Kat lived on 67th Street on the Upper West Side. The 19th Precinct, her workplace, was also on 67th Street, albeit on the east side, not far from Hunter College. She cherished her commute—a walk straight across Central Park. Her squad was housed in an 1880s landmark building in a style someone had told her was called Renaissance Revival. She worked as a detective on the third floor. On television, the detectives usually have some kind of specialty like homicide, but most of those subspecialties or designations were long gone. The year her father was murdered, there were nearly four hundred homicides. This year, so far, there had been twelve. Six-man homicide detective groups and the like had become obsolete.
As soon as she passed the front desk, Keith Inchierca, the sergeant on duty, said, “Captain wants to see you pronto.” Keith pointed with his beefy thumb as though she might not know where the captain’s office was located. She took the steps two at a time up to the second floor. Despite her personal connection with Captain Stagger, she was rarely called into his office.
She rapped her knuckles lightly on his door.
“Come in.”
She opened the door. His office was small and rain-pavement gray. He was bent over his desk, his head lowered. Kat’s mouth suddenly went dry. Stagger’s head had been lowered that day too, eighteen years ago, when he had knocked on her apartment door. Kat hadn’t understood. Not at first. She always thought she would know if that knock came, that there would be a premonition of some sort. She had pictured the scene a hundred times in her head—it would be late at night, pouring rain, a pounding knock. She would open the door, already knowing what was to come. She would meet some cop’s eyes, shake her head, see his slow nod, and then fall to the ground screaming, “No!”
But when the knock actually came, when Stagger had come to deliver the news that would cleave her life in two—one person before that moment, another thereafter—the sun had been shining without hesitation or care. She had been heading uptown to the campus library at Columbia to work on a paper about the Marshall Plan. She still remembered that. The damn Marshall Plan. So she opened the door, preparing to head to the C train, and there was Stagger, standing, his head lowered, just like now, and she hadn’t had a clue. He didn’t meet her eyes. The truth—the weird, shameful truth—was that when she first saw Stagger in the hallway, Kat had thought that maybe he had come for her. She had suspected Stagger had a little crush on her. Young cops, especially those who considered Dad something of a father figure, fell for her. So when Stagger first popped up on her doorstep, that was what she thought: that despite knowing she was engaged to Jeff, Stagger was about to make a subtle move on her. Nothing pushy. Stagger—his first name was Thomas, but no one ever used it—wasn’t the type. But something sweet.
When she saw the blood on his shirt, her eyes had narrowed, but the truth still didn’t reach her. Then he said three words, three simple words that came together and detonated in her chest, blowing her world apart: “It’s bad, Kat.”
Stagger was nearing fifty now, married, four boys. Photographs dotted his desk. There was an old one of Stagger with his late partner, Homicide Detective Henry Donovan, aka Dad. That’s how it was. When you die on the job, your picture ends up everywhere. Nice memorial for some. Painful reminder for others. On the wall behind Stagger, there was a framed poster of Stagger’s oldest, a high school junior, playing lacrosse. Stagger and his wife had a place in Brooklyn. It was a nice life, she supposed.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
Outside of the precinct, she called him Stagger, but when it came to professional matters, she just couldn’t do that. When Stagger looked up, she was surprised to see his face ashen. She involuntarily stepped back, almost expecting to hear those three words again, but this time she beat him to it.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Monte Leburne,” Stagger said.
The name sucked the air out of the room. After a worthless life of nothing but destruction, Monte Leburne was serving a life sentence for the murder of NYPD Homicide Detective Henry Donovan.
“What about him?”
“He’s dying.”
Kat nodded, stalling, trying to regain her footing. “Of?”
“Pancreatic cancer.”
“How long has he had it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you just telling me this now?”
Her voice had more edge than she’d meant. He looked up at her. She gestured her apology.
“I just found out myself,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to visit him.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“He used to let me. But lately . . .”
“I know that too,” Stagger said.
Silence.
“Is he still up at Clinton?” she asked. Clinton was a maximum-security correctional facility in upstate New York near the Canadian border, seemingly the loneliest, coldest place on earth. It was a six-hour drive from New York City. Kat had made that depressing ride too often.
“No. They moved him to Fishkill.”
Good. That was much closer. She could make it there in ninety minutes. “How long does he have?”
“Not long.”
Stagger started to come around the desk, maybe to offer comfort or a hug, but he pulled up short.
“This is good, Kat. He deserves to die. He deserves worse.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Kat . . .”
“I need to speak to him again.”
He nodded slowly. “I thought you’d say that.”
“And?”
“I made the request. Leburne refuses to see you.”
“Too bad,” she said. “I’m a cop. He’s a convicted murderer about to die with a big secret.”
“Kat.”
“What?”
“Even if you could get him to talk now—and come on, we know that won’t happen—he won’t live until trial anyway.”
“We can put him on tape. Deathbed confession.”
Stagger looked skeptical.
“I have to try.”
“He won’t see you.”
“Can I borrow a car from the pool?”
He closed his eyes, said nothing.
“Please, Stagger?”
So much for only calling him captain.
“Your partner will cover for you?”
“Sure,” she lied. “Of course.”
“Doesn’t feel like I have much of a choice anyway,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “Fine, go.”