“Take your time,” Hailey told her, leading Jamie to a small table to one side. On it sat a chamber for fingerprinting evidence.
Hailey sat and Jamie forced herself to join her, though she would have preferred to stand.
Sydney circled another three spots on the carpet before standing to remove the medical gloves, drop them in the biohazard trash bin, and toss the contaminated pen into the trash. Afterwards, she retrieved a file off her desk and carried it to the table, sitting beside Hailey and opposite Jamie. She wiped her eyes with her palms, shook her head. “I keep losing it. They should have someone else doing her work, you know. Damn bureaucracy.”
Jamie struggled to find something to say, something that would alleviate any doubt. Instead, she shook her head. “I’m very sorry, Sydney.”
Sydney glanced at her. “She wasn’t the best with men, but she was a wonderful person.”
“She didn’t deserve what happened to her.” Jamie opened her mouth to say more, but couldn’t think of anything that would seem genuine.
Natasha didn’t deserve to be murdered.
No one deserved that.
Sydney blinked again, shook her head, and sniffed to clear her nose. With a deep breath, she pressed on. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got. From the car, we found dozens of smudged partials but only nine full prints—three inside the car, six outside. Six we’ve matched to officers, the other three have no match yet. And we haven’t finished printing her office.”
Hailey drew out her notebook. “Start with the inside.”
“Your rookie on the neck. Devlin’s prints and another one.” She scanned the pages, flipping through them.
“Worley?” Hailey asked.
Sydney shook her head. “Scott Scanlan.”
Jamie watched Hailey’s face. From the expression, Jamie could see Hailey had not expected that news.
“Scanlan?” Hailey repeated.
Jamie knew Scanlan only by reputation. From what she’d heard, he was not a likely target for a Natasha conquest. He seemed young, even for her, and not all that bright. He had a tendency to make a mess of everything he got himself into, to the point where he’d become a sort of punch line for department jokes.
Except when he landed himself in the news. Then, the joke was on them.
Of course, he was the deputy chief’s son. That would be appealing to Natasha.
Sydney lowered her voice. “He’s been dating someone in here—our new tech, Stephanie Rusch.”
The tech was young and cute.
“They’ve been together a couple of months,” Sydney went on. “He’s been really sweet to her—taking her out, flowers, the whole bit. I know his reputation, but he’s young, you know. I don’t think he belongs on the force, but for the most part, he’s a confused kid, trying to fill Daddy’s shoes.”
“My husband’s sometimes guilty of the same,” Hailey admitted. “Does Stephanie know?”
“About the prints? Yeah. She got the match and I had to pull her. Have them double-checked. I’ve got her on an outside case now. The whole thing is conflict of interest. It should go to the Feds, but you know that’ll never happen. Can you see the department calling in the FBI?”
No one spoke for a minute.
No, Jamie thought. That would not happen. Getting a case from the department usually meant a battle.
“Christ, what a nightmare,” Jamie said after a pause.
“I’m sorry, too, Sydney,” Hailey added.
Jamie started to stand. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m making it harder, I’m sure.”
Sydney shook her head. “Don’t go. It’s fine. I’ll get through it.” She touched Jamie’s arm. “Stay.”
“Please,” Hailey added.
Jamie sat.
Sydney straightened. “We found dozens of partials, but Scanlan’s was clean—on the dash above the glove—so it’s recent—at least relatively.”
“And outside?” Hailey prompted.
“Outside we’ve got Wallace again—”
“The rookie,” Hailey said.
Sydney kept reading. “Natasha, Worley, two unknowns, and an officer named Daniels. Know him?”
Hailey’s expression tightened. “Daniels?”
“I saw him there,” Jamie said. “I figured it was because she was a cop, but I wouldn’t have expected him to touch the car. Kind of a rookie mistake for IA.” She had seen Daniels talking to Natasha at the banquet as well. They were flirting. Of course, Natasha didn’t seem to know how to talk to a man without flirting. She’s dead, Jamie caught herself.
Being a flirt wasn’t grounds for murder.
Hailey turned to Jamie. “You’re saying Daniels was at the scene yesterday morning?”
“Yeah. You’re surprised?”
Anger flashed across Hailey’s expression. Her cheeks filled with color. “I was told no one was there before me,” she said through gritted teeth.
Hailey’s reaction was something more than frustration at being jerked around by the brass. It seemed emotional, personal, at least to Jamie. “You okay?”
Hailey nodded stiffly. “Just sick of bureaucratic BS.”
“What else?” Hailey asked, turning to Sydney.
“The sex kit. We’ve got positive tests for saliva, semen, and we’ve got a half dozen hairs.”
Jamie felt her mouth drop. “Jesus. She wasn’t raped, was she?”
Sydney shook her head. “No signs of trauma, but she’d had intercourse.”
Jamie stared. “With—” Then suddenly she didn’t want to know. The band around her ribs tightened and she couldn’t seem to draw a breath. “It’s okay. I don’t need—”
Hailey touched her arm. “Tim told us, Jamie. They had sex earlier that day, before the banquet.”
