A Dark Horse

by Cooper, Blayne

“Okay,” Natalie whispered, looking a little overwhelmed again. “And, Ella,” she said, emotion seeping into her voice, “just knowing that you’re helping to put Josh’s killer away means everything to me.”

  Don’t let her keep saying things like that! “Don’t-don’t mention it.” Adele knew she should tell her about the coercion this very second. There would never be a better time than now, and there was always a chance that Natalie would understand. But even as she tried to convince herself, Adele knew that was bullshit. Crisco killed Natalie’s brother. No legal technicalities or moral quandary would ever touch that.

  Torn between her conscience, Natalie’s pain, and the idea of what was right, which was growing fuzzier and fuzzier with every heartbeat, Adele decided to sleep on her decision about Morrell. Maybe everything would look better after some rest.

  Natalie stood, still eyeing Adele carefully.

  Adele could see that Natalie knew something was wrong and Adele fought not to squirm under the attention. But there was something wrong, so she let it be.

  Natalie ran a nervous hand through her hair and looked as exposed as Adele had seen her. “Ella?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you have many friends outside work or your family?”

  It made her sound pathetic, but she was too tired and raw to care. “No.”

  “You have a new one today, okay?”

  One tentative smile reached out and met its twin.

  “You too, Natalie. You too.”

  Chapter Five

  It was just after eleven a.m. the next day when Adele marched into the NOPD Homicide bullpen and all but yanked Landry out of his seat by the arm.

  “We need to talk,” she whispered harshly. “Right now.”

  “What the hell?” Landry bit out, his arms spinning to keep from falling backward. The tips of his ears pinked under a chorus of loud snickers and chicken squawks from his coworkers that signified he was henpecked.

  Balance restored, he stood and glared down at his wife, fire in his eyes. “Ella.”

  “Don’t ‘Ella’ me.” Adele glared right back. “We can do this here or someplace else,” she declared, hands on hips. “But it’s happening now.”

  Their eyes dueled for a few long seconds then Landry grabbed her forearm and pulled her in the direction of an interrogation room.

  “Let’s go outside instead.” Adele yanked her arm from his grasp and began to lead the way by striding toward the door, her already confident gait quick and elongated. As livid as she was, she’d already embarrassed him in front of his colleagues and she didn’t particularly want to put on a show for the entire homicide department. Interrogation rooms were fitted with two-way mirrors and cops were notorious, gossipy busybodies.

  Landry shot a murderous scowl at his remaining tormentors, but followed his wife. “Fuck. It’s raining outside.”

  “Don’t be a baby.” It was barely sprinkling, but neither of them had an umbrella.

  “Was that really necessary, back in the bullpen?”

  “Yes.”

  Now his entire face was red. “I have to work with those men!” Once safely outside and well away from the front doors, Landry tugged Adele to a halt. “This had better be good.”

  Adele tried not to sneer, but was pretty sure by the look on Landry’s face that she hadn’t managed it. “I’ll bet you won’t guess where I just was.”

  “Helping Crisco pay for an attorney to beat this rap? Or maybe braiding Natalie Abbott’s hair in our living room?”

  So that’s how it was going to be. They were both incensed. Good. Adele wondered briefly how he knew that Natalie was staying with them, but didn’t care enough to ask whether one of the neighbors was his spy. “I just came back from talking to Morrell’s lieutenant and Lt. Xavier.”

  Some of the antagonism evaporated from Landry’s face. Resentment filled the gap. “I told you to leave this alone!”

  Incredulous, Adele blinked. “You told me? Did I miss the part of our relationship where you became my daddy or my boss?”

  Landry’s eyebrows jumped up his forehead and stayed. “Don’t pretend you listen to either one of them either.”

