Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 by The Dangerous Edge of Things

his eyes on the computer. “Personal protection. Yes, I am.”
    “So you agree with Marisa, that I’m in danger?”
    “I don’t know. But I think we should err on the side of caution. Considering.”
    “Considering what?”
    “Your connection to the crime, your current situation.” He took a sip of his tea, then lowered his cup. “Your pizza’s here.”
    The doorbell rang.
    I looked at the door, back at him. “All right, how did you do that?”
    “I’ll get it,” he said. And he padded off to fetch my dinner, taking his oolong with him.
    But it wasn’t a delivery boy who held my dinner—it was Garrity, looking tired and rumpled and very cop-like. He handed the pizza box to Trey and pointed right at me.
    “You. In the kitchen. Now.”

Chapter 15
    Garrity dumped a handful of grim photographs on the counter. Crime scene pictures, official ones. Lurid and vibrant, they hit me with the force of a punch in the stomach, and yet there was a detachment to them too. An unnerving composure.
    “This is what murderers do,” he said. “This is what happens to people who get in their way.”
    The photos were repulsively magnetic. One showed a woman’s hand, her palm sliced with a red line, a finger bent at an unnatural angle. The other showed a spreading pool of blood, black-red, clotting tendrils of blond hair.
    I peered closer. Blond?
    “That’s not Eliza,” I said. Then I noticed the date stamp on the photographs. “Garrity, these things are ten years old! What are you doing showing them to me?”
    “Getting your attention.” He collected the images and shoved them in his pocket. “Getting killed is fast most of the time. You never see it coming. Life’s all chuckles and then suddenly someone’s brains are making modern art on the wall. Are you getting the point?”
    I was getting the point. “Fine. I apologize for my behavior this afternoon at Beau Elan. I should have listened to Trey. Can I have my pizza now?”
    ***
    Garrity ate like a starving teenager, in quick two-bite attacks. He looked kinetic, even sitting at the table, like his spring was wound too tight. I sat opposite. Trey took up a position near the window, his arms folded.
    “I got somebody checking out that SUV following you all this morning,” Garrity said. “Guess what? It’s registered to Dylan Flint.”
    My jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding.
The
Dylan Flint, the Dylan Flint who boffed what’s-her-name, that boy toy actress, and then sold the videotape on the Internet, Dylan Flint the sleaze?”
    “Flint claimed it was stolen,” Trey said.
    “Wouldn’t you, if you were a sleaze?”
    Trey ignored me. “Did anyone ask him why he was following us?”
    Garrity shook his head. “No. The officer dropped by his apartment, but there was nobody home. Same at his work, some photography studio over on Luckie Street. “
    “So that’s it?” I said.
    “For now. We can’t put out an APB for acting suspicious.”
    “But Trey said he saw the same car at Phoenix Thursday morning. And then the parking garage cameras at Phoenix got smashed that afternoon.”
    “Circumstantial.”
    “What about Eliza?” Trey said. “Has there been any progress in the investigation?”
    Garrity got another piece of pizza. “No weapon, no suspect. No purse either, so they’re thinking maybe a car jacking gone bad.”
    “What about the guy who was following her,” I said, “the one Eric saw in the pick-up?”
    “At this moment, he’s a phantom. Just like this Dylan Flint character.”
    Trey kept his gaze on the horizon, his eyes focused on the ink and brilliance of the city sky. He seemed to be inhabiting his own world, and I guessed in many ways, he did.
    “Do they have time of death?” he said.
    “Sometime between three and six p.m.” Garrity wiped his mouth. “Eliza called in sick around nine o’clock Thursday morning, called your brother around three. It’s looking like Eric was the last person to see her alive, on record