Killer Winter

by Kay Bigelow

  “Cots, how do you know she’s cheating?” Leah asked in a whisper.

  “She wasn’t discreet about having dinner with Stephanie on a regular basis. When I asked her about it, she changed the subject. Quinn became secretive, so I tapped her phone. It was crystal clear what they were up to.”

  Leah’s mind began reeling. How could she? How could I not know about the affair? How could I not know about her sharing information with Grandini?

  Leah knew Quinn was sharing information with the governor, too. Not knowing what else to say, she said, “Leave me alone, okay? I need to process this and its implications.”

  As Cots got to the door, Leah said, “Cots? Thanks for telling me. I can only imagine what it took for you to decide to do that.”

  “You’re welcome. Like I said, Quinn is a shit and has been since she was little.” Cots turned and left the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

  Leah was stunned. She sat on the edge of the bed trying to get her head around what Cots had told her. One by one, puzzle pieces began clicking into place; she remembered a half dozen cases where information had been leaked, but she couldn’t ever figure out who on her squad could be leaking that information. It made sense now that it had been Quinn. To say nothing of the incoming phone calls that she’d leave the room to have, and the many times Quinn worked, or said she was working, until midnight or two o’clock.

  She didn’t think she’d ever have a complete picture of Quinn’s perfidy. She was sure, however, that her career as a cop was over. She knew she would resign in light of what she knew of Quinn’s betrayal. Even if no one else knew, Leah knew her wife was involved with the head of a mob family.

  As much as Leah wanted to focus on the killing field murders, her mind kept returning to Quinn. Who is this woman? God knows she’s not stupid, so did she really not figure out that if it became known she consorted with criminals, I would be guilty by association? Or did she really just not give a rat’s ass how it would affect me? Who is Stephanie Grandini? Why did I not know about her? I know of Stephan, her father, but not that his daughter took over as Godfather. I must have been absorbed in a case at the time. What is the relationship between her and Quinn? I’m sure when we got together Quinn and I both talked about our exes. I’m also sure the name Stephanie Grandini would have raised a flag—a big, bright red flag. The questions went round and round, and the frustration built until she thought she’d explode.

  At nine, there was a tap on her bedroom door. She opened it and found Cots with a tray. “You need to eat something. You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry, but thanks for thinking of me.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you’re hungry or not,” Cots said. “You need to feed your body.”

  “You sound like my mother,” Leah said with a smile. “Leave the tray. I’ll eat it after I shower.”

  “Nice try. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay until the food is gone,” Cots said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Come in, then.”

  Cots set the tray on the foot of the bed. Leah uncovered a couple of the dishes, and the aroma emanating from them made her stomach growl. She ate a few bites from each one, hoping that would satisfy him and he’d go away. It didn’t and he didn’t leave.

  As she sipped the wine he’d brought in, she asked the question she needed to have an answer for and, at the same time, dreaded knowing the answer. “Why did you really tell me about Quinn?”

  “I watched you when you found out Quinn had told the governor what we were using as a working hypothesis. I don’t think any of it was making sense to you. I think all that is a distraction, as is Quinn’s betrayal.”

  “A distraction?” Leah asked. Surely he can’t think Quinn’s cheating on me is a “distraction.”

  “You don’t know Quinn like I do. I grew up with her. She’s only interested in this case as a means of gaining information that she can pass on to the people who might find it interesting. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t given a thought to how all this, plus the affair with Stephanie, will affect you. I know you love her and trust her, and I think both are misplaced.”

  “I don’t know whether to thank you for having my back and telling me or take my weapon out of my drawer over there and shoot you,” Leah said. She could see the relief in Cots’s eyes that she was able to joke about it.

  Cots said, “I’ll be in the secure room if you need me.” He picked up the tray and left the room.

  Leah decided she couldn’t think about Quinn anymore. As a cop, she knew better than to jump to conclusions about a “suspect.” As Quinn’s wife, though, she didn’t want to believe a word Cots had told her. Without a confession from Quinn’s own mouth, she’d reserve her judgment. She knew that didn’t resolve any issue, but it was easier than having to deal with the roller coaster her emotions were on.

  * * *

  Quinn hadn’t come home the night before. She’d called and said she was still working and it was easier to stay at her office. She’d done that a time or two before, and normally, Leah didn’t think anything of it. But last night, it grew like a cancer until Leah had been sure Quinn was with Grandini. She admitted to herself she was glad Quinn hadn’t come home because she didn’t want to have to talk about what was going on between them or why Quinn had lied by omission about Grandini. Leah mentally shook her head, trying to clear it of thoughts of Quinn and Grandini. She was tired of thinking of them. She needed to get her head back in the game and focus on the murders in the park. Leah took her coffee mug into the electronics room and sat at the empty desk in the back.

