The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz Page B

what, if any, was her connection to me. Or to Genevieve. Maybe there was a connection between Broach and the surviving Bertrands. Or maybe she’d been killed merely to set me up. Who had a motivation to see me locked up? That is, aside from the detectives right in front of me. Had Genevieve been seeing someone new, who didn’t think I should be driving the streets with impunity? Maybe Luc Bertrand had hired someone to bring me down by any means possible. Hard to believe with his droopy blue eyes, but hey, so was a brain tumor. My mind continued to spin, reeling in an agent I’d fired, a guy whose nose I’d accidentally broken on the basketball court, a bizarre letter I’d received from an anonymous reader after Chainer’s Link.
    “How can I help you look into this?” I asked. “Where do you start?”
    Delveckio said, “We don’t have anything we can disclose at this point in time.”
    “Did Genevieve and Kasey Broach have anything in common?”
    “Grieving parents. Devastated younger sisters.” He shook his head. “I did the advise-next-of-kin for Adeline. I wish I’d borrowed your camcorder first so I could make you watch her reaction.”
    I resisted giving him the reaction he was looking for. “So you haven’t found any connection between the victims?”
    His grin faded, and the skin tensed around his eyes. “Just you.”
    Kaden stood to leave, Delveckio rising on a slight delay.
    “You find anything unusual in her bloodstream?” I asked.
    They halted. Kaden pivoted, slowly. “Why would you ask that?”
    “Two nights ago I felt really hazy when I woke up. I thought it was brain-tumor fallout or stress. But maybe I was drugged so someone could cut my foot.” I leaned back in the chair, folded my arms. “Take my blood.”
    Delveckio raised his eyebrows at Kaden, who took two solemn steps back to his chair and sat. “Why’d you wake up so quickly, then? If you were drugged?”
    “Dunno. I have a pretty good tolerance from my misspent youth. Can we run my blood?”
    Kaden fished a cell phone from his pocket and dialed. “Kaden here. Get me Wagner.” He rose and walked out of the room.
    “Lloyd Wagner’s on this case?”
    Delveckio looked peeved to be stuck with me. “Of course. He worked the first murder, didn’t he? Isn’t that why you called him? You knew him from your trial and figured you could harass your way in?”
    “I knew him before. He’s helped me on some projects.”
    “Yeah, well, I think it’s safe to say he’s not interested in helping you anymore.”
    Kaden’s voice hummed through the walls, but I couldn’t make out the words. Delveckio did his best not to make eye contact with me.
    I asked, “On the footage did you notice…did you see me move anything from the nightstand?”
    “Huh?”
    “Something in a jar?”
    “I was hoping this could get weirder.”
    “Did you?”
    “No.”
    So my tumor had already crawled off by the time I set up the recorder. Which meant it had likely vanished around the time my foot had been cut. Another oddity to toss on the heap.
    Kaden returned. “Would’ve cleared your bloodstream by now.”
    I asked, “What would have?”
    Kaden shifted from one foot to the other, giving me the stonewall.
    “Come on. If I may have been drugged, at least tell me what I could’ve had in my system.”
    “Xanax and sevoflurane. Alprazoblah-blah—that’s Xanax—is shorter-lasting. The other, too. It’s a knockout gas. ‘Rapid elimination from the bloodstream,’ the man says.”
    “So how’d you catch it in Broach?”
    “Quick response. Patrolman radioed in the body. We heard that it looked similar to Genevieve Bertrand, called in the cavalry so no one would trample evidence. Our criminalist had dropped a trace-evidence report at Rampart, was just a few blocks away having a burrito. Hot-assed it over to the crime scene. They always draw blood right off.”
    Delveckio licked his dry lips. “Plus, Broach’s metabolism wasn’t working so fast