Authors: Sandra Brown
Her life had been upended and my own marriage was limping through its final rancorous months, the shell of my relationship with Sherri turning more toxic by the day, our young son, Toby, showing signs of anxiety and aggression even though he was only four years old. God, the things people do to each other.
The first time I’d reached out to touch Nadia’s hand, in what I told myself was a comforting way, there it was: that spark, that flash. She’d grabbed my hand and linked her fingers into mine. In that one single entwining, I’d lost my marriage and whatever man Howie Logan had been right up until that very moment. I’d never seen that man again.
I’d made all kinds of excuses. None of them were remotely legit. The truth was we’d just reached for each other, connected. Gregg took a plea deal that netted him eight months and Sherri found out about my fling with Nadia. I got separated and within a matter of weeks Nadia told me she couldn’t see me anymore. I’d been spinning in place ever since.
No one bothered to report Gregg missing. He’d been living in a shabby apartment complex near I-40 since his release from state prison. A security guard found his body in the parking lot of a nearby defunct research facility, a cluster of glass-and-steel buildings that had been state-of-the-art until the parent company folded during the most recent recession. Gregg was crumpled near the entrance of the main building, killed in the exact same fashion as Everhardt, a double-tap to the back of the skull. Forensics showed it was the same 9 mm weapon that had killed both men.
Stimple was pissed. Gregg had been our prime suspect for the Bertram Everhardt killing. Now only one common factor remained.
* * *
Beckenridge, still testy about his last exchange with Stimple, addressed himself to me. “Detective Logan, I’d like to remind everyone that we came in voluntarily. If we’d known that my client was being treated as a suspect—”
“I don’t believe anyone’s used that term,” I said.
Don’t look at her.
Stimple broke in. “I would like to clarify something, though. Your client says she didn’t have any contact with Mr. Gregg after he was released from prison, correct?”
“She said she hadn’t seen him.”
Stimple grinned. He’d made his point, and now he pounced. “Because Mr. Gregg’s family gave us permission to look at his computer. We found a number of recent emails between your client and Mr. Gregg.”
“He was threatening me,” Nadia said suddenly, loudly. “He was trying to get money.”
Beckenridge laid a hand on her arm.
“That seemed apparent from the content of the messages,” Stimple said. “As was your adamant refusal to be coerced. Which I admire. You even told him that he’d be sorry if he didn’t leave you alone.”
“That—” Nadia began.
“This interview is terminated,” Beckenridge announced.
“We’d like permission to look on her computer,” Stimple said. “She might have information on there that could be helpful.”
Beckenridge laughed at that. He stood and glared at us in turn, smarting from the ambush. “Nadia, let’s go.”
She looked at me, drowning. I studied my screen saver.
“We won’t have much trouble getting a warrant,” Stimple said, enjoying himself. “The SBI is helping us out on this one, and they’ve got some digital forensics guys who do
incredible
work.”
* * *
I was at home that night, eating leftover pizza and watching ESPN when my cell phone rang. I saw her number come up and thought about not answering it. But if she left a message, that would be even worse. Once my number showed up on her phone records, interested parties might be able to make an argument that my phone should be examined.
And those digital forensics guys really can do some incredible things.
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked her when I picked up.
“Your emails are on my computer,” she said. “Going back the whole time we were seeing each other. I erased them but your experts can find them, right?”
I’d been thinking of little else since the meeting. I’d hidden the affair from Stimple and the rest of them because it was Sherri’s final request to me, the one I couldn’t deny after all the pain I’d caused her. She’d pleaded with me not to humiliate her any further. And if it came out, if Beckenridge discovered that Nadia was involved with a cop, he’d use it any way he could, in the media and in court.
“Did you ever have an off-site backup?” I asked her.
“Just my external drive.”
“Where is it? In your house?”
“Right beside the computer. Howie, I—”
God, my name on her lips.
“You shouldn’t have called me,” I said. But I couldn’t keep the emotion out of my voice.