  Leah was beginning to think the killing field murders would go unsolved. With the police department in total disarray, she was probably the only one still working an active case that wasn’t directly connected to the bombings. Her DNA evidence could be said to be compromised in Scotty’s evacuation of the crime lab, and the physical evidence he’d gathered from the killing field had been destroyed in the bombing. All Scotty had with him were the partial thumb with the bishop’s DNA and hardly anything more. She had nothing. Unless she got a confession, her case was going nowhere. First, though, she had to have a suspect to question and hope that a confession would follow. She sighed and rested her head on the desk. “I hate being stuck.”

  “What would you normally do?” Peony asked.

  “I’d go back to the crime scene to see what I might have missed when I was there when the body was discovered.”

  “Would it be helpful to return to the killing field?”

  “It’s under at least four feet of snow. It wouldn’t surprise me if the snowplows have started using the field as a dumping ground. By the time the snow melts, the field will have been thoroughly compromised.”

  “What would be the best-case scenario here, Boss?”

  “A valid suspect would be nice. Right now, we don’t have a single one.”

  “What about Grandini? Cots said she’s a mobster who knows Quinn, and Quinn has been telling her what’s been going on. Is there anything there?”

  Great. Cots told Peony about Grandini’s involvement with Quinn. I should be angry with him for telling both of us, but I can’t be. Not really. Why not? I should be ready to go ballistic, and yet, here I am being relatively sensible. “I’m hoping she becomes a suspect. But for all the theories we’ve got, we don’t have a single element of proof against her.”

  “So we need something that links Grandini to the bishop, then. Right?” Peony asked. “What kind of something?”

  “Something that proves there’s a connection, that Grandini knew the bishop. We’ll recognize it when we see it.” Leah liked that Peony was asking the right questions. It pulled her out of her circular thinking and kept her in the game. She motioned Peony to follow her to the murder board.

  They sat in silence studying a murder board that had hardly changed since the first day they were in the condo. They’d made no progress. They weren’t even a tiny step closer to resol
ving the murders.

  “Ask Cots to put everything he has on the bishop onto the murder board.”

  Peony went into the security room. Within a minute, articles and photographs began popping onto the board. A full mug of coffee appeared on the table beside her.

  “Thanks,” Leah said without looking away from the murder board.

  “You’re welcome,” Quinn said softly.

  She didn’t, couldn’t, look at her. “What are you doing home?” she asked.

  “I took care of business and cleared my schedule for the afternoon. It’s much more interesting here than at my office. And since I’m in ‘mourning’ for you, no one will think it’s unusual that I left the office early.”

  “This isn’t just early. This is obscenely early for you.”

  “Still, no one will comment. What are you doing?”

  Leah was unsure whether to share anything with Quinn, but she didn’t want to not share with her either. After all, she had no proof of Quinn’s perfidy. She only had Cots’s word and supposition, but she would find out at some point. Right now, she needed to set aside her personal life and solve the multiple murders in the killing field.

  “Trying to find anything that will move the killing field investigation forward.”

  “What does the evidence tell you?”

  “There isn’t any physical evidence. We’re pretty sure it was destroyed in the bombing. The only thing we know with some certainty is that one of the bodies in the field belonged to Bishop Solomon Cohane. Other than that, there are no definite connections to anyone.”

  “That’s pretty slim evidence to solve a lot of murders.”

  “Slim is putting it mildly. It’s more like nonexistent.”

  “What’s your gut telling you?”

  My gut is screaming you’re a cheating bitch. But her heart was trying hard to disagree, and she shook the thought away. “Nothing right now. I need to find one solid lead on who the people in the field are. Then I need a connection between that person and the bishop.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I also need to know whether the bishop was the target, thus making the others in the field collateral damage, or vice versa.”

  “We don’t know enough about the bishop other than his occupation to even speculate on why he was killed,” Peony said.

  “Good analysis,” Leah said. “Cots, you did the search on the bishop. Any hints in anything you found?”

  “None. His personal life is shrouded in secrecy,” Cots said. “His public persona, however, is full of good deeds done by a good man.”

  “Then how are we ever going to solve these murders?” Peony asked.

  “The way we always solve crimes, and the way we should have been working this all along. We’ll sift through the evidence Scotty gives us. We’ll gather information from every source we can find. Somewhere in that evidence and information, answers will begin to emerge. It will be tedious and we’ll be tempted to skip steps and jump to conclusions. But we won’t. We’ll carefully build our case and get whoever killed all those people,” Leah said.

  Leah knew she sounded more optimistic than she felt. Stuck in the condo until the case was solved wasn’t her idea of the best way to conduct an investigation. In reality, being out in the field wouldn’t help resolve this case, not to mention that she was still listed as missing and presumed dead. Cots would have to be her legs for the time being. She also knew she’d have to back off wanting Grandini to somehow be involved in this case, as there wasn’t a shred of evidence to point them in her direction. Leah knew she’d let her own feelings get into the middle of this investigation, and she knew she couldn’t continue to let them cloud the facts. She needed to rectify that right now.

  “Where do we start?” Peony asked, looking like the young, eager cop she was.

  “We’ll start with the bishop. Cots, have you got everything you can find on him?” Leah asked.

