I panicked, holding David’s hand tighter. Without even the hint of a warning, David yanked at that hand and made me move to the side and away from the front door, pushing me to lie on the floor and landing on top of me.
Detective Laura Moreno barged into the apartment then. She wore a bulletproof vest and was followed by at least ten uniformed police officers. All of them pointed guns at Fred Appleton.
It all got blurry. Fred started yelling, but he wasn’t the only one throwing loud remarks. David buried my body under his and dragged us slowly behind the couch. Someone knocked Fred out. The police finally handcuffed him and read him his rights. He kept protesting, even battered and in handcuffs. They took him out of the apartment and most of the agents left with him. Detective Moreno came to me and David then.
“You two okay?” she said, while we made our way up to sit on the couch. I felt exhausted.
“Considering I never liked him as a boss and he’s tried killing metwicein a day,” I said. “Absolutely. Never been better.”
“The sucker has been ahead of us all day.” Detective Moreno seemed to share my dislike for Fred, and that made me like her for the first time. “Glad he finally decided to stop.”
“By showing up here?” She had to be fucking kidding me. Perhaps I didn’t like her after all.
“By being stupid enough to show up here and let your periodista use his cell phone,” Detective Moreno explained, pointing to David. I liked that she referred to David as “my periodista.” It had a nice ring to it.
“You weren’t taking notes?” I asked David, realizing what he’d been doing all along.
“What? Of course I wasn’t taking notes! I was texting Detective Moreno, who thankfully wasn’t too far from here. She gave us her card the first time we went to the police station, remember?”
“And you memorized her number in your burner phone?” I was still confused.
“You never know when it may come handy.” For once, I was so happy he was the most methodically annoying and organized person I’d ever met.
“Need you two to come to the station again and go over what happened,” Detective Moreno said.
“Nuh-uh,” I said, shaking my head.
“Nope,” David agreed. “You have it all there in writing, on the several detailed texts I sent you. I don’t think I can put it better than that. Believe me, I’m the most eloquent in writing. And if youreallyneed us to tell you what happened, we can drop by the station on Monday morning. But we’re done for the day.”
“I really need a shower.” I decided not to tell her what else I needed, but the unmade bed in my apartment was staring at me with lascivious eyes and calling the wordsiestaat me.
“Okay, I’m gonna let you off the hook this time,” Detective Moreno conceded, checking her cell phone and presumably going over David’s communications. “Try to get some rest. You two look at least five years older than the first time we met.”
Ouch! Seriously, ouch!
She made us promise we’d be at the LAPD Downtown station at 9 a.m. sharp on Monday. It had taken us a couple of minutes to convince her she really didn’t want me there at 7:30 on Monday because I would be completely useless so early in the morning, and extremely pissy.
“Good luck with your love life, by the way,” David told her while she was leaving. “I hope it stops being a complete mess soon. Life tends to have a way of taking us by surprise. I say that from experience.”
“I doubt it. I’m going to be undercover in a few weeks, and that’s hardly the time or place to meet anyone,” she said.
David shrugged. “You never know.”
When we finally finished saying goodbye to Detective Laura Moreno and closed my apartment’s door—and bolted it—David turned to me.
“Such a skilled detective,” he commented.
“Oh my god!” I said. “Have you ever metanyoneyou didn’t like? She just said we’ve aged five years in two days! Why are you so nice?”
“Is that a problem? One of our many irreconcilable differences?” he asked with a smile.
“Not really, I guess,” I said, and I realized I meant it. For the first time in months—no, years—I didn’t mind him being the nicest, preppiest person I knew. “It’s just, she’s been eyeing us, more particularly you, as the culprits for this Dashing Henry debacle for days. And you still manage not to hold a grudge against her and think she’s good at her job! She only deduced Fred was the killer once he tried killing me the first time, remember?”
“You do realize she just saved our asses, right?” David sounded quite reasonable.
“She was just doing her job, which, if the LAPD had done better, wouldn’t have permitted Fred to try and kill metwice.”
“Do you think that’s what he was going to do?” David said, with a chill.
