Miranda's apartment was decorated in a style Hanson generously decided to call "I know how to crochet." That brought him up short.
A blanket lay draped over the backs and seats of each of the two armchairs and the couch that crowded the front room. The coffee table had a crocheted table runner, as did the side tables, the kitchen table, the shelves mounted under the windows, and—Hanson quickly discovered—the bedroom dresser. None of them matched. But all were, to his cursory glance, well-crafted and made by someone with skill. And drenched in Febreeze. The kind with Fresh Linen scent that pretended to remove smells by shouting them down.
Once again, Miranda had neglected to disclose important personal information. Nowhere in her profile did she mention the hobby, nor did she carry around yarn and hooks like so many hobbyists did. He thought he'd developed a good impression of who she was, and now there was this.
To his surprise, he wasn't surprised. Inasmuch as he'd given Miranda's character any deep thought, what he saw here was her: Desperate for comfort, with too much time on her hands, and the patience to keep trying until she succeeded.
"Come on," he stated, pulling her through the front door, and trying not to cough at the smell. Though Miranda was still capable of walking under her own power, she had lost the ability to stay upright without support—and that meant Hanson had felt compelled to escort her on the cab ride and then up to the 10th floor apartment where she lived.
At least this one had an elevator.
Miranda giggled, then released a long, easy sigh. "Such a night," she murmured. "D'you ever … ever …" She thrust out a finger, as if to emphasize a point, only to get distracted at its movement and trail off on a third "ever."
"Kitchen's that way." It didn't take much for Hanson to map out the apartment. Only a handful of doors led off the main room, and only one of those was shut. He aimed for it, doing his best to guide Miranda through the obstacle course of chairs, davenports, and end tables. "Which means you need to go this way." To himself, he wondered if all the seating was a relic from when she first started the club, or if it was just so she'd have a way to display her handicrafts. What came first: the chairs or the afghans?
"I need a drink," she stated. Her articulation was the best he'd heard all night.
"No, you don't."
"Do," she argued, throwing her weight toward the kitchen door.
Hanson was bigger and, despite being years away from the fitness records he'd set in the Academy, stronger. He was also sober. Countering her path change, he got her into the bedroom and let Miranda drop onto the bed.
"Think you know someone?" Miranda breathed out, her words barely a whisper. She flopped back on the bed, arms splayed out across the pink and green crocheted blanket covering it. She'd be fine there, Hanson decided. He didn't need to tuck her in, not with as heavy and scratchy as the blanket looked.
He contemplated the snippets of recent conversations he'd heard and the glimpses of personal interactions he'd witnessed. So many of them seemed to conceal a darker, dangerous level, like a layer of new snow over a Dumpster in a Manhattan alley. More than usual, in fact. Everyone had things they were lying about, either to themselves or others. That he spent so much of his life dealing with the dregs of humanity didn't mean he had to make the mistake of thinking everything and everyone he saw was part of it. Except when they were. He shrugged, though Miranda wasn't watching him to see it. "Mostly," he said, "people are exactly who they say they are. You just gotta pay attention to who they say that is."
Miranda stared toward the ceiling for long enough that Hanson thought she might have fallen asleep with her eyes open. She certainly hadn't heard his words of wisdom. Once again, his voice of experience was the victim of poor timing. He took her shoes off and refilled a glass of water that had been sitting on the nightstand, reluctant to leave until he knew she wouldn't try to get another drink. "Thought I knew him," she said.
Only then did he notice that her head had lolled and her gaze now pointed to the laptop that sat on a small desk opposite the bed. A file cabinet was pressed up next to the desk on one side with a printer on top. A stack of printouts sat in the tray. Legally, he couldn't boot up the laptop if it was off and click through whatever files he found there. Legally, he couldn't go through the file cabinet. But nothing prevented him from his glancing at the paper on top of the stack, and if he happened to bump the mouse and bring the laptop screen to life….
The computer was off, but the printouts stole his breath. He "accidentally" knocked them off the tray, which meant he was now obligated to pick each one up. They were screen grabs of a conversation being held through some social media platform he didn't recognize. What he did recognize is that the name on the account was not Miranda's. It wasn't any of the names he'd seen affiliated with the club. The fake identity could have been for one of the normal reasons. She might have been taking entirely reasonable precautions to protect her identity. She might have been catfishing. He couldn't tell from this sample, and the shuddering snore from behind him meant he couldn't ask.
