by Nora Roberts
“She was seeing a couple guys casually back in Atlanta before she transferred. One was another cop, and that was basically a booty buddy she’d been tight with awhile before. The other was a lawyer. She said it just wasn’t a good fit, and both of them got to just drifting along in the relationship. One of the reasons she transferred was because she felt her personal life got stale, and she felt she was losing her edge professionally. She wanted something new.”
“Nobody serious?” Eve pressed, thinking of what Morris had told her. And saw Cleo hesitate.
“She mentioned there’d been somebody, pretty intense for a while. But it hadn’t worked out.”
“Name?”
“No. But it bruised her up some-emotionally. She said they broke it off, and she’d done the casual thing for a couple months with the lawyer. But she wanted a change-a new place, new faces. Like that.”
“And once she’d transferred-on that personal level.”
“The thing with the ME started pretty quick. She hadn’t been here long when they met. Ammy said there was this instant spark. They took their time. I mean, they didn’t jump in the sack right off. When they did… like I said, you tell a woman partner things. She was crazy about him, and it came off mutual. I went out with them-like a double date deal-a few times. They gave it off-that spark. She wasn’t seeing anyone else.”
“She never mentioned anyone pushing her, on that personal front.”
“No.”
“Did she take meets on her own? With weasels, other informants, or arrange to deal with suspects solo?”
“Not generally. I mean, she might hook up with one of her weasels solo. But she’d been working this area less than a year. She didn’t have that many.”
“Names?”
Cleo’s back went up, Eve could see it. No cop liked to share weasels. “She mostly used this guy who runs a pawnshop on Spring. Stu Bollimer. He’s originally from Georgia, so she played the connection.”
“Were you using him on anything currently?”
“I know she gave him a bump on the Chinatown robbery we’re working, and he said he’d keep his ear to the ground.”
“Anything you worked on generate trouble, somebody who’d want to hurt her?”
“You bring in bad guys, they’re not going to be happy with you. Nothing stands out. I’ve been going over and over it since I heard. We’re a small squad, and most of what we handle just isn’t that juicy. She liked doing the small jobs. The mom-and-pop whose market gets ripped off, the kid who gets knocked off his airboard so some asshole can steal it. The truth is, she was thinking, maybe down the road, about marriage and having a family, taking the professional mother deal. She liked her job, and she was good at it-don’t get me wrong. But she was thinking, especially since Morris, that down the road…”
“All right, Detective. If you’d send Detective O’Brian up, I’d appreciate it. If he’s not available, your lieutenant can send up whoever he can spare.”
“O’Brian’s working his desk. I’ll send him.” Cleo got to her feet. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you come to us if you need more manpower on this. Not every cop works out of Central.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Detective.” After Cleo went out, Eve sat back. “Does she just not get it? Is it just a blind spot?”
“That every cop in that squad is currently a suspect?” Peabody shook her head. “I guess you don’t look at your own family first.”
“Civilians don’t. Cops do-or should.” Eve made a couple of notes, then reviewed her data on O’Brian.
“Next up has twenty-three years in. He made first grade five years back. He’s been with this squad for a dozen years. Second marriage, fifteen years in. No kids from marriage one, two from marriage two. Commendations, and two valorous conduct citations. Worked Major Case until he transferred here. That’s a big shift.”
Eve finally cracked her tube of Pepsi, took a hit. “He’s been here the longest, longer than his current lieutenant.”
“Guys like that can be the touchstone of a squad. The one the others go to when they don’t want to go to the brass.”
“We’re going to be here awhile yet. Check in, will you? See if there’s anything new we can use here.”
O’Brian, beefy, long-jawed, sharp-eyed, stepped in as Peabody moved to the far end of the table. “Lieutenant. Detective.”
“Detective O’Brian. We’re splitting duties here, to try to keep ahead of the curve. We can talk while my partner makes some contacts.”
