“Okay.” She cranes her neck for a final peek and then turns and leaves.
Adam brings the mug into the room, passes it to Gina. “Tea,” he tells her. “It’s hot.”
“Thank you.” She wriggles to a sitting position, accepts the mug, and gives him a contrite look. “I’m sorry about what happened out there,” she says. “I mean, with the gun. I’m a police officer, and I didn’t know what your intentions were. I’m sorry if I frightened you and your children.”
He nods.
She blows on the tea and sips. “My name’s Gina, by the way.”
“Adam Lengacher,” he says. “You’re warming up?”
“Yes. Finally. Thank you.”
He looks at me, not quite comfortable with all this. “I tossed more wood on the stove.”
The window rattles with a sudden gust wind. Gina startles so violently tea sloshes over the rim of the cup. “Shit,” she hisses, glancing down at the spill. “Sorry.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Adam glance my way. Grabbing the towel, I move to her and blot the spill. “You expecting someone?” I say under my breath.
“Not yet.”
I stop blotting and meet her gaze. “So what aren’t you telling me, Gina?”
Her laugh is short-lived. “Still have that suspicious mind, don’t you?”
“I guess that’s why I’m a cop,” I tell her. “I’ve got a pretty decent built-in lie detector. You’d be wise to remember that.”
Outside, the wind howls, hurling snow against the window, the panes trembling beneath the force.
“I’m in trouble,” she whispers.
“What kind of trouble?” I ask.
Her gaze flicks to Adam and back to me, telling me she doesn’t want to discuss it in front of him. “It’s bad.”
Realizing she’s asking for some privacy, the Amish man clears his throat. “I’ve got to drop hay for the cattle,” he tells us. “I won’t be long.”
When he’s gone, I go to the door and close it. Pulling the chair from the sewing table, I drag it to the cot and settle into it. When I run out of things to do, I look at Gina. “I think you’d better start talking.”
CHAPTER 3
Trust is an elusive thing when you’re a cop. When I was younger, trust and friendship were instantaneous and uncomplicated. Life was straightforward, not yet cluttered with baggage. I could close my eyes and charge forward, my heart overflowing with conviction, any risks be damned. It was one of many things Gina Colorosa and I had been good at. Maybe a little too good, because a couple of times both of us paid a price for having that kind of blind faith when we shouldn’t have.
I’m older now and not as foolish—or so I like to believe. I wonder where the last ten years have led Gina. Has she become as cautious as me or is she still the reckless dynamo I’d once admired?
“I got involved in something.” She picks up the tea, grips it with both hands, and drinks. “I’m in deep, Kate. I handled it badly. I did some things I shouldn’t have done.”
“Maybe you ought to start at the beginning and tell me everything.”
She nods. “I’m with the vice unit now. Have been for almost five years. It was a big promotion. More money. More prestige.” She laughs. “Bad hours.”
I’m familiar with the vice unit. Back when I was a rookie, it was a small but esteemed division of the Columbus Division of Police. It falls under the umbrella of the Narcotics Bureau and handles prostitution, alcohol, narcotics, and gambling. A lot of young cops clamored to be part of it, especially the adrenaline junkies. The unit saw a lot of action, serving warrants, setting up stings, even partaking in some undercover work.
Gina continues. “The first year was great. Satisfying work. Exciting. I got to know the guys in the unit. We were tight, you know, like a brotherhood or something. We made a lot of busts, took out some very bad guys, did some good. A few years ago, I started seeing and hearing things I didn’t like.”
“Like what?”
“For example, in the course of a bust I saw two patrol officers steal cash from a known pimp,” she tells me. “On another occasion, a prostitute I arrested told me that in the course of an arrest, one of the male cops let her go in exchange for sex.” She shrugs. “At first, I thought they were isolated incidents. A cop stepping over the line, taking advantage of his position. But I kept hearing things.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
She hesitates, looks everywhere but into my eyes. “Not enough.”
Knowing there’s more to all of this than she’s telling me, I rise and stalk to the window, look out at the whiteout conditions beyond. “You looked the other way.”
“Pretty much. I made some bad choices.”
“Bad choices? What is that, Gina? Secret code for your letting a bunch of dirty cops continue being dirty cops?”
When she doesn’t respond, I get a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. I turn to face her, the old anger stirring in my gut. “Even before I left the department, you weren’t exactly on the straight and narrow.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more complicated now, Kate. I was odd man out. There were a lot of dynamics to the situation. A lot of pressure—”
“Pressure? Are you kidding me?” I stalk over to her, jam my finger a few inches from her face. “What did you do?”
Shame flashes in her eyes, but is quickly replaced by attitude. “Nothing. I let it happen. I’m not proud of it. I screwed up. I got caught up in it. Kate, you have to understand … they made it far too easy to look the other way and that was by design. That’s how they operate.”
Needing a moment to process what I’m hearing—and the repercussions of it—I remove my parka, hang it on back of the chair, and sit. “Why are you here, Gina? What do you want from me?”
She laughs as if genuinely amused, and for a moment she looks like the fun-loving, errant young woman I’d known a lifetime ago. The one with a raucous laugh and a sense of humor that was invariably inappropriate. The one who could make me laugh even when I knew I shouldn’t.
“For God’s sake, you haven’t even heard the bad news yet,” she says.
I stare at her, saying nothing, bracing because I know she’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear. Something that’s going to bring an element into the situation that will fundamentally change a relationship I’d once held dear.
“The things I saw—the things I heard about after the fact—were just the tip of the iceberg.” She sits up, intensity flaring in her expression. “I’m talking widespread corruption. The whole unit. Falsifying affidavits for search warrants. We’re talking no-knock warrants served in the middle of the night with SWAT on scene, so they can go in and make good on a threat or take what they want.”
I let the words settle, try to digest them, make sense of them so I can decide how to handle this, but the revelations sit in my stomach like a plateful of bad food. I’m sickened by the thought of an institution I believe in—an institution I’d once been part of—being desecrated. Worse, a monstrous doubt that Gina isn’t telling the whole truth has taken up residence in the forefront of my mind.