“I wasn’t going to steal them.” The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to review them, to edit them. I was lying and we both knew it.
Alex let out an exhausted sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on with you lately?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re hot, you’re cold, you’re on edge and”—Alex licked his bottom lip—“you’re a liar.”
“A liar?” I was truly—and inappropriately—stunned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
It was rare that I had seen the kind of anger that flashed across Alex’s face. His lips were pressed together, his teeth gritted. He crossed his office and yanked open a top drawer, throwing a sheaf of papers on the desk.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t recognize it?”
I got a little closer and poked at the stack with a single finger. “No, I really don’t.” I looked him in the eye. “Honestly. I’ve never seen any of those papers before.”
“They’re from Mort’s place.”
“What?”
“I told you, I wasn’t about to get pinned in his pile of crap and have nothing to show for it. I left them in my car after the emergency room. They slipped under the console; I didn’t go through them until tonight.”
“The expired Enfamil coupons.”
Alex wasn’t fazed. “I got lucky. A few of them were of use.”
“Okay,” I said with a shrug. “But I don’t know what any of these are. I don’t recognize any of them. Should I? Are they mine or something?”
He immediately looked away from me and grabbed a few sheets, shoving them under my nose. “I thought these were kind of interesting.”
I looked down at the gridded sheets. “What are they?”
“I’m assuming pages from Mort’s calendar. See? Doctor appointment, shit delivery.”
I reluctantly took the pages. “Okay . . .”
Alex looked at me, the rage radiating off him in waves.
“I don’t see what you want me to—” I stopped, my chest suddenly tightening.
A few of the boxes were marred with Mort’s messy scribbles, but only one box had writing on it that was legible and in color: a big red circle and the word Sampson. The calendar date was the exact day that Sampson appeared at my front door. “Oh my God.”
“How come I had to find out from Hoarder Mort about Sampson, Lawson?”
“I—I—” The words were truly caught in my throat.
“I asked you point blank and you lied to my face. Multiple times. You’ve held up our investigation. Now another person is dead.”
I looked up, narrowing my eyes. “Oh, no. Don’t you put that on me. I didn’t kill anyone. I was trying to protect someone.”
“I wasn’t accusing you. If you feel guilty for something, that’s all you. I’m just trying to clarify what our relationship was.”
“Was?”
“Are we just friends? Colleagues? Were you using me to let your pals at the UDA get one over on us?”
“Friends?” I said to my lap. “We’re more than friends.”
Alex tucked a finger under my chin and tilted my head up to face him. “Are we?”
He let the question hang between us and I could feel the tension in the air.
Alex pulled a tiny silver key from his pocket and held it up for me to see. Silently, he pushed it into the keyhole and the cuffs clicked open.
“I’m not using you, Alex. I wasn’t trying to get one over on you.”
“But you didn’t feel like you could trust me enough to tell me about Sampson. Even when I asked.”
I swallowed hard, the tears rimming my eyes mirrored in his hard ones. “Sampson asked me not to tell anyone.”
“I asked you to tell me. We could have saved a lot of time.”
“Time?” I straightened. “You mean because Sampson is responsible for all these murders.”
Alex shrugged, noncommittal. “Look at the calendar, Lawson. The dates match up.”
“But it’s not true! And I have proof it’s not. There’s another werewolf. The one we saw in North Beach!”
“You know that for a fact?”
“You saw him, Alex.”
“I saw a werewolf, Lawson. I have no idea if it was or wasn’t Sampson.”
“It wasn’t,” I said, my voice sounding small.
Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Did he tell you that?”
I nodded, suddenly slightly less certain.
“Was it also Sampson who told you to go see Mort?”
I didn’t answer and Alex hung his head. “I’m just looking at the evidence, Lawson.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you!” I stood up so fast my chair went sputtering back, bouncing off the wall a second time. “Because you’d rush to judgment.”
Alex shook his head. “We’d treat Sampson like any other person of interest.”
“Don’t you mean ‘suspect’? And you would not treat Sampson like anyone else because you know what he is.”
“So do you.”
I jabbed myself in the chest. “I also know who he is. He’s being framed, Alex, I’m almost sure of it. Or another wolf is tailing him and he’s the one responsible. It’s not Sampson. It’s not.”
“Where is he, Lawson?”