“No. This has nothing to do with your father’s scandal.”
Scandal.
That word sours in the air and in my mind. So much so that I want to ask him if that’s what we’re calling my father getting caught on tape, commending a cop for his “good work” after he killed a suspect. But I don’t. I bite my tongue and hard. It should be bleeding right about now.
The captain might not be my best friend, but I believe he absolutely hated my father for justified reasons. Moore’s hard and difficult, but he’s a good man and a good cop. My father was the reason I joined the force, and he was neither of those things, but that’s a complicated piece of my psyche that most people, me included at times, wouldn’t understand.
Feeling that double pinch in my chest that the counselor the department made me see after my father’s death helped me identify as grief and anger, I fade back into the workspace and quickly return to my desk.
“You’re right,” Lang concludes. “His line’s disconnected.” He lowers his voice. “Is this—”
“No,” I say before he can ask about Roberts’s relationship with my father, because that’s where this is going. I know him. He knows me. Five years of sharing a desk and a good hundred cases investigated together has that effect, and yet I didn’t really know my father, whom I grew up with. Or maybe I did, and that’s my real problem. I leave it at that one word and move on. “The captain’s getting me a new number.”
“Right.” He doesn’t look convinced or satisfied. “What’s the case we’re taking over?”
We’re taking over.
I could shut him out, but I’m not going to do that. Not on this one. Not when he’s already looking for a connection between the case and Roberts’s departure. I am, too. I hand him the file and sit down, watching him scan the contents, waiting for his reaction.
“Obviously not connected,” he says, glancing up from the file, “but it feels like old territory. That mother and her kids who were poisoned. Reads like a cyanide poisoning.”
“Yes. I had the same thought.”
He taps the file. “Did you notice that this guy threw up, but the poem that was in his mouth was clean?”
“I did. The killer must have washed out the mouth.” I grab my phone. “I’m going to find out if the body is still with the medical examiner.” A quick call and I have my answer. “The body is confirmed present,” I say, disconnecting the line, and glancing at the time on my cell phone to confirm it’s one thirty, safely after the sparsely operated lunch hour at the ME’s office. “I’m headed in that direction. Want to join me?”
“If it includes a stop by Roberts’s place first, I’m in.” He flaps a piece of paper in the air. “I have the address.”
Lang and I do not like the same movies or share the same politics, but when it comes to investigations, we collide and connect in all the right ways. We home in on the same things when it matters, and this is one of those moments. Something with Roberts isn’t adding up. And when your life is all about death, you never ignore what doesn’t add up. Or you end up dead, too.
Chapter 4
Lang and I decide to rally some computer forensics support on our way out of the precinct. My approach to such support is that while the way to a man’s heart might not really be his belly, it seems to work on that team, all of whom tend to be overworked and underappreciated. Today, as is often the case, we find Chuck Waters, a man particularly fond of such attention, especially if it’s chocolate, hard at work in his little cubicle and oblivious to his surroundings.
I reach in the bag now on my shoulder and pull out a Godiva bar. Lang gives me an approving wink and hangs back a bit, giving me room to work. I snag a chair from a nearby vacant cubicle and roll it in beside Chuck, joining him at his desk, where I set the bar in front of him. He grins at the sight of it and glances over at me, his fingers still working his keyboard. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing. My finger. My gun. His fingers. His magical keyboard that holds answers I need now and always. “You don’t have to give me gifts.”
“Almost every murder I’ve solved involved you and long hours. Which I appreciate. But I do actually need a couple of things again. Now.”
He chuckles, and it’s a low rough chuckle that is brawny and oversized for a man who stands level to me at five-foot-five and probably outweighs my one eighteen by about five pounds. “That means you need a lot of things.” He shoves a yellow pad in front of me. “Make a list.”
I don’t reach for the pad. “Everything you can get me on the new Summer case. I’m headed to the ME’s office, but I’m taking a leap of faith that the cause of death is poison by cyanide.”
“And you need to know where the killer got the cyanide.”
“Exactly. We worked a case a few years back, and that case file has a dark web contact we never caught up with.”
“Case file: Roderick Kensington,” Lang says, leaning on the edge of the cubicle wall on my side, his way of not overwhelming Chuck.
Chuck gives him a wave and writes it down. “Got it. On it. And I know the routine. I’ll pull cameras for his home and work, search emails and phone records, and all the normal stuff.”
“And pull the entire body of work for a poet named Arthur Guiterman,” I add, “with emphasis on a poem titled ‘Fate, The Jester.’ Cross-reference it to the rest of his work.”
“Arthur Guiterman,” he says, scribbling additional notes. “‘Fate, The Jester.’ Summer case file. Got it all.” He keys in the name and glances over at me. “Says here this is Roberts’s case.”
“About that,” I say. “Roberts moved to Houston abruptly.”
His brows dip. “This murder happened three days ago. He worked the scene and, according to these notes, one of my coworkers did quite a lot of work for him. You’re sure he’s gone?”
“That’s right. He’s gone. And we’ll need your coworker’s notes, or help, if you can recruit that person.”
Chuck hasn’t moved on from his present state of confusion. “That’s more than abrupt.”
“His phone is disconnected,” Lang says. “We need to reach him. In fact, we’re going to go by his house after we leave here.”
Chuck’s gaze latches onto Lang’s, understanding in his stare. “Oh dear,” he murmurs. “I’ll ping his phone. You want me to dig deeper?”
“Not yet,” I say, but I hesitate on a hunch. “Actually, look for any connection between Summer and Roberts. And cross-reference Summer to all of his cases in the past year. No, two years.”