  A gust of warm, wet air tousled Adele’s hair. Irately, she shook her head to dislodge a lock that stuck to the damp and sweaty skin on her neck. “How could you tell him that? How could you tell Lt. Xavier, my boss, that you’d handle me,” she nearly spat out the words. “You know how hard I worked for my gold shield. How hard it is to get everyone’s respect. Xavier was actually surprised to see me because you were supposedly taking care of my little problem.” She curled her fingers into air quotes.

  Landry looked chagrined but unapologetic. “I never used those exact words. I only told him I’d talk to you and try to get you to see reason about Morrell.” He frowned and shook his head slowly. “And I can see that you still haven’t.”

  “You would have known that if you’d bothered to come home last night.”

  Landry pushed his shoulders back. “I was working.”

  Adele’s disappointment was written all over her face. “You were hiding at your mama’s house.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “It was nice to spend the evening with someone who didn’t hate me for being realistic and doing my job.”

  Adele’s jaw worked. “I don’t…I don’t hate you.” She stepped off the sidewalk to allow a woman pushing a stroller to pass. “I’m just furious with you!”

  Landry followed Adele, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Somehow, Ella, I’m having trouble telling the difference.”

  With effort, Adele lowered her voice. “Why were you even talking to Xavier?”

  “Morrell does need to be dealt with. I know that. But I also want to keep you from making a huge personal and professional mistake. And I’m not ashamed to say I want to keep my case alive.”

  Adele stiffened as something he said registered and felt suspiciously close to an ultimatum. She also noticed that the day before this had been “our” case. Today it was “his.” “Are you trying to tell me if I pursue this it will hurt our marriage?”

  “It will hurt everything!” Landry looked at her as though the very question was inane. “You’re a cop. You’re married to a cop. All our friends are cops.” He hesitated. “Morrell was one of the cops who stayed during Katrina and not one of the bastards who ran away. And you know that means something.”

  “So that gives him a free pass to act as though the laws don’t apply to him?”

  “No. But he gets one of his own people to set him straight without compromising the entire job we’re here to do in the first place!”

  “This is important to me, Landry. To do the right thing. I don’t want to be the kind of cop who looks the other way.”

  His demeanor softened. “So you said. But you didn’t look the other way. You’ve gone to Morrell’s boss, and yours. You’ve done enough, Ella. Now let everyone else do their jobs.”

  “And what about Crisco?” She blinked slowly as she thought of the rap sheet she’d pulled right after his arrest. Crisco had several arrests for domestic battery, with one that actually stuck, and multiple counts of vagrancy spanning nearly twenty years. He was neither angel nor devil, but did that even matter? This wasn’t just about him.

  Landry’s expression cooled. “You mean the murderer? At least he’s got a life ahead of him, hopefully one that’s entirely in prison. Or better yet, he’ll end up on death row. Joshua Phillips has been on ice to keep from rotting during his dissection. I heard his sister had a hard time seeing him that way in the morgue yesterday.”

  Adele’s eyes flashed. That was a surprisingly low blow. “Landry—”

  They both abruptly stopped talking when a couple of uniformed officers walked past them with mumbled greetings and strange looks. The meager raindrops were beginning to soak through their clothes.

  Adele turned away from her husband but threw her words back at him like barbs. “Xavier isn’t going to initiate an investigation of
Morrell and neither is Morrell’s boss—Luna. They both made that clear. Is that your doing?” She held her breath, not sure what she would do if Landry’s answer was yes.

  “Fuck. Of course not.”

  She could hear the hurt but also the truth in his voice. Landry didn’t want his case compromised. But if the brass decided to go after Morrell, he would support that as wholeheartedly as he was trying to talk her out of officially reporting Morrell now. Always the team player. “How’d we wind up on different sides?” she murmured to herself, surprised to find that her indignation was edging toward sadness.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head and turned back to face Landry. “Lt. Xavier—”

  “Did exactly what we both knew he would,” Landry finished. “But he told me confidentially that once Crisco is sentenced he’s going to talk Lt. Luna into pulling Morrell from the field for a few weeks and make him go through sensitivity training again. And not just the usual two-day class, either. Some major, three-week, bullshit training course from hell. It’s a punishment. Apparently there have been a few problems with Morrell’s behavior and attitude in the past. Luna’s also going to assign him a more veteran partner. Someone who can help keep him in line.”