“Fine.” He sat. “Let me save you some time. Detective Coltraine was a good, steady cop. Dependable. She liked to dig into the pieces for the little details. When she first joined the squad, I had my doubts she’d make the cut. That was my own prejudice, because she looked like someone who should be making beauty vids. After a couple of shifts, I saw what was under her. She knew how to be part of a team, how to handle herself in the field, and with the rest of the squad.
“If she got taken down in the stairwell of her own place, it wasn’t a stranger.”
“How do you know how she was taken down?”
His eyes never shifted from Eve’s. “I’ve got connections. I used them. I haven’t shared what I dug up with the rest of the squad. What gets shared there’s up to the boss. But I’m telling you here, if she left her place last night carrying both her weapons, she was on the job. She went down in the line. And I’m going to be pushing for her to have that honor.”
“Who could have gotten into her building?”
“Fuck if I know. We don’t work that much heat here. She didn’t have anything going for somebody to swing out and kill a cop. We got a break-in, electronics. Inside job, no question. We’d’ve had the guy sewed before noon today. I’ll still have him sewed before end-of-shift. He’s an idiot, a screwup. He’s not a cop killer. I know Delong gave you the case file. You’ll see for yourself.”
“Could she have, when picking at the pieces for the little details, on this, on something else, have scraped up something hot? Something that came back at her?”
“If she did, she didn’t tell me. We had a-I guess I want to say a kind of relationship where she’d talk a case through with me.” The grief showed now. He stared down at the table, but Eve saw it working over his face. “She had dinner at my place a few times. My wife liked her, a lot. We all did. Maybe it was Morris.”
“Excuse me?”
“Something he was working on, or had. Somebody who wanted to pay him back. Where do you hit? She was in love with the guy. It showed. The few times he came in, to hook up with her at end-of-shift? It was all over both of them. I don’t know. I’m reaching. I can’t see anything she was on, anything she was connected to that she’d die for.”
“Would you mind telling me why you transferred out of Major Case?”
He shrugged. “The job’s a good part of the reason my first marriage went south. I got another chance. Got married, and had this kid. A little girl. I figure, I’m not going to risk it again, so I transferred. It’s a good squad. We do good work here, and plenty of it. But I don’t get many calls in the middle of the night, and most nights, I’m home for dinner with my family. So you don’t have to ask, that’s where I was last night. My kid-the oldest-she’s fourteen now. She had a friend over for a study date. Mostly bullshit,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Around midnight, I was giving them both a raft of grief for giggling like a couple of mental patients when they should’ve been asleep.”
“Detective Grady mentioned a weasel, Stu Bollimer.”
“Yeah, Ammy cultivated him. He’s from Macon so she used the old home connect. The guy was born a weasel. I can’t see him setting her up, not for this. He’s small change.”
“All right. I appreciate it, Detective.”
“Are you going to keep the boss in the loop?”
“That’s my intention.”
“He’s a good boss.” He pushed back from the table. “If she’d felt anything coming, anything
to worry about, she’d have gone to him, or to me.”
“How were her instincts?”
For the first time, he hesitated. “Maybe not as tuned as they could’ve been. She was still feeling her way here, a little bit. Like I said, she was hell on details, and she was good with people. Put wits and vics at ease. But I guess I wouldn’t say she had the gut. The head, yeah, but maybe not the gut. Doesn’t make her less of a cop.”
“No, it doesn’t. She’s going to get our best, Detective O’Brian.”
“Can’t ask for more.”
“Who should we talk to next?”
“Newman maybe. He’s not going to get dick done today anyway.”
“Would you send him up?”
Peabody waited until the door shut. “Touchstone,” she said again. “He’ll take this the hardest. The boss is the boss, but he’s the team leader.”
“She didn’t have a cop’s gut. He didn’t want to say it because it seems disrespectful. But he knew it might help the investigation. She didn’t have the gut. Got the call, went out. Probably never felt any twinge. She’d been set up-and it doesn’t feel like impulse, but something planned out. But she didn’t feel it. It’s good to know.”
