Cohen set the gun back down on his desk. I swore he’d aged ten years since yesterday. I’d seen it before. The skin beneath his eyes went gray and he’d get a thousand-yard stare that said he knew trouble was out there, just waiting to jump him if he let down his guard. His shoulders would drop until I found myself looking for the weight of the world he seemed to be carrying.
Yet, each time he managed to bounce back. Right up until the next bad case.
He rolled his neck until it popped. “I can’t get a read on Stern. She’s about as warm as a deep freezer. But she pays her taxes, hasn’t ever taken a sick day at work, dresses like she’s got Grace Kelly as a wardrobe assistant. She donates time and money to the local art community. Doesn’t even have a parking ticket. Bandoni’s digging into her records, but if I put her in front of a profiler with what we’ve got so far, he’d laugh me out of the room. And we’re still looking for a link between her and either Ben or Samantha.”
“Maybe she crossed paths with them at an art event. Samantha’s got work hanging in galleries—don’t those places have openings and fund-raisers?”
“You’re asking a murder cop about art?”
“It can’t be all bullets and babes,” I said. “As for Stern, she’s completely by the book. No heart, according to those who work with her. But she’s the best at what she does. Maybe that makes her appealing to a certain type of man. One more interested in conquest than occupation. If Ben is that type, she might have caught his eye.”
“Occupation? Is that your word for a relationship?” He held up a hand. “Don’t answer that. So you’re thinking Ben might have relished the challenge? Former military man who’s bored with the day job after leading troops into battle?”
It wasn’t where I wanted to go, but I kept circling back to it. The photo I’d seen in Ben Davenport’s employee file was that of a man who had bad days. Maybe a lot of bad days. I got that and I didn’t want to hold it against him. But maybe persuading a woman like Veronica Stern into his bed had helped him make the transition from combat to corporate life.
“She’s not bad looking,” I said, going for understatement. “Pair that with the aloof, hard-to-get angle, and a man could get hooked. Even if she doesn’t acquiesce, he could get possessive. Is Stern married?”
“Divorced. We’re checking out the ex. Let’s say she did decide to sleep with Ben. Then, once the challenge is gone, he moves on to the next target. Or maybe goes back to his wife. Stern’s betrayed and enraged and decides to slaughter the family. She takes the little girl because—to her way of thinking—Lucy should be hers.”
I stared out the window on the other side of his desk. His gaze followed mine. Outside, a gloomy landscape of clouds and skyscrapers brooded in the gray light. The din of horns sounded distantly through the glass.
“It doesn’t work,” I said.
“Because she’s five feet five and a hundred pounds soaking wet?”
“Because the Davenport deaths were ugly. Hands-on and messy. I can barely put Stern and messy in the same sentence.”
“So she had a partner. Someone else who slept with her or who wants to sleep with her.”
“What about the person who called it in?” I asked.
“He didn’t give a name. And he used a burner phone.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And that’s not a flag?”
“Of course it is. But it’s not automatic proof of malice. People use prepaid phones when they’re trying to sell something and want to remain anonymous, or if they have bad credit and can’t get a phone plan. The Feds are trying to chase it down, but if the caller was setting up Stern, he will have used the phone once and ditched it. It’ll be a dead end.”
I rubbed Clyde’s outstretched paw gently with my foot. “I guess you’ve considered the possibility that the killer might be someone she’s rejected. He targets Ben for getting what he couldn’t, then fingers her for the crime.”
“First place Bandoni and I went. It fits with shooting the men and taking the women. And with the quotes. We’ll see what she says. And if we believe her.” He propped his feet on a half-open drawer of his desk and leaned back far enough I had to stop myself from grabbing his chair. He laced his fingers behind his head, elbows spread wide. A classic Cohen pose when he was thinking. To anyone who didn’t know him well, he looked relaxed. But his freighted eyes betrayed him.
“Tell me about the crossing number,” he said.
I told him about taking out the Xs, and that the crossing had been converted to an overpass back in the eighties. That it was close to where Samantha had been murdered.
“No shit?” Cohen dropped his feet, and the front wheels of his chair slammed down on the carpet. Clyde shot out from under Cohen’s desk, then gave him a dirty look when it was clear there weren’t any bad guys around that needed chasing.
“Sorry, fur ball,” Cohen said. Then to me, “Maybe he was signaling intent by writing that number in the kiln. Maybe he planned to kill Samantha when the hazmat train came through, but she fought back and he had to change his plans. So how would he know about an old crossing number?”
“Maybe he worked for the railroad years ago.”
He picked up the article. “So, 1982. We’d be talking someone in their, what, fifties? Or older. Crime like this would be hard for someone that age to pull off.”
Clyde had stretched out at my feet, safely away from Cohen’s chair. But now he came up fast. Something blocked the lights, and I turned in my chair to face Cohen’s partner, Len Bandoni.
“You two done making goo-goo eyes at each other, maybe we can get to work,” he said. “We got Stern in Room 3.”
Cohen’s partner was not my number-one fan. I didn’t think he ever fully accepted my version of events surrounding the skinhead shoot-out five months earlier. Cohen hadn’t, either, for that matter. But they had different opinions as to whether what I’d done had been wrong or right. Bandoni fell so far on the side of the line that put me in the wrong that—until now—he’d managed to avoid me entirely. Which made things tough for Cohen. Which, in turn, made me dislike Bandoni even more.
“Jealous?” I asked him. “Cohen never gives you goo-goo eyes anymore?”
Bandoni snorted. “You haven’t shot any of the witnesses yet, have you, Parnell? Flashed your little railroad badge and tried to arrest half of metro Denver?”
“This morning,” I said. “While you were finishing your first donut.”
He stuck a finger in one ear, dug around. “Something’s making noise. Like a gnat, maybe.”
Cohen rolled his eyes. “Let’s get to work, partner.” To me he said, “You know where the observation room is, right?”
I nodded.
As he and Bandoni walked off, Bandoni reached his hand up behind his back and gave me the finger. The last defense of the weak. Score one for the railroad cop.
CHAPTER 10
There are two main reasons we wage war: greed and revenge.
You can talk about dictators who’ve crossed a line, or about the need to defend the helpless. You can get on your soapbox and preach democracy and how it’s your job to take it to the world.
But it all comes down to two things. Someone wants something. Or someone took something.
And now we’re gonna kick a little ass.