Chapter 3 #7
“Enough,” Quinn said quietly. They all fell silent.
“Did he call the station?” he asked. He didn’t know how else Greer would have gotten the message.
Except that Delgrade had been an informant.
However, he would have had a number to call Gideon and Ange directly for the exact purpose of being able to tell them when he had important information.
Since he had turned up dead, Quinn figured the information he’d wanted to give them had been pretty fucking important.
“Nah, he was here in person.”
“And you just… what? Turned him away?” Gideon said incredulously.
“No, you fucking moron, I got the message, and then I told him to come back.”
Ange opened her mouth to say something else, and Quinn gave her a warning look. “Thank you for the message, Greer,” Quinn said. “We’ll handle it from here.”
“Whatever,” Greer muttered. He walked away, his head already back in his phone.
“He is a useless piece of shit,” Ange said.
Quinn wouldn’t have worded it quite that way, but he didn’t disagree. Greer gave their badge a bad name.
Grady was going to pitch a fit when he found out about this. It was a good thing he’d been busy coaching Henry through a phone call—that by the looks of it was not going well—and hadn’t heard any of that exchange.
Quinn’s desk phone rang, and Ange and Gideon walked off as he answered. He was almost willing to bet his own badge that they were contemplating ways to poison Greer’s food.
“Hughes.”
“Your three thirty is here. Parker Sinclair?”
“Send him in.” Quinn gestured at Grady and he nodded.
Maybe they could get some answers instead of more questions.
“WHERE WERE YOU THE night of the murder?” Grady asked as soon as Parker had slid into the chair opposite them in the interview room.
Quinn closed his eyes briefly. Grady usually had better manners than this. Not much better, but better.
“Are you accusing me of killing someone?” Parker asked, his mouth dropping open.
“No,” Quinn said, shooting Grady a warning look. “We’re just asking some questions so we can try to work out why our victim was found in your apartment.”
“I’m a kindergarten teacher,” Parker pointed out.
“You had a stalker during your time at university,” Quinn said.
It had been when he and Riley had been partners before Grady had joined the precinct.
Because of Riley’s connection to Parker, they hadn’t been allowed to touch the case, but Riley had still ridden the detective who did have it, hard.
Quinn wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but the case had been closed, and Riley had relaxed.
It had been around the same time that Quinn had been dealing with his painful breakup with Sebastian, so Quinn had only been half involved in anything that was going on. “You think they might have escalated?”
A muscle in Parker’s jaw twitched. “No. They’re long gone.”
“Dead?” Grady asked, glancing between them.
“No. Just gone. I can guarantee you it has nothing to do with this and would never have resulted in a dead body.”
“Okay,” Quinn said simply. He’d known Parker long enough that he was fairly confident he could spot a lie, and he wasn’t lying. “The night of the murder?”
“I was on a date.”
“With?” Grady asked.
“Are you going to interrogate them too?” Parker asked sarcastically.
“Them?” Quinn asked. More than one? Was this a Sinclair trait? He had some questions he wanted to ask Riley.
“A married couple. Joel and Sally Weston. I’ve been… seeing them… for a few months now.”
“Define seeing them,” Grady said.
“We’re dating, I think.”
“You think?”
“Both of them?” Quinn asked before Grady could snap. “Is there a reason one of them could be jealous of any attention you were getting? Anything that might have caused them to threaten you?”
Parker snorted out a laugh. “Uh, no. It’s all very equal and mutually beneficial.”
“How can it be equal if you’re dating a couple that are married?” Grady asked.
“Communication, Grady; you might want to try it sometime.”
“Let’s talk about your brother instead,” Grady replied.
“Which one?” Parker asked dryly.
“Has Peyton had any issues with anyone lately? Any threatening messages, weird phone calls?”
“Not that he’s told me, and he tells me everything.”
“What about Will?” Quinn asked.
“Will is a puppy,” Parker said. “Who would want to hurt him? Unless the body was like a weird courting thing, I doubt Will was the recipient.”
“And what about their guest last night?” Grady asked. He sounded far too gleeful, and Quinn wasn’t looking forward to the direction the conversation was taking. “Has Devlin been a frequent visitor?”
“You mean the guy they had over last night? Sebastian, was it? I’d never met him before in my life. My guess is that it was the first night. Will and Peyton have never brought someone home before.”
“Do they often share the same man?” Grady asked.
Quinn rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think that’s relevant,” he said. Mostly he didn’t want to know the answer, but it also wasn’t relevant. “Did you recognise the deceased at all?”
“The dead guy? Yeah, no. Never seen him either. He definitely wasn’t a ‘visitor’ at our place. He’s not their type. Or mine.”
A dead end. Wonderful.
“You’ll call us if you think of anything else?”
Parker shrugged. “Sure. How long do I have to stay away for?”
“From your apartment, you mean?” Quinn asked. At Parker’s nod, he said, “You might want to take that up with your brother. The Riley one, in case you need specifics.”
“Joy of joys,” Parker said, standing. “It’s been a pleasure, guys.”
Quinn held the door open for him and said, “The married couple, the one you’re seeing; is that where you’re staying?”
“Yes.”
“Can we get a phone number for them, so that we can speak to them if we need to?”
“About what?” Parker asked suspiciously. “Don’t you dare big-brother routine me.”
“I’m not,” Quinn said. Riley had the market on that anyway. “It’s merely a precaution.”
Parker pursed his lips. “Fine. I’ll text it to Peyton. Since he’s staying with you, he can pass it along.” He winked, and then he was gone.
Quinn blew out a breath and sank back into his chair.
“That was a waste of time,” Grady muttered.
“There are no cameras in the building, no witnesses, and no weird sounds reported or noticed. How does someone manage to get a body to the fourth floor of an apartment building and into a locked apartment without anyone noticing?” Quinn mused.
“Maybe everyone in the building was having sex at the same time?”
Quinn wasn’t amused by that answer. Grady shrugged at him.
“Q, no one notices anything anymore. Seriously, I miss the days where everyone had nosy neighbours.”
Grady and him both. Those neighbours had helped them solve many a case.
“I can’t believe they slept with Sebastian. Did you infect them?”
“With what?” Quinn flicked his tongue against the back of his top teeth. “It was a coincidence, that’s all.”
“You doing okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Quinn.”
“Grady.”
“My offer to shoot him still stands.”
“I appreciate that.” He’d tried explaining to Grady that what had happened between him and Sebastian, and what had gone wrong, had been entirely his fault, but Grady had never been rational about lawyers. Quinn didn’t know why, and Grady hadn’t ever shared.
But Quinn was fine. He wasn’t bothered that Peyton, Will, and Sebastian had slept together. He wished that was all it was. It was far more complicated than that. Just imagining them together, limbs tangled… Quinn coughed and shifted in his chair.
“Are we still waiting on the autopsy report?” Grady asked.
“Yeah. Will and Sebastian couldn’t come in today, so we can’t do anything with that.
” Will had been called out on a job, and Sebastian hadn’t been available, though Quinn didn’t know why.
He hadn’t spoken to Sebastian, even though he’d called the number Sebastian had given him.
It had been diverted to a rather irate receptionist instead.
The conversation had been short, stiff, and had left a sour taste in Quinn’s mouth.
Quinn hated having nothing to go on.
He wanted to know which of them was being targeted and why. He wanted to find whoever had done this, put them down, and make sure they couldn’t lay a finger on any of those men. Quinn wished he could rule it out as a coincidence, but he wasn’t sure he could.
“Well, one down, two to go. Process of elimination,” Grady said.
And that process left Will, and Sebastian. It felt like the victim was almost a warning.
But for whom?