She reviewed her data on Detective Josh Newman.
4
EVE FOUND JOSH NEWMAN SAD, STEADY, AND talkative. The easygoing type, she decided. The sort that did his job, did it competently, then went home after shift and left the job on the job.
Average, was how she thought of him. The family man who just happened to be a cop, who would unlikely make it to detective second grade. And who gave her no new insights on Coltraine.
She moved on and took Dak Clifton. Though he was the squad’s youngest member at twenty-nine, he’d been a cop for eight years, and held his detective’s shield for nearly four of them. She thought of him, within minutes, as the Hot Shot.
His strong, good looks-the warm gold skin, the steel blue eyes and tumbling sun-tipped brown hair-probably served him well with female wits. Just as his aggressive, kick-your-ass interview style might have given some suspects the shakes.
Eve didn’t care to have it directed at her.
He leaned in, pushing into her space, with his eyes hot and bright. “We don’t need outside brass on this. This investigation needs to be handled in this house, in this squad. We take care of our own here.”
“It’s not up to you to say who handles this investigation. It’s done. If you’re going to take care of your own, Detective, you can start by easing back.”
“We worked with her. You didn’t. She’s just another case to you.”
Since his words echoed Cleo Grady’s, Eve gave him the same response. “You don’t know what she is to me. You want to bitch, bitch to somebody else. Now you’ll answer my questions.”
“Or what? You’ll haul me down to Central? Big fucking deal. You’re in here jacking us up when you should be out there hunting down the one who killed her.”
“I’ll tell you what the big fucking deal is, Clifton. Detective Coltraine is dead. You’re here wasting my time and pissing me off when you should be doing everything you can to aid the investigation of a fellow officer.”
Now Eve pushed into his space. “And that makes me wonder. Are you just an asshole? Or is there some reason you don’t want to answer my questions? Let’s assume you’re just an asshole, and start with your whereabouts yesterday from twenty-two hundred to twenty-four hundred hours.”
The gold skin went hot as he showed his teeth. “You’re no better than the IAB rats.”
“Consider me worse. Whereabouts, Detective, or yeah, we will continue this at Central, in a box.”
“I was home, with a woman I’m seeing.” Sneering, he sat back, deliberately rubbed his crotch. “Want to know what we were doing, and how many times we did it?”
“Peabody?” she said with her eyes on Clifton’s. “Are either of us interested in what this asshole did or didn’t do with his cock between the hours of twenty-two and twenty-four hundred last night?”
“We couldn’t be less.”
“Name the woman, Clifton, and consider yourself lucky I have more important things to do right now than write you up.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“I’m no more interested in your ass than I am your dick. Name, Clifton, or I’ll find the time to write you up, and you’ll take a thirty-day rip for it. You’ll start the rip sweating in a box in my house if you don’t stop screwing with me. Name.”
“Sherri Loper. She’s upstairs in Communications.”
“Tell me about your relationship with Detective Coltraine.”
“We worked together.”
“I’m aware of that. Were you friendly, unfriendly?”
“We got along fine.”
“And occasionally worked cases together?”
He shrugged, stared up at the ceiling. “Some of us actually do the job.”
Eve sat back. “If you keep trying to bust my balls here, Clifton, I’m going to bust yours. Believe me, I’m better at it. I’m rank, and don’t you forget it. Now show some respect for the rank and for your dead squadmate.”
“I said we got along fine, and we did. Hell, Ammy got along fine with everybody. She had that way. She was good with people. You think I don’t want to know who took her down? We all want to know. It doesn’t make any sense.” Some of the bravado cracked as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “Why the hell aren’t you hammering at the people in her building? It had to be somebody in there. She lived in a secure building, and she was careful.”
“Have you been to her building, her apartment?”
