He grimaces and looks skyward before leveling a fierce stare at me, anger bubbling beneath his surface. Anger I know is not at me. It’s about fighting this fight and the wrong side winning. It’s about losing a good man and a detective. “What happened?”
“I had one of those gut feelings that I get, right after my run this morning. It was when I entered the coffee shop. Like he was there. I felt him there, Ethan. I can’t explain it. I felt him at the bookstore, too. Familiar. Like—” I stop myself before I make him more paranoid than he needs to be right now. “I stayed. I shot a video of everyone in the coffee shop. I even talked to one man who caught my attention. That’s how strong the feeling was.”
“And?”
“And he wasn’t the guy. He has cats and judges cat shows, but that’s not the real problem here. When I came home, Old Lady Crawford asked me who the man with the hat and hoodie was lurking around my door last night.”
He curses and scrubs his jaw, planting his hands on the island. “He followed you from the building last night.”
“One could assume. Yes.” I stop there because the truth is that I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about this. I’m human. I’m a detective. I’m the daughter of a recently murdered father who was also a cop. All I know right now is that I want to focus and work the case. “I called the apartment office and had them pull the security footage.”
“That’s it?” he demands. “That’s all you’re going to say to me, Jazz?”
“What do you want me to say, Lang?” I snap, and now I’m angry. “What am I supposed to say?”
“That you get it. That you see what’s happening here. If he kills the detectives who hunt him, you could be next.”
“And so could you.” I shove aside the anger. I need to work. I just need to work. “Which reminds me,” I say, grabbing my phone, “I sent Wade the case file to have him get me a profile and a ViCAP report. I need to make sure he looks for cases where the detective working the case ended up dead.” I text Wade, cautious not to set off any personal triggers: Just to be safe, because of this situation with Roberts, check for cases where law enforcement disappeared.
Message sent, I slide my phone back into my pocket and find Lang glaring at me.
“You’re not going to talk about this, are you?”
“I’m just doing my job, Lang. What else can I do?”
“We need to talk to the captain.”
“I don’t want an overreaction that loses this guy,” I say. “Let’s just see what Wade says. In the meantime, Chuck is working on the camera action from the surrounding area and I’m headed to the apartment office to grab their security feed on my way to the UT campus. I want to follow up on the poetry club myself, in person.”
“I’m in on this one. You don’t get a say-so. I’m with you every step of the way. Let’s go to the office. And I’ll drive us to the campus.”
I don’t argue. Why would I? I have no goal here but to catch The Poet before he kills again.
Chapter 22
Tabitha, a pretty blonde who dresses like she’s Saks Fifth Avenue, pops to her feet the minute we enter the office. Her eyes go wide at the sight of Lang, who is admittedly quite big and rather overwhelming in small spaces, such as this itty-bitty lobby. But she’s not looking at him like she’s intimidated. More like she wants to lick him all over, which is disgusting. He hasn’t showered in two days. She bats long, mascara-laden lashes at him. “Hi.”
“Hello there,” he says in his best flirty voice that has me groaning and rolling my eyes.
“The security footage?” I say, and then, because I can’t help myself, I say, “And do you make it a habit to flirt with tenants’ boyfriends?”
Tabitha’s cheeks flush. “Oh God. Oh sorry.”
“Jesus, Jazz,” Lang grumbles.
I don’t set the record straight. I’m kind of enjoying this. “The security footage,” I say tartly. “We’re here for the security footage.”
“The tech support team is working on it,” Tabitha assures me. “And I’m sorry. I would never—”
Jeez, I think. “He’s like a big brother. Take him. Have him. Remind him to shower for the rest of us to remain sane. We don’t want to wait for the tech support team wherever they are. Can I access the feed from here in your office?”
Tabitha blinks and looks between us. “Ah. Yes. We do have a booth in the back room, but I don’t know how to operate it.”
“We do,” Lang says, sounding a bit tart now, too. “Take us there.”
“Of course,” she agrees, hurrying away and waving for us to follow.
And so we do. We follow like good little soldiers while Lang shoots me a look meant to freeze hell. Just another day in the neighborhood. I smile. He doesn’t. We really are good friends. Everyone doesn’t know that about us.
Once we’re offered access to the booth, which is more of a closet, Lang sits down at the computer and keys the screen to life. I lean in close, hovering over his shoulder while Tabitha hovers by the door. “No feed for your apartment entryway,” Lang says.
“Almost like he knew, isn’t it?”
Lang gives a sharp nod. “Exactly what I was thinking. I’ll check the building and the parking lot.” He glances up at me. “What timeline are we thinking?”
“It had to have been nine when I got home, but I got the impression from Mrs. Crawford that he was at my door for an extended period.”
He keys in a time stamp and then starts tabbing through timelines that seem to never end, to the point that I grab a chair and settle next to him. We hit the midnight hour and we have something: a man walking toward my building doorway in a hoodie. He opens the door and goes inside without ever looking up. I glance at Tabitha, who’s still at the door. “Our building doors should have codes.”
Her lips purse and she shifts her weight on top of her extremely high red stilettos. “I know. Mrs. Crawford expressed the same quite vocally this morning.”
“I’m searching the parking lot now,” Lang says, tabbing through the feed and then tabbing some more. “I can’t find where he came from.” He glances up at me. “It does seem like he had some inside knowledge of the security system here.”
I dismiss that idea without questioning Tabitha. “He wouldn’t have known I existed until I took over for Roberts. And that just happened.”
“Right,” he says, but we stare at each other a long moment before he says, “Unless he did.”