“That’s not what you said when you came to my hospital room this morning.”
She stared at him, her big dark eyes holding emotions he couldn’t tease out. “A man doesn’t make love the way you just did if he’s given up on life.”
Noah laughed at the remembrance, the bright bark of laughter so at odds with the near silence of the Sunday morning that Harley paused at the apex of the A-frame to glance back at him.
His final words to Carly had been, “When I beat this, I’ll look you up.”
She’d smiled, finally. “You do that.”
Now, here he was in a dog park, no closer than he was twenty-four hours ago to finding out who wanted him dead. Andy and his parents, and maybe even Carly, were depending on him to extricate himself from this mess. He needed to stop thinking like a victim and start thinking like the investigator he was.
Every crime needed opportunity and motive. For now, motive was the simple desire to murder Noah Glover. More, it was the desire to make that murder look like suicide. To ruin his reputation in the manner in which he was to die. That’s what the suicide note had been about. To make his failure public. As if he was at the end of his rope, or felt trapped, or ashamed. But there was nothing in his life so terrible that friends and family would understand his suicide. Or, was there something he was missing?
He frowned as he processed that idea. The desire to make his death look like a suicide limited the number of ways the murder could take place. Choosing arson as the method of death was an unnecessary complication with far more risks than simple murder. He could have been killed in a hit and run. Shot. Poisoned. Instead, he’d been roofied. Then picked up sometime later when his adversary knew he could control him, and their environment.
“Son of a B!” That meant the man knew him well enough to get close to him to deliver the drug. That had to have been at the bar.
The person was known to him. Was familiar enough with Noah’s habits to quickly get inside his natural caution as a law enforcement officer when approached. Not a stranger, nor even a man he’d previously arrested. The perpetrator must be a friend, or at least a regular acquaintance.
He pulled out a note pad and began making notes. Once a cop, always a cop. It was a mindset. It ruled the way an officer entered a building, approached a store, chose a seat in a restaurant, and orientated him or herself in the world.
And his nemesis had even gotten past Harley.
He glanced at his dog, who had come running back and now eyed him with bright eyes and a lolling tongue.
He smiled and reached for a treat. “I wish you could talk.”
Harley barked on cue and received his reward.
He grinned. “On the other hand, all you’d probably say is ‘Time to eat? Time to eat? Squirrel! Uh, time to eat?’”
He leaned down to scratch both sides of Harley’s head behind the ears. His furry companion might be a taste bud surrounded by fur, but Harley was also, like all dogs, a believer in pack. Noah was his pack leader. Noah’s son was pack. So, to a lesser degree, were Noah’s parents. But the pack ended there. Harley would defend Noah against an aggressor, even if the person was well known to him. He and his dad had learned that early on during a particularly heated basketball game of twenty-one. While tussling for the ball, his dad had thrown an elbow that caught Noah in the ribs and sent him to the driveway pavement. Harley had almost taken a hefty bite of out his father before Noah realized what the dog was about to do, and called him off. After that, they played basketball only after Harley was put safely inside.
No, no hostile person could have gotten close to him with Harley there. That confirmed that he had greeted the man in a way that Harley had accepted his presence without question.
Noah looked at Harley, hard. “Who did we pick up that night?”
Harley licked his hand.
“Yeah, a better question would be, will you recognize our enemy when you see him again?” Saying that aloud gave Noah an idea. He should retrace his steps that night, as far as he could remember them.
He wished he had his truck back. But it had been impounded for evidence gathering. That was a reminder, much like Durvan’s curt call, that the clock was ticking on his freedom. Once forensics came back with that evidence against him, Durvan had all but said he would be arrested. Bail would depend on whether or not the judge could be persuaded that he wasn’t a flight risk. No, he had to act before his freedom depended on the outcome between some assistant district attorney and some cheap-o defender—because he could not afford better.