  “Yes. I’ve got a bot out in the ether waiting for his name to appear somewhere. It’ll grab the information and send it back to us if anything pops up. But we’re current as of last night.”

  “You and Peony compile the information. Distill it into something useful. When you’ve done that, we’ll go over what you’ve got and go from there.”

  “On it, Boss,” Peony said, sounding much like Cots.

  Cots frowned as he followed Peony into the secure room.

  Leah asked Quinn, “Don’t you need to go back to work?”

  “Yeah, but this is so much more interesting.”

  “More interesting than buying and selling property at all hours of the night and day? That’s new.” Leah couldn’t keep the sharp tone from her voice.

  “I think I’m having a midlife crisis,” Quinn confessed.

  “I thought you told me that Devarians lived to be in their hundreds. How can you be having a midlife crisis now?”

  “They do, but I’m an early flower. Is that the correct saying?”

  Leah smiled. It wasn’t often that Quinn was unsure of herself. Seeing Quinn even a little vulnerable tugged at Leah’s heartstrings. “You meant to say ‘bloomer,’ but I understood what you meant. Maybe you’re bored and only need to come across a nice, juicy piece of property to get back into the swing of things.”

  “Maybe I’ll retire,” she said more to herself than to Leah. “We could travel.”

  “Hey, buddy, I’ve got a job and I can’t retire for another twenty years or so.” At least, I have a job for now. If it’s ever revealed my wife knew and consorted with the mob, my job will be over anyway. Her worry about the future grew like a tsunami. But what if that was part of the answer to fix their relationship? Would Quinn walk away from Grandini so they could start over somewhere else? Does that mean she’s not cheating on me after all? Maybe Grandini is just an ex who is still a friend. And maybe I’m just grasping at straws. As desperately as she wanted to believe it, instinct told her that wasn’t the case.

  “You don’t need to work.” Quinn returned to an old and touchy subject.

  “Right now I need to solve the killing field murders. We’ll talk about your midlife crisis later, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, clearly already making travel plans. She left to retrieve her computer from her bag near the front door and then returned looking stressed. “Someone delivered something to you.” Quinn’s voice shook slightly.

  “What is it?”

  “An envelope addressed to you.”

  Leah could see the wheels turning in Quinn’s head as it occurred to her that someone had breached her security system and delivered an envelope to her front door. They were no longer safe.

  Chapter Nine

  “Cots,” Quinn yelled.

  “Yeah?” Cots darted into the room with Peony right behind him.

  “How the hell did someone get into the building to deliver this?” Quinn demanded, waving the envelope.

  “What are you talking about?” Cots asked.

  “I found this slipped under the door,” Quinn said.

  “What is it?” Cots put his hand up to take it, but Quinn kept waving it like it was on fire.

  “It’s an envelope, and it was under our door.”

  “I can see that much,” Cots said. “Let me have it before you open it. I’ll run some tests. Maybe we’ll catch a break and we’ll find out who delivered it.”

  Quinn followed Peony and Cots back into the secure room, leaving Leah in the living room by herself. It was still snowing, although not as heavily. The snowplow had been by again but was obviously unable to keep up with removing the rapidly accumulating snow. Her mind drifted to what it would be like to get up in the morning in January and see flowers and trees with leaves on them. Better yet, what would it be like not to have to wear ten pounds of outerwear every day? Or spend a half hour getting ready to go out to get a package of coffee? She could almost imagine it, but not quite. Reluctantly, she brought herself back to the present.

  Although it was midafternoon, th
e clouds and snow made it look like dusk. She couldn’t make out the details of the many shadowy objects on the sidewalks. They could be people or trash cans. She was sure someone was watching the condo. She could sense them out there. Too many years of being a cop told her that it wasn’t just another flight of fancy, like wondering what it would be like to see green living things in the middle of winter. She knew whoever was watching couldn’t see her because of the privacy glass, but it felt creepy nevertheless. Who found us and how? Her gut said that it was Grandini who had found them, but how, and why? Quinn was the obvious answer. But why would she tell Grandini? Pillow talk? Please don’t let it be Quinn who told Grandini where we are.

  Before Leah could start that endless loop over again, Quinn returned to the living room and sank into a chair near Leah’s.

  “Cots is trying to see if there are any fingerprints on the envelope before he lets us open it.”

  “Quinn?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Was Stephanie Grandini ever in this condo?” Leah didn’t want to think what it might imply if the answer was yes, but she had to know. If Cots was right, and Quinn was sharing information with Grandini for reasons other than just intimate talk, Leah needed to know. And if it was at all connected to her case, she definitely needed to know. No matter how much it hurt to know the truth.

  “You’re thinking she sent the envelope?” Quinn asked, obviously avoiding answering her question.

  Leah didn’t miss the fact that Quinn didn’t pretend not to know the name. “It’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

  “But that would mean she knows you’re still alive.”

  “Does Grandini know this is where you lived? Was she ever here?”

  “Yes,” she answered without elaborating or looking at Leah.