Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

for the short ride to the waiting ambulance.
    “Do your intro again,” the director said.
    Without being told, Tawny stepped away from the two cops so that the first camera could shoot the scene behind her while the second one would keep her in a close-up.
    “This is Tawny Dawn, reporting live from the parking lot of…”
    Sam yanked off his tie and walked away to question the crime techs who were still in the trailer. If sweet Tawny needed anything from him, she’d have to splice it together from the first five interviews.

Chapter 27
    Glendale
    Thursday night
    Kate glanced out the peephole of her front door, then started opening locks to let Sam in.
    “You look like hell,” she said.
    “Comes from interviewing clients of recent corpses.”
    “The Purcells?”
    Sam shut the door behind him with his heel and shot the bolts before the thirty-second grace period on Kate’s alarm system ran out. “How did you know?”
    She waved toward the TV set in the living room.
    Though the sound was muted, Sam didn’t have any trouble placing the scene. Beneath a pitiless sun in an unshaded parking lot, two sacked up bodies were being loaded into an ambulance. The camera zoomed in for a close-up, saw no blood, and drew back to focus on the immaculately painted, suitably solemn face of a young blonde female who looked like she’d started life as a Barbie doll and would end it as a cosmetic surgeon’s wife. Her well-painted lips moved. Words crawled across the bottom of the screen.
    Sam and Mario, freshly shaved, wearing suit and tie and white shirt, were standing behind the reporter, looking officially impassive.It had been a hard act to pull off while explaining how a motor coach full of FBI agents hadn’t tumbled to two murders going down a stone’s throw away.
    “She pronounced Mario’s name like a native Spanish speaker,” Sam said. “Is her name really Tawny Dawn?”
    Kate shrugged. “You’re the one who talked to her.”
    “Like I had a choice.” He gritted his teeth against a yawn.
    “What really happened?” Kate said. “And don’t give me the same line of condescending bullshit you gave to Tawny baby.”
    “Mike Purcell was bound with duct tape, carved up some around the genitals, thighs, and neck, and then murdered. Apparently, the wife was an accident. Couldn’t breathe much through her nose and couldn’t open her mouth because of the duct tape wrapped around it. It took a while, but she suffocated. Probably after her husband bled out next to her in bed.”
    Kate ran her hands up and down her arms.
    “Chilly?” he asked sardonically. “Turn off the air conditioner.”
    Her head came up. She started to take a chunk out of him for being cold enough to freeze a stadium, then saw all over again how weary he looked.
    Interviewing corpses.
    “Your job sucks,” she said.
    “It has its moments,” he agreed. “You got any coffee?”
    “Is that what CIs do?” she asked lightly, trying to shift the mood. “Keep their agents in coffee?”
    Instead of smiling at her joke, he turned back toward the front door. “Forget it. I’ll—”
    “Of course I have coffee,” she cut in, putting her hand on his arm to hold him back from the door. “There’s a pot in my workroom, if you don’t mind using my cup. The dishwasher is full and I haven’t—”
    “Right now, I’d drink coffee out of a dirty shoe.”
    She didn’t have to lead him to the workroom; he knew exactly where it was. Another muted television was on in that room. Interviews with people who had walked through the employee parkinglot last night seemed to be a specialty. Tawny was flogging it hard to lead the six o’clock news.
    Sam glanced away and hoped that tomorrow wasn’t another slow news day. He really hated talking to earnest young things who were trained to look horrified one moment and segue into a chirpy sign-off the next.
    He poured himself a cup of coffee, drank it down in two long gulps, and poured another, trying to wash away the taste of the bloody crime scene.
    “Sit down before you fall down,” Kate said, shoving one of her rolling work chairs at him.
    “Thanks.” He sat heavily and finished off the second cup of coffee. “Sure tastes better than the crime scene or the morgue.”
    She stood close to him, uncertain of what to do. This was a side of Special Agent Sam Groves she hadn’t suspected existed. Worn. Haunted.
    Way too human.
    “Have you eaten anything today?” Kate asked.
    “More than I