Double Cross

Chapter 40

I HOOKED UP with Bree and Sampson back at the Daly Building that evening. I’d already been given an office there, and it was doubling as a nerve center for the Audience Killer case. It felt a little like a college dorm room, with the three of us crammed in there together.

I’d never worked this way before, quite so cooperatively. There was no tension about our roles, though, no debating how the work would get done. There was just the case. And, of course, the proximity of Bree’s long legs and other parts, her fetching looks, and so on and so forth.

She was searching through the drawers for something when I came in. Sampson stood behind her, reading a file on the desk over her shoulder.

“Check this out.” He held up a mug shot. “Meet Ashton Cooley.”

“What’s his deal?” I asked, glancing at the file upside down from where I stood.

“Ashton is a stage name,” Sampson said. “He tried out for, but didn’t get, Matthew Jay Walker’s part in that sci-fi play at the Kennedy. The producers went with the big Hollywood name over the local talent. Typical, right?”

“That could piss you right the hell off,” Bree contributed. “Don’t you think so? I do.”

I took the picture and looked at it. The actor was in his twenties, white, dark-haired, kind of pouty-looking.

“I’m guessing a lot of actors would have wanted that part. Play could’ve been headed for Broadway,” I said.

“Sure,” Sampson said. “But how many of them were suspects in a previous homicide?”