  Adele rolled her eyes.

  Landry threw his hands in the air. “Do you need a pound of flesh too? You know that training is torture.”

  “No, Landry, you know what is torture? Actual torture. Like getting your teeth knocked out. Or bones broken. Or kicked in the chest while you’re begging for it to stop. Those things are torture. Not watching lame videos from 1988 on how you shouldn’t call grown women ‘girls’ and stare at their tits while you talk to them!”

  “Forensics came back. At least with the preliminary results.”

  It took a few seconds to get over the case of mental whiplash that came with the apparent change in subjects. Adele lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “That was fast.” When Landry looked down at his feet and nodded, she immediately suspected the rush in processing wasn’t accidental.

  “Everything was just as it appeared. Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Brick was the murder weapon. Vic’s blood on Crisco’s hand and Crisco’s bloody prints on the brick. But—” Landry hesitated.

  “But?”

  He released an explosive sigh. “That’s it. The crime scene was a mess. Crisco ended up tits down in some mud puddle and ruined any other forensics on his clothes. Every other test for fibers or fluids or anything else remotely useful came up inconclusive.”

  Adele’s eyes widened, though she wasn’t entirely surprised. Morrell had been beyond careless and ruined the evidence a jury would expect to see. All those stupid procedural crime shows set unrealistically high expectations when it came to forensics. And disappointed juries often didn’t convict.

  “Ella, we didn’t find any of what we think were Josh’s possessions on Crisco. No wallet. Or money. Or even drugs.” Landry growled in frustration and for the first time that day Adele took a good look at him. The rain had soaked through his pale blue cotton shirt, and it was plastered to his broad chest. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked like he’d slept in his clothes.

  “We’re still waiting for toxicology to come back,” he went on, brushing a few droplets of rain from his face. “But the medical examiner says he only expects it to show the vic was high. Yesterday, I scoured the area and talked to anyone who frequents the brewery. Nobody saw anything. The rain kept them all closer to downtown that night. So far, other than the brick, there’s not a single link between Crisco and the victim.”

  Adele’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit. You can’t even prove robbery. You have no witnesses or motive for a fight or anything else.”

  Landry looked as though he wanted to argue, but couldn’t. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his slacks, his expression darkening.

  Adele wiped her hand down her face and stared off into the distance, eyes unseeing. “Christ, even a hopeless defense attorney could make a jury at least consider that Crisco might have stumbled onto Josh after he was murdered and stupidly picked up the brick. Maybe even because he wanted to help Josh. Then he passed out drunk.”

  She swallowed a few times, the implications sinking in. “You have no case.”

  “That’s not true.”

  She looked up sharply.

  “We have a confession. We need that confession.” When Adele didn’t say anything to that he asked, “What are you going to do?”

  Adele’s lips thinned, and she held her tongue for fear she’d say something truly damaging to their relationship.

  “Dammit, I don’t like this sword hanging over my case!”

  “Morrell put it there, not me.”

  “At least tell me if you’re going to unleash hell into this so I can prepare for the fallout.” He pointed an accusing finger straight at Adele’s chest. “You owe me that.”

  They owed each other so much more than that. But it should be a two-way street.

  In her heart, she believed Crisco had killed Josh. If it walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, in her experience, it was a goddamned duck. Yes, a lot of potential evidence had turned out to be inconclusive, but she’d seen why with her own eyes. The remaining evidence tied Crisco to the murder weapon. But none of that made his confession viable. And that was now the linchpin of the entire case.

  “What are you going to do?” Landry repeated, his impatience winning out.

  “I-I don’t know,” Adele said honestly. And even if she did, at this point she didn’t think she could tell Landry about it. How could she trust him after he went to Lt. Xavier behind her back? How could she let Morrell get away with what he’d done? How could she crush Natalie and her family and potentially let a killer get away with murder?

