Chapter Five-Exigent Circumstances

 

 

The building's security guard had already given up trying to look like he wasn't watching everyone in the lobby by the time Julian got there.

Adrian was already inside, badge out, talking to a woman in a rumpled blazer who had the particular tired authority of someone who'd been doing this job long enough to stop being surprised by any of it.

"Detective Marsh." She turned when Julian walked up, assessed him in under two seconds, and didn't look impressed. "You'd be the defense attorney."

"Julian Voss. I take it you've heard my name."

"I've heard your name from three different people in the last hour, none of them kindly." Marsh glanced at Adrian. "You want to explain to me why opposing counsel on a murder case is standing in the lobby of my missing person's building at ten-thirty at night?"

"Because Marcus Aldridge is connected to both our cases," Adrian said, "and because I'd rather have Voss where I can see him than chasing this on his own with his investigator two steps ahead of CPD."

"That's almost a compliment," Julian said.

"Don't get used to it." Marsh looked between them another moment, then apparently decided the political math wasn't worth fighting tonight. "Fine. Both of you, upstairs, hands in your pockets, touch nothing. My scene, my rules."

§

The apartment told a story that didn't quite hang together.

The closet door stood open, a gap in the hangers where a suit or two had clearly been pulled in a hurry. The safe in the bedroom closet sat open and empty. A charging cable curled on the nightstand with nothing plugged into it.

But the refrigerator, when Marsh opened it for them with a gloved hand, was full — milk, produce starting to turn, a takeout container from four days ago. The bathroom cabinet still held three prescription bottles with his name on them, half-full.

"Man doesn't grab his passport, his car, and half his suits," Marsh said, "and leave his blood pressure medication behind unless he's not thinking about the parts of his life that take longer than a week to catch up with him."

"So he ran," Adrian said.

"Or he was told to run so fast he didn't have time to think it through." Marsh crouched by the open safe. "Whatever was in here, it's gone. Cash, documents, jewelry — anybody's guess."

Julian crossed to the small desk near the window, the only surface in the apartment that looked untouched by panic — everything squared away, pens in a cup, a landline phone with an answering machine beside it, the kind almost nobody owned anymore.

"He kept a landline," Julian said.

Marsh looked over. "Careful guy. No cell records, no cloud backups, no accidental screenshots. We already pulled it. You're going to want to hear this before it hits anyone's evidence file officially, because in about an hour it's not going to be mine to share anymore."

She hit a button.

The message was three days old, timestamped the night before Preston Hale died. A voice neither of them had heard before — measured, older, achingly familiar in the way a stranger's voice sounds when you've read enough about him to imagine it — filled the small apartment.

"Marcus. It's me. I know you're not going to want to hear this, and I know I don't get to explain it in a voicemail, but I have to try to fix things with Daniel before I lose the last of whatever's left worth fixing. I'm sorry. I never meant for three years to turn into this. Please don't call me back tonight. I need to be a person I can live with, just for a little while, before anything else."

The recording clicked off.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

§

"That's a man ending something," Adrian said finally, quiet.

"That's a man trying to end something," Julian said. "The night before he died. Which means somebody on the other end of that message had about twelve hours to decide how he felt about being left."

"You think Aldridge killed him."

"I think Aldridge just became the single most motivated person in this entire case, and now he's gone." Julian looked at the empty safe again. "I also think whoever tipped Rachel Kim's compliance office wasn't trying to expose an affair. They were trying to make sure somebody looked at Marcus Aldridge before he could disappear clean."

Marsh, listening, didn't disagree, but didn't fully agree either. "That's a working theory. It's not the only one. Grief makes people run too, Voss. So does guilt that has nothing to do with murder."

"So does murder," Adrian said.

"So does murder," Marsh agreed. "Which is why I've got an APB out on his car and a request in for his financials by morning. You two—" she looked between them, something almost amused under the exhaustion "—can go back to hating each other in a courtroom now. I've got a job to do."

§

They ended up on the sidewalk outside, the night gone properly cold, neither of them quite ready to be the one who left first.

"He was trying to go back to Daniel," Adrian said. "The night before he died. Trying to fix it."

"Maybe." Julian looked up at the dark windows of Aldridge's building. "Or maybe that's exactly what somebody wanted us to think when they left an answering machine message conveniently intact in an apartment somebody clearly emptied in a hurry."

Adrian looked at him, something sharpening. "You think it's staged."

"I think I've spent fifteen years not believing the story that's handed to me on a plate, and this one came with a bow on it." Julian pulled his coat tighter. "I could be wrong. I'd like to be wrong, for Daniel's sake. A dead man having a change of heart the night before he died is a story that gets my client out of prison. That should make me happy."

"Does it?"

"It makes me careful." Julian met his eyes. "Every time this case hands me exactly what I need, Adrian, I keep waiting to find out what it cost somebody else."

Adrian didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice had dropped, quieter than the moment strictly needed. "I keep waiting to find out what it's costing me."

Julian didn't ask what he meant. He thought he already knew, and some things were better left unsaid on a cold sidewalk at eleven at night, in front of a building that currently had four CPD units parked outside it.

"Go home, Adrian."

"Yeah." Adrian didn't move for a second longer than the word suggested he would. "You too."

Neither of them moved first, again. It was becoming a pattern.

§

Julian's phone rang at six the next morning, Nora's name on the screen, no preamble.

"They found the car."

Julian was already sitting up. "Where."

"Forest preserve out past Palos Hills. Parked at a trailhead, keys still in it, engine cold enough that it's been sitting since sometime last night." Nora's voice had none of its usual dry edge. "No sign of Aldridge. No note. Trail cameras at the entrance caught him walking in on foot around eleven p.m., alone."

"And walking out?"

There was a pause that told Julian everything before Nora said a word.

"Nobody's found footage of him walking out."