In Plain Sight

“I’ve already been through it twice,” Jan told him. She’d figured out a way to get Danny Ruple to cooperate with her. And as soon as she had that piece of business taken care of, she could go home. Check her mail. And if she wasn’t too late, enjoy some of her neighbor’s nonsense before dinner.

“I pulled it before lunch,” Andrew told her, frowning. “Right after we talked about making the deal with Ruple.”

Jan was going to do something she’d never done before; charge and prosecute a defendant solely on a detective’s hunch—and the circumstantial evidence she’d collected when she’d tried to bring the case to justice two years before. She’d probably lose and waste the state’s money on a long and grueling jury trial. But if bringing in the man Ruple was sure had raped and brutally murdered U of A student Lorna Zeidel, a couple of years before would get her Hall’s conviction, she figured the state would be getting its money’s worth.

Andrew continued to rifle through the files.

“Maybe someone put it back,” Jan suggested. Files did not disappear in the county attorney’s office. And Andrew was too obsessive to admit that he might only have thought he’d put the file on her desk. He was usually too efficient to have forgotten. But he was also an exhausted first-time father—to a newborn who wasn’t sleeping through the night.

“Who would’ve done that?” He had the entire box in one arm as he sorted through it, piece by piece.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t. Nancy, her secretary, would never take a file from her desk. Nor would anyone else. “But could you check?”

“Maybe it fell in the trash.”

From the far right corner of her desk to the near left one? Andrew’s statement validated her exhaustion theory. She would’ve teased him, if she’d thought he had enough energy left to get the joke. Or if she wasn’t bothered by his apparent carelessness.

“You check the file room and I’ll go through the trash,” she said instead, pulling the metal bin out from beneath her desk.

Half an hour later, Jan accompanied Andrew from their third-story office, past the potted plants on the ground-floor atrium, to their cars in the parking lot by Cherry Avenue. It was a nightly ritual, one Andrew insisted upon.

The file, containing all the notes Jan had collected on Lorna Zeidel, was still missing.

And Ruple had not been called. Jan was looking forward to the frozen dinner waiting at home for her.

Jan almost stopped at the mailbox as she drove in, rather than parking her car in the garage first. Not because she thought it would be safer or because she was turning over a new time-management leaf, but because she was thinking of Simon and he’d suggested she do so. Not that she expected anything from her friendly neighbor, ever, but tonight she was kind of depleted and could use some of his easy humor. Easy, because he expected nothing in return. No borrowed cups of flour. Or chats on the lawn. Or dates.

Of course, the cup of flour she’d be happy to give him. Jan grinned, as she waited for the automatic garage door to rise a few slow inches at a time, picturing him in the kitchen, making cookies with as much sloppiness as he showed in the way he dressed. She’d hate to have to clean up that mess.

The overhead light popped on as the door opened and Jan started to pull forward, but then stopped. What was that shiny substance on her garage floor? It hadn’t been there that morning.

Putting the car in Park, she got out, not frightened but tense as she moved closer. It looked like glass. There were shards everywhere. A glance at the window showed her where it had come from—there was a hole the size of a softball through the middle of the pane. Had some neighbor kid thrown a wild pitch? It happened. And it could be fixed.

Then she saw the brick on the opposite side of the garage and her heart began to pound. No way could this be part of a ball game. Whoever had thrown the heavy object through her window had done so with enough force to embed it in the drywall on the far side.

“Don’t touch it.”

Yelping as she swung around, Jan almost dropped with relief when she realized the voice was Simon’s. “I wasn’t planning to,” she told him. “This doesn’t look like an accident, and I know better than to tamper with evidence.”

“You want me to call the police?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got this cop friend downtown,” she quoted an old play, making light of the fact that she’d just come home and found her property vandalized. It was a brick through a garage window, she told herself. Certainly not life-threatening. Or even particularly damaging.

Her nervous system was overreacting. Dialing the downtown precinct, Jan told them what had happened and was grateful when they said they’d send someone right over.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Simon said, as soon as Jan got off the phone. “When you didn’t show up at the mailbox and I saw your car in the garage, I got curious.”

“I’m glad you did,” she admitted, a little shaky. “It’s creepy standing here alone, knowing someone was here while I was gone, vandalizing my stuff.”

A window wasn’t all that much. But the guy couldn’t have known what else might be in the garage.

Of course, if he’d meant to do real damage, he’d have thrown the thing into the house, making all her possessions fair game.

“You been working on anything in particular that would piss someone off?” Simon asked, sitting beside her on the stoop in front of her house as they waited for the police. She’d called from her cell phone and was still holding it in her hand. Just in case.

A vision of the way Hall had looked at her the day before flashed through her mind. She shook her head. Twice. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she told her neighbor. No sense in giving life to fear. It only became truly dangerous when it was given the power of acknowledgment.

Besides, the Jacob Halls of the world used things that were far more dangerous than bricks. Even as warnings.

Didn’t they?

“This ever happen before?”

Simon’s slacks were wrinkled. She liked them that way. Unlike most of the men she dealt with on a day-to-day basis, being with him felt comfortable. Relaxed.

Safe.

Now, where had that word come from?

“Uh, no,” she stammered, when she realized he was still waiting for her answer. “I’ve had letters at the office. Threats. But nothing that ever amounted to anything.”

She glanced down the street, met Simon’s gaze, and focused on the phone between her hands. “I doubt this had anything to do with my job.”

“Probably not.”

She looked back at him. Was he serious? With Simon it was hard to tell. “You really don’t think so?”

The shake of his head was decisive. “I’d guess it’s a neighborhood thing.”

She took a slightly easier breath. He was probably right. It made sense. Except that she couldn’t think of anyone nearby who might be mad at her, let alone angry enough to vandalize her house.

“Did you see anything?” She should’ve asked before. Simon was always around. Aware. How else could he know when she was at her mailbox most nights?

“Nope.”

“You sound as if you think you should have,” Jan said. There was something different about him tonight. Something deeper; more serious. Or maybe she was just coloring everything with the uneasiness she’d begun to feel. “You certainly aren’t responsible for what goes on at my house,” she told him.

“Five days out of five, my life consists of sitting at my computer staring out at an empty street. There’s a school bus that comes and goes with boring regularity, and that’s about it. Today, I’m not watching, and I might actually have seen something that could’ve been useful.” He sounded disgusted with himself.

Interesting. The man was a self-supporting published author—something a lot of people aspired to but few ever managed. He was his own boss, set his own hours, dressed however he wanted, worked from home—a dream job. His work educated thousands of people. And he thought he was useless? Who’d have figured?

Route 66 was a lot like Flagstaff itself—an innocuous two-lane road without a high-class establishment in sight, and famous anyway. And the Museum Club, with its low-grade gravel parking lot and attention-getting giant guitar sign out front, followed suit. A comfortable laid-back hangout for locals, the bar was also on many tourist lists as a famous historical site, and according to the signs Simon read as he pulled open the door, the roadhouse hosted live country-and-western bands and dancing on Friday and Saturday nights.

He neither liked country music nor dancing.

Tuesday night was karaoke night.

Simon loathed karaoke.