A Twisted Love Story(28)

Karen’s shoes cost $19.99 on clearance. They’re also real leather.

She feels bad for the cops who have to interview him. Not easy to get information out of someone who isn’t used to being questioned by anyone.

“Karen? What are you doing here?”

Louis Knox, another detective, is standing behind her. They’ve been working together for years. She pretended to be happy for Louis when he was promoted to detective before she was, and he pretended to believe it.

He calls her Karen, as everyone else does, because Colglazier is not the ideal surname for a detective. For a while, the other cops called her Cole but it didn’t stick. Karen did. That was long before the name became popular on social media, before she was a meme instead of a human being. She uses it to her advantage, because people have a preconceived notion about who she is. Acting against type catches them off guard.

“I heard a woman was assaulted,” she says to Louis. “It was on the scanner.”

“That’s the story, yeah. But it’s a murder investigation.”

“Lot of blood.”

“She was standing here.” Louis points to a desk. There’s blood on top and on the floor in front of it. The only clean surface is the center of the desk. “She grabbed the scissors and stabbed him in the neck.”

The jugular. Explains all the blood, along with the clear spot on the desk. That’s where the blood hit the woman instead.

She must have been covered in it.

Louis is right: Karen has no reason to be here. When she first heard about the incident on the police scanner, she ignored it. Not her problem. But then she recognized the address, because she had been here to talk with Wes Harmon.

“Who was he?” she says.

“Tanner Duncan. Head of the sales department.” Louis checks his phone, where he always keeps his notes. “The assistant did it. Bianca . . . Bianca Mercado.”

Karen remembers her. Pretty, young, and very professional. The buttoned-up-tight kind.

“Where is she now?” Karen says.

“Hospital.”

“She’s hurt?”

“Physically, I don’t think so.” Louis shrugs, his jacket rising a few inches, because his shoulders are that big. “But she was hysterical.”

Louis is called away, giving Karen a chance to study the scene a little closer. Besides being covered in blood, the top of the desk looks nothing like the one in the lobby. The pen holder is knocked over, the sticky notes are all over the place, even the blotter is crooked. Bianca had been grasping for something to hit Tanner with.

The Russian nesting dolls are particularly odd. They’re open, all of them, from large to small. She wouldn’t have had time to do all that while being attacked—if that’s what happened. But she had done it at some point.

Two theories come to mind. Either a nervous habit, or because something was hidden inside the last one. Something she needed at that moment, late at night, before the altercation with her boss.

A question she would ask Bianca, if she were a detective on the case. Too bad she isn’t.

The door to Wes’s office is open. The others are closed. Karen can see straight into it, all the way to the window and the dark sky behind it. The chair at the desk is pushed back a little.

He isn’t here, though. Maybe he had been. Maybe he left in a rush. Maybe he saw what happened. The security card swipes could show that, or the cameras, depending on the angle in the parking lot.

Or maybe Wes had left his door open.

She walks back to the elevator, turning all of this around in her head, trying to put the picture together. The jigsaw needs more pieces.

However, she did learn what she wanted to know. Wes Harmon wasn’t the victim.

Too bad. That would’ve made everything so easy.





25




The email arrives when Wes is still in Ivy’s bed. It comes from the CEO’s assistant, Abigail, and the whole staff is copied.

    The Siphon office will be closed today due to an emergency. Details to come.



He smiles. The fire alarm probably went off again, triggering the sprinklers. It happened once before, and they were out of the office for almost a week. Wes puts the phone down and rolls over, sliding an arm around Ivy.

His house is small, with only two bedrooms, and he picked out all the furniture, including the bed. But he still likes hers better. It’s so much more comfortable. Could be the sheets or the pillow-top mattress. Or maybe it’s because the bed smells like her. And if he’s in it, so is she.

She wakes up and buries her head in his shoulder. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

“Time?”

“A little after seven.”

“Shouldn’t you be in the shower by now?” she says. She always teases him about the military precision of his routine. Her mornings are far more chaotic.

“I don’t have to go in today,” he says. “Some problem at the building.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She snuggles a little closer. “I’d take the day off if I could.”

“You can’t call in sick?”

“Our weekly meeting is this morning. It’s the one thing I really shouldn’t miss.”

“Too bad,” he says.