Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [101]
“What?”
“You heard me,” said Jack. “Are you or are you not meeting with—”
Jack stopped cold, nearly flattening a woman who had rounded the corner from the opposite direction. She, too, was frozen in her tracks—and their eyes locked.
“Jack, please,” Vince said over the phone, but Jack wasn’t listening. Images flashed in his mind—photographs he’d seen of Shada Mays before her disappearance. And he knew.
“Shada?” he said.
She didn’t answer, and before Jack could say another word—before he could even react—she turned and ran.
“Shada, wait!”
Jack sprinted after her, trying his best to keep up. Two minutes into the chase, Jack was digging for a gear he didn’t have. She was pulling away, a blur of buildings flying by as the distance expanded between them.
“Shada!” he called out.
She never looked back, never broke stride. Jack hadn’t logged a five-minute mile since high school, and Shada was bettering that pace on a wet sidewalk. He pulled up at a zebra crossing, exhausted and fighting to catch his breath. The mist was turning to rain. Hunched over, hands on his knees, Jack looked up and watched Shada disappear into the old neighborhood. He wasn’t surprised in the least that a woman on the run could run like the wind.
Jack was still catching his breath when a taxi pulled up at the curb. The rear window rolled down, and he spotted Vince in the backseat.
“Get in,” Vince said.
Jack turned and walked the other way. The cab came up slowly beside him, matching Jack’s walking pace. Vince spoke through the open window.
“I made a mistake,” said Vince.
Jack didn’t answer. The cab pulled ahead with a quick burst of speed, and then it stopped at the corner. Vince got out, and the cab pulled away. He waited for Jack, who had no intention of stopping. In fact, Jack already had his smart phone in hand, searching the Web for return flights to Miami.
“I’m sorry,” said Vince.
Jack stopped. It wasn’t every day that a criminal defense lawyer got a heartfelt apology from a cop, and Jack found himself unable to ignore it. He put his phone away.
“You should have told me you were meeting with Shada Mays.”
“You’re right, I should have,” said Vince.
“It was beyond a mistake. Meeting with Shada Mays was the most important thing that could have possibly come out of this trip. You not only excluded me, but you flat-out lied to my face. There is absolutely no way for me to trust you anymore.”
“Let me try to explain.”
“Forget it,” said Jack. “I never trusted Chuck, and you may not be a murderer, but now I don’t trust you, either.”
“Chuck didn’t kill anyone.”
“Obviously, he didn’t kill Shada. But like I said: I have serious questions about what happened to Jamal. I should have listened to my fiancée and never come on this trip.”
“Does your fiancée seriously think that Shada was sleeping with Jamal?”
Jack was silent.
Vince shook his head, scoffing at the thought. “Look, Chuck and Shada didn’t have a perfect marriage. But Shada loved McKenna. She was not the kind of mother who would bed her teenage daughter’s first love.”
Vince was making sense, and it surprised Jack that Andie hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe the whole theory that Chuck killed Jamal in a love-triangle homicide was more posturing on her part to keep Jack from going to London.
“You did the right thing by coming,” said Vince. “Let me talk to Chuck and see what he can do to make this right.”
Jack stopped. He’d come this far, and now he had leverage. The next nonstop to Miami was not until Wednesday morning anyway. “All right, here’s one way to make amends. Chuck can tell me all about Project Round Up.”
“Exactly what do you think you can learn from Project Round Up?”
Jack remembered that Jamal had been working with Chuck on Project Round Up before he’d gone missing. “My bet is that it will tell me how Jamal ended up in a detention center, and why Chuck never really believed that Jamal killed his daughter.”
Jack studied his expression. Those were two huge pieces of the puzzle, but it was hard to read a man who lived behind dark sunglasses.
“It might even