Conklin and I walked downstairs toward the sound of the vacuum cleaner, watched the CSIs work, Conklin shouting to me over the vacuum’s motor, “Three months after the fact, what do we expect? A sign saying, ‘Michael Campion died here’?”
That’s when we heard the clank of metal against the vacuum cleaner nozzle. The CSI turned off the motor, stooped, pulled a steak knife from under the skirt of a velvet-covered sofa – just where Conklin and I had been sitting last night.
The investigator held out the steak knife with his gloved hand so that I could see the rust-colored stain on the sharp, serrated blade.
Chapter 12
I WAS STILL SAVORING the discovery of the knife when my cell phone rang. It was Chief Anthony Tracchio, and his voice was unusually loud.
“What is it, Tony?”
“I need the two of you in my office, pronto.”
After a short volley of useless quibble, he hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, Conklin and I walked into Tracchio’s wood-paneled corner suite and saw two well-known people seated in the leather armchairs. Former governor Connor Hume Campion’s face looked swollen with rage, and his much younger wife, Valentina, appeared heavily sedated.
The front page of the Sunday Chronicle was on Tracchio’s desk. I could read the headline upside down and from ten feet away: SUSPECT QUESTIONED IN CAMPION DISAPPEARANCE.
Cindy hadn’t waited for my quote, damn it.
What the hell had she written?
Tracchio patted his Vitalis comb-over and introduced us to the parents of the missing boy as Conklin and I dragged chairs up to his massive desk. Connor Campion acknowledged us with a hard stare. “I had to read this in the newspaper?” he said to me. “That my son died in a whorehouse?”