Page 37 of Unlocked

He'd seen it in the set of her jaw, the way her eyes went just slightly flat, the particular quality of stillness that preceded someone doing exactly what they'd just agreed not to do. He'd seen it a thousand times in a thousand different people across a career built on reading rooms and assessing people, and Tatum Wellington was, if nothing else, completely transparent when she was angry.

So he hadn't been surprised when security flagged her leaving the building twenty minutes after he'd walked away with Rush. He'd been irritated, yes. Worried, certainly. But not surprised. Flynn O'Connor had checked in that she’d gone directly to her apartment, but it irked him that he had to have her followed. The urge to follow her, to be sure she was safe, was equally irritating.

"You okay?" Rush asked.

Archer swung his gaze over to his security specialist. "Why do you ask?"

"You look pissed."

Archer bit back a sigh. "No. Just disappointed." He shifted gears mentally. "Are the cops finished with North's apartment?"

Rush shook his head. "A friend is doing me a favor."

"Nice to have friends," Archer commented as the SUV pulled to the curb outside Richard North's building.

He and Rush exited the vehicle and made their way up to the dead man's condo. Ryker met them just outside the door. A uniformed officer stood sentry, and Archer nodded to him. The man gave a curt nod in return and fixed his eyes on some spot in the middle distance.

Rush opened the door, and the three of them entered, closing it behind them.

"Is that your friend?" Archer asked, gesturing toward the door.

"Nah. He's just the uniform on door duty. He'll keep his mouth shut. His ass will be on the line for letting us in, so he's not going to rock the boat. My friend knows we're not stupid enough to mess with the crime scene."

Archer gave a curt nod and moved into the space. He came to a stop beside the coffee table in the living room and turned to study the staircase. “What happened to our camera?”

“Collected. And we’re processing it. We think it might have picked up North’s fall, but we’ll see. We had it angled to take in the living room, not the staircase specifically.”

Archer nodded. “What do we know?”

"Our prevailing theory," Ryker started, "is that North left his cell on the coffee table and came down to get it in the middle of the night, still drunk, slipped and fell."

Archer grunted. "Do we believe that?"

Ryker shook his head. "We do not. There were no missed calls on his phone until after eight a.m. No missed texts either. So there was no reason for him to come downstairs in the middle of the night for his phone."

"Could he have woken up and realized it was down here and just decided to get it?" Rush asked. They both stared at him, and with a snort, he held up his hands. "Just playing devil's advocate."

Ryker nodded. "Fair. And I guess it's a possibility. But the reality is that North had tied one on with his buddies. Drowning their sorrows about going to jail. He came home and went upstairs, dumped his clothes on the floor, and crashed. Knowing North, I can't see him waking up at two a.m. after a night of drinking and thinking he should go get his phone. More likely, he passed out rather than fell asleep, and something woke him up. Something made him come downstairs."

"That sounds more likely," Rush agreed. "But if it wasn't the phone, what did he come down for?"

Archer stared at the staircase. "Do we know the time of death?"

"Somewhere between one and four a.m. They're doing the autopsy now," Ryker said.

"Do we know what he looked like when he was found?" Archer asked, glancing around the room.

Ryker pulled a manila envelope from his jacket pocket and passed it across. "I have friends too," he said with a slight smile at Rush.

Archer opened the envelope and slid the photographs out.

Richard North had not been an attractive man in life and was even less so in death.

The photographs were high-resolution, clinical in the way crime scene images always were, indifferent to dignity. North lay crumpled at the base of the marble staircase in a posture that no living body could have held, one arm folded beneath him at an angle that made Archer's jaw tighten, one leg twisted outward, his considerable bulk collapsed against the bottom step like something discarded rather than fallen. The marble staircase was coldly white and unforgiving, and had done considerable damage on the way down. The large gash on the back of his head was no doubt the cause of death.

His face was turned partially toward the camera. The jowls that had always made him look vaguely aggrieved in life were slack now, pulling his features downward into an expression that was neither peaceful nor pained, but simply absent. A cut above his left eyebrow had bled and dried dark against his skin. One eye was slightly open, catching the light in a way that was deeply wrong. His mouth hung loose.

Whatever Richard North had been in life, and the list was not flattering, he had not deserved to end up like this. Alone at the bottom of a staircase, staged to look like the consequence of his own excess.