The Witness

the other cameras caught you poking around inside the suite. Got your lock picks.” As if sympathetic, Brooks let out a breath, shook his head. “Even a fancy lawyer’s going to have a time getting around that, don’t you figure? Could mean a little jail time and put a hurt on your license. And a baby coming. I’d hate for your wife to visit you in jail in her condition.”
    “Jail’s doubtful, but the hurt on my license … Hell.” Roland pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Might be okay there. It’s the first ding on my record.”
    Brooks lifted his shoulders, let them fall. “Might be.”
    “I’m not usually sloppy. I figured the look-around for a breeze. I didn’t spot the cameras.”
    “Don’t be too hard on yourself. They weren’t there until after you stopped by Abigail’s.”
    “Uh-huh.” Now, Roland’s eyes met Brooks’s in perfect understanding. “She, her dog and her Glock scared the hell out of me.”
    “You scared her. She’s a city girl still,” Brooks lied cheerfully. “Alone out there, no close neighbors. Add to that how she makes her living. I’m sure you know that already. Working security, always looking for how people get around it and do what they do? She’s a bit jumpy.”
    “You’d have to be to have security cameras in the woods.”
    “Oh, she’s always experimenting, running programs and what she calls scenarios. It happens you walked into one. Shook her up enough to have her lock herself in the house till I got home. You know, in case you were some ax murderer instead of a lost photographer.”
    “She didn’t look shook up,” Roland muttered.
    “Well, Abigail, she puts on a good front, and the dog helps her confidence. She told me about you, and I had to wonder. You gave her your real name.”
    “ID was in my pack. She had the gun. I didn’t want to annoy her with a lie if she checked my pack. But I didn’t consider she, or you, would run me.”
    “Cops. We’re just naturally cynical and suspicious. So, Roland, here’s the thing. I know who’d hire a PI from a fancy firm to poke around at Abigail, at me, at the Conroys and the hotel.”
    “I can’t confirm or deny without my legal counsel.”
    “I’m not asking you to, I’m telling you. Lincoln Blake would do close to anything to get that asshole son of his off, including hiring out for somebody to plant false evidence, make false statements.”
    Where he’d been slouched and sulky in his seat, Roland now straightened. “Listen. I don’t go there, not for any client, not for any fee. Neither does the firm. We wouldn’t have the reputation we do otherwise.”
    “Off the record, I’ll say I believe that. But on it?” Brooks gave a careless shrug.
    “Is there a deal coming along?”
    “Might be. Russ Conroy’s my oldest and closest friend. His parents are family to me, and his mama broke down and cried after she saw what that fucker and his friends did to that suite. It’s considerably better now, but …”
    Brooks picked up a file, handed it to Roland. “We took those after Justin Blake and his idiot friends got done with the place.”
    “Jesus,” Roland muttered, as he examined the photos.
    “That kind of damage? That’s not careless or stupid or childish. It’s downright mean. That’s just what Justin Blake is.”
    Brooks reached over to hand the file back. “And when the fucker managed to make bail, he comes out to the house of the woman I’m in love with, stoned, armed, in the middle of the night. He was stupid enough to take a jab at me with the knife he’d brought to slash my tires with. He upset my woman, and, Roland, that upsets me.
    “You might see why she reacted the way she did when you came hiking on down to the house.”
    “Yeah, maybe. Yeah.”
    “Justin caused over a hundred thousand in damages to that suite, he punctured my tire, tried to puncture me, and scared my lady. And that’s over and above him being a pain in my ass since I took this job. He’s going down for what he’s done, Roland. I will make it my mission in life to see to it. He’s earned it, and if I gave a rat’s flea-bitten ass, I’d say he needs it. He’s got something twisted in him, the kind of thing we’ve both seen in others who end up dead or killing somebody.”
    “I’d like to say something, off the record.”
    “All right, then. Just between you and me.”
    “I don’t like working for Blake. He’s a son of a bitch. There’s nothing about his son you just said I