Stepping back, Foster studied what she’d done, satisfied that it was a good start. She would add to it as she discovered more, but for now the order helped her breathe a little easier.
“Foster.” She turned to see Griffin standing at the door to her office, arms crossed, glancing at the board but making no comment. “Lonergan?”
All heads turned her way, everyone quieting. “Following a lead. Should be back any second.”
She could tell Griffin knew she was lying. The boss knew Lonergan better than Foster knew him, but she didn’t challenge the statement. And from the looks she got from the cops in the room, she’d passed a test. She’d covered for her partner, even if it was Lonergan, and their nods and winks of approval signaled to her that she had earned their respect and fraternity. She’d take it, but a little white lie was as far as she would ever bend. They didn’t know that about her yet.
The board set, Foster checked her watch, then switched to the security footage from the bar. Two sets of eyes would have been better, but it looked like Lonergan was going to leave it all to her.
She went through the main footage again, finding just a bar filled with happy, drinking people. Peggy Birch, the life of the party, as Giles Valentine had told them. Foster then moved to the other angles, the ones that covered the back end of the bar and along the wall. She checked her watch. It was just after eleven.
“What’s all this?”
Foster looked up to find Detective Vera Li holding a white grease-stained bag that smelled like Wrigley Field on a hot summer day. “Excuse me?”
Li flicked the bag toward the screen. “That a lead?”
“It’s footage from the bar Birch was in the night she was killed. We’re looking for . . . anything, I guess. So far nothing. I’m just about to look at the rest of it.”
Li scanned the room. “We? Where’s Lonergan?”
Foster gave Li a slight smile. “Somewhere readjusting.”
“Want another set of eyes?” She held the bag up. “And a hot dog?”
Foster’s stomach growled as if on cue, despite her reluctance to accept the assist on principle.
Li chuckled, then pulled over Lonergan’s empty chair and sat next to her. “Sure you do.” She drew the dogs out of the bag and set one in front of Foster, taking the other for herself.
“What about whatever you’re working on?” Foster asked.
“Kelley’s at a dentist appointment. I’m taking lunch while he’s at it. No sense wasting all this detectiveness. I figure we eat a little, cop a little.” She nodded toward the computer. “Cue it up. Let’s see what we got.”
Foster stared at Li for a moment, watching as she bit into her hot dog with great enthusiasm and speed. Cops learned early to eat fast and often. You never knew how long your break would be or how long a meal would have to last you before you had the chance to eat again.
“No chips?” Foster asked.
Li grinned and stuck a hand back in the bag, grabbing two small bags of Jays potato chips, original flavor. She tossed one to Foster. “What do you take me for?”
They ran through angle two for about forty minutes before Foster spotted him. He came in minutes after Birch entered and sat well away from the bar at a small table in the corner, his eyes never leaving Birch as she stood at the bar with Valentine and the others.
“He’s staring at her,” Foster said.
Li leaned closer to the screen. “And he looks pissed.”
They watched him glare at Birch from the table, then advanced the footage frame by frame until the blonde woman in the black dress who Valentine had paid close attention to approached him, talked him up, flipping her hair around, and then sat down with him. Twenty minutes later, the two left together. Foster rolled back to before the woman approached, zoomed in a little to get more of his face.
“That’s who you were looking for?” Li asked. Foster nodded. “Who is he?”
Foster froze the frame, leaned back in her chair to think. “Her ex. Joe Rimmer, who told us he hadn’t seen Birch in weeks.”
“What about the blonde?” Li asked.
“A pickup would be my guess.”
“She could also be his alibi,” Li said. “Depending on how long it all took.”
“Looks like we’ve got a new person of interest.” Foster ran it all again.
They stuck Rimmer in the smallest, smelliest interview room available and then let him sit there for a time, letting the funk sink in and the fear rise enough to rattle his bones. Foster watched him through the two-way mirror from the next room as Rimmer shook, his glassy eyes darting around the depressing space. He repeatedly checked his pockets as if trying to remind himself that he wasn’t holding anything they could ding him for.
Lonergan was back and took up the spot beside her. “Heard the boss was lookin’ for me. I was followin’ a lead . . . thought it’d be better if I took it solo.”
She didn’t bother turning to look at him. She’d seen enough, heard enough, endured enough. “What lead?”
“Doesn’t matter. Didn’t pan out.”
She knew there was no lead. She’d asked around the office when he hadn’t come back for almost two hours. It seemed Lonergan often disappeared when the going got tough. There were conflicting theories as to where he went, whether he cooled his heels in a bar or met a mistress in a hotel. It didn’t really matter to her which it was. Lonergan, she’d decided, was a goldbricker. Griffin had said as much, and she had no time for it. If she couldn’t work with him, she’d work around him.
“What’s he doing here?” Lonergan asked.
“We found him on the footage from Teddy’s.”
“That lyin’ piece of shit was followin’ her?”
“He was in the same bar she was in,” Foster corrected pointedly.
His eyes lasered in on Rimmer fidgeting in the other room. “On the very night she comes up dead.”
“I’ve asked Li to sit in,” she said.
He turned. “Li?”
“She helped get through the footage while you were . . . out. I needed another set of eyes. Yours weren’t here. She sits in.”
“Two days in and you’re already calling the shots?”
“Just working the case, Lonergan.”
“Which you’re supposed to be doin’ with me.”
“That’s right. But you flaked off and left the hard part to me. And I covered your ass with Griffin. So here we are.”
He studied her. “Look, if you’ve got beef—”
She brushed past him. Sniping with the man was a waste of time and energy, and she lacked both. The sooner they got something out of Rimmer, the sooner they could move on. “I don’t have beef. What I have is a dead girl. You coming or not?”
Three detectives, one liar. Lonergan, Foster, and Li stared down at Rimmer sitting at the table, sweating, smelling of weed. No one spoke for a good minute.
“What’s this about?” There was a tremor to his voice, his tone as thin as a reed. He looked from one to another. “Seriously?”
Foster laid a copy of the freeze-frame from the bar on the table and waited until Rimmer looked at it, registered what it was, and seemed to short-circuit. He started to stammer; his eyes danced around the room. Lonergan took a seat across from him. Foster too. Li leaned against the wall, her arms crossed in front of her, eyes on the trembling man-child with the heavy metal tats up and down his puny arms.