AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alex had met Hank years ago through Buck Jordan, and since both men walked a fine line of functioning alcoholics, Alex was not surprised to see Buck and Hank bellied up to the bar when she walked into Benjamin’s. It looked like they’d been there for quite some time. Newton’s first law popped into Alex’s thoughts when she looked at the two men: An object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. The law of inertia had been forever imprinted on her psyche ever since she’d studied for a physics test on the night her family was killed. From time to time, and out of the blue, Newton’s laws became applicably apparent. This morning, she knew it would take quite an unbalanced force to move these two from the bar.
“Boys,” Alex said when she walked over. “Am I late?”
Buck looked at her with bloodshot eyes glassed over from too much bourbon.
“Not at all,” he said. “Hank and I were catching up. We haven’t seen each other for a while.”
“Good to see you, Hank,” Alex said.
The detective lifted his glass to her. “Alex, it’s been a while.”
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked.
Alex looked around the somewhat crowded bar, amazed that so many people were drinking at this time of morning.
“You don’t by chance serve slow-poured Americanos, do you?”
The bartender shook her head and smiled. “Just beer and liquor. Twenty-four-seven.”
“I’ll have a water, thanks.”
“I’ll have another Jameson.” Hank pushed his glass to the end of the bar. “You on the wagon again, Alex?”
“Was never off, Hank. And it’s not even nine-thirty in the morning.”
“I just finished an overnight.”
“Maybe a diner for breakfast and coffee might have been a better idea.”
“I’d be up the rest of the day if I started drinking coffee at the end of my shift. I need a couple of Jamesons to put me to sleep and get me ready for tonight.”
“Fair enough, just answer a few questions for us before you doze off.”
“Fire away.”
“Byron Zell,” Buck said. “Tell us what you know.”
“Not much,” Hank said.
“But more than nothing,” Alex said, “which is what we know.”
“Why are you two so curious about a pedo who got knocked off?”
Alex was curious for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that she had recently been inside the man’s apartment. An apartment that was now a crime scene, every inch of which was being dusted for prints and combed for fibers. She’d been careful during her rogue operation, but only to a point. Her barometer had been outwitting a wealthy businessman who would want to figure out how someone had gotten into his computer to send an errant e-mail. The bar she had set was low and hadn’t included outsmarting CSI teams or fingerprint experts or forensic scientists. Her worry, ever since reading the news about Byron Zell, was that she had sloppily left a print behind. Although Alex Armstrong would not show up in any database, Alexandra Quinlan would. Somewhere in the dusty corners of the national fingerprint database were the prints Alex had provided as a seventeen-year-old girl when she was arrested for the murder of her family. What a field day the press would have if Alexandra Quinlan’s fingerprints were found in the apartment of a man who was shot dead. Good Lord, the mess that would cause.
“Byron Zell was a client at Lancaster and Jordan,” Alex said. “Buck and I had briefly been assigned to his case.”
“Lancaster and Jordan was repping him on the pedo charges?”
“Hell no!” Buck said with a force that accentuated the slur to his words. “We don’t defend perverts.”
Alex looked at Buck. She was fashionably late for the 9:00 a.m. meeting but was sure Buck had been there long earlier than that. Hank Donovan had an excuse for drinking so early in the morning: he’d just finished a night shift. Buck had no such pretext.
“We don’t take clients like that,” Alex said. “As Buck so eloquently stated.”
“Perverts,” Buck said again.
“He gets it, Buck. Lancaster and Jordan doesn’t represent pedophiles.” Alex put her hand on Buck’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “You okay?”