He closed up again. “Sure, a couple of times. Picked her up, dropped her off when we worked a case together. I have a ride, she doesn’t. So what?”
“Did you and Detective Coltraine have a personal relationship?”
“You mean did I screw her. Look, bitch-”
Eve leaned in again. “I am a ranking officer. If you call me a bitch, you’d better damn well put Lieutenant in front of it. Answer the question.”
“No. Not like you mean. We had a drink now and then, like everybody else in the squad. Maybe we grabbed a meal. She was tied up with the death doctor. You ought to be talking to him. He had access to her building, her apartment, he’d know how to take her out fast, leave a clean scene.”
“Do you have any knowledge that there was any friction between her and Dr. Morris?”
He shrugged, scowled off toward the window. “People have sex, they have friction. First person you eyeball with murder is the spouse or lover. But you’re here, grinding us through it.”
“So noted. You’re done, Detective.”
Eve sat, watched as he strode out, gave the door a slam behind him. “He made a play for her, that’s my take. Too much heat there. He made a play and she brushed him back, and then she goes for Morris. He’s the type used to having women go for him, not somebody else.”
“He’d be stupid to give us an alibi we can break,” Peabody said.
“Yeah, but we’ll check it anyway. In fact, you do that now. I’ll go thank Delong.”
“If there was something between him and Coltraine-or tension between them because she didn’t let there be-wouldn’t the rest of the squad know?”
“Cops are good at keeping secrets.”
They met outside, where, at Peabody’s insistence, they grabbed a quick to-go lunch from the deli. Eve wasn’t sure what was inside the roll she ate while they leaned against her vehicle, but it was pretty damn good.
“So, Clifton’s alibi checks out.” Peabody chomped into her own sandwich with obvious enjoyment. “But she was pretty pissy about it. ‘Yeah, we spent the night together, so what.’ Snarly, defensive. She and Clifton deserve each other.”
Eve ate, watched cops come and go. Busy little house, she thought. And little meant more interaction, more internal relationships. Cops tended to stand for each other, it was part of the code. She’d taken down wrong cops before, and
it was a hard and ugly process.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to take one down for this.
“Clifton’s had a lot of disciplinary slaps, and a few marks for using undue force. He’s got a temper. This murder doesn’t feel like heat. But we need to dig into him, and his alibi, a little deeper.”
“I hate that. I hate looking at us for this.”
“Then we hope it’s a straight bad guy, one without a badge. But we look. We’ll take the weasel next, then I want to go back to the scene, go through it again.” She walked around to get in the car, leaving Peabody no choice but to hop in.
They found the pawnshop and its proprietor easily enough. The guy looked a little like a weasel, Eve thought-or what she figured a weasel looked like. He sat in back of his security glass, making a deal with a guy sweating for his next fix.
Bollimer’s long, sharp nose twitched in the center of his long, thin face. Scenting cop, Eve decided, as the man’s bright, black eyes darted over toward her and Peabody.
“You got fifty.”
“Come on, man.” The junkie’s body twitched, his voice piped with desperation. “I need the hundred. It’s worth more’n that. Worth two-fifty easy. Have a heart, man. I need the one.”
Bollimer sniffed through his nose, pretended to examine the wrist unit more carefully. “Seventy-five. That’s the best I can do.”
“How about ninety, maybe? How about ninety? It’s a nice piece.”
“Seventy-five’s the limit.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll take it.”
Bollimer tapped some keys on his minicomp, and it spat out a form. He slid it through the chute. “You know the drill.”
The junkie scrawled his name on both parts, tore off his tab, slid the other end back to Bollimer. After keying in another code, Bollimer sent the seventy-five jingling down a tube. “You got thirty days to reclaim,” he said, and only shook his head as the man rushed out of the shop.
“He’ll be back, but not to claim this.” Bollimer tagged the wrist unit, set it aside. Then he ran a hand over the near-mirror gloss of his slicked-back hair. “What can I do for you officers today?”