She'd been talking to a guy whose name he did recognize. At least, he recognized the last name. Gerring. The same as Miranda's. He'd bet anything this was her latest ex-husband. Gerring had been flirting with Miranda's fake identity, likely unaware of who sat on the other side of the screen.
Or maybe he was.
The final exchange—presumably the one that had prompted her to print the whole conversation out—should have been banal. It should have been as innocent as pickup lines went. It wasn't.
Hanson rocked back on his heels, the final page of the conversation clenched in his hand. As he listened to Miranda's continued snoring, he suddenly understood the question she'd tried so hard to ask him before she passed out and why she'd been drinking so heavily. She was so desperate for a relationship, to the point of having started a singles club just so she could meet people, and this is what she got for it.
Tommorow night? Ur place? Ill bring the coffee.
Below the text, her ex-husband had helpfully embellished his offer with a picture of a K-cup.
Hanson watched Jo cuff the sword-wielding maniac and wrestle him to the floor of the warehouse where they'd caught him. Police work. One day it was solving a murder through getting a drunk woman safely home to a cozy apartment, and the next it was wrestling violent criminals in filthy, abandoned buildings. While he couldn't avoid the latter, the closer Hanson got to the golden watch, the more he preferred the former.
He hefted the sword the maniac had dropped, surprised at its weight. For a second—a tiny fraction of a second—he considered swinging the sword. Just to see how it felt. There had to be a reason both the maniac and Adamson chose to carry this type of weapon. Adamson. The mystery man.
To his surprise, Adamson had played both the role of informant and bait in the capture. Snitch made sense. Hanson had no doubt that Adamson was more than he let on. Why he'd play bait was a different question—and one that Hanson suspected Henry already had the answer to, based on the quiet words they'd stepped out of the warehouse to exchange. Between the quantity of weapons they'd caught Adamson carrying, his ability to switch accents on the fly, and the fluency of his fighting just now, the picture Hanson was forming of his man seemed less illegal and more extra legal. Despite this, Hanson allowed himself a tight smile.
He'd closed two cases in one week. Quite a boost to the spirits.
He'd needed it, too. Something had gone down between Jo and Henry that had them both wound tight and snapping with tension. He recognized a lovers' spat when he saw one, though Jo hadn't volunteered any details. She was professional that way.
Hanson read the maniac his rights, then helped Jo get him back to his feet and out the door. She'd arrived in a department vehicle, so he hauled the perp toward it, ready to toss him in the back seat and call it a night. Two cases closed. Two murderers off the streets. There but for the paperwork went he.
"You'll want a Russian translator," Adamson called after them. To Henry, he said more that Hanson couldn't catch because he was too busy grumbling to himself. If the perp didn't speak English, and therefore couldn't understand his rights, they could lose this case on a technicality. And Hanson had no doubt that if this guy landed back on the streets, it would only be a matter of time before he started slicing people up with his sword again. He pulled out his phone to call the station so they could have a translator waiting when they arrived. Given the late hour, they'd need all the lead time they could get.
"As it happens, I speak Russian," Adamson added.
Hanson sighed. Why hadn't he expected that?
Adamson stepped past Jo, who had her notebook out and pen poised. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his jeans and he ambled toward the car as if he were spending a lazy afternoon on the beach rather than strolling through the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse in the dark of night. The croaking of frogs from the nearby river filled the air, the only thing undisturbed by his presence.
"Hey! Statement." Jo waved the notebook and pen.
"Let's get him taken care of first." Adamson gestured with his chin at the maniac, who now sat hunched in the back of Jo's car, his thick-featured face pulled into a murderous glower. "I give you my word that I won't run off before you're done with me." He shot an inscrutable look at Henry. "We had a deal, after all."
Hanson didn't know what that deal was, nor did he care. No badges had been flashed, no acronyms dropped. None of that deal with official, which gave Hanson plausible deniability about whether it even existed. All that mattered was getting the maniac properly processed. He nodded his approval, got the sword tagged and stowed in the trunk, then turned his attention to a different matter. Heading back into the warehouse, he called over his shoulder, "Hey, Morgan, you got a minute?"
Henry hesitated only a moment, no doubt correctly deducing that Jo would wait for him at the car since she couldn't risk leaving Adamson and the guy who'd just tried to kill him together, unsupervised. Hanson couldn't have crafted a better opportunity if he'd had weeks to plan.
