Authors: Radclyffe
“You were being honored for bravery
and
promoted. It’s a big deal.”
“Yeah, and nothing I’ve done in the last year and a half has mattered to you, so why should this?” Mitchell tried to curb the bitterness in her voice, but failed. “Why did you come here at all this week?”
“Because I have to work at not thinking about you every day, and when I found out you were injured and in the hospital, I couldn’t stop worrying. I just…had to come.” Erica’s shoulders sagged slightly and she inched closer, her eyes dark with pain. “I miss you. Damn it, Dell. I
miss
you.”
“Nothing’s changed…” Mitchell caught herself and grinned ruefully. “Actually, everything’s changed. I know who I am. I
like
who I am. I love Sandy. What are you going to do with all of that, Erica?”
“I don’t know.” Her sister shook her head. “Sandy is…she’s fierce, the way she…loves you.”
Mitchell’s eyes sparkled. “Yeah. She’s pretty amazing.”
Erica studied her, her expression puzzled. “And you’re happy? She makes you happy?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Erica’s gaze swept the room where small groups, composed mostly of men, continued to mill about, talking and laughing. The rumble of many voices drowned out neighboring conversations. Nevertheless, she lowered her voice. “That’s not a problem, here?”
“Sometimes it can be,” Mitchell acknowledged. “But I don’t care. I can handle it.”
“You always thought you could handle everything,” Erica said with a mixture of affection and irritation.
“That’s because I can.”
Erica laughed, sounding very much like Mitchell. “You are so full of shit, Dell.”
“Yeah. Like you’re not.” Mitchell reached out and fingered the row of ribbons on her sister’s chest. “Looks like you’ve been busy racking up the points. You must be looking at a promotion yourself soon.”
Erica blushed. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“They’re fast-tracking you, aren’t they? The posting in DC? Grooming you for a command post somewhere soon.”
“Probably,” Erica admitted.
Mitchell was surprised to realize that she felt no animosity, no jealousy. With a start, she realized that she no longer wanted the life her sister was headed for. The life she had thought she wanted. Some of the anger she had nourished to shield herself from pain eased. “That’s cool. That’s good.”
“I have to get back to the base,” Erica said. “I wish we could talk.”
“About what?”
“About…Robin. What happened.”
Mitchell shook her head. “There’s no point. It’s over. We all made our choices back then. And we’re all living with them now.” She looked away, scanning the crowd, smiling as she spied Sandy heading their way. “Sometimes the choices we’re forced to make take us to the place we wanted to be all along.” She met her sister’s eyes. “I’m happy, Erica.”
“You ready to go?” Sandy asked as she reached Mitchell’s side.
“Yep.”
Sandy turned her attention to Erica. “If you’re anything like Dell, and I guess you probably are, you’re insane for pizza. We can order extra.”
“Thanks,” Erica said sincerely. “I need to catch a train.” She held out her hand to Sandy. “It was very nice meeting you.”
Sandy appeared thoughtful as she took Erica’s hand. “It would probably be good if you came back for another visit.”
“Thank you.” Erica looked from Sandy into her sister’s eyes. “I’d like that very much.”
Mitchell and Sandy were silent as they watched Erica walk away. Then Sandy said, “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Have I mentioned that I really like it when you take care of me?”
Sandy stood on tiptoe and spoke quietly, close to Mitchell’s ear. “Yeah, but you’re usually talking about sex when you do.”
Mitchell laughed. “Well, then too.”
“So what do you say we pick up some pizza, and I can take care of you some more.”
“Oh yeah—love in the afternoon,” Mitchell said, grasping Sandy’s hand. “I think I just got lucky.”
“Yeah, yeah, rookie. Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late.” Tugging Sandy through the crowd, Mitchell finally knew that she was exactly where she wanted to be.
“This is such a nice treat, having you all to myself in the middle of the afternoon,” Catherine said, leaning her head against Rebecca’s shoulder.
