Killer Winter

by Kay Bigelow

  “Okay. Keep this under wraps. I don’t want anything about this case leaking to the media, understand?”

  “I’ll put one team on it and have the others working on cases they’re already in the middle of. I’ll send my reports to you ‘Eyes Only.’ That’ll help.”

  “Don’t put any of your cowboys on this one.”

  “I have Allison Davidson and her partner, Peony Fong, on it. They’re both sane and sensible investigators.” At least I hope they are. Fong is too new to know for sure.

  “Who’s Fong?” the captain asked.

  “The new kid. She’s a newly minted detective. She’ll replace Weston as Davidson’s partner.”

  “You took care of him this morning?” he asked.

  Leah thought he sounded as relieved as she was Weston was out of their hair. “Yeah, he’s gone.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  Leah smothered a smile. The captain occasionally sounded like her dad when she’d been a kid and someone picked on her.

  “Of course.”

  “Watch your back, Leah. He’s a nasty piece of crud who’s hated you for years. This may be the blow that throws him over the edge.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leah left the captain’s office and returned to her own. Her computer was dinging softly, indicating she had messages. One was from Scotty. He’d sent the crime scene photos to her.

  She brought them up. There wasn’t much to be seen from the photos. Eventually, she’d blow them up to see what she could see about the scene. She accessed her murder board again and stored the crime scene photos there.

  A second message was from Davidson, who’d sent Bishop Cohane’s driver’s license to her. Leah stored it on the murder wall as well.

  There was a soft knock on her door.

  “Enter.”

  “We’re assuming we need to keep this case to ourselves until further notice. How are we supposed to do that out there in the bullpen?” Peony asked when she and Davidson came in. “The guys are already wanting to know what we’re up to. I’ve caught Thompson trying to look at what’s on my computer screen. I’m pretty sure he heard a part of my conversation with the bishop’s housekeeper.”

  Leah waved them to the chairs in front of her desk and said, “Good question. Let me figure out an answer for you.” She gave them what she hoped was a reassuring smile, but by their expressions, she guessed it hadn’t worked.

  After Leah dismissed them, she sat at her desk thinking. It wouldn’t do much good to go door to door asking if anyone heard or saw anything. Idiots were shooting guns into the air, there were firecrackers, and the elders were probably already in bed and asleep. What was the bishop doing there, and who were the other victims? What was the connection between an elderly religious man and the other victims? What should the logical next step be? Was there a logical next step?

  While she was pondering the escalating questions, she called the captain. When he answered, she said, “I have to move this investigation off-site if there’s to be any hope of containing it.”

  “I agree. Do you have any idea where you want to go?”

  “Yeah. I have a place in mind, but I need to confirm its availability.”

  “Let me know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leah’s next phone call was to her wife.

  “What an unexpected surprise, Lieutenant,” Quinn said when she heard her voice. “I didn’t expect to hear from you until very late tonight.”

  “Something unusual has come up. Can we share dinner together tonight?”

  “Yet another unexpected pleasure. Where would you like to go?”

  “Somewhere secure.”

  There was silence on the other end, and Leah knew Quinn was absorbing the request for privacy and putting two and two together. Quinn knew she’d been called out to a homicide in the early hours of the morning and now, just over twelve hours later, Leah was asking for a meeting somewhere private. Quinn had to know the case had become both sensitive and high profile.

  “I’ll meet you at seven at the Mexican joint.”

  The Mexican joint was a tiny restaurant they had started going to years before when they first began dating. Then, there had been only a tiny dining room and the kitchen. The dining room had only a half dozen tables, and the patrons could hear everything the chef said and every dropped utensil, but the aromas emanating from the tiny kitchen had been divine. Now it had evolved into a grown-up restaurant with dozens of tables and a separate bar, and even had three privacy booths.

  “I’ll be there.” Leah allowed herself a smile of anticipation at seeing her wife, a prospect that always made the most gruesome day seem a little less ominous and overwhelming.

  Chapter Three

  At the restaurant, Leah waited for the maître d’ to return from seating a couple. She glanced at the mirror behind the bar as she removed her hat. Her hair was standing up like she’d stuck a finger in an electrical outlet. She did a quick pat down to try to tame it before seeing Quinn. The pat down had only made matters worse. What she needed, she decided, was a haircut.

  “Lootennent, it’s been a long time,” Jorge, the maître d’ of Mama’s Mexican, told her as he returned to his station.

  “Too long, Jorge.”

  “How many will be eating with you tonight?”

  “One other. We’d like a secure booth.”

  “Absolutely.” He led the way away from the line that had formed behind Leah and through the restaurant to a row of booths surrounded by privacy panes.

  “I’ll send your waiter over immediately,” Jorge said with a little bow.

  Leah wasn’t surprised to see Quinn already in the booth when Jorge opened the door for her. Jorge was the soul of discretion, and he took his job very seriously. He obviously hadn’t wanted to let a random listener know Leah’s dinner companion had already arrived. After taking her coat off, she slid into the booth and looked at her wife. When they’d met, she had no idea how old Quinn was, thanks to the way her kind aged. Her blond good looks kept her as youthful looking as the day they’d met. When they had first gotten together, Leah used to sit and watch her, mesmerized by her beauty. She still thought her incredibly handsome, and it made her heart sing to know Quinn loved her.