A layer of grit covered the concrete floor of the warehouse, disturbed only where the five people in the building that night had walked or tumbled through it. Hanson hunkered down in front of one of those patches and squinted at it until Henry did the same. Anyone who walked in on them wouldn't see anything suspicious.
The height and emptiness of the warehouse amplified sounds, so Hanson kept his voice down."You and Adamson seem pretty tight. You trust him?"
Henry jerked, as if aborting a glance in Adamson's direction. "I cannot speak to his character, except to say that he's given me no reason not to extend him the benefit of doubt." He pressed his lips together in thought, then conceded. "So far, he has kept his promises."
A "but" seemed to be hanging at the end of the last word, not that Hanson needed one. "What about that other friend of yours. The young one. Jensen?"
"Richie?" Henry asked. With the way he said the nickname, Henry lost all ability to keep the kid at arm's length, like he had with Adamson. The tone now jibed with their casual, close body language at the bar. Why they were friends, though, still didn't have an answer.
"Richie? Not Rich or Rick? Dick? OK, not that one. Even I could tell he's old enough to have an adult name," Hanson grumbled.
"How did…?" Henry trailed off as he thought back. "Ah ha!" The interjection bounced off the walls, and Hanson made a frantic shushing motion before more overly-loud words followed. Henry cast him an aggrieved look, but complied. "You've been working the poisoning case. The two victims were both affiliated with that… what was it again … oh, yes, a singles' club. What a dreadful thing for people to have to participate in. Members of the larger community used to look out for one another so that no one had to be single, provided they didn't prefer the melancholy life. Given that the club meets at Clancy's Bar, you must have been there the other night." It wasn't a question. Hanson nodded in confirmation anyway. Frowning in sudden concern, Henry asked, "What else did you see there?"
It didn't matter, and Hanson didn't feel like listening to Henry try to come up with a deflection or a lie. Nor was he interested in explaining how he'd learned the kid's name. "Just answer the question: Do you trust the kid?"
Henry shifted his weight, drawing in on himself. "I don't believe it matters any longer if I do." Grit had smudged the gloss of his shoes; he made no effort to dust it off. "I have reason to believe that he has also become a victim of our man outside … though perhaps I'll yet be proven wrong."
That was more candor than Hanson had expected, and a surprising amount coming from Henry. The conversation he'd eavesdropped on again flashed through his mind as he considered which of the "men outside" Henry might be referring to, and concluded easily that it wasn't Adamson. He'd been trying to help the kid, trying to help Zoe. Hell, he'd put his own life in danger to help catch the bad guy. Hanson had a feeling he'd succeeded on all counts. "I think you will," he offered.
It was all connected: Adamson, the kid, the black woman at the bar, the maniac, Henry. All the pieces now implied a different kind of danger than he'd first suspected. Not sex-trafficking, though Hanson didn't dare try to put a label on what it could be. Not yet. He slowly stood up, his knees cracking and his back already stiffened. He still had a point to make and not much more time to make it. "See, the thing is, Morgan, you're kind of a enigma. I've asked around and no one seems to know much about you. Oh, they know you're damned good at your job, and apparently your roommate runs a quality antique store. Karen would go there every weekend, if she had the option."
The corner of Henry's mouth stretched toward a proud smile as he preened.
"But Henry Morgan, the man? No one seems to know much about him at all. You know what they say, though: judge a man by the company he keeps. And the company you keep…" Hanson shook his head, unable to find descriptors condemning enough. "I've worked enough cases with you to know you're into some pretty weird shit. And your friends, I got a lot of questions about them. But Jo seems to like you, and Jo's good people. So, here's what's going to happen: you're going to make things right with her, whatever you have to do. Then you're going to make sure you keep doing right by her. She's been through enough, so you're gonna make damn sure that none of your weird shit hurts her."
Henry was a smart guy who was quick on the uptake, so he recognized a shovel talk when he heard one. "What if I'm unable to fulfill those terms?" he asked.
Hanson caught Henry's eye and held it. "How about we don't find out." The thing was, Hanson hadn't answered Henry's question about what he'd seen, much less what he'd figured out on his own, and he wasn't going to. Let Henry wonder. He might be able to suss out that Hanson didn't know anything specific, but he couldn't guess when that might change, or what Hanson might do about it.
Just because Hanson didn't like mysteries didn't mean he wasn't good at solving them.