Fall Guy

entering the academy.
    „Because he wasn't my friend, my brother, my partner?“
    Brody's expression didn't change.
    „That doesn't matter now, does it? For whatever reason, I'm in it. It's too late to change that, way too late.“
    „And you'll see it through.“
    „I will.“ Thinking that I, too, was a product of my family history, like Timothy O'Fallon, like Maggie. „I can't believe what some people live through,“ I said, „what they live with. The whole family, every last one of them, it's been ...“
    That's when it happened, an oceanic force pulling at me, taking me where I didn't want to go, where it was too damn dangerous to go. I reached for him, putting my hands on his shoulders, leaning toward him until I was kissing his mouth, tasting the coffee he'd been drinking, taking in the heat of his body, the scent of his skin. He reached around me with both arms and pulled me closer, kissing me back. For a moment, everything else disappeared, all those people, all those questions. For a moment, death disappeared. Then I let go, pushed myself back, the sadness rushing back at me.
    A cop. A secretive workaholic with an aversion to showing emotions. What the hell was I thinking?
    But, of course, I hadn't been thinking. That had been the point. Hadn't it?
    Brody slipped his foot out from beneath Dashiell's head so that he could get up. „I'm going to go now,“ he said.
    I stood, too. „Because if you stay, we'll both regret it in the morning.“ More a statement to myself than a question directed at him.
    „No,“ he said, surprised. „Not that.“ He reached for my face, gently wiping my eyes with his fingers. „Because someone's in your bed.“
    I thought he might start to laugh, but he didn't. He was dead serious.
    What the hell was he thinking?
    I began shaking my head. „Just like that? No dinner, no movie, no flowers?“
    Brody smiled. We followed him to the gate. I unlocked it and held it open. But he didn't leave. He just stood there looking at me as if I were the hunk of cake I'd neglected to give him with his coffee. Then he put his warm hand on my cheek, bent to ruffle one of Dashiell's ears, turned and headed back toward Tim's house.

CHAPTER 24
    After Brody left, I let the cold water out of the tub and ran another bath. Soaking in the hot water, I closed my eyes and must have fallen asleep because when I opened them again, the water was as cold as the water I'd let out of the tub what seemed like moments before. I opened the drain and turned on the hot water, sinking back into the tub as it got hot again, thinking about Brody, about the warmth of his hand against my face, the taste of his mouth. But just as quickly as that image came, it disappeared. Now I was thinking about someone else in a bathtub, the hot water running.
    Only that time it was the shower running.
    And that time the drain had been obstructed.
    I was thinking about Timothy O'Fallon falling into the tub, the gun dropping from his hand, the washcloth and his foot stopping up enough of the drain so that the tub begins to fill. I thought about the gun lying on the bottom of the tub, soaking, as I was, in hot soapy water, and then I opened my eyes and looked at my hands, the fingertips puffy and wrinkled from being in the water so long, not even looking like my own hands anymore.
    What would have happened to the trace evidence on O'Fallon's hand?
    Gone.
    And the prints on the gun?
    Also gone.
    Parker had messed with the scene as well, turning off the water, letting the tub drain. And there'd been that rookie cop who threw up in the bathroom, then scoured it in an attempt to cover up his weakness.
    The scene was a mess. Had it all been an accident, the work of a bumbling fool and a raw beginner? Or not?
    Suddenly, lying in all that hot, soapy water, I was no longer tired. I was wide-awake. I was feeling the cold stab of truth.
    What if the washcloth hadn't stopped up the drain by accident? What if O'Fallon's foot had landed somewhere else, to the side of the drain, for example, or in front of it? What if the drain had been stopped up on purpose, to destroy the trace evidence? What if someone knew O'Fallon's patterns, his habits, the way a dog knows his master's? What if that person had waited for Tim to take his morning shower, waited, in fact, for him to be shampooing his hair, his eyes closed? What if he had picked that exact time to ease the shower curtain aside, place the gun against O'Fallon's temple and pull the