The whole day had stuck to Kim like marker pen and had taken some scrubbing away. But now she had something to focus on, the negative began to fade. She had copied the letters, spacing and placement of them on the paper onto the wipe board to study. With the missing letters it was pretty much impossible to fill in the gaps. She felt as though she was playing a heavily biased game of Hangman.
And yet the structure was familiar to her. The letters had been centred across the page.
Damn it, had this been her own investigation she would have had this displayed prominently in the office so they could all ponder it. Four heads were most definitely better than one – depending on who the four heads were.
Kim knew she wasn’t adjusting to the dynamics of the joint investigation as well as Woody would like. Every hour that she managed to endure was a victory of fist-pump proportions.
The worst thing wasn’t even being stuck next to a man that hated her more than most of the folks she’d put behind bars. It was the slow, methodical approach to every piece of information. It felt as though Travis was constantly trying to find an operating theatre in the middle of a battleground. Sometimes you just had to get down in the mud and crack on.
And, God help her, she missed her team. Never would that thought see the other side of her lips. It was hard enough admitting it to herself. But she knew them. She could land a case and immediately visualise the best way of dividing the work. She knew that Stacey would not stop digging until she unearthed what she was after. She knew that Dawson would follow his own instinct and find good solid leads. And Bryant, well his brain would complement her own instead of slow it down.
She wondered if she was going soft in her old age, as now and again she even missed Woody.
She sighed and turned her attention back to the puzzle. There was something trying to make itself known to her.
She growled as her phone rang, then rolled her eyes when she saw the caller.
‘Frost,’ she said, swinging her legs back and forth on the bike.
‘I wanna know what you’re doing,’ she said without greeting. ‘What progress have you made? Have you identified any suspects?’
‘Bloody hell, even you’re normally more subtle than this,’ Kim observed. ‘You know I’m not going to comment on—’
‘Are you kidding, Stone?’ Frost said with an unusually thick voice. ‘This is no ordinary case, and if you treat it as such I’ll make your life—’
‘Frost, calm down,’ Kim instructed as her legs stopped swinging. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Old bones in the ground should not have turned the reporter into this near-hysterical fishwife on the other end of her phone.
Stunned silence met her ears. ‘You don’t know?’ Tracy cried, disbelievingly.
‘Know what?’ Kim asked, easing herself off the bike.
‘Bubba, my trainee, dead…’
‘Bloody hell, Tracy,’ Kim said, placing her hand on the petrol tank for support. ‘I’m so sorry. What the hell happened?’
‘His head became separated from the rest of his body on train tracks earlier today.’
Kim stood still, trying to digest what she was hearing. Not only dead but murdered.
‘Tracy, I’m sorry… I…’
Kim didn’t want to admit the inconceivable truth; that she hadn’t known.
‘Well, what are you lot doing about it?’ Tracy asked, choking back a sob. ‘Whoever did this needs stringing up by the balls. Bubba was a good kid who didn’t have it easy. I hope you’re gonna pull out all the stops to catch this bastard.’
‘Tracy, you know the police force will do everything they can—’
‘Don’t speak to me like a press liaison officer, Stone. If you tell me you’re going to catch the person, I’ll believe you, but get your two to pull their fingers out their arses and—’
‘My two?’ she asked, frowning.
‘Bryant and Dawson. They attended the scene.’
The line fell silent as Frost worked it out.
‘You didn’t even know that, did you?’ she asked, aghast. ‘What the hell is going on with you and your team, Stone?’
Kim tried to work the tension from her jaw.
‘Frost, I’ll call you tomorrow but I’m so sorry for—’
‘Save it, Stone. I’m clearly talking to the wrong person this time.’
The line went dead in her ear.
Kim didn’t move for a full ten seconds as her mind tried to process everything she’d just learned.
Bubba Jones was dead.
A reporter that they knew had been viciously and horrifically murdered earlier that day.
And she didn’t know about it.
Her next thought echoed Tracy Frost’s accusation.
What the hell was her team playing at?
FORTY
Kim had called a 7 a.m. briefing, so was not surprised that her team was assembled and waiting. What did surprise her was the Post-it note name tags they were all wearing.
She screwed up the one marked ‘boss’ and launched it into the bin. On another morning it might have been funny.
Now she had their attention.
‘How the hell did I not know that Bubba Jones had been murdered?’ she asked, looking from one to the other, waiting for an explanation.
Her gaze finally rested on Bryant.
‘Guv, you’re working on another—’
‘I have a phone, email, text. Jesus, you could have sent a bloody pigeon so that I wasn’t blindsided by Frost at eleven thirty last night.’
‘It was all over the news,’ Dawson mumbled.
‘And that’s how you think I should have found out, Kev?’ Kim raged.
If this was Dawson’s attempt to protect his colleague it was both misguided and untimely.
She turned on him. ‘Forgive me for taking an hour for myself after a fifteen-hour shift. Maybe tonight we’ll have a briefing right here at ten o’clock so we can catch up properly.’
Her response was not strictly accurate – she had been studying the paper found by Travis – but she resented the inference that she should be informed of her team’s activities by watching the bloody news.
‘You’re right, guv,’ Bryant said. ‘I should have let you know. It was down to me and I didn’t do it.’
The apology was both sincere and genuine, and she accepted it with a nod in his direction.
This was new territory for them all. A different dynamic had been forced on them, disturbing the natural rhythm of their well-oiled machine. Right now they were all feeling their way.
The fact that Stacey had remained silent throughout told her that the constable had not been involved in the process either.
‘So, where are we with it?’ she asked, reaching for the coffee that had been waiting for her.
Although she had not met the lad personally, he had been responsible for Dawson almost losing his job a while back. The trainee reporter had managed to convince her colleague to act against her direct instruction, and it had resulted in a mountain of false leads and hours of wasted manpower.
‘You cleared it with Woody?’ she asked. Any prior involvement with a murder victim had to be logged and explained.
‘Last night,’ he answered.
‘And?’
Formal permission was required to continue working the case.
‘Cleared,’ he answered.
For once Dawson appeared to have followed the rules.
‘Tied to the tracks with his neck literally on the line,’ Dawson continued. He made a cutting sign at the throat. ‘Gone.’