“It’s people like her makin’ the world such a shit show, you ask me.”
“Nobody asked you. Nobody. Ever. You’re a cop, not her judge. What’s wrong with you?” She really needed to know because whatever it was didn’t look like anything she or Griffin or the job or the world, for that matter, would be able to fix. Had he worked this way his entire career? How? she wondered.
“Look, Foster, I’m tryin’ to get a killer off the streets. I got kids, you don’t, which means I, unlike you, got skin in the game. I’m gonna do whatever I have to do, whether it comes out pretty or not is what I’m sayin’。 You want all touchy feely, you need to partner with somebody else.” He cocked a thumb toward the team. “Li, for instance, since you two seem to get on so well together.”
Lonergan’s eyes left hers and focused on something over her shoulder that straightened him up. She turned and saw Griffin standing at her door, her hands on her hips. She’d watched their exchange. “Great,” he muttered. “Happy now?”
For a split second she thought of picking up her stuff and leaving. She needed a break, fresh air, peace, only she didn’t have time for any of that. It felt as though she were locked in a tiny box and the box kept getting smaller. She had to fight to breathe evenly. Rimmer was a liar who was obsessed with Peggy, and he had several unaccounted hours to answer for. That was her next step. Slowly, the din in the office resumed as everyone went back to what they’d been doing. The “blowup” was over.
Skin in the game.
The words echoed in her ears. He had no idea how much skin she had. Damn him.
CHAPTER 28
The traffic light at Lower Wacker and Michigan changed from red to green without a single car or truck to pay heed or care. The canopy of steel and concrete above shut out the sky, giving the street a cavernous, otherworldly feel, as though it were some forsaken underworld or forbidden place where only devils roamed. At 2:00 a.m., there was just gloom and emptiness and the stench of sour milk, steam, and diesel. Yellow-tinted streetlights worked but did little to dispel the shadows. Not much would change when the city woke in a few hours, except for the rush of traffic clogging the street.
But now, down below, red-eyed rats darted about, foraging for left-behinds. Homeless encamped along the fringes, their makeshift tents and lean-tos huddled together against the filthy steam vents of the luxury hotels they couldn’t afford to stay in. City workers, cops, routinely swept the homeless up and along so that the city wouldn’t look bad to visitors who didn’t know its failings. Out of sight, out of mind, the unfortunates, the troubled, as vexing to those in high places as the rats that shimmied through their sewer pipes.
This was the spot. It was the cover of half light that made it appealing. The old car slowed, then hopped the curb, pulling onto the gravel, the crunch of the tiny pebbles the only thing to disturb the stillness here. Once the trunk was popped, it was an easy pull and drag as the army-green tarp was drawn out, a pale arm escaping, red lipstick around the slender wrist. Quickly. That was how it needed to be done. As easy as emptying a trash pail or scraping mud off a shoe.
Not the ideal circumstances, not the way it would have been preferred, but in a pinch, stopgap, the improvised method would suffice. The tarp would be found in the morning. The rats would find it sooner. They’d smell the blood and the promise of a bountiful feast. It was a cycle—life, death. Everything that died got eaten.
The car drove away and left the rats their prize.
CHAPTER 29
She didn’t hear Lonergan come in the next morning. She’d been at her desk for hours before her shift going over her notes, probing for inconsistencies, looking for a way forward. It wasn’t until she heard his chair squeak that she looked up and saw him standing there, peeling off his overcoat. No exchange of pleasantries. They were beyond that now.
“Anything new?” he asked, taking his chair, rolling up the sleeves on his button-down shirt. All business, like nothing had happened between them the day before. They’d gone by Rimmer’s apartment before clocking out last night, but there had been no sign of him. His stoned-out neighbor had no clue when he’d seen him last.
“Still on Rimmer. He’s got family ties in Rensselaer,” Foster replied curtly. “Maybe we won’t have to go that far to track a lie.”
“Well, he’s not at his job,” Lonergan said. “I swung by on my way in. The little twerp’s AWOL. His runnin’ kinda proves he’s a lyin’ little Zappa weasel.”
“It doesn’t prove anything,” Foster said.
Lonergan stared at Foster. “We gonna talk about what went down yesterday or not? I figure you’d want to clear the air or somethin’。”
If she’d thought talking would do any good, she might have gone for it, but she didn’t see Lonergan changing, and she certainly didn’t see herself changing to accommodate him. “We find Rimmer,” she said. “We keep things moving.”
Lonergan stood. “All right, then let’s go run this prick to ground. He’s startin’ to piss me off.”
Griffin’s door flew open, and she came barreling out of her office. “Body!” Her angry eyes scanned the office. “Foster. Lonergan. Lower Michigan. Move it! We got another one.”
Foster quickly gathered up her things, Lonergan grabbed his coat, and they were off.
Another one.
Just forty-eight hours from Peggy Birch’s discovery, and Foster was squatting over another body, another white female. Rosales stepped back and waited for her to take a closer look while Lonergan walked gingerly around the body lying naked on a tarp, his face grim, his jaw set. The young woman had been stabbed repeatedly, like Peggy, but much worse. There were more wounds. They looked deeper; the tarp was a bloody mess. The musty smell of death was no longer a shock to Foster’s system. She had long ago inured herself to that, and if she lived to be a hundred, she would never forget it.
Two patrol officers stood close while the evidence techs did what they were supposed to.
“Dumped here,” Lonergan said. “Not killed here. No drag marks. The tarp doesn’t look beat up.”
Foster stared into the still eyes. They were half-open, fixed, no light or life in them. Blue eyes. “Who found her?”
The shorter of the two POs took a step forward but not too close. He looked a little green but made an effort to keep his eyes on Foster, not on the tarp. “Officer Perez.” He pointed to his partner. “Officer Malcolm and I were passing around zero eight hundred. Traffic was just starting to pick up. We thought it could be one of the homeless sleeping rough, so we stopped to move him along.” His eyes darted to the dead woman, then away. “It wasn’t. We called it in.”
“Thanks,” she said, watching as Perez stepped back, clearly relieved to be doing so. The woman looked to be in her late twenties, thin, naked, and she was wearing a red wig. Not a clownish, Halloween red but a sedate, natural-looking red. In fact, anyone would likely take her for a natural redhead were it not for the wisps of brown hair sticking out around her ears and forehead.
Foster stood, stepped back, eyed Rosales. “Time of death?”