Thicker Than Water

Harry’s living room looked like some dated idea of a playboy’s love nest. Black leather furniture, white shag carpet, wall-size stereo system, wet bar. Jones moved through it into a hallway and went through a door about halfway down. God, he hoped she wasn’t heading for the bedroom. He could only imagine what that would look like.

She wasn’t. He moved quietly to the door she’d entered. She’d left it open, so he could look inside. It was a study or library. Desk, chair, file cabinet and a big-screen TV that would have seemed out of place if not for the wall of videos.

He thought they were books at first, in the muted light. But no. VHS tapes. One entire wall housed a built-in cabinet that must have been full of them. Right now, its doors were flung open wide, and video cassettes lay toppled on the shelves and strewn over the floor. The file cabinet nearby was open wide, too. File folders and papers were thrown everywhere.

Jones stood there, looking at the mess, shaking her head from side to side as if the sight rendered her unable to move or speak. She pressed her hands to either side of her head, fingers digging in her own hair. “Oh, Jesus, look at all this,” she whispered.

“Jones.”

She whirled when Sean said her name, one hand clenched in a fist and the other pressing to her chest as if to keep her heart from busting out.

“Easy, easy, it’s just me.”

“MacKenzie. What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“Hell, no. I was getting some background for my story.”

She tipped her head to one side and lowered the fist. “How?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again.

“Well, you sure as hell couldn’t be interviewing neighbors at this hour. What were you doing, digging through the trash?”

It was supposed to be a sarcastic little barb, and he would be damned before he admitted that it was dead-on target. There was nothing wrong with digging through the trash. “You’re the one breaking and entering,” he reminded her.

“The door was open.”

Arguing in whispers was an interesting concept, he thought. Each of them tried to whisper more forcefully than the other.

“It was,” she said, apparently mistaking his silence for doubt.

“I know, I know, I saw.” He took her arm. “Let’s get out of here before both our asses wind up behind bars.”

She tugged her arm free. “You go on. I have to look around some more.” Her eyes were on the scattered files, scanning them as if trying to read the labels.

“Jones, someone broke in here tonight.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, has it occurred to you that it might have been the killer?”

“Gee, no, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“He might still be around here somewhere, Jones. Did you think of that?”

That brought her head up. Her eyes leveled on his, widening a little. Her body went so still that he didn’t think she was breathing for a second. The idea of someone else in the apartment frightened her. Good. She should be frightened. But after a second, she seemed to decide her reasons for being there outweighed her fear.

“Maybe you should go check out the rest of the place,” she suggested. “Make sure no one else is around.” Then she turned away from him, dropping to her knees to scan the file folders littering the floor.

“Right, and leave you here alone to abscond with whatever evidence you find.” He knelt right beside her, checking the videocassettes. Some were commercially made, with printed labels, films that sounded like porn, with titles like Mistress Mary’s Discipline and Dungeon Lover. Others had white labels on them with handwritten titles. Sean pulled out his penlight for a better look, because the handwritten ones were harder to read in the dark. He flicked the light on and read them aloud in a whisper. “Vanessa. Marianne. Barb & Sally.” He looked at Jones. She was still pawing frantically through the files that carpeted the floor. “Just what is it you’re looking for?”

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just looking.” She took his light from his hand, shining it on papers with an air of impatience, then stopping the beam on something that lay on the floor, something that reflected the light with its glossy surface. Photographs, Sean thought, but as soon as he thought it, she dropped an empty folder on top of them.

“What was that? Was that something?”

“No. Nothing.” She shone the light elsewhere; then, getting to her feet, she scanned the few files still in the open drawers.

“What is it you expect to find in the files, Jones?” He got up, too, brushing off his pantlegs, waiting for a chance to see what it was she had covered up.

“How would I know?”

“Then why do I get the feeling you’re looking for one that says Julie Jones on it?” Then he lifted his brows. “Or should I be looking for a tape with that label instead?”

She turned toward him, probably about to tear him a new one, he thought, but then she went still at the sound of a bell—just one single ping. “What’s that?”

“The elevator.” He grabbed the light from her, shut it off and ran back through the apartment to the still-open door. He peered out into the hall. She came up behind him a couple of seconds later. “Is it…?”

Lieutenant Jax was striding down the hall toward them, flanked by the same two cops from the hotel room. Sean ducked back inside. “Police,” he whispered. “Come on.”

The two of them ran through the apartment, ducked back into the study and closed the door behind them. Sean went to the window and parted the curtains, looking for a balcony. What he found was even better. Thank God this was an old building. He yanked open the window, turned and held out a hand to Jones. “Come here.”

“What the hell are you doing?” she whisper-shouted at him.

“Fire escape. Come on. Hurry.” Taking her hand in one of his, holding the curtains for her with the other, he helped her out first, then climbed out after her. As he did, he glanced back into the room, at the floor. And, yes, it was dark, and his light was in his pocket now—but he didn’t see the file folder covering up the photographs anymore. It had been kicked aside, and he didn’t see the photos at all. Maybe they’d been kicked aside, too, but he didn’t think so.

He had an inkling that those photos were in Jones’s pocket by now. Sighing, he closed the window behind them and turned to where she stood on the black metal landing, looking down at the skeletal flights of iron stairs and the street below. “You all right?”

The wind blew none too gently, and it carried a bite of autumn chill with it. She nodded but didn’t speak. She kept looking down, and he thought maybe heights were not her favorite thing in the world. He had no idea why, but he squeezed past her, so he was in front, then reached behind him and caught her wrist in his hands.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Relax, Jones. This is strictly business.” He pulled her hand up, pressed it onto his shoulder. “Just hold on to me, okay?” And then he started down the fire escape’s zigzagging stairs.

She stayed right behind him, her hand closing tight on his shoulder, the second one quickly following suit on the other side. The fire escape was a good one, as fire escapes went, but even the best of them tended to sway and jiggle. Every time this one did, her nails dug into his flesh, right through his clothes. He moved slowly, carefully, because the thing was noisy. He figured he had maybe five minutes, maximum, before the cops noticed the window unlocked and came outside to check. It might be far sooner. Jax was sharp; she didn’t miss much. If he’d been alone, he could have taken it twice as fast and been gone by now, despite the noise.

He told himself he ought to do it and leave Jones to face the music. But instead he kept to the slow pace all the way to the bottom, where the fire escape ended with a good ten feet left between it and the ground.

“Put the ladder down,” Jones whispered, pointing urgently at the folded up ladder that would extend almost to the ground, when released.

“No way. You think Jax would miss something like that?”

“Then how are we—”

“We jump.”

She shook her head side to side, backing up a step.

“Come on, Jones, it’s not that far.”