Devil's Bargain

They followed Manny to the stairs.

Upstairs was a different world. This didn’t come as a shock to Jazz, but she saw it register on Lucia as Manny keyed a code into a lock and opened the door at the top of the stairs.

Because beyond was a state-of-the-art science lab, segmented by movable clear glass partitions. Beyond that was a thick leather couch and widescreen HDTV that doubled as Manny’s living area. Green hospital curtains hung on suspended rods hid the open-forum bathroom—which, Jazz had cause to know, was an interior designer’s wet dream of gleaming marble, Jacuzzi tub and spa shower—and the bedroom, which she’d only glimpsed but looked good enough that if she lived here, she’d never get out of bed. Manny shooed them away from the lab part of the room and toward the living room. He combed fingers through his disordered hair and avoided their eyes.

“Um, yeah, sorry, I don’t get a lot of—visitors—sit. Sit down.” He moved newspapers and piled them on a glass side table, then picked up the remote control and clicked the TV to some high-definition channel doing a travelogue of China. No sound. “So. Um, tell me what you want. Oh, and hi, by the way. I’m Manny.”

That last went to Lucia, who was standing, staring in bemusement. Jazz patted the couch. Lucia sank down gracefully, hands in her lap. Studying Manny like a new and alien life-form.

“This is Lucia,” Jazz said. “I’ve got two documents for you, plus envelopes. I want the full ride. Everything you can give me.”

Manny couldn’t seem to tear his attention away from Lucia. Apparently, his hormones weren’t dead. “Takes time,” Manny said.

“I know it does.”

“Also, the full ride doesn’t come cheap. And hey, I’m only saying that because, you know, I’ve got to pay for upkeep around here, supplies, stuff…”

Jazz winced inside, but smiled and nodded. “How much?”

“Two documents? Three grand. That includes my time and materials, by the way. Plus, you get to, um, stay here if you want. Wait on the results.”

Hotel Manny. He did have a nice place—scrupulously clean—but she could see Lucia was starting to wish she’d crawled under the car to retrieve the gun. “That’s a nice gesture, but how about if we come back later? You call me when you’re ready with the results?”

“Um…sure.” Manny stared at her with his slightly off-kilter eyes. “Jazz?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this about Mac?”

“No. It’s not about Mac.”

“‘Cause you know I’d do it for free if—”

“It’s not about Mac. But I’ll tell him.” Ben McCarthy, she knew, would shake his head and roll his eyes, but he’d appreciate it somewhere deep down. Manny was a twitch, but he was an honest one. In some ways, he was also the bravest guy she’d ever met.

She took the plastic bag out of her jacket and handed over her letter; Lucia did the same. Manny raised the evidence bags, thick eyebrows going up, and stared at Jazz through the plastic. “You’re sure it isn’t murder or something? ‘Cause I’m getting a weird vibe.”

“I’m not a cop anymore, you know that.”

“Yeah, well…still. It looks hinky, Jazz. There’s blood.”

“That falls under the heading of bar mayhem, not murder. Two guys tried to start something with me. They’ll live.”

“But you want DNA profile on the blood, right?”

“I want every scrap of information you can pull off of either one of those, right? Everything.”

Manny nodded. “Okay. Everything.”

“Got any idea how long…?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“You’re not outsourcing, right?”

“Everything gets done here,” he said, and gave her an almost charming grin. “Jeez, grow up. Who would I trust?”

It was a really good point. “Call me.”

Chapter 3

Lucia kept silent all the way back down the steps. Without being asked, Jazz got on her hands and knees and fished the gun out from under the car.

“Thanks,” Lucia said, and returned it to the pancake holster behind her back.

“Yeah, well, you’re wearing a nice suit.” Jazz shrugged. “I don’t figure my jeans will suffer from a little contact with the concrete.”

Once they were in the sedan again, the metal door cranked up like a castle gate, allowing them to exit into the bright morning air.

“So what,” Lucia asked with absolutely precision, “the hell was that?”

“That is Manny Glickman.” Jazz pretended to concentrate on the flow of commuter traffic, which wasn’t too much of a stretch—K.C., like most semilarge cities, was hell in the morning rush hour. She was trying to decide what to share. “Used to be the go-to guy at Quantico for the big cases after the shakeup of the lab, you remember the scandal over the evidence problems—”

Lucia nodded, eyes fixed on the cars around them. Sweeping the street for surveillance.

“Anyway, he went through a bad patch. Started private practice a couple of years ago, after he got out of the hospital. Most of the P.I.s and lawyers use him, or try to, but he won’t do any cases with violent crime elements.”

“Sounds like he’s limiting his business pretty severely.”

“Yeah. But he’s got money, and he doesn’t want to go back into that world.” Jazz shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He’ll get us what we need. Manny’s hell on wheels when it comes to evidence.”

Lucia thought about that for a few seconds, and then turned her head to look straight at her. Sunlight flashed between the buildings and painted her skin in strobing flashes of gold. “What happened to him? Really?”

“Really?” Jazz made up her mind in a split second. There were few people she told about Manny—the real story—out of respect for his privacy, but she couldn’t start out with lying, not to Lucia. She’d know. “He was buried for almost forty-two hours in a black box eight feet under the ground, with nothing but some oxygen tanks to keep him alive, and a continuous loop recording playing the sound of the killer’s previous victim being tortured. That kind of thing will take all the fizz out of a person.”

Lucia understood immediately, it was all over her face. A deep, sad appreciation for everything Jazz didn’t say about that ordeal. “Did you find him?”

“No,” Jazz said softly. “No, I was across town, interrogating the suspect. My partner found the spot. He and two FBI agents dug Manny up.”

“My God,” Lucia murmured. “Did you know him?”

“Not then. He was a case file shipped down to us. I met him when he woke up in the hospital.” She’d never forget that bloodied, dirt-caked figure. Shaking. Weeping. The FBI agents turning away while Ben McCarthy pulled up a chair and took one of those filthy hands, nodding for her to hold the other. Holding Manny in the world.

“It was related to an investigation.” Lucia didn’t make it a question. “Something Manny was working on.”

“Serial killer,” Jazz agreed. “Just our blind luck he decided to dump Manny in Kansas City. He was a coast-to-coast, equal-opportunity son of a bitch. We all got lucky. Me, Manny, Ben…”

Lucia didn’t ask about Ben. No doubt she knew everything there was to know on that subject already, had made up her mind as to Ben’s guilt or innocence.