet, a skyscape at midday—spilled across the table. The metallic strip board she’d hauled from her Chicago apartment propped against one wall, her most recent work held in place with small round magnets.
I paint.
