She didn’t want him postponing his trip with Emma. Brittany was such a bitch she was practically a nutcase about his visitation rights.
David had been hired as her assistant, but he often acted like a bodyguard. Or, at least, a protector. Max didn’t want a bodyguard, but after a particularly violent trial she covered eighteen months ago that instigated death threats, Ben had hired David. And he’d saved her life in Chicago when a wacko went after her. Now Max depended on him more than anyone else in her life, which made her uncomfortable. Maybe if she’d had sex with him it would be different—she tended to maintain the upper hand once she’d slept with a guy—but David was gay and sex was out of the question. He took both parts of his job—as her assistant and as her bodyguard—seriously. She sometimes missed being completely independent—of the show, of Ben, of an occasionally overprotective assistant.
David said, “Whoever attacked her knew she was meeting with you.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Don’t be dense.”
Max watched an unmarked sedan with government plates drive into the parking garage. A female detective—Gorman—stepped out of the car and talked to the officer who’d irritated Max earlier. They looked over at her. “I’m fine, David. Ben hired you to protect me when I’m working for the show, and this is personal. Really. The cops are here, all is well in the world.” She was being sarcastic, but she was tired and worried. “I was just calling to keep you in the loop and ask you to follow up on Dru’s condition. If something changes, let me know. But you’d damn well better be on that plane to Hawaii tomorrow.”
The detective strode over to where Max had been told to wait.
“If you get yourself in trouble, call,” David said.
“If I get myself into trouble? Ha.” She hung up. David knew her well. She followed trouble because that was her job. But she didn’t want him here. She needed the freedom to do her own thing.
Ben wouldn’t like her working on the Jason Hoffman murder because it would take time—time he wanted on the Bachman trial. Also, the Hoffman case wasn’t “sexy” enough for him. Ben had been trying to get her to write about Lindy’s murder and Kevin’s trial—if he knew that Kevin had contacted her four months ago, they’d have argued every day about whether she should pursue it or not. So she never told him. And she wasn’t going to tell him now—he’d insist she do a show, and she’d have to tell him to go to hell. She didn’t want to quit.
Not yet, anyway.
Detective Gorman glared at her. “Who were you talking to?”
“A friend.”
“About what?”
Max checked her temper. “It’s personal.”
“Do you understand the seriousness of this situation?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you should know better than to talk to anyone until you give your statement to me, got it?”
She bit back a sarcastic comment. “Yes, Detective.”
Max didn’t like Gorman. One of Max’s faults—if one listened to Ben—was that she formed knee-jerk opinions of people. Her opinions were based on her experience coupled with the first impression package. Gorman’s first impression package was: tough female detective, angry, competent, chip on her shoulder. From her attire Max suspected she was in debt—cheap shoes and clothes, but with a fondness for jewelry. The diamonds in her ears, for example, were real.
What really irked Max was Gorman’s approach. She watched as Gorman waited for Max to elaborate. It was a technique cops loved, letting the silence hang to get a suspect to continue talking—hopefully to send him to prison.
It took Gorman ten seconds before she spoke. Not very patient. Max had remained silent with cops for upwards of two minutes when she’d been questioned in the past. Two minutes was about Max’s threshold. That’s when she’d say, “I’m leaving.” They’d either let her go or ask more questions.
“Do you know the victim”—Gorman looked at her notes—“Dru Parker?”
“Not well.”
“But you know her.”
“I met her for the first time today.”
“So you don’t know her.”
“I said, not well. I met her at her place of employment, Evergreen—”
“This is rather a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“What?”
“That you just show up here and find her bleeding on the ground.”
“She called to meet with me. She picked the place—”
“You’re telling me that a girl you barely know, who you just met today, agreed to meet with you in a parking lot in the middle of the night?”
“We agreed to meet at Starbucks. She wasn’t there, so I started looking for her. It seemed—”
“Why did you start looking for her?”
“Because an employee said she had been in, but left.”
“How’d you know she was in the parking garage?”
“I didn’t see her car in the lot outside, so I came down here. She’d mentioned she was going to take the train to her mother’s in San Francisco, and I thought—”
Gorman cut her off. “You barely know the girl, but you seem to know a lot about her plans.”
“Stop cutting me off!”
“You’re telling me how to do my job?”
“Someone has to,” Max snapped.