Chapter 7
On the drive back, Kat kept both hands on the wheel. She focused hard on the road, too hard, but it was the only way to keep her head from spinning. Her world had keeled off its axis. Nurse Steiner had again warned her that Monte Leburne had been disoriented under the medication and that his claims should be viewed with a strong dose of skepticism. Kat nodded as the nurse spoke. She understood all that—about disorientation and unreliability and even imagination—but she’d learned one thing as a cop: Truth has its own funky smell.
Right now, Monte Leburne reeked of truth.
She flipped on the radio and tried to listen to angry talk radio. The hosts always had such easy answers to the world’s problems. Kat found their simplicity irritating and thus their shows, in an odd way, wonderfully distracting. Those who had easy answers, be they on the right or the left, were always wrong. The world is complex. It is never one-size-fits-all.
When she arrived back at the 19th Precinct, she headed straight to Captain Stagger’s office. He wasn’t there. She could ask when he’d be back, but she didn’t feel like drawing attention to herself quite yet. She settled on sending him a quick text: Need to talk.
No immediate reply, but then again, Kat hadn’t expected one. She took the stairs up a level. Her current partner, Charles “Chaz” Faircloth, stood in the corner with three other cops. When she approached, Chaz said, “Well, hey there, Kat,” stretching it out so that even these benign words carried a sarcastic edge. Then, because Chaz was funny like this, he added: “Look what the Kat dragged in.”
Sadly, the men with him actually chuckled.
“Good one,” she said.
“Thanks. Been working on my timing.”
“It’s paying off.”
Oh man, she was so not in the mood for him right now.
Chaz wore an expensive, chintzy, perfectly tailored suit, the kind that glistens as though wet, a tie Windsored by someone who had too much time on their hands, and Ferragamo shoes that brought to mind that old adage about judging a man by the shine of his shoes. The adage was crap. Guys who always shined their shoes were usually self-involved asswipes who figure superficiality trumps substance.
Chaz had the waxy, pretty-boy good looks and almost supernatural charisma of, well, a sociopath, which Kat suspected he was. He was a Faircloth, yes, one of the Faircloths, a loaded and well-connected family whose members often played at being cops because it looked good when they ran for public office. Still keeping his eye on her, Chaz whispered a little joke to the guys, probably at her expense, and the group dispersed with a laugh.
“You’re late,” Chaz said to her.
“I was working a case for the captain.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Is that what they call it?”
What an ass.
With Chaz, everything was a double entendre that bordered on, if not crossed into, harassment. It wasn’t that he hit on women. It was that his entire personality was hitting on women. Some men are like this—they communicate with all females as though they’d just met in a singles bar. He couldn’t talk about what he had for breakfast without making it somehow smarmy, as though you’d just had a one-night stand and cooked it up for him.
“So what are we working on?” Kat asked.
“Don’t worry. I covered for you.”
“Yeah, well, thanks, but do you mind filling me in?”
Chaz gestured toward her desk, flashing emerald-stone cuff links. “The files are all there. Have at it.” He checked his oversize and too-shiny Rolex. “Gotta bounce.”
He strutted out with his shoulders back, whistling some lame tune about shorties in a club. Kat had already spoken to Stephen Singer, her immediate superior, about getting a new partner. Once Chaz heard about her request, he’d been shocked, not so much because he really liked Kat but because he could not fathom how this woman—or any woman—hadn’t fallen under his spell. He reacted by turning up the charm, sure that there was no woman anywhere in the free world he couldn’t bend to his whim.
With his back still facing her, Chaz waved a hand up and said, “Later, babe.”
Not worth it, she told herself.
There were more important issues at hand. For example: Could Monte Leburne have been telling the truth?
What if they had had it wrong all these years? What if her father’s killer was still out there?
It was almost too overwhelming to consider. She needed to unload, to talk to someone who had known all the players and the situations, and the first name to come to mind, the first person who popped in her head, God help her, was Jeff Raynes.
She glanced at the computer on her desk.
First things first. She brought up every file on Monte Leburne and the murder of Detective Henry Donovan. There was a ton of material. Okay, fine. She could read it tonight at home. Of course, she had already read it a hundred times, but had she ever gone into it with the supposition that Monte Leburne was a fall guy? No. Fresh eyes. She would read it with fresh eyes.
Then she started wondering whether Jeff had replied to her YouAreJustMyType.com message yet.
The desks on either side of her were empty. She looked behind her. No one was there. Good. If the guys in here saw her bring up an online dating site, she would never hear the end of it. She sat at the computer and took another look. The coast was clear. She quickly typed “YouAreJustMyType.com” into the field and hit RETURN.
Site blocked. To access, please ask your direct superior for access code.
Uh-uh, no way. The police department was like a lot of businesses—they were trying to up productivity by not allowing employees to spend time on personal websites or social networks. That was what was happening here.
Earlier she had debated putting the YouAreJustMyType app on her phone, but that felt way too desperate. It would simply have to wait. Which was fine. Except that it wasn’t.
Cases came in through the door. Kat handled them. A taxi driver claimed a socialite was trying to beat a fare. A woman complained that her neighbor was growing pot plants. Minor stuff. She checked her cell phone. No reply from Stagger. She didn’t know what to make of that. She sent him another message: Really need to talk to you.
She was about to pocket her phone when she felt the vibration. Stagger’s answer had come in: Assume this has to do with prison visit?