"Do you have her under surveillance?"
"Sure, that's standard M.O., but Maggie knows we're doing it. She's not stupid."
"Keep it up anyway. Twenty-four seven. I don't want anyone saying we gave her special treatment."
"K-2 already ordered it."
"If you're looking for affairs, remember that she's always had a thing for Stride," Dan reminded him.
"Everyone knows that's platonic."
"Yeah? Don't be so sure."
Abel's eyes narrowed. "Do you know something?"
"I'm just saying they spend half their lives together. Check it out."
"If you say so." Abel wasn't convinced. He didn't like Stride and didn't much like Maggie either, but that didn't mean they were heating up the sheets. Then again, he had always assumed his wife was loyal, too.
"So her husband is cheating, and she's got millions coming her way," Dan said. "Motive isn't a problem."
"Nothing's a problem. It's her gun. No one was in the house. She did it."
"You sound pretty sure. How about gun shot residue?"
"Nothing, but she's a cop. She knows how to beat that."
"Any blood spatter on her clothes?"
Abel shook his head. "We're running tests, but I didn't see anything. It was her house. She could have washed her clothes before calling us. Hell, she could have shot him in the buff and then taken a shower. Oh, and I had her take a blood test, too. She was drinking coffee, but I smelled alcohol."
"And?"
"Her blood alcohol level was point zero seven. Even if she quit drinking a few hours earlier, that's high. She must have been drunk when she did it."
"That gives Archie Gale a way to talk it down to manslaughter."
"He may be right," Abel said. "Nothing points to premeditation at this point."
"Right, the gun walked downstairs on its own, and Maggie followed to find out where it was going." Dan took a big bite out of a pastry and licked the cream cheese off his lips with his tongue. He added, "How about the conspiracy theory? Anyone get out of prison lately who might want to get back at Maggie for putting him away? Defense attorneys like Archie Gale love to blow smoke about that kind of shit."
Abel scoffed. "There's nothing like that. I've got people running down her old cases, but so far, the violent perps she put away are all still behind bars or dead. Cases don't come much more straightforward than this. Stride's the one who wants this to be some mystery, because he can't accept the fact that Maggie did it."
Dan leaned forward. "Is Stride interfering?"
"He was at the crime scene before anyone else. I don't like that, but I don't think he actually touched anything or helped her clean up."
"If he gets in the way, or sticks his nose into this, I want to know immediately."
"You personally?"
"Damn right. I wasn't in favor of bringing him back, you know. As far as I was concerned, K-2 should have kept you in the top job, but Stride and K-2 are as thick as thieves. If Stride does anything that compromises this investigation, I will personally see that his ass gets kicked out of the lieutenant's chair."
Abel didn't know how to respond to that. "I wouldn't want it back even if K-2 offered it, and he won't."
"Never say never."
Abel didn't like game-playing. He wasn't going to be a pawn. He knew Stride was permanently on Dan's shit list because of the blown election, but if Dan was burning to take him down before he left the city, he could do it on his own.
He heard the muffled ringing of Dan's cell phone. Dan reached into the pocket of his bathrobe and retrieved it.
"Erickson," Dan said into the phone.
Abel watched Dan's eyes do a nervous dance. Dan snapped his fingers and gestured at the door, and Abel was glad to take the hint. Time to go.
Whatever the call was, it was bad news.
"Hello, Dan. Do you know who this is?"
There was a moment of dead air as Dan wrenched his way from one reality to the next. Every victim was like that.
"Yes," Dan replied, his voice forced.
"Tonight's the night. Is Serena ready to make the drop?"
"Yes."
"That's good." He added, "But you know this is just a down payment, right?"
"That's not what we discussed."
"You're right, it's not, but things have changed. A lot's happened this week, Dan. You think I don't read the papers? The price has gone up."
"That's not acceptable."
He chuckled long and low. "I love lawyers. Always negotiating. You're right, Dan, why don't we just forget about it. Hand the phone to that cop who's there with you, and I can let him know what's been going on."
He waited as Dan stewed. Targets like Dan were the easy ones. They'd chew glass rather than risk public embarrassment. Or jail.
"What did you have in mind?" Dan asked finally.
He smiled. "Let's wrap up the first deal, and then I'll check in with you again. I'd hate to see your big move to Washington get tanked."
"Give me the details," Dan snapped.
"Call Serena," he instructed. "Tell her to be at the Park Hill Cemetery off Vermillion Road at ten o'clock tonight. Alone. With the money."
"Why there?"
"Let's just say I like the idea of being surrounded by dead people." He thought about the river stench of the rising waters in Alabama and added, "The truth is, Dan, I'm a ghost."
13
Stride felt sorry for the guy from Byte Patrol, who was seated in front of the store computer at Lauren Erickson's dress shop, Silk. The store manager, Sonia Bezac, jabbed her razor-sharp nail dangerously close to his eyes and wouldn't have thought twice about digging in and gouging one out. The techie had a giant physique that made his neon purple T-shirt look as if it had shrunk in the wash, but Sonia may as well have been wearing black leather and cracking a whip.
"This is the third time in a month I've had you in here," she snapped at him. "Each time you tell me it's fixed, and each time the fucking machine freezes up again."
The tech shrugged his craggy shoulders, and his neck disappeared. "Have you tried rebooting?"
Sonia threw her hands in the air. She was tall and extremely thin, with a narrow face, prominent chin, and a slightly drooping nose. With her hands over her head, and her red hair blazing like sunshine, she looked as if she were rearing back to fire off a lightning bolt. "Rebooting? Do I look like an idiot? Don't you think I would turn the goddamn thing off and on eighteen times before calling you?"
"I have to ask," the man said.
"Don't ask. Just get busy. I need my files back."
She swung away and expelled her breath loudly as if she were spitting out a gristly piece of steak. The techie caught Stride's eye and winked at him.
Sonia stopped dead when she saw Stride standing in the middle of the dress shop, watching her. He knew he looked out of place, the way any man would, surrounded by glittering evening gowns and cocktail dresses. He could see himself reflected in half a dozen mirrors. He wasn't sure how he would feel, seeing Sonia again, and it didn't help when she immediately stalked up to him, cocked her head to one side, and kissed him on the lips.
"Soft lips," she said to him. "Thirty years later, and I still remember that."
He had dated Sonia exactly once, when he was a junior in high school. Stride was wild with grief because his father had just died, and Sonia was on a quest to rob as many teenage boys as she could of their virginity. She smuggled a bottle of Stoli out of her parents' house, and the two of them spent three hours in a parking lot near Gooseberry Falls, drinking shots until they were sick. They undressed each other through a fog of alcohol but wound up vomiting on the highway shoulder before they had sex. Neither of them was in the mood after that.
A month later, Stride met Cindy, and he never went out with Sonia again. He had bumped into her in the city off and on over the course of three decades. Sonia wound up marrying a urologist named Delmar Bezac, and Stride remembered Cindy joking about whether Delmar or Sonia had seen more penises in their days.