Rebecca, in sweats and a T-shirt, her feet propped on the coffee table next to the empty deli containers, sighed. “I could get spoiled, that’s for sure.” She kissed Catherine lightly. “But I have to go back to work. Flanagan said she’d have something for me today on the shooting.”
“I know, and I need to go in to the office and take care of billing before Joyce loses patience with me entirely.” Catherine too had changed into a favorite pair of slacks and a pullover, and now she drew her legs onto the sofa to curl closer against Rebecca’s side. “I really enjoyed the ceremony. I noticed
you
trying to slip away from the photo-op at the end.”
“The department never passes up an opportunity for publicity,” Rebecca said wryly. “Hardly my style.”
“But you
are
newsworthy, darling.” When Rebecca stiffened, Catherine laughed and hugged her. “This is the second time in less than a year that you’ve received a departmental commendation, you were just promoted, and you’re without question the sexiest police officer in the city.”
Rebecca tilted her head back to look into her lover’s face. “About that last part…”
“We have to work,” Catherine murmured, captured by the light dancing in Rebecca’s eyes. Her body flushed hot, then she shivered. “But there’s something about you in that uniform that’s had me on edge since this morning.”
“The uniform, huh?” Rebecca guided Catherine’s hand beneath her T-shirt, then pressed Catherine’s palm to her stomach. “Will this outfit do?”
“Darling,” Catherine whispered, sliding her hand up to cup Rebecca’s breast. “You in absolutely
anything
does it for me.”
Laughing, Rebecca pulled Catherine down on top of her. Work would always be there.
*
“You want that last piece of pizza?” Mitchell, propped up naked in bed, looked down at Sandy, whose head was cradled in her lap. The pizza box lay on the floor beside them where they’d placed it earlier so they could eat in bed. When Mitchell had indulged herself by licking off a few drops of sauce that had fallen on Sandy’s breast, they’d gotten sidetracked. They’d made love, fast and hard, and then consumed the rest of the pizza in postcoital indolence.
Sandy nuzzled Mitchell’s navel, then tugged at the skin around it with her teeth. “Nuh-uh.”
“Jeez, San, cut that out. I don’t have time to go again.” Mitchell squirmed as Sandy bit harder. “Ouch. Come
on.
I’ve got that doctor’s appointment, and Jason’s been waiting all day for me to finish up some stuff.”
“Say please,” Sandy muttered, circling her tongue where her teeth had just been.
“Oh man,” Mitchell sighed, her stomach quivering as her body went molten. “
Honey.
”
Sandy slid a hand beneath the sheet and up the inside of Mitchell’s leg. “What do you say?”
“Please,” Mitchell whispered.
*
“Good afternoon,
Lieutenant
,” Flanagan said when Rebecca rapped on her open office door. “I hope you’re not bringing your bulldog in here.”
“Watts?” Rebecca grinned. “No, he’s down at the docks following up on some paperwork with Port Authority.”
“Good, because even when he
does
keep his hands in his pockets, I don’t trust him in my lab.” Flanagan capped her pen and shuffled papers into a folder. “So, nice showing this morning.”
“I didn’t see you there,” Rebecca said, surprised. Flanagan was not one to appear at departmental gatherings, official or otherwise. “Maggie make you go?”
Flanagan harrumphed as she stood. “Actually, no. I just put my head in for a minute. Saw you get the commendation. Congratulations.”
“Well, thanks.”
The two regarded one another from a few feet apart, then spoke at once.
“About the case…”
“So regarding the findings…”
With comfortable routine once more restored, they moved companionably into the laboratory where Flanagan led Rebecca to a workbench.
“Nothing new about COD. GSW at close range. From the trajectory, I put your shooter in the car with the victim, not just leaning in the door. That means considerable blowback—his, or
her
—clothes and body would have been grossly contaminated with the spray. No professional would get into another vehicle like that.”
