Day one as partners she and Boswell had adjusted their small space so that their desks faced each other, their file cabinets were out of the way, and the shared case board was front and center. Now she was rethinking that arrangement. Separate work spaces would be far more tolerable under these new circumstances. Otherwise she would be stuck face to face with Falco, every hour of every day in the office.
Thank God a good portion of their time would be in the field. Then again, partners spent a lot of hours cramped up in a vehicle together doing surveillance or tracking down leads.
She heaved a big breath. This arrangement was going to be endlessly challenging and utterly irritating. Be that as it may, it was her duty to try and make it work. Good team player.
“Hey, Devlin,” this new partner of hers said as she approached their shared work space. “How’d things go with the boss?”
She stared at him. In light of the fact that he hadn’t been here when she’d gone into the LT’s office, he had obviously nosed around to learn her whereabouts. “My meeting with the boss was private, Falco. Do you grasp the concept of privacy?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “I got you, Devlin. I definitely didn’t mean to get all up in your business or anything.”
She kept to herself the first snarky response that came to mind. Make the best of the situation. At some point today, they should discuss his wardrobe and appearance. Worn-out jeans, wrinkled shirts, and scuffed biker boots were not appropriate attire for a detective representing the Major Investigations Division. His beard-shadowed jaw and shaggy hair didn’t make the cut either. Giving him grace, she reminded herself he was new. It was her job to ensure he was properly oriented.
“Unless you got some other private business”—Falco stood and reached for his vintage lightweight leather jacket—“we just landed our first case together. A homicide.”
Wait. Wait. Wait. Kerri shook her head. “How did we land anything?”
He shrugged into that beat-up jacket she decided wasn’t really vintage, just abused. “No clue,” he said. “Sergeant Gordon handed it off like two minutes ago.”
“Sykes and Peterson are up.” She’d scarcely filed her final report on the Hayden case.
“The story is,” Falco explained, “Sykes and Peterson got caught up in a robbery at their Starbucks stop this morning.”
Great. She grabbed the keys on her desk and the large dark-roast black coffee she’d picked up at a drive-through and hadn’t yet had the chance to drink. “We’ll take my vehicle.”
Falco’s reputation as a reckless driver preceded him. To date he had wrecked two official vehicles in his five-year career.
“Suit yourself. Did I mention this is a two for one?”
Two vics? Not good. “What’s the address?”
Kerri headed for the stairwell exit. Whoever and whatever the circumstances, the double homicide had been handed off to MID. There would be a clear and undeniable reason. Cops were territorial. No one liked someone else bulldozing into their jurisdiction without justifiable cause.
“Botanical Place in Mountain Brook.” He moved up beside her. “For the record, that’s why I was looking for you.”
She paused at the stairwell door. “Good to know. I’d hate to think you were spying on me this early in our relationship.”
“Relationship.” He winked. “I like the sound of that, Devlin.”
God help her. She might have to kill this guy herself.
Botanical Place, Mountain Brook
There were mansions in Mountain Brook, and there were mansions. The Abbott home was a mansion. A stunning European-style estate nestled amid the majestic trees on one of the community’s most prestigious streets. The property was fenced and gated with a purportedly state-of-the-art security system. Yet somehow a killer had found his way inside and murdered two people, possibly three.
Kerri grabbed shoe covers and gloves from the repurposed tissue box that sat next to her on the classic vehicle’s bench seat. She shoved them into the left pocket of her jacket along with her notebook. She kept her keys in her right. Her driver’s license and necessary plastic were in a thin credit card case in an interior pocket. She never bought jackets without sufficient pockets because she hated carrying handbags or anything else on the job that set her apart from the male detectives. Whatever else she needed was in her Wagoneer. Made life far less complicated.
Kerri was all about uncomplicated, particularly these days.
She hit the lock button and closed the driver’s-side door. Falco rounded the hood, and they crossed the strip of grass that separated the street from the sidewalk. Yellow crime scene tape draped across the front perimeter of the property, starting where the cobblestone driveway met the street. Kerri nodded at the uniform maintaining the perimeter and showed her credentials. She squinted to see his name tag. No matter that she was still four whole years from forty, her vision was already going downhill. The optometrist would say it was time to accommodate her astigmatism rather than ignore it, but it didn’t give her enough consistent trouble to bother with glasses or contacts just yet. Either one would be annoying. Maybe not as annoying as adjusting to a new partner, but then the partnership between detectives was a special bond. She glanced at Falco. Whatever her misgivings and concerns about him, he’d made the grade somehow. She should give him the benefit of the doubt. She tugged on her gloves. It was amazing what a large extrastrong black coffee could do for her attitude.
“Morning, Detective Devlin.”
The uni’s broad smile jogged her memory about the same time his name came into better focus. “Morning, Baker.”
Baker had been first on the scene at Councilor Hayden’s homicide scene three weeks ago. She remembered thinking he’d likely been teased as a kid about being a baker or a cake maker. Not such a bad nickname either way. At least he hadn’t been called a devil. Sometimes Kerri wondered why she’d chosen to reclaim her maiden name after the divorce.
Oh yeah, the bastard she’d married had cheated on her. She wanted no part of him attached to her—except their daughter, Victoria, of course. Tori was the only good thing to come of that doomed fourteen-year union.
Why had it taken her so long to recognize what Nicholas Jackman was? Or maybe he was right in his accusation that she had driven him to cheat because she’d been too obsessed with work.
Of course, it couldn’t possibly be his fault.
Kerri ducked under the yellow tape and resisted the urge to groan as the thought of the divorce and her cheating ex trickled down to a more recent and pressing issue: their thirteen-year-old daughter had decided she wanted to spend the summer with Daddy in New York. Really, what young girl wouldn’t want to trade Birmingham, Alabama, for Manhattan? Especially since Daddy’s new firm had put him in an Upper East Side apartment with amazing views of the city.
The shock Kerri had felt when Tori had broached the subject this morning reverberated through her now. Thankfully she had been so startled by the idea she’d said little, but she felt certain her daughter was aware they would be revisiting the subject very soon. No way was Tori spending the whole summer with her dad. Not in New York at his hip apartment and especially not with his beautiful young girlfriend with whom he had cheated.