“I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Bertram or Liam,” she said, her voice breaking just a little. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I was in love with you, Nadia. But I’m still not sure I ever
knew
you.”
“You lost a lot because of me. I’m willing to take responsibility for that, Howie. But not for this. And if someone’s killing the people I’ve been with, the men I’ve loved…” She didn’t have to say the rest.
“Did you ever tell anyone about us?” I asked.
“Never. I respected your wishes. Does anyone besides your wife know?”
I stared at the TV. I wanted nothing more than to see her, to touch her. But that wasn’t real anymore. Our brief affair had allowed me to live out a consuming fantasy of breathless transgression. She’d nurtured the liar in me, the one who lied to everyone else and to myself, even if I never could lie to her. That fantasy had cost me most of the real world, and now we’d come to a place where it just might cost me the rest.
* * *
Stimple wanted me to help execute the warrant the next morning but I had to be in court to testify on one of my old drug cases. By the time I got done with my turn on the stand, my mentor had left no less than five messages on my phone, each more progressively anguished than the last.
“She beat us to the punch,” he said on the first one, nearly weeping with frustration. “She’s saying her house was broken into last night. Call me as soon as you get this.”
The next message: “Bitch says she didn’t leave her alarm system on when she went out for drinks with her girlfriends. How stupid does she think we are? I am going to crucify her, Howie, you hear me?”
The next: “Computer’s gone, along with the gun that’s registered to her—9 mm, just like our shooter. Call me when—”
I called my soon-to-be ex-wife instead. This had gone far enough, and my rationalizations were corroding.
Sherri had taken Toby and unofficially moved to South Carolina, to be closer to her parents. I hadn’t seen her for more than a few minutes at a time since the split, and then only when she was handing Toby off for a weekend with me. I could’ve made a fuss in family court about the arrangement, but I didn’t feel like I was in any position to fight her. Toby had been exposed to too much bitterness already.
“God, you sound horrible,” she said. She, on the other hand, sounded fine. The further she withdrew from me, the better she felt. “What’s up?”
I told her. I could hear it when she went cold on the other end of the line.
“Nadia.” She fairly spat the name. “I thought you said it was over with her.”
“It was. Is.”
“So what are you looking for here?” she asked, sounding exhausted. “You’re your own man now. You clean up your own messes.”
“In order to clean this one up I’m going to have to tell the chief.”
She laughed but there was no humor in it, only a resentful sort of self-pity and an open hostility I hadn’t felt from her since she’d noticed my increasingly erratic behavior and tailed me over to Nadia’s place one night. She used all the surveillance tactics I’d taught her as a lark when we were first dating, giving her the inside trade secrets I thought were inconsequential. Turned out she’d been a good listener, better than I ever was.
“Well, I guess my humiliation’s complete,” she surmised. “I’m going to keep Toby with me until you clear this up.”
No argument from me there.
“Did I ever tell you that you were the worst mistake I ever made?” she asked.
It was what you’d call a rhetorical question.
* * *
I arranged a meeting in the chief’s office with Stimple and Lori Wiese in attendance. The worst part was those first few seconds, all of them staring at me, uneasy but still trusting, giving me the benefit of the doubt.
So I just came right out with it.
“You guys know I got separated last year. You know we chalked it up to irreconcilable differences, the usual cop-spouse burnout syndrome.” No one had second-guessed that explanation; police forces worldwide were littered with collateral wreckage. “The truth is Sherri caught me cheating. I was having an affair with Nadia Yohn.”
At first Stimple actually cracked up, but within a few breaths his laugh had sputtered into gaping disbelief.
Chief Roberson asked me to repeat what I’d just said.
Lori Wiese was up on her feet, pacing. “And why the hell, exactly, did you not mention this before now? Why did you not pull yourself off the case as soon as Everhardt was reported missing? Why the hell did you attend that meeting yesterday?” Her hands were flying around like she couldn’t decide what to do with them.
