"Just give me some background," Serena said. "If it really is just bullshit, fine, but at least I'll know that going in."
Abel leaned back against the wooden wall of the booth. He worked a toothpick between his molars. "Look, Nicole was a good kid. She and I worked together for five years. She was a lot younger than me, but we got along. I'll tell you the truth, I wasn't all that keen about having a black partner. My experience is that black women assume you're going to treat them with disrespect, so you have to be careful about everything you say. I don't do a very good job of watching my mouth. You've probably figured that out."
Serena smiled.
"Nicole was just as nervous having a middle-aged white guy as a partner. We had our arguments from time to time. Having a partner is like being married, you know that. But we did okay."
"How did her problems start?" Serena asked.
"To begin with, she was married to a son of a bitch. The kind of guy that thinks the world owes him a living because he's got a good-looking face. Nicole denied it, but I know he hit her a few times."
"So what happened?"
Abel took off his glasses and stared at the ceiling. "It was just bad, bad luck. Nicole was coming back from Superior on the Blatnik Bridge on a Saturday night. There was a guy on the Minnesota side who had parked his car and was running around on the bridge deck in a winter coat. This was July. Nicole blocked off traffic and got out of her car to talk to him. He told her he had a bomb strapped to his chest, and he was going to blow up himself and the bridge."
"Oh, shit."
"She tried to talk him into keeping his hands in the air, but he wouldn't listen. He kept saying he was going to do it, he was going to set off the bomb. When he unzipped his coat and began to reach inside, Nicole shot him twice in the head."
Serena understood what Nicole had gone through in those few seconds on the bridge. She had faced the same situation in Las Vegas, when a man decided to commit suicide by cop by pointing a gun at her and Jonny. That time, she was the one to pull the trigger.
"Sounds like a good shooting," she said.
"It was, but then the second-guessing started. It turns out the guy was mentally ill. There was no bomb."
"It's not like she could take the chance."
"You know that, and I know that. But tell that to the people who weren't up on the bridge. There was more, too. A lot of people said they heard this guy shouting racial slurs at Nicole. So some politicians got the idea that she shot him because he was a racist."
"Great."
"There was an investigation. Nicole went on leave, and it was six months before they cleared her and got her back on the job. Six months. Unbelievable. She went to pieces sitting at home, watching the television stations chew her up night after night. She had a nervous breakdown."
"So what happened with her husband?"
"The son of a bitch started having an affair with a young cocktail waitress. Eighteen years old."
"Was Nicole back on the job at that point?"
Abel nodded. "Yeah, she said she was okay, but she was fragile. Therapy wasn't working. She didn't have much of a caseload, too. Stride was nervous about her getting in over her head too quickly, so she mainly pulled cold cases. He was right. She was coming apart. You'd hear her on the phone with her husband, and it was crazy, like you were listening to a stranger. Hell, I heard her threaten him myself. Nicole said she'd kill him if he didn't break off the affair."
"And?"
"I got the call. Bad smell coming out of an apartment in the Lincoln Park area. I went in and found Nicole's husband and his teenie girlfriend, both shot dead. They'd been gone at least two days. Nicole never even reported him missing."
"Was it her gun?"
"No, but it was just as bad. Her husband's gun. He kept it in the glove compartment of his car, which was parked outside the apartment building. Nicole said she was home drinking on the night of the murders, but she didn't have any witnesses to back it up. She said he sometimes went off for days on end, so she didn't think anything was wrong when he didn't come home. But she knew he was with the other girl. She also swore to me-swore to me-that she had never been inside that girl's apartment. Except we found witnesses who placed her outside the building in her car on multiple occasions. Like she was stalking them. And we found two of her hairs in the bedroom with the bodies. Perfect DNA match."
Serena whistled. "That's a lot of evidence. What did Nicole say?"
"She said she didn't do it. I believed her, too, until we found the witnesses near the apartment and got the forensics report back. Then I knew she was just like every other perp. Covering her ass."
"This was personal for you."
"Very personal. Take my advice, Serena. Save yourself a trip."
Serena shrugged. "I have to go down there anyway."
"Suit yourself." The older detective slid out of the booth. He took black leather gloves out of his pockets and put them on his hands.
"Hey, Abel," Serena said. "I know you don't want to hear it, but Maggie's not Nicole."
"I need more than faith to believe that."
He left, and Serena drummed her fingers on the table. She was discouraged. The visit to Nicole Castro smelled like a waste of time now, but she couldn't back out, even though she knew what it would be like. She hated to see a cop's life ruined. They all walked close to the line sometimes, and when one of them took a step across, you just wanted to turn your eyes away.
The waitress stopped by her table. She had tomato sauce on her shirt. "You want to order pizza?"
"Oh, yeah."
26
Stride saw a light on inside Silk, shining in a yellow triangle from the office at the rear of Lauren Erickson's dress shop. He rang the bell beside the door and heard a distant chime. As he waited, he looked up and down Superior Street, which was deserted for the night. It was almost seven thirty, and the stores were closed. A string of streetlights illuminated the slush piled in gray mounds on the curb and on the edge of the sidewalks.
Inside, he saw Lauren's petite silhouette framed in the light from the office. She crossed the store in the darkness and unlocked the door. He felt uncomfortable as he came inside. He was dressed in a dirty flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, which were crusted with mud. He smelled like smoke because of an arson fire he was investigating near the airport, and there was soot in the creases of his neck. Lauren, by contrast, wore a striped dress shirt with an open collar and a gold chain around her neck, tan pleated dress slacks with a braided belt, and leather pumps. Her wheat-colored hair was loose, bobbing around her shoulders.
"Lose the boots," she told him.
He left them on the rubber mat. The blue carpet felt deep and thick under his feet. "Sorry, I'm a mess."
"Don't get anything on the dresses," she said.
She led him back to the office, where moving boxes were scattered on the floor. The bottom drawers of several filing cabinets were open and half-filled with bulging file folders. She had a bottle of pinot noir on her desk and a crystal glass filled with wine.
She held up the bottle, offering him a drink, and he shook his head.
"I know you won't believe this, but I'm going to miss living in Duluth," she told him as he sat down.
Stride squeezed his body into a wooden chair designed for women whose trim backsides could fit in a thimble. "You're right. I don't believe it."
"I used to go hunting and fishing with my dad when I was a girl," she said. "I brought down an eight-pointer once. I had it on my bedroom wall for years."
"Don't look now, but you could be a redneck."
Lauren smiled thinly. "I'm just saying this is my home."
"You'll do okay in Georgetown," Stride said.
"I'm sure we will." She swirled her wine in the glass. "Who knows, maybe I can land Dan a job in the next administration. Something in the Justice Department."
"I always heard that 'under secretary' was the position Dan preferred," Stride said.