Her stomach contracted like she’d been hit.
Tim said he’d seen her the night before, when he’d gone to her house. He told her they’d had a fight. He hit her. An older neighbor had come out of her house and asked if Natasha needed help. Jamie shook her head, felt sick. He told her all those things, but he had failed to tell her that he’d slept with Natasha the day of her death. That somehow they’d made up long enough to have sex again. He’d lied. Stupid. Of course he’d lied.
“Jamie, are you—”
Just then, a phone began to vibrate on the table. Both inspectors grabbed for theirs.
“It’s me,” Jamie said, thankful for the interruption. “Vail,” she said without excusing herself, stumbling into the hall.
Hailey called something behind her, but Jamie kept moving.
She had been so focused on clearing Tim, so concerned that they would do everything to frame Tim in an effort to solve the case quickly. The more pressure there was to solve it, the easier it would be to let Worley hang in the noose.
Maybe, though, the noose was exactly where Tim belonged. Damn him.
“This is dispatch,” came the response.
“Dispatch?”
“Inspector, we received a call from the Marin County Sheriff’s Department. A neighbor called on a break-in at 129 Payne Road. I’ll patch you through to the responding officer now.”
Shit. That was her house.
A series of clicks and she heard a new voice. “Officer Arguello here.”
“This is Inspector Vail. I’m the owner of 129 Payne. You have an intruder there?”
“Guy broke a window over the kitchen sink to get in. Dog went crazy, so the neighbor called us. We caught your perp. He’s wasted drunk and swears he knows you.”
Could Tim have made it from the courthouse that quickly? Gotten wasted? But, that meant they’d granted bail and why would he go to her house? “I don’t think so.”
The officer chuckled. “That’s the truth. They all say they know someone when they get busted.”
“You have an ID on him?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “Name is Tony Galen.”
Jamie clamped her eyes shut.
Some small noise issued from her chest like
a sigh, or a gasp, or maybe the sound of her childhood rushing back.
“You know him, Inspector?” Arguello asked.
“Yeah,” Jamie said slowly. “I know him.”
“We’ve got him at the station. You want to come pick him up?”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
“We’ll try to get some coffee in him.”
Jamie hung up the phone and headed for the door.
Tony Galen.
Jesus Christ.
They had grown up together. Their fathers had been best friends, worked in the same firehouse, and shared a duplex a few blocks away. When their wives had died, her father and Pat, Tony’s father, were widowers together.
Tony Galen, and his brother Mick, were the closest thing she’d had to brothers.
But they were not good at family.
Besides a few rules, her father mostly ignored her as she developed into a woman. From time to time, the women her father or Pat dated tried to help. When it came to Jamie, though, her father cast one of his wide blue-eyed winks. “My Jamie can take care of herself,” he’d say, the Irish brogue always thicker around the ladies.
For a while, Jamie assumed the distance her father kept was because she was a girl. And maybe that was part of it. But Tony and Mick’s father, Pat, ignored the boys in much the same way.
Maybe the kids looked too much like the women the men had lost, their little faces were too much for the men to bear. Perhaps they didn’t know how to raise kids on their own.
Maybe it was because the two men were immigrants. Growing up in America was completely different from what they knew in Ireland.
Or maybe it was what happened the summer of their twelfth year.
Whatever the reason, their fathers didn’t ask, and the kids didn’t tell.
That rule became the basis of their relationships—between the children and their fathers, between each other, and as Jamie learned with Tim, in her relationships after that too.
Despite all the death and tragedy, no one ever talked. Loss was something you put in a dark place, in a deep drawer, and sealed off.
That was supposed to make it hurt less, keep it from doing damage.
Christ, look at her now.
She hit end and saw she had a new voicemail.
“It’s Jules,” her captain’s voice said. “You’ve got another twenty-four hours surveillance on Marchek. Let’s hope we get something.”
She was relieved. At least they had more time. As she started out of the building, the phone vibrated in her hand.
“Vail.”
“It’s Ed Goldman.” His voice was quiet and she heard the disappointment in his voice. It wasn’t good news.
“What happened?”
“We didn’t make bail. Flight risk, a police murder. We fought hard, but the judge didn’t budge.”
Jamie rushed out the front door, felt the sun bright in her eyes. “What do you do now?”
“We appeal. In the meantime, the police have warrants for his house and car.”
Tim was going to jail. She had helped him. What if he were guilty? No.
He couldn’t be.
“I’ll call you when I’ve got an update,” Goldman said and rang off.
For several minutes, Jamie stood outside the department and let the sun warm her face.
What else could go wrong?
Chapter 14
Tony Galen pressed his forehead against the scarred table in the interview room. The plastic surface was cool against the heat in his face, and he let his eyes fall closed again, trying to shut out the pain in his head and throat.
The room reeked of bad coffee and stale cigarettes, and under that was the sharp odor of liquor oozing out of pores—his. It had been whiskey going in, but it all smelled like gin coming out. Like rotting limes. He opened his lips, tried not to swallow. He held an arm against the rumbling in his stomach, fought the urge to throw up.