“My wife asked me to keep the affair a secret,” I said quietly. I felt a great deflation coming on, like my bones had turned soft. Like I’d been holding myself rigid for so long I’d forgotten how to unclench. “I knew if the truth came out, the lawyers would use it and, well, Sherri didn’t want to feel publicly humiliated.”
“You humiliated her when you started screwing around with that—that—!” Wiese finally dropped her hands and stared at me. “I cannot believe I’m having this conversation.”
Stimple’s reaction was worse. The hurt on his face was apparent, a depth of betrayal I hadn’t ever imagined. I started to say something to him but he held up a hand and shook his head. The brief sense of confessional relief I’d felt quickly turned poisonous.
Roberson leaned across his desk. “As of this moment, you are suspended with pay pending an investigation. You are not to speak about this matter to anyone. If we discover that you’ve jeopardized a murder investigation, your losing your badge will be just the beginning.”
“What happened to her computer?” Stimple asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
“What about
your
computer?” asked the chief.
“My wife took it when she left.”
“Of all the stupid, thinking-with-your-dick screwups—” Wiese continued, livid.
I said, “We still don’t know for certain that Nadia is involved in the murders.”
They stared at me like I was a foreign life-form, a particularly disgusting one composed mostly of quivering valves and offensive odors. “You’re right about that,” Stimple finally said. “But now we have to figure out if
you
are.”
* * *
I still lived in the house Sherri and I’d bought when we were first married; it was my only real asset, in terms of ownership. I didn’t know if it would survive the final terms of the divorce.
When the empty upstairs rooms loomed too large, I retreated to the basement to really turn up the Bose speakers loud and blank out all thought. I had my flat-screen down there, all my Drive-By Truckers and Avett Brothers and Bobby Bare, Jr. CDs, none of that radio country crap. Real music. It was the only thing I could disappear into anymore.
Nadia had broken it off with me a few weeks after Sherri left. “I love you,” she’d said, “I really do, but you’re part of this same damned pattern. The rich guy to the troublemaker to the cop with the heart of gold.” She’d smiled then and touched me on my chest. If I’d died right at that moment I’d have been cool with it. But instead she took her hand away and left me behind.
I couldn’t really blame her for what had happened with Sherri. Nadia was a catalyst. I’d given my wife a dozen reasons to leave, some having to do with the job, some with whatever was missing inside me. But now I was on the verge of losing my job, maybe my freedom, and yet all I could think of was those flashing eyes, those whispers, the way she’d clung so tight. I’d let Nadia walk away because I knew she was right, she
was
stuck in a pattern that was leading to worse and worse results. What I wanted for her most of all was for her to break free of the machinations of all the jealous petty dipshits who’d ever fallen for her, myself included.
I’d stowed my service weapon in my locker before I left the station. They wouldn’t demand it of me yet, not until Roberson and Wiese’s investigation—which I imagined would involve a lot of ass-covering and a concerted effort to keep it an internal affair—was complete. The only guns I kept in the house were a shotgun upstairs and my father’s little .22 pistol, an antique that I still fired sometimes on the range, just to keep it in working order. I stored the handgun in a cushioned wooden box down in the basement, in one of the coffee table drawers, right there by the couch.
I slid open the drawer and unlatched the box now, five beers in—bad idea.
The last time I’d taken it out was the day Nadia walked away. I’d just wanted to stop hurting. But I’d eventually put it back in the box and closed the lid on it. It was my son’s face that turned things for me then, but thinking of him now made me hurt even worse. I took out the .22 and checked the cylinder—fully loaded, six rounds. Small caliber, you’d have to aim it straight into your eye or your mouth or your heart for it to work.
I stared at the gun a while and then put it back in the drawer, too drunk to latch it back into its box, halfway thinking I might work up the guts sooner rather than later.
* * *
“She’s gone,” Stimple told me on the phone.
“Gone?” I croaked. It was nearly noon, but I was still entangled in stale sheets, the curtains pulled tight, a spilled beer sticky on the bedside table. I couldn’t even remember coming up from the basement.
“Lock on the back door broken, blood on the cabinets. The alarm company called it in this morning at around four. Where were you at that time?”