  Quinn kissed her hello. “This must be some serious business if we’re meeting here,” she said.

  “It is more than just a little serious, hon.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “The case I caught this morning was a bloodbath. On my way over here, Scotty called. He thinks the victims were slaughtered and shredded in an open field during the night.” Leah was having a hard time getting her head around Scotty’s characterization of the victims being shredded—it made the murders more horrific somehow.

  “He thinks? Shredded?” Quinn looked as horrified as Leah felt.

  “We have some lumps of flesh, and he’s found a ton of bone fragments. Most of them aren’t big enough for immediate positive identity purposes. The blood is so mixed together and diluted by the snow that it will take months, if not longer, to distinguish individuals’ blood.”

  “It sounds horrific, and I’m pretty sure you’ve cleaned it up for me.”

  “The scene had veteran cops puking in the street.”

  “What haven’t you told me?”

  Quinn knew her too well. She paused before telling her the rest of the story. She knew she could trust Quinn implicitly. Quinn knew the importance of keeping what she told her to herself. She’d never betrayed her confidences in the years they’d been together. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “This is strictly between you and me. Got it?” Leah said.

  “Of course, babe. I know the rules by now.”

  She gave Quinn a sanitized version of what they’d found out so far.

  “You have a serious problem if you have that many dead people and no way of kn
owing who they are or why they’re dead. No wonder we’re meeting here.”

  There was a discreet tap on the door. Quinn pressed the button to unlock the door to the waiter.

  After they ordered, they returned to Leah’s case.

  “Is there any way you can walk away from this?” Quinn asked.

  “No.”

  “You know people will be gunning for you when this hits the news outlets.”

  “We’re going to try to keep it under wraps until we can start identifying victims and coming up with possible motives.”

  “What’s your main worry, then?”

  “I’m wondering why someone would take the time to chop up twenty people into little bitty pieces. Granted, it was in the wee hours of the morning and there was a blizzard, so it would be less likely there’d be witnesses, but still.”

  “Why would he want the victims to remain unidentified?”

  “Undoubtedly to keep us from connecting him to them, but we won’t know for certain until we catch the son of a Sirulian she-dog.” Leah didn’t like to speculate on the details of a murder without evidence, even for Quinn. She liked to keep the early days of her investigations as non-specific as possible until the evidence started trickling in, giving her something specific she could speculate on. Right now, the only evidence she had was tiny pieces of bone and flesh and perhaps the bishop. That was way too little to build a case on or to begin speculating about who the perp or perps were.

  “Are you thinking it’s gang related, then? One of the big crime families dealing with traitors or some such?”

  “Right now, I’m not thinking about who it could be. I doubt it was a gang or a mob since they tend to kill their victims with guns or knives one at a time, not dozens all at once.”

  Quinn sat silently while she digested what Leah had told her. “Anyone who could pull this off is seriously deranged and dangerous. Which means, love, that you’re in danger, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Which is why I’ve limited the investigation to myself and two other detectives.” She knew Quinn worried far more than she did about her safety.

  “Are they to be trusted?”

  “I think so. But who knows in something like this? I’m also taking the investigation out of the precinct house.”

  “The fewer people who know what you’re up to, the less the enemy knows.”

  Leah smiled. Quinn was learning. “Exactly.”

  There was another light knock on the door. The identifier indicated it was their waiter. Leah put her hand on her weapon, suddenly more paranoid than before talking with Quinn. She nodded at Quinn, who tapped the key that unlocked the door.

  The waiter, seeing Leah had her hand on her weapon, quickly served their dinner and fled.

  “Where are you taking the investigation?”

  “You mean physically?”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said, smiling. “I know full well nothing else will be on your mind until it’s over.”

  “I’d like to take it to your old place. It’s secure. It’s high-tech. It has the tools we’ll need to be able to do research. There’s no obvious connection to me or the team.”

  “Perfect choice. But if it ever comes out that you ran the investigation from the condo, the shit will hit the fan.”

  “It’s bound to happen someday.”

  That was the one thing she and Quinn had been hoping they could stave off for several years. They didn’t want people finding out they were together. While the prohibition against humans marrying aliens had been lifted five years earlier by the legislature, the stigma against it was still firmly in place.

  Quinn was a Devarian, a fierce race who had come to Earth uninvited and refused to leave. A war had been fought and Earth had sued for peace after only six months. The humiliation of “defeat” had seeped into the human psyche. There were those who still hadn’t forgiven the Devarians for winning the war, though many people in New America would never admit they’d lost to a race of aliens.

  Leah had met Quinn four years earlier during an investigation of a Devarian woman murdered for being with a human man. Initially, Quinn had been looked at as a possible suspect because she’d been seen near the murder scene minutes after the victim had been killed, and because she was Devarian, but Leah had quickly cleared her. She found her intelligent, open-minded, and helpful in her investigation. The more time she’d spent with Quinn, the more she wanted to be with her. Leah had always been attracted to intelligent, tall, blond women. Everything about Quinn drew Leah to her. Quinn had asked her out, and within a few months, they had both declared their love, even though they knew Leah’s career could be ended by the disclosure of their relationship. Few in the cop shop would want to work with her if she were associating with an alien. Things were changing as more and more Devarians were integrated into human society, but the changes were slow in coming.