They’d tried to get him to eat something, but he couldn’t. Eating would guarantee he’d vomit and he’d rather not. When he’d first arrived, the police interview room had been spinning. Now that it had stopped, he wished it would start again. At least then his head hadn’t been pounding.
He drank five—or was it six—cups of burned coffee in the hopes that it would start to mix with the alcohol in his blood and bring him down enough to stop the nausea. Again, no luck.
That was the story of his life—no fucking luck.
He turned his head sideways and felt the burn of the wound on his neck. The lacerations had scabbed over and healed, but with each turn of his head came little pangs in the old wounds. The collar of his shirt was carefully closed over the scars. He had enough to answer for; he didn’t want to have to go into that too.
He had spent four months locked up for it already.
Before that, he’d been in twelve states in the eight months since Deborah had kicked him out. He hadn’t known anyone along the way. Worked his way from state to state, if you could call it working. He’d bummed rides and cigarettes, worked a day here and there. Almost two fucking years since Mick had died.
Almost two years since he had killed Mick.
Almost that long since his father had died of a broken heart. “I can’t believe my Mick’s gone,” he’d said, sitting in that sterile room, looking like warm death. The room was pungent with the smells of bleach and urine. Mixed in was the chalky scent of Maalox.
His dad had died a week and a half later, before Tony had made it back to see him again.
He heard the door to the interview room open and assumed it was another cop with more coffee.
The special treatment was because of Jamie.
If Jamie wasn’t on her way right now, he’d be behind bars and no one would give a shit that his head was ready to explode. There would be no coffee, no niceties. That’s what knowing a local cop did for you.
“You want to tell me what the fuck I’m doing here?”
Tony raised his head to look at Jamie Vail.
He blinked, which felt like hammering his head with his fist. Bluish circles shadowed her eyes. Tired. How long since he’d seen her? They’d been like siblings growing up—Jamie, Tony, his brother, Mick.
Now, Jamie was all the family he had left.
“You hear about Mick?”
She nodded, but nothing in her expression gave a hint as to what she thought of Mick’s death.
Did she know that Mick came back into that burning building because his baby brother was drunk?
Did she know he never came out for that same reason?
“And Dad?”
Something in her expression softened, the old Jamie still in there. At least there was that. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to get back for the services—”
“Shit happens,” he responded.
“Is that your excuse for my window?”
Their eyes met and she shook her head. She never could stay angry for long. Her shoulders dropped. “I didn’t mean it like that. The window doesn’t matter. Shit, none of it matters.”
He lifted his head. “I know what you meant.”
It was a mistake to come here. He knew it already. Because he couldn’t see Jamie and not think about being a kid. About their dead mothers, their dads, the firehouse, that day…
He couldn’t see Jamie and not remember the moment when everything had changed.
She seemed anxious to be released from the discussion of the dead people in their lives.
“You got your hair cut,” he commented. “It was longer before.”
She touched her hair. “I haven’t seen you in five years,” she reminded him. “It’s about the same. I haven’t had it done in forever.”
“If it was recent, I was going to suggest you ask for a refund.”
“Asshole,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips. It looked foreign on her face.
More awkward silence followed.
She glanced around the room, pulled out a chair, and sat. “Why did I
come here again?”
“To pick me up?”
“You ever think of calling first?” Jamie asked.
“Breaking the window was so much easier. Plus, I didn’t think you had a phone.”
She stood, motioned to him. “Let’s go.”
He pressed his palms flat into the cool, laminate surface of the table and rose. Followed. Without comment, Jamie filled out the paperwork, retrieved what was left of his worldly possessions from the police, and handed the manila envelope to him, raising an eyebrow at the scar on his hand. She didn’t ask.
That was Jamie.
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
It was the way they were raised.
They were equals back then. There was no big sister or brother among them. Being in charge was the job of Tony’s older brother, Mick. As kids, the threesome spent nearly every evening together. Their dads worked in the same firehouse, alternating shifts when they could so that one or the other could be in charge of the kids.
Even then, Mick was the one who helped with homework and made sure Tony and Jamie were in bed on time.
His father and Jamie’s made the meals.
That was a rule—no cooking without one of them around. Fire safety, of course.
If both men were going to be out, they made cold sandwiches for dinner.
When they got to the car, she unlocked it and they both got in. “Where to?”
He leaned back. “Home?”
“And where is that?”
“I thought you’d know how to get there. The cops drove me here and I was kind of drunk when the cabbie dropped me off.”
Jamie pulled a cigarette out and lit it. He took one too. They smoked in silence, the car unmoving until she finally said, “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”
It was the question that burned in his mind too. Why had he come?
Because there was no one else.
Because he needed a job, a life, and he could no longer have one in New York.
Just then, her phone rang. “Vail.”
On the other end of the phone, he heard a male voice. Gruff, short. Another police officer. Jamie smoked. She glanced over at him and he knew exactly what was going on—she was checking on him, his past. When she hung up, she turned to him.
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 11