“I’ve got uniforms checking every dumpster, sewer drain, and alley in a three-block radius. But down there, in the middle of the night, with no one around, the shooter would have had ample opportunity to discard the weapon
and
their clothing somewhere we’d never find it.” Rebecca shrugged. “And by now, any evidence that might have been
on
his body is gone.”
“Probably dumped the clothes in the river.”
“Yeah,” Rebecca agreed. “The dive team is dragging in the immediate area, but with the currents…we’d have to get real lucky to find anything. How are we doing on time of death?”
“According to the surveillance team, Beecher dined at eight at a Thai place on Third.” Flanagan leafed through several pages clipped inside a file folder that had been labeled with a case number, the initials
GB
, and the date. “Decomposition of the stomach contents puts TOD at three a.m., give or take an hour and a half.”
“Can you narrow it down any more than that?” Rebecca asked, thinking that Mitchell’s report had put Sloan squarely in front of her computers at 3:00 a.m. There was ample data to make a case that it couldn’t have been anyone else using the computers. Neither Sandy nor Michael had the expertise. Mitchell did, but Sandy had stated unequivocally that Mitchell was with her from 1:30 on. Tapes from the exterior cameras had shown Sandy’s arrival at 1:20, supporting that. The tapes also verified that no one else had entered the building until Rebecca’s arrival. The only occupant who could have been logged on to the system at 3:00 a.m. was Sloan.
But a time of death of 4:30 a.m. was going to be a problem, because Sloan had logged off at 3:52 a.m. The crime scene was only three blocks from her building. She could easily have walked there and killed Beecher a few minutes after 4:00 a.m.
“You want a window of less than ninety minutes?” Flanagan snorted.
“Less than sixty.”
Flanagan eyed her speculatively. “That critical?”
“Yes.”
“Get one of your detectives to question the wait staff at the restaurant. I’ll need as precise a time as possible for when he was actually served the meal. If you want a window that narrow, I need to know if we’re talking eight thirty or nine. Without that, what I gave you is as good as you’re going to get.”
“I’ll talk to them myself as soon as we’re done. What else do you have?”
“Something personal going on here?” Flanagan asked. “You’re pushing more than usual, even for you.”
Used to keeping the facts of a case to herself, often not even sharing everything with Watts, Rebecca hesitated. Flanagan, however, was one of the few people in the department she trusted implicitly. “Clark has a suspect in mind whom I’d like to clear.”
“Then the less I know, the better. I don’t trust the feds not to claim collusion.”
“No one in their right mind would believe that about this lab.”
“Thanks,” Flanagan said gruffly. “So, not much else to tell you.” Then as if on an afterthought, she said, “Except about the bullet.”
“You’re kidding.” Rebecca whistled softly. “You got a bullet? How? It was a through-and-through shot, the bullet went through the window of the driver’s door, and the car was parked in the middle of nowhere.”
“True. All true.”
Rebecca followed as Flanagan moved down the aisle to the far end of the bench and lifted a section of wood that, on closer inspection, proved to be a round cut from a tree. Rebecca raised a questioning eyebrow.
Unable to suppress a grin, Flanagan picked up a thin metal probe and pointed out a neat, round hole punched into the bark that led into the interior of the section of wood. A bullet track. “Voilà.”
“No way.”
“This morning, Maggie and I took a crash-test dummy, sat him behind the wheel of Beecher’s car in the position we assume he in was prior to death, and shot a hole through its head using the same trajectory as that found in the body.” Flanagan pointed to the section of tree. “Then we aimed a laser beam through the hole in the dummy’s cranium, out the open window of the car, and traced its path through the parking lot, across the street, and into this tree.”
“Beautiful,” Rebecca breathed in true awe.
Flanagan’s expression grew serious. “The bullet’s a match to a previous homicide, Rebecca.”
Alerted to the unusual use of her first name, Rebecca tensed. “Okay.”
“It’s the same gun that killed Jeff and Jimmy.”