  “I can’t afford to go through the department to find a safe place to work. The captain and chief like to think that all cops, except those at the Eighty-sixth, are clean. We all know it’s not true. That knowledge hasn’t climbed its way up the chain of command yet.”

  “I’d rather risk exposure of our relationship than to have you risk your life and / or career at the precinct. Is there anything I can put into the condo for you before you arrive?” Quinn asked.

  “Not if you left your electronics behind.”

  “Yeah, they’re still there. I keep hoping we’ll be able to live there one day. In the meantime, Cots spends time there.”

  Leah hadn’t yet figured out what Cots’s role in Quinn’s life was. Best friend? Valet? Bodyguard? So many possibilities, and when asked, Quinn was somewhat vague with her answers. Leah knew Devarians didn’t like to discuss their personal relationships with humans because they were complex and not always like human families and friends, so she accepted the lack of information as part of having a relationship with a nonhuman.

  They ate their dinner in silence, each lost in thought.

  “I’m about to suggest something I’m sure you won’t like, but I’d like you to consider it nevertheless,” Quinn told her.

  “Uh-oh,” Leah said with a smile. She took a deep breath. “All right, tell me.”

  “I’d like Cots to stay with you.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Cots was also a Devarian. He was six feet seven inches tall, handsome as the day is long, charming when he wanted to be, and could pass for human with ease. Beyond his looks, though, he was trained in about 96,000 ways of killing. He’d been a soldier in a very elite division of the Devarian military before immigrating to the Americas. Quinn, like others of the ruling family on Devaria, had grown up under protection. According to Quinn, Cots had been with her since she was a child, and she trusted him implicitly. When the war ended, many of the Devarians, in a gesture of goodwill, had assumed human names. Cots had, for reasons known only to himself, chosen the name Cotsworthy. Quinn, too, had chosen a new name, since her own was unpronounceable by humans.

  “What in the world would I do with him? He’d be in the way.”

  “No, he wouldn’t, and you know it. He’d be helpful. He is discreet and wouldn’t betray you or your investigation. He knows the electronics as well as I do and better than you. And it would give me some peace of mind knowing he had your back.”

  Leah’s mind was running a mile a minute. What Quinn said made sense, but having to deal with Cots on a daily basis in the middle of a nasty investigation wasn’t her idea of a good time. She and Cots hadn’t much liked each other from the beginning. Evidently, Cots thought Quinn shouldn’t be involved with a human and should certainly never have married one.

  When she and Quinn were finished with dinner, they sat a few minutes longer, talking about Quinn’s day. During the previous four years, she’d made a fortune buying and selling real estate. She seemed to have a second sense about upcoming trends. In fact, the restaurant they were sitting in was hers, which was why they were both comfortable talking
about Leah’s case there. Quinn knew the extent of the security in this room. If she was comfortable with it, so was Leah.

  “You leave first, love. I’ll follow later. Meet you at home?” Quinn asked.

  “Okay. I had planned to go back to the precinct, but there’s nothing I can do there. Since my communicator hasn’t buzzed since I’ve been here, there’s nothing new.”

  “Good girl. Why don’t we go to the condo first thing in the morning and check it out?”

  “Sounds good,” she said, sliding from the booth. “Thanks for dinner. It was delicious as usual.”

  “Did you even taste it?”

  She smiled at her. She hadn’t actually tasted the food. “Of course.”

  “Liar.”

  She shrugged and Quinn released the lock on the door.

  “Take care out there,” she said.

  As she walked through the restaurant, she felt, rather than saw, eyes on her. Am I just being paranoid? Besides, how could anyone know where I’d be? Quinn might be right. Maybe Cots would be a nice addition to the team. Another pair of eyes might not be a bad thing.

  Leah took a circuitous route home to see if she could spot who was following her. She was sure someone was but couldn’t see anyone specific. There were too damned many cars on the road to get a good sighting. She wasn’t so much worried about who was following her as why. None of the cases she was responsible for would make anyone want to follow her, and the murders in the field were too new for anyone to know about the details. She mentally shrugged since there was nothing she could do about it, filed away the possibility she might have been followed, and continued home to Quinn.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, as Leah and Quinn were preparing to leave their apartment, she called Davidson and Fong. She told them to meet up at the food kiosk at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-third Street and call her from that location. She also told them to make sure they weren’t followed.

  Leah and Quinn went directly to the condo. Leah loved the space and had wanted them to live in it, but Quinn had asked whether someone might question how she could afford to live in the building, let alone on the top floor, on her cop’s salary. She had been disappointed to have to agree with her, but she was right, there was no way she could afford to buy the space, so Quinn had moved into Leah’s already-cramped apartment when they married. They’d talked about moving to a larger space but never seemed to have time to go looking, even with Quinn being in the real estate business.