Read Online Internal Affair by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page B

raised her eyes to his, humor playing along her lips. “Mellowing?”
    She wore some kind of gloss, he realized, something that caught the overhead light and made her lips shimmer.
    He was noticing the wrong things, Patrick told himself.
    Not bothering to answer her, he nodded toward the laptop that stood open on the small, pressboard desk. There was every indication within the room that Joanne would have been returning to her apartment.
    “She had a computer. Maybe there’s some interesting e-mail that might tell us something. We can take it up to the lab,” he said.
    Maggi closed the lid and unplugged the computer. She spotted a carrying case haphazardly thrown under the desk and tucked the laptop into it. “Why the lab?”
    “To read it.” When she looked at him quizzically, he added, “There’s probably a password they’ll need to get by.”
    “I can get you through that,” she said.
    Patrick stopped rifling through the victim’s closet. “You’re a hacker?”
    She shrugged carelessly. “I’ve been known to get into some systems.”
    He hadn’t thought to catch McKenna in a contradiction so soon. “I thought you believed in the straight and narrow.”
    “I do.” With the laptop safely put away, she began to go through the shallow center drawer. “I was also younger once.”
    Squatting, he looked from the victim’s collection of shoes. Twelve pair. Shoes were obviously a weakness. Nothing unusual about that. “Guess not everyone starts out as a plaster saint.”
    “Guess not.”
    Maggi closed the center drawer. The desk wobbled dangerously and continued to do so with every move she made as she went through the other two drawers. It was the kind of desk that started out as pieces packed into a cardboard box along with simplistic photographs that were meant to be directions. It couldn’t have been any cheaper if it had been constructed out of orange crates. “Looks like being a congressman’s staff assistant doesn’t pay all that much,” she commented.
    “Maybe she was in it for the fringe benefits.”
    Having found an album tucked into the rear corner of the closet, Patrick flipped through the plastic-covered pages until he found something worth looking at. He held up a page with a photograph mounted in the center. It displayed several young people, all smiling broadly and obviously celebrating. In the midst was the congressman. He had his arm draped around two staff members, one a male, the other was Joanne. A banner in the background proclaimed Wiley Is Your Congressman.
    Maggi moved forward to look at it. Joanne seemed so happy. If this was the last election, that meant it was taken only a few weeks ago. “And maybe he’s just a nice boss.”
    “Maybe.”
    From his tone, she knew he didn’t believe it.
    By the time they returned to the station, they had one more piece of information beyond the address book that Maggi had found in Joanne’s desk and her laptop. Ochoa had called from the coroner’s office to tell them that their victim had also been seven weeks pregnant.
    Maggi watched as the rain teased the dormant wind-shield wipers of his car. They had just pulled into the precinct parking lot when he had gotten the call.
    A baby. The killer had gotten two for the price of one. Her own charade in the bank came back to her. You’ll be killing two if you kill me.
    She sighed. “Puts a whole new spin on this, doesn’t it?” she commented as Patrick put away his cell phone.
    He opened the door. A whoosh of cold air and the smell of rain came in with them. “That it does, Mary Margaret, that it does.”
    She started to tell him again how much she hated to be called that, but then let it go. Some things in life remained the same. The more she voiced her dislike, the more he’d use the names. She was better off just putting up with it. With any luck, she’d find what she needed and terminate this charade Internal Affairs had assigned her before she gave in to the urge to strangle