Dust Up: A Thriller by Jon McGoran Page B

normal, happy, in love, and in no way suspicious until Ron was murdered.”
    Royce nodded and went quiet. I wondered if he had run out of questions.
    “Will that be all?” she asked.
    “Um … actually, we’d like to talk to your son Brian. Is he available?”
    She stared at Royce with such intensity I wondered if she was trying to make his head explode. I took a step away, just in case, but she briefly gave me the same look, letting me know she blamed me for bringing him here.
    “He’s out of town until late tonight, but he doesn’t live here, anyway,” she said. “Detective Carrick can give you his contact information.”
    “Okay. Thank you,” he said without looking up. “We appreciate your—”
    The door slammed in his face.
    To his credit, Royce didn’t flinch. But as he turned to walk back to the car, he looked at me and muttered, “Asshole.”
    “Sorry,” I said as we got in the car. “If I’d known you were intending on impersonating a police officer, I would have kept quiet.”
    “Fuck you, Carrick. You’re supposed to be helping us. You didn’t have to turn her against us like that.”
    It was a fun drive back to the Roundhouse. When I saw my car parked on the street, I looked at my watch. It was five o’clock.
    “You can let me out here,” I said, overwhelmed by the compulsion to get away from them and relief that my two days with them were over.
    “Suit yourself,” Royce said, pulling over. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
    I paused, halfway out of the car. “What do you mean?” Suarez had said yesterday and today.
    “We need you tomorrow morning, too, when we talk to the brother. Kind of suspicious that he leaves town immediately after the murder, so we want to see him in person. I texted Suarez. He okayed it. We’ll pick you up here at nine.”
    I was stunned and angry. “I’ll meet you out there.” I wasn’t going to get any more information out of them, and I couldn’t bear the thought of riding with them again.
    Royce turned in his seat, his mouth open as if he was going to argue. But I guess he didn’t want to spend any more time with me, either. “All right, whatever. We also need the case file. Warren said we could borrow it tomorrow morning.”
    “He did?” Cooperation was one thing, but this was a little extreme.
    “He did.”
    Whatever. I opened the door to get out. “I’ll bring it.”
    “Fine. What’s Brian Hartwell’s address?”
    I gave him the address, and as I closed the door, Royce said, “See you there at nine thirty.”
    As I watched them drive away, my anger slowly cooled. My car was right there, and I was looking forward to getting home—houseguest or not. But I knew I’d regret having to make a special trip in the morning. I turned away from my car and walked up the block, toward the Roundhouse.
    Mike Warren was leaning against his desk talking football at Darryl Purcell, who was typing at his computer. Purcell and I didn’t know each other well, but he looked up at me, his eyes almost pleading me to distract Warren so he could get his work done.
    Through an open door, I could see Myerson, Warren’s lieutenant, in his office, looking like he was trying to concentrate on something other than Warren’s bullshit. He got up from behind his desk to close the door.
    Warren looked up at me and laughed, like he was about to say something funny, but then he didn’t have anything, so he just said, “Carrick.”
    “You told Royce he could borrow the Hartwell case file?” I asked Warren loudly.
    Warren shrugged. “The brass said cooperate.”
    I didn’t want to spend any longer with him than I had to, so I didn’t tell him how ridiculous it was. “Royce asked me to pick it up for him,” I said. “I’m meeting them in the morning, and they want me to bring it.”
    I was waiting for him to give me shit about bringing the case file home so I could blister him for lending it out to someone who could conceivably be a suspect. But he