  She wanted to scream.

  Neither her boss nor Morrell’s would pursue her claims. She knew that now. That left her with the choice of doing nothing or filing a complaint with the NOPD Public Integrity Bureau. Or what was unkindly, but commonly, called The Rat Squad.

  Landry moved in close and cupped her cheek with a sturdy hand that felt hot on her damp skin. She couldn’t help but lean into the touch as his familiar scent washed over her. Her heart jumped wildly when his olive-green eyes captured hers. “Baby, let me help you. Please.”

  She let out a shuddering sigh, relief infusing her every cell. This was what she’d been craving. “Yes. Please. I need your—”

  “Let me help you keep from doing something stupid.”

  His words sank in and then came to land in the pit of her stomach with a sickly thud. Wounded to the core, she stepped away. He wasn’t even trying to understand. “Say hello to your mother for me tonight, Landry.” She walked away.

  * * *

  “Ella! Wait up. Hey.” A young uniformed officer grabbed Adele’s arm as she began to open her car door.

  She spun around to face him, eyes blazing. “Not right now, Al!” Her temper was a razor’s edge after speaking with Landry, and she was fighting to get away from the station before the tears that had been threatening since her argument with Landry could fall.

  A very light rain dotted the concrete all around them.

  Al backed up a step and raised two placating hands. “Damn, Little Mama, don’t shoot. I was just checkin’ on you. You looked all upset, like you were marching out of the PD on the way to shoot someone. I figured I’d better go along to, you know…” He shrugged as though the reason was obvious.

  “Hold my bullets for me?”

  “Why you gotta make a servant joke to a black man, Ella? You know, there’s room in this world for both of us to be bad-ass motherfuckers.”

  Despite herself, she smiled.

  “I was going to say, I would go with you to keep you out of trouble.”

  “Shouldn’t you actually be someplace…like on duty and working? Or home taking care of those kids that are way too cute to actually be yours?”

  Al scowled playfully. “Their
mama says the same thing. I’m on nights this week and am actually just getting off duty. And now’s not the time to get all picky about who holds your bullets. If you’re going to kill someone you’ll also need a strong partner who can lift the body to wherever you’re going to dump it. So I’m your man.”

  Something about Al’s bright smile always made her feel better.

  He was all raw muscle, tats, and street attitude…with everyone but Adele. They’d known each other since Al was a boy and she was a fresh-faced beat cop. Each one’s devotion to the other went bone deep. Though there were no blood ties, theirs was a relationship that straddled the line between friendship and family effortlessly.

  Adele let out a shuddering breath. “I’m not going to kill someone. I’m-I’m sorry I snapped. Landry and I just…we aren’t seeing eye to eye on something.”

  “Get in.” He gave her a gentle shove into the driver’s seat of her car. “I’ll come around.”

  Adele made sure the passenger door was unlocked so Al could slip inside, his wide shoulders seemingly too big for the seat. He took off his hat, and she waggled her finger at him. “Don’t you shake the rain off yourself like you’re a wet dog, Alonzo. I don’t want to have to wipe down the inside of all my windows again.”

  He rolled his eyes, and Adele reached out and scrubbed the bristly top of his high fade haircut. Al gave her a long-suffering look but still endured her rough affection without complaint.

  He chuckled quietly, then for a moment there was only the sound of two sets of breathing and the light pitter-patter of the rain. “Now tell me what’s really going on? I’ve been hearing rumors.”

  Adele dug out her keys and popped them into the ignition, where she left them dangling for a moment then fired up the car for the air-conditioning. “What have you heard?”

  His gaze went so serious that for a second Adele was struck with the duality of Al’s personality. One minute he could be joking and playful and the very next, as intense as anyone she’d ever known.

  “That you’re stirring up questions of police brutality and coercion against Morrell over the beat down he gave Crisco.”